The Agreement between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union was signed in Moscow on 12 July 1941, in duplicate, the English and Russian texts having equal force. Signatories: Stafford Cripps, British Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, and Vyacheslav Molotov, Deputy President of the Council of People's Commissars and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Signature took place in the Kremlin, in Stalin's presence, that afternoon. It did not require ratification. LNTS volume 204, p. 277. It is not the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Alliance of 26 May 1942, which replaced and developed it.

The first clause: the two Governments mutually undertake to render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the then war against Hitlerite Germany. The wording is general; operational plans, supply routes and weapons are not described.

The second clause: during that war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement. It is a bar on a separate peace, not a capitulation handbook.

The German invasion of the USSR had begun on 22 June; this Agreement is the first written bilateral instrument of Anglo-Soviet alignment after that date. The protocol of the Moscow Conference later that autumn, on supplies, is a different document. The United States Lend-Lease statute, later extended to the USSR, does not form part of this text.

Cover: the Moscow Kremlin, the place of signature; we do not claim the hall. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: Anglo-Soviet Agreement; Agreement Between the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Avalon).