From behind the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow, Joseph
Stalin undoubtedly observed the effects of the Great De-
pression with a measure of satisfaction. During the early
1920s, once it became clear that the capitalist states in
Europe had managed to survive without socialist revolutions,
Stalin decided to improve relations with the outside
world as a means of obtaining capital and technological
assistance in promoting economic growth in the
Soviet Union. But Lenin had predicted that after a brief
period of stability in Europe, a new crisis brought on by
overproduction and intense competition was likely to occur
in the capitalist world. That, he added, would mark
the beginning of the next wave of revolution. In the
meantime, he declared, “We will give the capitalists the
shovels with which to bury themselves.”
To Stalin, the onset of the Great Depression was a signal
that the next era of turbulence in the capitalist world
was at hand, and during the early 1930s, Soviet foreign
policy returned to the themes of class struggle and social
revolution. When the influence of the Nazi Party reached
significant proportions in the early 1930s, Stalin viewed
it as a pathological form of capitalism and ordered the
Communist Party in Germany not to support the fragile
Weimar Republic. Hitler would quickly fall, he reasoned,
leading to a Communist takeover.
By 1935, Stalin became uneasily aware that Hitler
was not only securely in power in Berlin but also represented
a serious threat to the Soviet Union. That summer,
at a major meeting of the Communist International
held in Moscow, Soviet officials announced a shift in policy.
The Soviet Union would now seek to form a united
front with capitalist democratic nations throughout the
world against the common danger of Naziism and fascism.
Communist parties in capitalist countries and in colonial
areas were instructed to cooperate with “peace-loving
democratic forces” in forming coalition governments
called Popular Fronts.
In most capitalist countries, Stalin’s move was greeted
with suspicion, but in France, a coalition of leftist parties—
Communists, Socialists, and Radicals—fearful
that rightists intended to seize power, formed a Popular
Front government in June 1936. The new government
succeeded in launching a program for workers that some
called the French New Deal. It included the right of
collective bargaining, a forty-hour workweek, two-week
paid vacations, and minimum wages. But such policies
failed to solve the problems of the depression, and although
it survived until 1938, the Front was for all intents
and purposes dead before then. Moscow signed
a defensive treaty with France and reached an agreement
with three noncommunist states in eastern Europe
(Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), but talks
with Great Britain achieved little result. The Soviet
Union, rebuffed by London and disappointed by Paris,
feared that it might be forced to face the might of Hitler’s
Wehrmacht alone.
World History
