22 March 1998

An Eye on French Politics and Politicians from the Soviet Embassy
on the rue de Grenelle in Paris, 1924-1940
(Society for French Historical Studies
Saturday, 28 March 1998, Ottawa, Ontario)

by Michael Jabara Carley©

Between 1924 when France extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union and 1940 when the Third Republic collapsed, the Soviet government sent five ambassadors to Paris, all of whom were excellent political observers of French politics and politicians. These ambassadors were L. B. Krasin, Kh. G. Rakovskii, V. S. Dovgalevskii, V. P. Potemkin, and Ia. Z. Surits. They met with French politicians, ministers, officials, journalists, and they recorded their conversations in their official diairies and in correspondence to Moscow. They took the measure of their interlocutors, reported gossip and politics, and even the unkind comments of officials about their ministers. The French liked to talk and they had a certain penchant for indiscretion.

    Soviet ambassadors offered estimates of French internal politics and foreign policy. They saw early on that the Soviet Union had become an object of French domestic politics both for right and left. The right, however, was far more effective in exploiting the red scare than was the centre-left in pointing to the strategic importance of Russia to French security against Germany. Who was the greater enemy of France: Soviet Russia or Weimar, then Nazi Germany? In the calculations of French security during the inter-war years, this was a recurring question.

    Soviet ambassadors tried to influence French policy by circulating in French society, establishing close contacts with influential politicians, and even paying subsidies to French newspapers. What the Soviet government wanted in France was a political and economic rapprochement. A political rapprochement would prevent the formation of an anti-Soviet bloc and (in the 1930s) would foster the creation of an anti-Nazi alliance. Better trade relations would reinforce political ties and address Soviet economic needs to sell and buy in French and European markets and to obtain trade credits and loans.

    There were many obstacles in the way of achieving these objectives. The Bolshevik revolution left bitter memories of billions in investments and loans nationalized or repudiated by the Soviet government. The revolution in Russia also threatened to spread Bolshevism in the west. The poster image during the 1919 French elections of a crazed revolutionary clenching a knife with his broken teeth endured long after the right's first electoral success, exploiting the red scare.

    In 1919 the Soviet government organized the Communist International, or Comintern to foment socialist revolution in the west. At the end of 1920 a communist party was organized in France. The communist enemy was thus not only external but internal as well. And ties between the Comintern and the French communist party created further animosity in France and also, ironically, in the commissariat for foreign affairs, the Narkomindel in Moscow.

    Early Narkomindel objectives in France were, first, to seek a debts settlement for the quid pro quo of loans or credits, and, second, to distance the embassy from the Comintern and the French communist party. These were not easy tasks. Maksim M. Litvinov, the deputy foreign commissar, observed that "A country not paying its own debts, beset by such troublesome creditors as England and America, cannot, even if it so wished, give loans to others, and still less to the USSR." ¹

    Distancing the Soviet embassy from the Comintern also proved difficult at the outset with a Bolshevik ideologue as counsellor and a former Comintern agent as first secretary. G. V. Chicherin, the commissar, and Litvinov complained bitterly to the Politburo that the Paris embassy--which was one of the most important Soviet diplomatic stations--was staffed by people unfit for their jobs. Apart from clerks and typists, the Narkomindel had had no input into the assigning of personnel. Instead of a good beginning to Franco-Soviet relations, tensions had immediately risen to their worst level in several years.² As far as Litvinov was concerned, it was worse than that. The embassy counsellor, Aleksandr Shliapnikov, thought the Narkomindel was a "harmful institution... sunken in the ooze of diplomatic opportunism... He requires the directives, instructions, and advice of the Narkomindel [said Litvinov] for the purpose of working in a fully opposite direction." Shliapnikov, Litvinov told the Politburo, was a talboid polemicist, who sucked theories out of his thumb.³

    The Soviet embassy also had problems with the French communist party. Litvinov observed to Krasin: "Communists of all countries have a tendency to post and advertise their extraordinary knowledge of our affairs and intentions. You must restrain our French friends from such demonstrations. We everywhere and always gloriously proclaim the lack of links between the Soviet government and the Comintern, but foreign communists on the contrary strive to call out from all the rooftops their intimate proximity to the Soviet government and especially to the Narkomindel."⁴

    Western sources have recorded Litvinov's personal exasperation with the Comintern and with foreign communists, but he also got tired of western complaints. On the one hand, the French government insists on the complete separation of the Comintern and the Soviet government and, on the other, demands that the Soviet government intervene in the business of French communist party to stop their undesirable activities.⁵

    One of the less visible ways by which the Soviet government sought to improve relations with France was the payment of "allowances" (dovol'stvie) to French newspapers so that they would take a more charitable view of the Soviet Union. In December 1924 Krasin recommended drastically increasing subsidies, and Shliapnikov proposed the purchase of the Paris daily Le Journal.⁶ Litvinov was unhappy that Soviet "allowances" were not muting the anti-communist obloquy of the French papers. "We consider it necessary to inform the Politburo," Litvinov advised Krasin, "about the absolutely unsatisfactory conduct of the big newspaper [the Parisian daily Le Temps]." In its lead editorials its damns us, but then almost inadvertently has some more or less decent thing to say. And for this, it expects our "allowances". Litvinov recommended payments only at the end of each month subject to decent editorial conduct.⁷ Krasin reported that the "big newspaper" continued to be hostile, and that other papers offered space for pro-Soviet articles on p. 2 or 3, but without altering their hostile front page editorials.⁸ There was never enough Soviet gold to buy off the French press, and the anti-communist campaign continued to flourish throughout the interwar years. Rakovskii, shortly after succeeding Krasin at the end of 1925, advised the Narkomindel to forget about buying the French press. Such efforts would eventually be discovered and would only backfire.⁹

    Franco-Soviet relations between 1925 and 1927 worsened, though the Soviet government went a long way to obtain an agreement with France. During formal negotiations in 1926-27 the Soviet government made large concessions. French negotiators, Anatole de Monzie and Eirik Labonne, a foreign ministry official, told Rakovskii that the premier, Raymond Poincaré, and the finance ministry were dead set against a settlement. Elections were coming in 1928; an agreement with the Soviet Union might bring the left back to power. Victor Dalbiez, another of the French negotiators, told Chicherin, who was in Paris in May 1927, that the Bloc national was preparing a new anti-communist campaign. "They will try again to frighten the population, summoning up a mood similar to that of the 'knife between the teeth' [in 1919]".¹⁰

    A violent anti-communist press campaign in September-October 1927 drove Rakovskii from his embassy; he was replaced by V. S. Dovgalevskii, a highly professional Soviet diplomat. His first objective was simply to avoid a diplomatic break with France, which was not always an easy task.¹¹ There were several blow-ups in Franco-Soviet relations, one being the disappearance of the white general Kutepov in early 1930. The French government thought the kidnapping was done by the Soviet secret police, and it provoked a new eruption of press vituperation, with new calls for a rupture of diplomatic relations with Moscow. Aristide Briand, the foreign minister, reassured Dovgalevskii and made light of the situation. "Tell me, please," Briand joked, "what did you do with the general? How did you manage to kidnap such an important person in the middle of Paris? Was it all arranged for a movie scenario?" Dovgalevskii took the affair more seriously, having feared that the embassy might be attacked by right wing mobs.¹²

    In early 1931 the French and Soviet governments were in the midst of trade war, and the Narkomindel concluded that the prospects for Franco-Soviet relations were poor.¹³ It was darkest before the dawn, however, for the French government, having precipitated the trade war, took the initiative to end it. This marked the beginning of an improvement of relations which continued until October 1934.

    The improvement came with fits and starts: a non-aggression pact was concluded in late 1932 and a trade agreement in early 1934. The Soviet government deeply mistrusted the French. Rakovskii had referred to their Jesuit's guile, and Dovgalevskii advised that the French were capable of reversing themselves twice over, even in the presence of stenographers.¹⁴ When talking to Dovgalevskii, Briand blamed the failure of earlier negotiations in the 1920s on Poincaré. Dovgalevskii advised the Narkomindel not to be in a hurry about negotiations because the French might think we need a favour.¹⁵ In 1931 the non-aggression pact was initialled, though some French officials wanted to keep it secret for fear of touching off another press campaign.¹⁶ Of course, the news leaked and the resulting right wing tumult delayed the conclusion of the pact for over a year. Robert Coulondre, a foreign ministry official, told his Soviet counterparts that the minister responsible for trade negotiations, was unnerved by incessant right wing attacks against him.¹⁷

    National elections in 1932 moved the French government slightly to the left and put the Radical Édouard Herriot back in power. He had, as premier in 1924, pushed through French recognition, and he was known to be favourable to a Franco-Soviet rapprochement to strengthen French security against Germany. It was not an easy task: Herriot admitted to Dovgalevskii that he could not trust his officials at the Quai d'Orsay.¹⁸ Neither, of course, did the Soviet. In 1925 Krasin had said that Quai d'Orsay officials were "enemies to the last man".¹⁹ This was not quite true; there were a few cuckoos in the nest, but they were relatively junior officials.

    The "German danger" began to turn up in reports from Paris in 1932. None other than Monzie told the Soviet chargé d'affaires (M. I. Rozenberg) that "the German danger" made a Franco-Soviet rapprochement essential.²⁰ The Soviet embassy heard that Herriot was anxious to conclude the non-aggression pact to cut off a future French government from concluding an anti-Soviet agreement with Germany.²¹ In 1933 his successor, Joseph Paul-Boncour, was also reported to be in a hurry to strengthen Franco-Soviet relations. But the embassy worried about the instability of French governments, which changed every few months, and about continued public hostility to the Soviet Union.²²

    In early 1934 Dovgalevskii explained French equivocation on security issues by a split in French opinion and in the cabinet between "pro-Soviet and pro-German doctrines".²³ Shortly afterward, right wing riots broke out in Paris in February 1934, leading to the resignation of yet another French cabinet. Louis Barthou, the new foreign minister, reassured the Soviet ambassador of his commitment to the rapprochement and discussions began for the conclusion of a pact of mutual assistance.²⁴ Events in 1934 moved along more or less satisfactorily from the Soviet point of view until the autumn. Not long after the Soviet entry into the League of Nations, Barthou was killed in Marseilles in the assassination of the Yugoslav king. Pierre Laval, Barthou's successor, gave assurances to the Soviet embassy that French policy would not change.²⁵

    The Soviet ambassador's reports--now it was V. P. Potemkin--portray an evasive and unreliable Laval who made excuses for not moving more quickly to conclude a mutual assistance pact. There was opposition in Parliament and France did not want to be dragged into a war.²⁶ The Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact was gutted by gloating French officials before Laval finally signed it May 1935. Potemkin began to show some reserve toward the French for fear that too much Soviet interest in closer ties would have the opposite effect. And the embassy reported increasing anti-communist agitation. The bourgeois press feared the growing strength of the Front populaire. In the Paris political salons there were laments about too much Soviet influence in French internal affairs. At this time Herriot was one of Potemkin's most important sources of inside information. By the end of 1935 Litvinov reckoned that Laval might refuse to ratify the pact or would turn it into a scrap of paper, which it became in effect. When Laval fell from power in early 1936, the Soviet government was relieved.²⁷

    In February 1936, Litvinov met the latest French premier, Pierre-Étienne Flandin, in Paris. We have our own "isolationists", Litvinov warned: but we want clarity in our relations with France and not the uncertainty of the last eight months under Laval.²⁸ Litvinov would never get the clarity he wanted. In March the Rhineland crisis erupted. The Soviet embassy was discouraged by the weakness of the French response to the German military occupation of the demilitarized zone along the Rhine. According to Potemkin, it was not hard to understand why. The French feared the loss of British support. Allies and neutral countries alike were wavering before the increasing peril of war with Nazi Germany. There was little confidence in Soviet support in the case of war. We are far away and do not have a common frontier with Germany. The Red Army is not ready for an offensive war. According to Georges Mandel, who also became an important informant of the Soviet embassy, "no one would stand in the elections [in the spring of 1936] as a proponent of war and an advocate of a policy of firmness... The elections would take place under the ill-omen of pacifism." In these circumstances the government had no choice but to wait and see, play for time, and wait for the maturing of public opinion under the influence of further Hitlerite aggression.²⁹

    And things got worse as 1936 unfolded. For the right it was the victory of the Popular Front; for the left it was the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. In September 1936 Potemkin warned the French foreign minister, Yvon Delbos, that a "policy of capitulation" to fascist aggression would lead France to the loss of its allies and to isolation. Delbos protested that the government wanted to avoid war and that there was a growing fear of revolution in France. Even the British ambassador in Paris had indicated to the French government that more strikes in France would be undesirable. Potemkin was astonished: "Why does France permit the interference of a foreign government in its internal affairs?" Delbos replied that French "friendship" with Britain allowed to it certain liberties.³⁰ The Soviet government also faced difficulties in buying war matériel from French suppliers and in persuading the French general staff to begin talks with their Red Army counterparts. Léon Blum, then premier, said that the military bureaucracy was "sabotaging" arms sales and that Édouard Daladier, the defence minister, was opposed to staff talks.³¹

    Matters worsened in 1937. In January cabinet minister Camille Chautemps told Potemkin that staff talks could provoke a German-Italian "preventative war" and that the British opposed them in any event. The Soviet government has no intention of forcing itself upon the French, replied Potemkin, but it's a mistake for France to be constantly looking over it shoulder at Germany in expectation of its next outburst and to be subordinating its foreign policy to direction from London.³² Paul Reynaud, who favoured better Franco-Soviet relations, also begins to show up in Soviet dispatches at this time. Litvinov wanted to meet him. Like Herriot and Mandel, Reynaud became a sometime visitor to the Soviet embassy.³³

    After the Stalinist purges of the Red Army high command in mid-1937, the French general staff had the ideal pretext for dropping closer military cooperation. But the Soviet estimate of French reliability also declined. Surits wrote a devastating report in November 1937 which would buttress the case of any advocate of "decadent" France. The fear of tomorrow grows stronger every day, said Surits: the French see danger on all sides. Surits noted that French and Soviet interests were diverging on almost every point of the compass. For the French government the mutual assistance pact was merely a hindrance to a Soviet-German rapprochement. French policy seemed incomprehensible to Surits because of the government's betrayal of its own national interests, especially in Spain. The only way he could explain it was in the domination of class over national interests, and in French submission to British power, thought to be the only real protection for France against Nazi Germany. For France and especially for Britain, it was evident that the Soviet Union would play the decisive role in the struggle against fascism and that the defeat of fascism would lead to the growth of Soviet influence in Europe. At this cost, victory over fascism was undesirable. If France had to choose between Bolshevism and fascism, it would choose fascism. The French, said Surits, were headed toward "complete capitulation to Hitler and Mussolini".³⁴

    And then came Munich in September 1938. Surits saw it coming. There is no disposition on the part of the French and British, he said in July 1938, to defend Czechoslovakia. The British wanted to obtain by negotiations from the Czechs what Hitler wanted to take by force. Mandel and Reynaud encouraged the Soviet ambassador to threaten Daladier with a withdrawal of Soviet support in order to smarten him up. Surits was very discouraged: "When you look carefully here at the press... when you observe this panicky fear mixed with awe of German force and German 'power' [Macht], when day in and day out you are witness to an endless showing of heels, to concessions, to the gradual loss of independence in foreign policy... one cannot help but feel a terrible foreboding."

    To all this, said Surits, I must add the daily course of our joyless relations with the French. With regard to the acquisition of war supplies Daladier promises deliveries and his apparat sabotages and delays. And the French fear of anything carrying a Soviet seal on it has grown to such an extent that the Bibliothèque nationale has even refused an exhibit of Soviet books.³⁵

    After Munich Surits summed up the extent of the French catastrophe. It's "second Sedan". Nazi Germany, with French compliance and without firing a single shot, has gained a population of more than three millions, acquired more than 27,000 square kilometres of territory with important factories, mines, fortifications. And on and on he went. There had been no popular support for Czechoslovakia. On the contrary, "... for days we were all witnesses to the most disgraceful scenes when cowardice was elevated to virtue by cheering, thoughtless crowds and when the capitulators were glorified as national heros."

    Surits concluded his report by noting that with the exception of Mandel, none of the present leaders of France felt capable of waging a modern war. "Not one of them has the will, the energy, the grip, or the élan of [Georges] Clemenceau and even Poincaré."³⁶ This was an ironic comment indeed since these two men were among the most determined opponents of early Soviet Russia.

    In spite of the grim analysis coming from the Paris embassy, there was one last effort to create an anti-Nazi alliance. In 1939 the Soviet embassy took a more hopeful view of the French political situation. Surits saw France with its back against the wall and neck deep in danger; public opinion now favoured an alliance with the Soviet Union. In such circumstances of desperation, a sceptical Surits thought the French government might finally agree to an alliance against Nazi Germany. Suspicion remained, however, and it was reinforced by none other than Mandel who told Surits in July that Soviet mistrust of the Anglo-French was completely justified. Mandel urged the Soviet government to stick to a tough negotiating position to secure a real war-fighting alliance and to prevent the Anglo-French from escaping with mere paper agreements.³⁷ As we know, these tactics did not work and the Soviet government soon concluded a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany.

    The remaining months before the collapse of France in 1940 were an anti-climax. The outbreak of the Finnish war allowed the French to give vent to their more habitual hostility toward the Soviet Union. The French, warned Surits at the end of December, were completely out of control. Nearly the entire French press is shouting that we are easy pickings and riven with internal dissent. "Our embassy has become a plague zone and is surrounded by a swarm of plainclothes cops."³⁸

    Until April 1940 Franco-Soviet relations were strained to the breaking point. Some French politicians and generals thought of bombing the Caucasian oil fields or advancing from Finland on Leningrad when at the same time they would not take the offensive against the Wehrmacht. In March the French government asked for the recall of Surits--just as the French government had done in 1927 when it demanded the recall of Rakovskii. Only in May 1940, when it was too late, did the French contemplate an improvement of relations to retrieve the possibility of a strategic Soviet counter-balance which it had rejected, either by volition or inertia, in 1926-27, in 1935-37, and in 1939. Not without irony Eirik Labonne went to Moscow as ambassador and he made a last effort to bring about a rapprochement.³⁹ It was the same Labonne who had been Monzie's Sancho Panza in 1927 in their unsuccessful attempt to achieve agreement with the Soviet Union.

The Soviet embassy saw a lot of French politics and politicians. Even in the early 1920s, Herriot and Paul Painlevé, for example, emphasized the strategic importance of closer French relations with Russia. In the 1930s Herriot remained an important Soviet contact. Paul-Boncour, Reynaud, and Mandel were others. They provided the Soviet embassy with a window on French political life and they contributed directly to the formation of the Soviet view of France. What the Soviet embassy saw was an unstable political environment in which the Soviet Union often became an object of internal French politics. The embassy was witness to and often a target of a virulent, marauding anti-communism which sometimes threatened to rupture Franco-Soviet diplomatic relations. In the 1930s Soviet ambassadors described the collapse of France as a great power. This collapse was due to the failure of French leadership, awe of Nazi power and virility, subordination to British policy, and fear of war and socialist revolution. The ambassador's reports are seldom affected by ideological blinkers and even betray a certain sympathy for France and its terrible predicaments. In the scholarly debate concerning "decadent" France, Soviet ambassadors contribute contemporary evidence supporting in some measure the positions associated with J.-B. Duroselle or Eugen Weber.

Finally, these Soviet documents confirm or fill in gaps in the French archives. The formal, opaque language of the French papers often hides as much as it reveals. You will not find in the French archives the kind of detailed, direct reporting which one may read, for instance, in the Soviet ambassadors' reports from Paris. Nor will you often encounter the gritty language of Soviet observers. In short, what we gain from the Soviet mind's eye on the rue de Grenelle is another dimension and a deeper depth of field into French politics and French foreign policy.
 

Notes

1 . Litvinov to Krasin, no. 0621, secret, 27 Dec. 1924, Moscow, Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, fond 136, delo 102, papka 105, listy 13-15 (hereafter AVPRF, f., d., p., l.).
 
2. Chicherin/Litvinov to Politburo, no. 0049, secret, 20 Jan. 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 97, p. 105, l. 8-10.
 
3. Litvinov to Politburo, no. 0168, secret, 28 Feb. 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 97, p. 105, l. 15-16.
 
4. Litvinov to Krasin, no. 0621, 27 Dec. 1924, already cited; and Litvinov to Stalin, no. 0285, secret, 25 April 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 97, p. 105, l. 19.
 
5. Excerpt from Litvinov's journal, 12 Jan. 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 95, p. 105, l. 9-12.

6 . Krasin to Narkomindel, no. 05/9, 7 Dec. 1924, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 104, p. 105, l. 9-14; and Litvinov to Politburo, no. 630, very secret, 31 Dec. 1924, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 67, p. 103, l. 30-32.
 
7. Litvinov to Politburo, no. 0319, secret, 2 May 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 97, p. 105, l. 23-24.

8 . Krasin to Narkomindel, report no. 26, 17 May 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 104, p. 105, l. 150-62; and Krasin to Chicherin/Litvinov, no. 0215, 7 Aug. 1925, ibid., l. 267-71.
 
9. Excerpt from Rakovskii's journal, no. 0321, very secret, 17 Nov. 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 104, p. 105, l. 319-27.
 
10. "Discussions with [Alfred] Margaine, [Victor] Dalbiez, and [Henri] Rollins," Rakovskii, very secret, 24 May 1927, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 305, p. 117, l. 55-57.
 
11. Dovgalevskii to Litvinov, no. 0964/s, 26 Oct. 1928, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 408, p. 125, l. 162-63.
 
12. "Record of a conversation of ... V. S. Dovgalevskii with Briand on 25 March 1930," Dovgalevskii, very secret, 1 April 1930, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 585, p. 139, l. 30-37.
 
13. "Franco-Soviet Relations from October 1929 to 1 January 1931," secret, L. B. Gelfand, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 591, p. 140, l. 35-36.
 
14. Rakovskii to Litvinov, no. 33, 24 Sept. 1927, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 306, l. 117, l. 235-40; and Dovgalevskii to Litvinov, 3 May 1931, Kommissiia po izdaniiu diplomaticheskikh dokumentov, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR (hereafter DVP), 23 vols. (Moscow, 1958- ), XIV, pp. 306-09.
 
15. "Report of a conversation of the people's commissar for foreign affairs with... Briand," Litvinov, 26 May 1931, DVP, XIV, pp. 350-52; and Dovgalevskii to N. N. Krestinskii,... , 1 June 1931, ibid., pp. 358-61.

16. Dovgalevskii to Narkomindel, 10 Aug. 1931, DVP, XIV, p. 452.
 
17. "Record of conversation... with... [Robert] Coulondre," V. I. Mezhlauk, 16 Oct. 1931, DVP, XIV, pp. 573-81; and Dovgalevskii to Narkomindel, 25 Jan. 1932, DVP, XV, pp. 55-57.

18. Dovgalevskii to Narkomindel, 26 July 1932, DVP, XV, pp. 440-41.
 
19. Krasin to Narkomindel, report no. 26, 17 May 1925, AVPRF, f. 136, d. 104, p. 105, l. 150-62.
 
20. Rozenberg to Narkomindel, 4 Sept. 1932, DVP, XV, p. 505.
 
21. Rozenberg to Litvinov, 13 Sept. 1932, DVP, XV, pp. 527-528.
 
22. "Record of conversation of the people's commissar for foreign affairs with the French air minister P. Cot," Litvinov, 20 Sept. 1933, DVP, XVI, p. 523; Litvinov to TsK VKP(b), 15 Dec. 1933, ibid., pp. 751-53; and "Record of conversation... with... [Charles] Alphand," E. V. Rubinin, 22 Dec. 1933, ibid., pp. 763-65.
 
23. "Record of a conversation... with... Alphand," Litvinov, 4 Jan. 1934, DVP, XVII, p. 22, and Dovgalevskii to Litvinov, 25 Jan. 1934, ibid., pp. 70-71.

24. "Record of a conversation... with... Alphand," B. S. Stomoniakov, 13 Feb. 1934, DVP, XVII, pp. 140-42; and Dovgalevskii to Narkomindel, immediate, 24 Feb. 1934, ibid., pp. 165-66.

25. Rozenberg to Narkomindel, immediate, 19 Oct. 1934, DVP, XVII, pp. 647-49; and Litvinov to Rozenberg, 6 Nov. 1934, ibid., pp. 666-67.

26. V. P. Potemkin to Narkomindel, immediate, 26 March 1935, DVP, XVIII, pp. 26-17, and Potemkin to Narkomindel, highest priority, 29 March 1935, ibid., pp. 251-52.
 
27. Potemkin to Litvinov, 26 June 1935, DVP, XVIII, pp. 415-21; Potemkin to Litvinov, highest priority, 22 Nov. 1935, ibid., pp. 562-64; Potemkin to Litvinov, immediate, 27 Nov. 1935, ibid., pp. 567-68; and Litvinov to Potemkin, 4 Nov. 1935, ibid., p. 667.
 
28. Litvinov (Paris) to Narkomindel, immediate, 2 Feb. 1936, DVP, XIX, pp. 58-59.
 
29. Potemkin to Narkomindel, highest priority, 26 Feb. 1936, DVP, XIX, pp. 102-03; Litvinov to I. M. Maiskii, Soviet ambassador in London, 9 March 1936, ibid., p. 130; Krestinskii to Potemkin, 22 March 1936, ibid., pp. 182-83; Potemkin to Krestinskii, 26 March 1936, ibid., pp. 189-95.

30. Potemkin to Narkomindel, immediate, 17 Sept. 1936, DVP, XIX, pp. 428-29.
 
31. Potemkin to Narkomindel, 19 Sept. 1936, DVP, XIX, pp. 430-32; and Litvinov (Geneva) to Narkomindel, 5 Oct. 1936, ibid., pp. 461-62.
 
32. "Record of a conversation... with... Chautemps," Potemkin, 19 Jan. 1937, DVP, XX, pp. 43-46.

33. Potemkin to Surits (Berlin), 4 May 1937, DVP, XX, pp. 227-28.
 
34. Surits to Litvinov, 27 Nov. 1937, DVP, XX, pp. 630-34.

35. Surits to Litvinov, 27 July 1938, DVP, XXI, pp. 392-402.

36. Surits to Litvinov, 12 Oct. 1938, DVP, XXI, pp. 575-581.
 
37. Surits to Narkomindel, highest priority, very secret, 7 July 1939, DVP, XXII, book 1, pp. 529-30; and Surits to Narkomindel, very secret, 19 July 1939, ibid., pp. 544-45.

38. Surits to Narkomindel, very secret, 23 Dec. 1939, DVP, XXII, bk. 2, pp. 439-40.

39. "Conversation of... V. M. Molotov with... Labonne," 14 June 1940, DVP, XXIII, bk. 1, pp. 342-45.