Moscow, Soviet Union • August 3, 1940 Early on the morning of August 24, 1939, Soviet People’s Commissar on Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, and his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop, affixed their signatures to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. As German dictator Adolf Hitler viewed it, the pact was a “strategic…
Moscow, Soviet Union (USSR) • March 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Japanese Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka (1940–1941) arrived in Moscow after a 7‑day journey by train from the Siberian port city of Vladivostok. On this his first of 2 visits to senior Soviet officials, Matsuoka met Soviet Premier Vyacheslav Molotov. At the top of Matsuoka’s…
Moscow, Soviet Union • July 1, 1941 Early in the morning of August 24, 1939, the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of nonaggression, formally known by the two signatories’ names—the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which bore the date August 23, 1939. Neither Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (who was also Soviet Premier)…