There are, of course, many theories about the origins of the Cold War. Some of the more fanciful blossomed precisely because the dearth of reliable information about the Soviet side made it impossible ultimately to disprove them. Thus while some works argued that Stalin initially sought accommodation with the West and only took the path of confrontation in 1948, others argued the exact reverse—that Stalin was harshest towards the West prior to that date and at his most conciliatory thereafter. Still other studies concluded that Stalin was weaker after the Second World War than before, and accounted for the evolution of Soviet foreign policy largely in terms of domestic politics or the clashing preferences of his subordinates.
With the partial opening of Soviet archives, we now have more evidence than before. The data are, however, far from complete; no definitive interpretation of Soviet foreign relations has yet emerged. The discussion that follows is based on three premises: that Stalin was firmly in charge of international affairs; that he was both an ideologue and a geopolitician; and that two signal post-war objectives were to avoid war while strengthening Soviet control over foreign communist parties.
Stalin was not, in principle, averse to war. In fact, his Marxist Weltanschauung predisposed him to believe in inevitable armed conflict between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world. In the spring of 1945, as Soviet tanks rolled towards Berlin, he informed a horrified delegation of Yugoslavian communists that ‘the war will soon be over. We shall recover in fifteen or twenty years and then we will have another go at it.’
As that comment suggests, Stalin was aware that the Soviet Union was too devastated to wage war in the near future. Then, too, the United States had emerged from the Second World War with greatly increased relative strength and with the atomic bomb. But here was the rub: Soviet ideology made all capitalist regimes ipso facto anti-communist. What then would prevent a great capitalist coalition, led by the United States, from exploiting the Soviet Union’s temporary debility to launch an annihilating attack? How was Stalin to shield the USSR from such a blow?
The answer was to bluff—to project an exaggerated image of Soviet military might. This entailed denying the West accurate knowledge about the true situation within the Soviet Union by waging a massive counter-intelligence campaign, by prohibiting even the most mundane contacts between Soviet citizens and foreigners, and by severely curtailing the movements and activities of Western diplomats, attachés, journalists, even tourists. Swathed in an impermeable miasma, thought to be possessed of overwhelming military power, the Soviet Union would buy the time necessary to rebuild, rearm, and acquire nuclear weapons. Thus, paradoxically and counter-intuitively the best way to avoid war was to pretend that the USSR was in fact ready to risk one.
Simultaneously Stalin had to avoid unnecessarily provoking the West or arousing Western suspicions, but to take a hard line against the plots that the imperialists would surely concoct against the USSR. In 1946, for instance, he backed the Azeri and Kurdish separatists in northern Iran (in response to what he saw as British oil intrigues). His government condemned the Marshall Plan in 1947 and ordered the French and Italian communists to sabotage it. And in June 1948, he retaliated to a Western currency reform (which he thought prefigured the establishment of a capitalist West Germany) by imposing the Berlin blockade.
Yet Stalin was willing to retreat when the price of confrontation grew too high or threatened war. For example, he pulled out of northern Iran, informing the Azeri communists that he did not want to give Britain an excuse to remain in Egypt, Syria, and Indonesia. And after eight months of tension he lifted the blockade of Berlin.
Stalin thus attempted to strike an extremely delicate balance in the conduct of foreign relations, but if successful the Soviet Union might benefit in both the long and short term. After all, Soviet truculence might persuade Western governments that the USSR was too hard a nut to crack. In that event, capitalist states might soon revert to their usual rapacious competition for markets. With any luck, such commercial rivalry might produce internecine wars among the capitalist states, which could debilitate them all, thereby advantageously positioning the USSR for the eventual day of military reckoning.
Another important objective for Stalin was to reimpose discipline and centralized control over the international communist movement. There were several considerations operating here. First, Stalin believed that he alone could formulate the correct strategy and tactics, which should be binding on communists everywhere. His leadership was particularly necessary to prevent headstrong foreign communists from unduly alarming the Western powers. Second, if directed by Moscow, non-ruling communist parties and front groups might pressure Western governments to act in ways favourable to Soviet interests. Third, the maximum economic exploitation of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe would only be possible if communist governments were installed there. Although Stalin might have been delighted by the prospect of further acquisitions in Europe and Asia, these could be forgone. But Eastern Europe was nonnegotiable; it was the great prize the Soviet Union had won in the Second World War. The East European countries were to be Sovietized; as Stalin put it, ‘whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.’ It goes without saying that Stalin expected the Eastern European communists to submit obediently to his dictation.
The problem, however, was that many foreign communists exhibited an annoying independence. Non-ruling parties were eager to make gains; communists who had seized power in Eastern Europe were often too ideologically fervid to heed Stalin’s cautionary advice. The Chinese communists are a good example: despite Stalin’s suggestion that they form a coalition with the nationalists, they made a hard push for military victory in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Similarly Stalin opposed the Greek communist insurrection of 1946–8 as premature. The Czechoslovakian coup of February 1948—an event usually interpreted as awakening even the most generous Western observers to Stalin’s ambitions—was very likely launched by the Czech communists themselves, not at Moscow’s behest. Finally, the Soviet–Yugoslavian rupture of 1948 originated in Stalin’s inability to moderate Tito’s recklessness either at home or abroad.
Stalin sought to impose his will on the Eastern European communists by a variety of means. One was territorial expansion. A series of post-war treaties annexed large parts of eastern Prussia, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and Ruthenia to the Soviet state. This westward expansion gave the Soviet Union a common border with its Czechoslovak and Hungarian client states. Another instrument was the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), established in 1948, specifically to ensure Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. Finally after the break with Tito, Stalin resorted to an ‘anti-nationalism’ campaign of terror and purges. Important communist leaders such as R. Slansky (Czechoslovakia), T. Kostov (Bulgaria), W. Gomulka (Poland), and L. Rajk (Hungary) were imprisoned or executed, as were thousands of others.