The extension of the Polish–Soviet non-aggression pact

On 5 May 1934 in Moscow the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, and the Polish ambassador, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, signed a protocol extending the Polish–Soviet non-aggression pact of 25 July 1932 until 31 December 1945. The pact had originally been concluded for three years with automatic two-year renewals. After 1945 it was to be renewed in the same way for further two-year periods unless either party gave notice six months before expiry. The protocol was accompanied by a final protocol in which the Soviet Union confirmed that it had no intention of interfering in the Polish–Lithuanian dispute over Wilno (Vilnius). Ratifications were exchanged in Warsaw on 16 June 1934.

A new situation

When the pact was signed in July 1932, no one yet knew who would be ruling in Berlin. A year and a half later everything had changed. On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, and in October Germany left the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. Moscow, which had cooperated with Germany throughout the 1920s, began to seek an understanding with states that also feared the Reich. In November 1933 the United States recognised the USSR, and Soviet diplomacy was drawing closer to France.

Poland was playing its own game. Marshal Józef Piłsudski and the Foreign Minister, Józef Beck, concluded that since Hitler was for the moment seeking calm in the east, this could be turned to advantage. On 26 January 1934 the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression, concluded for ten years, was signed in Berlin. It was received with alarm in Moscow. A few weeks earlier, in December 1933, Litvinov had proposed to Warsaw a joint Polish–Soviet declaration guaranteeing the independence of the Baltic states. Poland did not take up the proposal, wishing neither to bind itself to the Soviet Union nor to give Moscow a title to act as “protector” of the Baltic peoples.

Beck’s visit to Moscow

To dispel Soviet suspicions that Poland was moving into the German camp, Beck travelled to Moscow on 13 February 1934. According to Polish studies, this was the first visit by a Polish foreign minister to the Soviet Union. Beck held talks with Litvinov and with the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov. Litvinov spoke of the threat from Germany. Beck made it clear that Poland had no intention of joining any action either against Germany or against the USSR. It was agreed, however, that the non-aggression pact would be extended to ten years – a period similar to that of the German–Polish declaration – and that both states would raise their legations to the rank of embassies. By the time the protocol was signed, Łukasiewicz, until then envoy in Moscow, was already ambassador.

In March 1934 Moscow proposed a similar extension to the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed the relevant protocols on 4 April, and Finland on 7 April 1934. These agreements, which extended the pact with Estonia and the other treaties of 1932, likewise remained in force until the end of 1945.

The question of Wilno

The Polish–Soviet talks took longer because Warsaw set a condition. At issue was the note that the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, had sent to the Lithuanian government on 28 September 1926 on the conclusion of the Soviet–Lithuanian non-aggression treaty. In it the Soviet Union declared that it did not recognise the de facto violation of Lithuania’s borders, which Kaunas and Warsaw understood as support for Lithuania’s claims to Wilno, taken by Poland after Żeligowski’s mutiny in 1920. Poland wanted Moscow, in extending the pact, to distance itself explicitly from that declaration.

The compromise was recorded in the final protocol. Having re-examined the provisions of the Peace of Riga, which remained the basis of their relations, the two sides stated that they had no obligations and were bound by no declarations inconsistent with the treaty, in particular with its Article 3. That article provided that territorial questions between Poland and Lithuania would be settled by those two states. The Soviet government confirmed that Chicherin’s note “cannot be interpreted” as an intention to interfere in the settlement of the territorial questions it mentioned. This was an indirect but unmistakable withdrawal of support for Lithuania over Wilno.

What was extended

The protocol itself consisted of two articles. The first provided that the pact of 25 July 1932 would remain in force until 31 December 1945. Either party could give notice six months before that date. If neither did so, the pact would be renewed automatically for a further two years, and so on each time. The content of the pact itself was unchanged: both sides still renounced aggression against each other and undertook not to assist an aggressor and not to take part in agreements directed against the other party. The second article dealt with ratification. The Central Executive Committee of the USSR ratified the protocol on 25 May and the President of Poland on 15 June; the next day the instruments were exchanged in Warsaw and the protocol came into force.

Significance

The extension of the pact was the high point of Piłsudski’s policy of balance. Within a few months Poland had obtained ten-year undertakings from both its great neighbours not to use force, without giving either of them any commitment directed against the other. In Warsaw it was believed that this gave the state time to grow stronger. Piłsudski himself was not so sure. In the spring and autumn of 1934 he instructed his generals and diplomats to assess which of the two neighbours would become dangerous sooner, and, according to those present, he predicted that the agreements would hold for a few years at most.

Poland declined to take part in further Soviet and French projects, above all the Eastern Pact proposed from mid-1934 by the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou. It feared that mutual assistance under such a pact would give the Red Army the right to march across its territory. The refusal worsened relations with Moscow and Paris, and in September 1938, during the Sudeten crisis, the Soviet Union even threatened to denounce the pact. It nevertheless remained formally in force, and in November 1938 the two governments reaffirmed it in a joint communiqué.

The date of 31 December 1945 was written into a protocol that remained in force for less than five years. On 23 August 1939 Molotov signed a pact with Joachim von Ribbentrop with a secret protocol dividing Poland, and on 17 September 1939 the Red Army invaded Poland. The Soviet government announced that the Polish state had “ceased to exist”, and with it the agreements concluded with it had lapsed. Wilno, too – the city over which Moscow had promised in 1934 not to interfere – was handed over to Lithuania by the Soviet Union itself in October 1939, only to be taken a few months later together with the whole country.