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Table of Contents
The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 3
  • 10 January
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  • Conversation with Butler on 18 March 1940
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© 2025
29 September
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By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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29 September
Another day of excitement and sensations. Journalists have been calling all day on the telephone.
Communications about the outcome of Ribbentrop’s visit to Moscow have come in. A friendship and boundary treaty, an exchange of letters concerning the strengthening of trade relations, and a joint declaration about peace in Western Europe. In addition, a Soviet–Estonian pact of mutual assistance.
Ribbentrop reached Moscow on 27 September. It was then that the final secret protocols concerning the division of spheres of influence were concluded in seven separate documents, discovered in the archives of Schulenburg by I. Fleischhauer only in 1990.
The British are most concerned about the peace declaration. Glasgow, Gordon-Lennox, Cummings and others pose one and the same question: what is the meaning of the last paragraph of the declaration stipulating ‘consultations’ on the measures to be taken if Britain and France refuse to cease hostilities.


Page 635

Does it mean that in this case the USSR will provide military aid to Germany against Western powers?
Glasgow was highly agitated when he came to see me and came straight out with it: ‘So is it war?’
‘War with whom?’ I inquired.
‘With the USSR!’ cried Glasgow.
I laughed out loud and began to ridicule him. He gradually returned to a more normal state. On parting, I recommended that he and Garvin not hasten with their conclusions and await new developments.
Cummings was less bellicose. He merely told me about the mood in the City, the extreme irritation aroused in political circles by the Soviet–German agreements (Labour is especially furious), and a new campaign to change the government.
Gordon-Lennox understands the situation better than anyone. His reasoning is that of a cynical imperialist, and he even told me directly: ‘The USSR is playing its cards splendidly.’
I put him right on a number of points, while confirming that Moscow knows how to use a favourable situation in the interests of its general policy of peace.
Yes, there’s no doubting that the English are highly irritated. Serves them right. They should have thought about that earlier. Looks like there are difficult days ahead of us. But it’s not the first time. We’ll stick it out!
[The narrative of the events leading up to the pact, assiduously composed by Maisky and adopted almost verbatim by Stalin, maintained that the Soviet Union was left with no choice but to sign an agreement with Hitler: Russia was in desperate need of a breathing space to prepare for the supposedly inevitable war with Germany.
It comes as a startling revelation, however, that – contrary to the accepted wisdom – Stalin believed he could successfully avoid war altogether. The German–Soviet collaboration was not, therefore, transient and precarious, but appeared to have long-lasting prospects. Stalin was bent on exploiting the new opportunities to redress the grievances which, he felt, had been inflicted on Russia not only at the Versailles peace conference, but also during the nineteenth century – specifically by the humiliating Paris Peace Treaty of 1856 (following the Crimean War) and at the Congress of Berlin (following the Russo-Turkish wars of 1877–78). His gaze, like that of the tsars, was fixed on the Balkans, the littoral of the Black Sea and the Turkish Straits.
Rather than being a manifestation of defeatism, motivated by ideological expectations of the outbreak of revolution, the ‘peace campaign’ launched by the Comintern on the outbreak of war served more mundane Soviet interests. It was to be instrumental in efforts to bring the war to a rapid conclusion. That was to be followed by a peace conference, probably in 1941–42. The main thrust of Stalin’s policies in 1939–41, therefore, was to gather together the best cards he could, ahead of the anticipated peace conference. He expected the conference, which would be attended by a debilitated British Empire, to topple the Versailles Agreement, acknowledge the


Page 636

new Soviet security arrangements in Central and Northern Europe, and extend them to the south.
Argued in detail in G. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German invasion of Russia (New Haven, 1999).
After a short period of being left in the lurch, Maisky grasped the essence of the new policy, and this would give him a fresh lease of life. The line he consistently pursued, as Vansittart alerted Halifax, was that ‘it is time to make peace’, as the common foe, Germany, ‘has been defeated, thanks to the far-sighted policy of Stalin. If the Western Powers are as resolute in dealing with Hitler as Stalin has been, then Hitler is finished. There is no way out left for Hitler – neither in the East, nor in the West, nor in the Balkans.’ It was therefore ‘useless to shed more blood, seeing that Hitler is vanquished. Poland was the price that had to be paid to achieve this victory’.
TNA FO 371 23701 N5717/5717/18, 25 Oct. 1939.
He hastened to enlist Lloyd George, whose secretary was horrified to find the Russian ambassador ‘absolutely defeatist’ seeking ‘peace NOW’, with a brief along these lines for Lloyd George’s speech in parliament. Maisky urged Lloyd George to stress that the Soviet Union’s commitment to Germany was limited, and that the trade agreement was not ‘because of the blue eyes of Hitler’ but because, as a neutral, Russia could trade with both sides. He urged Lloyd George to think twice whether it was in Britain’s interest to commit an even ‘greater blunder’ than the Polish guarantees ‘and plunge into a three years’ war’. He advocated the convening of a peace conference with Soviet participation, which was bound to culminate in a settlement ‘much more durable and stable than Munich’. Speaking in parliament later that day, Lloyd George did indeed champion the peace front, urging the government to treat Russia ‘purely as neutrals … we do not want to multiply our enemies’.
Sylvester papers, diary, A47, and memorandum on meeting Maisky, 3 Oct. 1939; Lloyd George papers, LG/G/130, 3 Oct. 1939.
Maisky, who had not briefed Moscow about his preliminary talk with Sylvester,
Albert James Sylvester, Lloyd George’s influential private secretary from 1923 until his death in March 1945.
reported that although Lloyd George’s speech went against the mainstream, it proved ‘a great sensation’.
DVP, 1939, XXII/2, doc. 655.
In his memoirs, Maisky claims that he ‘did not believe in the durability and stability of the agreement with Germany’. He assuredly did not share the views of the Kremlin that Britain would respond favourably to Hitler’s peace proposals.
Maisky, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, p. 35. See his cautious telegram to Molotov, DVP, 1939, XXII/2, doc. 679, 12 Oct. 1939.
]
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Document Title29 September
AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)
RecipientN/A
RepositoryN/A
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DescriptionN/A
Date1939 Sep 29
AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2
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