The impact of 10 July 1940 constitutional coup in France on the Soviet-French relations

Gusev Anton PhD in History Assistant, Department of History and Philosophy, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, 115054, Russia, Moscow, lane. Stremyanny, 36 gusev.aa@rea.ru

Relations between the Soviet Union and France in the run-up to and at the initial stage of World War II, which constituted an important aspect of international politics, went through a number of stages and were marked by several dramatic turns. After unsuccessful attempts to create an anti-Hitler alliance, the USSR and France found themselves on the verge of confrontation in 1939, but in April 1940 their relations relatively stabilized, and since July of the same year attempts have been made to further develop them, primarily from France. Such dynamics were determined by both foreign and domestic political factors. Among the latter is the constitutional coup that took place in July 1940 in France, which suffered a military defeat, which not only changed the political structure of the country, but also influenced its foreign policy, including relations with the Soviet Union.

The impact of the July coup, which put an end to the republican form of government in France, on Soviet—French relations has not yet been the subject of special research, although its study is important for understanding the evolution of these relations. In the works of Russian authors published during the Soviet period, this topic was not touched upon at all ^[9], and in recent studies published after the "archival revolution", it is only partially covered ^{[15; 12]}. A similar pattern is observed in French historiography ^{[22; 27; 13; 14]}. All the more important is the study of this problem on the basis of both published sources — Soviet ^[8] and French ^[20] diplomatic documents, memoirs ^[19] and diaries ^[18] of participants in the events, the Soviet and French press, and unpublished materials deposited in the funds of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of Socio-political history. This article is the first attempt to analyze the reception in the Soviet Union of the constitutional coup of July 10, 1940 in France and the direct impact of this event on relations between the two countries.

France entered World War II on September 3, 1939, fulfilling its allied obligations to Poland, which was attacked by Nazi Germany. However, the French High Command quickly abandoned the idea of effectively helping the ally, considering his case to be obviously lost ^{[21, p. 388]}. The country has entered a period of "strange war", an armed confrontation without active warfare. At the same time, the French leadership used the respite to build up the country's military potential and hatched plans to open a "second front" away from the French borders. For a number of reasons, these plans were not allowed to come to fruition, however, by the beginning of the open phase of hostilities in Western Europe on May 10, 1940, the allies (France and Great Britain, as well as Belgium and Holland, who requested their help, who were the first to be attacked by the Germans) really managed to gain an advantage over Nazi Germany in all branches of the armed forces, with the exception of aviation ^{[7, pp. 564-565]}. But a number of strategic miscalculations of the French command, the defensive doctrine that guided it ^{[30, p. 44-45, 58-59]} and the inability to use existing forces in new conditions ^{[6, p. 456]} led to the fact that in the first days of an open armed conflict, Germany inflicted a serious defeat on France, from which she never she could not recover, despite the fierce resistance of the French troops.

Under these conditions, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, who took up this post just a month and a half earlier, made a number of changes in the supreme command and the center-left government of the country, in particular, appointed the famous commander of the First World War, an extreme reactionary 84-year-old Marshal Philippe Petain, to the post of deputy Prime Minister, hoping thereby to support the morale of the defending army. An intelligent and experienced politician, Reynaud had, however, the disadvantage that catastrophically — for himself personally and for the country — he did not understand people. Most of his new appointments were unsuccessful, in particular, Marshal Petain was not going to be content with the passive role of the personification of military glory and showed himself to be a serious political player, pursuing far-reaching power ambitions.

It was not possible to rectify the situation with the measures taken, the best forces of the French army and the British Expeditionary Corps were surrounded, from which they were only partially evacuated through Dunkirk, Belgium capitulated. By the beginning of June, a significant numerical advantage was on the side of Germany, and the military defeat on the territory of France no longer left any doubt. On June 10-11, the Government and other authorities left Paris, moving first to Tours and then to Bordeaux. Under these conditions, supporters of a truce with the Germans, who united around Deputy Prime Minister Peten, began to show themselves more and more actively in the government. The commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, General Maxime Weygand, also supported the marshal. Both military leaders agreed on the basis of their extreme right-wing beliefs and saw no point in defending the republic, blaming it for the defeat and believing that France needed an authoritarian form of government. The members of Parliament evacuated to Bordeaux, mostly demoralized by defeat, also tended to this point of view, especially under the influence of Senator Pierre Laval. Reynaud, Interior Minister Georges Mandel and other supporters of continued resistance to the invaders, including in the French colonies in North Africa, lost the support of the majority in the Council of Ministers. Then Reynaud resigned, hoping, as he later admitted, to form a new government from supporters of continuing the struggle ^{[26, p. 2424, 2426]}. However, French President Albert Lebrun appointed Petain to the post of Prime Minister without even securing the consent of the leaders of the parliament, which was required by law ^{[23, pp. 74-75, 414-417]} (thus, the legitimacy of the new government turned out to be questionable). The Marshal has prepared everything for his rise to power, including the list of the new government, although certain adjustments have been made to it. Thus, Laval applied for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, but the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (chief of Staff with the rank of deputy minister) Francois Charles-Roux, fearing a sharp turn in foreign policy and the overthrow of alliances — Laval was already in favor of cooperation with Nazi Germany — thwarted this appointment and as a result, the post of head of the foreign ministry was occupied by the stateGovernment Secretary Reynaud Paul Baudouin. A former bank director appointed by Reynaud to this position, at a critical moment he disowned his boss, to whom he owed his political career, and supported the conclusion of a truce. The old career diplomat Charles-Roux hoped that he could easily guide a financier without much experience in the field of international relations along the right path. Laval had to settle for the position of deputy Prime Minister.

As soon as he took a leading position in the state, Peten immediately asked the Germans for a truce and made a radio appeal to the nation to stop fighting the invaders ^{[22, p. 233]}. However, not everyone in France was ready to come to terms with such an outcome. In particular, General of armored troops Charles de Gaulle, who held the post of Deputy Minister of National Defense since June 6 (one of the few successful appointments of Reynaud) went to England, where on June 18 he also addressed the French people on the radio, saying: "France lost the battle, but did not lose the war. The flame of the French Resistance will not die out" ^{[29, p. 98]}. Gradually, the general who founded the organization "Free France" became the center of attraction for those who did not accept the defeat of the country and sought to continue the struggle.

The armistice was concluded on June 22, 1940 on German terms. Alsace and Lorraine were annexed by the Reich, three-fifths of the territory of France was occupied by German troops. The remaining territory in the south-east of France was under the authority of the Petain government under the close control of the occupiers. Its capital was moved to the small resort town of Vichy.

The new French government took care first of all to change the political regime in the country. Although the marshal, with the support of Weygand, had the opportunity to carry out a military coup, he preferred to go a more complicated, but "legal" way and make a constitutional coup in order to give legitimacy to the new regime (although his own government, as already noted, was not completely legitimate) and liquidate the republic by the hands of its politicians themselves. To this end, deputies and senators were hastily summoned to Vichy to hold a meeting of the National Assembly, the highest legislative body of France. The Marshal entrusted the direct organization of the constitutional coup to Deputy Prime Minister Laval. A skilled manipulator who possessed an indisputable gift of persuasion, and most importantly, did not disdain any means to achieve his goal, he processed deputies for several days using a variety of arguments. "The Constitution should be changed. It will have to be guided by the constitutions of totalitarian states," he inspired parliamentarians ^{[17, pp. 112-113]}. To ensure their compliance, the surviving troops (the "armistice army") were pulled together to Vichy under the command of Weygand. In addition, the Wehrmacht forces were only 50 km from the new capital and could intervene in events at any time if they did not go according to plan.

Not only demoralized parliamentarians gathered in Vichy, ready to go along with Petain and Laval, but also politicians who intended to give the last fight in defense of the republic, even at the risk of freedom and life. Deputies of various views, mostly left–wing socialists and radicals, have drawn up a statement designed to attract the majority of parliament to their side at a crucial moment. "We refuse to vote for a project [...] that would inevitably lead to the elimination of the republican form of government. We declare that we remain more committed than ever to the democratic freedoms for which the best sons of our motherland gave their lives," the document said ^{[26, p. 2271]}.

On July 10, 1940, a bill was submitted to the National Assembly for consideration on "granting all powers to the Government of the Republic under the leadership of Marshal Petain to promulgate in one or more acts the new constitution of the French state" ^{[32, p. 19]}. As you can see, in the last words there was no speech about the republic. The Republicans, despite the threats, tried to make their statement, but they were not allowed to speak, having arranged an obstruction ^{[25, p. 2219; 26, p. 2274]}. 570 parliamentarians voted for the government bill, 80 against, 17 abstained, several more people refused to participate in the vote. According to French historians A. Nouchy and M. Agulon, 80 deputies who opposed the coup "played the same role in political terms as de Gaulle in military terms: they saved the honor of the country and prepared the future" ^{[29, p. 99]}. According to a number of historians and contemporaries, in particular, General de Gaulle, they became the initiators of the Resistance movement in France ^{[28, pp. 51-52]}.

Immediately after the coup, on July 11 and 12, Petain issued 4 constitutional acts that laid the foundations of a new state structure. With them, as the head of the French state (the country has now received such an official name), he appropriated all the powers of authority, as well as the right to dispose of the armed force remaining in France, negotiate with other countries, and ratify international treaties. Due to his advanced age, the marshal appointed a successor, who, as a reward for the services rendered, became Pierre Laval (see: Actes constitutionnels No. 1, 2, 3 // Journal officiel. 1940. Le 12 juillet. P. 4517; Acte constitutionnel ¹ 4 // Ibid. 1940. Le 13 juillet. P. 4521.). Soon legislative acts were issued on the cancellation of elections at all levels, the dissolution of political parties and trade unions, the arrest without trial of "suspicious persons" who could pose a potential threat to the regime, on the prohibition of professions for Jews, Freemasons, activists of left-wing parties ^{[32, pp. 47-48, 66-72, 75-76]}.

The new order in France under the Nazi heel required not only legislative, but also ideological justification. To this end, the ideology of the so-called National Revolution began to be hastily developed, the foundations of which were laid in the memorandum of General Weygand on June 28, 1940 ^{[24, c. 1923]} Then activists of the far-right organization "Axion Francaise" (French Action) joined the formation of the state ideology. In fact, the new ideology, for all its eclecticism, was not revolutionary, but frankly reactionary. It included a return to "traditional values" (work, family, homeland) and rejection of the republic and democracy, the legacy of the Great French Revolution, denial of class struggle, pochvennichestvo, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hatred of Freemasonry, preaching of national exclusivity. Petain, the former French ambassador to Francoist Spain, had the opportunity to get acquainted with the practice of the authoritarian regime of the fascist type, while in his state-building he was guided, rather, by the regime of A. Salazar in Portugal. Following the example of other dictatorships of that time, the cult of the Marshal's personality began to assert itself.

The foreign policy of the French state immediately after the constitutional coup can also be characterized as eclectic. After the military defeat and the actual enslavement of the country by Nazi Germany, there was a sharp turn in it, but still not by 180, but rather by 120 degrees. At first, two trends were struggling in the leadership of foreign policy. Deputy Prime Minister Laval, who did not abandon his foreign policy ambitions, advocated the full integration of the Vichy regime into the "new world order" established in Europe by Nazi Germany, as he believed, seriously and for a long time, and advocated comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, more precisely, vassal and suzerain. The Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Charles Roux, took more moderate positions, he did not consider it necessary to blindly copy fascist regimes with their racial doctrines, and most importantly, he considered the overthrow of alliances unacceptable - this nightmare of French diplomacy of the 1930s. He advocated maintaining contacts with Britain (diplomatic relations between the former allies were severed after the destruction of French warships by the British in Mers-el-Kebir on July 3, so that they would not fall to the Germans) and maintaining and developing relations with neutral states, primarily the United States and the USSR. In the Soviet Union, Charles-Roux saw the guarantor of European equilibrium ^{[13, p. 79]}, counting on rapprochement with Moscow as it inevitably, according to the calculations of French diplomacy, will move away from Berlin ^{[19, p. 215]}. Minister Baudouin hesitated between these two lines, but realizing that Laval was invading his prerogatives, he listened more often to the advice of his experienced assistant ^{[22, pp. 337-340]}.

However, it should not be assumed that these two vectors of French foreign policy were mutually exclusive. Baudouin in his diary, although edited after the war for the purpose of self-justification, made a very remarkable confession, quoting his analytical note of July 26 on cooperation with Germany (the word "collaboration" was used in the document, it was then that the concept of "collaboration" arose): "France must bow to Germany's victory. Germany deserved it. [...] We want to establish a long-term cooperation. [...] France and Germany can be sincerely connected with each other, [...] adhering to different ideals" ^{[18, pp. 265-266]}.

Soviet—French relations had reached the "freezing point" long before the constitutional coup in France. The cooling between the two countries, which were bound by the mutual assistance agreement concluded on May 2, 1935 (signed on the French side by none other than Laval, who at that time held the post of Foreign Minister), began after the failure of the Trilateral Soviet—Franco—British negotiations in Moscow in the summer of 1939 on the creation of an anti-Hitler alliance, which France had high hopes and strove with all her might for their successful completion ^{[10, p. 107-112]}. However, the negotiations reached an impasse, and the USSR preferred to conclude a non-aggression treaty with Germany on August 23, 1939. After France entered World War II against Nazi Germany, the government banned the French Communist Party, which defended the priorities of Soviet foreign policy and even called for peace with Germany on October 1, 1939 ^{[31, p. 142]}, its activists were persecuted. The Soviet government, for its part, declared an imperialist war for world domination, stating, in particular, through the mouth of the Pre-People's Commissar and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. M. Molotov, that France covers its aggressive policy with a "false flag of struggle for "democracy"" (see: On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union: Report of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Comrade V. M. Molotov at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on October 31, 1939 // Pravda. 1939. November 1.).

The Soviet—French relations became even more complicated with the outbreak of the Soviet—Finnish war on November 30, 1939. France strongly supported Finland in this conflict, increased its arms supplies, despite the need to modernize its own army in war conditions, and on December 14, 1939, with the support of a number of other states, achieved the exclusion of the USSR from the League of Nations. A massive campaign of solidarity with Finland was launched in France, in which all legal socio-political forces of the country participated. The influence of public opinion turned out to be so great that the conclusion of peace between the USSR and Finland on March 13, 1940 led a week later to the resignation of the government of Eduard Daladier, who, according to deputies, did not provide enough assistance to the northern country.

Meanwhile, relations between the USSR and France, which were already on the verge of rupture, became more complicated because the Soviet ambassador in Paris, Ya. Z. Surits, sent a welcome telegram to Moscow through open channels in connection with the end of the conflict, in which he condemned the "Anglo—French warmongers." Suritz was declared persona non grata and recalled to Moscow ^{[8, p. 166]} (French Ambassador E. Najiar left the USSR even earlier). N. N. Ivanov, the second secretary of the plenipotentiary mission, an economist by education, who graduated from the accelerated courses of the NKID in 1938 and did not know French very well, remained to represent the interests of the USSR in Paris ^{[15, pp. 243-244]}. The appointment to such a responsible post of a diplomat with no work experience and poor knowledge of the language testified to how little attention Moscow began to pay to relations with France. The new envoy, in one of his first reports, nevertheless expressed some hope that with the change of government in France, the attitude towards the USSR might change: "Some of the French journalists (Kerillis, Petrinax, Buret, Taboui, Herve) again began to emphasize that France's enemy number 1 is Germany, not the USSR, that France should avoid war with the USSR. [...] In the press, the government of Paul Reynaud is most zealously supported by the newspapers ”Epoc” and ”Ordr". The same bodies advocate the need to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the USSR. The most reactionary press, expressing to a certain extent the views of the Laval and Flandin groups, [...] criticized the government of Paul Reynaud. The same press most sharply opposes the USSR" ^{[2, l. 96]}. However, the hopes of the plenipotentiary at that moment were not destined to be justified: the first policy statement of the Reynaud government was clearly anti-Soviet in nature (see: La d?claration minist?rielle// L'ouvre. 1940. Le 23 mars.), and relations between the two countries continued to remain at a low point.

They did not change after the invasion of France by the German army in May 1940. The French leadership did not count on military assistance from the Soviet Union. However, in a critical situation on the 20th of May, it still tried to take the first step to establish interstate relations. Reynaud decided to send a new ambassador to Moscow and, on the advice of his Minister of Aviation, was initially going to appoint Pierre Cot, a left-wing radical socialist who had previously held this post and retained ties in Soviet circles. The choice of his candidacy was also due to the fact that France desperately needed combat aircraft. The Minister of Public Works (Industry) A. de Monzy, who also had long-standing ties with the USSR, tried to find out the attitude of the plenipotentiary Nikolai Ivanov to this ^{[15, pp. 299-300]}. As a result, on May 28, the Soviet diplomat had a conversation with the head of the political department of the Foreign Ministry, Emil Sharveria. Ivanov told his French counterpart that the Soviet leadership was not fundamentally opposed to the candidacy of the Cat, but —concession for concession — expressed confidence that France would not "object to the deployment of Russian [troops] in the Baltic states." France was not in a position to argue, but Deputy Prime Minister Petain managed to disrupt the agreement that had been outlined ^{[5, p. 123-125]}.

The French press, as well as the government, did not expect help from the Soviet Union, and even mentions of it disappeared from the pages of newspapers. The only exception was an article by right-wing publicist Henri de Kerillis. On June 1, 1940, he wrote in the newspaper "Epic": "There is a huge Russia. [...] We need to get help from her. [...] We don't even have an ambassador in Moscow! Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, for God's sake, influence Moscow" (Kerillis H. de. Nos atouts // L'?poque. 1940. Le 1 juin.).

The journalist obviously did not know that Reynaud did not give up trying to improve relations with the USSR and on the eve of May 30, appointed a career diplomat Eric Labonne as ambassador to Moscow. Tom managed to reach his destination only on June 12, when the outcome of the Battle for France was already a foregone conclusion, and there could be no question of any assistance to the defeated country ^{[8, pp. 343-344]}.

Although the rapid defeat of France, apparently, turned out, as Ambassador Labonne noted, in particular, in his telegram to Paris ^{[19, p. 201]}, unexpected for the Soviet leadership, which expected that Hitler would get involved in a protracted war in the West and would not threaten the USSR for a long time, the course of Soviet foreign policy at first it has not undergone any changes ^{[12, pp. 45-46]}. The Soviet Union seems to have stopped closely monitoring what is happening in France, which has lost its status as a leading European power. Soviet newspapers published (not on the front pages) news about political changes in France with reference to Western, including German press agencies, and the information about this sometimes looked very contradictory. Thus, in an article about the constitutional coup, the newspaper Trud reported to Soviet readers on July 12: "In connection with the opposition in parliament regarding government activities, the correspondent of [United Press] states, there are reports that Petain may be removed from his post. [...] The German Information Bureau reports from Geneva: “There are rumors here that the president of the French Republic Lebrun intends to resign and will be replaced by Marshal Petain. It is assumed that in France they intend to create a triumvirate: Laval—Marquet—Weygand"" (see: The situation in France // Labor. 1940. July 12.).

Envoy Nikolai Ivanov hastened to clarify the situation for the Soviet leadership in an analytical note entitled "The reasons for the defeat of France." It is noteworthy that he saw them "primarily in the political field, the field of French domestic and foreign policy in the pre—war period and during the war - from September 1939 to May 1940," placing responsibility on the "Munich camp": "A Munich man like Daladier headed the war Ministry during the war with September 1939 to May 1940 From the ruling camp, only two ministers can be named who could prepare France for resistance: These are Georges Mandel and Paul Reynaud. But these people came to the leadership only in April 1940, when it was already too late" ^{[3, L. 12, 13]}.

Ivanov's note does not say a word about the actions of the French command that led the army to defeat. The constitutional coup itself is assessed sharply negatively in the document, as are its organizers: "After May 10, reactionary circles wanted the defeat of France in order to kill the bourgeois-democratic system, the parliament, finally defeat the cadres of the Popular Front and establish a reactionary dictatorship. The coup carried out in Bordeaux and executed in Vichy by Petain, Laval and Co., meant that the ruling clique had achieved its goal. [...] The Laval—Petain government immediately accepted the shameful terms of the armistice, the likes of which France had not known since the Middle Ages... In a large casino in Vichy, the burial of the 3rd French Republic with its constitution of 1875 was decorated. The pro—monarchical, pious old man Petain and the crook Laval became the head of the state that survived from the former France" ^{[3, l. 16, 17]}.

However, the Soviet diplomat believed that certain prospects were opening up in the new conditions before the USSR's policy towards France, and made a forecast for the future, which seems quite unexpected: "The real political strength of the Communist Party and the working class in modern France, in my opinion, is more significant than the strength of the Vichy government. [...] The main conclusion that I draw from my observations on French life is that France is on the path to revolution" ^{[3, L. 42, 45]}. Such a bold forecast could not be justified in a country drained of blood by war and defeat under the German occupation and the puppet Vichy regime. However, it should be noted that the French Communist Party, which was banned, decided to take advantage of the changed situation and in July 1940 tried to legalize itself, but negotiations on this with the occupation authorities were unsuccessful, the Communists only managed to secure the release of their leader Maurice Thorez, who was arrested by the Germans ^{[4, pp. 338-352]}.

At the same time, the Soviet diplomat turned out to be right in that a change in the political situation in France could lead to a change in relations between the two countries and lead them out of the impasse. And the initiative here, apparently, came from France. The Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Charles Roux, and the head of the Ministry, Baudouin, believed that the USSR was capable of balancing Germany's influence in the European arena in the future and even tacitly encouraged Anglo-Soviet rapprochement for this purpose ^{[13, p. 79]}. The point of contact between the USSR and the French state was also the fact that both countries declared their neutrality in the World War (the Vichy regime was not officially an ally of Germany). Already on July 23, the French Foreign Ministry took the first step towards the USSR. Nikolai Ivanov reported to Moscow that Baudouin ("a man without prejudice," as the envoy described him in another report ^{[11, l. 13]}) proposed to conclude a deal on the exchange of Soviet oil for rubber produced in the French colonies, and "wants to consider this exchange as the beginning of broader trade relations between the USSR and France" ^{[8, p. 451]}. The next day, Baudouin wrote to Labonne about the importance of sending an authorized Soviet ambassador to Paris ^{[19, p. 212]}. At the same time, in July 1940, the Vichy authorities reacted with restraint, if not approvingly, to the entry of the Baltic Republics into the Soviet Union ^{[20, pp. 247-248]}, only asked the Soviet government to take into account the interests of France in these countries ^{[15, pp. 324-326]}. This position of the Foreign Ministry was explained by the fact that in this event he saw a step towards achieving a balance of power in Europe.

The diplomat of the old school Labonne, appointed during the republic, shared a similar opinion. Concerned about the openly pro-German orientation of Laval and the Vichy government as a whole, in a telegram to the Foreign Ministry on September 4, he insisted on the need for a more firm line: "Any unstable, uncertain policy, subject to opposite influences, [...] harms contacts" between the French state and the USSR ^{[20, p. 391]}. Ivanov, for his part, skillfully used the contradictions of Vichy foreign policy. So, in September 1940, in an interview with one of the employees of the French General Staff, the envoy expressed confidence that Germany would not be able to win the battle for Britain, and the USSR would pursue a tougher policy towards the Reich. The diplomat hoped that these thoughts would be brought to the Vichy leadership ^{[14, p. 158]}.

Before the Soviet plenipotentiary mission, whose activities extended to the entire territory of France, including those occupied by the Nazis, in the new conditions, another line of activity opened up: the collection of military information, of course, not about the small French "armistice army", but about the intentions and plans of the German command. In Ivanov's reports to Moscow, information about the number and movements of German troops began to appear more and more often, and they sounded more and more alarming. So, in a telegram dated September 26, the envoy noted: "A number of sources report the systematic dispatch of German troops from France to the Soviet—German border. The total number of German troops on the Soviet border reaches 120 divisions. More than 70 trains with troops left the Paris area in a week in the eastern direction" ^{[8, p. 630]}.

However, in general, the Soviet leadership still did not attach much importance to relations with Vichy France, which developed difficult and slow, mainly in the trade and economic sphere, nor, unfortunately, to the alarming reports of Nikolai Ivanov about the movements of German troops to the east - in November 1940, the envoy was recalled to the USSR and arrested, being accused of "anti-German statements" in conversations with French diplomats and journalists ^{[16, p. 114]}. The perception of the Vichy regime in the USSR is vividly characterized by the caricature of Bor. Efimova, published in Ogonyok magazine in September 1940, which depicts Petain filling bottles with Vichy mineral water and Laval in the image of a bored street vendor to her; the caption reads: "Mineral water experiencing an acute sales crisis" (see: Ogonyok. 1940. No. 26 (713). p. 3.).

But at the same time, the leadership of the USSR at that time did not try to establish any contacts with the forces of the French Resistance, in particular, with General de Gaulle and his "Free France". Although the Soviet Embassy in London held meetings with some political emigrants, in particular, with the aforementioned Pierre Kot. The prospects for the formation of a center of French resistance abroad were assessed in the USSR very skeptically. Following a conversation with the Cat on July 6, Envoy I. I. Maisky reported to Moscow: "French emigration in England has no future. [...] The policy of creating a “French national committee” here has failed. There was only one de Gaulle - a good military man, but a zero politician" ^{[1, l. 112]}. The Soviet leadership adhered to this position in the following months, including because the de Gaulle organization was perceived as the successor of the French Third Republic, with which the USSR did not have relations.

Thus, in the period immediately following the constitutional coup in France, Soviet—French relations were determined mainly by the commitment declared by both States to neutrality in the World War. For the French state, this neutrality masked the forced following in the wake of Nazi Germany's foreign policy, although some French diplomats tried to combine a pro-German orientation with the preservation of some rudiments of foreign policy independence. For the Soviet Union, neutrality at the initial stage of the Second World War was the result of a tactical choice in favor of reducing tensions in relations with Germany. The Franco—Soviet rapprochement on the basis of neutrality created opportunities for the resumption of interstate cooperation — at least in the trade and economic sphere.

However, in Moscow, the Vichy regime was still not perceived — unlike the former French Republic — as a full-fledged subject of international politics, justifiably seeing it as a puppet entity, actually subject to Berlin. And in the future, the dynamics of Soviet—French relations directly reflected the processes that took place in relations between the USSR and Germany. When the latter began to deteriorate in the autumn of 1940, the development of relations between Moscow and Vichy also stalled. This was also facilitated by the implementation of a pro-German policy by the government of the French state, which followed the path of increasingly complete subordination to the instructions of Berlin. The leadership of the French Foreign Ministry, considered insufficiently loyal to the German Reich, was removed by the end of the year, and soon after that the ambassador in Moscow Labonne was replaced by a convinced collaborator and an active participant in the constitutional coup, G. Bergery. Finally, in June 1941, after Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Vichy regime announced the severance of diplomatic relations with the USSR. The Soviet Union, for its part, recognized in September 1941 as the legitimate representative of the French people the movement "Free France", which initially opposed the Vichy regime generated by the constitutional coup. So the anti-fascist forces of France, together with the USSR, contributed to the formation of the anti-Hitler coalition, which eventually won the Second World War.