The Polish–Soviet non-aggression pact

On 25 July 1932 in Moscow the Polish envoy Stanisław Patek and the Soviet Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Nikolai Krestinsky signed the Polish–Soviet non-aggression pact. Both sides undertook not to attack each other, not to aid an aggressor should either of them be attacked by a third state, and not to take part in agreements hostile to each other. The pact was concluded for three years, with automatic renewal for two more. The negotiations, begun in 1926, had lasted on and off for six years. In Warsaw the treaty was regarded as one of the greatest successes of Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s diplomacy. Seven years later the Soviet Union broke it by invading Poland alongside Germany.

Six years of negotiations

The foundation of Polish–Soviet relations was the Peace of Riga of 18 March 1921, which ended the Polish–Soviet War and fixed Poland’s eastern border. Moscow never truly accepted it, and Poland was its most dangerous neighbour in the west: an ally of France and Romania, and the country that in 1920 had halted the Red Army’s march on Europe.

The first talks on a non-aggression pact began in 1926, the same year in which Germany and the USSR concluded the Treaty of Berlin. From the start the two sides were divided by a fundamental difference. Moscow proposed bilateral treaties. Warsaw, followed by the Baltic states and Romania, wanted a collective agreement, or at least simultaneous treaties with all the USSR’s western neighbours, so that the Kremlin could not play them off one by one. In 1927 the talks were broken off by the crisis in Soviet–British relations and the assassination of Pyotr Voykov in Warsaw. In February 1929 Poland signed the Litvinov Protocol, which brought the Kellogg–Briand Pact into force between the USSR and its western neighbours but contained no specific obligations.

The matter was taken up again in 1931. On 10 August France initialled its own pact with the USSR and wanted its allies to do the same. Piłsudski, who pursued a policy of balance between Berlin and Moscow, concluded that an agreement with the USSR would strengthen Poland’s position towards Germany, where revisionism and the National Socialist movement were gaining strength. Moscow was interested too. After the Mukden incident and the Japanese entry into Manchuria, the Soviet Union had to reckon with a threat in the Far East and needed calm on its western border during the first Five-Year Plan. At the end of 1931 Patek opened talks in Moscow, supervised in Warsaw by Deputy Foreign Minister Józef Beck. Poland demanded explicit confirmation of the Treaty of Riga and a precise definition of aggression. On 25 January 1932 the text of the pact was initialled.

Six months of waiting

Six months passed between initialling and signature. Poland did not want to conclude the pact until its ally Romania had obtained a similar treaty. With the Baltic states things went easily: Finland signed its pact on 21 January, Latvia on 5 February and Estonia on 4 May 1932. Romanian–Soviet talks, however, foundered on Bessarabia. The Soviet Union did not recognise its union with Romania in 1918 and would not accept wording that would amount to abandoning its claims, while Bucharest would not sign anything that confirmed those claims.

In the summer of 1932 Warsaw stopped waiting. Polish diplomats concluded that further delay would not help Romania but would harm Poland, whose relations with Germany were rapidly deteriorating. A Polish–German customs war had been going on since 1925, and German governments, democratic ones included, openly demanded a revision of the border, especially in Pomerania. On 30 May 1932 Heinrich Brüning’s government fell, and the cabinet of Franz von Papen, backed by the army, courted the National Socialists, who a few days after the signing, in the election of 31 July, became the strongest party in the Reichstag. In the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk) a dispute was growing over the right of Polish warships to use the port. In June 1932 Piłsudski sent the destroyer ORP Wicher there to greet a visiting British squadron, with orders to open fire if the city authorities insulted the Polish flag. At the same time Poland was unsure of France, which since the Locarno Treaties had been seeking an understanding with Germany and, at the disarmament conference in Geneva, was inclined to make concessions to Germany’s demand for equal rights in armaments. All this argued for securing the eastern flank. On 25 July Patek and Krestinsky signed in Moscow. In Bucharest the decision was received with bitterness.

What was agreed

The pact had a preamble and eight articles. The preamble stated that the Treaty of Riga “remains the basis” of mutual relations and obligations, and that the pact itself was to develop and supplement the Paris treaty of 1928. Article 1 bound the parties to refrain from any aggressive action against or attack on each other, whether alone or jointly with other states. It declared contrary to this obligation any act of violence infringing the integrity and inviolability of the territory or the political independence of the other party, “even if such acts are committed without a declaration of war and avoiding all its possible manifestations”. For the Polish side, one purpose was to rule out a situation in which the USSR started a war without formally declaring it, on the pretext of “aiding” insurgents or “protecting” the population.

Article 2 provided that if one party were attacked by a third state or group of states, the other would give the aggressor no direct or indirect assistance for the whole duration of the conflict. If, however, one of the parties itself attacked a third state, the other could denounce the pact without notice. Article 3 prohibited participation in agreements “clearly hostile from the aggressive point of view” to the other party, and Article 4 stipulated that the pact did not affect the parties’ earlier obligations, provided these contained no element of aggression. This provision protected Poland’s alliances with France and Romania. Disputes that could not be settled diplomatically were to go to a conciliation commission under a separate convention. The pact was concluded for three years, with automatic renewal for two years unless either party denounced it six months before it expired. Two additional protocols stated that the expiry or denunciation of the pact would not release the parties from their obligations under the Paris treaty, and that there were no significant differences between them on the conciliation convention.

Ratification

The conciliation convention was signed in Moscow in November 1932. The President of Poland ratified the pact on 26 November, and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR a day later. On 29 November 1932 France signed its own pact with the USSR, closing the series of agreements of 1932. The instruments of ratification were exchanged in Warsaw on 23 December 1932, and the pact entered into force that day. In January 1933 it was registered with the Secretariat of the League of Nations.

In the meantime the head of Polish diplomacy had changed. At the beginning of November 1932 August Zaleski stepped down, and Józef Beck, a trusted associate of Piłsudski, became Foreign Minister. Beck saw the pact as part of a policy of “equal distance”: Poland was to bind itself neither to Germany against the USSR nor to the USSR against Germany.

Two assessments

In Poland the pact was received as a success. Moscow had confirmed the Treaty of Riga in writing in a separate agreement and undertaken not to use force against Poland, even in the form of an “undeclared war”. Poland kept its alliances and made no commitments to the USSR concerning Germany. The treaty also strengthened its position towards Berlin, where the pact was received with displeasure because it undermined the long-held belief that Poland was at odds with both its neighbours. According to some historians, it laid the groundwork for the agreement with Germany reached a year and a half later.

Soviet diplomats saw the pact above all as securing the western border while Japan posed a threat, and as a means of isolating Poland from any anti-Soviet schemes. Significantly, the treaty contained no recognition by Moscow of Poland’s policy towards Lithuania and the Wilno region, which became a subject of negotiation two years later.

Significance

The 1932 pact opened a short period of improved Polish–Soviet relations. A year later, on 3 July 1933, the two states signed in London the Convention for the Definition of Aggression, drafted by Maxim Litvinov, which described even more precisely what constituted aggression. On 5 May 1934 the pact was extended to 31 December 1945. At the same time Warsaw had no intention of going further. It rejected Soviet proposals for joint guarantees to the Baltic states and for participation in planned pacts of mutual assistance, judging that any alliance with the USSR would sooner or later mean the presence of the Red Army on Polish soil.

During the Sudeten crisis (PL), on 23 September 1938, the Soviet government warned Poland that if its troops entered Czechoslovakia, it would regard the pact as denounced. Poland nevertheless occupied Zaolzie, and Moscow did not denounce the pact. At the end of November 1938 the two governments issued a joint communiqué stating that all existing agreements, including the 1932 pact, remained the basis of their relations. As late as 2 June 1939 the new Soviet ambassador in Warsaw, Nikolai Sharonov, gave assurances of its durability.

On 23 August 1939 Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop signed in Moscow a pact whose secret protocol divided Poland between Germany and the USSR. It was an act contrary to all Moscow’s obligations towards Poland, above all to Article 3 of the 1932 pact. When Germany attacked Poland on 1 September, the Soviet Union not only failed to keep the neutrality required of it by Article 2 but on 17 September 1939 attacked Poland itself. In the early hours the Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vladimir Potemkin read to Ambassador Wacław Grzybowski a note stating that the Polish state had ceased to exist, and with it all the agreements concluded with it. Grzybowski refused to accept it. The Soviet invasion of Poland violated the non-aggression pact, the Treaty of Riga, the Litvinov Protocol, the Convention for the Definition of Aggression and the Covenant of the League of Nations. An undertaking meant to protect Poland in the east did not survive the first test in which Moscow judged that it had more to gain by breaking it than by keeping it.