Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

As Ribbentrop was returning to Molotov’s office for an evening session of talks, however, he had the opportunity to see the other side of Soviet hospitality. Waiting in an anteroom with his entourage, he encountered the Estonian foreign minister, Karl Selter, as he was leaving a meeting with Molotov. The two certainly knew one another; Selter had been in Berlin only four months earlier to sign a nonaggression pact with Ribbentrop. Yet, their chance meeting in Moscow was certainly more strained. History does not record whether the two exchanged anything other than the usual diplomatic platitudes, but Selter had a hunted look—and for good reason.

It was Selter’s second visit to Moscow that week. A tall, seasoned diplomat, considered one of the ablest politicians in the Estonian government, he had trained as a lawyer before entering politics and held a number of ministerial and diplomatic posts prior to being appointed foreign minister the previous year. This would be his sternest test. In his September 24 meeting with Molotov, Selter had expected to sign a new trade treaty with the USSR, but instead the Soviet foreign commissar had wanted to discuss political matters. Soviet-Estonian relations were in something of a crisis, with the Estonians still unsettled by the potential meaning of the Nazi-Soviet Pact for them and the Soviets agitated by the ongoing war. To add to the tensions, the previous week, the Polish submarine Orzeł had escaped from Tallinn harbor, and Moscow was aggrieved, arguing that the Estonian authorities should have done more to detain the vessel. In response to this perceived “provocation,” Red Army troops had been massed on Estonia’s eastern border, and the Red Air Force was overflying Estonian airspace, apparently carrying out reconnaissance.

When Molotov met Selter for talks that evening in the Kremlin, therefore, the mood was commensurately fraught. Molotov began by airing his concerns about the implications of the recent Orzeł crisis for Soviet security, claiming that the Estonian government was either unwilling or unable to “keep order in its country” and demanding guarantees to the contrary, embodied in the proposal of a mutual assistance pact. Selter gamely replied that there were no shortcomings in Estonia’s ability to keep order and that the suggested pact was unnecessary and unwanted by the Estonian people and would impair Estonian sovereignty. Molotov was unmoved, however, assuring Selter that the pact with the Soviet Union would bring no perils. “We are not going to force Communism on Estonia,” he said, adding, “Estonia will retain her independence, her government, parliament, foreign and domestic policy, army and economic system. We are not going to touch all this.” When Selter protested further, Molotov cut to the chase: “The Soviet Union is now a great power whose interests need to be taken into consideration. If you do not want to conclude a mutual assistance pact with us, then we will have to guarantee our security in other ways, perhaps more drastic, perhaps more complicated. I ask you: do not compel us to use force against Estonia.”

If Selter had the impression of being a mouse caught in the claws of a playfully malevolent cat, he would not have been far wrong. Requesting leave to discuss the Soviet “proposal” with his government, he was told that the matter “cannot be delayed,” and a direct telephone line to Tallinn was produced. Selter protested that such delicate discussions could not be carried out in that way and asked that he be permitted to return to the Estonian capital the following day. As he left, Molotov told him, “I advise you to yield to the wishes of the Soviet Union in order to avoid something worse.”

An hour after leaving the Kremlin, Molotov’s office telephoned Selter, requesting another meeting at midnight the same evening. This time, he was presented with a unilateral Soviet draft of the disputed “mutual assistance pact” and badgered into a discussion of the locations—including Tallinn—that might be “of interest to the Soviet Union” as possible military bases. Once again, Molotov hectored him on the urgency of the matter and the inadvisability of any delay, adding that the agreement was “ready for signature.”

Returning to Tallinn the next day, Selter discussed the Soviet proposal with his cabinet colleagues. German diplomatic circles were also sounded out, but their response—that Estonia was essentially on its own—caused consternation. Given the nonaggression pact made with Germany in June 1939, the Estonian cabinet was justified in expecting some assistance from the Germans when faced with blatant Soviet intimidation. German inaction, therefore, tended to confirm what some of them already feared: that the political constellation had shifted with the signing of the pact between Hitler and Stalin, and Estonia was being cut adrift. Despite some defiant rhetoric, sober pragmatism was the order of the day, and Selter was dispatched again to Moscow with instructions to conclude the best terms possible with the Soviet Union. The alternative was unthinkable: “To refuse the Soviet proposal,” President Konstantin Päts intoned, “would mean to knowingly send the entire Estonian people to their death.”

Yet, when Selter returned to Moscow on September 27—accompanied, rather superfluously, by two Estonian experts on international law—he found that the goalposts had already shifted. Just as the Soviet foreign minister had exploited the case of the Orzeł to undermine the Estonian position three days earlier, Molotov now used the alleged sinking of the Soviet merchantman Metallist in the Baltic, the previous day, to undermine Selter once again. On the unsubstantiated claim that the Metallist had been sunk by the Orzeł , Molotov asserted that the previous proposals were no longer sufficient: Soviet security now required additional Estonian concessions.

In response to Selter’s protestations of his country’s innocence in the affair, Molotov called upon Stalin himself to join the discussion. The Soviet leader showed his avuncular side upon entering the room soon after, joking with the Estonians, but he quickly got down to business. Once apprised of the essentials, he stated ominously, “What is there to argue about? Our proposal stands and that must be understood.” What passed for negotiations continued for the next couple hours, the Soviets insisting on placing 35,000 Red Army troops in Estonia to “protect order” and demanding a base in Tallinn itself, and the Estonians desperately trying to resist while sticking to the diplomatic niceties that their opponents had long since abandoned. Browbeaten, berated, and bullied, the Estonian delegates returned the following day having decided that they had no choice but to yield. Yet, with Ribbentrop waiting in the wings, they were again met with additional demands and the threat that “other possibilities” existed for ensuring Soviet security. The mutual assistance pact was finally signed at midnight on September 28 and ratified by the Estonian president a week later. Nominally, the treaty obliged both parties to respect each other’s independence; yet, by allowing for the establishment of Soviet military bases on Estonian soil, it fatally undermined Estonian sovereignty. Estonia was effectively at Stalin’s mercy.

IF THE ESTONIANS HAD THOUGHT THAT THEY WERE ALONE IN THEIR tortuous negotiations with the Soviets, they were mistaken. They were just the first on the list. Once the treaty with Estonia had been settled, Moscow’s focus turned to the other countries promised to it by the secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the follow-up agreement signed by Ribbentrop. Stalin was putting down a marker, as much for Berlin’s attention as for the rest of the world, that the Baltic states were now under his “protection.”