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Hungarian–Soviet diplomatic relations 1935–1941: a failed rapprochement

2004; Routledge; Volume: 56; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0966813041000235128

1465-3427

Peter Pastor,

European history and politics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Ignác Romsics, Magyarország története a XX. Században (Budapest, Osiris Kiadó, 1999), pp. 267–268, 274; Ferenc Pölöskei, Jenö Gergely & Lajos Izsák, Magyarország története 1918–1990 (Budapest, 1996), p. 150; István Diószegi et al., 20. századi egyetemes történet, 1890–1945 (Budapest, Korona Kiadó, 1995) vol. 1, p. 515; Zsuzsa L. Nagy, Magyarország története, 1918–1945 (Debrecen, Multiplex Média, 1995), p. 221; Sándor Balogh et al., Magyarország a XX. Században (Budapest, Kossuth Kiadó, 1985), pp. 208–209. Instructions to Ambassador Colonna in Budapest by Head of Government and Foreign Minister Mussolini, Rome, 6 December 1933, in György Réti (ed.), A Palazzo Chigi és Magyarország. Olasz diplomáciai dokumentumok Magyarországról (a Gömbös‐kormány idöszakában) 1932–1936 (Budapest, Fischerman Nyomda, 2003), p. 130. Giorgio Petracchi, ‘Pinocchio, the Cat, and the Fox: Italy between Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939–1941’, in Bernd Wegner (ed.), From Peace to War. Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939–1941 (Providence, RI, Berghahn Books, 1997), pp. 501–502. Pál Pritz, Magyarország külpolitikája Gömbös Gyula miniszterelnöksége idején, 1932–1936 (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982), pp. 141–142; Attila Seres, ‘Szovjet–román történelmi ellentét vagy orosz‐román eggyütmüködés? Észrevételek egy dokumentumkötet kapcsán’, Levéltári Szemle, 2003, 1, p. 28. György Réti, Hungarian–Italian Relations in the Shadow of Hitler's Germany, 1933–1940 (Boulder, CO, Social Science Monographs, 2003), pp. 30–31. Pritz, Magyarország külpolitikája, p. 149. Mihály Sipos & László Szücs (eds), Jungerth‐Arnóthy Mihály, moszkvai napló (Budapest, Zrinyi Katonai Kiadó, 1989), p. 101. ‘Report of Ambassador to Moscow Attolico to Head of Government and Foreign Minister Mussolini, 19 June 1934’, in Réti (ed.), A Palazzo Chigi és Magyarország, pp. 191–192. Pritz, Magyarország külpolitikája, p. 149. Maxim Mourin, Les relations franco–soviétiques, 1917–1967 (Paris, Payot, 1967), pp. 204–207. Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–1939 (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1984), p. 163. Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Sovetsko‐rumynskie otnosheniya, vol. 2, 1935–1941 Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 2000), p. 22. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., pp. 82–83; Keith Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 436. Dov B. Lungu, Rumania and the Great Powers, 1933–1940 (Durham, Duke University Press, 1989), p. 80. Ibid., p. 437; Sovetsko‐rumynskie otnosheniya, vol. 2, 1935–1941, pp. 99–100; Lungu, Rumania and the Great Powers, p. 437; Rebecca Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–40 (New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 4–6. In contrast to Haynes, Lungu and Hitchins, Jiri Hochman claims correctly that Litvinov rejected ‘a Rumanian proposal that the Soviet Union render assistance to Bulgaria, and especially against Hungary …’; see Jiri Hochman, The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934–1938 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 69. Quoted in Réti, Hungarian–Italian Relations, pp. 7, 75–76. Ibid., pp. 83–86. Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence. Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973 (New York, Praeger, 1974), p. 247. Peter Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség jelentései 1935–1941 (Budapest, Századvég Kiadó, 1992), pp. 59–61. Rather than referring to the documents deposited at Columbia University, I am identifying them in this documentary collection for the sake of easier accessibility. Jenö Gergely, Gömbös Gyula, életkép‐sorozat (Budapest, Elektra Kiadóház, 1999), pp. 135–136. Ibid., pp. 122–123. Gergely, Gömbös, p. 124. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, pp. 89–90. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 91. Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., p. 95. See especially Hochman, The Soviet Union, pp. 119–120; Lord Beloff, ‘Was there a Soviet Appeasement Policy?’, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen & Lothar Kettenacker (eds), The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London, G. Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 284–285; Aleksandr M. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German–Soviet Relations, 1922–1941 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 63, 95, 98, 106–107, 246; Gottfried Schramm, ‘German Ostpolitik, 1918–1939’, in Wegner (ed.) From Peace to War; Weinberg claims that in 1939 the Soviet government practised a ‘ploy of negotiating with the British and leaking information about those talks in order to entice the Germans into making a better offer’; see Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘German Diplomacy Toward the Soviet Union’, in Germany, Hitler, and World War II (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 163, and Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘The Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939: A Half Century Later’, in Germany, Hitler …, p. 176. Rejecting ‘the Weinberg–Tucker–Hochman thesis … that is based almost entirely on German documents’, Uldricks recently suggested that the pro‐German policy, which was not reciprocated in Berlin until 1939, in fact indicated that Stalin attempted to have a pro‐French and a pro‐German policy at the same time; see Teddy J. Uldricks, ‘Soviet Security Policy in the 1930s’, in Patrick Finney (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1997), pp. 169–178. On the other hand, Watson supports the so‐called ‘revisionist’ interpretation that ‘the Soviet decision to negotiate a non‐aggression pact was taken late and the Soviet contribution to the failure of the negotiations [with France and Great Britain] was not lack of motivation but a failure to understand the French and British political position and diplomatic tactics …’; see Derek Watson, ‘Molotov's Apprenticeship in Foreign Policy: The Triple Alliance Negotiations in 1939', Europe‐Asia Studies, 52, 4, 2000, p. 716. For a review of the debate see Jonathan Haslam, ‘Soviet–German Relations and the Origins of the Second World War: The Jury is Still Out’, The Journal of Modern History, 69, December 1997, pp. 785–797. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 97. Mihály Fülöp & Péter Sipos, Magyarország külpolitikája a XX. Században (Budapest, Aula, 1998), p. 197. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 141. Ibid., p. 143. Ibid., p. 145. Ibid., p. 147. Andrei A. Kokoshkin, Soviet Strategic Thought 1917–1991 (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998), p. 95; David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus. The Red Army on the Eve of World War (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 1968), p. 84; for the text of the war plan see Lev Bezymensky, Gitler i Stalin pered skhvatkoi (Moscow, Veche, 2000), pp. 405–412. Loránt Dombrády, ‘Revizió háború nélkül’, in Loránt Dombrády (ed.), Katonapolitika és hadsereg 1920–1933 (Budapest, Ister, 2000), p. 65; Pál Pritz, ‘A kieli találkozó (Forráskritikai tanulmány)’, in Pál Pritz (ed.), A magyar diplomácia a két háború között (Budapest, Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1995), pp. 312–314; Ernst von Weizsäcker, Memoirs of Ernst von Weizsäcker (Chicago, Henry Regnery and Company, 1951), pp. 138–139. Réti, Hungarian–Italian Relations, p. 128. Ibid., p. 145; Tibor Frank, ‘Treaty Revision and Doublespeak: Hungarian Neutrality, 1939–1940’, in Neville Wylie (ed.), European Neutrals and Non‐belligerents during the Second World War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 156–157; Gergely Sallai, Az elsö bécsi döntés (Budapest, Osiris Kiadó, 2002), pp. 143–146. Thomas L. Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers, and the Danubian Crisis 1936–1938 (Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 222; Gyula Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979), p. 148. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 144, 147. Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler. The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 249, 258. Quoted in ‘Ambassador Count Schulenburg and the Preparations for “Barbarossa”’, in Wegner (ed.), From Peace to War, p. 192. Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, vol. 22, 1939 god (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1992), book 1, p. 20. A. L. Narochnitsky et al., SSSR v borbe protiv fashistskoi agressii 1933–1945 (Moscow, Nauka, 1986), p. 79. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 178. Ibid., pp. 178–179. Ibid., p. 179; Dokumenty, 1939, book 1, p. 40. Ibid., p. 63; Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 181. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 183. Dokumenty, 1939, book 1, p. 89. János Péter, A Magyar–szovjet diplomáciai kapcsolotok történetéböl, 1939–1941 (Budapest, Kossuth Kiadó, 1979), pp. 28–29. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, pp. 186–187. E. Kul'kov, M. Myagkov & O. Rzheshevsky (eds), Voina 1941–1945. Fakty i dokumenty (Moscow, OLMA‐PRESS, 2001), pp. 294–296. Yu. A. Gor'kov, ‘Gotovil li Stalin uprezhdayushchii udar protiv Gitlera v 1941 godu’, in Yu. N. Afanas'ev (ed.), Drugaya voina: 1939–1945 (Moscow, RGGU, 1996), p. 161; Cynthia A. Roberts, ‘Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941’, Europe‐Asia Studies, 47, 8, 1995, p. 1315; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 90. Kul'kov, Myagkov & Rzheshevsky (eds), Voina 1941–1945, p. 317. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 185. Dokumenty, 1939, book 1, pp. 39, 160–161; Read & Fischer consider that ‘By the beginning of March, … the situation for Stalin was looking bleak …’; see Anthony Read & David Fischer, The Deadly Embrace. Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi–Soviet Pact 1939–1941 (New York, Norton, 1988), p. 58. The documents examined, however, indicate that by that date Stalin's fear of isolation was over. Bruce Franklin (ed.), The Essential Stalin. Major Theoretical Writings, 1905–1952 (New York, Doubleday and Company Inc., 1972), pp. 343–344. Béla Zselinszky, Kárpátalja a cseh és a szovjet politika érdekterében 1920–1945 (Budapest; Napvilág Kiadó, 1998), p. 49; László Zsigmond (ed.), Diplomáciai iratok Magyarország külpolitikájához 1936–1945, vol. 3, Magda Ádám (ed.), Magyarország külpolitikája, 1938–1939 (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970), p. 551. Read & Fischer, The Deadly Embrace, p. 61. Dokumenty, 1939, book 2, p. 122. After the war Beneš recalled the meeting where he expressed his support for a post‐war common Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Soviet frontier. His recollection about what he said on the future of Ruthenia differed from Maisky's report: ‘The question of Subcarpathian Ruthenia will be solved between us later and we surely will agree!’; see Edvard Beneš, Memoirs of Dr Edouard Beneš. From Munich to New War and New Victory (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954), p. 139. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 222. Albert Resis, ‘The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German–Soviet Non‐aggression Pact’, Europe‐Asia Studies, 52, 1, 2000, p. 50. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin. Triumph and Tragedy (New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), pp. 347–348; Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators, pp. 109–110; Jonathan Haslam, ‘Litvinov, Stalin and the Road not Taken’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1991 A Retrospective (London, Frank Cass, 1994), p. 58. In an alleged 19 August 1939 speech of Stalin to the Politburo, which was recently judged a forgery by Derek Watson, he said that ‘Germany is giving us complete freedom of action in the Baltic states and does not object to the return of Bessarabia to the USSR. She is willing to grant us a sphere of influence in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary’; see letter from Derek Watson, Slavic Review, 59, 2, 2000, pp. 492–493, in which he claims that the Politburo did not meet on 19 August 1939. Volkogonov, however, states that the Politburo met on that day, but that Stalin did not discuss Germany; see Dmitrii Volkogonov, ‘Etu versiyu uzhe oprovergla istoriya’, Izvestiya, 15 January 1993, p. 9. Pons suggests that the document's ‘main features reflect Stalin's post‐pact strategy in convincing terms and overlap with Dimitrov's diary notes of 7 September'; see Silvio Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War 1936–1941 (London, Frank Cass, 2002), p. 191; for the English‐language text of the speech see Richard Sakwa (ed.), The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 1917–1991 (New York, Routledge, 1999), p. 235, and for the Russian see V. L. Doroshenko, ‘Stalinskaya provokatsiya vtoroi mirovoi voiny’, in Afanas'ev (ed.), Drugaya voina, pp. 61, 65, 73. For Dimitrov's notes see Georgi Dimitrov, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 115–116. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, pp. 195–196; Katalin Petrák, Magyarok a Szovjetunióban (Budapest, 2000), p. 322. Bezymensky, Gitler i Stalin, p. 350; see p. 349 for a facsimile of the first page of the handwritten instruction; Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire (New York, The Free Press, 1998), p. 144. Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Dokumenty, vol. 23, 1940–22 iyunya 1941, book 2, part 1 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998), p. 31. Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Ser. D, vol. 11, The War Years September 1, 1940–January 31, 1941 (Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 547. Ibid., p. 567. Von Weizsäcker, Memoirs, p. 245. Ibid., p. 634; Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Dokumenty, vol. 23, 1940–22 iyunya 1941, part 2, p. 819, n. 206. On 21 March 1941 Hitler met the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs László Bárdossy in Munich, and warned him of the Russian threat toward Hungary by telling ‘at some length the conversations with Molotov …’; see Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents on German Foreign Policy, Ser. D, vol. 12, The War Years, February 1–June 22, 1941 (Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 333. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 222. Pons, Stalin, pp. 198–199. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners and Predators, pp. 106, 117–181. As quoted in Read & Fischer, The Deadly Embrace, p. 472. Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Dokumenty, vol. 23, 1940–22 iyunya 1941, book 1 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1995), p. 375. Gor'kov, ‘Gotovil li Stalin’, pp. 171, 182. Dokumenty, vol. 23, book 1, p. 415. Rossiiskaya akademiya nauk. Institut slavyanovedeniya. Federal'naya arkhivnaya sluzhba Rossii, Transil'vanskii vopros. Vengero‐Rumynskii territorial'nyi spor i SSSR. 1940–1946 gg. Dokumenty (Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2000), p. 39. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, pp. 257–258. György Réti (ed.), Olasz diplomáciai dokumentumok a második bécsi döntésröl (Budapest, Aula, 2000), pp. 14–15; Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents, ser. D, vol. 10, p. 182. Tofik Iszlamov, ‘Erdély a szovjet külpolitikában a második világháború alatt’, Multunk, 1994, 1–2, pp. 33, 36–37; N.F. Dreisziger, ‘Stalin's Wartime Plans for Transylvania, 1939–1945', in Dennis P. Hupchick & R. William Weisberger (eds), Hungary's Historical Legacies. Studies in Honor of Steven Béla Várdy (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs, 2000), pp. 149; Rétied.), Olasz diplomaciai dokumentumok, pp. 30–31. Rossiiskaya akademiya nauk, Transil'vanskii vopros, pp. 83–86; Germany, Auswärtiges Amt, Documents, ser D, vol. 11, The War Years, p. 1. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, ‘Three‐Power Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan, Signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940’, http://w.w.w.yale/lawweb/avalon/wwii/triparti.htm. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators, p. 196. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 278. Ibid., pp. 303–304; Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del, Dokumenty, vol. 23, 1940–22 iyunya 1941, book 2, part 2, p. 553. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 304. Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents, ser. D, vol. 12, p. 538. Ágnes Godó (ed.), Horthy–Magyarország részvétele Jugoszlávia megtámadásában és megszálásában 1941–1945 (Budapest and Belgrade, Zrinyi Katonai Kiadó, 1986), pp. 49–53. Ibid., p. 54, n. 12. László Zsigmond (ed.), Diplomáciai iratok, vol. 5, Gyula Juhász (ed.), Magyarország külpolitikája a nyugati hadjárattól a Szovjetunió megtámadásáig 1940–1941 (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982), pp. 1093–1094; Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents, ser. D, vol. 12, pp. 1070–1071; Lóránd Dombrády, ‘A hadba lépés felelöségéröl’, in Dombrády (ed.), Katonapolitika, p. 134. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, p. 312. For the German‐language text see Zsigmond (ed.), Diplomáciai iratok, vol. 5, pp. 1203–1204. Germany. Auswärtiges Amt, Documents, ser, D, vol. 12, pp. 1077–1078; Dombrády, ‘A hadba lépés’, p. 135. Thomas L. Sakmyster, Hungary's Admiral on Horseback. Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944 (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs, 1994), p. 265; Nándor Dreisziger, ‘Hungary Enters the War: March–December, 1941’, in Nándor Dreisziger (ed.), Hungary in the Age of Total War (1938–1948) (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs, 1998), pp. 66–67. Antal Ullein‐Reviczky, Német háború‐orosz béke (Budapest, Európa‐História, 1993), pp. 93–95; Pál Pritz, A Bárdossy‐per (Budapest, Kossuth Kiadó, 2001), p. 38. Péter, Magyar–szovjet diplomáciai kapcsolatok, p. 135. Zsigmond (ed.), Diplomáciai iratok, vol. 5, p. 1214. Ibid., p. 344; Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Dokumenty, vol. 24, 22 iyunya 1941–1 yanvarya 1942 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 2000), pp. 35–36. Ibid., pp. 31–32; Grigore Gafencu, Prelude to the Russian Campaign (London, F. Mullen, 1944), pp. 308–309. Pastor (ed.), A moszkvai magyar követség, pp. 315–317; Dokumenty, vol. 24, pp. 35–36. Pál Pritz, ‘La crise de guerre internationale et la Hongrie, 1938–1941’, in La Hongrie dans les conflits du XXe siècle, Guerres mondiales et conflicts contemporains, no. 200, 2001, p. 80; Sándor Szakály, ‘Magyar hadbalépés a Szovjetunió ellen 1941‐ben’, in Levente Püski & Tibor Valuch (eds), Mérlegen a XX. századi magyar történelem—értelmezések és értekezések (Debrecen, Debreceni Egyetem, 2002), p. 118. Krisztián Ungváry, ‘Magyarország szovjetizálásának kérdései’, in Ignác Romsics (ed.), Mitoszok, legendák, tévhitek a 20. századi magyar történelemröl (Budapest, Osiris Kiadó, 2002), p. 292. Derek Watson, ‘Molotov, the Making of the Grand Alliance and the Second Front 1939–1942’, Europe‐Asia Studies, 54, 1, 2002, p. 58. Oleg A. Rzheshevsky, War and Diplomacy. The Making of the Grand Alliance. Documents from Stalin's Archives (London, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996), p. 11.