After the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the Soviet ambassador to London Ivan Maisky had few friends who grasped Russia’s motives. Churchill, as Maisky revealed in his diaries, published by Oxford historian Prof. Gabriel Gorodetsky, knew better.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Churchill, who had been a vociferous opponent of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, was appointed as the First Lord of the Admiralty. On 1 October, 1939, in one of his early broadcasts, he made the now famous reference to Russia: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
This sentence has since been often employed to describe Russia’s sinister and incomprehensible policies. But Churchill did not stop there (as most historians do). He in fact cracked the riddle: “but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south Eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.”
Maisky, who since the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact had become a pariah in London, his survival hanging by a thread, did not fail to see the chance of amending relations with Britain. He was determined to help Churchill find the key. He therefore was quick off the mark seeking a meeting with Churchill.
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