Stalin: A Biography

Somehow Stalin had to devise a way of gaining popular sympathy in these occupied countries while solving a vast number of urgent tasks. Food supplies had to be found. Economies had to be regenerated and post-Nazi administrations set up. Functionaries had to be checked for political reliability. The shattered cities and damaged roads and railways had to be restored. At the same time Stalin was determined to gain reparations from the former enemy countries, not only Germany but also Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This was bound to complicate the task of winning popularity for himself and for communism. The Western Allies were another difficulty. An understanding existed with them that a rough line ran from north to south in Europe separating the Soviet zone of influence from the zone to be dominated by the United States, Britain and France. Yet there was no clarity about the rights of victor powers to impose their political, economic and ideological models on the countries they occupied. Nor had the victors specified what methods of rule were acceptable. As the ashes of war settled, tensions among the Allies were rising.

The global rivalry of the Allies was bound to increase after they had crushed their German and Japanese enemies. Stalin’s armies had taken the brunt of the military burden in Europe, but American power had also been decisive and was growing there. In the Far East the Red Army contributed little until the last few days. The United States, moreover, was the world’s sole nuclear power. The management of the post-war global order posed many menaces to Soviet security — and Stalin was quick to comprehend the danger.

If his regime was unpopular abroad, it was not much more attractive to Soviet citizens. There was a paradox in this. Undoubtedly the war had done wonders to enhance his reputation in the USSR; he was widely regarded as the embodiment of patriotism and victory. Even many who detested him had come to accord him a basic respect — and when defectors from the Soviet Union were interviewed it was found that several basic values propagated by the authorities found favour. The commitment to free education, shelter and healthcare as well as to universal employment had a lasting appeal. But the haters in the USSR were certainly numerous. Armed resistance was widespread in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, western Belorussia and western Ukraine. These were recently annexed areas. Elsewhere the regime was much more durably in control and few citizens dared to organise themselves against Stalin and his subordinates. Most of those who did were young people, especially students, who had no memory of the Great Terror. Small, clandestine groupings were formed in the universities. Typically they were dedicated to the purification of Marxist–Leninist ideology and behaviour from Stalinist taint: state indoctrination had got the brightest youngsters to approve of the October Revolution. These groupings were easily penetrated and dissolved.

More worrisome for the authorities was the hope prevailing across society that immense political and economic changes would follow the achievement of military victory. Stalin was a student of Russian history; he knew that the Russian Imperial Army’s entry into Paris in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon had led to political unrest in Russia. Officers and troops who had experienced the greater civic freedom in France were never the same again, and in 1825 a mutiny took place which nearly overthrew the Romanovs. Stalin was determined to avoid any repetition of that Decembrist Revolt. The Red Army which stormed Berlin had witnessed terrible sights in eastern and central Europe: gas chambers, concentration camps, starvation, and urban devastation. Nazism’s impact was unmistakable. But those serving soldiers had also glimpsed a different and attractive way of life. Churches and shops were functioning. Goods were available, at least in most cities, which in the USSR were on sale only in enterprises reserved for the elites. The diet was more diverse. Peasants, if not well dressed, did not always look destitute. The pervasive regimentation of the USSR, too, was absent from the countries over which they had marched. This included Germany itself.