The ‘war scare’ of 1927 and the birth of the defence-industry complex

Abstract

The system of international relations formed in the 1920s on the basis of the Versailles peace treaty and the League of Nations protected the USSR — though none too reliably — from military confrontation with the West. The Soviet Union’s security was also reinforced by its emergence from international political isolation through the establishment of diplomatic and consular relations with all the European countries, including those where the Russian White Guard emigration was based. Industrial and financial circles in the West were interested in penetrating the vast Russian market, and therefore turned a blind eye to the subversive activities of the Comintern which was giving moral and material encouragement to extremist political groups throughout the world, and to the calls emanating from Moscow for the international solidarity of the workers and a world proletarian revolution. It was not the communist character of the ruling political regime in the USSR (the West was almost reconciled to this and, recalling the French Revolution, was calmly awaiting the hour of the ‘Russian Thermidor’) but the Soviet government’s attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of colonial and dependent countries that complicated the USSR’s international position. A particular cause of irritation (primarily to Britain and Japan) was Soviet support for the national-democratic revolution in China.