Did the USSR Want to Save Czechoslovakia in 1938?

The myth of the Soviet rescuer

One of the typical Soviet narratives about the eve of World War II asserts: during the partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938 the Soviet Union wanted to send in troops to defend it, but was “forbidden” to do so. In this telling the USSR appears as the only state ready to stop Hitler, while the West “surrendered” Czechoslovakia^[1].

This storyline sounds striking, but it falls apart the moment one turns to the text of the treaty itself on which the narrative rests.

Who actually partitioned Czechoslovakia

First, the very frame of “Hitler took everything, while the USSR wanted to prevent it” should be set aside. Czechoslovakia in 1938 was partitioned not by a single aggressor but by an entire coalition of neighbors. Under the Munich Agreement (29—30 September 1938) the Sudetenland went to Hitler, and in March 1939 — all of the Czech lands, turned into the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” Poland seized the moment and in October 1938 occupied the Cieszyn region (Zaolzie), over which it had already fought the Czechs back in 1919. Hungary, under the First Vienna Award (2 November 1938), received the south of Slovakia and southern Transcarpathia with their Hungarian minority. And in the remaining Slovak lands, in March 1939, the puppet pro-fascist Slovak State, allied with Hitler, was established^[5].

In other words, the “partition” was not a duel of “Hitler versus the USSR” but a joint action of several states, among them Poland. This is important to keep in mind, because it is against the backdrop of this real geography that the Soviet myth of the “rescuer” unfolds.

What the 1935 treaty actually provided for

The Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of mutual assistance was signed on 16 May 1935 and was linked to the Soviet-French treaty of the same year. It set out a clear order of precedence: Soviet troops would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia only after the French had done so^[2].

France did not send its troops. Consequently, under the terms of the treaty the Soviet Union was not obliged — and had no right — to act on its own. This was not a “prohibition from outside” but a direct condition that Moscow itself had signed up to. The opponent’s call to “open the treaty yourself, find it in the depository, and read all its articles” is entirely apt here: the myth survives precisely because the treaty is not read.

The problem the myth sidesteps: geography

Even if the political condition had been met, a physical one remained: there was no common border between the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Soviet troops would have had to pass in transit — through Poland or Romania. The Romanian route was hindered by the Carpathians; Poland remained^[3].

And Poland categorically refused to let Soviet troops through. The reasons were historical and entirely rational: the Poles remembered that in the 18th century the Russian Empire had taken part three times in the partitions of their state, and the recent war of 1920, when the Red Army under Tukhachevsky marched on Warsaw. Warsaw’s conclusion was unequivocal: Soviet troops would not appear on Polish territory under any circumstances^[4].

Why the West chose appeasement

There remains a question that the myth usually sidesteps: why did Britain and France hand the Sudetenland over to Hitler at all, instead of stopping him by force. The answer lies not in “betrayal” or secret sympathy for Nazism, but in the sober calculation of exhausted states. Britain and France had suffered very heavily from World War I — over a million dead, economic crisis — and had no wish to enter a new great war for a state that had not existed on the map of the world before 1918. Czechoslovakia itself was a creation of 1918, cobbled together from Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) lands of the former empires^[6]. Chamberlain, returning from Munich, sincerely believed he had brought “peace” — and he was wrong: within a year the war began.

The logic of appeasement was also electoral: in London and Paris they feared that firmness would only push Berlin further, and that the next elections in Germany might bring to power someone even worse than Hitler — for no one yet understood who Hitler “really” was, which became apparent only a little later^[7]. History proved the falseness of this bet as early as 1939. But what matters is that the motive was fear of a new world war, not a willingness to “surrender” Czechoslovakia to Stalin, who supposedly was the only one who wanted to save it.

Conclusion

The thesis that “the USSR wanted to save Czechoslovakia but was prevented” serves a concrete propaganda function — to portray the Soviet Union as the sole bearer of good on the eve of the war. Yet the 1935 treaty on which this narrative rests is precisely what refutes it: Soviet obligations were conditioned on French action that did not occur, and the transit of troops was impossible without Poland’s consent, which was also absent. A readiness that could not be realized physically or legally remained on paper.