Magazine: Canadian Journal of History, December 1998

                     REVIEWS: MODERN EUROPE

                         ----------------------

    Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922-1941, by Aleksandr M.
    Nekrich, edited and translated by Gregory L. Freeze. New York, Columbia University
    Press, 1997. xiv, 308 pp. $35.00 U.S.

    German-Soviet relations between the world wars is a sometimes controversial subject and
    makes up part of a Cold War discourse focusing on the sinister and destructive foreign
    policy of the Soviet Union. From this perspective, the NaziSoviet non-aggression pact and
    subsequent "alliance" (1939-41) mark the most important stages in the development of a
    basically illicit relationship. The work by the late A.M. Nekrich fits within this interpretive
    framework. Nekrich was a Russian historian who emigrated to the United States in 1976
    and worked at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. The author died in
    1993, and this book is published posthumously, after editing and translation from the
    Russian.

    Nekrich saw the Soviet-German relationship as one between two "pariah" states issuing
    from the First World War who co-operated together to re-establish their political, military,
    and economic standing in post-war Europe. The most controversial and least substantiated
    part of the book deals with Nazi-Soviet relations after 1933. Here the author asserts that
    I.V. Stalin, the Soviet dictator, never really lost interest in close German relations even as
    the Soviet foreign ministry, the Narkomindel, sought to advance a policy of collective
    security with Britain, France, and the smaller east European successor states. Nekrich
    based these assertions on early, but not extensive use of unpublished Soviet archives as well
    as on the Documents on German Foreign Policy, translated from German and published by
    the U.S. government between 1949 and 1983.

    The most interesting part of the book deals with German-Soviet military cooperation during
    the 1920s and early 1930s. "On the one hand, the Soviet Union was repeatedly trying to
    realize its doctrine of world revolution... At the same time, it was collaborating with the very
    state the workers were seeking to topple..." (p. 2). What is interesting is not this
    commonplace and somewhat exaggerated reference to "dual policy", but the detailed
    information on military plants and training centres in the Soviet Union. And what is
    remarkable is not how widespread this co-operation was, but rather how modest and
    relatively insignificant were its results. The pilot training centre at Lipetsk (Voronezh oblast)
    was the most important: it provided training to approximately 1,200 German pilots over
    seven years (1926-32) though far smaller numbers of Soviet personnel were sent there (p.
    51). A tank school at Kama near Kazan received ten German tanks and trained 65 Soviet
    officers over three years (p. 61). An aircraft plant produced a handful of bombers (p. 50).

    The author based his assumptions about close German-Soviet co-operation on a hostile
    Soviet posture toward the West (p. 27), but in fact the Soviet government made serious
    efforts during the 1920s to improve relations with Britain, France, and the United States.
    These initiatives were rebuffed by the French and British in spectacular fashion in 1924-27,
    and of course the United States refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. The
    Soviet government was not always the innocent party in these failures; in 1926-27 it
    appears to have been willing to sacrifice its relations with Britain to support the nationalist
    revolution in China. But if the Soviet Union only had satisfactory relations with Germany, it
    was not for lack of trying with the former Allied powers. Soviet foreign policy during the
    inter-war years is distinguished more by its pragmatism, than its zeal to pursue world
    revolution. For those who might counter that Stalin had a different policy, preliminary
    evidence from Soviet archives indicates that Stalin was directly involved in foreign policy
    issues in the mid- 1920s, much earlier than previously supposed, and that the Politburo
    approved all major foreign policy initiatives. To borrow a colleague's metaphor, the unseen
    man upstairs, Stalin, may have been calling the piano player's tune for far longer than
    historians have previously believed.

    Nekrich's view of Nazi-Soviet relations during the 1930s is that "Stalin decided to conduct
    foreign policy simultaneously along two quite contradictory lines: an 'official' policy of
    rapprochement with France and her allies, as well as an 'unofficial' policy of seeking not
    only cooperation but also a comprehensive agreement with Germany" (pp. 70, 76). Further
    on, the author is more categorical (e.g., for 1935-36): "... Stalin was stubbornly returning to
    the idea of a rapprochement with Germany..." (p. 89); or "... Stalin still hoped for some
    arrangement with the Germans..." (p. 94). The main evidence for Nekrich's contention
    comes from the Documents on German Foreign Policy, not Soviet archives. But
    comparisons of Soviet and western records of meetings during the inter-war years often
    show interesting nuances, so that caution should be used in drawing firm conclusions from
    only one side's account. German officials may have been exaggerating Soviet interest in a
    rapprochement in order to persuade their superiors to pursue such a policy.

    A case in point is the negotiations of Soviet representative David Kandelaki in Berlin
    (1935-37). Nekrich puts a heavy emphasis on these negotiations using almost exclusively
    the German documents. Geoffrey Roberts (University College, Cork), in an article
    published after Nekrich's death, made use of published Soviet documents and concluded
    that Soviet discussions with the Germans in this period were only tactical probes rather than
    a strategic initiative. Collective security was the main Soviet policy (International History
    Review, 3, 1994). American historian, T.J. Uldricks, put it succinctly in observing that the
    view of Nekrich and his predecessors "makes 98 per cent of all Soviet diplomatic activity a
    brittle cover for the remaining covert 2 per cent" (G. Martel, ed., Origins of the Second
    World War Reconsidered, 1986, p. 178).

    Nekrich treats the German-Soviet negotiations in 1939 as a rather more determined effort
    by Stalin to gain agreement whereas, for example, Roberts and the Russian historian, V. Ia.
    Sipols, hold that the Soviet movement toward a nonaggression pact was the result of
    uncertainty and drift. Soviet policy was poorly thought-out, a volte-face occurring during a
    fortnight in August (Soviet Studies, 1, 1992 and International Affairs, June 1989). It is often
    forgotten, in fact, that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was a result of Anglo-French
    indifference or hostility to collective security (1934-39) and, at the last, of an astounding
    lack of Anglo-French interest in a real fighting alliance against Nazi Germany. Once again
    Nekrich's sources are mainly German, while Roberts and Sipols make use of newly
    published Soviet papers. Neither Roberts's nor Sipols's work is cited in Nekrich's
    bibliography, as perhaps the editor ought to have done.

    In short, while Nekrich's work provides interesting new information and details on
    German-Soviet relations, its main interpretation is one-sided and unpersuasive.

    ~~~~~~~~

    By Michael Jabara Carley, University of Akron

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