The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Opposing the Concept of Establishing Unions of States on its Western Borders in 1939–45, as Reported by the Soviet Press

In 1939–40, in the agreements imposed by the Soviet Union by force on Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, these nations were forced to withdraw from the Baltic Entente, and in the agreements of 1940 and 1944, it forbade Finland from joining the Scandinavian states. It also rejected the right of “small states”—Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as Yugoslavia and Greece (1942)—to join plans for regional integration supported by Great Britain. It should be recalled that in the interwar period, the Soviet Union had opposed Aristide Briand’s plan (1929) for a united Europe, which Soviet propaganda called “the holy capitalist alliance”. The Soviet Union policy believed that as a socialist state it resolved national, economic and social problems in the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation between nations. Capitalist states were allegedly incapable of equal unions of states. The Soviet Union described itself as a union of republics which were formally independent and equal states. In fact their independence was superficial, and the republican institutions were strictly controlled by the Communist party and the Soviet secret services. In foreign policy, the concept of Soviet federalism served to justify the successive annexation of neighbouring nations as republics “liberated” by the Red Army. The Soviet goal was to unite Europe, and even the whole world, on the basis of Communist ideology.