Moscow: Publishing House "International Relations". 1970. 94 pages. It has a circulation of 30,000 copies. The price is 14 kopecks. The Munich Agreement of 1938, which became the prelude to the Second World War, has always attracted and will continue to attract the attention of researchers. The years and events that have passed since then have revealed many obscure aspects and details of this shameful deal, but they have not changed the fundamental assessment given to Munich by Marxist historiography: This was an imperialist collusion between the "Western democracies" and the Nazis, directed against the Soviet Union. International historian, political commentator of the newspaper Izvestia V. A. Matveev once again turns to the events of those years 1, which had such fatal consequences for the fate of the world. As the author emphasizes, "Munich contained all the elements of the tragedy that befell humanity as a result of the unleashing of Fascist aggression" (p. 5). At the same time, writes V. A. Matveev, Munich was the culmination of the policy of "appeasement" of the fascist aggressors, initiated by the Western powers long before 1938. The unperturbed reaction of London, Paris and Washington to the aggression of the Japanese militarists against China in 1931, to the seizure of Ethiopia by fascist Italy in 1936, to the occupation of the Rhineland by Hitler's troops in 1936 in violation of the Locarno Treaty, and finally, "non-intervention", and in fact aiding the Francoist rebellion in Spain-these are the milestones of the path that it led to the Munich betrayal. Describing the events immediately preceding the Munich Conference, V. A. Matveev shows the complex and contradictory interweaving of the imperialist goals of the participants in the deal that was being prepared, but in which, nevertheless, the resultant is clearly traced: the desire to direct Hitler's aggression to the East. The author uses only recently known archives of the British Cabinet of Ministers fo ... Read more