Manhattan Dream and Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

深夜２時間ほど、「リラックス」していた。眠ってはいなかった。昨日は、朝かと思って目を開けたら午後３時半だった。何それ？

団体でニューヨークに行った夢だった。公園で野球。ピッチャーとキャッチャーの間に大きな木が１本あって、「何でこんな場所、選んだの」と不思議がる。硬球だと思ったらゴムボールで、このボールが飛び跳ねて走り回った。グループには、昔の同僚で日系三世のＧや（確か）アーカンソー州出身のＭがいた。Ｍはバイクで来ていた。

１階が小さな雑貨屋になっているホテルの５階に泊っていた。ロビーには雑貨屋の前の細い通路を抜けたところにあるエレベーターで行く。商談のための訪問で、母親と兄も同行していた。

ホテルの窓からは大きな建物も見えるが、大通りらしきものはなく、マンハッタンにしては田舎の景色。夕食には地元に住む日本人の若者数人も参加した。和食レストランだったが、アルコール飲料の値段が高くてほとんど注文できなかった。

たいしたことのない町のメーンストリートは坂道で、上りきった先には森が見えた。「あの森を越えるとKalamazoo だ」とあり得ないことをＧに話していた。彼は「仕事が終われば、行ってみればいいじゃないか」と応じた。自分は「いやいや、Kalamazoo な訳がない」と思い直す。「そうか、間にマサチューセッツがあるからな（本当はもっとあるのに）。じゃ、Albany に行けばいい」。「うん、ここから３時間ほどだから」。

ヘンな夢だったが、悪夢ではなかった。みんないい人だったし。

“Stalin”

Yet nationality always mattered in Soviet politics, however internationalist the Party claimed to be…. In 1937, 5.7 per cent of the Party was Jewish yet they formed a majority of the Government. Lenin himself (who was partly Jewish by ancestry) said that if the Commissar was Jewish, the deputy should be Russian: Stalin followed the rule. (p. 270)

Stalin realized that, while he had to be seen to oppose anti-Semitism, his Jews were one obstacle to rapprochement with Hitler, particularly Litvinov (Wallach). Many Jewish Bolsheviks used Russian pseudonyms….

The removal of the Jews was a signal to Hitler – but Stalin always sent double messages: Molotov appointed Solomon Lozovsky, a Jew, as one of his deputies.

英仏の怠慢。独ソ不可侵条約の締結

… Ironically the Polish [border] guarantee [by Britain and France of 31 March 1939] increased Stalin’s doubt about the depth of this British commitment: if Hitler invaded Poland, what was to stop ‘perfidious Albion’ from using the guarantee as a mere bargaining chip to negotiate another Munich-style deal, leaving Hitler on his borders?

Britain and France had dispatched a hapless and ludicrously low-level delegation to Moscow by slow steamship to offer an alliance but no guarantee of Soviet frontiers and no freedom of action in the Baltics…. [The delegation] arrived in Leningrad on the night of 9-10 August, the German-Russian flirtation was getting serious…. (pp. 271-272)

…. Hitler decided to invade Poland on 26 August: suddenly, the agreement with Stalin was desperately necessary. The meeting with the Western powers only got started on 12 August but the gap between what the West was willing to offer and the price Stalin demanded, was unbridgeable. That day, the Russians signaled to the Germans that they were ready to start negotiations, even on the dismemberment of Poland. On the 14th, Hitler decided to send Ribbentrop, his Foreign Minister, to Moscow…. On the 17th, Voroshilov proposed a treaty of mutual military assistance to the British and French but added that there was no point to continuing the discussion until they had persuaded the Poles and Romanians to allow the passage of Soviet troops in the event of a German attack….

‘Enough of these games!’ Stalin told Molotov. On the afternoon of Saturday the 19th, Molotov hurriedly summoned [the German Ambassador, Count Friedrich Werner] Schulenburg, handing him a draft non-aggression pact…. Having signed the trade treaty that Stalin had specified was necessary before the real business could begin, the Germans, whose deadline was fast approaching, waited with a gambler’s anticipation. Hitler shrewdly decided to cut the Gordian knot of mutual trust and prestige by personally addressing Stalin in a telegram dated 20 August: ‘Dear Mr. Stalin.'…

Far to the east, that Sunday the 20th, Georgi Zhukov, commander of the Soviet army on the Khalokin-Gol River, launched a formidable cannonade against the Japanese, then attacked across the front. By the 23rd, the Japanese were defeated with losses as high as 61,000 men, a bloody nose that was enough to dissuade them from attacking Russia again. （ノモンハン事件）

At 3 p.m. on Monday the 21st, Molotov received Schulenburg who passed on Hitler’s request for a meeting on 23rd. Two hours later, he an Stalin agreed to the historic visit of Ribbentrop…. At 7 p.m. next day, Voroshilov dismissed the British and French: ‘Let’s wait until everything has been cleared up…’

Stalin’s reply reached Hitler at eight-thirty that evening: ‘Marvelous! I congratulate you’ declaimed Hitler, adding with the flashiness of the entertainer: ‘I have the world in my pocket.’

When they sat down at the table, the Russians, with their interpreter V.N. Pavlov, on one side, and the Germans on the other, Ribbentrop declared: ‘Germany demands nothing from Russia – only peace and trade.’…

[On Tuesday, 22 August, t]hey swiftly agreed to the terms of their pact which was designed to divide Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in Romania, though Hitler kept Lithuania….

By 2 a.m. on 24 August, the treaty was ready….

…. At 3 a.m., as the excited leaders parted, Stalin told Ribbentrop: ‘I can guarantee on my word of honour that the Soviet Union will not betray its partner.’ (pp. 273-276)

ポーランド侵攻とバルト併合

At 2 a.m. on 1 September, [Alexander] Poskrebyshev handed Stalin a telegram from Berlin informing him that early that evening ‘Polish’ troops (in fact German security forces in disguise) had attacked the German radio station in Gleiwitz…. Germany had invaded Poland…. Stalin planned the Soviet invasion of Poland with Voroshilov, [Marshal B.M.] Shaposhnikov and [Grigory] Kulik, who was to command the front along with Mekhlis, but waited until he had secured an end to the war with Japan first. At 2 a.m. on 17 September, Stalin… told Schulenburg: ‘At 6 a.m., four hours from now, the Red Army will cross into Poland.’

… [Soviet invasion of Poland] unleashed depredations on the Polish population every bit as cruel and tragic as those of the Nazis. [Ukrainian First Secretary] Khrushchev ruthlessly suppressed any sections of the population who might oppose Soviet power: priests, officers, noblemen, intellectuals were kidnapped, murdered and deported to eliminate the very existence of Poland. By November 1940, one tenth of the population or 1.17 million innocents had been deported. Thirty per cent of them were dead by 1941; 60,000 were arrested and 50,000 shot…. (pp. 277-278)

At 5 p.m. on Wednesday 27 September, Ribbentrop flew back to negotiate the notorious protocols, so secret that Molotov was still denying their existence thirty years later. By 10 p.m., he was at the Kremlin in talks with Stalin and Molotov…. Stalin wanted Lithuania. Ribbentrop telegraphed Hitler for his permission so the talks were delayed until 3 p.m. the next day. But Hitler’s message had not arrived by the time Ribbentrop returned to negotiate the cartological details. (p. 278)

[At the gala dinner of the evening, Stalin] toasted Kaganovich, ‘our People’s Commissar of Railways’. Stalin could have toasted the Jewish magnate across the table but he deliberately rose and circled the table to clink the glasses so that Ribbentrop had to follow suit and drink to a Jew, and irony that amused Stalin…. (p. 279)

… At the end of the dinner, Stalin and Molotov excused themselves as the Germans were dispatched off to the Bolshoi to watch Swan Lake. As he left, Stalin whispered to Kaganovich, ‘We must win time.’ They then walked upstairs where the Estonian Foreign Minister miserably waited for Stalin to emasculate his little Baltic nation. Molotov demanded a Soviet garrison of 35,000 troops, more than the entire Estonian army.

‘Come on, Molotov, you’re rather harsh on our friends,’ said Stalin, suggesting 25,000 but the effect was much the same. Having swallowed a country during the first act of Swan Lake, Stalin returned to the Germans at midnight for a final session during which Hitler telephoned his agreement to the Lithuanian concession.

By 3 October, all three Baltic States had agreed to Soviet garrisons. Stalin and Molotov turned their guns and threats on the fourth Baltic country in their sphere of influence, Finland, which they expected to buckle like the others. (pp. 279-280)