Russo-Japanese Relations

Report Outline
Soviet Russia and the Pacific War
Czarist Russia and Imperial Japan
Soviet Russia and Imperial Japan

Soviet Russia and the Pacific War

Military Considerations Affecting Soviet Policy

If and when the Soviet Union will enter the war against Japan remains a closely guarded secret of the Kremlin. Roosevelt and Churchill may have been taken into Stalin's confidence, but the peoples of the Allied countries—including the people of the U. S. S. R.—are likely to remain in ignorance of Soviet plans until those plans are put into execution.

Up to the present, concentration of Soviet military strength against Germany has accorded with the British-American policy of defeating Hitler first. Russian neutrality in the Pacific war has permitted shipment of lend-lease supplies through the port of Vladivostok for the use of Soviet forces on European fronts. At an earlier stage of the war Vladivostok would have fallen easy prey to Japan, and for Russia to have granted the use of her airfields in the Far East to the Allies would have been futile—until sufficient forces were available to guard them against destruction. These military considerations preventing Russian action against Japan will no longer exist when the war in Europe ends and the Allies hold full control of the western Pacific.

Scrupulous Observance of Non-Aggression Pact

When sufficient forces can be massed in eastern Siberia to render an attack by Japan unlikely, the right to use the extensive Soviet air bases in that area might be granted to the United States and Great Britain without necessarily involving Russia in further participation in the war. Russia could, however, by throwing her full strength into the conflict, assure a quicker Allied victory and earlier resumption of her own economic development under normal conditions.