ABSTRACT
In The Late 1920s, Maxim Litvinov was already de facto commissar for foreign affairs, and in 1930 he formally assumed the position. Immediately after Litvinov’s first experience at the Preparatory Commission in Geneva, he told German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann that he was especially pleased by the German-Soviet cooperation there. The idea for the Litvinov Protocol grew out of events in France, the United States, and, strangely enough, Lithuania. Litvinov explained his plan before Sovnarkom, arguing that his proposal would constitute a large step toward a Soviet-Polish nonaggression treaty, something the Soviet government had first proposed in September 1925. Litvinov singled out British objections to the Soviet state monopoly on foreign trade, clearly feeling that the policy should be accepted by London. Litvinov was called upon to answer the charges of dumping, which he did in an address to the Commission of Enquiry of European Unions on 18 May 1931.
