Abstract
Molotov’s lukewarm attitude towards Britain, a reflection of his pro-German sentiments, and the treaties with Germany, meant that despite the efforts of Sir Stafford Cripps, British ambassador to the USSR from May 1940, there was little change in Anglo-Soviet relations from 1939 until Hitler launched Barbarossa.1 On 12 July 1941 Molotov and Cripps signed a joint agreement between Britain and the USSR. This pledged mutual aid and affirmed that neither country would conclude a separate peace. A trade and credit agreement was signed in August, but even after the ‘three-power conference’2 relations between the two countries remained poor. Stalin and Molotov were clearly dissatisfied with the limited aid they were receiving from Britain, which had not responded to enquiries about a Second Front, raised by Molotov with Cripps, and by Stalin with Churchill, as early as 18 July.3 Eden’s visit to Moscow, in December 1941, was a half-hearted and unsuccessful British attempt to foster improved relations and closer co-operation.
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Notes
Ibid., pp. 54–5. The term, ‘Second Front’, ‘of Russian origin, had come to signify in Moscow parlance an Anglo-American invasion of France across the English channel; it carried the insulting connotation that the Soviet Union alone was really fighting,’ Mastny, V., Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy. Warfare and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945, New York: 1970, p. 46.
Harvey, J., ed., The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, London: 1978, pp. 78–80.
Rzheshevsky, O. A., ed., War and Diplomacy: the Making of the Grand Alliance: Documents from Stalin’s Archives (hereinafter War and Diplomacy), Amsterdam: 1996, pp. 35–40; PRO, FO, 371/32874, 56–58A.
Arbatov, G. A. et al., eds, Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniya vo vremya Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945, t. 1, 1941–1943, Moscow: 1984 (hereinafter Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniya), pp. 150–1.
Kynin, G.P. et al., eds, Sovetsko-anglnskie otnosheniya vo vremya Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945, t. 1, 1941–1943, Moscow: 1983 (hereinafter Sovetsko-angliiskie otnosheniya) pp. 217–8; PRO, FO, 371/32879, 112.
Stoler, M. A., The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943, Westport: 1977, p. 43.
Dilks, D., ed., The Diaries of Alexander Cadogan 1938–1941, London: 1971, pp. 451–3.
Churchill, W. S., The Second World War: vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate, London: 1952, pp. 278–9.
War and Diplomacy, pp. 89–96. Stalin had mentioned the figure of 40 divisions to Churchill as early as September 1941. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Stalin’s Correspondence with Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman 1941–1945, London: 1955, pp. 20–2.
War and Diplomacy, pp.183–9; Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniya, pp. 181–7; FRUS 1942, vol. III, pp. 575–8; Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, vol. 2, pp. 566–9.
Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, vol. 2, p 579. Cf. Harriman, W. A. and Abel, E. Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, New York: 1975, p. 137; FRUS 1942, vol. III, pp. 582–3.
Kimball, W. F., ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: the Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942, Princeton, NJ: 1984, p. 508.
For a detailed discussion of the conference see Watson, D., ‘Molotov et la Conférence de Moscou Octobre 1943’, Communisme, no. 74/75, 2003, pp. 71–99.
Birse, A. H., Memoirs of an Interpreter, London: 1967, p. 137; Werth, Russia at War, p. 674.
Mastny, V., ‘Soviet War Aims at the Moscow and Teheran Conferences of 1943’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 47, 1975, p. 493.
Marion, C. J., Ministers in Moscow, Indiana University PhD. thesis, 1970, pp. 20–2; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, p. 28. FRUS, 1943, vol. 3, pp. 564–5, 567–8.
AVPRF, 6/5/17/159, 75 published Kynin, G.P. and Laufer, I., eds, SSSR i Germanskii vopros, 22 iyunya 1941g.-8 maya 1945g. t. 1, Moscow: 1996, p. 225.
Gromyko, A. A. et al., eds, Sovetskii Soyuz na mezhdunarodnykh konferentsiyakh perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945gg., T. 1, Moskovskaya konferentsiya ministrov inostrannykh del SSSR, SShA i Velikobritaniii (19–30 oktyabyra 1943g.): sbornik dokumentov, (hereinafter, Moskovskaya konferentsiya), Moscow: 1978, pp. 41–2.
Ibid., p. 42; Sainsbury, K., The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and Chiang-KaiShek, 1943, The Moscow, Cairo and Teheran Conferences, New York: 1985, pp. 11, 329.
Mastny, V., ‘The Beneš-Stalin-Molotov Conversations in December 1943: New Documents’, Jahrbűcher fűr Geschichte Osteuropas, 20, 1972, p. 387.
Mosely, P. E., The Kremlin and World Politics: Studies in Soviet Policy and Action, New York: 1960, p. 19. For Eden’s capitulation see Mastny, ‘Soviet War Aims,’ pp. 486–8; Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, pp. 116–17.
Churchill, W.S., The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring, London: 1952, p. 294.
Kennedy-Pipe, C., Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943 to 1956, Manchester: 1995, p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 42–3; Sainsbury, The Turning Point, pp. 262–5; Tegeranskaya konferentsiya, pp. 144–9.
Pons, S., ‘In the Aftermath of the Age of Wars: the Impact of World War II on Soviet Security Policy’, in Pons, S., and Romano, A., eds, Russia in the Age of Wars, Milan: 1998, pp. 283–91.
Ibid., p. 299 quoting AVPRF, 7/10/6/64, 4.
Rzheshevskii, O. A., ‘Operatsiya “Tolstoi”. Vizit U. Cherchilya v Moskvu v oktyabre 1944g.’, NNI, no. 5, 2003, pp. 111, 116.
For the latest contribution to this debate see Roberts, G., ‘Beware Greek Gifts: The Stalin-Churchill “Percentages” Agreement of October 1944’, Paper presented at the Foreign Office Seminar “Churchill-Stalin”, London: 2002.
Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, p. 210. For a detailed account of these negotiations see Resis, A., ‘The Churchill-Stalin Secret “Percentages” Agreement on the Balkans, Moscow, 1944’, American Historical Review, vol. 83, no. 2, 1978, pp. 368–87.
Gromyko, A. A. et al., eds, Sovetskii Soyuz na mezhdunarodnykh konferentsiyakh perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg., T. IV Krymskaya konferentsiya rukovoditelei trekh soyuznykh derzhav — SSSR, SShA i Velikobritanii (4–11 fevralya 1945g), sbornik dokumentov Moscow: 1979 (hereinafter Krymskaya konferentsiya), pp. 46–273; FRUS Diplomatic Paper, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945, Washington: 1955, pp. 539–934.
Ibid., p. 716; FRUS, 1945, vol 5, pp. 123–4; Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, pp. 246–8.
Ibid., pp. 250–1; Krymskaya konferentsiya, pp. 182, 187; FRUS, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945, p. 848.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidents of the U.S.A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, vol. 2, Moscow: 1957, pp. 197, 199.
Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, pp. 257–8; FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, pp. 134, 142–4, 180–2, 196–8; FRUS 1945, vol. 3, European Advisory Commission, Austria and Germany, Washington, DC: 1968, pp. 731–12.
Sherwin, M. J., A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance, New York 1997, pp. 171–3.
See for instance, Yergin, D., Shattered Peace: the Origins of the Cold War and National Security State, London: 1978, p. 83.
See Roberts, G., ‘Sexing up the Cold War: New Evidence on the Molotov-Truman Talks of April 1945’, Cold War History, vol. 4, no. 3, 2004, pp. 105–125, which prints the Soviet record of the conversations; Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 213.
Butler, R. and Pelly, M. E., eds, Documents on British Policy Overseas, series 1, vol. 1, The Conference at Potsdam, July–August 1945 (hereinafter DBPO1), London: 1984, p. 455.
Davies, N., ‘The Soviet Occupation of Poland, 1944–45’, in Bennett, G., ed., The End of the War in Europe, London: 1995, p. 197.
Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, p. 293; Gromyko, A.A. et al., eds, Sovetskii Soyuz na mezhdunarodnykh konferentsiyakh perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg., T.6, Berlinskaya konferentsiya rukovoditelei trekh soyuznykh derzhav — SSSR, SShA i Velikobritanii (17 iyulya-2 avgusta 1945 g.) sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: 1980, p. 38.
During the election campaign Churchill had tried to provoke fears of ‘a Labour Party Gestapo’. See Thomson, D., England in the Twentieth Century: 1914–1963, Harmondsworth: 1965, pp. 218–9.
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Watson, D. (2005). The Diplomat at War. In: Molotov. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514522_13
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