The Geopolitical Crossword

Three days after Stalin’s conversation with the Comintern leaders, one of the participants in the meeting, Viacheslav Molotov, was ordered to try the nationality argument for Soviet entry into the war on none other than the German ambassador to the Soviet Union, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg.

“The Soviet Government,” wrote Schulenburg, reporting the words of the Soviet foreign commissar to Berlin, “had intended to take the occasion of the further advance of German troops to declare that Poland was falling apart and that it was necessary for the Soviet Union, in consequence, to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and the White Russians ‘threatened’ by Germany. This argument was to make the intervention of the Soviet Union plau­sible to the masses and at the same time avoid giving the Soviet Union the appearance of an aggressor.”²

The class analysis and export-of-revolution argument given by Stalin to Dimitrov had been dropped in Molotov’s presentation to Schulenburg, while the nationality justification had survived, admittedly in somewhat different form. It was no longer the Pol­ish state’s poor treatment of the Ukrainians and Belarusians but their possible mistreatment by the Germans that was supposed to justify the Soviet invasion. On 14 September, Schulenburg re­ported to Berlin about his next meeting with Molotov. The So­viet foreign commissar was again preoccupied with the question of legitimacy. “For the political motivation of Soviet action (the collapse of Poland and protection of Russian ‘minorities’) it was of the greatest importance not to take action until the govern­mental center of Poland, the city of Warsaw, had fallen,” report­ed Schulenburg on the new Soviet position.

To be sure, the Soviets were not simply awaiting the fall of Warsaw. They began to prepare their own population for war, and the ethnic explanation of the impending invasion played an important role. On 8 September, the day after Stalin’s meeting with his military commanders and Dimitrov, the Polish military attach in Moscow attended a public lecture in Gorky Park on the German-Polish war. The speaker asked whether his audience was prepared to observe impassively the sufferings inflicted by nobiliary Poland on Ukrainians and Belarusians. The audience responded with cries of “March, march on the evil Germans!”

On è September, the Red Army formed two fronts tasked with the invasion of Poland. They were based on the Kyiv and Minsk military districts but received “nationalized” names—Ukrainian and Belarusian. They also introduced the minorities theme in public propaganda. A few days later it appeared in the print me­dia. Schulenburg concluded his report of 14 September by stating: “I would direct your attention to today’s article in Pravda, carried by DNB [Deutsches Nachrichtenburo—German Press Agency], which will be followed by a similar article in Izvestiia tomorrow. The articles serve [to prepare] the political motivation mentioned by Molotov for Soviet intervention.”³

The two articles mentioned by Schulenburg ascribed the de­feat of Poland to its mistreatment of its ethnic minorities and provided detailed information on the sorry status of Ukrainians and Belarusians in the prewar Polish state. The potential Ger­man threat was not mentioned, but Hitler’s foreign minister, Joa­chim von Ribbentrop, finally became alert to the problem that might arise as a result of Molotov’s desire to explain Soviet action against Poland by pointing a finger at the Germans. To forestall it, Ribbentrop wanted a joint Soviet-German statement stressing the desire of the two powers to “restore peace” in Poland.

On 15 September, the Reichskommissar cabled his ambassa­dor in Moscow:

We assume...that the Soviet Government has already given up the idea, expressed by Molotov in an earlier conversation with you, of taking the threat to the Ukrainian and White Russian populations by Germany as a ground for Soviet action. The as­signment of a motive of that sort would be out of the question in practice. It would be directly contrary to the true German intentions, which are confined exclusively to the realization of well-known German spheres of interest. It would also be in contradiction to the arrangements made in Moscow and, finally, would—in opposition to the desire for friendly relations ex­pressed on both sides—expose the two States before the whole world as enemies.⁴

When Schulenburg presented these arguments to Molotov at their meeting on 16 September, the day before the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Soviet commissar found himself on the defensive. Despite Ribbentrop’s warning, he insisted on including a state­ment in the Soviet declaration on the causes of intervention argu­ing that “the Soviet Union considered itself obligated to intervene to protect its Ukrainian and White Russian brothers and make it possible for these unfortunate people to work in peace.”

According to Schulenburg’s report, Molotov

conceded that the projected argument of the Soviet Govern­ment contained a note that was jarring to German sensibilities but asked that in view of the difficult situation of the Sovi­et Government we not let a trifle like this stand in our way. The Soviet Government unfortunately saw no possibility of any other motivation, since the Soviet Union had thus far not concerned itself about the plight of its minorities in Poland and had to justify abroad, in some way or other, its present intervention.⁵

As always, Molotov was acting on Stalin’s instructions and was not at liberty to change anything in the declared position of the Soviet government.

The main problem with their explanation of the invasion as an act of fraternal assistance to the Ukrainians and Belarusians was that, according to the secret protocol signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop in Moscow on the morning of 24 August 1939 (and dated the previous day), the Soviet sphere of influence extend­ed beyond territories settled predominantly by Ukrainians and Belarusians. The Soviet catch also included millions of Jews and Poles. If Jews were dispersed all over Polish territory, nowhere constituting a majority and consequently unable to claim a home­land of their own, the Poles had such a claim. They constituted an absolute majority of the inhabitants of lands between the Bug and Wisla Rivers who were to be brought forcibly into the Soviet sphere. Well aware of this, Stalin made preparations for dealing with the Polish question.

On the eve of the invasion, the commander of the newly formed Ukrainian front, Semen Tymoshenko, received instruc­tions on how to facilitate the election of deputies to three popu­lar assemblies—those of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and Polish regions east of the Wisla. These assemblies were to adopt resolutions requesting the incorporation of their territories into the USSR.

Beriia's instructions to NKVD officers in Ukraine and Be­larus and the instructions to Tymoshenko show that on the eve of the Soviet invasion Stalin had no plans for creating a Polish buffer state between Germany and the USSR, an idea earlier entertained by the Soviet leadership. On 19 September, Molotov said as much to Schulenburg, who reported to Berlin on his con­versation with the Soviet foreign commissar: “Molotov hinted that the original inclination entertained by the Soviet Govern­ment and Stalin personally to permit the existence of a residual Poland had given way to the inclination to partition Poland along the Neisse-Narew-Wisla-San Line.”

That was the line defined by the secret protocol of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August. Within the next few days, Stalin further developed his thinking on the issue. On 25 September, he told Schulenburg that he wanted to avoid “anything that in the future might create friction between Germany and the Soviet Union” and “considered it wrong to leave an independent Polish rump state.” According to Schulenburg, Stalin proposed the fol­lowing: “From the territory to the east of the demarcation line, all the Province of Lublin and that portion of the Province of Warsaw which extends to the Bug should be added to our share. In return, we should waive our claim to Lithuania.”⁸

What was the logic of Stalin’s new proposal? His desire to claim Lithuania might suggest that he wanted to regain a former Romanov possession.

If the proposal was not solely an attempt to reclaim tsarist possessions or improve military defenses, what was it? A close reading indicates that the Soviet desire to recover lost territory and improve the geostrategic position of the state were adjusted to take into account ethnic boundaries and national identities of borderland populations. By getting rid of the ethnic Polish ter­ritories, Stalin was also bringing the new Soviet-German border into line with his propaganda thesis that Soviet forces had entered Poland primarily in order to liberate their fellow Ukrainians and Belarusians. He could thus explain the new border to the Soviet and foreign public much more effectively than the original one.⁹

There is also no reason to doubt the sincerity of Stalin’s claim that he wanted to avoid anything in the new territorial arrange­ment that might make future German-Soviet relations more difficult. Getting rid of the Polish buffer state was one step in that direction. Getting rid of the Lublin and Warsaw provinces, settled largely by Poles, was another. Stalin had good reason for concern that Germany might use the cause of Polish reunifi­cation as a pretext to interfere in Soviet affairs and eventually go to war against the Soviet Union. A few months earlier, the world press had been full of suggestions that Hitler was going to use Transcarpathian Ukraine—the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia—as a base for starting a war with Stalin for control of Soviet Ukraine.

In March 1939, Stalin declared from the podium of the Eigh­teenth Party Congress that he did not trust Western insinuations in that regard. Many regard Stalin’s assertion as a signal to Hitler and Ribbentrop that he was prepared to make a deal. The deal he was negotiating now precluded the creation of a new “Transcar­pathia,” either Ukrainian or Polish. The proposed new Soviet- German boundary was to follow the San and Bug Rivers, roughly corresponding to the ethnic boundary in the region as defined by the Allied Supreme Council in Paris in December 1918, later known as the Curzon Line.¹⁰

On 28 September, Ribbentrop, who had flown to Moscow the previous day, signed the German-Soviet border agreement, which recognized the new line proposed by Stalin. In the course of ne­gotiations, Ribbentrop tried to acquire the oil-rich Drohobych region of Ukrainian Galicia for Germany, but Stalin stood firm, agreeing to ship oil to Germany but not to give up the territory. He emerged from the negotiations not only as a protector of Ukrainian territory but also as a leader concerned about Ukraini­ans and Belarusians beyond the lands that were about to become part of the USSR. Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a confiden­tial protocol that committed the Soviet government to raise no obstacle to the voluntary transfer of German inhabitants from the Soviet sector of partitioned Poland to the German sector. The German government promised to reciprocate with regard to Ukrainians and Belarusians. This privilege was not extended to Poles or Jews. Another protocol obliged each government to suppress Polish propaganda directed against the other party. In transferring Polish territories to Hitler, Stalin wanted to ensure that his new partner would not use the Polish card against the USSR.¹¹

If the map accompanying the secret protocol of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact (23 August 1939) was largely the result of propos­als made by Ribbentrop, the amendments made to it on 28 Sep­tember originated with Stalin. Ribbentrop’s proposal was based mainly on historical precedent and on the assumption that Stalin wanted to restore the old imperial borders in Eastern Europe. Stalin’s amendments, by contrast, were based on ethnic criteria that dominated the thinking of the post-World War I era. In a mere three weeks—a brief period extremely rich in events and decisions—Stalin’s nationality argument, which was first formu­lated, as far as we know, at his meeting of 7 September with Molotov, Zhdanov, Dimitrov, and Manuilsky, had developed from a theme intended to undermine the legitimacy of the Polish state into a propaganda tool and, finally, an important principle for determining the extent of Soviet territorial expansion and estab­lishing the border with the Soviets’ new German neighbor.

Stalin’s uncertainty with regard to that border and his vacil­lation between creating a Polish buffer state, setting up a Polish Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the USSR, and transferring Polish territory to Germany indicate that he and his advisers were caught unprepared, first by the conclusion of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact and then by the rapid advance of the German panzer divisions into Poland. It was in the process of the Sep­tember consultations and negotiations with Germany that they found a way not only to sort out their messy territorial relations with Germany but also to work out a language in which they could explain their actions both at home and abroad. The word “nationality” proved highly compatible with the words “borders,” “security,” “legitimacy,” and “propaganda,” linking them in a dip­lomatic crossword that preoccupied Stalin in the weeks leading up to the Soviet entry into World War II.