Statement of the International Memorial Association Board on the 85th anniversary of the USSR’s expulsion from the League of Nations

85 years ago, on December 14, 1939, the Soviet Union was excluded from the League of Nations. This was a consequence of the Soviet attack on Finland on November 30, 1939.

On December 4, in response to a request from the Secretary General of the League of Nations, the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov claimed that the Soviet Union was neither at war with Finland nor a threat to the Finnish people, citing a Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship signed by the USSR and the government of the Democratic Republic of Finland (FDR), which had been established a day before. From the point of view of the USSR, it was undertaking joint efforts with the FDR to eliminate the hotbed of war created in Finland by its former rulers.

This demagogy did not fool anyone, of course.

The legal basis for exclusion was the Convention on the Definition of Aggression, adopted in 1933 with the USSR among its initiators. None of the member countries of the League opposed the USSR’s exclusion.

Alas, then, as now, international institutions had no effective tools. There was no means to confront the impudence of the aggressor.

The Soviet news agency TASS said in its statement: “The ruling circles of England and France, who forced through the adoption of the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations, have neither moral nor formal right to speak about the ‘aggression’ of the USSR and to condemn this ‘aggression’. England and France have very recently firmly rejected the German peace proposals aimed at ending the war as quickly as possible. They are poised for the war 'to the victorious end'”.

These phrasing sounds very familiar.

European nations, including the nations of the USSR, paid dearly for the aggressive policy of the Soviet leadership, for its alliance with Hitler. But the crime of aggression, committed by the Soviet leadership against a number of neighboring countries, remained unpunished and never even received an appropriate legal assessment in international documents.

Impunity of a crime leads to temptation to commit it again. This is a reason to think about reforming and improving the effectiveness of international institutions.