Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War Two: A Review of the Soviet Documents

Abstract

'Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War Two',' is a collection of documents from various countries covering September 1938 to August 1939, which purports to give the Soviet version of the immediate origins of the second world war. Propaganda apart, such publications have an intrinsic value, which lies not only in the additional light shed on past Soviet foreign policy but also on current Soviet attitudes, since, as Pokrovsky once remarked, 'history is politics projected back into the past'. This collection contains many documents published for the first time and also has a curious history which makes it additionally interesting. It was originally published as a two-volume paperback in Moscow in 1973 and in conformity with the Soviet practice of printing, small, limited editions 'to sell out' stocks, rapidly became out of print. It was reissued as a single-volume hardback in 1976 as a second printing, which, however, amounted to a second revised edition since approximately one hundred (mostly Soviet) documents were missing and it contained a different preface, with no reference to the fact that it was a revised, abridged or different version of the first. The theme of this collection is 'the persistent efforts of the Soviet government to create a peace front' and the repeated attempts by