The Eastern Pact was a Franco-Soviet diplomatic initiative that was discussed from 1933 to 1935. It was imagined as a multilateral defensive treaty, similar in function to the Locarno Treaties, comprising France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Nazi Germany.
History
Origins
Franco-Soviet relations improved in the years prior to Hitler's victory in Germany. In 1932 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with both France and Poland. This was possible due to the weakening of the German-Soviet Rapallo relationship, the prolongation of which in 1931 (Treaty of Berlin) was the last high note in German-Soviet relations. With the rise of Hitler: "The Rapallo relationship between Germany and Russia collapsed […].[1] Germany, the USSR's most important ally in the capitalist world in the 1920s, had become the object of Soviet encirclement and confrontation".[2] This was a pretty big hit to the Soviet economy as by 1932 almost half of Soviet imports came from Germany.[3] In the view of this, the reorientation to France and western powers was the only pragmatic way to avoid diplomatic isolation.
Early Negotiations
Paul-Boncour and Litvinov, the French and Soviet foreign ministers respectively, met in Geneva just as Germany left the League of Nations in October of 1933. "Secret meetings began to be held immediately, and in spite of early differences, by the end of December the Soviet ambassador was able to present Paul-Boncour with a written draft. This was to form the basis for the negotiations over the Eastern Pact."[4] A month later the Soviet Union adopted the policy of Collective Security, officially ending the German-Soviet Rapallo relations.[5]