ABSTRACT
Soviet Russia's participation in the pact with the Nazis, as well as its alternating periods of friendship and hostility toward the Western democracies, are sometimes considered enigmatic and mysterious. However, sudden changes from friendship to hostility are familiar features of international relationships and are by no means confined to the diplomatic history of the Soviet Union. The major developments in the international field that faced the Soviet Union after the establishment of Stalin's internal leadership were the rise of Germany and Japan as expansionist states. Some of the pressures to abandon the fratricidal conflict appeared when a German Social Democratic publication broached the possibility of reaching an agreement just before Hitler suppressed the Party. By 1939 this system of paper ramparts lay in ruins, and the Russians found it expedient to ally themselves, at least temporarily, with Nazi Germany, their major diplomatic antagonist.
