The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and World War II Ë 181
Moscow suspected that, while supporting Bammat and other Caucasian rightist
groups, Japan was pressing ahead with its own clandestine operations without Ger-
man support. Captured “Japanese agents” interrogated by the Soviets reveal that spe-
cially trained sabotage groups “were to commence their activity with the launch by
Japan of military operations against the Soviet Union. [They were] to operate in the
rear of the Red Army with objectives of destroying telephone and telegraph lines,
bridges, storehouses, transport routes, with the assassination of Soviet-Party adminis-
trative personnel, as well as with robberies, acts of arson and other activities directed
at the weakening of the [Soviet] rear.”⁴⁵This was a political fabrication typical of the
Stalin era, prompted by Japan’s shadow in the Caucasus.
In view of the dangers posed by these “sabotage groups,” Stalin intensi ed the
protection of those areas (i.e. periphery) deemed weak links in Soviet security by es-
tablishing in February 1941 a special Department for the Struggle against Banditry in
the NKVD. Its head was Sh.O. Tsereteli, a Georgian, and its First Section was charged
with the Caucasians.⁴⁶(The term “banditry” is reminiscent of the time during and af-
ter the Civil War of 1918–21, when the Soviet periphery, including the Caucasus, was
plagued with anti-Soviet “bandits.”)
Meanwhile, the international situation continued to change rapidly. The defeat
of France made it attractive for both Italy and Japan to strengthen (or restrengthen
in the case of Japan in the wake of the fall-out from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact)
their ties to Germany. Japan’s political and military leaders were deeply divided on
this matter. In the end, however, Japan chose Germany in hopes it would help Japan
in dealing with the United States, with which Japan was drawing ever closer to mili-
tary confrontation. As the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940 stipulated: “Germany,
Italy and Japan agree to co-operate in their eorts on aforesaid lines [a rming and
respecting the leadership of Germany and Italy “in establishment of a new order in
Europe” and the leadership of Japan “in the establishment of a new order in greater
East Asia”]. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic
and military means when one of the three contracting powers is attacked by a power
at present not involved in the European war or in the Chinese-Japanese con ict.” Fur-
ther, the pact declared: “Germany, Italy and Japan a rm that the aforesaid terms do
not in any way aect the political status which exists at present as between each of
the three contracting powers and Soviet Russia.”⁴⁷This last clause left open the pos-
sibility of including the Soviet Union into this Axis Pact. Indeed, the Japanese govern-
ment pursued this possibility as a leverage against the United States. Germany was
45 Burds, “The Soviet War against ‘Fifth Columnists’,” 273–74.
46 NKVD-MVD SSSR v bor’be s banditizmom i vooruzhennym natsionalisticheskim podpol’em na za-
padnoi Ukraine, v zapadnoi Belorossii i Pribaltike (1918–1956)(Moscow: Ob’edinennaia redaktsiia MVD
Rossii, 2008), 419, 473, 583. See also Burds, “The Soviet War against ‘Fifth Columnists’,” 289.
47 Translation by the Avalon project: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/triparti.asp (accessed Febru-
ary 2013).