The Soviet Union and the Middle East: "In the General Direction of the Persian Gulf". Part I

Abstract

Writers on Soviet policy in the Middle have found most intriguing the conversations which Foreign Minister Molotov held with the German leaders in Berlin in November 1940. Here in very clear words, if we look at the documents which were drafted for discussion at those meetings or were proposed as a basis for agreement after their conclusion, appears to be stated the Soviet aim of a sphere of influence and control over the whole area we now know as the Middle East. It seems to explain what went before, in the years from the October Revolution until the Second World War, and what came after, in the period from the war to the present day. The picture generally drawn is one of a consistent strategy of conquest in which this region has had a critical place. Let us therefore first take a brief look backwards, then make a closer examination of the famous encounter in 1940, and finally take a longer look at what has happened since. The historical record may tell us at least something about what is happening now. From the very first manifesto to all Muslim toilers of Russia and the East in 1917, the peoples of the Middle were an object of the Soviet regime's attention. As the years went by, that attention was motivated by a variety of aims: to spread the revolution, to weaken the capitalist West by allying with colonial peoples, to nullify attempts of Russian emigres to organize counter-revolution from Middle countries, to prevent hostile powers acquiring footholds on the southern borders of the Soviet state, or to gain influence throughout the region. Much of the Western analysis of Soviet policy toward the Middle in the first two decades of Soviet rule concentrates on the duality of approach made by the Communist International on the one,