THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 3, 28 September 1939, Page 8

THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA

Russia’s motives for her unexpected activities in Poland and elsewhere in Europe still await clarification. New developments are reported which, if confirmed, would suggest that Soviet policy may be looking further afield. These state that Russia has closed her Rumanian frontier, is concentrating troops in that area, and has also closed her Black Sea port of Odessa. Furthermore, her activities in the Baltic, and her reported ultimatum to Estonia, have given cause for serious apprehensions. The three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, are anti-Communist, and pledged to corporate neutrality. All three were opposed to the idea that they should be guaranteed protection by Russia against aggression, a condition put forward by the Soviet Government in the recent negotiations for an Anglo-French-Russian military alliance. Is the Soviet about to exploit the general unrest in Europe iby extending the frontiers of Communism? Whatever induced Russia to agree to a pact of non-aggression with such a notorious treaty-breaker as anti-Communist Nazi Germany, it could hardly have been esteem and affection. When Herr Hitler seized Bohemia and Moravia after Munich, thus practically annihilating Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Government, in a Note, refused to recognize the legality of his action on the ground that it was “violent, arbitrary, and aggressive.” Later on, when Hungary signified her adherence to the Berlin-Rome axis and joined the anti-Comintern Pact, the Soviet broke off diplomatic relations, pointing out that the Hungarian. Government since Munich had given evidence of “agreeing too easily .to pressure by certain countries, prejudicing her independence to a considerable degree.” It is now reported that diplomatic relations have been resumed.

Communist Russia has by no means abandoned its ideological crusade for the spread of Marxist Socialism through the world. M. Stalin himself made this clear in a policy statement in February, 1938:

International proletarian connexions of the working class in the U.S.S.R. (he said) should be strengthened and reinforced. Political assistance on the part of the working class of the bourgeois countries to the working class of our country, in the event of an armed attack, should be organized. Our whole people should be kept in a state of mobilization and preparedness, so that no accident and no tricks of our external enemies can catch us unawares. In March of the present year M. Stalin strongly criticized Britain and France for their alleged continued retreats before the demands of totalitarianism. “The policy of non-intervention,” he declared, “is tantamount to connivance at aggression, to unleashing war.” M. Stalin may possibly have convinced himself that the Western Powers, in their neglect to resist German aggression at every point and from the very beginning, might not now be able to accomplish her defeat, and accordingly has decided that an aggressive policy on behalf of his. own nation’s political ideology is called for. One of his professed aims is “the rendering of support to nations which have fallen a prey to aggression.” '■ It is hard, after what ‘has happened in Poland, to imagine. M. Stalin in the role of a public benefactor, taking weak and victimized nations under his sheltering wing without benefit or fee. It may be that he is just as anxious to prevent further German expansion toward the Black Sea and the Mediterranean as are Turkey and the Balkan States; and in the Baltic to secure his northern flank against a possible menace from the same quarter. On the other hand, he may have decided that in the present disorganized state of Europe the time is ripe for a new Communist offensive. There is evidence that Russia’s share of Poland is already being systematically Sovietized.