ABSTRACT
State interests, communist ideology, and legacies of earlier Italo-Russian confrontation in Northeast Africa whipsawed Soviet policy. Russia's imperial efforts in the region had fallen within the pale of European power politics, and the Soviets suckled the milk of tsarist experience. Building on the agreements of 1933, in mid-1934 Ambassador Boris Shtein assured Rome that the USSR wanted to see Paris and Rome solve their problems as part of the Soviet rapprochement with France and the Little Entente. The Soviets began introducing themselves to the Ethiopians in the early 1920s, when I. A. Zalkind explored the revolutionary and diplomatic opportunities available to the new Soviet State in Africa. Maxim M. Litvinov valued Italian friendship and wanted to keep it; the Italo-Ethiopian dispute in itself did not threaten or even bother the USSR except that it portended threats by Japan or Germany; and Italy was a vital component in collective security.
