Page:Max M. Laserson - The Development of Soviet Foreign Policy in Europe, 1917-1942 (1943).pdf/14

 With the special protocol signed by Esthonia, Latvia, Poland, Rumania and the U. S. S. R. on February 9, 1929 (B No. 24), the Soviet Union began the negotiation of nonaggression pacts with its neighbors (B Nos. 25, 26). The capstone was set on this treaty security structure in the mutual assistance agreement with France and Czechoslovakia (B Nos. 29, 30) concluded after Hitler's rise to power.

The convention for the definition of Aggression (B No. 27) was the final step preparatory to entrance into the League and at the same time a means of safeguarding the Soviet Union against the hazards of the Japanese and German defections from the League's ranks. By tying together the various bilateral treaties of nonaggression and mutual assistance, the Soviet Union complemented the League security system and compensated for the League's lack of universality.

The only non-Russian agreement included in this collection is the German-Japanese Agreement against the Communist International of November 25, 1936 (B No. 31), which was directed against the Soviet Union and brought to focus the ideological enmity of the Axis powers against the Soviet Union. The other countries that adhered to this instrument included Italy, Hungary, Spain, Slovakia, Denmark, Rumania and Bulgaria.

The present war was preceded by the treaty of nonaggression between Soviet Russia and Germany (B No. 32), which was soon followed by the three mutual assistance pacts of autumn, 1939, with Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (B Nos. 33, 34 and 35). Together with the peace treaty between the U. S. S. R. and Finland (B No. 13) and the peace treaties with the three Baltic States in 1920 (B Nos. 9, 10 and 11), those documents constitute the background for the eight documents in Part C relating to border territories and States. With the foregoing belongs the act of exclusion of the U. S. S. R. from the League (A No. 24) as a result of the Russo-Finnish War and the developments which led up to it.

Of the documents in part A, those beginning with the speech of Joseph Stalin of November 7, 1941 (A No. 25), and of the treaties in part B, those beginning with the agreement between the U. S. S. R. and the United Kingdom of July 12,1941 (B No. 38), belong to the period when the Soviet Union joined the United Nations in their war against the Axis powers. In the Joint United Nations Declaration of January 2, 1942 (A No. 26), to which the Soviet Union was a party, the Atlantic