Anglo-Soviet relations, 1927-1932

摘要

Using unpublished official and private papers to supplement published Western and Soviet sources, this thesis seeks to demonstrate that Anglo-Soviet relations from 1927 to 1932 retained much of the mutual suspicion and misunderstanding characteristic of relations in the early 1920s, thereby restricting co-operative responses to the rising threats to their interests from Japan and Germany in the early 1930s. Anglo-Tsarist enmity and the vicissitudes of the first decade of Anglo-Soviet relations conditioned the political and institutional problems in reconciling the two powers, difficulties which were compounded by the antipathy between the practice of Stalinist communism and British Imperial interests. The British remained suspicious of Soviet intentions towards the Indian sub-continent. Chamberlain's policy of 'studied reserve' in the face of both Soviet intransigence and party- political pressure was nullified by the Arcos raid and the rupture of relations, but, contrary to the alarums of the Soviet 'war scare', this was not the prelude to wider British action. Relations marked time until mid-1929. For Britain, the results of the Labour Cabinet's renewal of relations were disappointing, for controversy over Soviet internal conditions combined with the unresolved propaganda and debts issues to hamper the creation of mutual understanding. Under the National Government relations remained distant, and, with British export expectations unfulfilled, and a deteriorating economic climate in Britain and the Dominions, trade relations were re-assessed. For the Soviet Union, with Stalin taking effective control of Soviet foreign policy, internal considerations predominated over objective perceptions of the changing international environment in the West and the colonial world during the Depression. Whilst France gradually became the focus of Soviet interest, no real Anglo-Soviet understanding emerged on either bilateral or international issues.