Soviet Foreign Policy from the Spanish Civil War to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1936–1939

Daniel Kowalsky

doi:10.7238/dd.v0i7.3168

Abstract

Having consolidated his power in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin long focused on internal affairs: the Five Year Plans, collectivization of agriculture, rapid industrialization, and modernization of the Red Army. Despite his penchant for domestic policy, from the summer of 1936 Stalin’s Soviet Union was increasingly drawn into foreign affairs. This article explores Stalin’s foreign policy on the eve of the Second World War. The Soviet Union’s multiple failures in forging an anti-Fascist alliance with Britain and France, most notably in the Spanish Civil War, will be explored as the prelude to Stalin’s eventual decision, in August 1939, to authorize the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Highlights

Daniel KowalskySubmission date: 24 Oct. 2019 | Accepted date: Nov. 2019 | Published on: Dec. 2019
Having consolidated his power in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin long focused on internal affairs: the Five Year Plans, collectivization of agriculture, rapid industrialization, and modernization of the Red Army
In several corridors outside the parliamentary chamber, stretching to the seven-meter ceiling, are wellpreserved soaring panels covered with graffiti in Cyrillic letters: messages left by Red Army soldiers who occupied the partially destroyed building in the spring of 1945.1 The thrust of most the graffiti is a triumphalist, vengeful declaration of Stalin having once and for all conquered Berlin

Summary

Daniel Kowalsky

Submission date: 24 Oct. 2019 | Accepted date: Nov. 2019 | Published on: Dec. 2019. “Soviet Foreign Policy from the Spanish Civil War to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1936–1939”. Journal of History and Culture 7: 69–96.

The Tripartite Pact

Findings

Conclusion