By Krishna Jha
It was June 22, 1941, when the Nazi forces started attacking the Soviet Union. It was a strategy to shift the burden of war and resolve the inter-imperialist conflicts at the cost of Soviet Union. Imperialism was keen to decide the eternal contradiction that always evolved in capitalism whenever socio-economic forces moved towards establishing a socialist system. Dialectics was also explicit in the imperialist initiative to prepare for war and also pursue the policy of appeasement with rivals. The purpose was to isolate the Soviet Union in the face of fascist challenge.
The Munich Agreement of September 1938 was one such example. British and French governments offered Czechoslovakia to satiate Germany’s expansionist cravings. It was revealed in the 18th congress of the CPSU that the areas of Czechoslovakia were ceded as the price for an undertaking to start war against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union condemned the Munich Deal as a crude act of violence against Czechoslovakia and also as a flagrant violation of International law.
The threat of war was getting intensified as the policy of appeasement encouraged the fascist countries to new acts of aggression. On March 15, 1939, Germany liquidated the state of Czechoslovakia. On March 21, Hitler demanded Danzig (Gdansk) to be incorporated. The very next day, Nazi army invaded Lithuanian town of Klaipeda. On April 7, 1939, Italy, led by Mussolini attacked Albania.
Though the Soviet state was in the process of building up the socialist society, it had taken up the task of defeating the fascist forces also from further devastation. An attempt was also made not only to stop the fast growing forces of the right, but also to restrain the initiatives to forge the formidable formation of anti –Soviet front. There was not a single state there to stretch a helping hand towards the suffering humanity under Fascist siege. In the days of Munich pact, it was the socialist state of Soviet Union alone that came up to help Czechoslovakia, that too without getting asked for.
President of Czechoslovakia did not ask Soviet Union for it, yet the latter had protested strongly against the fascist attack and opposed sharply the occupation of Czech lands by the German Reich. Soviet Union declared in no uncertain terms its refusal to recognize the step. It was also strongly trying to persuade the French and British governments to step in and take joint action to restrain the barbaric advance of fascism. It was also trying to build up a treaty of mutual assistance, also to be followed by military convention.
However, the efforts failed as no European country was willing to join it. Instead, France and Britain tried everything to put a deadlock to this initiative. In the spring and summer of 1939, secret Anglo-German negotiations had taken place to reach an agreement with fascist Germany to share the areas of influence at a world scale. But the initiatives were cold shouldered by Germany.
The fascist Germany had already assessed the strength of the European countries and decided to aim its first attack on them only. No more persuaded to have agreements, Germany turned to its own clan and attacked the rival capitalist countries. The very first target was Poland. On September 1, 1939, the fascist armies were moving into Poland. It was now a great dilemma for the British and French, as they were both committed to guarantee the security of Poland. The result was they both had to attack fascist Germany.
It was the declaration of Second World War. Interestingly, it was a revealing moment as the contradiction of capitalism came out in the open when the bourgeois-democratic states too stood up for capitalism itself as against fascism. In the thick of all these complexities, there was the socialist system standing against the imperialism. Efforts of Germany to dominate the entire world were resisted by every other section including its own clan. But this was also true that after the world war was declared, Britain and France did not take a single military initiative against fascist Germany.
Consequences of this historical calamity were beyond even imagination. The occupied regions where lived the enslaved people were subjected to savage terror. Hitler had constructed a new system, which was an impossible task that the entire human civilization was facing. The entire world was witness to a system based on annihilation of all values. Imperialism created an ideal ground for Finance Capital. It was not the same as the first world war of 1914-18.
The existence of the great socialist system was not only shielding the rest of the world against all these aberrations but also spreading its own influence zone. The East European countries are the examples of the same where a new dimension of Socialism blossomed up. It was the social democracy, defined by Lenin as the first step towards socialism, which was the contribution of the great leader towards Marxism. (IPA Service)
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