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"Friendly Relations" with Germany |
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Stalin’s intelligence agents had informed him of Hitler’s secret
designs, including the plan to invade the Soviet Union in a few
years time. Yet this did not deter the Soviet dictator from making a
deal with Hitler. Several days after the pact had been signed, it
was ratified by a rubber-stamp vote of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet.
The deputies approved the treaty without even knowing that the pact
had an additional secret protocol that defined the spheres of
interests of the Soviet Union and Germany in eastern and
southeastern Europe. The protocol envisaged that in the event of a
German-Polish armed conflict the German troops would occupy western
and central Poland, while the remaining part of eastern Poland,
together with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia, would fall
into the Soviet sphere of influence. |
SPHERES OF
INFLUENCE UNDER THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT
On
the day after the ratification of the treaty by the USSR’s Supreme
Soviet, Germany, without declaration of war, invaded Poland. The
Soviet government bided its time for two weeks and on 17 September
sent its troops across the Polish border under the credible pretext
of coming to the rescue of the East Slavs—Ukrainians and White
Russians—living in eastern Poland and now threatened by the German
occupation. Poland was swiftly routed under the blows from west and
east, and Molotov and Ribbentrop endorsed the results of its
partition in the new Soviet-German treaty on “friendship and
borders” signed on 28 September. The secret addenda to the new
treaty further clarified the victors’ spheres of influence. The
Soviet sphere was augmented by the inclusion of Lithuania in
addition to the territories specified in the secret protocol of 23
August.
Following the signing of the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, the
antifascist agitation in the Soviet media was toned down, as the two
countries were now engaged in large-scale economic cooperation that
constituted an important part of the “friendly relations.” In the
two years following the conclusion of the treaty and up to the day
of Germany’s sneak attack on the USSR, the German economic and
military machine benefited substantially from trade with its future
victim. Germany received about 2.2 million tons of grain, 1 million
tons of oil, 0.1 million tons of cotton, 80 million cubic meters of
timber, and other strategic commodities. On the very night that
German troops were completing their final preparations for the
surprise attack on the Soviet Union, ships and trains carrying
grain, oil, and other commodities were in transit from the USSR to
Germany.
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