Russia Ten Years Ago
The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia Vol. II. 1936-41. By Max Beloff. (Oxford University Press. 21s.)
IN completing the second, and much longer, volume of this book, Mr. Beloff has rounded off a major achievement in balanced historical analysis, which is so fairly presented and so painstakingly documented, in fact so good, that it would be presumptuous to criticise it except on an occasional point of detail. The achievement seems the greater. when one remembers the doubtful nature of much of the evidence on which Mr. Beloff has necessarily had to build his case, and we have here a basis for study of the contemporary manifestations of Soviet foreign policy which no responsible person can afford to be without during the present dangerous period in world history.
It is often a help for those of us who find it difficult to comprehend a mentality which is quite outside our range of experience, such as, for example, that of an intelligent Russian Marxist, to seek a parallel from European history, which will give us some guide to the possible effect on our civilisation of this mentality when expressed as a national force. Mr. Beloff, cautious judge though he is, offers us such an analogy.
"if," he says, "the expansion of Islam and of Arab rule offers the most striking parallel (to the Soviet system) there is perhaps a closer one in the interrelation of the Counter-Reformation and the Habsburg dynasty. For a crucial century . . . it ,is indeed impossible to say where religious zeal and dynastic aggrandisement respectively begin and end."
And he adds :
"For between a society like that of Soviet Russia, where the
proletarian revolution is in the past, and the ' capitalist ' world,
where this revolution is in the future, there is an unbridgeable gulf." (The italics are mine.) He will be a bold man who quarrels with these conclusions after reading Mr. Beloff's dispassionate statement'of his case.
The main section of Volume II is divided into two parts, which cover, respectively, "the breakdown of collective security," and the attitude of the Soviet Union to the "second imperialist war." In a final chapter of ten pages the author sums up his conclusions on "the principles of Soviet foreign policy." A valuable bibliography is appended, and the four small maps are useful in illustrating certain of the frontier problems involved. From 1936 to 1941 we are able to follow the interplay of the " religious " and the " dynastic " com- ponents of Soviet foreign policy, of " Red " and " Blue ' Russia, so to speak, in face of the threatening mushroom growth of Germanic power. It is understandable, but a pity none the less, that on the evidence available Mr. Beloff has not thought it feasible to attempt to connect these warring cross-currents with individual personalities within the Soviet hierarchy.
We have, however, a good picture of Litvinov who might not unfairly be described as a leading exponent of the international or, perhaps, " Petrine " school within the " Blue" group, the apostle of collective security and of the indMsibility of peace. There is a glimpse of Zhdanov, the spearhead of " Red " Russia, the author of the curious article in Pravda of June 29th, 1939, eight weeks after the resignation of Litvinov, which indicated, perhaps as closely as we shall ever know, the date on which the Politburo made its final decision to come to terms with Hitler. Equally interesting is the light thrown on the great measure of personal confidence reposed by the Politburo in Georgi Astakhov, the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin, and former First Secretary in the London Embassy, whose unobtrusive contacts were the main gbannel through which a measure of agreement was reached that made it finally possible for Ribbentrop to go to Moscow. Astakhov's services were subsequently rewarded with the curatorship of a museum, a form of "cold storage" which the Russians sometimes employ in such circumstances, but his present whereabouts are not known. It is easy, in retrospect, to draw con- clusions from the appointment of Voroshilov as Soviet negotiator with the Anglo-French Military Mission when it arrived in Moscow in August, 1939. The outcome was, after all, already a foregone conclusion.
This book is as interesting as it is important, and Mr. Beloff is to be congratulated in making it so readable in spite of its almost over-scrupulous documentation. Few British Foreign Office docu- ments are quoted, and when these papers become available it will be most interesting to read them in conjunction with the relevant chapters of Mr. Beloff's remarkable and authoritative work.
RICHARD CHANOELLOR.
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