THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1939 RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23338, 5 May 1939, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1939 RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY

Nothing in the diplomatic world to-day is more important than the direction of Russian foreign policy, as is exemplified, for instance, by the repeated questions on the subject addressed to Mr. Chamberlain by the Commons from day to day. Of all post-war developments the variation of Russian policy from Lenin's seizure of power in 1917 until the present day is one of the most striking. In the early days of the Russian experiment, the whole world was to be the battlefield of the Soviet in its struggle to make Communism international. Its enemies were all capitalist States, whether they were the Allies or the Central Empires. With the collapse of Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Bolsheviks fought foreign intervention led by Great Britain and France. The Bolsheviks triumphed, and they found their first friends in the new republican Germany and Turkey—"redeemed from the reproach of Capitalism by being sanctified as its victims." At Rapallo in 1921 Russia negotiated with Germany a treaty of friendship. As for the League of Nations, the Soviet, much in the style of the Germans, regarded it as a conspiracy of the victorious Allied Powers. Gradually, however, Russia settled down. The notion of world revolution was abandoned, at any rate for the time being. The Russian leaders sought to consolidate their position and develop their country. Russia became a satisfied Power, facing with anxious eyes an aggressive Germany and an aggressive Japan. The Soviet cast around for allies and perforce it had to make friends with the mammon of capitalist unrighteousness. There was no more urgent advocate of friendship with Great Britain and France than M. Litvinoff, assistant Commissar of Foreign Affairs until 1930 and Commissar until his resignation, recorded in to-day's cable news. One of the few of Lenin's Old Guard to survive, and, interesting to note, married to an Englishwoman, he was the more ready to advocate the enti'y of his country into the League when he saw the Soviet's potential enemies, Germany and Japan, turn their backs on Geneva. If in the»Russian view the League was an embarrassment to the enemies of peace, the Germans and the Japanese, then it was a good thing for the Soviet Union to join, and join it did Jn 1934. The Franco-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance and the adherence of Czecho-Slovakia were early and natural sequences. The rapid rise of Nazi Germany and the dominance of the military in Japan meant that Russia returned to the policy of the Tsars and to an entente with France. Why, asked M. Herriot, should Frenchmen be worried if bourgeois France came to an agreement with Communist Russia? Soviet relations with Japan steadily deteriorated. Although Russian statesmen have said repeatedly that war with Japan is not "fatalistically inevitable," the causes of enmity have been numerous and intractable of settlement. The Communist regime of the Soviet is to Japan anathema—an ever-present threat to her ancient monarchy and institutions. She has ringed the Siberian and Outer Mongolian borders with her troops. Russia has not left the threat unanswered. Her five-year plans in, Siberia have immensely strengthened that region as a military base. Steady colonisation has greatly increased the population, industiial expansion has been considerable and strategic communications render the defence of Russia's far eastern dominions infinitely more effective than it was in 1905. The Red Army in Siberia, made an independent military e'stablishment in 1929, is now protected by the double-tracking of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the construction of a new line from Lake .Baikal to the Sea of Okhotsk. Air bases have been made from which Japan's industrial nerve centres can be attacked. In July of last year the Russians tested the efficiency of their new army, and in a sharp conflict at Ohangfukeng drove oft the Japanese and proved, according to one acute observer, that the mechanical equipment of the Far Eastern .army was superior to that of the Japanese forces. But it is very significant that the Russians, satisfied with their success, called a halt to the hostilities.

Russia has no greater desire than Germany to conduct a war on two fronts. She Has beheld with great uneasiness the conclusion of the anti-Comintern pact. Its military character received emphasis, after Munich, from the appointment of Japanese generals as Ambassadors at Berlin and Rome respectively. Russia, rightly or wrongly, considered that the western democracies did little to save Czecho-Slovakia. The momentum of German expansion is such that no distaste for Munich can, it is true, render Russia oblivious to the need for co-operation with Great Britain and France. Their need, however, may be greater than Russia's. The succour of Poland and Rumania by Russian forces means an external war —a type of war, it is interesting to record, which Russia has never fought successfully. The drastic purges for which M. Stalin has earned the name of the new Tiberius will not embolden him to enter a conflict the strain of which might entail the downfall of his regime. Let Russia meet the armed might of Germany in the west and Japan in the east, and her long line of communications may not stand the strain. These are considerations no doubt influencing the Russian Government to-day. M. Litvinoff, it has been suggested, has pursued too vigorously an alliance with the democracies.' Whether this be so or not, Japan, occupied though she is in China, is still powerful enough to make Russia weigh very carefully the risks of embroilment in a European war.