So far in this book I have said little concerning the foreign policy of the Soviet Union in relation to Japan, although from the first days of the Bolshevik Revolution Japan has been waging an incessant struggle against the Bolsheviks and has drawn the sword against them more frequently than any other Power. The Japanese were the last to leave the soil of Soviet Russia in the wars of intervention. Not until the end of 1922 did Japan’s soldiers leave Vladivostok. When they left their Government had no intention of regarding that retreat as their final departure. They came away with every intention on the part of their ruler’s that one day they would return.
This fact they have never hidden. Glittering prizes are in Soviet hands. The Japanese cast envious eyes upon the Maritime Province which includes the port of Vladivostok, vast timber resources, fisheries, farms, and industrial property. Its long coast is only four hundred miles from Japan and commands the lines of communication between Japan and Korea, Manchuria and North China. Sakhalin island with its oil resources is divided between Japan and Soviet Russia. Japan wants the whole island. It also wants Kamchatka and the Yakutsk coast which stretch north of Japan and would be of immense importance in a war with the U.S.A. It wants the trans-Baikal Province, economically the richest of all, abounding in minerals, gold, platinum, iron, and coal. It wants Outer-Mongolia as well as Inner-Mongolia which it has already taken.
All these objectives the rulers of Japan have openly proclaimed their intention some day to secure. But in 1922, Japan was not ready for so colossal an undertaking. She had yet to secure a wide basis in Manchuria from which to plan her campaign and to broaden the foundations of her economy.
It was thus that history played into the hands of the Bolsheviks and thrust the Japanese rulers into a dilemma. It gave the Bolsheviks time to organize their economy, strengthen their military resources, and increase their grip of the strategical positions for the defence of their territory. These developments presented the Japanese with the problem of securing an ally in the West in order that when they were ready for the attack they could force Soviet Russia to face a war on two fronts. It was not until the rise of Hitler to power in Germany at the close of 1933 that the wanted ally in the West appeared definitely on the scene. Here was a Power as ambitious as the Japanese and whose enemies were their enemies. A mutuality of interest drew Nazi Germany and Japan together from the outset of the growth of the new Germanic Empire. But Japan could not wait passively for the appearance of the new ally. Whatever the future had in store in this respect, Japan had first of all, whether for the conquest of Siberia or China, which also figured largely in her programme, to secure a footing in Manchuria as the starting point of her fight for world power. Across Manchuria lay the Chinese Eastern Railway which, after the Soviet Revolution, passed over to the Bolsheviks from the Czarist regime.
The initial line of attack in Japan’s expansionist programme therefore brought her into direct conflict with the Bolsheviks as well as the Chinese. It was in the fateful year of 1931 that Japan embarked on her invasion of Manchuria. This was as violent a contravention of the Nine Power Pact whereby the U.S.A., Britain, France, and other Great Powers had guaranteed the integrity of China, as the contravention of the Versailles Treaty by Hitler in later years. Only the U.S.A. took exception to this invasion. Britain approved. The anti-Soviet forces everywhere were jubilant. They regarded the invasion as the beginning of the new offensive against the Bolsheviks and were unconcerned about the future of China. They believed that the differences between the various imperialist Powers on this matter could be settled easily by negotiation. They did not believe that Japan would infringe upon the interests of the Western Powers in China.
It was after this invasion that Sir John Simon made his remarkable speech at Geneva justifying the invasion more effectively than the Japanese themselves, although China was a member of the League of Nations and Britain was a signatory of the Nine Power Pact. He was not alone in his justification. The present leader of Labour’s Opposition in the House of Commons, Mr. Lees Smith, said in a speech at Wellingborough in 1932: ‘Japan had an undoubted case against the rest of the world, which we must now admit. . . . How was Japan to live? She was desperate. If we were in her position we should not die quietly, but we should undoubtedly burst out somewhere, as she had done in Manchuria and Shanghai.’ General Graves, the first leader of the American Army of intervention against Soviet Russia in 1918, commented on the event in Current History of August, 1934: ‘For the prosecution of a war with a first-class Power Japan must have financial assistance and supplies. I anticipate Japan will have no difficulty in getting all the aid she needs. There are many people in the United States who would be glad to assist in the destruction of a communist state, and similar sentiments are to be found in England.’
I have given these quotations and observations in order that the international background of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy in the Far East can be properly appreciated. From the moment that Japan invaded Manchuria, ‘incidents’ between the Japanese troops and the Red Army occurred with increasing frequency. It was clear to the Bolsheviks that should they permit any one of these to develop into a first class war with Japan, such a war would be regarded as the signal for a renewal of the all-in intervention war against Bolshevism.
The determination of the Bolsheviks to avoid this as long as possible is the key to their policy in relation to Japan and the degree and kind of support they have rendered to China. While answering all skirmishing activities of the Japanese with armed force, Soviet Russia treated every ‘incident’ small or large as an incident, offered investigation of grievances, negotiations, a non-aggression pact, etc., and, in order to make it easier to carry out this policy, sold to Japan her rights in the Chinese Eastern Railway.
Although Japan knew that she could count on international support should she develop the struggle with Soviet Russia into a major war, she was also conscious of the fact that as yet there was no Great Power in real striking distance of the Soviet Union in the West. At the same time another fact of momentous importance claimed her attention. The Chinese Revolution beckoned her southward lest it soon become so powerful that her plan for the conquest of China would be defeated. When Japan and Soviet Russia came to terms concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway it signified that Japan had decided to advance against China and the Western Powers interested in that country, and a postponement of the desired war of conquest against the Soviet Union. But it was not so regarded by the Western Powers. Japan struck southward and westward towards Outer-Mongolia. She stopped at the Outer-Mongolian frontier after she discovered in practice that war with the Mongolians of this territory meant also war with the Soviet Union. In 1926 the Soviet Union had made a treaty of alliance with the Mongolian Republic and had promptly come to its aid.
From the outset Soviet Russia recognized the National Government of Dr. Sun Yat Sen as the sovereign government of China. In 1925 she signed a non-aggression pact with the Government of Chiang Kai Slick who had succeeded to leadership after the death of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and proceeded to assist this government to clean up the country of the feudal war lords. Through the Communist International, in the years prior to the Japanese invasion, the Bolsheviks strove to transform the national revolution of China into a revolution similar to their own. They then said: ‘The liberation of China cannot be achieved without the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, without the confiscation of the land, without the nationalization of the foreign enterprises, banks, transport, etc.’
Those efforts were defeated. When the Japanese invaded China the Bolsheviks came to the conclusion that they must support the national revolution against the invader and postpone their efforts to secure the dictatorship of the proletariat. This they have done consistently since that time. But they have restricted their aid to avoid uniting the imperialist Powers against the Soviet Union and China. Had they brought the full power of the Soviet Union to the aid of China in her war with Japan the latter would have compounded her differences with Britain, the U.S.A., and France to secure their united assistance against Bolshevism. The Soviet Union would then have had to bear the brunt of the task of arming the Chinese. This would have been an impossible task to undertake at that stage of her history. Her help, therefore, was limited in order to avoid the complication of uniting the Great Powers.
The aid she has rendered has had a twofold purpose. First it assisted China to keep Japan preoccupied and therefore unable to launch a first class offensive against the Soviet Union. Secondly it enabled the Bolsheviks to exercise an influence on the development of the Chinese Revolution towards a socialist revolution in keeping with the fundamental aim of Bolshevism.
The Japanese aims were of a different order. They were directed towards making China into a vast Japanese colony and the basis for a world empire. These aims are set out in detail in the Tanaka memorandum. When, after the subjugation of Manchuria, the Japanese struck southward it was with a clear understanding that they would thereby come into conflict and ultimately face war with Britain and America. It was clear also that the Japanese invasion of Siberia was postponed to a later date and this no doubt influenced Hitler in his decision to strike west instead of east. That the Bolsheviks saw the significance of these developments is evident in the statement of M. Maisky the Soviet Ambassador in London on the occasion of the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact by Germany, Japan, and Italy, when he remarked that: ‘It would cause more headaches in London and Paris than in Moscow’. This turn of events reached its decisive stages in 1938-9 when the Japanese had seized the Treaty Ports along the Chinese coast from Teintsin to Canton and Hitler had conquered Central Europe.
The Bolsheviks alone rendered political and material assistance to China and throughout this period raised the alarm against the aggressors as already described in an earlier chapter. They repeatedly offered a non-aggression pact to Japan and a settlement of border and trade questions but Japan refused until after the failure of the Soviet Union’s collective security campaign and her own relations with Britain and the U.S.A. were approaching their climax in war. In 1941 Japan took the initiative in seeking a pact of non-aggression with the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks, smarting under the rebuffs they had received to their proposals for collective security and the continuation of the anti-Soviet policy of the British and American Governments, promptly agreed. They thereby stabilized the Siberian-Manchukuo (Manchuria) frontiers and the frontier of the Outer-Mongolian Republic. The pact has the further significance, for what it may be worth in these days of political cynicism in relation to treaties, that Japan declares its intention of being neutral in the event of the Soviet Union going to war with any third Power.
The de facto recognition of the Japanese conquest of Manchuria and its transformation into the State of Manchukuo is unquestionably a rebuff to the moral claims of China in regard to this region taken from her by Japan in 1931. The Bolsheviks, however, have regarded the settlement of the frontier questions of Siberia and Mongolia and the declaration of Japanese neutrality as of more immediate importance than the moral rebuff to China. The moral rebuff is tempered by the fact that the Bolsheviks have declared their intention of continuing their political and material aid to China in her struggle against Japan. The Bolsheviks regard the pact with Japan as a document which formalizes the present power relations of the two countries as established at the frontiers over which they have control; the public declaration of the postponement by Japan of any attempt to fulfil her declared ambitions in Siberia and Mongolia; and her neutrality in a possible Soviet war with another State. The conflict of interests in the Far East have thus become more potential than imminent.
The most important region of Soviet Russia’s ‘interests—direct and indirect’—which is more likely than any other to be threatened by another Power has the Black Sea and the territory surrounding it as its storm centres. The Black Sea washes the shores of four countries—the U.S.S.R., Turkey, Bulgaria, and Rumania. The greatest of these is the U.S.S.R. It has here a coastline of nearly a thousand miles. Four of its great rivers, the Dnieper, the Dniester, the Bug, and the Don, which flow through the great wheat producing and industrial regions of Southern Russia, pour their waters and convey their traffic into the Black Sea. Great ports are studded on its shores from Odessa to Batum. But for the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles it would be a closed sea. The narrow passage between these two inlets and outlets connects it with the Mediterranean and the great oceans of the world. Turkey, with the next greatest stretch of coastline, commands the passage way to the outer sea. Into the Black Sea also flows the Danube, the great waterway, and traffic way from Germany through the Balkans. At the entrance to this sea stands Istanbul, the ancient centre of Empires which it has been the ambition of every imperial Power in Europe to command. It is the principal centre of Turkey in Europe. Bulgaria has a small coast line and Rumania a still smaller.
Thus the Red Fleet of the Soviet Union and the Turkish Navy stand guard over the great exporting regions of Southern Russia and Turkey. The northern land frontier of Turkey is contiguous with that of the Soviet Union from Batum to the shores of the Caspian Sea and the northern frontier of Persia.
It can be safely said that from Turkey and Persia the Soviet Union fears no attack. They are never likely on their own initiative to be other than friendly in their relations with the Soviet Union. Indeed, so strongly do the Turks feel on this matter that in their Treaty with Britain they stipulate that on no account will they participate in action which involves them in conflict with the Soviet Union. From this source, therefore, there is little likelihood of an anti-Soviet attack although this region is fresh in the memory of the Bolsheviks as one from which British armed forces entered in the wars of intervention. Recently, too, in the earlier stages of the present war friction with Turkey was caused by French aeroplanes flying from it over Soviet territory. It has therefore been regarded by the Bolsheviks as a danger zone should the war be ‘switched’ as suggested in the days of the Soviet-Finnish war.
As if in anticipation of Nazi Germany’s intentions the Soviet Union settled accounts with Rumania by taking Bessarabia from her before the Nazis began their eastward march. It will be remembered that when in 1939, the British Government inquired of the Soviet Government concerning the guarantee of Rumania against German aggression, the Bolsheviks offered to join with Britain and France in guaranteeing all the Border States including Rumania, despite the anti-Soviet attitude of Rumania and Poland. The Allies, Poland, and Rumania rejected this offer. The return of Bessarabia to Soviet Russia under the threat of forceful seizure occurred in 1940 after the termination of the Soviet-Finnish war.
When Germany called a conference of the Danubian countries with a view to settling questions concerning the control of Danubian traffic she at first ignored the Bolsheviks despite the terms of the Soviet-Nazi Pact of 1939. With no hesitation whatever the Soviet Union asserted her claim to be considered a Danubian Power. Germany gave way and the Bolsheviks participated in the conference. The regulation of commercial traffic on the Danube is one thing. Permission for the Nazis to make a naval base at the mouth of the Danube is another. Such a concession from the Bolsheviks would be suicidal. The control of the Black Sea is of paramount interest to the Soviet Union and to Turkey. To permit another Great Power to establish itself as a naval Power in that Sea would be equivalent to the surrender of the inviolability of her territory: There is no evidence in the history of Soviet foreign policy of any tendency to concede such an infringement of her most direct interests. On the contrary, every Soviet leader has repeatedly emphasized the determination of the Bolsheviks not to surrender anything which violates such interests. From the moment of the signing of the Soviet-Nazi Pact in 1939 Soviet foreign policy consists of a series of strategical achievements directed against an unnamed future enemy which the map of Europe proclaims in large letters to be none other than Nazi Germany. Having seized as opportunity arose every strategical position of advantage on her land frontier from Murmansk to the Black Sea the Bolsheviks have shown no evidence of willingness to lay open their richest regions to attack from the Black Sea. The Bolsheviks are sounding the alarm and have given clear indications of the passing of the period of ‘strict neutrality’.
After the collapse of Poland there was a modification of the attitude of the Balkan governments to the Soviet Union. Every Balkan Government was led by men who were pro-Nazi but still anxious to remain independent. Not one of these states was capable or could become capable in the time available, of effective resistance to the mechanized armies of a powerful industrialized State such as Germany. All of them knew that the only Power in a strategically advantageous position and capable of rendering the most effective assistance against aggression in the Balkans was the Soviet Union. Hence there was among them a sudden flirting with the idea of friendship with the Bolsheviks. For the first time for more than twenty years Yugoslavia entered into diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Bulgarian delegations went to and fro between Moscow and Sofia. In October, 1940, the Soviet Foreign Office sought to crystallize the newly developing friendship with the Bulgarian Government into a pact of non-aggression and mutual assistance. Bulgaria declined. When she became a party to the Tri-partite pact of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Soviet Government declared through Vishinsky, the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs: ‘. . . the Soviet Government cannot share the view of the Bulgarian Government as to the correctness of her attitude in this question, as their attitude, independently of whether the Bulgarian Government wishes it, leads not to the consolidation of peace, but to an extension of the sphere of war and the involving of Bulgaria in war.’
The full statement of the Soviet Government in a note to the Bulgarian Government has subsequently been broadcast from the Moscow radio station. It may turn out to be as significant a warning of the approaching end of Soviet ‘neutrality’, as the speech of Molotov in March, 1939, in relation to the approaching end of Bolshevik efforts to secure ‘Collective Security’. Bulgaria as a small Power could never hope, however strongly anti-Soviet its rulers, to measure its strength against the Soviet Union. Bulgaria as a province of the great Germanic Empire is a proposition of another kind, providing air bases and a possible naval base for the new giant. This development must be regarded by the Bolsheviks as a threat to her Black Sea interests. The Note to Bulgaria is their public recognition of this fact and the alarm they feel about it. The further declaration of a pact of friendship with the shortlived new government of Yugoslavia following the belated revolt against the pro-Nazi Government of Prince Paul can only be regarded as a further anti-German demonstration of the Bolsheviks against the oncoming threat to their interests.
How quickly the potential danger to these interests will be translated into imminent danger depends on German strategy. It will become imminent immediately the Nazis infringe upon Turkey, the joint custodian with Soviet Russia of all Black Sea interests. The declarations of the Soviet Government on events in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, her approval of Turkey’s attitude and assurances of friendship, her tacit agreement with Turkey’s action under the Montreux Convention in relation to the control of the Straits of the Dardanelles, clearly indicate that she has no intention of being a passive onlooker at the transformation of the Black Sea into a Nazi waterway to the oilfields of Baku, and the industrial regions and wheatfields of Southern Russia.
The Nazi armies may attempt to by-pass Turkey and encircle her through Cyprus, Syria, and Irak; but that Turkey is destined to suffer the attempt to bring her within the Nazi scheme of empire is certain. The Berlin-Bagdad Railway is once more on the German order of the day. Turkey as a province of the Nazi Empire would be an invaluable part of the Nazi strategic plan for the deployment of their forces for the coming attack on the vitals of the Soviet Union. For Turkey to surrender to this grandiose plan without a fight would be a violation of her treaty with Great Britain and a repudiation of her declared intention to stand against the violation of her territory. It would also be the surrender of positions which are of immense importance to the defence of the Soviet Union. Turkey and Germany at war in the Black Sea would jeopardize Soviet trade, block the gateway to the Mediterranean, draw another navy and air force into the Black Sea and change completely the relation of forces to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union.
The most recent triumphs of the Nazi armies in Yugoslavia and Greece make imminent the decisive hour of Turkey and the Soviet Union. Whether the German armies will now stride through Turkey or whether such action will be preceded by an attempt to secure their aims by first neutralizing her, no one can say but the Germans. So far the public evidence points to the latter course. The signing of a trade barter agreement by the German and Turkish Governments in the last week of April, 1941, together with a similar agreement between Hungary and Turkey, provide strong evidence both of Germany’s efforts and Turkey’s trend away from her alliance with Great Britain.
It should not be forgotten that Turkey must realize that she is no match for the German mechanized forces. She is not an industrialized country nor large enough to beat back the enemy on her own. She must have an ally, and the inability of Great Britain to provide the necessary mechanized armies and air forces to save Greece from being overrun has had profound repercussions upon the Turks. No doubt the Turkish Government is wondering whether the loans and the pledges they received from Britain are proving to be good alternatives to the rejection of the Pact of Mutual Assistance offered earlier by the Soviet Government. Just prior to the signing of the Turko-British Treaty such a pact was offered by the Soviet Government and rejected by the Turks. The Pact itself was limited to the regions of the Black Sea and the Straits and aimed at preventing the Black Sea being used by warships of non-Black Sea Powers—a significant indication of Soviet Russian attitude to encroachments in this region.
If, therefore, Germany succeeds in detaching Turkey from her, alliance with Britain by means of a neutrality pact, it will no doubt be welcomed by the Bolsheviks as bringing Turkey into the orbit of the peace front of neutrality. It would be quickly followed by closer friendship between the Soviet Union and Turkey. This in turn would be the prelude to a Soviet-Turkish Pact of Mutual Assistance of much wider scope than that which Turkey previously rejected. It will be done in the language of the ‘Peace Front’ but the deeds which will flow from it will consist of preparations for war.
But a swift decision on the part of the Nazis to attack Turkey before any of these developments come to fruition must not be ruled out of consideration especially in the light of the pro-Nazi development in Irak and the possibility of similar happenings in Turkey itself.
Meanwhile the Bolsheviks consider they can afford to wait. Indeed they consider it an advantage so to do. Their waiting is not passive. They are watching the Nazi lines become more attenuated as the distance between their striking forces and the sources of supply increases. They will not wait indefinitely. They know that their hours of neutrality are passing swiftly. The ‘interests, direct and indirect’ of the regions of the Black Sea are approaching imminent danger. These will set Russia on the march.
Next: 8. Is an Anglo-Soviet Pact Possible?