ABSTRACT
The new Politburo elected by the Eighteenth Pan-Russian Congress of the Party was composed of men whose devotion to Stalin was complete. All had accepted his authority like an oracle which as often as not is silent. The situation created in Central Europe by the disappearance of Czechoslovakia should have incited all the governments to take up their final positions. But Stalin no longer believed in the sincerity of the West. His instincts put him on his guard against the foreigner; his realism orientated him in accordance with the rules of Marxist historical realism. The Germano-Soviet pact was signed. Stalin was pledging himself during a period of international activity of exceptional complexity, in the course of which he would try to maintain as long as possible the Russo-German mariage de raison, while yielding nothing in the various disputes which arose during the logical development of the opposition of German and Russian interests.
