Soviet Foreign Policy from the Spanish Civil War to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1936–1939

Having consolidated his power in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin long focused on internal affairs: the Five Year Plans, collectivization of agriculture, rapid industriali- zation, and modernization of the Red Army. Despite his penchant for domestic policy, from the summer of 1936 Stalin’s Soviet Union was increasingly drawn into foreign af- fairs. This article explores Stalin’s foreign policy on the eve of the Second World War. The Soviet Union’s multiple failures in forging an anti-Fascist alliance with Britain and France, most notably in the Spanish Civil War, will be explored as the prelude to Stalin’s eventual decision, in August 1939, to authorize the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.