Anglo-Soviet Agreement

The Anglo-Soviet Agreement was a formal military alliance that was signed by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany on July 12, 1941, shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Both powers pledged to assist each other and not to make a separate peace with Germany.[1] The military alliance was to be valid until the end of World War II.

Winston Churchill with Joseph Stalin and his interpreter at the 1945 Yalta Conference

The agreement was signed on 12 July 1941 by Sir Stafford Cripps, British Ambassador in Russia, and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs without requiring ratification.[2]


The agreement was replaced by the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942.[3]

According to Lynn Davis, the United States perceived the agreement to mean that the Soviet Union intended to support the postwar re-establishment of independence of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Text

The agreement contained two clauses:

(1) The two Governments mutually undertake to render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the present war against Hitlerite Germany.

(2) They further undertake that during this war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement.

See also

References
  1. Chubarov, Alexander. Russia's Bitter Path to Modernity: A History of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras, pg. 119
  2. Anglo-Soviet Agreement BBC radio broadcast 13 July 1941
  3. Slusser, Robert M.; Triska, Jan F. (1959). A Calendar of Soviet Treaties 1917-1957. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 144.


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