Stalin: A Biography

Stalin’s associates needed to conserve the powers of repression if they wanted to survive. The moderation of many policies was not excluded by this; and in fact his associates quietly suggested a number of modifications to economic, national and foreign policy. But none of them was a procedural democrat or an advocate of a market economy. Stalin had them in personal thrall. But it was not just his terrifying nature which stopped radical reform from being attempted. The Soviet order had its own internal imperatives. It had never been as adaptive as capitalist societies in the West, and the conditions after the Second World War rendered its inflexibilities stronger than ever. Stalinism would outlast Stalin.

46. THE OUTBREAK OF THE COLD WAR

The USSR’s relationship with the world of capitalism was always volatile. The October 1917 Revolution shook the global order like an earthquake and the tremors were registered in the politics and diplomacy of both the Bolsheviks and their enemies in the West. No government thought the rivalry could forever remain unresolved. The axiom was that permanent coexistence was impossible and that one side or the other would eventually triumph. Yet the communist leaders concurred that direct military conflict should be avoided. Truman, Attlee and Stalin agreed on this without the need to discuss it; and when Stalin was asked his opinion by visiting foreign communists, he insisted that the Third World War which he and they as Marxist–Leninists regarded as inevitable was not going to happen. He thought his will and judgement superior to those of his counterparts in the West. He also believed in the greater internal strength of the communist order in a potential conflict with capitalist states. Communism had spread fast in Europe and Asia. Nuclear-weapon technology had been a sector of Soviet weakness but he was doing something about this. He had allocated the resources to acquire parity for his armed forces and aimed to catch up with the USA in military power.

The USSR’s agreements with Western governments, from the commercial treaties of 1921 onwards, had been regarded by everyone on both sides as suspendable. Subsequent events confirmed this approach. In 1924 the United Kingdom tore up the treaty signed with Sovnarkom in 1921. The Japanese in 1938 and the Germans in 1941 went to war with the USSR despite earlier concordats. The coalition which Stalin formed with the United Kingdom and the USA in the Second World War had from the start been characterised by strain and suspicion. The leaders of the Grand Alliance had lived on their nerves. Only their common anti-Nazi interest had kept them on speaking terms. Communism and capitalism dealt uneasily with each other.

Yet this does not explain why the coalition broke down when and in the way it did. Stalin had spent the war ranting about the perfidy of his foreign partners; and Truman had few illusions about the ruthless ambitions of the Soviet leader. It was not just a question of clashing ideologies and personalities. The states of the Grand Alliance had divergent interests. The United Kingdom wished to preserve its empire intact while the USSR and the USA aspired to have it dismantled. The USA aimed at hegemony in Europe and the Far East: this was bound to agitate the Soviet political leadership after the protracted struggle against Germany and Japan. Yet the USSR had brought eastern and east-central Europe under its direct dominion despite the Grand Alliance’s promise to liberate all nations from wartime subjugation. The fact that the Soviet economy, apart from its armaments sector, was in ruins strengthened Truman’s confidence. The USA flexed the muscles of its financial and industrial might around the globe, and until 1949 the USA had atomic weapons and the USSR had none. This was a dangerous world situation. The practical moves of Stalin and Truman had to be calculated with care if military conflict was to be avoided.