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Author : S. Morozov
Assistant Professor at the History of the Slavic and Balkan Peoples Department, St. Petersburg State
University, Doctor of Sciences (History)
RECENTLY, historians have been displaying a lot of interest in
prewar international relations in Europe and with good reason:
new so far little-known yet weighty facts have come to the fore to
be included in the history of diplomacy.
In the spring of 1936, the failure of the old security system in Eu-
rope became obvious to all; once more the European countries
had to start from the very beginning. The Mutual Assistance
Agreement and the Air Convention Moscow and Prague signed
on 17 May 1935 allowed Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia Ed-
uard Beneš launch preparations for the worst possible variant, viz. German military ag-
gression.
The Third Reich saw this as an obstacle to its aggressive plans: everybody knew that Hitler's
inevitable eastward expansion would lead, sooner or later, to a clash with Poland and
Czechoslovakia.
Having learned about the Polish-Yugoslav talks and having sensed concealed threat Nicolae
Titulescu sped to Belgrade to learn that it conditioned its participation in the Bucharest
meeting of the Little Entente on the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Central European
affairs. To avoid a split, the Rumanian foreign minister promised to act accordingly.
By late 1936, a certain feature of great powers' European politics had become obvious.
To a certain extent it could be discerned in Polish and Czech politics. Despite their frantic
efforts to avoid a revision of their borders Polish and Czech leaders might become grad-
ually convinced that they could do little if anything to tip the balance.
Diplomatic and archival sources confirm the above. On 29 September, Zdeněk Fierlinger
informed Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia Kamil Krofta: Yesterday overjoyed French
Ambassador Coulondre told me that the Soviet military attaché in Paris had announced
that the Soviet Union dispatched 30 complete and alerted divisions as well as technical
support units along its western borders to be ready to act at short notice.18 In April 1939,
Beneš in emigration in the United States said in an interview to the Daily Mail that in Sep-
tember 1938 the Soviet Union had been prepared to live up to its obligations to Czecho-
slovakia. What was more, added the former president, the Soviet Union had been prepared
to act even if France and Britain stood aside.
A Glimpse of the History of the Bukovina Railway