The League of Nations was founded in 1919-1920 to avoid a repeat of a destructive war. The parties to the Versailles Agreement, created by this organization, were 58 states. The objectives of the League were to maintain world peace within the framework of the founding principles of the Pact adopted by its members: to develop co-operation among peoples and guarantee them peace and security.

During the first years of the existence of the League of Nations, great successes were noted. In accordance with the provisions of the Pact, several international disputes - between Sweden and Finland, and between Greece and Bulgaria - have been resolved amicably. The agreement signed at Locarno in October 1925, which marked the beginning of the Franco-German reconciliation, was entrusted to the League.

Who did not join the League of Nations

Countries that did not enter the League: USA, Saudi Arabia. Later, due to non-compliance with the Treaty of Versailles, countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan withdrew, and there was also the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations.

At the beginning of the formation of the League, the USSR was not a member of the countries, although it supported this organization in every possible way, taking an active part in summits and negotiations. In September 1934, the USSR joined the League as a permanent member. The reason for the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations lay in the armed attack on Finland.

Political events in Moscow leading to hostilities

Stalin was worried that the border with Finland was very close to Leningrad, which, in his opinion, threatened national security. The Soviet leader at first did not want to start military campaign and negotiated for peace and military aid. Stalin was ready to cede a significant part of Karelia to the Finns, in return they were required to move the border from Leningrad deep into their territory and provide the USSR with several islands on Finnish territory for military bases.

How did the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations

Moscow's proposal caused a split in the Finnish leadership, and those who did not want any compromises with the Bolsheviks took over. On November 26, 1939, around 16:00, on the territory of the Soviet frontier post in the area of ​​the Korean village of Mainila, shelling was allegedly arranged from the Finnish territory, according to official sources, 4 people were killed, 8 wounded.

Finnish border guards claimed that the shells came from the Soviet rear. An hour later, a commission was held in Mainil as part of the MKVD, which quickly determined the guilt of the Finnish side. Such a shelling gave Moscow a formal reason to attack the territory of the Finns, under the guise of protecting their land. That is why the USSR was excluded from the League of Nations (1939).

November 28, Moscow withdraws from the non-aggression pact, the next day follows a statement about November 30, 1939 troops Soviet Union crossed the Finnish border with a large preponderance of manpower and equipment. This confrontation went down in history under the name "War with the White Finns." The beginning of it was not announced, and even the obvious shelling of Finnish territory by Soviet troops was denied by the Moscow leaders.

The patience of the League of Nations has run out

Moscow created information propaganda that the Finnish government is the enemy of its population. The Union declared itself not an aggressor, but a liberator. But few believed in Moscow. On December 14, the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations was supported by 7 members of the Council out of 15. Despite the minority of those who supported, the decision entered into force. The meeting ignored the main leverage against the aggressor - the application of economic sanctions. Delegates from countries such as Greece, China and Yugoslavia abstained from voting, while representatives of Iran and Peru were not present at the meeting where the USSR was excluded from the League of Nations.

World War II was coming

This was the largest bloody conflict in the history of mankind with the use of nuclear weapons, which involved 62 states in hostilities, and this is 80% the globe. World War II began shortly after everyone saw the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. Do not forget the bloody war in Finland, where the city of Helsinki was completely wiped off the face of the country.

After the outbreak of World War II, the failure of the League turned out to be obvious, and the last thing that could be considered was the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. The date of this event fell on December 14, 1939, and by January 1940 the League had stopped all activity regarding the settlement of political issues.

What failures has the organization experienced?

Despite a good start, the League of Nations failed to prevent either the invasion of Manchuria by Japan or the annexation of Ethiopia by Italy in 1936, and the capture of Austria by Hitler in 1938 left the League of Nations powerless to prevent further world conflict. The League of Nations ceased its activities in 1940.

Such failures only prove the failure of agreements between political forces. Settlement agreements are adhered to as long as it is beneficial to both countries or until there is no opportunity to wage military conflicts. Therefore, the participating countries observed the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations (1939).

Successes of the Treaty of Versailles

Failure collective security The League of Nations does not lose sight of the successes that have been achieved from the very beginning. Under its auspices, a significant number of summits, intergovernmental meetings of experts were held in Geneva in such areas as financial issues, health care, social affairs, transport and communications, etc. This fruitful work was confirmed by the ratification of more than a hundred conventions by member states. The unprecedented work in the interests of refugees, carried out by the Norwegian leader F. Nansen since 1920, should also be emphasized.

Almost 100 years ago, the USSR was excluded from the League of Nations, the date of this event, as mentioned above, fell on December 14, 1939. Today, the successor to the League is considered to be the United Nations.

Formed as a result of the First World War, the League of Nations was supposed to serve a good purpose - to maintain peace throughout the world. But formulated the mighty of the world these tasks were, in fact, impossible. And there are many reasons for this: some call the imperfection of the Versailles-Washington system, ambitions in some states and revanchist sentiments in others among the main ones, and so on.

One of the fundamental instruments of influence on the alleged aggressor was to be economic sanctions.

It was assumed that the states that were members of the League of Nations would break off all financial relations with the aggressor. Certain parallels with this old concept, if desired, can be traced even now. However, very quickly the members of the League of Nations, and especially its founders, began to act solely in their own interests, ignoring the previous guidelines and agreements. Thus, the United States was not a member of the League of Nations, since the Senate refused to ratify the organization's charter.

Over time, the prestige of the League of Nations only continued to decline. As well as her influence. This was due to the fact that the organization was unable to solve the urgent problems of many states, turning into an arena for the struggle for dominance between Great Britain and France.

“... Podkolesin tragically asked:
- Why are you silent, like the League of Nations?
“I was very frightened of Chamberlain,” Stepan replied ... "

- wrote in the immortal "Twelve Chairs" and.

The satirical novel was written in 1927. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations only seven years later, in 1934. But long before that, in many countries, including the Soviet Union, there was a perception of the League of Nations as a purely symbolic and useless institution.

Vladimir Lenin especially disliked the League of Nations. Ilyich believed that it "bears all the features of its origin from the world war" and "is saturated through and through with the absence of anything resembling real chances for peaceful cohabitation" of states. Not afraid of the League of Nations and Joseph Stalin, in early December 1939, went to war with Finland.

Not much time passed - already on December 14, the League of Nations decided to expel the USSR from its ranks. The corresponding decision was taken by the Council of the League of Nations on the basis of a resolution adopted by the assembly of the organization. At the same time, the delegates of Greece, China and Yugoslavia abstained from voting, and the delegates of Iran and Peru did not attend the meeting at all. The League of Nations violated its own rules - only 7 of the 15 members of the Council voted for the exclusion of the USSR, which, however, did not prevent the decision from being implemented.

The reaction of the Soviet Union was not long in coming.

“In the opinion of Soviet circles, this absurd decision of the League of Nations evokes an ironic smile, and it can only discredit its unlucky authors,” said in a post published the same day.

There was also a place for external enemies: “The ruling circles of England and France, under whose dictation the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations was adopted, have neither a moral nor a formal right to speak about the “aggression” of the USSR and condemn this “aggression”.

“Thus, the League of Nations, by the grace of its current directors, has been transformed from some kind of ‘instrument of peace’, as it could be, into a real instrument of the Anglo-French military bloc in support and instigation of war in Europe,” the document also said.

The League of Nations was dissolved only on April 20, 1946, although it ceased to mean anything much earlier.

The presentation of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Finland and the declaration of war on a small country against the will of the "world community" in 1939 led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations.

The presentation of an ultimatum by the Soviet Union to Finland and the declaration of war on a small country against the will of the "world community" in 1939 led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. Disappeared, as I.V. Stalin, the last "hillock on the way to at least somewhat complicating the cause of war and to some extent facilitating the cause of peace." The leader was right: soon the Second World War (1939-1945) swept the planet. This is a very common view of events. It is fundamentally wrong.

The League of Nations, the forerunner of the modern UN, was created by the victors of World War I at the Paris Conference of 1919-1920. initiated by US President Wilson. He dreamed of uniting different countries enough to rule out the possibility new war. However, the League was arranged with such obvious dictates of England and France that the US itself refused to enter it. The 33 countries of the Entente that founded the League of Nations and the 13 states that were the first to be invited to join it saw in this organization a way to formalize the redivision of the world by issuing new owners of mandates for colonies and to consolidate the Versailles system of oppression of the defeated countries. The 26-point Charter of the League of Nations was included in all treaties concluded after the war. The League guaranteed "perpetual" peace on the basis of the inviolability of borders and protectorates arbitrarily established by the victors.

The mistake of the organizers of the League was that they saw the world as unipolar, wholly owned by the winners with a corresponding subordination among them. However, it was difficult only through reparations and sending expeditionary forces to consolidate a system in which 7 out of 10 inhabitants of the Earth were actually turned into slaves, and borders arbitrarily drawn through nation-states made almost 17 million people national minorities. The Entente interventionists have broken their teeth on Russia. With the support of Russia, Turkey, already sentenced to death, rose up under the leadership of the Young Turks and expelled the invaders. The world was engulfed in riots.

A special dissonance was created by the defeated or thrown out of the number of winners in the division of booty. the developed countries. England and France included as permanent members in the Council of the League Japan, dissatisfied with the acquisitions, deprived of new lands and colonies, Italy, as well as Germany cut off on all sides, which lost 8% of the German population and 75% of ore reserves. Japan was resolutely preparing for conquests, in Italy the fascists came to power under the slogan of redividing the world. The Germans, plunged into poverty by the war, were robbed and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles so cruelly that, as soon as a new generation grew up, they almost unanimously followed the one who promised to take revenge on the victors and wash away the shame with blood.

In the West, they seriously believed that Hitler, who came to power in 1933, like an obedient sheep dog, would rush to the USSR without returning to Germany the German lands torn away by the Treaty of Versailles. However, in the same 1933, Germany and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, promising their peoples to divide the world fairly. In 1935, Italy was offended: in violation of secret agreements, England and France passed a decision in the League of Nations on its economic blockade for aggression against Ethiopia (a member of this organization since 1923). Having joined the League in September 1933, the USSR supported the blockade. And the United States passed a "neutrality law" that allowed anyone to trade with anyone they saw fit to support. For example, the rebels in Spain, where the legal republic was strangled by the blockade of the League of Nations.

In the camp of the victors, the division of the world caused a hidden struggle. France secretly supported Turkey against England, and that - Syria against France. England and Italy tried to undermine the dominance of France in Central and Southern Europe. The United States made every effort to restore the military-industrial potential of Germany, and President Roosevelt was happy to learn about the outbreak of World War II, in which Europe was to suffer terrible damage by handing over markets to the depressed States. However, both England and France reacted “with understanding” to the fascist regimes that arose one after another, believing that their revanchist aspirations could be satisfied at the expense of the USSR.

Following Ethiopia and Spain surrendered to the Nazis, the League of Nations gave Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, and almost all of China to the Japanese. Aggression crept to the borders of the USSR. But Chamberlain could not agree with Hitler on the division of Eastern Europe, USSR and China. Soon, on August 23, 1939, Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol delimiting the interests of Germany and the USSR along the line of their collision "all the way from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea." On September 1, Hitler attacked Poland, on the 3rd - Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, on September 17, Soviet troops went to occupy the part of Poland assigned to them, that is, they joined the act that the League of Nations finally recognized as aggression.

But the “expulsion” of the USSR from the League of Nations after the attack on Finland on November 30, 1939, is associated with the outbreak of a world war only in the minds of the West. Having declared war but not started, England and France tried to intimidate Hitler with the prospect of a fight with the entire clan of victors, hastening to point to a “weaker” and no longer covered by the aegis of the League enemy. After all, Hitler, together with England, France, the USA and others, selflessly armed Finland and prepared it for a coalition war against the USSR. And the "Western democracies" under the pretext of a "strange war" abandoned Finland in the same way as the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, which they pledged to protect. Not foreseeing violations by the allies of treaties on military assistance and the supply of weapons, the Finns did not bow to Stalin. For the USSR and Finland, the war turned into a senseless murder.

However, the military-political pressure on Hitler and the indication to him of a new "rogue country" had the opposite effect. The Fuhrer was no less willing to "surrender" Finland to Stalin and was pleased that he was bogged down in it. At the time of the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations, Hitler already had a plan to attack the most dangerous enemy in his opinion, and week after week he postponed it until spring solely due to weather conditions. Blitzkrieg brought the League of Nations to an end. On its basis, the utterly defeated "masters of Europe" could not even try to attract the only powerful anti-fascist force left on the continent - the USSR - into the coalition. However, the apparatus of the League of Nations existed comfortably in Geneva until the formal dissolution of the League in 1946.

The United Nations, established as a result of the Second World War, also pursued the goal of “forever” fixing the division of the world. But the new rulers belonged to different socio-political systems, moreover, at the suggestion of the USSR, France and China, which were then weak, were introduced into the number of permanent members of the Security Council. The UN performed peacekeeping functions in the bipolar system international relations, thanks to which the old colonial empires crumbled and many small countries imagined themselves protected by international law. It rested only on the nuclear confrontation and collapsed along with the USSR. Now the NATO troops on the continent are being energetically replaced by the army of the United Europe. And the US has a chance to win the third world war, as the Romans loved - "exclusively by intimidation."

Russian history 20 century is rich in various events. Among them were tragic, were dramatic, and there were triumphal ones.

Consider one of the episodes of our history as the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations.

The expulsion of the USSR from the League of Nations: how and when did it happen?

This event took place in 1939 year. The formal reason is the war of the USSR against Finland for disputed territories.

Recall that the League of Nations was an analogue of the UN, its goal was to restore world order after the bloody world war of the beginning of the century. The Soviet Union was treated with suspicion in this organization, especially this suspicion intensified after the powerful industrialization of the country, which was carried out by Stalin and his team, and also after Soviet army began to grow in numbers and in military-technical development.

IN 1934 The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations at the invitation of France. However, our country failed to maintain membership in this organization for a long time.

TO 1939 year this international organization(that is, the League of Nations) was 40 states. True, there were no such major players on the world stage as the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy and so on. However, the League of Nations had a certain weighty authority, so the exclusion from it and subsequent sanctions could not but affect the economy and political life THE USSR.

Let us examine in detail the reasons for such an exception.

The reason for the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations

The reasons for exclusion vary. There is an official and formal reason - this is a war with Finland, there are also more hidden reasons that can be discussed separately.

As for the first reason, the actions of the Soviet leadership can be justified by the fact that the borders with the Finnish state of the sample 1939 year were menacingly close to the border with Leningrad. In the event of an attack by Germany, whose ally was Finland, Leningrad and all its main communications would have been captured within a few days. Stalin and his team could not allow such a thing, which is why they started this war.

The exclusion of the USSR was also preceded by an active information campaign to denigrate the image of our country, which was launched in the Western media. The fact is that Soviet aircraft dropped bombs on Finnish military targets, but often bombs also hit civilian targets. The glow of the fires and the deaths of people were filmed on cameras, a video was made, and immediately the entire European press began to accuse our country of the exceptional cruelty of the war.

Thus, the mass consciousness of the inhabitants of Western countries and their colonies perceived the USSR solely as an aggressor country that needed to be punished for its actions.

Other reasons for the exclusion of the USSR were competition, which is not uncommon between different states. The governments of European countries were afraid that a successful war could increase the influence of the country of the Soviets on Europe, so they wanted to disarm our country by introducing additional sanctions and aggravating relations, which was inevitable after the exclusion procedure.

How did the exclusion of the USSR happen?

Initiated by Argentina 14 December The twentieth assembly of the League was convened. At it, all the speakers protested against the actions of the USSR, reinforcing their speeches with excerpts from the media. The issue was put to a vote, as a result of which 40 countries 28 voted for the exclusion of our country from this organization.

16 December employees of the Soviet diplomatic consulate circulated the answer of the USSR. Representatives of our country noticed that the vote was held according to a fraudulent scheme, in addition, representatives of France and Great Britain took an active part in it, who, instead of responding to Hitler for his military invasion of their countries, were engaged in weakening the USSR. Moreover, representatives of Soviet diplomacy noted that if 127 million people who lived in the remaining 39 states belonging to the League of Nations do not want to have anything to do with 183 millions of people living in the USSR, then, in fact, the country of the Soviets has nothing to regret about them.

Consequences of exclusion of the USSR

For the USSR, the consequences of the expulsion affected, first of all, the fact that when Hitler attacked our country it was more difficult to come to an agreement with Western world about creating a coalition against Germany and its leader. Although, perhaps, even if the USSR had not been excluded, the second front would still have been opened precisely at the time when the situation between the USSR and Germany turned in favor of Soviet troops. Also, this exception brought some sanctions in the economic sphere, which the USSR endured quite easily.

The League of Nations itself was dissolved shortly after the end of the war.

Thus, the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations was one of the pages of the difficult relationship between our country and the Western European world.

It is believed that the Soviet bombing of Helsinki on September 30, 1939 provoked a protest from the world political elite and led to the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. Meanwhile, in Russian archives there are documents showing that the commander of the DB-3 bomber squadron, Nikolai Tokarev, did not receive an order to drop bombs on the streets of Helsinki.

November 30, 1939 - the date of the start of the Soviet military invasion of Finland. 2 days before, the Finnish envoy to the Soviet Union, Irie-Koskinen, was handed a government note, which spoke of the denunciation of the non-aggression pact previously concluded between Finland and the USSR. The note stated that the Soviet Union did not intend to leave unanswered the aggressive actions of the Finnish side, which was systematically firing artillery on Soviet territory.
On the first day of the war, the Air Force squadron of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet dropped a total of 10.5 tons of bombs on Helsinki. However, according to the documents of the Russian State Archive of the Navy, her combat mission was not the bombing of the Finnish capital at all - Soviet pilots were ordered to reconnoiter the location of the coastal defense battleships of the Finnish Navy - Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen - and destroy them.

The first link of naval aviation reconnaissance aircraft lost 2 aircraft shot down by Finnish anti-aircraft gunners. Only the second link managed to detect the armadillos in the first hour of the day. They stood north of the island of Ruissalo (the base of Hanko). The DB-3 bombs were dropped, but they did not hit the targets. When the squadron of Nikolai Tokarev arrived at the place 2 hours later to bombard again, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen were no longer there. There was no way to search for battleships again - the weather was getting worse and evening was approaching.

The directive of the Air Force Directorate of the Baltic Fleet dated November 18, 1939 clearly prescribed alternate targets for bombers in a similar situation: ships and defensive structures of the naval base. The flag navigator of Tokarev's squadron, Pyotr Khokhlov, later wrote in his memoirs that "there were no spare targets for them [then]", and the commander ordered to go "to the most important target." The operational report of the Baltic Fleet Air Force Headquarters dated November 30 indicates that the port of Helsinki was a backup target for Tokarev's squadron, which was bombed from a height of one and a half thousand meters. According to official data, as a result, 2 warships caught fire, as well as 4 and 5-story port buildings.