RUSSIA ABROAD

Evening Star, Issue 23861, 16 April 1941, Page 8

RUSSIA ABROAD

MIGAWBER ATTITUDE STALIN'S FOREIGN SHIFTS The year 1940 was one of waiting in Stalin’s foreign policy, in spite of the apparently great successes of the opening of the year. In the coming phase of the war, if only on account of Asiatic questions, the Russian factor may be of great importance; it is worthwhile, therefore, to consider the results of Russian foreign policy in 1940, writes A. Maslov in the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ At the beginning of the year Russia was occupied with the concluding stages of her Finish adventure, which had been an interruption in the Stalin policy of non-participation in the war and waiting for its outcome —in the expectation of a long and exhausting struggle in Europe—and of building up a third coalition, especially in Asia. Since the end of 1939 Stalin had had to cut out both items of this policy; he had had to give up the idea of any rapid Asiatic coalition, whether in. the near East, where Turkey had simply, declined to go his way, or in the Far East, where Japan’s weakness and China’s toughness were so great that while coquetting with the idea of an understanding with Japan he was compelled to support Chiang Kai-shek; and so he was brought, whether he liked it or not, into a‘ virtual coalition with Britain and the United States. FAILURE IN FINLAND. The Finnish adventure was brought to a close with a peace which had its contradictory elements. Diplomatically the peace was a success for Stalin. Outward forms were preserved towards a conquered enemy, and a small one at that, and it was possible to maintain the fiction that the war had been fought only for an improvement of Russia’s land frontier. Militarily the war was a technical success for Russia, since the supposedly impregnable Mannerheim Line had been pierced; but from an historical and even strategical point of view it had been a defeat, because the true purpose of Staling whole Finnish adventure had simply been to profit by the embarrassment of the two belligerent coalitions to make big conquests on his own account and at last to reach the Atlantic Ocean. In this aim he failed completely. Not Stalin hut Hitler commands the Norwegian Atlantic coast, and Stalin’s Finnish successes were insignificant alongside those of Hitler in Scandinavia. In the Balkans, while Stalin pursued a policy of slow and cautious efforts at penetration (apart from the annexation of Bessarabia), trying to profit by the methods which had brought him success in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, German foreign policy forcibly blocked his way into Rumania and Hungary. It gained further ground in Bulgaria, and within the Russian Foreign Office the pro-German elements won the upper hand, causing Molotov’s journey to Berlin. INFLUENCE OF GREEK WAR. But Molotov’s whole attitude in Berlin was governed by the tragic results for Italy, and so for her “ loyal ” partner Germany, of the Greek campaign. •It may be that in the course of the two days’ journey from Moscow to Berlin the whole purpose of this visit was changed by directions from Moscow—in other words, from Stalin himself—but in any case the purpose of the journey was only “tactical”; Stalin meant to go on waiting. The zig-zag policy and the effort made in the Russian Foreign Office in the summer of 1940 to discover “ definitely ” whether the German coalition was going to be victorious have evidently been broken off; their advocate, Dekanozov, was shifted for that very reason and sent to Berlin. Stalin is once more on the fence, particularly in regard to Asia, where Moscow’s one concern is, of course, what the United States intends to do. Russia’s internal and economic policy has, of course, been determined by this foreign policy and by the course of the war. Her economic course has thus been conservative rather than progressive. This is no paradox. To any careful observer it has been perfectly clear that the end of the second Five-year Plan brought Russia’s economic development to a critical point. Early in the working of the third Five-year Plan great technical and trading difficulties made their appearance. On the surface they were concerned with quality, but in reality it was not quality that was at issue but the fact that the country’s centrally and bureaucratically organised economic system was failing to provide for the country’s needs. NEEDS STILL NOT MET. The war and Russia’s non-participa-tion in it rescued Stalin’s Ministers from their economic perplexities, but there is no concealing that the quality of almost all goods produced is poor, the quantity is below the planned figure, and there can be no question of further rapid progress, even on the patient paper of reports and statistics. On December 30 Benediktov, the Commissar for Agriculture, published a statement in ‘ Pravda ’ which fully bears out what has here been suggested. He wrote in entirely general terms of “ successes ” in agriculture, but specified nothing, apart from a few extensions of the area under certain sorts of wheat and potatoes. A “victory report ” issued earlier by his commissariat said that in the Kuban territory, one of Russia’s best wheat-producing areas, 16 (16!) out of several thousand collective farms established a “ record ” by bringing in 1,600 kilograms of wheat per hectare (roughly 12Jcwt per acre). The comment of Russia’s German friends, whoso Minister of Agriculture, Darre, took the opportunity to boost himself once more, appeared in a discreet comparison in Press and wireless with the German average wheat yield —2.200 kilograms a hectare. The official figures of production in the Russian engineering industry talk at present of some 15 to 16 per cent, increase. It remains to be seen what later conferences will say, or fail to say, about this. (Since then shortages have.been admitted.)