USSR and Germany: on the Way to June 22, 1941

The article deals with the Soviet-German relations in the period of 1939‒1941. It is shoun that after signing of the Munich agreements in September, 1938, Germany generally defined its strategy of pressure on countries that fit into the Hitler’s concept of "Push to the East". Its victims in 1935 were Czechoslovakia and Poland. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France sought to review the "policy of appeasement" of Hitler and were ready to join the USSR in the search for ways to prevent Hitler's expansion. However, the inconsistency and contradictoriness of this "change of milestones" strengthened the position of the Soviet leadership in favour of reaching agreements with Germany. The summer of 1939 was the apotheosis of fruitless negotiations between the "Troika" (the USSR, Great Britain and France), which objectively prompted Moscow to accept the German proposal for fundamentally new bilateral agreements (the Pact of August 23, 1939). Subsequent events up to June 22, 1941 showed the unreliability of agreements with Nazism, facilitated the fleeting victory of Germany over Poland and France, and the actual isolation of Great Britain. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union did not remove from the Soviet leadership the historical guilt of being unprepared for war with fascism, for the colossal human and territorial losses of the first stage of the Great Patriotic War