Soviet "Scraps of Paper"
SOUVARINE, BORIS
Soviet 'Scraps of Paper' By Boris Souvarine Communists don't mind signing a treaty-so long as they can break it Paris The Soviet announcement of March 25 granting full sovereignty to East...
...The Western democracies would be well advised to declare null and void all those agreements, pacts and treaties which have binding force only for those whose interests they harm...
...And the Quai d'Orsay, somewhat less blunt, declared that "the Soviet action does not seem likely to change the situation very much...
...A treaty of mutual assistance was signed on October 10, 1939...
...was "granted" on August 1. A non-aggression treaty between Latvia and the Soviet Union was concluded on February 5, 1932 and extended on April 4, 1934...
...Between 1928 and 1950, the U.S.S.R...
...if there is less "peaceful coexistence" today, when we recognize the Soviet Union, it is because circumstances have made an expansionist policy possible for the Kremlin...
...Starting with the Red Army's invasion of Georgia and annexation of all Transcaucasia in 1921, in defiance of treaties, the Communists have never kept any of their international undertakings...
...Here are some of the most important: The U.S.S.R...
...they respect only strength of will...
...signed a treaty of non-aggression with Finland on January 21, 1932...
...The magazine United Nations World published a table in its November 1950 issue showing the neutrality and non-aggression treaties, military alliances and collective international commitments signed and violated by the Soviet Union: Between 1925 and 1941, the U.S.S.R...
...The U.S.S.R...
...They would show a higher regard for France...
...In 1939, the Russians attacked Finland and, after a short war, annexed several pieces of Finnish territory...
...They intensified their overtures to Kemal Ataturk when the latter suppressed the Turkish Communist party, and followed the same policy toward Hitler and Mussolini...
...The forgetful public should be constantly reminded of the countless occasions on which they have broken their word...
...It broke, denounced or violated 11 (two having been violated by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and two others annulled by subsequent agreements...
...it was extended for ten years on April 7, 1934...
...signed 18 military alliances...
...Yet, in June 1940 a Soviet ultimatum forced Rumania to give up the provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina...
...Yet, the following June, Stalin sent the Red Army into Lithuania...
...Recognition of Communist China, which will be constantly on the agenda at Geneva despite American objections, would in no way improve international relations but, rather, would further complicate them...
...The official comments in London, Washington and Paris show that the Western governments are no longer allowing themselves to be taken in by this sort of maneuver...
...it was extended on May 5, 1934 and confirmed once more on November 26, 1938...
...A Soviet-Estonian non-aggression treaty was signed on May 4, 1932 and extended on April 4, 1934...
...subscribed to 7 major international undertakings...
...We know only too well the Communists' aim in these discussions: to weary and divide their adversaries, confuse and deceive public opinion, and extort substantial concessions in return for worthless promises...
...signed a treaty of non-aggression with Poland on July 25, 1932...
...It has never ceased to act in a manner contrary to the letter and spirit of all of them-the League of Nations as much as the United Nations...
...It simply means that Russian control, hitherto exercised openly, will henceforth take more subtly camouflaged forms...
...Nevertheless, Latvia was occupied and annexed at the same time as Lithuania...
...There was a time when the United States and other countries gave neither de facto nor de jure recognition to the U.S.S.R...
...It would be better to abandon that Utopian organization in due course, permitting each country to decide about its relations, diplomatic and otherwise, with both Red China and the Soviet Union...
...signed a convention with Rumania defining and forbidding acts of aggression...
...signed 15 treaties of non-aggression or neutrality...
...and yet were none the worse off-indeed, quite the contrary...
...Between 1935 and 1950, the U.S.S.R...
...The Soviet-Lithuanian non-aggression pact, signed on September 28, 1926 and renewed on April 4, 1934, provided for "respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of the two signatories "under all circumstances...
...Stalin started violating the wartime agreements at Teheran (December 1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (August 1945) almost before the ink was dry...
...Thus, the democracies have ceased to be dupes, in spite of the Communist and neutralist propaganda which supports the enemy's moves within every free country...
...After thirty-six years of the Soviet regime, it would obviously be inexcusable to give any further credence to the promises of the men in the Kremlin...
...There was less talk then about "peaceful coexistence," which seemed to take care of itself...
...British sources promptly observed that East Germany had won merely "the freedom to follow the line of conduct dictated by Moscow to all the satellite states...
...It broke or violated 15, the three others having been imposed on helpless satellites...
...The Russians violated the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement signed with the United States on June 11, 1942, as well as the armistice agreements concluded in 1944 with the former Nazi satellites in Eastern Europe...
...On July 3, 1933, the U.S.S.R...
...The men in the Kremlin care nothing for good will...
...In view of this devastating record, it is astonishing to see the free nations continue the interminable talk-fests at the United Notions and at conferences like those in Berlin and Geneva with people for whom a solemn agreement is no more than a "scrap of paper" to be torn up at the first propitious moment...
...Britain and America if the leaders, parliaments and press of the free nations coldly ignored Soviet rhetoric and promises and reserved their attention for concrete deeds...
...Yet, in 1939 Stalin joined Hitler in invading and partitioning Poland...
...It would be followed in short order by Peking's admission to the UN and the latter's demise under the worst possible conditions...
...and, following a Soviet-style election, the country's "request" for incorporation into the U.S.S.R...
...Soviet 'Scraps of Paper' By Boris Souvarine Communists don't mind signing a treaty-so long as they can break it Paris The Soviet announcement of March 25 granting full sovereignty to East Germany should fool no one...
...In 1940, however, Estonia met the same fate as her two Baltic neighbors...
...A State Department spokesman commented that, if Soviet occupation troops were ever withdrawn, "the entire puppet regime would collapse under the weight of the hatred and hostility of the populace which it has the effrontery to claim it represents...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 18
