ABSTRACT
Stalin told the Eighteenth Party Congress (10-21 March 1939) that the second imperialist war had become ‘a fact’. Its distinguishing feature, he said, was the absence of a declared war. Germany, Italy and Japan had engaged in aggression against Abyssinia, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and China, Britain, France and the United States were holding back, waiting for and ‘to some extent’ encouraging the aggressors to become deeply embroiled, particularly in China and against the Soviet Union. Reverting to the two-track policy he had formulated at the 1934 congress, he said, ‘We stand for peace and the strengthening of business relations with all countries’. The Soviet Union, he added, stood also for ‘support of nations which are victims of aggression’ and was ‘ready to deal two blows for every blow delivered by instigators of war who attempt to violate the Soviet borders’.1
