By entering into a nonaggression alliance with Hitler in the summer of 1939—the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—Stalin was at least able to buy himself some time. Mindful that Soviet-German friendship might falter in the future, he used that time to build up buffer zones by attacking and taking control of an assortment of the Soviet Union’s neighbors: the eastern half of Poland; the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia; swaths of Finland and Romania. Alas, these buffer zones proved of little help when Hitler betrayed the pact in June 1941 and launched his long-planned invasion of the Soviet
...more
