Joachim von Ribbentrop | Ribbentrop and Stalin at the signing of the Pact

Stalin and Ribbentrop traded toasts on the night of the signing discussing past hostilities between the countries.

After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin traded letters with Ribbentrop, with Stalin writing about entering an agreement regarding a " permanent basis " for their " mutual interests.

In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: ( 1 ) a mutual assistance / aid pact and ( 2 ) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact.

Following the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall of Benito Mussolini in September, he and Joachim von Ribbentrop raised with Hitler the possibility of secretly approaching Joseph Stalin and negotiating a separate peace behind the backs of the western Allies.

" In his diaries, he expressed the belief that German diplomacy should find a way to exploit the emerging tensions between Stalin and the West, but he proclaimed foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, whom Hitler would not abandon, incapable of such a feat.

During the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, Ribbentrop was overjoyed by a report from his Ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, of a speech by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin before the 18th Party Congress in March 1939 that was strongly anti-Western, which Schulenburg reported meant that the Soviet Union might be seeking an accord with Germany.

Ribbentrop had only expected to see the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, and was most surprised to be holding talks with Joseph Stalin.

During his trip to Moscow, Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin and Molotov proceed very cordially and efficiently with the exception of the question of Latvia, which Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to try to claim for Germany.

When Stalin claimed Latvia for the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop was forced to telephone Berlin for permission from Hitler to concede Latvia to the Soviets.

After finishing his talks with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop, at a dinner with the Soviet leaders, launched into a lengthy diatribe against the British Empire, with frequent interjections of approval from Stalin, and then exchanged toasts with Stalin in honour of German-Soviet friendship.

On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow, where at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand that Lithuania go to the Soviet Union.

The imposition of the British blockade had made the Reich highly dependent upon Soviet economic support, which placed Stalin in a strong negotiating position with Ribbentrop.

Ribbentrop liked and admired Stalin, and was against the attack on the USSR in 1941.

In October, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop proposed to Stalin the idea of a conference to reach a complete understanding about spheres of influence.

That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact, and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August.

Ribbentrop and Stalin at the signing of the Pact

On 22 August, one day after the talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day.

At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s.

When this proposal was made, Stalin spoke with stronger emotion than at any other time during the Conference.

Stalin declared that he preferred to continue the war a little longer, `` although it costs us blood '', in order to give Poland compensation in the West at the expense of the Germans.

Professor McNeill thinks that at Yalta, Stalin did not fully realize the dilemma which faced him, that he thought the exclusion of the anti-Soviet voters from East European elections would not be greatly resented by his allies, while neither Roosevelt nor Churchill frankly faced `` the fact that, in Poland at least, genuinely free democratic elections would return governments unfriendly to Russia '', by any definition of international friendliness.

But he rejects, perhaps a little too sweepingly, the theory that disloyal and pro-Communist influences may have contributed to the policy of appeasing Stalin which persisted until after the end of the war and reached its high point at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945.

After all that had happened, open shadowing, friends turning away, Pasternak ’ s suicidal condition at the time, one can ... understand her: the memory of Stalin ’ s camps was too fresh, she tried to protect him.

In 1952, at the 19th Party Congress, Stalin declared: " There are no more Mensheviks.

Clement Attlee ( left ) with President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Potsdam Conference.

To make matters worse, Stalin began espousing his policy of socialism in one country – a policy often viewed, wrongly, as an attack on Trotsky, when it was really aimed at Zinoviev.

Khrushchev had began to initiate nepotistic policies, initiated policies without the consent of either the Presidium or the Central Committee, a cult of personality had developed and, in general, Khrushchev had developed several characteristics which he himself criticised Stalin of having at the 20th Party Congress.

At the 21st Party Congress Khrushchev boldly declared that Leninist legality had been reestablishing, when in reality, he himself was beginning to following some of the same policies, albeit not at the same level, as Stalin had.

This territory, amounting to some, was incorporated into Russia by Joseph Stalin at the end of World War II.

In 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev condemned the cult of personality that had been built up around Joseph Stalin and also accused him of many grave mistakes.

* 1945 – World War II: The Yalta Conference between the " Big Three " ( Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin ) opens at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea.

Stalin attended the delegations at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, which drew the map of post-war Europe.

The Big Three: Stalin, President of the United States | U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, November 1943.

While initial talk existed of a race to Berlin by the Allies, after Stalin successfully lobbied for Eastern Germany to fall within the Soviet " sphere of influence " at Yalta, no plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation.

Thereafter, Stalin was at times referred to as one of the most influential men in human history.

The Big Three: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President of the United States | U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe.

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, President of the United States | U. S. President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945. At the Potsdam Conference from July to August 1945, though Germany had surrendered months earlier, instead of withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern European countries, Stalin had not moved those forces.

While Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in Poland, after an election failure in " 3 times YES " elections, vote rigging was employed to win a majority in the carefully controlled poll.

Stalin and Molotov on the signing of the Soviet – Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, 1941

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan.

On 24 August, Pravda and Izvestia carried news of the non-secret portions of the Pact, complete with the now infamous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty, with a smiling Stalin looking on ( located at the top of this article ).

Stalin replied to these moves by integrating the economies of Eastern Europe in his version of the Marshall Plan, exploding the first Soviet atomic device in 1949, and signing an alliance with Communist China in February 1950.

Matsuoka in Moscow signing the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941 with Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov on the background

Molotov, Stalin and Ribbentrop signing the German – Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, Moscow, September 1939

At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s.

He is pictured standing with Molotov, Ribbentrop, Stalin, and Soviet Chief of Staff Shaposnikov at the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939

Another is that the men may have been tricked into signing confessions in the belief that their lives or those of their families would be spared, a tactic sometimes employed by Stalin.