Moscow versus Tokyo Ë 133
the port when frozen.²³Thus Moscow and Washington formed a virtual united front
against Japan.
This was a remarkable development whose signi cance for the course of interna-
tional politics in the 1930s and 1940s cannot be overemphasized. By the end of 1933,
the two countries had resumed diplomatic relations. In December of that year, Soviet
Foreign Commissar Maksim Litvinov rang the tocsin of Japan’s threat to American Am-
bassador William C. Bullitt soon after the latter’s arrival in Moscow, stating that:
he [Litvinov] and all other members of the Soviet Government considered an attack by Japan
in the spring [of 1934] so probable that everything possible must be done to secure the western
frontier of the Soviet Union from attack; that he did not fear an immediate attack by Germany or
Poland or both combined, but that he knew that conversations had taken place between Germany
and Poland looking toward an eventual attack on the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union should
become embroiled in a long war with Japan; that he feared that a war with Japan might drag on
for years and that after a couple of years Germany and Poland combined might attack the Soviet
Union, Poland with the hope of annexing the Ukraine and parts of Lithuania and Germany with
the hope of annexing the remainder of Lithuania, as well as Latvia and Estonia.²⁴Other Soviet leaders repeated Litvinov’s concerns, except one: Karl Radek, a former
Trotskyite supporter turned Stalin follower. Characteristically, Radek spoke too much
and too frankly. According to Bullitt, Radek contradicted the foreign minister: “I had a
long talk with Karl Radek, who does not believe that Japan will attack this spring, con-
trary to the belief of the members of the Government.”²⁵Still Litvinov sought American
cooperation against Japan, telling Bullitt that:
he felt that anything that could be done to make the Japanese believe that the United States was
ready to cooperate with Russia, even though there might not be basis for the belief would be
valuable. He asked whether it might not be possible for an American squadron or an individual
warship to pay a visit during the spring to Vladivostok or to Leningrad. I said that I could not
answer that question, but would submit it to my Government.²⁶Hoping to coordinate actions against Japan, Stalin sent the old Japan hand Aleksandr
A. Troianovskii from Tokyo to Washington as rst Soviet ambassador to the United
States. In 1934, Karl Radek, acting as Stalin’s personal diplomat, frankly noted that
Moscow wanted to sabotage US-Japanese relations.²⁷
23 AVP, f. 146, op. 16 papka 153, d. 10, l. 250 (Ambassador William C. Bullitt’s remark to the Soviet side
on 13 December 1933.) The Soviet diplomat G.Ia. Sokol’nikov, who received Bullitt, had to assure the
United States that the climatic issue was no longer so vital because of the importance of air forces.
24 Foreign Relations of the United States. The Soviet Union, 1933–1939(Washington DC: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing O ce, 1952), 60.
25 Foreign Relations of the United States. The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 57.
26 Foreign Relations of the United States. The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 61.
27 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 792, l. 1.