Czechoslovakia and the USSR in 1933 — June 1934: On the Way to Establishing Diplomatic Relations

The subject of the present study is the process of normalisation of the relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in 1933 — June 1934. Regarding the historiography of the problem it should be stressed that in the Russian as well as in the Czech and Slovak historiography exists a considerable part of scientific works which are concerned with this problem. Among them we can mark such works which were written in the 1950s — 1970s by Czechoslovak (A. Ort, V. Moulis, V. Olivová, V. Král) as well as Soviet (P. I. Rezonov, S. I. Prasolov, A. F. Kizchenko, I. A. Peters) historians. The modern Czech and Slovak works are presented by monographs and articles by A. Klímek, E. Kubů, B. Ferenčuhová, J. Dejmek, E. Voráček, D. Hubený and B. Litera. In contemporary Russian historical science the problem of Czechoslovak–Soviet relations in the middle of interwar period was studied by O. N. Ken and A. I. Rupasov. However, their studies are mainly concentrated on the circumstances of signing on 16 May 1935 of the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of mutual assistance on the background of the Franco-Soviet co-operation and the discussion of the project of the Eastern Pact. In this connection the main object of this study became the reconstruction of the process of talks which were carried on by Soviet diplomats with their Czechoslovak colleagues. The principal sources for this article are the materials presented in the fonds of the Archive of the foreign politics of Russian Federation and published in such collections as Documents and materials on the history of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations and Documents on the USSR foreign policy. The study shows that the politics led by Soviet as well as Czechoslovak governments toward each other, especially the adoption of concrete decisions, depended on the fluctuations, which took place in the European international policy.