Nonaggression Pact

A common assignment onNon-Aggression Pact is as follows:

The topic statement that was chosen is The 1939 Non-Aggression Pact with Germany was not motivated by Stalin's greed for territory, not by naivety, but by necessity. Stalin felt abandoned by the Western powers, whom he had been courting for some years, and feared that Russia would be left alone against Germany.

The essay should discuss:

1. Stalin's options
2. The Great Purges
3. The Moscow Trials
4. The Purge of the Red Army
5. The abuse regarding Poland
6. The Munich Agreement
7. and whatever other ideas may work to help prove that it was necessity for Stalin to pact with Hitler. Keep in mind that any evidence from 1935 and before should be minimal, because the events of 1938-1939 are the ones that should be focused on majorly.

It is very important that a certain source is used in this essay along with others. The title of the book that MUST be used is, Stalin The Glasnost Revelations, whose author is Walter Laquerer. The reader of the essay is quite familiar and knowledgeable of the book.

Items to Consider When Writing the Non-Aggression Pact Research Paper:

1. Do NOT write a narrative of events.
2. Examine interpretations of a historical problem and come to some conclusions.
3. There is no right answer.
4. The topic statement is written to be arguable.
5. You may argue for or against the statement; you may decide that part is true and other factors are also important, so that you will write your own thesis.
6. Make sure that the evidence provided has been organized chronologically.
7. The essay is supposed to be written formally, no first person narration.

Stalin's Reign and the Great Purges Overview:

During his entire reign, Stalin used the threat of force to gain power and concessions. When the peasant farmers failed to show allegiance to Stalin's banners and government propaganda, Stalin reacted with harsher controls on them. Party members that showed dissent were executed, such as Sergei Kirov, one of Stalin's chief aids. The secret police rounded up thousands of Soviet citizens, gave them mock trials and executed them via firing squad during the Great Purges.

In public, Stalin offered conciliatory gestures that seemed, on the surface, to be peaceful in nature. In reality, he wanted nothing less than world domination. Thus, Stalin's foreign policy was one of expansionism. He constructed an enormous propaganda machine that relied on the falsification of history and total control over all forms of media. It is tempting to suggest that the terror that accompanied the Great Purge of the late 1930 must have made him unpopular in the Russia but, given the fact that public opinion could not possibly be accurately measured under such conditions, this cannot be proved and there is evidence that Stalin was regarded by the people of Russia as being unaware of what was going in with respect to the terror.