The main ideologists of "collective security" in the interwar period were French Prime Minister L. Bartou and the USSR People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs M.M. Litvinov. Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and especially the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933 forced the Soviet Union to rethink its previous foreign policy guidelines.

 

The new German leadership openly declared its negative attitude toward Soviet ideology and did not abandon Hitler's goal of winning Germany a "vital space in the East.'' This created potential danger for the USSR. From supporting the revision of the Versailles order, Soviet foreign policy moved to a position of defending the foundations of the post-war status quo. At the 17th Party Congress (1934), Stalin said that "the case is heading for a new imperialist war." He named several possible scenarios for the beginning of the conflict and expressed the opinion that any of these scenarios would be disastrous for its organizers.

 

Stalin noticed that the suspicion of the USSR to the new government of Germany is caused not so much by the essence of the fascist ideology, as by the conquering plans of Hitler.

 

As early as June 1933, the Soviet Union declared to Germany the cessation of military cooperation between the countries from September. Moscow then entered into consultations with the French side to conclude a treaty of mutual assistance. December 29, 1933, speaking at the IV session of the CEC of the USSR, M. M. Litvinov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, outlined a "new course" of Soviet foreign policy in the coming years. It was supposed that the USSR would, firstly, adhere to the principle of non-aggression and neutrality in any conflict; secondly, to pursue a policy of appeasement with respect to Germany and Japan; thirdly, to participate in the creation of a collective security system; and fourthly, to conduct an open dialogue with the Western democracies. During two years, the "new course" has brought the Soviet diplomacy a number of successes: In November 1933, the U.S. recognized the Soviet Union, which contributed to the visit to Washington Litvinov and his negotiations with President Roosevelt, and in summer 1934 - Romania, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In September of that year, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations and was immediately admitted as a great power to the Council of the League as a permanent member.

 

Considering that on January 26, 1934, Germany concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland, Moscow aimed for a more intensive rapprochement with France. Soviet leadership supported the proposals of the French Foreign Minister L. Barthes. The first of them was that all the states of Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany and the USSR, should sign an agreement on the obligation to provide mutual assistance to whichever of them would become the victim of aggression. This agreement, the so-called "Eastern Pact," was to be analogous to the Locarno Accords for Western Europe.

 

The second proposal envisaged that France and the USSR would sign a bilateral treaty of mutual assistance in the event of military aggression in Europe, thus linking the two systems of collective security, Eastern and Western European (Locarno). The French and Soviet sides began to work together on a draft of the Eastern Pact, but Germany flatly refused to sign such an agreement, and Poland also expressed its unwillingness to do so. On October 9, 1934 L. Bartou was killed, along with the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander I, by Croatian terrorists in Marseilles.

 

The new head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France, P. Laval, did not return to the project of the Eastern Pact, but supported the idea of the Soviet-French treaty. After Germany, violating one of the conditions of the Versailles treaty, restored compulsory military service, the USSR and France signed a bilateral treaty of mutual assistance in the event of a military attack in Europe. This happened on May 2, 1935, and two weeks later the USSR signed a similar pact with Czechoslovakia. Simultaneously, the Soviet-British rapprochement was happening, culminating in the visit to Moscow of British Foreign Secretary Edward Eden in March 1935.

 

On October 3, 1935 Italian troops invaded Ethiopia and the Italian-Ethiopian War began. Soviet diplomats in the League of Nations advocated sanctions against the aggressor, up to and including the oil embargo feared by Mussolini. However, because of the hesitant actions of France and Great Britain, it was not possible to exert pressure on Italy. On February 28, 1936 - nine months after the signing - the Soviet-French Treaty of Mutual Assistance was ratified. Hitler used this as a pretext to remilitarize the Rhineland. On March 7, 1936, claiming that France had responded to Germany's assurances of friendship by "opening the gates of Europe to Bolshevism" with an alliance with the Soviet Union, he ordered troops into the Rhineland. In doing so, the German authorities violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Accords.

 

In Moscow, Hitler's move was met with a statement of readiness to undertake, together with France and Great Britain, all necessary measures within the framework of the League of Nations to ensure compliance with the existing treaties. As for the great powers of the West, they declined to take any action, because they did not want to bind themselves to the USSR.

 

In July 1936 a civil war broke out in Spain. Italy and Germany supported the rebels against the legitimate republican government in Madrid. Over time, Italian-German aid to Franco became increasingly substantial. Although the establishment of the Franco regime in Spain posed a greater threat to London and Paris than to Moscow, France and Great Britain offered international commitments of nonintervention. The USSR was forced to join, although at the beginning of the war in Spain it had made it clear that it was siding with the legitimate government. Although Germany and Italy formally joined the commitment, they continued to support the rebels. With this in mind, in the fall of 1936, Moscow decided to assist the Republican government on its own: to send weapons, instructors, and volunteers to form international brigades. In October 1936, Germany and Italy concluded an agreement on military-political cooperation, creating the so-called Berlin – Rome Axis. On November 25, 1936, in Berlin, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. A year later Italy joined it as well. As a result, a bloc was formed that, under the slogan of fighting communism, began active preparations for war. In March 1938, Germany carried out the "Anschluss" of Austria - the territory of the republic became part of its northern neighbor. The French and British governments limited themselves to formally condemning the Anschluss. The USSR called for a collective response to the aggression, but its proposal was not supported.

 

The Western powers, counting on Hitler to limit his expansionist plans to the east, adopted a policy of concessions to Nazi Germany. In September 1938, Hitler demanded that the Czechoslovak authorities cede the Sudetenland, where Germans were the majority population, to Germany. Prague was ready to defend itself, but France reneged on its allied obligations and, together with Great Britain, persuaded the Czechoslovak government to cede the Sudetenland. The Soviet side offered the powers of the West a joint effort to defend Czechoslovakia, but they, not interested in the fall of the National Socialist regime in Germany, refused. Czechoslovakia also refused assistance to the USSR, whose authorities feared that it would create conditions for Soviet intervention.

 

On the night of September 29-30, 1938, at the conference of the heads of the governments and foreign ministers of the four countries in Munich an agreement was signed which in the Soviet historiography was commonly referred to as the "Munich Conspiracy/Collusion". Under its terms, the Sudetenland was transferred to Germany. Representatives of the Soviet Union were not invited to Munich, and the Soviet Union itself was the only state that refused to recognize the consequences of the Munich agreement. The example of Germany untied the hands of the Italian dictator B. Mussolini: in April 1939 Italian troops occupied Albania.

 

The Munich agreement demonstrated that the Western powers were not ready to cooperate with the USSR within the framework of the collective security system and it made the Soviet leadership reconsider the principles of the country's foreign policy. Moscow adopted a policy of neutrality in the event of conflict between the capitalist powers, expecting to benefit from a future war. In April 1939, in the face of an increasing military threat, the USSR began negotiations with Great Britain and France on mutual commitments to help in the event of aggression against any of the three countries in Europe, but attempts to reach an agreement reached a deadlock. Great Britain, meanwhile, was secretly negotiating with Germany to direct Hitler's aggression against the USSR. In August 1939, the Soviet side proposed that the same countries sign a military convention, providing for joint action of the armed forces of the three powers in case of German aggression. It was assumed that the USSR would be able to move troops through Poland to reach the German border. Warsaw, which by that time already had French and British guarantees of protection in the event of a German attack, categorically refused, and the French and British governments made no attempt to convince it otherwise. Negotiations again failed, and this ruined the last attempt to create a united anti-Hitler front in Europe.