Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
world war. On May 3, 1939 Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Commissar,
replacing him with the less than cordial character of Vyacheslav Molotov. Litvinov was
a long-seasoned ambassador to the West, having lived a number of years in both Belfast
and London. Throughout the thirties Litvinov had fostered extremely cordial relations
with politicians and public figures throughout the West. Molotov on the other hand was
a brash and hardened character who had been an instrumental and unquestioning henchman
of Stalin during collectivization and the Great Purges. Molotov also was not Jewish,
making him a more appropriate character for any negotiations with the anti-Semitic Third
Reich. Sir William Seeds, the British ambassador to the USSR, reflected on this transfer
of personalities stating, "Litvinov's disappearance means chiefly the loss of an admirable
technician or perhaps shock-absorber, and that we are faced with a more truly Bolshevik
as opposed to diplomatic or cosmopolitan modus operandi." 14 Though the diplomatic
community saw the importance of this transition, the young communist press primarily
stayed silent on this issue. 15
Less than two weeks before signing this infamous pact, Stalin hosted a mission of
low-level diplomats from Britain and France to form a collective security pact. The
French delegation had been given full negotiating powers to conclude a pact with the
Soviets, while the British delegation was instructed to "proceed slowly," further souring
the attitudes of Molotov and Stalin towards Britain. Stalin had already warned the British
and the French after the Munich Conference that the Soviet Union would not be "drawn
into conflict by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for them." 16 Unknown to most communists, Stalin and Molotov were conducting
secret negotiations with the Nazis, assuming that the British, French and Poles would not
succumb to Soviet territorial demands in Eastern Europe. The failures of the three-power
talks to produce an agreeable pact of reciprocity in cooperation hastened Molotov to
progress further in his German negotiations. On August 19, 1939 Molotov signed a
lucrative trade agreement with the Third Reich, followed by the infamous "nonaggression"
pact with Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939. A London
Times editorial initially asserted that the pact could be utilized as "a valuable contribution
to peace" if it contained "a clause providing that the pact will be invalidated by any act of
aggression on the part of a contracting party against a third party." 17 When the public
portions of the pact were released to the press later in the week, any hopes for such
clauses were shattered. While communist propaganda did not portray this pact as a profascist
manoeuvre, public opinion increasingly perceived it as a Nazi-Soviet alliance,
undercutting much of the legitimacy of the Popular Front.
Communist propaganda attempted to rationalize the Non-Aggression Pact by highlighting
the foreign policies of Britain and France. This rhetorical strategy was not new.
Throughout the thirties young communist propaganda denounced Chamberlain and
Daladier as pro-fascist politicians. Although their official government rhetoric spoke of
preserving peace, young communists asserted these political leaders could not and should
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