turn on Russia as well. When necessary, however,
the Soviet Union did not hesitate to resist mili-
tarily any direct Japanese attacks on Soviet spheres
of influence, on the People’s Republic of
Mongolia and along the Russo-Chinese frontier.
There was full-scale fighting between Soviet and
Japanese troops in 1938 and in the summer of
- These were no mere ‘incidents’. Marshal
Zhukov in 1939 had the advantage of modern
tanks and troops far better armed than the
Japanese. The Japanese suffered a severe defeat
and left behind 18,000 dead. Thereafter, they
avoided open conflict with Russia. The Soviet
Union and Japan, in fact, remained at peace until
it suited Stalin, shortly before Japan’s surrender,
to attack the Japanese in China in 1945.
In the West, the Soviet Union did what it could
to persuade France and Britain to stand up to
Hitler and Mussolini. The menace they presented
to peace and so to the Soviet Union was belatedly
recognised in 1934. The Soviet Union then
signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France in
May 1935 to strengthen the deterrent alignment.
The Soviet Union also joined in the League’s inef-
fectual sanctions to deter Mussolini from con-
quering Abyssinia. In 1934 the new United Front
tactics were acquiesced in when France itself
seemed in danger of succumbing to fascism. But
at the same time the communist leadership was
always conscious of, and never wished to repeat,
the experiences of the First World War when
Russia was cast in the role of providing military
relief to the West and, in the effort, went down in
defeat. Russian policy aimed to maintain a careful
balance and to avoid war by encouraging the will
of France and Britain to resist. In line with this
overall strategy the Russian help afforded to the
Republican side during the Spanish Civil War was
carefully limited to exclude any possible risk of
war. It was left to the Comintern to organise the
International Brigades to fight as volunteers on
the Republican side. But Soviet technical advisers,
tanks, aircraft and supplies played a role in the war.
The year 1937 saw Stalin’s military purge at its
height. Russia was more unready than ever to face
military attack from the West. The Soviet Union
almost frantically attempted to construct a diplo-
matic peace front in 1938. It failed. Britain and
France went to Munich in September and con-
sented to the partition of Czechoslovakia. The
Russians, meanwhile, had promised to support
the Czechs only to the extent of their limited
treaty obligations. Whatever Russian aid might
have been forthcoming if the Czechs had fought,
it appears certain that Stalin would not have
risked war with Germany. Simultaneously Soviet
diplomats sought to stiffen French and British
resistance to Hitler by warning their governments
that Hitler meant to defeat them. Stalin’s faith in
‘collective security’, probably never strong, did
not survive after the German occupation of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939. It was unlikely
that peace could be preserved much longer
between Hitler and his neighbours, and Stalin’s
prime objective remained to stop the Soviet
Union from going to war. And so after simulta-
neous and secret negotiations with France and
Britain on the one hand and Germany on the
other – a double insurance policy – Stalin, having
delayed as long as he dared, concluded a non-
aggression pact with Germany on 23 August- Stalin had calculated correctly and kept the
Soviet Union at peace. The Germans extracted a
price in requiring supplies from the Soviet Union.
The war that began in September 1939, Stalin
believed, afforded the Soviet Union a long
breathing space during which communism would
strengthen the Soviet Union’s capacity to meet
the dangers still to come. It lasted barely two
years.