So, ‘wait and see’. England’s favourite policy!

Very good. But what practical conclusions can be drawn from the above? There may be two possible conclusions. The first is to provide effective support to Czechoslovakia now, scare Hitler, and thus avert a war. The second is to exert ‘friendly’ pressure on Czechoslovakia to the extent that it would surrender entirely to Hitler without fighting, and thus avoid war. I have a strong suspicion that the Cabinet might draw the second conclusion.

At just the same time, on the eve of his departure for Geneva on 2 September, Litvinov asked Payart,

Jean Payart, French chargé d’affaires to Moscow, 1931–41.

the French chargé d’affaires in Moscow, to convey to Bonnet, the French foreign minister, that the Soviet Union stood steadfastly by its contractual commitments to Czechoslovakia in the event of an attack on her by Germany. He called for an immediate conference between Great Britain, France and the USSR to coincide with consultations between the representatives of the Soviet, French and Czech armed forces. He further urged that the crisis be placed on the agenda of the Assembly of the League of Nations. The same message was reiterated by Potemkin a couple of days later, but Payart concealed the essence of the message and conveyed the impression that the approach was not sincere, as Litvinov assumed Russia would not be called upon to fulfil its obligations.

Z. Steiner, ‘The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Czechoslovakian crisis in 1938: New material from the Soviet archives’, The Historical Journal, 42/3 (1999), p. 764–5.

Confronted by Litvinov in Geneva on 11 September, Bonnet was likewise devious: in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the French government, he suggested that the Soviet Union was seeking ‘an escape clause to justify its abstention at a moment when France itself is already committed’. Briefed by Litvinov, Maisky followed his own counsel, disclosing to wide circles the content of the proposals made to Payart. Spilling the beans, though ostensibly aimed at countering the ‘whispering campaign of the Cliveden Set’,

See Maisky’s retrospective claim in Who Helped Hitler?, p. 79. Maisky continued to maintain correct relations with Lady Astor, inviting her to events in the embassy even after the Munich Agreement. See for instance, Astor papers, 1416/1/2/188, 28 Nov. 1938.

would become Maisky’s trademark in his desperate efforts to resuscitate ‘collective security’ and prevent the Soviet government from becoming reclusive.

Detailed accounts of Maisky’s approaches are in Amery’s diary entry of 15 February 1939 (Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, p. 543), and in H. Dalton, The Fateful Years (London, 1957), pp. 184–5. See also Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security, pp. 179–81; Carley, 1939, pp. 54–7; and Aster, ‘Ivan Maisky and parliamentary anti-appeasement’, pp. 326–7. Relying mostly on a couple of speeches by Zhdanov and the evaluation of Rossi, the Italian ambassador in Moscow, Silvio Pons maintains that the Russians, having become reconciled to the inevitability of war, pinned their hopes on the revolutionary potential of such a war, see The Inevitable War, pp. 128–46.

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