Pravda and Le Journal de Moscou, the latter in 1938 the international voice of the Soviet foreign ministry, in mid-February of that year reported one of Joseph Stalin's rare public statements linking foreign and domestic policy, couched in the form of a response to an inquiring letter by one of his Soviet concitoyens. the fact that Stalin gave this public testimony tells us that the Soviet leader wanted to tell the world outside his nation something. But what? For the interpretations of his remarks afterward supplied by vitally interested observers. and government analysts in other European capitals could not have been more varied.
The Times of London reported that Stalin was saying, on the one hand, that the subversive clique in Moscow most recently tried and executed as enemies of the people had opposed the "victory of socialism in one country." Yet he had, on the other hand, noted that the "victory of socialism in our country is not final." He then went on to suggest actions by the proletarians of other countries to help make the revolution more secure in the Soviet Union, and to propose that Soviet workers should assist the workers abroad. British diplomats in Moscow and in the Northern Office of the Foreign Office, and elsewhere, reporting and commenting on Stalin's state-