What Molotov Wants

(See Cover)

Last week biggest news was the fact that Germany did not invade Great Britain. Involved in this news was the apparently insignificant circumstance that, years ago, a proletarian Russian named Alexander Shkvartsev took the trouble to learn German. Little Alexander Shkvartsev is the new Soviet Ambassador to Germany.

Last winter he and Germany's Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop spent several pleasant evenings together at the cinema in Berlin. Going and coming, they would chat about the new friendly relations that had grown up between their two countries. But for the last month and a half Ambassador Shkvartsev has wished he did not know German so well, since he has had to listen to some Ribbentrop tirades that the Foreign Minister would be too cagey to put into notes.

Late in May Ribbentrop began to berate the Ambassador about Russia's failure to deliver supplies promised in the commercial agreement of last February. As a result of Russia's shortcomings, explained Herr von Ribbentrop, Germany had to buy oil, cotton and foodstuffs in the Balkans, had to pay for them with machinery. Therefore Germany would be unable to fill the Russian orders for machinery. Furthermore, said the Foreign Minister, Russian newspapers were not giving sufficient praise to German achievements in The Netherlands, Belgium and France. And what was Great Britain's Ambassador Sir Richard Stafford Cripps up to in Moscow? Was he trying to play Russia against Germany? Anyway, it was time for Germany and Russia to make a clear division of interests in Eastern Europe. Germany was going to be busy in the West.

When Ambassador Shkvartsev's chief, Premier and Foreign Minister Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, learned of these conversations he was reminded of a historic parallel. At Tilsit Napoleon proposed to Tsar Alexander I that the two rulers share Europe. If Alexander had stuck to his agreement there would have been no Franco-Russian war. Said Viacheslav Mikhailovich to his chief, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: "Why not meditate on this example?"

Black-browed Joseph Stalin may have meditated that it was the Franco-Russian War that started Napoleon on his downward spiral, beginning with the retreat from Moscow. To Joseph Stalin the Ribbentrop message sounded like the prelude to a typical Hitlerian workup: complaints, proposals, demands, threats, action. Communist Joseph Stalin is mortally afraid of National Socialist Adolf Hitler, but he knows one truth that Europe's other statesmen learned too late: that Hitler respects strength alone. He set out to give a demonstration.

Within six weeks Russia occupied and socialized three Baltic republics, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, took outright from Rumania, Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina. Last week the Red Army was feverishly digging in along the east bank of the Prut while Premier Molotov kept southeast Europe sweating in steam from three valves:

>From Rumania, Russia wants control of bridgeheads on the Prut and at Reni on the Danube and Snake Island in the Danube's mouth, which would give Russia control of Central Europe's main waterway.

>From Rumania, Bulgaria, backed by Russia, wants the southern Dobruja without delay.

> From Turkey, Russia wants at least joint control of the Dardanelles, gateway to the Black Sea and historic objective for which Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire fought eight wars.

This was the sort of threat that Adolf Hitler could not brush aside. If Slavic Bulgaria gets the entire Dobruja (which she has not yet demanded), she will have a common frontier with Russia in Bessarabia. Russian hegemony over Bulgaria (probably the next step) would leave Russia free to advance in two directions: 1) southward toward the Dardanelles and through Thrace to the Aegean, which Italy wants; 2) westward through Yugoslavia, another Slav State, toward Albania and the Adriatic. Attainment of only the first of these objectives would halt the Axis push to the East. Attainment of both would make the Balkan Peninsula a Russian province.

So seriously did Adolf Hitler take what Russia was doing that his long-promised invasion of England marked time while he summoned Italy's Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano to Berlin to confer on the Balkan situation. Rumania plumped into the Axis lap and begged Germany to save her. It was all Germany and Italy together could do to keep Hungary from marching into Transylvania. Suspicion grew that Russia was deliberately trying to provoke trouble in the Balkans.

Against all the evidence of fact, the Moscow press insisted that Russia's moves were directed against Great Britain and not against Germany. This, however, was good policy. If Germany knocks Britain out quickly, Russia can still protest friendship for Germany, while holding a stronger defense line against German attack. If Britain can hold on and use her sea power to advantage, then Russia might tip the balance against the Axis and win far-reaching concessions for so doing. For the present, by threatening to open a southeastern front, Stalin had Hitler on a spot--on such a spot that he might trade temporary peace in the Balkans for German acquiescence in a Dardanelles grab.

One Policy, Two Methods. By last week most U. S. citizens were thoroughly baffled by the apparent inconsistencies of Russian foreign policy. Last September the U. S. S. R. ditched the Allies and signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. She split Poland with Germany, reduced the Baltic States to impotence, went to war with Finland--and by that act completely alienated the sympathies of all countries but Germany. Yet by last week Russia was Great Britain's brightest hope as an ally.

Even more baffling, in the light of Russia's acts, is Premier Molotov's definition of Russia's policy: "The task of our foreign policy is to insure peace between nations and the security of our country." If Molotov had said "eventual peace", a defense could be made for his definition.

Most U. S. citizens see Russian policy in relation to Anglo-French policy, which toward Russia has been inconsistent, irresolute, insincere. Actually only the methods of Russian policy have shifted, with the shifting winds of policy toward the U. S. S. R. In her objective Russia has been so consistent that she makes the democracies, and even the Fascist powers, look like wishful wobblers.

Founder Lenin held that the Communist state would have to exist for many years beside the capitalist states, and therefore that the U. S. S. R. should aim at peaceful co-existence as long as the capitalist countries did not impede or attack her. From the Communist point of view seek peaceful coexistence as a foreign policy while as a political policy the Communist International tried to under mine capitalist governments. That made the capitalist world mistrust everything Russian.

With good reason to mistrust the U. S. S. R.'s revolutionary political policy, the capitalist countries went on to mistrust her nonaggressive foreign policy. Two dates in recent history seem to mark abrupt changes in that policy: 1934, when Russia joined the League of Nations, and 1939, when she signed her Non-Aggression Treaty with Germany. Neither act was a change of objective, but merely a change of method.

From the Revolution in 1917 until she joined the League in 1934, Russia's relations with Germany were far better than with Great Britain and France. First the Allies tried intervention to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. At the Genoa Conference of 1922 Russia was offered money and aid only if capitalism were restored. Russia was excluded from Locarno in 1925. Things got so bad by 1927 that London police raided the offices of Arco Ltd., the Soviet Trading Company, finding nothing, and Russia and Great Britain finally broke off all diplomatic relations.

Meanwhile Russia and Germany got along. Between 1921 and 1929 eight major treaties were signed between Russia and Germany. Even during the first year of Hitler's power, relations continued to be agreeable. Said Hitler to the Reichstag early in 1934: "Despite the great difference between the two outlooks on life, the German Reich has endeavored to look after its friendly relations with Russia."

But before 1934 was over Hitler had refused to sign a non-aggression pact with Russia and was talking tough. France, alarmed by Germany's growing power, proposed a treaty of mutual assistance to Russia and Russian entry into the League. Caught between two rambunctious neighbors, Russia was glad to sign.

Litvinoff Era. Having embarked upon the collective security method of pursuing her objective of peace, Russia gave it all she had. Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff became one of the most active, consistent delegates to the League, repeatedly astounded his colleagues with the proposal that everybody disarm. But almost from the moment that she entered the League, Russia saw the principle of collective security sold out time after time.

In 1935 sanctions were imposed against Italy for her Ethiopian adventure. The sanctions were emasculated by the lack of an oil embargo. In 1936 Britain instituted its "noninterference" policy in Spain. Italy and Germany--and Russia--continued to interfere. In 1937 China, a League member, was invaded by Japan. The League did nothing. In 1938 Russia proposed a joint demarche of Great Britain, France and the U. S. S. R. to protect Czecho-Slovakia, offered to carry out "to the letter" her guarantees to France and Czecho-Slovakia. Munich followed. In 1939, after Germany took the rest of Czecho-Slovakia, Russia proposed a six-power conference to devise resistance to further aggression. Great Britain said the proposal was "premature." A month later Russia proposed an ironclad, three-power alliance with Britain and France. Nothing happened for three weeks, then Litvinoff resigned.

Molotov Era. In Russia Litvinoff had stood for the idea of collective security; abroad he had represented Russia's desire for collective security. It was not Litvinoff but collective security that fell. To symbolize Russia's new reliance on herself, Joseph Stalin picked a man who represented the state bureaucracy he had created. An old-guard Bolshevik, Molotov was a quiet political boss who had risen through hard, unspectacular work to be President of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) and a member of the powerful Politbureau. In Russia he was known as the father of the collective farm movement.

Born Skriabin in 1890, he was a son of a store clerk and turned revolutionist early. He took the name Molotov (Hammer) in 1914. During World War I he organized Bolshevik groups in Moscow, was exiled to Siberia, escaped and went underground in Petrograd. During the February Revolution he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and collaborated with Lenin and Stalin. In 1922, during the Lenin-Trotsky split, Stalin replaced Molotov as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Molotov stayed on as Stalin's assistant, proved his loyalty during the Stalin-Trotsky struggle for power, thereafter became Stalin's most trusted assistant.

Molotov was a man Stalin could safely bring into world prominence without endangering his own prestige. (Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, No. 2 man in Russia, is scarcely heard of abroad.) Molotov is short, has a too-big head, and stammers. He looks like an unsuccessful Theodore Roosevelt. He drives himself as he drives his subordinates, holds conferences all day long, usually eats dinner at his desk. Even when he goes to a formal dinner he never wears a black tie (Litvinoff wore a white tie), and his only sartorial concession to his new job was to replace his cloth cap with a black hat.

Although Molotov was put in to symbolize Russia's new self-reliance, self-reliance did not mean isolation. Russia was still vulnerable, and the greatest, most imminent threat to her security was Germany. To the Kremlin, in the tense summer of 1939, it looked as if Great Britain and France were trying to sic Hitler on Russia. While Britain stalled and dragged out the treaty negotiations, meanwhile trying to appease Hitler over Poland, Russia also turned to Germany.

The Non-Aggression Pact of Aug. 23 followed. Said Molotov: "As the negotiations had shown that the conclusion of a pact of mutual assistance [with Great Britain and France] could not be expected, we could not but explore other possibilities of insuring peace and eliminating the danger of war between Germany and the U. S. S. R. If the British and French Governments refused to reckon with this, that is their affair. It is our duty to think of the interests of the Soviet people, the interests of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics."

In the Book. Implicit in every move in Russia's foreign policy is the search for security. Joseph Stalin knows that Russia is weak internally, has the longest, most vulnerable frontier of any major power. Like Alexander I, he knows that Russia's fertile lands and docile people must always be a temptation to any master of Western Europe. The treaty with Germany was designed to give him time to prepare for the attack promised in Mein Kampf.

But Stalin and Molotov doubtless counted on a longer war, possibly on the socialization of Europe in the process. When France collapsed, it was time to readjust the balance of power, if possible; at least to readjust Russia's defenses. So Russia marched.

Molotov's right-hand man in the Foreign Office is 40-year-old Alexei Vassiltchenko, who few years ago was Stalin's clean-up man. In the evenings he plays a card game called "Preference" with his boss and listens to his long-winded, quasi-scientific dissertations on foreign policy. Vassiltchenko is Molotov's file man (Molotov cannot go half an hour without consulting a file), and one of his files is labeled Bessarabia and The Straits. In the view of the Russian Foreign Office, Bessarabia, the Dardanelles and the Bosporus are parts of the same objective.

Last week Turkey was worried by a German White Book involving her in an alleged Allied plot to bomb the Baku oilfields, more worried by the fact that the Russian press seemed inclined to believe Germany's story. Turkey expected a quick showdown on The Straits, with Germany conniving or otherwise occupied. Putting up a brave front, Foreign Minister Suekrue Saracoglu, who may soon lose his job on Molotov's demand, entertained patrons of the Karpitch Restaurant in Ankara by kicking up his heels in his famous acrobatic zeybek folk dance, with which he used to delight the late Kamal Atatuerk.

Although the brightest spotlight played on Bessarabia and The Straits, Stalin and Molotov watched other performances in war's many-ringed circus last week. In the Baltic the Red Fleet finished intensive war games, perhaps designed to help persuade Finland to let the U. S. S. R. fortify the AAland Islands, which would weaken Germany in the Baltic. In the Far East, against Japan, Russia needs more than Soviet-dominated Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang for security against Japan; she needs a strong China, which Britain would also like to see. And across the Himalayas lies India, all but cut off from the mother country and having her troubles last week. Russia would not like Japan or Germany to take India.

Everywhere Russia's interests appeared to parallel those of Great Britain. Hard-pressed Britain is no longer in a position to turn up her nose at the Soviets. And Russia, too weak to stand alone, must make treaties and alliances for protection. Unlike the pacific U. S., she is ready to fight--or aggress first--to halt aggression that seems ultimately aimed at her. Though Russia might like to run the world, for a long time to come she will settle for simple security. But so long as capitalist countries fear Communism, they will suspect Russia of sinister intentions. And so long as the U. S. S. R. fears Capitalism, she will remain hostile, suspicious, Communist.

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