The presentation of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Finland and the declaration of war on a small country against the will of the "world community" in 1939 led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations.
The presentation of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Finland and the declaration of war on a small country against the will of the "world community" in 1939 led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. Disappeared, as I.V. Stalin, the last "hillock on the way to at least somewhat complicating the cause of war and to some extent facilitating the cause of peace." The leader was right: soon the Second World War (1939-1945) swept the planet. This is a very common view of events. It is fundamentally wrong.
The League of Nations, the forerunner of the modern UN, was created by the victors of World War I at the Paris Conference of 1919-1920. initiated by US President Wilson. He dreamed of uniting different countries enough to rule out the possibility new war. However, the League was arranged with such obvious dictates of England and France that the US itself refused to enter it. The 33 countries of the Entente that founded the League of Nations and the 13 states that were the first to be invited to join it saw in this organization a way to formalize the redivision of the world by issuing new owners of mandates for colonies and to consolidate the Versailles system of oppression of the defeated countries. The 26-point Charter of the League of Nations was included in all treaties concluded after the war. The League guaranteed "perpetual" peace on the basis of the inviolability of borders and protectorates arbitrarily established by the victors.
The mistake of the organizers of the League was that they saw the world as unipolar, wholly owned by the winners with a corresponding subordination among them. However, it was difficult only through reparations and sending expeditionary forces to consolidate a system in which 7 out of 10 inhabitants of the Earth were actually turned into slaves, and borders arbitrarily drawn through nation states, made almost 17 million people national minorities. The Entente interventionists have broken their teeth on Russia. With the support of Russia, Turkey, already sentenced to death, rose up under the leadership of the Young Turks and expelled the invaders. The world was engulfed in riots.
A special dissonance was created by the defeated or thrown out of the number of winners in the division of booty. the developed countries. England and France included as permanent members in the Council of the League Japan, dissatisfied with the acquisitions, deprived of new lands and colonies, Italy, as well as Germany cut off on all sides, which lost 8% of the German population and 75% of ore reserves. Japan was resolutely preparing for conquests, in Italy the fascists came to power under the slogan of redividing the world. The Germans, plunged into poverty by the war, were robbed and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles so cruelly that, as soon as a new generation grew up, they almost unanimously followed the one who promised to take revenge on the victors and wash away the shame with blood.
In the West, they seriously believed that Hitler, who came to power in 1933, like an obedient sheep dog, would rush to the USSR without returning to Germany the German lands torn away by the Treaty of Versailles. However, in the same 1933, Germany and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, promising their peoples to divide the world fairly. In 1935, Italy was offended: in violation of secret agreements, England and France passed a decision in the League of Nations on its economic blockade for aggression against Ethiopia (a member of this organization since 1923). Having joined the League in September 1933, the USSR supported the blockade. And the United States passed a "neutrality law" that allowed anyone to trade with anyone they saw fit to support. For example, the rebels in Spain, where the legal republic was strangled by the blockade of the League of Nations.
In the camp of the victors, the division of the world caused a hidden struggle. France secretly supported Turkey against England, and that - Syria against France. England and Italy tried to undermine the dominance of France in Central and Southern Europe. The United States made every effort to restore the military-industrial potential of Germany, and President Roosevelt was happy to learn about the outbreak of World War II, in which Europe was to suffer terrible damage by handing over markets to the depressed States. However, both England and France reacted “with understanding” to the fascist regimes that arose one after another, believing that their revanchist aspirations could be satisfied at the expense of the USSR.
Following Ethiopia and Spain surrendered to the Nazis, the League of Nations gave Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, and almost all of China to the Japanese. Aggression crept to the borders of the USSR. But Chamberlain could not agree with Hitler on the division of Eastern Europe, the USSR and China. Soon, on August 23, 1939, Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol delimiting the interests of Germany and the USSR along the line of their collision "all the way from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea." On September 1, Hitler attacked Poland, on the 3rd - Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, on September 17 Soviet troops they went to occupy the part of Poland allotted to them, that is, they joined the act, which the League of Nations finally recognized as aggression.
But the “expulsion” of the USSR from the League of Nations after the attack on Finland on November 30, 1939, is associated with the outbreak of a world war only in the minds of the West. Having declared war but not started, England and France tried to intimidate Hitler with the prospect of a fight with the entire clan of victors, hastening to point to a “weaker” and no longer covered by the aegis of the League enemy. After all, Hitler, together with England, France, the USA and others, selflessly armed Finland and prepared it for a coalition war against the USSR. And the "Western democracies" under the pretext of a "strange war" abandoned Finland in the same way as the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, which they pledged to protect. Not foreseeing violations by the allies of treaties on military assistance and the supply of weapons, the Finns did not bow to Stalin. For the USSR and Finland, the war turned into a senseless murder.
However, the military-political pressure on Hitler and the indication to him of a new "rogue country" had the opposite effect. The Fuhrer was no less willing to "surrender" Finland to Stalin and was pleased that he was bogged down in it. At the moment the USSR was expelled from the League of Nations, Hitler already had a plan to strike at the most dangerous enemy in his opinion, and week after week he postponed it until spring solely on weather conditions. Blitzkrieg brought the League of Nations to an end. On its basis, the utterly defeated "masters of Europe" could not even try to attract the only powerful anti-fascist force left on the continent - the USSR - into the coalition. However, the apparatus of the League of Nations existed comfortably in Geneva until the formal dissolution of the League in 1946.
The United Nations, established as a result of the Second World War, also pursued the goal of “forever” fixing the division of the world. But the new rulers belonged to different socio-political systems, moreover, at the suggestion of the USSR, France and China, which were then weak, were introduced into the number of permanent members of the Security Council. The UN performed peacekeeping functions in the bipolar system international relations, thanks to which the old colonial empires crumbled and many small countries imagined themselves protected by international law. It rested only on the nuclear confrontation and collapsed along with the USSR. Now the NATO troops on the continent are being energetically replaced by the army of the United Europe. And the US has a chance to win the third world war, as the Romans loved - "exclusively by intimidation."
Formed as a result of the First World War, the League of Nations was supposed to serve a good purpose - to maintain peace throughout the world. But formulated the mighty of the world these tasks were, in fact, impossible. And there are many reasons for this: some call the imperfection of the Versailles-Washington system, ambitions in some states and revanchist sentiments in others among the main ones, and so on.
One of the fundamental instruments of influence on the alleged aggressor was to be economic sanctions.
It was assumed that the states that were members of the League of Nations would break off all financial relations with the aggressor. Certain parallels with this old concept, if desired, can be traced even now. However, very quickly the members of the League of Nations, and especially its founders, began to act solely in their own interests, ignoring the previous guidelines and agreements. Thus, the United States was not a member of the League of Nations, since the Senate refused to ratify the organization's charter.
Over time, the prestige of the League of Nations only continued to decline. As well as her influence. This was due to the fact that the organization was unable to solve the urgent problems of many states, turning into an arena for the struggle for dominance between Great Britain and France.
“... Podkolesin tragically asked:
- Why are you silent, like the League of Nations?
“I was very frightened of Chamberlain,” Stepan replied ... "
- wrote in the immortal "Twelve Chairs" and.
The satirical novel was written in 1927. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations only seven years later, in 1934. But long before that, in many countries, including the Soviet Union, there was a perception of the League of Nations as a purely symbolic and useless institution.
Vladimir Lenin especially disliked the League of Nations. Ilyich believed that it "bears all the features of its origin from the world war" and "is saturated through and through with the absence of anything resembling real chances for peaceful cohabitation" of states. Not afraid of the League of Nations and Joseph Stalin, in early December 1939, went to war with Finland.
Not much time passed - already on December 14, the League of Nations decided to expel the USSR from its ranks. The corresponding decision was taken by the Council of the League of Nations on the basis of a resolution adopted by the assembly of the organization. At the same time, the delegates of Greece, China and Yugoslavia abstained from voting, and the delegates of Iran and Peru did not attend the meeting at all. The League of Nations violated its own rules - only 7 of the 15 members of the Council voted for the exclusion of the USSR, which, however, did not prevent the decision from being implemented.
Reaction Soviet Union didn't have to wait long.
“In the opinion of Soviet circles, this absurd decision of the League of Nations evokes an ironic smile, and it can only discredit its unlucky authors,” said in a post published the same day.
There was also a place for external enemies: “The ruling circles of England and France, under whose dictation the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations was adopted, have neither a moral nor a formal right to speak about the “aggression” of the USSR and condemn this “aggression”.
“Thus, the League of Nations, by the grace of its current directors, has turned from some kind of “instrument of peace”, as it could be, into a real instrument of the Anglo-French military bloc in supporting and instigating war in Europe,” the document also said.
The League of Nations was dissolved only on April 20, 1946, although it ceased to mean anything much earlier.
- the resolution of the Assembly and the decision of the Council of the League of Nations on the exclusion of the Soviet Union from this international organization with the condemnation of "the actions of the USSR directed against the Finnish state", namely: for unleashing a war with Finland. It took place on December 14, 1939 at the Palais des Nations, the headquarters of the League in Geneva (Switzerland).
Mr Secretary General,
The USSR, with which Finland maintained good neighborly relations since the signing of the peace treaty in Tartu in 1920 and signed a non-aggression pact, which expired only in 1945, suddenly attacked on the morning of November 30 of this year not only border positions, but also and on the open Finnish cities, sowing death and devastation among civilian population especially air attacks.
Finland has never done anything against its powerful neighbor. She did not stop making the greatest efforts to live in peace with him. Nevertheless, referring to the alleged refusal of Finland to agree to the so-called border incidents and blaming Finland for the alleged refusal to agree to the strengthening of the security of Leningrad, the USSR first denounces the non-aggression pact mentioned above and then refuses the offer of the Finnish government to resort to the mediation of any neutral power .
At the direction of my Government, I have the honor to bring the foregoing to your attention with a request that you be so kind as to convene immediately, by virtue of Articles 11 and 15 of the Covenant, the Council and the Assembly and ask them to accept all necessary measures to stop the aggression. I shall not fail to give you a full account of the reasons and circumstances which led my Government to ask for the intervention of the League of Nations in a conflict which brought two of its members into conflict.
REFERENCE
1.The League of nations— international organization, founded as a result of the Versailles-Washington system of the Versailles Agreement in 1919-1920. Between September 28, 1934 and February 23, 1935, the League of Nations included 58 member states.
2. September 15, 1934 at the initiative of France30 member countries turned to the USSR with a proposal to join the League. September 18In 1934, the Soviet Union accepted this proposal and took the place of a permanent member of its Council.
3. The goals of the League of Nations included: disarmament, prevention of hostilities, ensuring collective security, settlement of disputes between countries through diplomatic negotiations, as well as improving the quality of life on the planet.
4. The basic principles of a peaceful community of nations were formulated in 1795Immanuel Kant, who in his political-philosophical treatise "Towards Eternal Peace"described the cultural and philosophical foundations of the future unification of peoples and thus expressed the idea of the League of Nations, which could control conflict situations and make efforts to preserve and strengthen peace between states.
5. The League of Nations was liquidated on April 20, 1946, when its assets and liabilities were transferred to UN.
It is believed that the Soviet bombing of Helsinki on September 30, 1939 provoked a protest from the world political elite and led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. Meanwhile, there are documents in the Russian archives showing that the commander of the DB-3 bomber squadron, Nikolai Tokarev, did not receive an order to drop bombs on the streets of Helsinki.
November 30, 1939 - the date of the start of the Soviet military invasion of Finland. 2 days before, the Finnish envoy to the Soviet Union, Irie-Koskinen, was handed a government note, which spoke of the denunciation of the non-aggression pact previously concluded between Finland and the USSR. The note stated that the Soviet Union did not intend to leave unanswered the aggressive actions of the Finnish side, which was systematically firing artillery on Soviet territory.
On the first day of the war, the Air Force squadron of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet dropped a total of 10.5 tons of bombs on Helsinki. However, according to the documents of the Russian State Archive of the Navy, her combat mission was not the bombing of the Finnish capital at all - Soviet pilots were ordered to reconnoiter the location of the coastal defense battleships of the Finnish Navy - Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen - and destroy them.
The first link of naval aviation reconnaissance aircraft lost 2 aircraft shot down by Finnish anti-aircraft gunners. Only the second link managed to detect the armadillos in the first hour of the day. They stood north of the island of Ruissalo (the base of Hanko). The DB-3 bombs were dropped, but they did not hit the targets. When the squadron of Nikolai Tokarev arrived at the place 2 hours later to bombard again, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen were no longer there. There was no way to search for battleships again - the weather was getting worse and evening was approaching.
The directive of the Air Force Directorate of the Baltic Fleet dated November 18, 1939 clearly prescribed alternate targets for bombers in a similar situation: ships and defensive structures of the naval base. The flag navigator of Tokarev's squadron, Pyotr Khokhlov, later wrote in his memoirs that "there were no spare targets for them [then]", and the commander ordered to go "to the most important target." The operational report of the Baltic Fleet Air Force Headquarters dated November 30 indicates that the port of Helsinki was a backup target for Tokarev's squadron, which was bombed from a height of one and a half thousand meters. According to official data, as a result, 2 warships caught fire, as well as 4 and 5-story port buildings.
Inspired by reports of the suspension of the membership of the Russian delegation in PACE and voices heard about leaving the pan-European structures, the analogies of LG-PACE, Finland-Novorossia arise. Although in 1939 the war was fought by the USSR, and now there is a maximum supply of weapons .
TASS message.
TASS is authorized to convey the following assessment by authoritative Soviet circles of the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations of December 14 on the "exclusion" of the USSR from the League of Nations.
On December 14, the Council of the League of Nations adopted a resolution on the "expulsion" of the USSR from the League of Nations, condemning "the actions of the USSR directed against the State of Finland."
In the opinion of Soviet circles, this absurd decision of the League of Nations evokes an ironic smile and can only discredit its hapless authors.
First of all, it should be emphasized that the ruling circles of England and France, under whose dictation the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations was adopted, have neither a moral nor a formal right to speak about the "aggression" of the USSR and condemn this "aggression". England and France hold in their subordination the vast territories they have long seized in Asia and Africa. They quite recently resolutely rejected Germany's peace proposals, which tended to end the war as soon as possible. They build their policy on the continuation of the war "to a victorious end." These circumstances alone, revealing the aggressive policy of the ruling circles of England and France, should have forced them to be more modest in defining aggression and finally understand that the ruling circles of England and France have deprived themselves of both the moral and formal right to talk about someone else's "aggression" and, moreover, about "aggression" from the USSR.
It should further be noted that relations between the Soviet Union and Finland are regulated by the Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship, concluded on December 2 of this year. between the People's Government of the Finnish Democratic Republic and the government of the USSR. These treaties fully ensured peaceful relations between the USSR and Finland and resolved in a friendly manner to the satisfaction of both parties, both the issues of ensuring the independence of Finland and the security of Leningrad, and the issues of expanding the territory of Finland at the expense of the territory of the USSR by reuniting the Karelian regions with Finland. As is known, under this treaty the USSR transfers to Finland 70,000 square kilometers with a population of more than 100,000 people in exchange for the territory of Finland in the amount of less than 4,000 kilometers with a population of about 25,000 people. If the seizure of foreign territory and the forcible subjugation of the population of this territory to a foreign state is the main element of the concept of aggression, then it cannot be denied that the treaty between the USSR and the Republic of Finland testifies not to aggression, but, on the contrary, to the peaceful and friendly policy of the USSR towards Finland, which has as its goal ensuring the independence of Finland and strengthening its power by expanding its territory. There can be no doubt that today's England and France would have acted differently in this case, that is, they would simply have taken and seized the territory of Finland, as they seized the territories of India, Indochina, Morocco in their time, or as they seized in 1918 -1919 the territory of the Soviet Union.
Finally, it should be noted that the Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship between the USSR and the Republic of Finland fully ensures peace between these countries. And precisely because this treaty ensures peace and friendship between the two countries, the USSR is not waging and is not interested in waging war with Finland. Only the former, already bankrupt Finnish rulers from the Mannerheim clique do not want the implementation of this treaty and, under the dictation of third powers, impose a war on Finland against the USSR against the real will of the Finnish people. The real meaning of the decision of the Council of the League of Nations lies not in striving for peace and not in supporting the Finnish people, but in supporting the bankrupt Mannerheim clique against the Finnish people and thereby kindling a war in which the Finnish people are involved against their will and by force. provocations of the Mannerheim clique.
Thus, instead of helping to end the war between Germany and the Anglo-French bloc, which, in fact, should be the mission of the League of Nations if it continued to be an "instrument of peace", the current composition of the Council of the League of Nations, having proclaimed a policy of support provocateurs of war in Finland - the clique of Mannerheim and Tanner, took the path of inciting war also in the north-east of Europe.
In this way the League of Nations, by the grace of its current directors, has been transformed from some sort of "instrument of peace" as it could be, into a real instrument of the Anglo-French military bloc to support and foment war in Europe.
With such an inglorious evolution of the League of Nations, its decision to "exclude" the USSR becomes quite understandable. The gentlemen of the imperialists, determined to turn the League of Nations into an instrument of their military interests, decided to find fault with the first opportunity that came across in order to get rid of the USSR as the only force capable of resisting their imperialist machinations and exposing their aggressive policy.
Well, so much the worse for the League of Nations and its undermined authority.
In the final analysis, the USSR may win here. Firstly, he is now relieved of the obligation to bear moral responsibility for the inglorious deeds of the League of Nations, and the responsibility for "leaving the USSR out of the League of Nations" lies entirely with the League of Nations and its Anglo-French directors. Secondly, the USSR is no longer bound to the League of Nations pact and will henceforth have free hands.
Needless to say, the very situation in which the League of Nations resolution directed against the USSR was prepared and adopted exposes the scandalous machinations resorted to by the Anglo-French representatives in the League of Nations to achieve this goal. As is known, the Council of the League of Nations consists of 15 members, but for the resolution on the "exclusion" of the USSR, only 7 votes were cast out of these 15, that is, the resolution was adopted by a minority of the members of the Council of the League. The remaining 8 Council members are either abstaining or absent. The composition of the representatives of the 7 states that voted for the "exclusion" of the USSR speaks for itself: these seven include England, France, Belgium, Bolivia, Egypt, the Union of South Africa, and the Dominican Republic.
Thus, Britain and France, with a total population of 89 million, relying on Belgium, Bolivia, Egypt, the Union of South Africa and the Dominican Republic, which together have a total population of 38 million, decided to "exclude" the Soviet Union, which has a population of 183 million. Randomly selected "representatives" of 127 million people "excluded" the USSR with its 183 million population.
But even in order to obtain these votes, the Anglo-French representatives had to resort on the eve of voting day to special machinations to change the composition of the members of the Council of the League. On the eve of the meetings of the Council, through the Assembly of the League of Nations, were held for members of the Council, for non-permanent seats - representatives of the Union of South Africa and Bolivia (the latter was chosen for the second time) and for the so-called temporary seats - the representative of Egypt. Consequently, from among the seven representatives who voted in the Council of the League for the "exclusion" of the USSR, three representatives were selected in a special way. By these scandalous machinations, the representatives of England and France in the League of Nations finally undermined all political and moral weight of their vote on December 14th.
Undoubtedly, such scandalous machinations could only be dictated by the atmosphere of political reaction and moral decay that now reigns in the "spheres" of the League of Nations.
The value of the decisions of the League of Nations taken in such an atmosphere is not difficult to understand.
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