Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

700 DER FUEHRERStates through an exchange of notes. Literally the same men who intheir 'Theses' threatened these countries with the destruction of theirsocial institutions, vowed peace and friendship for them in theirdiplomatic notes.Sometimes they did this in one and the same document, in one and thesame speech. In January, 1934, in his report to the SeventeenthCongress of the Russian Communist Party, Stalin said that worldcapitalism was in a crisis from which it would never recover. Thebourgeoisie saw no other way out but war: 'Conditions are obviouslytending toward another war.' The triumph of fascism in Germany, heexplained, was only a sign of bourgeois weakness, but 'if thebourgeoisie chooses the path of war, the working classes of thecapitalist countries, driven to despair by four years of crisis andunemployment, will choose the path of revolution. The revolutionarycrisis is maturing and will go on maturing.'But then Stalin suddenly changed his tone and now spoke as abourgeois politician to other bourgeois politicians. There were, he said,'common-sense countries,' which for one reason or another were notinterested in disturbing peace and wished to develop their trade relationswith a customer who paid as well as the Soviet Union. Stalin herebroached a subject which gradually began to interest the Russian leadersmore than world revolution: that of Russian exports, or the sale ofRussian goods partly produced at very low cost and partly kept cheap oncapitalist markets by artificial means. Of certain goods, like timberproducts, it was not unjustly said abroad that they were produced by'slave labor,' cut and transported by labor gangs of political prisoners.Russia's exports had suffered as a result of the collapse of world trade,and between 1930 and 1932 they had dropped in value from$910,000,000 to $570,000,000 (the drop was less considerable involume). The Russians held the capitalist boycott responsible for thissituation, at least in part. National Socialist Germany, too, held thepolitical boycott responsible for her export troubles; if this contentionwas true at all, German imports were throttled by Russia's governmentdirectedtrade more than by anything else. But now Stalin denied thatRussia nursed unfriendly feelings toward Germany, only becausefascism ruled there: 'Certain German politicians say that the