How to wage warfare without going to war?

Abstract

AbstractWhy did the USSR not become involved in the Second World War from autumn 1939, while waging its own wars? Why did France and Britain not declare war on the Soviets when the Red Army crossed the Polish border? The answers lie in breaking down the barriers between diplomatic and military histories of the USSR and reading Stalin’s discourse and practices in autumn 1939 in the wider European context of external policies of intervention and aggression. A compelling argument can be made that the lack of reaction to the Soviet aggression of Poland and its demands on the Baltic states in autumn 1939 arose from the ambiguous situation created by the pact and from the splintered vision of conflict that was characteristic of the interwar period. Those who saw the war in terms of the need to resist two forms of totalitarianism in 1939 were few and far between. In Moscow, theoreticians and practitioners of international relations and law shared much in the way of reading and experience with their European counterparts when it came to observing modes of aggression and conflict resolution. Political differences and ideological struggles across Europe did not hinder the formation of a transnational repertoire of types of discourse and practices understood and called on by the USSR. On the other hand, Moscow did maintain specific policies marked by revolutionary convictions: only when these were publicly held up to legitimise warfare did they meet with overtly hostile reactions, as shown by the Winter War.