Paper Cut outs: Encounters with Trotskyism in the UK

 

"I'm up for a Bolshie-fight!
I am a Trostkyite!
I know what I want, don't know how to get it
I want to destroy the independent labour parties
Cos I, I wannabe Leon Trotsky
No Zinoviev me"

Trotsky in the UK

Way back in 2016 I wrote The SPEW and Me, a short account about my encounters with the Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW), recently I've been in a reflective mood and have decided to expand it into a document detailing my encounters with some of the other factions of the Trotskyites in the the United Kingdom.

Introduction

 A few words on the background of myself and the UK. My political education has led me to change and develop as I gain more knowledge and experience, nothing unusual there it happens to everyone more or less. What is a bit strange is that much of my development was stimulated by close proximity with the British labour movement, its orbiters and challengers. And yet despite this connection I can honestly say that Trotskyism holds no appeal for me whatsoever. The reason this is surprising is that the Trotskyists as a whole are quite large and prominent in the UK's left wing spaces, and several have set up experienced fronts for attracting the unwary socially conscious amongst the students and Trade Union members.

It wasn't for lack of trying though, I've run into about half a dozen front groups and over a hundred newspaper sellers, stalls, and recruiters using petitions to harvest contact details over the years. And, while I'll concede their are differences between the groups and even individual members of the same outfit, generally speaking the encounters have been unpleasant and they show the same logic and point of view regarding the organisation and how it sees the public, its members and its potential recruits. So, I feel tallying the most notable cases in one place would be beneficial especially given that I still see the occasional "Anyone familiar with ____" style questions from people who have been approached by one of their touts.

 

The SPEW and Me

In Britain for some reason the most common and longstanding strain of leftism is Trotskyism. This has always been a bit of a mystery to me because even the Trotskyists loathe Trotskyists. I'm joking, but not by much, in activist circles Trots seem to be poison, and on most Trotskyist sites I've stumbled upon the group they seem to hate the most is another Trot group. Off the top of my head theirs the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Socialist Party in England and Wales (SP/SPEW) the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) Solidarity (also in Scotland) the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Workers Power(WP), the Workers Revolutionary Party(WRP) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and Counter Fire and I must be forgetting at least a dozen and have never heard of several more. Many have very bad reputations and reputations are all I know them by, with one exception.

I have a bit of personal experience with one Trot group, and curiously enough it was the one that had a fairly decent reputation in some circles. That was SPEW often known as just the Socialist Party, but I'll keep referring to them as SPEW because I don't like them being associated with Socialism, and I hope I'll adequately explain why that is below. Here's a list of the times I encountered the Socialist Party in England and Wales.

But first a brief disclaimer, apart from the last incident this is all from memory and happened several years ago, so do bear in mind that I'm going to be a bit hazy on the details.

In 2011 I was at a UCU picket at the University of Hull, in addition to the striking lecturers, some local TUC council members, me and a mate we also had a few unaffiliated Socialists and the student section (about half a dozen) of the SPEW. It was a standard negotiation picket, a petition to sign support, banners saying UCU and “honk if you support hardworking lecturers” you know, not exactly building the barricades. The Student section seemed to have Les Mis ringing in their ears however. They turned up as a group, kitted out with some home made banners and a megaphone, but instead of manning the picket and showing support they tried to get everyone to form some kind of rally. They marched around us chanting about Cairo and Wisconsin, and some third place I really don’t remember, Athens maybe?. When it didn't work they just left, as in walked off immediately leaving the rest of us very confused. Now that was not a very good first impression of the party in action, but I just wrote it off as a bunch of over enthusiastic students not really understanding the reality of these things.

A year later or thereabouts in Grimsby the SPEW as a party group tried something similar at a Fireman’s Brigade Union protest, they were forcefully told to knock it off or be banned from any other FBU event. It was rather embarrassing; now they take part in the protests but afterwards try to encourage people to attend an additional meeting they set up nearby. I've never taken them up on the offer so don't how well attended this side meetings have been but if their election results are any indication the strategy hasn't worked very well.

And when TUSC was formed the group spent months fighting with the local Labour party over control of the Union branches, the fight was purely about officer elections and affiliations, and of course financial support for the local council elections, even though TUSC only put up one candidate a year at the time. Though to be fair to them in recent years they've put up a few more. The attempt failed and back fired pretty badly, since the local Labour party is still pretty heavily concentrated in the TUC unions in the area giving them the edge in politicking. The whole thing resulted in the few SPEW union branch officers they did have(all of whom had gotten their positions before the position jockeying) were isolated and had their reputations sunk because the ordinary members resented them wasting time trying to use them for political fights.

This is embarrassing stuff and it didn't endear me to them in anyway, but SPEW are a national organisation and so maybe I've just had some bad luck? Well no, I also have example of an incident when the SPEW as a national organisation behaved in a very disruptive and opportunistic way.

For me the most egregious example of a SPEW highjacking was what happened to the National Shop Stewards Network. I wasn't directly involved in this but friends were so I learnt quite a bit about the group and its breakdown and the role of the SPEW. It was also a very public falling out so I was able to look up a few things and refresh my memory. This for me was the event that soured me on the party as a whole, I don't think I was every really in danger of joining them but it after this it meant I didn't have any time for them at all.

The NSSN was a network for shop stewards in various unions across the country, hence the name. More importantly it had succeeded in growing in some parts beyond a contact list into actual working groups and so had a physical presence. The SP had put a lot of effort into this network that had been founded by the RMT union in 2006 and for awhile had received quite a bit of credit from Trade Union types. However in 2011 it soon became clear that the SPEW were only interested in the NSSN because it was supposed to be just another front for the Party and as such all non SP members ended up resigning.

Effectively killing what had been a fairly active support network for the sake of party strategy. If you go to the NSSN website today its indistinguishable from a leftist blog site, all the news is about demo marches, "building the pressure" and solidarity (best wishes) with groups and people but no actual practical steps for any of them. The only times it does discuss strikes or workplace actions its by Unions on their own at best its a newsletter, about actions going on independently of itself. In contrast the old group was full of updates and news about workplace struggles, like for example the Yorkshire and Humberside bulletin from 2009.

I don’t bring up the NSSN because I have an attachment to it, I don't really. While it was doing some interesting things it remained firmly a creature of the Trade Union movement. Conservative, defensive and dominated by officers and staffers, even though it proclaimed that it's main goal was building the rank and file. I think on balance the old NSSN was better than what it became for whatever that's worth.
No I bring it up because in addition to my tangential connections to the NSSN it exposes the SPEW as just another opportunistic group concerned with its own influence. By the time SPEW had decided to exert controlling influence on the NSSN it had already agreed to join the anti cuts struggle. The problem and the reason for the split revolved around the question of how. The majority non SPEW officers agreed that the NSSN should be part of a wider anti cuts movement independent of any of the other organisations.

“The NSSN Conference on 22nd January will feature an important debate about the network's role in the anti-cuts movement, which is likely to be decisive in determining the organisation's future. The meeting of the majority of current NSSN Officers held on 5th January unanimously agreed that the NSSN should seek to build unity between the existing anti-cuts bodies and to oppose any attempt to further fragment the developing but still fragile anti-cuts movement. We urge all NSSN supporters and like minded trade unionists to attend our conference to help ensure that the NSSN plays a positive role in unifying the emerging anti-cuts movement and in building support for the sort of industrial action that will be crucial to beating back the coalition's attacks.”

Source
Emphasis mine.

However SPEW wanted the NSSN to join its own anti cuts organisation that was being setup at the time.

“The purpose of this Conference is to put before shop stewards and workplace reps a proposal to set up a working class trade union based campaign that is able to intervene on a clear no-cuts programme in the forthcoming battles.”

Source
Emphasis mine.

Both sides of the dispute, NSSN officers on one side(SPEW blamed one Dave Chapple a CWU shop steward in particular) and the SPEW Executive Committee (which to me is telling*) claimed the opposition was unrepresentative, and dishonest. And while I’m no stranger to a fight between two dishonest groups equally as terrible, after this dispute came to ahead it was followed by mass resignations which does suggest that the NSSN officers were the more popular and closer to the truth of the matter.

On the 22nd of January meeting the SPEW members dominated (its an old tactic from the days of Militant, called stacking a meeting) and forced through their proposal. This meant that from 23rd of January the NSSN had to work to setup a project of the SPEW, on behalf of the SPEW. Understandably the non SPEW members didn’t feel like working for a political party they weren’t members of and so walked away. And that was all she wrote for the NSSN. This dispute tanked SPEW’s reputation, amongst the trade union constituency, the jewel in the crown for most Trotskyist groups. At least one General Secretary had written an open letter to dissuade them from this plan and the shop stewards informed the rest of the union apparatus. And of course all the other leftist groups wasted no time spreading the information. It’s also clear that the dispute was purely about control, the NSSN had already agreed to resist the public spending cuts in some form so this couldn’t have been motivated by principal, unless we count naked self interest. If the SPEW were genuine in building a powerful anti cuts movement and had no interest in controlling the NSSN they had several options, 1) join an already existing anti-cuts group, or 2)set up their own group but keep it independent of the NSSN. Either option would have allowed them to work with the NSSN on its own terms.

I do feel sorry for the members who put years of effort into the organisation only to have another group wreck it for them. And for any workers who relied upon the NSSN in their workplace struggles because this politicking couldn't have helped.

A textbook case of highjacking, in hindsight this wasn’t really surprising given that SPEW is the child of Militant. But there you are. I don't really have an overall point here, I just thought it'd be worth sharing my experiences with this group for reference purposes. Though I suppose it might be useful knowledge for anyone interested in joining such an organization. I mean when I first encountered the "Socialist Party" tm I didn't know about their Trotskyist leanings or their dodgy heritage. They talked a good British leftist game about nationalisation and the need for workers militancy etc, which was in tune with my politics at the time.

Fortunately I held off joining until I knew more about them and my education took me in a different direction.

*To elaborate the dispute was publicly between a group of NSSN officers and the SPEW executive committee as a whole and not just the party members who had joined the NSSN. Which confirmed the allegation that the SPEW members were carrying out party orders.

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty Need to work on the Alliance part

Quick note: this account is related to the UCU strike section of the SPEW part.

I talked a bit about how me and a friend supported a picket of UCU lecturers at Hull University above. In addition to the SPEW student  contingent who walked off to hold a demonstration on their own there was also a small showing by the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) student section. Three people in total, though on reflection I can only confirm that the groups leader was a paid up member of the AWL. Anyway, as the picket wore on, my friend suggested we go and see how the other pickets were doing since we were just members of the public showing our support we could come and go as we pleased. The University of Hull is an open campus with multiple points of entry spread out over several square miles. 

We spoke to the UCU stewards but they were unsure of where exactly the other pickets had been set up. At that point the leader of the AWLers speaks up and politely gives us directions, so we thanked him and went on our way, only we couldn't find any of them. So, we went back and later learnt that he had lied to us to get us out of the way. If you're wondering why such pettiness? Well, earlier in the day he had approached us to give us the "talk" the sales pitch for his group, which is how I knew he was AWL as he had no identifiable merch like the young SPEWers did. We were polite but not interested and he soon gave up and ignored us for most of the time we spent there. I think he wanted to get rid of us since we were of no use to him. 

This may seem like small beer, and in a vacuum I'd agree, even a small setup like the AWL is bound to have a couple arseholes in the mix. But its not in a vacuum, this wasn't my only run in with the AWL its the main one I had, I've had plenty of run ins with eager recruiters on TUC marches who become dismissive and rude once its clear they aren't getting a bite and I know other people who've had similar experiences with AWL. And while the AWL are one of the more atypical Trot groups -support for Israel being one of their more notorious- this pattern of behaviour isn't one of their differences, its one of the things they share in common.

Socialist Appeal: The SApps found themselves a Sap

This one is personal, well more personal then the others. I have a friend who I don't see much of any more. First it was the usual things, time and distance as we go down different paths, but recently their has been a further strain on our relationship, my friend has joined Socialist Appeal. Socialist Appeal like the AWL were part of the Trot filter feeders who latched onto the British Labour party until Keir Starmer kicked them out. Of all the established Brit Trots they kept the lowest profile, aside from seeing them trying to sell newspapers outside Labour party events I had managed to avoid them. Now, it seems they've managed to infiltrate my limited social circle.

I'm not going to use real names, the odds of my friend discovering this are slim to nil, like most Trot converts he just doesn't read outsiders any more, but still. My mate used to be quite a nice person to hang around with, have a beer, chat about shows and films and play video games with. Politically he was a Tory who like the works of Milton Friedman and other economists I hadn't heard of before. But, he was good to socialise with and we didn't talk politics. Well, I didn't talk politics with him, another friend who was closer to him and even shared a flat for a couple of years with did talk politics, and he came around bit by bit. So we could talk a bit more freely, and things were great for awhile, then his job and a move took him out of direct contact outside of messages.

This is going to get confusing so to limit that a bit let's call my Trot friend Leon, and my other friend who features quite a bit in this account, uhm, Cliff. 

Unfortunately, my words at the introduction have come to haunt me "my political education has led me to change and develop as I gain more knowledge and experience, nothing unusual there it happens to everyone more or less". Well, my friend Leon is a normal person and they've been on a similar journey, only now they've taken a very different path. Currently Leon is a paid up member of the SApps, and he has been behaving much like the stereotypes of the British Trotskyite. He is an aggressive pushing of their paper, he flooded messages with links to the online version, when my other friend Cliff went to stay with him for a few days Leon while still perfectly hospitable kept pressuring Cliff to buy several copies of the paper, and while they were out socialising in the pubs and bars of ______ Leon would occasionally break off to flog newspapers to people trying to enjoy a drink. 

This has gone on for sometime now, thankfully, Leon has come to realise we aren't interested in buying his paper so he stops pushing it on us. Though he will still message some of us to tell us about the latest great article by some person we've never heard of who on googling turns out to be one of the leading lights of the SApps. If it stayed at that level this would just be embarrassing, or as the kids say `cringe` it certainly makes me cringe from second hand embarrassment. But its sadly more than that. For a group that decries the exploitation of the proletariat the SApps seem to have little issue exploiting their own. The pushing of newspapers isn't just a symptom of overenthusiasm from a convert, its actively coerced from above. There is a table charting how many papers each group has sold, I know this because Leon once showed it when his group did particularly well on it. 

In addition, Leon has changed quite a bit. Back in the Tory days he would disagree with the rest of the group but it wasn't a source of tension, we either moved on to other topics or in the few times we stayed on topic he was opinion to hearing other opinions. Now? I would say Leon reminds me of a walking tannoy system. What is Leon's views on X? Well if you could ask him, but its often quicker and easier to look up what the SApps line on the subject is. And when he's been in a social gathering that talks about things the SApps are in disagreement, he'll either get argumentative or just go silent in that awkward way where the body language is telling you a boiler is getting close to bursting. And in addition the SApps are taking up more and more of his free time, often he's spending his weekends manning something or walking a street corner hawking a paper or a leaflet or something else. He still keeps up the golf, and spends his disposable income on expensive soviet kitsch, Lenin busts and a Trotsky tee, tat like that. 

I don't see a good end to this story. The best case scenario is that eventually Leon realises he's being taken advantage of and then drops out of politics all together. Worst, he stays the course and ends up alienating everyone around him.

Addendum: The Socialist "Workers" Party

This is just a short one. I think the most surprising thing about my encounters with the Trots is how little I've run into the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Nowadays, this isn't that odd, the fallout from the horrific exposure of sexual assault by leading members and the steps the SWP took to shield them from consequences has caused severe though sadly not fatal damage to that groups influence. But even back in the days of the political joke about the fastest growing party in the UK being the "ex-members of the SWP" I had little experience.

This was back when I was still a student, the SWP were holding a stall in the hall for members, and as I passed by someone came up to them and made the obvious crack about how its ironic that students are part of the Socialist Workers Party. I imagine their student arm got this quite a bit. Anyway, one of the stall holders immediately reached into his pocket and pulled out an invoice from a year earlier that showed he had been paid for some summer work. I think he thought this was a damning rebuttal, but to me it just looked sad. Keeping hold of an old payslip just to prove your prole cred wasn't impressive. For starters, back then most 15-18 year olds were paid cash in hand for work they did on the side, I certainly was, so having an official payslip suggested a form of privilege, probably nepotism. Could be totally wrong about that of course, only encountered him for about a minute before we both went our separate ways, but this is about my impressions.

And that's it for the Swappers. Like SPEW, AWL and all the rest I've been in physical proximity to them many times on protest marches and demonstrations but those encounters weren't worth mentioning.

Conclusion

So then, what was the point of all this? There are problems with anecdotes, but I don't have any sympathy for the school of thought that rejects them entirely. That said, I don't want anyone who reads this to take it as gospel on its own. I want this to be added to the body of evidence concerning Trotskyism in the United Kingdom. I have had other encounters most of which were unpleasant, but its even less substance than the SWP section. I have also had some encounters with people that were pleasant, mostly ex-Labour members who joined TUSC, I thought about including them, but "ran into X after not seeing him in years, he looked well and we caught up" didn't seem worth getting into. And, to be honest I'm not sure they were fully converted to the cause, most of these were kicked out of Labour and I think joined TUSC as it was the only group in the area remotely like the Labour party. 

Speaking of TUSC, looking at now in the 2020s, I'm reminded of the mean-spirited joke about the audience of the BBC political panel show Question Time. "And tonight as always our audience is made up of die-hard partisans (SPEW members), single issue nutters (the members of the few non SPEW groups) and the remaining seats have been filled by people looking for somewhere dry to sit now that the library has closed (ex-Labours)". So far it continues to fail to coalesce into a coherent political grouping. I think SPEW may eventually come to regard the initiative as a total failure and retire it in the future, but we'll see.

Its perfectly fine to agree with or disagree with what I've written above, the steps to anonymise and the passage of time means its a bit fuzzy. I recommend looking at other accounts of dealings with these specific groups and the other Trot groups that are active in Britain.

Real Politik in the interwar years

 

Over the past several years I've noticed some worrying trends among pop history effectively popularising myths to the point they obscure and even deny some heavily documented events. One of them concerns foreign policy in the interwar years, especially concerning policies on dealing with Nazi Germany. Its somewhat understandable, this period is quite infamous for some dramatic shifts in international affairs. Even the name the Interwar period is misleading, I don't think Ethiopians or Chinese or the Spanish would agree that the years between World War I and World War II were particularly peaceful to take just a handful of examples.

I'll outline a general version of the argument that I find is increasingly common, every advocate I've encountered has there own personal spin so this'll be a bit of a generalisation but it'll cover the main thrusts.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (M-R) is not proof that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany collaborated with each other in alliance, it was merely an attempt by the USSR to gain time to defeat Nazi Germany later. Anyway, Stalin had to take that deal as Britain and France had turned down his attempts to ally with the west against the fascists. But the west preferred to appease fascism and tried to use it to attack communism.

Like all good lies there's a few strands of truth weaved into it for credibility sake. I'll start with acknowledging those bits so we can move on to the really dangerous stuff. The decision to negotiate with Nazi Germany was motivated by self interest, and it is true that earlier in the decade the Soviet Union had pursued a collective security initiative including approaches to the British and French governments, its also true that Britain and France especially under certain administrations had little appetite for working with the Soviet Union. Its also true that a strategy of appeasement was promoted.

However, this reading and most of the variations of it I've encountered usually leave out quite a bit of important context, either because they don't know, they haven't bothered to study a really complex and confusing period of history, or they are aware but know attempting to account for further context opens their standpoint up to more scrutiny and commentary than they wish to experience. 

To take an example, many emphasis the Soviet Union's motives as opposition to fascism, but I don't believe ideological stripes mattered at all. Because a key partner in the USSR's collective security against Germany strategy was Fascist Italy. 

Meanwhile, 1933 was an important year for Moscow’s relations with Rome and for its newly declared policy of collective security designed to contain both Adolf Hitler and the Japanese. In May, Italy and the USSR signed an economic accord, and in September they signed a Treaty of Neutrality, Friendship, and Nonaggression. A series of military exchanges and favorable press comment punctuated their good relations.(22) On October 27, Ambassador Vladimir Potemkin told Deputy Foreign Minister Fulvio Suvich that Germany was trying to conclude an agreement with Japan at Soviet expense. Distrusting Britain in East Asia, the Soviets wished to forge a pact among themselves, the French, Italians, and Americans to defend China against Japan.(23) 
https://libcom.org/article/soviet-appeasement-collective-security-and-italo-ethiopian-war-1935-and-1936

Courting of Italy was also done by Britain and France, though at times Britain was more reluctant and even hostile to Italy over tensions between both nations over spheres of interest in their colonies. This courting of Mussolini may seem odd looking back, not only because Mussolini was a Fascist dictator, he is also regarded as a clown and a failure. Well Mussolini was concerned about Germany uniting with Austria and having a direct land border with Italy, so in the 1930s his government was willing to work with other powers to limit German expansion. During the 1934 July putsch, a coup attempt by the Austrian Nazi party against the ruling Austrofascist party (yes that is correct, a civil war between Nazis and Fascists) Mussolini built up his forces in the Brenner pass and publicly warned Germany not to invade Austria. Hitler publicly declared he had no intention of doing so and disavowed the coup which quickly collapsed afterwards. So yes, there was a time when Nazi Germany was so vulnerable that Mussolini made Hitler blink.

Eventually this courting of Mussolini brokedown once Hitler made him a better offer. In addition to courting Mussolini, the Soviet Union did secure an agreement with the French Republic. In 1932 both nations had established a non-aggression pact and then in 1935 had developed their relationship further with the signing of a military accord, the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. As military alliances go its considered weak, the accord didn't automatically mean war with one was war with the other, and it required consultation with other powers including Britain and Italy and the League of Nations. 

But it did mean that any nation wishing to pursue military objectives against one would have to take into account the response from the other. And it did establish a framework for further co-operation, with French support the Soviet Union signed a similar agreement with Czechoslovakia which is why Stalin is represented in the famous cartoon about the Munich agreement.

 The connections between France and the Soviet Union is the reason why so many French politicians like Édouard Marie Herriot disgraced themselves by denying famine in the Soviet Union. While the two powers grew closer rumours about starvation in Ukraine and the south of Russia had begun to circulate internationally. Which cause some backlash other the government's decision to ally with a brutal dictatorship, hence the need to deny.

The importance of the relationship is also seen as an explanation for the Spanish Republican government's lack of support for independence amongst Spain's African colonies, as anti-colonial revolt would threaten French interests in their African colonies and in Morocco.

In particular, the U.S.S.R. is in alliance with France, a capitalist-imperialist country. The alliance is of little use to Russia unless French capitalism is strong, therefore Communist policy in France has got to be anti-revolutionary. This means not only that French Communists now march behind the tricolour and sing the Marseillaise, but, what is more important, that they have had to drop all effective agitation in the French colonies. It is less than three years since Thorez, the Secretary of the French Communist Party, was declaring that the French workers would never be bamboozled into fighting against their German comrades(4); he is now one of the loudest-lunged patriots in France. The clue to the behaviour of the Communist Party in any country is the military relation of that country,actual or potential, towards the U.S.S.R. In England, for instance, the position is still uncertain, hence the English Communist Party is still hostile to the National Government,and, ostensibly, opposed to rearmament. If, however, Great Britain enters into an alliance or military understanding with the U.S.S.R., the English Communist, like the French Communist, will have no choice but to become a good patriot and imperialist; there are premonitory signs of this already. In Spain the Communist ‘line’ was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that France, Russia's ally, would strongly object to a revolutionary neighbour and would raise heaven and earth to prevent the liberation of Spanish Morocco.
https://files.libcom.org/files/Homage%20to%20Catalonia%20-%20George%20Orwell.pdf

France however, is democratic, well they have elections, and so the government of France and its priorities changed. By 1938 the government led by Édouard Daladier no longer held much faith in the pact and instead put his faith in further collaboration with Britain and Neville Chamberlain, the pact wound up that same year.

So, I think we can see why the popular version is misleading, it frames the issue as a desperate Stalin on one side and a totally unresponsive if not actively malicious Western powers. The truth is much less emotional, most European powers were concerned with the potential threat of Germany (The Franco-Soviet pact specified a hostile European power) and looked to building a network of alliance to contain it. The Soviet Union had some success in this with Italy and France, but neither panned out in the long-term due to changing  circumstances and the strategic goals of one or more of the powers. 

Now, there is something of an Elephant in the room, so far we've barely mentioned Britain. Britain and the Soviet Union's relationship in the 1930s could accurately be described as poor. The Royal Navy wasn't shelling Kronstadt and Leningrad and the Soviet army was massing on the border of Persia waiting for the right time to launch an offensive into India, but there wasn't much love lost between the two. Given that the British Empire was one of the earliest powers to recognise the Soviet Union and establish diplomatic agreements with it, the fraying in the 1930s has a lot to do with the political leadership of the United Kingdom at the time. Especially Neville Chamberlain, he had a very poor view of the Soviet Union,

 “I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty,”
Neville Chamberlain's letter to a friend in March 1939

He even viewed the Labour party with so much contempt, that Oliver Stanley a fellow cabinet member (this was before Chamberlain became Prime Minister) had to tell him to tone down his attitude and respect them as the official opposition. "Stanley begged me to remember that I was addressing a meeting of gentlemen. I always gave him the impression, he said, when I spoke in the House of Commons, that I looked on the Labour Party as dirt."

His views on the Soviet Union were not atypical amongst the British Conservative Party of the time. Even the minority who advocated reaching an accommodation with the Soviet Union like Winston Churchill were open and aggressive anti-Reds. So, not a promising start to a Europe wide anti-German alliance. There is also the issue of Chamberlain's advocacy for Appeasement, in the UK the words Chamberlain and Appeasement are practically the same. The decision not to confront Germany over Austria and the Czech crisis, and his PR disaster that was the "Peace for our time" speech effectively destroyed his reputation. 

However, appeasement has been greatly distorted. Chamberlain in addition to being an Appeaser was a booster for war preparations. "the merest scaremongering; disgraceful in a statesman of Mr Chamberlain's responsible position, to suggest that more millions of money needed to be spent on armaments." said Arthur Greenwood Labour deputy leader in 1935. The appeasement strategy had two potential objectives if it gave Hitler enough to get him to cease pushing for more territory than more than worth sacrificing some tens of thousands of foreigners. But if that didn't work, it would buy time for the British Empire to expand its war preparation work. Arms spending increased significantly under Neville's time as Prime Minister, especially for the Royal Air Force. He was also in charge of the government that extended guarantees to Poland, guarantees that led to a declaration of war against Germany in September 1939 in response to its aggression against Poland.

There has been some small revisionist history to defend Neville Chamberlain's performance and I don't agree with them. I think his actions were ultimately abhorrent and contributed to the start of World War II, or at least the version of the war we got. But he was ultimately guilty of doing what Stalin was doing, looking to deal with Germany and buy time for their own powers defence and security at the expense of others. 

Chamberlain's willingness to compromise even extended to his contempt for the Soviet Union, there was in 1939 finally some movement between Britain and France to establish an agreement with the Soviet Union. Essentially his cabinet and strong favourable polling for a French-Anglo-Soviet pact pushed him and Daladier to pursue it. It didn't go very well, from June 15th to the 2nd of August preliminary talks between the three had agreed to extend each other and other nations bordering or close to Germany, Poland, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Greece, Turkey etc, of support should they face aggression from Germany. But once the talks reached the stage of discussing military missions and co-operation they soon collapsed.

Problems arouse almost immediately as soon as the delegations arrived in Moscow. The Soviet Union were represented by Klimet Voroshilov Marshal of the Soviet Army and Defence Minister for the Soviet Union, while Britain was represented by Admiral Reginald Drax and the French by General Aimé Doumenc both of whom were minor military officials in comparison to the Soviet delegation. The situation degraded even further when neither Drax nor Doumenc were authorised to make decisions without consultation and approval from their governments. 

The Soviet government came to the conclusion that the talks were not serious initiatives and looked elsewhere. The fruitless talks were officially ended on the 21st of August, two days later on the 23rd of August the Soviet government announced that it had come to an agreement with Germany and had signed what became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. 

And that is usually where the pop-history enjoyer declares case closed. The West wasn't played silly games and a frustrated Soviet Union had to turn elsewhere and in desperation made a deal with the devil for pragmatic means. But again if we actually look a little deeper many questions arise and refuse to go away. Two days is a suspiciously short amount of time to hold and conclude a diplomatic accord, the technological level of communications, the distance and the layers of bureaucracy and protocol would take weeks if not months to work through just to get diplomats to meet each other. The doomed British, French Soviet talks took several months before breaking down with no agreement.

Indeed talks between the two nations over a closer relationship had begun earlier in 1939 almost as soon as Maksim Litvinov the advocate of collective security had been replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov.

 More positively, Astakhov paid an unusual visit to the Bulgarian Ambassador in Berlin on June 14 to inform him (and apparently the Germans as well) that the USSR "was vacillating between three possibilities, namely the conclusion of the pact with England and France, a further dilatory treatment of the pact negotiations, and a rapprochement with Germany. This last possibility, with which ideological considerations would not have to become involved, was closest to the desires of the Soviet Union."
Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany in 1939-41, pg 47

In addition the talks between Britain, France and the Soviet Union collapsed other the Soviet insistence on military access on Polish territory. 

Moreover, the negotiations stalled immediately after Voroshilov had asked if Poland and Romania would let the Red Army through their territories to fight Germany. Drax and Doumenc didn’t have the competency to answer such a principal question – of course, Poland and Romania would not agree. “Stalin believed that those states were just puppets and that Britain and France could force them to agree – but it was more complicated than that and led to London and Paris failing to convince Warsaw that the USSR was any better than Germany,” Budnitsky notes.

Voroshilov was quite brief. “The Soviet mission considers that without a positive answer to this question all the efforts to enter into a military convention are doomed to failure,” he said, inviting Drax and Doumenc to enjoy their time in Moscow instead. The fruitless talks were officially halted on Aug. 21, 1939.
https://www.rbth.com/history/331039-ussr-britain-france-talks-wwii

This demand was made at a talk without a Polish delegation and was asked of two representatives who had no way of agreeing to it. The Polish for their part had been adamant that they would not agree to let the Soviet Union a nation it had serious territorial disputes with put troops within its borders, and for good reason. Instead the Soviet government made an agreement with the foreign power that was more than happy to let them station troops within Poland.

There's also another issue that I find rather worrying. Multiple advocates for the M-R pact are insistent that it wasn't a big deal as it was only a "Non-Aggression" agreement. And yes the official name for the M-R pact was the German-Soviet Nonaggression pact the name Molotov-Ribbentropp pact was a nickname that stuck. It was also described as the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Hitler-Stalin pact, but M-R is the name that proved the more popular. And the public version presented to the world seems to conform to what we would think such an agreement would entail.

The terms of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact were briefly as follows: the two countries agreed not to attack each other, either independently or in conjunction with other powers; not to support any third power that might attack the other party to the pact; to remain in consultation with each other upon questions touching their common interests; not to join any group of powers directly or indirectly threatening one of the two parties; to solve all differences between the two by negotiation or arbitration. The pact was to last for 10 years, with automatic extension for another 5 years unless either party gave notice to terminate it 1 year before its expiration.

 However, the key word is public. The M-R pact also entailed three additional agreements that were kept secret from the international community. The first of the protocols was agreed on the same day as the public M-R pact, 23rd of August 1939, that divided Eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of influence. It broke Poland between the two powers and agreed the Baltic states and Finland were to be Soviet areas, and also discussed the possibility of Bessarabia being broken off from the Kingdom of Romania. Then on the 28th of September 1939 a second secret protocol was signed finalising the division of Poland and looked at the division of Lithuania, and officially consinged Bessarabia to the Soviet sphere, a third and final protocol was signed on the 10th of January 1941 in which Germany agreed to waive its claims to Lithuania in exchange for payment from the Soviet Union the occupying power.

This map shows the differences between the agreed and actual divisions of Europe.

So, the M-R pact was not simply a statement of non-aggression it involved quite a bit of aggression. I usually don't resort to the dictionary, but this is a rare case where I think it is useful to clear up genuine confusion if there is in fact any.

alliance, in international relations, a formal agreement between two or more states for mutual support in case of war. Contemporary alliances provide for combined action on the part of two or more independent states and are generally defensive in nature, obligating allies to join forces if one or more of them is attacked by another state or coalition. Although alliances may be informal, they are typically formalized by a treaty of alliance, the most critical clauses of which are those that define the casus foederis, or the circumstances under which the treaty obligates an ally to aid a fellow member.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/alliance-politics

On the 1st of September 1939 the German army attacked Poland, this was the start of the invasion of Poland by Germany, the Slovak Republic and the Soviet Union. On the 17th of September the Soviet army began its offensive operations in Poland violating the Soviet-Poland Nonaggression pact signed in 1932. Attacked on all sides including an uprising by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists the Polish military resisted until the 6th of October. The Soviet and German military met at Brest-Litovsk (modern day Brest in Belarus) held a joint victory parade and the German army hand over control of the city to the Soviet authorities. 

German officers Generalleutnant Mauritz von Wiktorin (left), General der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian (centre) and Soviet Kombrig Semyon Krivoshein (right) standing on the platform

 

The scene was captured on film. 

In addition to the joint invasion of Poland when the Soviet Union attacked Finland in November of that same year Nazi Germany officially took a stance of neutrality regarding the two nations. While actively supporting the Soviet invasion by taking action to cut off support for Finland including seizing war material sent by Mussolini.

As there was some pro-Finnish agitation in the Scandinavian countries, they were warned by Berlin ‘not to listen to the blandishments of League of Nations evangelists and British extremists’. ^[42] Thus any hopes the Finnish government might at first have had of German help vanished. On 8 December the Finnish Minister in Rome had confided to Ciano that Germany ‘had supplied arms to Finland from the booty captured during the Polish campaign’, ^[43] but on 12 December Hitler yielded to the Naval General Staff’s request for a ‘clear-cut policy’ towards Finland and for the suspension of arms deliveries there. ^[44] The shipment of arms to Sweden was to be stopped unless the Swedish government gave a written guarantee that they would not be transferred to Finland. ^[45] A few aircraft ordered from Italy before the war and on their way to Helsinki were seized in Germany. ^[46] At his second meeting with Molotov in Berlin (13 November 1940), Hitler pointed out that ‘during the Russo – Finnish war, despite the danger that Allied bases might be established in Scandinavia, Germany had meticulously kept her obligations toward Russia’ and that ‘in this connection she had even gone so far as to deny to the Finnish President the use of a German cable for a radio address to America’.
https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/great-patriotic-war/soviet-german-pact/tasca/ch6.htm

And beyond the military sphere the intelligence services of the two powers, the German Gestapo and Soviet NKVD, both brutal secret police forces co-operated on dealing with internal dissent in their new territories.

Both parties will tolerate in their territories no Polish agitation which affects the territories of the other party. They will suppress in their territories all beginnings of such agitation and inform each other concerning suitable measures for this purpose.

— Secret Supplementary Protocol (2), German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty 28 September 1939

The co-operation involved the transfer of prisoners of war and actions against Polish resistance groups. And most bizarrely the Soviet Union began handing over many German Communists who had escaped persecution in Germany and Austria.

And yet they get them, to the Gestapo’s great delight. Eighty antifascists before the 1939 Hitler–Stalin Pact, more than 200 (out of 350 deportees) afterward. Only now do the Germans press for deportations, stressing the mutual friendly relations between the German Reich and the USSR. There is no evidence of other pressure, nor of any “reciprocation” to follow. The Nazis give the numbers, the Soviets supply the names. The antifascists are sacrificed not according to some overarching principle of political calculus nor as currency in an exchange but rather as a kind of gift.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-nazi-soviet-pact-a-betrayal-of-communists-by-communists/

So, we have two direct examples of the two powers effectively collaborating in military and strategic aims. But as the timeline of the secret protocols 1939-1941 demonstrates, the M-R pact was a step along the path of the relationship. In addition there were not one but two economic treaties, the German-Soviet Credit agreement signed in May 1939 and the German-Soviet Commercial agreement (1940). These treaties expanded trade in materials and economic co-operation between the two powers. By 1941 when the German broke off ties by invading the Soviet Union the trade had been worth

• 1,500,000 metric tons (1,700,000 short tons; 1,500,000 long tons) of grains
• 820,000 metric tons (900,000 short tons; 810,000 long tons) of oil
• 180,000 metric tons (200,000 short tons; 180,000 long tons) of cotton
• 130,000 metric tons (140,000 short tons; 130,000 long tons) of manganese
• 180,000 metric tons (200,000 short tons; 180,000 long tons) of phosphates
• 18,000 metric tons (20,000 short tons; 18,000 long tons) of chrome ore
• 16,000 metric tons (18,000 short tons; 16,000 long tons) of rubber
• 91,000 metric tons (100,000 short tons; 90,000 long tons) of soybeans
• 450,000 metric tons (500,000 short tons; 440,000 long tons) of iron ores
• 270,000 metric tons (300,000 short tons; 270,000 long tons) of scrap metal and pig iron
• 200,000 kilograms (440,000 lb) of platinum

	Total USSR imports	June 1941 German stocks	June 1941 (without USSR imports)	October 1941 German stocks	October 1941 (without USSR imports)
Oil products	827 (912; 814)	1,220 (1,350; 1,210)	397 (438; 391)	821 (905; 808)	−6.4 (−7; −6.3)
Rubber	17.1 (18.8; 16.8)	12.5 (13.8; 12.3)	−4.4 (−4.9; −4.4)	11.0 (12.1; 10.8)	−6.1 (−6.7; −6.0)
Manganese	171.9 (189.5; 169.2)	186 (205; 183)	14.1 (15.5; 13.8)	150 (170; 150)	−17.7 (−19.5; −17.4)
Grain	1,485.2 (1,637.1; 1,461.7)	1,253 (1,381; 1,233)	−232.3 (−256.1; −228.7)	690 (761; 679)	−794.8 (−876.1; −782.2)
*German stocks in thousands of metric tons (short tons; long tons) (with and without USSR imports-October 1941 aggregate)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940) 

 In addition to business interests much of the trade was considered vital to outlast the British Naval blockade that threatened vital German military resources. By 1941 with the conquest of France, Denmark and Norway and guaranteed co-operation from Sweden Hitler believed Germany was no longer dependent on the material supplied by the Soviet Union and a quick victory would mean only a brief disruption in any case.

The Soviet Union also got quite a lot out of those agreements too of course. 

Both Admiralties discussed ‘practical agreements’ for the supply of fuel to German submarines and the use of the ‘northern sea-route’ ^[69] by German ships. The German Admiralty was very keen on this last point and negotiations began towards the end of December 1939. ^[70] On 6 February 1940, the German Naval Attaché in Moscow announced that the Russians were willing to allow a German auxiliary cruiser, ‘Ship 45’, ^[71] to sail to the Far East by the ‘Siberian route’. A temporary stiffening of Molotov’s attitude at the beginning of April seemed to bring them back to where they started, ^[72] but preparations for the voyage were eventually resumed ‘with Russia’s cooperation’ ^[73] and ‘Ship 45’ sailed on 12 August 1940, ‘by the Siberian sea-route, with Russian help’. ^[74] The German auxiliary cruiser was thus able to cross the Pacific without risk and there raid British ships as a privateer. For their part, the Germans handed over the Lützow to the Russians, ^[75] and in the Leningrad shipyards technicians took over the construction or repair of some of the big ships of the Soviet navy. In November 1940, Admiral Raeder was convinced that Russia would not attack Germany on the grounds that she ‘was starting to build up her navy with the help of Germany’. ^[76] They were still working together in May 1941. In a memorandum of the 15th of this month Schnurre stated that: ... construction of the cruiser L in Leningrad is proceeding according to plan, with German supplies coming in as scheduled. Approximately 70 German engineers and fitters are working on the cruiser in Leningrad under the direction of Admiral Feige.
https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/great-patriotic-war/soviet-german-pact/tasca/ch6.htm

 The nature of these agreements both economic and strategically important is very similar to the collaboration of American and British and French businessmen in the same years. (see https://libcom.org/article/how-allied-multinationals-supplied-nazi-germany-throughout-world-war-ii).

 Economic agreements and strategic interventions have an air of cold detachment, what is often confused for pragmatism or "realpolitik". But both powers were left with a big issue concerning their abrupt realignment after years of casting each other as a sought of anti-christ like entity. How to explain this to their own populations? The archives of Pravda,  the Communist party newspaper has preserved some examples of this push. Consider this article, written during the Soviet occupation of Estonia.

 POLITICAL MOOD IN ESTONIA, Pravda, 28 May 1940 TALLINN, 27 May (special correspondent of "Pravda"), (7/14) Recent events in Europe have attracted a lot of attention from various segments of the Estonian population. In contrast to most of the Estonian newspapers, a certain part of the Estonian intelligentsia regards the occupation by the Germans of Denmark in Norway, their invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium as aggression, as the enslavement of small nations. This part of the intelligentsia preaches a loyal attitude towards England and expresses hatred towards Germany and everything German. In commercial circles, the judgment prevails that it was more profitable to trade with England than with Germany, and that English goods are better than German ones. On May 10, the Tallinn Post newspaper (an edition of the Uus Eesti newspaper) published a feuilleton in which the poor quality of German goods was denounced. That part of the Estonian intelligentsia that is hostile to Germany is spreading rumours that the friendship between Germany and the USSR is fragile and short-lived, that a war between the two countries is inevitable, which will bring suffering to the Estonian people. Some of the people who propagate such sentiments are connected by various threads to the British and American embassies. They can also be found among editorial staff of newspaper "Päevaleht". University of Tartu is also a place where pro-English propaganda is carried out.
translation source.

And there's another strange example of close co-operation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which concerns the Comintern. This organisation was tasked with handling the international Communist movement, or at least the Communist movement that looked to Moscow for leadership. This proved to be a problem as the Communist Party of Great Britain and the French Communist Party had been actively pushing the lines formulated in response to the Spanish Civil War, extreme patriotism and appeals for their governments to take a firm hand against Germany.

But on 14 September something else happened: the Daily Worker received a press telegram from the Soviet Union saying it was a robber war on both sides. Pollitt suppressed this telegram because it was against the line of the 2 September manifesto. However, at the next day’s meeting of the party’s Political Bureau, Dutt, ever responsive to his master’s voice, said the line would have to be revised. Indeed, Stalin had already given orders to that effect, in a private chat with Dimitrov on 7 September; Dimitrov had handed the word down to the Comintern Secretariat, which had approved his theses on 9 September, instructing the Communist Parties of France, Britain, Belgium and the USA in particular that they must immediately correct their political line.
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no4/revking.html

The new line was now as the French Communist Party promoted in the winter of 1939 was "The war conducted by the Anglo-French coalition was Imperialist for a certain period, insofar as the coalition was pursuing imperialist ends, had prepared for war, and had worked to bring it about" (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/260642?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents ) I highlighted the last part to draw attention to a discrepancy in the line. At the time of the M-R pact the official position of the Soviet Union which was repeated by its supporters was that WWII was the result of the Imperialist actions of the Allies against Germany, and they had been working to prepare for such an action for some time. Contrast this to the original argument at the beginning were the modern supporters of Soviet foreign policy, that the M-R had to be signed because the Western Allies failed to take any step to prevent the rise of German militarism. The imperialism of Britain and France was the official justification the Soviet Union gave for its occupation of the Baltic states. 

«[…] it had become necessary to put an end to all the intrigues by which England and France had tried to sow discord and mistrust between Germany and the Soviet Union in the Baltic States. […]Lithuanian border was evidently inadequately guarded. The Soviet Government would, therefore, if requested, assist the Lithuanian Government in guarding its borders.»
Telegram by Molotov

The French Communist Party was so active in pushing the new line attacking Franco Imperialism and defending the M-R pact for preventing war while Nazi Germany was marching in the direction of Paris. The French Communist Party exploited its reputation in the French resistance for decades after the war ended. But while members of the party had fought in the clandestine underground since the beginning of the German occupation, the party itself did not join the resistance struggle until June 1941. If that date seems familiar that was when Nazi Germany ended its period of co-operation with the Soviet Union by launching a massive and brutal invasion of the Soviet Union.

One final point to consider. In its last days the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had attempted a partial reckoning with the many skeletons in its closet. Thousands of socialists who had been persecuted, tortured and even executed were "rehabilitated", which was the government term for an official admittance of mistakes and wrongful treatment by the government, a secular mea culpa. In 1989 this process reached the M-R pact. In December of that year Alexander Yakovlev, Communist party historian and Politburo member submitted a report to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, the highest governing body of the USSR. The report acknowledged the existence of the secret protocols ending decades of official denial. In response Mikhail Gorbachev denounced the actions of Soviet government (see appendix).

Conclusion

What is the point of all this? Well, aside from challenging a popular narrative that doesn't have much to stand on, I hope to make something clear. What the years just before 1939 show us is that there were no heroes, neither the Soviet Union nor the Western European powers come out of that period with a clean record. They all, including Mussolini came to the conclusion that a powerful and ambitious Germany probably wasn't a good omen for them and looked into ways of checking that threat. The issue though was that none of the powers were willing to risk their own self interest, they would make commitments up to a point but would not stick their necks out for others unless they were absolutely forced to. The Soviet Union was willing to abandon the anti-fascist struggle and collaborate with the British and French Empires, but was not willing to give up its desires to expand into its neighbours. The French were willing to work with the Soviet Union but weren't willing to risk instability in its colonial empire and so on. 

Meanwhile Germany was willing to work with the hated Judeo-bolsheviks if it would secure the material it needed for its strategic aims. I think too many people read to much into the word alliance, for many they seem to think it means a long term relationship or genuine fraternal bonds. And that just isn't true, alliances are often temporary and can be made with nations who shouldn't be compatible, an example would be the USA and Israel supporting Iran during its war with Iraq. There is a counter pop-myth that frames the M-R pact and wider Soviet-German relationship as proof of a genuine desire of Stalin to work with Nazi Germany on a deeper level, but that has very little in the way of evidence either.

The failures of the 1930s European powers in preventing the Second World War are the result of the failures of real politik and pragmatic attempts to maximise gain for the lowest costs. There are no friends amongst nations, when push came to shove for the Chinese, Ethiopians, Czechs, Austrians, Spanish, Baltic peoples etc. The great powers were no friends to them either and sold them out when it looked risky. The only reason the Poles weren't added to that list was thanks to timing, Britain and France's war preparations were largely complete and they were more confident and even then France scaled back its military operations on Germany's western borders which allowed the German army to concentrate on Poland. Even at that late date the Western Allies were prioritising their own security against a potential German offensive over providing effective support for the Poles dealing with their actual offensive.

Appendix: Text of the Soviet acknowledgment of the existence of secret agreements with Nazi Germany

CONGRESS OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES OF THE USSR
DECISION
of December 24, 1989 N 979-1
ON POLITICAL AND LEGAL EVALUATION
OF THE SOVIET-GERMAN NON-AGGRESSION PACT
FROM 1939
 

1. The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR takes note of the conclusions of the commission on political and legal evaluation of the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty of August 23, 1939.
 

2. The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR agrees with the opinion of the Commission that the Non-Aggression Treaty with Germany was concluded in a critical international situation, in the face of increasing danger of aggression by Fascism in Europe and Japanese militarism in Asia, and had as one of its aims to take away from the USSR the threat of an impending war. Ultimately, this goal was not achieved, and the miscalculations associated with the presence of German obligations to the USSR, exacerbated the consequences of treacherous Nazi aggression. At this time the country was faced with difficult choices.
The obligations under the treaty came into force immediately after its signing, although the treaty itself was subject to approval by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The decree of ratification was adopted in Moscow on August 31, and the instruments of ratification were exchanged on September 24, 1939.
 

3. The Congress considers that the contents of that treaty were not incompatible with the rules of international law and the treaty practice of States in making treaty settlements of this kind. But both at the conclusion of the treaty and at its ratification the fact was concealed that simultaneously with the treaty a "secret additional protocol" had been signed, delimiting the "spheres of interests" of the contracting parties from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, from Finland to Bessarabia.
The originals of the protocol have not been found in Soviet or foreign archives. However the graphological, phototechnical and lexical examination of the copies, maps and other documents, the correspondence of the subsequent events to the content of the protocol confirm the fact of its signing and existence.

4. The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR hereby certifies that the Treaty of Non-Aggression of August 23, 1939, and the Treaty of Friendship and Boundary between the USSR and Germany concluded on September 28th of that year, as well as other Soviet-German agreements, in accordance with the rules of international law, lost force at the moment of the German attack on the USSR, that is June 22, 1941.
 

5. The Congress states that the Protocol of August 23, 1939, and other secret protocols signed with Germany in 1939-1941, both in method of drafting and in content, were a departure from the Leninist principles of Soviet foreign policy. Delimitation of "spheres of interest" of the USSR and Germany and other actions taken in them were from the legal point of view in contradiction with the sovereignty and independence of a number of third countries.
The Congress notes that at that time the relations of the USSR with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were regulated by a system of treaties. According to the peace treaties of 1920 and the non-aggression treaties of 1926-1933, their parties undertook to respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and inviolability in all circumstances. The Soviet Union had similar obligations towards Poland and Finland.
 

6. The Congress states that the negotiations with Germany on secret protocols were conducted by Stalin and Molotov in secret from the Soviet people, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) and the entire Party, the Supreme Soviet and the USSR Government, these protocols were excluded from the ratification procedures. Thus the decision to sign them was, in substance and form, an act of personal power, and in no way reflected the will of the Soviet people, who are not responsible for this conspiracy.
 

7. The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR condemns the signing of the "secret additional protocol" of August 23, 1939 and other secret agreements with Germany. The Congress recognizes the secret protocols as legally invalid and null and void from the moment of their signing.
The protocols did not create a new legal basis for relations between the Soviet Union and third countries, but were used by Stalin and his entourage to issue ultimatums and exert forceful pressure on other states in violation of the legal obligations undertaken before them.
 

8. The Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR assumes that awareness of the complex and contradictory past is part of the process of perestroika, designed to provide every people of the Soviet Union with opportunities for free and equal development in an integral, interdependent world and expanding mutual understanding.
Chairman
Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. GORBACHEV

[Translated from Russian by DeepL, bolding my own]

Pork and Profits - How Big Business Destroys Living Beings

 

This absolute unit of a pig is an example of the Baston pig, known to many as the Lincolnshire Curly Coat. This breed of pig originated in Lincolnshire and was bred for smallholders, its thick coat very similar to the wool of a sheep protected it from the weather and its large size maximised its meat yield. It is sadly now extinct, it became rare in the UK after the Second World War and in its native habitat of Lincolnshire it survived until the 1970s (see addendum for information on the last known example of the breed) the reason for the decline was economic.

In 1954 Britain finally ended its war time rationing system and began to return to a more normal market economy. As a consequence British governmental and economic authorities became focused on making British products competitive on the international market. In 1955 a committee was formed to look at the state of Britain's pig production and breeding, chaired by Sir Harold Howitt - the Howitt report - it recommended that farmers move away from diversity of breeds with 16 distinct breeds being common in the British farming at that point and focus on breeding just three, the Welsh pig, the British Landrace and the Large White. The remaining 13 breeds went into extreme decline with 3 breeds the Cumberland, the Dorset Gold Tip and of course the Lincolnshire Curly Coat died out entirely. 

 “In the first place we have formed the view that one of the main handicaps facing the British pig industry today is the diversity of the type of pig which is found throughout the country. The pig industry will in our view only make real progress when it concentrates on a few main types and  - if it were at any time found possible – on a single type of pig for commercial production.”

This isn't a unique story, the sad truth is that there are many species both wild and domesticated that have gone extinct or are at extreme risk of extinction due to human economic priorities. The UK is also unfortunately a place that has depleted a lot of its natural wealth with many indigenous species over hunted or exterminated as pests. In addition to losing those species this also causes a knock on effect on the wider environment. However, in recent years there has been increased support for the preservation and re-introduction of endangered species into habitats it once flourished in. The Beaver is enjoying a gradual comeback throughout Europe with small populations being established in Scotland, Wales and England, as an example and there have been years long discussions about whether or not the European Lynx and even the Wolf should be brought back to British soil. 

From the Beaver Trust

And over the years some have claimed that the Lincolnshire Curly Coat has returned. Sadly, that is not the case, the UK does have small pockets of Curly Coated pigs now, however they're Hungarian Curly Coats. The Hungarian Curly Coat or Mangalica as its called in its homeland is also a pig with a distinctive curly coat, but its a distinct breed in and of itself. The Mangalica dates back to the 1830s, it was a very common pig breed in the Kingdom of Hungary but it also faced a serious decline after the Second World War. By 1991 it was critically endangered with perhaps as few as 200 pigs surviving. Conservationists will be happy to learn that its popularity rebounded and there are now several tens of thousands of the Mangalica in the world today. 

A Mangalica

The Mangalica was imported into the UK for the first time in 2007, and can be seen in several wild life parks and rewilding areas. This year Doddington Hall imported some Mangalica to serve as a team of "eco pigs" to improve the range of plant and insect life on its grounds. This is part of a process of returning animal species that used to preform an important function in the life cycle of a whole environment. When the species that performed this sort of niche in the chain has died out entirely there has been some success in introducing similar species. European which were slightly different from the extinct British Bison are also being introduced into Scotland and England for a similar reason. So, Curly pigs may return as an established part of the British countryside after all, though they will likely remain confined to rewilding projects for the foreseeable future rather than the farmyard.

There is however a connection between the Lincolnshire Curly Coat and the Mangalica beyond both being pigs famous for their hair. In the 1930s the Lincolnshire Curly Coat was doing so well that it was exported to several countries including the Soviet Union and Hungary. It is known that the two breeds interacted and for a time there existed a cross breed of the two called the Lincolica. The Lincolica died out by the 1950s though its possible that some modern Mangalica retain some Curly Coat ancestors. Perhaps something similar can be done in the UK to create a new Curly Coat breed in Lincolnshire?

 

Addendum: The story of the last Lincolnshire Curly Coat 

The Curly Coat died out in the 1970s though reports differ on the exact year. Functionally as a distinct animal it had passed away by 1970, but a few old specimens remained. One, declared to be the last Lincolnshire Curly Coat in existence was tracked down on a farm in Lincolnshire. Regional news thought it would be a good human interest story to invite the pig and its owner to the studio. The farmer turned up with the pig quite a large example of a large breed arrived in the back of a truck. For some reason the studio had the farmer and pig arrive through the main entrance, the pig being both a pig in temperament and having been stuck in a truck on a long drive stretched its trotters and then shat and pissed all over the carpet in the main reception area. A pig that big produces a lot of waste material. Sadly no recording of the broadcast was made as far as I know so the story survives in recollection amongst older rural yellow bellies who were around at the time. 

Source list

• https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2023/03/woolly-eco-pigs-taking-doddington-hall-back-to-nature/
•  https://web.archive.org/web/20090415150305/http://www.fwi.co.uk/blogs/rural-life/2007/12/news-of-the-curlycoated-pigs.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20200206161401/http://www.britishpigs.org.uk/trad3.htm 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalica 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincolnshire_Curly_Coat 
• https://alchetron.com/Lincolnshire-Curly-coated-pig
  

How being President made me a better Radical - a review of Suzerain

 

 Over the past week I've been playing Suzerain, a sort of choose your own adventure political simulation game. Released in 2020 by Torpor Games, I totally missed it until browsing a recommended for you tab during a sale. The aim of the game is for the player to take on the mantle of President of the nation of Sordland, a country with a very complex and bleak political history, complete with revolutions, military coups, civil wars and deposed monarchs. The game treats it all very seriously, with many of the people and cultures and organisations being similar but not copies of our own world during the early days of the Cold War. The game is set in 1953 by its own calendar and the technology and development and political situation of the world tally with that.

Once a decision is made you cannot reload and undo it, you'll have to start a whole new game if you really need to change course. The game starts with a profile builder for your character and a timeline of events in Sordland's recent history. Throughout you are given some options to choose from about certain actions and beliefs, this is largely to help the player build a picture of the character Anton Rayne, but some of the options do come up and have some bearing in the game. Eventually the timeline shifts to documenting Anton's rise to the Presidency, and the game proper starts with your inauguration.

The goal is to essentially survive as President and depending on player decisions stay alive until the conclusion of your first (only?) term. At the start you are given some options, economic outlook, pro-market or pro-planned economy, which sector of government to prioritise, defence, health etc. and which of the worlds two superpowers to develop closer ties or to push for a third path.  The prologue is there to give you a rough plan of who you wish to be as a person and a President. I chose to stick to that plan as closely as possible with deviations being forced upon me. I ended the game as partially successful reformer who had been swept up in the CSP, the game's version of the Warsaw Pact.

The game is very gripping, my first play through was over 11 hours which I played over a week. I needed to spread it over several days because otherwise I would've just done nothing but play the game until it ended. The world of Suzerain is full of characters, institutions, nations, cultures, religions, and so on. There is a codex for nearly everything referenced in the game and its information can be useful at certain parts of the game. It took 11 hours to play the game, just reading a file of the codex entries alone will had several more hours. But, you don't need to be overly familiar with the games codex to be successful, its an asset, but not a vital one, you can still complete a play-through with some thought and a strong sense of what you want to achieve.

The music is also a strong point of the game. Most of the games action is through text boxes so the soundtrack had to work hard to deliver on setting appropriate moods. After playing the game I bought the soundtrack and have listened to it quite a bit. The tracks were composed by James Spence and they're fantastic, Suspense the track that often accompanied the stressed and important political meetings made me feel like biting my nails, a habit I broke years ago, and Past which covers more reflective episodes had me looking back on my own life.

 It does allow you scope to play radically differently, I ended the game as a mostly clean democrat who leaned left and had made some ground to support minorities and averted an invasion from a powerful neighbour. Looking at the achievements on Steam, I can see that I could've done the exact opposite, become a brutal and corrupt despot, or overthrown in yet another civil war, and many points in between. And crucially, the developments largely made sense, there were times when bombshells were dropped in my lap, but once the smoke cleared and I learnt more about those events they also made sense. I understood why my opposition, oligarchs, foreign powers, conservatives and nationalists, were out to get me. I didn't particularly sympathise with their views but they had reasons for doing what they were doing. 

Sordland is to put it bluntly a mess. Its been ruled by a military strongman whose shadow still looms over everything, it is technically a democratic state but its constitution was devise with the explicit intention of maintaining strong central authority, and the ruling party the United Sordland Party (USP) has ruled unquestioned since the end of the civil war. You are the current leader of the USP which is both a blessing and a curse. And a failed reformist administration provoked a major economic recession, and there's a powerful and active nationalist movement even more fanatically devoted to the ruling ideology than the USP, violent extremist groups and at least one regional power looking to change the map for good. And that's just on day one. For a text based game that moves from one backroom meeting to the next its surprisingly eventful.

Which brings me to this games most important teaching moment. No matter how strong my mandate or how dirty I fought or how pure my ideals, I could not carry out fundamental change to the system. The best I could do was push through some reforms, and that had to be watered down when I faced intractable opposition. If I kept pushing things to there limit, at best all my reforms would fail, and I would probably be done for, or attacked by a foreign power. The Anarchist criticism of power isn't that bad people can hold power, it is power itself that is the issue. Being President of a nation is not a blank check to do whatever you wish so we just have to make sure the best person gets the top job and all is well. Presidents et al are constrained by other forces and circumstance, compromises have to be made and no matter what the system continues grinding on. And Suzerain teaches this important lesson at every step on the road. 

I promised to expand healthcare during my first term, but we were in the middle of a severe recession inherited from past administrations, and the oligarchs and the ultra conservative political elite had already threatened me repeatedly. So, I expanded funding for the courts and created an anti-corruption force to tackle corruption but also to investigate both factions, healthcare had to make do with what resources it had. Later I was able to find enough money to combat a Polio outbreak and make prescription medicine free, but that put Sordland in debt and hindered the overall economic recovery. This is just one example, it simply isn't possible to achieve everything you promise the electorate. Which is also a lesson we are taught in the real world time after time. Dictator or Democrat, there is not one leader in world history whose legacy doesn't have many stains and broken promises. 

Usually, in political commentary the reaction to this is to lambast the individual leader or their network of advisers. And occasionally the criticism will expand to include the whole political party or coalition and very rarely during the time of political revolution the whole governmental mechanism will be condemned. Its obvious that some senior politicians are actively corrupt or promise well beyond their means to deliver, do I need to cite an example? I'm sure every reader can think of a dozen examples at least and some will be unique to their background. But Suzerain goes further than this, you can be an angel and work beyond the limits to achieve your vision, its a video game after all, even if Anton Rayne gets shot the player will be fine. It just won't be enough, forces outside your control with their own wills, desires and concerns will clash with you, even allied and friendly ones.

I have no idea if this was the intended message of Suzerain's developers Torpor Games. Though I find it difficult to see any other intended message. Especially when attending the games version of the United Nations the AN. The AN meeting is essentially where all of the foreign policy tangles you've tried to smooth out come to ahead. One after another Rayne and his counterparts in the other nations ascend to the podium and give their views, the words and specific goals of each speaker are different but the forms and structure are the same. They each outline their grievances with each other, often at opposite sides of the same tensions, each one is selective in their arguments and uses high talk of ideals to cloak pragmatic demands, and each one has a point. There is no `good guy` there, they all are equally to blame for causing these tensions and are all equally blameless since they are the inheritors and responders to past and current tensions beyond their control. Even your nation Sordland behaves in much the same way, or at least my Sordland did. 

There were dialogue options to stress peace and co-operation, but I just didn't see the point in choosing any of them, it was far too late for any such talk to make a difference. By that point I had a neighbour actively trying to provoke a war with me and building a nuclear weapons program, I had also signed Sordland into the CSP a powerful block of nations and its leader had already started modernising Sordland's military. I had already been pressured into taking a side in regional and global conflict that seemed about to rip open any day. And I had seen no evidence from the other heads of government that neutral appeal would work at all in advancing Sordland's benefit.

I had set out with the goal of staying independent and maintaining peace and treating everyone fairly but the events of the game forced me to make serious compromises on nearly every front. Which is also a testament to the games excellent writing, its a video game, I could've have at any point said `to hell with it` and played how I wished damning the consequences and just booting up a new game when the sword finally dropped on my head. But, I just couldn't play like that, I cared what those close to me felt about me and wanted to collaborate with them. And I actively viewed several characters in contempt and looked forward to arranging their downfall and felt cheated in the cases where I could never catch them. And for the bigger picture I struggled to do the best I could with the limited resources I had while doing my best to keep all those plates spinning.  

This is how I ended up.