ITALY AND RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23111, 29 August 1940, Page 6

ITALY AND RUSSIA

Problem of Reconciling Interests MUTUAL IGNORANCE CAUSES FRICTION [By ROY SHERWOOD] Possible future relations between Italy and Russia are surveyed in this article. It is suggested that any friction between these States is based largely on, ignorance, and that both can profit from a better understanding.

LONDON, July 20. So much in the developments of the next few months depends on ItalianRussian relations, that nothing could be more welcome, than to be able to measure them with caliper accuracy, Unfortunately, it, is difficult to form even a. moderately sound opinion. The difficulties as well as the influences for better understanding between the two countries fall into two categories—ideological and political. On ideological grounds, Italy hates Bolshevism for the same reason for which it was for so many years the bugbear of the Germans. Italians and Germans have never looked at it from the relatively detached viewpoint natural to most other people. To them Communism has always been the state of chaos and wholesale licence for plundering, mob excesses, and destruction against which they fought in their early days, and from which they ciairit to have rescued their own countries. They do not see Bolshevism for what it is—a rule evolved into something very similar to their own in practice if not in theory. Politically, Trere are clashing aspirations between Italy and Russia in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Any Russian tendency, real or fancied, to revive the old part of big brother to the Slav world is poison to Italy. She has her own designs on Jugoslavia, and she does not relish the idea of a Russian-inspired resistance to them. Neither does she want to find herself, even in the absence of any such resistance. face to face with the great Russian bear’s military might on the eastern frontiers of a Soviet-backed and Soviet-influenced Balkan bloc. Next, she does not want Russia growing so powerful in or around Istanbul a. to make of her a new competitor for supremacy in the Mediterranean. It is for that reason that Italy’s professions of friendliness for Turkey are genuine within fixed limits; and the limits are reached at the point where Turkish friendship with Great Britain begins, because Britain is the great present obstacle to Italian aspirations to hegemony over the Mediterranean. Hostility Skin Deep In Russia, in spite of the occasional vehemence of official enmity to Italian ideology, that enmity is really quite shallow. The Russians have no actual experience of Fascism and therefore no reason to like or to dislike it on personal grounds. In so far as their dislike is genuine, it ft founded on the idea that the Fascist regime is more or less the same thing as the old pre-revolu-tionary Tsarist rule. But politically the case is different. The whole of the old Russian expansive urge towards the Dardanelles and the Balkans would be so much waste of time and effort if, when she arrived there, she were to find herself confronted by an all-powerful Italy ruling over the destinies of the Mediterranean. She would then have broken out of a narrow prison merely to find herself confined in a wider but more forbidding one under Italy’s control. Further afield there are more political differences. Nothing short of either a completely new world order or a deeply studied plan of division and demarcation can overcome the Far Eastern difficulties between Russia and Japan. China is the ground where these difficulties meet ideologically as well as territorially, translating themselves into open warfare. And as Russia is not likely to follow

in Britain’s footsteps in abandonim help for China quickly, gradually temporarily, or permanently, and Italy is daily stressing her friendship fm Japan, the Soviets have no more res.' son to love Mussolini in the East the*' in the south-west. Now let us look at the other sid* of® the picture. Ideologically, as have seen, the antagonism is vehement rather than deep. It could be wiped out with greater ease than that between Russia and Germany for the simple reason that Russians know little about Italians except that they provided a good proportion oLpre-world-war anarchists—which Should predispose them in their favburwhereas they have historical menl* ories of German penetration and Get. man influence in Tsarist days mostly, directed against all liberalist tended cies. Politically it is not beyond human ingenuity to discover a basis of mu. tual accommodation regarding thi Balkans. There is a comfortable geographical distance between the places in which the Soviets are . .ost inter, ested and those which Italy aspires to bring within her sphere of influence, Particularly in view of Germany’) anxiety- to bring Italy and ' Rusll* closer together, it may not be iftposi sible for a basis of lasting agreement on the “Balkan point” to be fcrtifld* Problem of Turkey _ Much harder in the . long rilfl, though easy in short-term polldy. i) the question of Turkey. Sandwiched between the prospect of distant hUkj from Russia and immediate dattgefi from Italy, Ankara can be made to yield a good deal if Italy and RiISSiS act in concert Fundamentally tfie Turk is in much closer sympathy withthe Russian than with the Italian, and' Italy will have to watch her step if she wants to prevent a real close hilianee between the two countries, more or less directed against hetselt But, temperamentally destined to be friends, Turkey and Russia have Often been political enemies in the past and are still governed by the one important consideration—lstanbul—whicn has always exerted its influence against their close collaboration. It is inevitable that Russia should 'feel imprisoned in the Black Sea as long as somebody else holds the Dardanelles. So it comes to this, that Italy can best dispose of Turkish opposition to her Mediterranean aspirations, and of Turkey’s annoying support of Great Britain by making friends with Russia.. But if that friendship leads in the long run to the Soviets gaining direct or indirect control over the Dardanelles—as it is logically bound to do —Mussolini will only have replaced a. moderate-sized competitor by one of huge dimensions. To point that out is not to say that it will not happen. , Wc have seen queerer developments within the, last few months. But. as a rapprochement between Turkey and Russia must al-' most certainly entail a cooling-off between Italy and Japan at a time when relations between that Far Eadem nation and Germany are already-’less close than they used to -be. and when • Britain is trying hard to improve her own relations with Japan, the mere thought of such an even lality opens out a new’ field of speculation. Japan might have to become more cautious, the Burma road might be reopened—and who shall say what else might happen?