MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th July, 2019) The Soviet Union had to sign the 1939 Treaty of Non-aggression with Nazi Germany, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in order to ensure its national security after the failure of trilateral USSR-French-British talks on an anti-German military alliance, Russia's ex-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told Sputnik.
"In 1930s, the USSR took a clear anti-Fascist, anti-German stance. USSR-German relations started to gradually change only after the [1938] Munich Betrayal and the initiative belonged to Berlin that began to study the USSR position. However, the Soviet leadership, who wanted to create a coalition with the United Kingdom and France, was cautious and did not do quick steps in response to the German initiatives," Ivanov, who currently serves as the special presidential representative for environmental protection, ecology and transport, said.
He said that, according to many Western historians, until mid-August 1939 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin tried to build a trilateral union with the United States and France but the negotiations ended with a failure.
"The Soviet Union clearly understood that the foreign policy concept of the Third Reich was directly linked to the Nazi ramblings about the 'Lebensraum' [living space] ... in the East, on the Slavic territories, as [Nazi leader Adolf] Hitler said. That is why Berlin remained our main enemy," Ivanov stressed.
He pointed out that the USSR had no other choice but to enter the alliance with Germany amid the failure of the trilateral talks and the USSR-Japanese conflict on the Khalkhin Gol River in Mongolia.
"He [Stalin] had to primarily think about the national security of his country. It was necessary to postpone the start of the war with Germany," Ivanov said, adding that the Soviet Union had no need to be the first great power to clash with Nazi Germany, especially amid the Polish refusal to let Moscow protect it from the threat from the West.
According to Ivanov, the United Kingdom and France wanted to provoke the conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
"That is why the top Soviet leadership reached consensus on signing the 1939 Treaty of Non-aggression with Nazi Germany," the official added.
In 1938, when the United Kingdom, France and Poland let Hitler occupy Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union had no border with Germany, which meant it needed permission to send its troops to Poland to fight the possible German aggression. Warsaw was afraid of the growing military power of the Soviet Union and refused to enter an anti-German coalition with Moscow.
In early August 1939, the trilateral talks in Moscow were suspended, and on August 23 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. The treaty, in fact, divided Europe into Nazi and Soviet zone of interest, with Latvia, Estonia, western Belarus, western Ukraine and Bessarabia being a part of the Soviet zone of interest.
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, which resulted in the beginning of World War II. On September 17, taking advantage of the fact that the vast majority of Polish troops were sent to the western front against the German army, the Red Army entered Poland and seized western Belarus and western Ukraine, which were part of Poland then.
After the Polish campaign the Soviet Union expanded to Latvia, Estonia and Bessarabia as well as Lithuania (except the Memel Territory, also known as the Klaipeda region), which initially was not a part of the Soviet sphere of interest under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. However, the Soviet war against Finland did not result in the latter's accession to the USSR.
On June 22, 1941, after defeating most European states, including France, Nazi Germany suddenly invaded the Soviet Union in violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The war ended in May 1945 with a full defeat of Germany and liberation of Europe from Nazism.
