Stalin as foreign policy-maker: avoiding war, 1927–1953

Alfred J. Rieber

Stal in’s repu tation as a wartime leader continu es to be cont roversi al at hom e and abr oad because of the deep inconsi stencies an d parad oxes of hisbehaviour.Hehadanticipatedwarforatleastadecadebeforeitcame, prepared for it, yet was taken by surprise when the Germans invaded in June1941.Ashemobilisedthecountryforwarinthe1930s,heweakened the institutions that might have served him best in fighting it: the army command, the diplomatic corps, the federal structure, the Comintern, eventhearmamentindustries.Hefailedtopredictthebreakdownofthe wartimealliancewiththeUSAandGreatBritain,althoughheharboured deepsuspicionsoverthebehaviourofhisalliesduringmostoftheconflict.

A Marxist-Leninist who believed in the inevitability of war as long as capitalism survived, Stalin misconstrued the basic character of the SecondW orldW ar,andtheSovietUnionsufferedterribleconsequences as a result. He survived his mistakes, but his was a pyrrhic victory. The aimofthischapteristoexplorethesourcesoftheseparadoxesasawayof shedding light on Stalin as a statesman and wartime leader who did his b e s t t o k e e pt h e S o v i e t U ni o n o u t o f bo t h a h o t a n d ac ol d w a r , b u t w h o failedonbothaccounts.

For Stalin, war rather than revolution was the major catalyst of social change.In1917hewasconspicuouslyabsentfromthecentreoftheplanning and execution of the October Revolution. During the Central Committee debatesaboutaseparatepeacewithGermanyinthewinterof1917–18,he expressedhisscepticismoveranimminentEuropeanrevolution:‘thereisno revolutionary movement in the West, nothing existed, only a potential.’ 1

TheresearchforthischapterwasmadepossiblebyagrantfromtheResearchBoardofthe CentralEuropeanUniversity.

1 TheBolsheviksandtheOctoberRevolution:MinutesoftheCentralCommitteeoftheRussian Social-DemocraticLaborParty(Bolsheviks),August1917–February1918 (London:Pluto, 1974),pp.177–8;forStalin’sabsenceRobertSlusser, Stalinin October:TheManWho MissedtheRevolution (Baltimore:TheJohnsHopkinsPress,1987).

140

DuringtheCi vilW arandinterventionheregardedtheRedArmyasthe maininstrumentofspreadingtheBolshevikRevolutionintotheborder - landsofthe former tsaristempire.Hepursuedthispolicywith vigour in Ukraine,andmostaggressivelyinGeorgiawherehenotonlyconvinceda reluctantLenintosupportaninterventionbytheRedArmy,butignored thelocalBolsheviksinthecampaigntooverthrowtheMenshevikgovern - ment.Hewas,however,scepticaloftheabilityoftheRedArmytocarry theRevolutiononitsbayonetsintoPolandwhere‘classconflictshavenot reached such a pitch as to undermine the sense of national unity’. For 2

Stalin, war was a necessary but not sufficient basis for radical change;

domestic class relations also mattered. Instead of advancing on Warsaw hefavoureddefeatingW rangelintheCrimea,securingtherearoftheRed Army, and then driving on to Lwow (L’viv) in order to complete the unificationofUkrainebyincorporatingEastGalicia. 3

Stalinfavoureddirectactionbythecentreoverspontaneous fusionin reunifyingtheGreatRussiancorewiththenationalborderlandsoftheold empire. As early as the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 he stated that ‘the roots of all conflicts between the periphery and central Russialieinthequestionofpower’. Accordingtohisanalysis,thesocio- 4

economicbackwardnessoftheperipheryenabledlocalnationalists,espe - cially his beˆtes noires the Georgian Mensheviks, to promote separation fromthecentre,weakeningSovietpower.Thisinturncreated‘azoneof foreigninterventionandoccupation’thatfurtherthreatenedtheproletarian heartland. 5Stalin’sobsessionwiththevulnerabilityofSovietfrontiersto foreigninterventioninsupportofinternaloppositionshapedhisinterwar policiestowardtherepublicsof Belorussia,Ukraine,andtheneighbour- ingstatesofPolandandRomania,thetermsoftheNazi–SovietPact,his waraims,andhisconceptofpost -warsecurity.

ThedangerofexternalattackrecededwiththeendoftheRussianCivil War, intervention, and the Russo–Polish War. But these events were never far from Stalin’s mind. He incorporated them, as he had done in thepastandwoulddointhefuture,intohisongoingrevisionofMarxism - Leninism.Embeddedinhisconceptsoftheinevitabilityofwar,socialism inonecountry,andcapitalistencirclementwastheimplicitbeliefthatthe externalworldrepresentednotsomuchanopportunitytolaunchfurther

2 I.V.Stalin, Sochineniia,13vols.(Moscow:Gospolitizdat,1946–52),IV,p.336.

3 I.V. Mikhutina, Pol’sko-Sovetskaia voina, 1919–1920gg. (Moscow: RAN Institut slavianovedeniia i balkanistiki, 1994), pp.182–3. For a severe indictment of Stalin’s behaviourduringthecampaignthatdoesnotmentionthenationalquestionseeThomas C. Fiddick, Russia’s Retreat from Poland, 1920: From Permanent Revolution to Peaceful Coexistence (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), ch. 12.

4 Stalin, Sochineniia, I V , p . 3 1 . 5 Ibid., pp. 162, 237, 372.

revo lutionary offensive s as a p otential threat to the territori al integr ity, ind eed the survi val of the Soviet state. He was prep ared to exaggera te and man ipulate the dange r in order to confoun d his internal enemi es and advan ce his own agend a. Yet it is no easy matte r for the outside obs erver to draw a clear distin ction, if one eve r existed, among reality, fan tasy, and inve ntion in St alin’s perce ption of the extern al worl d.

A case in point is the war sc are of the late 1920s . A serie s of inter- nation al inciden ts during these years arou sed fears within the Soviet lead ership and the publ ic that war was imm inent. It is now cl ear that the se fears were not only gro undless but were manipu lated by Stalin in his campa ign to destroy the Ri ght Oppositi on. St alin was , none theless , 6

convin ced tha t unreliab le element s among the pop ulations of the west ern peri phery could prove troublesome in the event of a major conflict with Poland and Romani a. OGP U report s streng thene d his conv iction.

Peas ant resistanc e to collecti visation in the borde rlands confirm ed it.

Stal in’s recurre nt nightma re was the prospect of Po lish interve ntion in Ukrai ne in support of domestic unrest. He responded by taking charac - teristically contradictory measu res, depor ting Polish villagers suspect ed of nation alis t opposit ion, and at the same time creatin g a Polis h nation al regi on along the Belo russia frontier in ord er to fight ‘cha uvinism’. 7

Despi te these ‘alarms and excurs ions’ St alin only began in earnest to buil d a m odern army and defence ind ustry with the inaugu ration of the Secon d Five-Y ear Plan. He reacte d belat edly to the real dange r signalled 8

by the Japanese occ upati on of Manc huria and Hitler’s coming to powe r in Ge rmany. At the Se venteent h Party Congr ess in 1934, in his on ly maj or forei gn polic y address duri ng the cru cial deca de of the thirties devote d to the nature of wars, he pred icted ‘an imperialist war’, wh ich h e blamed on

‘extr eme na tionalis m’ without nam ing the most likely aggressor. He sketc hed ou t four scen arios for war without ind icating which was the more likely to occ ur. In every case war woul d pro mote revolu tion. But Stal in stopped short of desc ribing the kin d of regim es that might emerg e from tho se revo lutions , an omi ssion which should be kep t in mind wh en

6 L.N. Nezhinskii, ‘Byla li voennaia ugroza SSSR v kontse 20-x -nachale 30-x godov?’, IstoriiaSSSR 6(1990),14–30.

7 O.N. Ken and A.I. Rupasov, Politbiuro TsK VKP (b) i otnosheniia SSSR s zapadnymi sosednimigosudarstvami(konets20–30-khgg.).Problemy.Dokumenty.Opytkommenariia, pt1,1928–1934(St.Petersburg:EvropeiskiiDom,2000),pp.484–5,491,497.Aspecial commission of the Politburo for studying the security of the frontier zone had been established as early as 1925. Ibid., p. 486.

8 The share of defence in the total budget expenditure rose in the following pattern:

1933–3.4%; 1934–9.1%; 1935–11.1%; 1936–16.1%; 1937–16.5%; 1938–18.7%;

1939–25.6%; 1940–32.6%. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991 (Harmondsworth:Penguin,1992),p.230.

considering his policies in the borderlands during and after the Second W orldW ar. 9

Thus,ontheeveofthemomentousshiftinbothSovietf oreignpolic y towardscollectivesecurityandCominternpolicytowardapopularfront, Stalin’s message fell short of a clarion call to resist fascism. The speech wasvintageStalinism.Hemetuncertaintywithambiguity.Hestakedout themiddlegroundwithoutindicatingthedirectioninwhichhemightmove.

Events would dictate. Having exhausted all the possible combinations that might lead to war, he could never be proven wrong. The point was not to commit himself prematurely to a course of action that he might laterregret,orthatmightbeusedagainsthimbywhicheverinternalenemies might emerge in a moment of political confusion and uncertainty. The onecertaintyremainedhisbelief,rootedinLeninism,oftheinevitability ofwar.

The ambiguity of Stalin’s tactical moves from the Seventeenth Congress to the Nazi–Soviet Pact has given rise to conflicting views about his intentions. Did Stalin’s genuine commitment to collective security and the Popular Front erode under the cumulative effect of Anglo-French actions during the Spanish Civil War, at Munich, and in their abortive negotiations in Moscow in the summer of 1939? Or did 10

Stalin plan all along to cut a deal with Hitler? 11The problem of inter- pretation arises from the fact that Stalin prepared for war along two parallellines,oneinternal,theotherexternal.Internallyhecompletedthe process,begunforotherreasons,ofeliminatinganypotentialopposition that in the event of a war might invoke what Trotsky had called the Clemenceau option of overturning a government in order to pursue the wareffortmoreeffectively.Thisexplainsinparttheaccusationsoftreason that Stalin levelled against suspected opponents among high-ranking party, army, defence, industrial, and Comintern personnel from 1936–9.

The precise proportions of political calculation and psychological derangement thatdroveStalinto theseextreme measures willalwaysbe

9 Stalin, Sochineniia,XIII,pp.267–69.

10 Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–39 (London: Macmillan, 1984) and Teddy Uldricks, ‘Debating the Role of RussiaintheOriginsoftheSecondW orldW ar’,inG.Martel(ed.), TheOriginsofthe SecondWorldWarReconsidered (London:Routledge,1999).BothHaslamandUlricks generallytakethisposition.

11 JiriHochman, TheSovietUnionandtheFailureofCollectiveSecurity,1934–1938 (Ithaca:

CornellUniversityPress,1984)andR.CRaack, Stalin’sDrivetotheWest,1938–1945:

TheOriginsoftheColdWar (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress,1995)sharethisview.

Haslamhasrecentlyreviewedoneaspectofthedebatein‘Soviet -GermanRelationsand theOriginsoftheSecondW orldW ar:TheJuryIsStillOut’, JournalofModernHistory 4(1997),785–97.

amatterofspeculation.Buttheireffectcuttwoways.W hentheGermans invadedtherewasnoalternativetohisleadershipeventhoughhehadled thecountrytothebrinkofdisaster.Butinordertosecurethispositionhe destroyed what was arguably the most talented group of general staff officersintheworld,anddecimatedtheinternationalcommunistmove - mentincludingPartyleadersinthefront-lineSovietrepublicsexposedto foreigninvasion.

Inhisexternalrelations,Stalin’sattitudetowardthePopularFrontalso displayedcontradictionsthatwerenot,itmustbeadmitted,entirelyofhis ownmaking. TheseshowedupmostdramaticallyinSpainandChina, 12

where the Soviet Union backed up its endorsement of a Popular Front with military aid and volunteers. Stalin even expanded on Dimitrov’s definition with a public endorsement in the form of a letter to Largo Caballero that a Popular Front government could make the transition to socialism by parliamentary means. 13Simultaneously, he pressed the Chinese Communists to enter a coalition government with the Kuomintang.Hehadadumbratedtheideaofatransitionalstagebetween bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1928 during his first speech to the Comintern when he revived and revised the formula Lenin first mentioned in 1905 and then discarded of a

‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’. Clearly, his 14

policy was aimed at maintaining the broadest possible coalition of anti- fascist forces at both the international diplomatic level and at the local fightingfrontsinwarsfardistantfromtheSovietborders.Standinginthe shadowsofthesepragmaticconcernswasStalin’sfearofanautonomous, spontaneous revolutionary movement outside his control that could claim equal status with the Soviet Union by virtue of making its own October.

LocalconditionsinSpainandChinaprovedfartoocomplexforStalin to manage by remote control. In China during the battle for Wuhan, ChiangKai-shekrejectedtheadviceofhisSovietadvisorstocommithis armouredforcesconsistingofSoviettankstoamajoroffensiveagainstthe

12 TherewasmuchuncertaintyanddisagreementwithintheCominternoverthePopular FrontandlittlecoordinationbetweenthenewpolicyandthenegotiationoftheFranco -SovietandCzech-Soviettreatiesofmutualassistance.JulianJackson, ThePopularFront in France. Defending Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.26–41.

13 E.H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp.86–7.

14 ReferringtosuchpredominantlypeasantsocietiessuchasPolandandRomania,Stalin hadraisedthepossibilityofintermediatestagessuchasthe‘dictatorshipoftheproletariat and peasantry’, dropping Lenin’s modifier of ‘democratic’. Stalin, Sochineniia, XI, pp.155–6.

Japanese. At the same time Chiang resisted the urging of the Chinese Communiststoarmtheworkersandconductarevolutionarywaragainst theJapanese. YetStalincontinuedtourgethecommuniststocooperate 15

withtheKuomintang.InSpain,disagreementsamongCominternrepre - sentatives,theactivitiesoftheNKVD,andthecommunistrepressionof the anarchists in the name of unity fatally weakened the republic. Yet Stalin permitted the defeated and exiled Spanish communists to defend their leftist policies. 16It was becoming increasingly evident to him that eachcountrypresentedasetofspecificconditionsthatdefiedauniform policy.Asearlyas1940,hehadconsideredabolishingtheCominternand substitutingbilateralrelationswith local communistparties. Yet despite theSpanishde´baˆcleandtheimpotenceofthePopularFrontinChinahe continuedtobelieveintheideaofatransitionalstage;onlyhenceforthit wouldhavetoconformtolocalcircumstancesasheinterpretedthem.

The Czech crisis of 1938 together with the crumbling of the Popular Front in Spain and China revealed to Stalin the weakness of the policy of collective security. The major stumbling-block to invoking the Franco–SovietallianceindefenceofCzechoslovakiaprovedtobethe refusalofPolandandRomaniatogranttheRedArmytransitrightsinthe event of war with Germany. Soviet military plans envisaged a campaign fought outside the western frontier of the Soviet Union. This would prevent a battleground in the borderlands, where strong resistance to collectivisationcombinedwithnationalistferment. 17

Stalin reacted to the complexities of the international situation in the latethirtiesbypermittingdifferentvoiceswithintheSovietelitetoengage in a muted debate over an ideological question that masked real policy options. Was there a real distinction within the capitalist camp between

‘peace-loving’and‘aggressive’powersthatcouldbebestexploitedinthe interestsofsecuritybyaSovietalignmentwiththeformer?Thiswasthe mainassumptionofLitvinovandhissupporters.Orwerealltheimperialist powers, althoughantagonistic tooneanother, alsoequally hostile tothe SovietUnion,inwhichcaseapolicyofwithdrawalorisolationwouldbe in order, leaving the imperialists to fight it out until the propitious

15 A.I.Cherepanov, ZapiskivoennogosovetnikavKitae,2ndedn.(Moscow:Nauka,1976), pp.323–32;A.Ia.Kaliagin, Poneznakomymdorogam.ZapiskivoennogosovetnikavKitae, 2ndedn.(Moscow:Nauka,1979),pp.92n,282.

16 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (henceforth RGASPI) f.495,op.10a,d.2521,ll.1 7–50.

17 Hugh Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis and the Coming of World War II (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2004);R.Savushkin,‘Kvoprosuozarozhde -nii teorii posledovatel’nykh nastupatel’nykh operatsii’, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal 5(1983),78–82.

momentarrivedforadirectSovietintervention?Suchwasthethinkingof ZhdanovandMolotov. Inneithercasewastheideaabandonedthatwar 18

wastheharbingerofrevolution,althoughStalinhadleftopenthenature oftheregimesthatwouldbeestablishedasaresult.

In the parallel negotiations with the Anglo-French and the Germans duringthe summer of 1939,Stalin’s dual aimwas to avoid being drawn i ntoawarthat hebelieved inevitable,andto ensure that ifand when he became involved it would be under the most favourable political and military circumstances. What he sought from the Anglo-French was an iron-cladmutualassistancepactembracingPolandandRomaniaaswell as the three signatory powers, guarantees against ‘indirect aggression’

through a fascist coup in the Baltic states, and safe passage of Soviet troops through Polish and Romanian territory in case of a German attack on those two states or the Soviet Union. 19If concluded, such a pact would have encircled Hitler with a powerful military alliance and confronted him with the certainty of fighting a three-front war in the event of his aggression. Would this deterrent guarantee the peace?

If not, then at least the Red Army would be fighting on foreign soil;

itspresenceasanallyonPolishandRomanianterritorymightwellfoster thekindofpoliticalchangesinthosecountriesthathadnotbeenpossible in Spain or China. When the Anglo-French negotiators were unable to guarantee transit rights, Voroshilov suspended and effectively ended thetalks. 20

TheNazi–SovietPactdidnot,bycontrast,involveamilitary alliance, and Stalin refused to conclude one with Germany over the following months. Its main advantages in Stalin’s mind were to keep the Soviet Unionoutofthecoming‘imperialistwar’andtostrengthenitsstrategic positionbyadivisionofEasternEuropeintospheresofinfluence.Given his assumption that the war in the West would beprolonged, the Soviet Union would also be in a position to advance its frontiers by annexing territories assigned to its sphere without German interference and to make additional demands on Hitler, especially in the Balkans, while German forces were tied up in a western campaign. Operating on the

18 Silvio Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936–1941 (London: Frank Cass, 2002) presentsthemostsophisticatedanalysisofpolicydifferencesamongtheSovietelitebut concludesthat‘Litvinovnevermanagedtopresentaforcefulalternativetothisdogmatic view[combiningarevivalof1914and1918]thatdominat edStalinistthinkingonforeign policy’,p.119.

19 Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War II (September 1938–August 1939), 2 vols.

(Moscow:Novosti,1973),II,pp.202–10.TheSovietwarplanswerepresentedindetail by the Chief of Staff, Marshal B. M. Shaposhnikov. Ibid., pp. 201–2.

20 Ibid., pp. 254–9.

same assumpti on, Stalin envisage d gaining a nece ssary br eathing space because ‘onl y by 1943 coul d we m eet the Ge rmans on an equ al footing’. His negotiatio n of a neutrali ty pact with Japan in April 1940 21

secu red the Far E astern f ront and furth er streng thened his posit ion vis-a` -vis Hitl er.

In the wake of the Nazi –Soviet Pa ct, Stalin purs ued a borde rland policy base d on strategic considera tions but carri ed ou t in such a brutal fashion as to undermi ne the purpose for wh ich it was designed . The massi ve depor tations and repres sion that accomp anie d the inco rporation of west Belo russia and Wes t Ukraine int o the Soviet Uni on le ft behind a residue of hosti lity that fed into an ti-Sovie t res istanc e duri ng the Secon d World War. The Winter War embittered the Finns who exacted revenge when 22

the Germ ans launc hed their invasi on by waging their own ‘Co ntinuat ion War’. The dep ortation s of local elites an d forced collectiv isation that followe d the anne xation of the Baltic states cre ated a deep an tagonism that explo ded in the rear of the Red Army when the Ge rmans attac ked in 1941 and then three years later sparked a pr olonged gue rilla resis tance that lasted into the early 1950s. In part, the se politic al disasters were the result of St alin’s hasty, not to say panic-st ricke n, r eaction to the unexpe ctedly rapid Ge rman victorie s in the west. The fall of France shattere d his illusi ons of a stal emate, upse t his plans for the gra dual sovie tisation of the Baltic states , an d expos ed h im to great er Germa n diplo matic pressu re. 23

That St alin was stupefie d by the Ge rman attack in Ju ne 1941 can hardly be expla ined by his trus t in Hitl er’s word – did St alin eve r trust anyon e? Rath er he was the victim of self-dec eption base d on a se t of perfec tly rationa l, if fau lty, calculations . He was conv inced that Hitler would never risk repeati ng the error of the Germa ns in the Fi rst World War of fighting on two fronts . He also discoun ted the m ass of intelli- 24

gence point ing to Ge rman’s preparat ions for an easter n campaign as inspired either by the Brit ish wh o wante d to dra w him into the war to save their skins or b y the Ge rmans wh o sought to check an active Sov iet

21 This is the way Molotov remembered it decades later: F. I. Chuev, Sto sorok besed sMolotovym:izdnevnikaF.Chueva (Moscow:Terra,1991),p.31.

22 JanT.Gross, RevolutionfromAbroad:TheSovietConquestofPoland’sWesternUkraineand WesternBelarus,expandededition(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,2002).

23 A.O. Chubarian, ‘Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika (1 sentiabria–konets oktiabria 1939 goda)’,inA.O.Chubarian(ed.), Voinaipolitika,1939–1941 (Moscow:Nauka,1999), pp. 11–13 and A. S. Orlov, ‘SSSR i Pribaltiki’, in ibid., pp. 174–91.

24 OntheeveoftheGermanattackhetoldGeneralsZhukovandTimoshenko‘Germanyis b u s y u p t o i t s n e c k wi t h t h e wa r i n t h e W e s t , a n d I a m c e r t a i n t h a t H i t l e r wi l l n o t r i s k creating a second front by attacking the Soviet Union.’ G.K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia irazmyshleniia,2ndedn.(Mosco w:Nov osti,1995),II,pp.383–4.

policy in the Balkans. His relations with Germany oscillated between appeasementandprovocation.Economicappeasementtooktheformof deliveries of raw materials right up to June 1941, although even in this Moscowprovedtobeatoughnegotiator.Politicalappeasementtookthe form of Stalin’s refusal to keep the lines open to London, ignoring Litvinov’sadvice. TheprovocationcameoverStalin’srigidnegotiating 25

standonSovietinterestsinBulgariaandtheStraits. Hisbalancingact 26

only convinced Hitler that Stalin was both weak and dangerous, and he setBarbarossainmotion.TheGermaninvasionoftheSovietUnionled toareversalofalliances,butitdidnotchangeStalin’slong -termgoalsin any fundamental way. It did, however, open the way for him to expand thehorizonsofhisborderlandpolicy. 27

From this perspective, it is possible to shed new light on Stalin’s war aims. Reacting opportunistically to changing political and military cir- cumstances,hegraduallyconstructedabeltofconcentricsecurityzones, eachpossessingadifferentcharacterandfunction,slopingoutwardlikea defensiveglacis fromtheinner, GreatRussiancoreof theUSSR.Atthe same time, he revised the official ideology once again in response to changing circumstances by blending elements of Soviet patriotism, Russian nationalism, Panslavism, and a ‘united’ rather than ‘popular’

frontof‘allfreedom-lovingpeopleagainstfascism’inordertoavoidany hint of revolutionary aims. Mutually reinforcing one another, his real- politikandideologicalstancerepresentedStalin’sanswertothepersistent geo-cultural factors that had confronted all previous rulers of the Eurasian land mass that had become the USSR: the need to stabilise a multiculturalstate;sealitsporousfrontiers,overcomerelativeeconomic backwardness,andendculturalmarginality. 28

His first aim, essential to all the others, was to restore Soviet power within the 1940 state boundaries; the second was to readjust those

25 Kh. P. fon Strandman, ‘Obostriaiushchiesia paradoksy: Gitler, Stalin i germano-sovetskie ekonomicheskie sviazi, 1939–1941’, in Chubarian (ed.), Voina, pp.366–83;

Gabriel Gorodetsky, Sir Stafford Cripps’ Mission to Moscow (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,1984).

26 Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Illusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress,1999),pp.67–75.

27 From his first contact with the British during Anthony Eden’s visit to Moscow in November 1941, he attempted to confirm his territorial gains from the Nazi–Soviet PactandredefinethedivisionofEuropeintospheresofinfluence,thistimewithGreat Britain. This foreshadowed the Churchill–Stalin percentages agreement of October 1944. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki. 22 iiunia 1941–1 ianvaria 1942 (Moscow:

Mezhdunarodnyeotnosheniia,2000),pp.502–10.

28 ForafurtheranalysisseeAlfredJ.Rieber,‘PersistentFactorsinRussianForeignPolicy:

An Interpretive Essay’, in Hugh Ragsdale (ed.), Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1993),pp.315–59.

boundaries in order to acquire strategic strong points and eliminate potentialirredenta.Thethirdwastoformabeltof‘friendly’governments (populardemocracies)orautonomousregionsunderSovietpoliticaland economic influence in the borderland states along the periphery of the USSR. The fourth was to encourage and support the participation of local communist parties in coalition governments outside the territories liberatedbytheSovietUnionasaguaranteeagainsttheformationofan anti-communistbloc.Underpinningthissystemofdefenceindepthwas hisinterestinmaintainingaworkingrelationshipwiththeUSAandGreat Britain that would acknowledge the legitimacy of his other four aims, assistinthepost-warreconstructionoftheSovietUnion,anddelayforat leastadecadetheresurgenceofGermanyandJapanasgreatpowersthat couldonceagainchallengeSovietcontrolovertheborderlands.

This analysis does not assume either that Stalin had formed a pre- establishedplanorthatheconceivedofthis‘system’inthetermsoutlined above. The outcome was rather the result of a series of ad hoc decisions that reflected his conceptual thinking about the borderlands and his estimate of the ‘balance of forces’ as he sought to resolve the problems arising from the persistent factors. His policies reflected then both his experience as a revolutionary from a highly volatile ethnic region on the imperial periphery, his praxis, if you will, and his ideologically based understanding of class conflict and imperialist rivalries. He was not always able to combine these elements into an integrated world view.

Thishelpstoexplainthecontradictions,paradoxes,andabruptshiftsin hispre-war,wartime,andpost-warpatternofbehaviour.

Stalin faced serious internal and external problems in restoring the 1940 frontiers. For a period of up to three years the western periphery oftheSovietUnionhadbeenoccupiedbythearmiesofGermanyandits allies and had been to a greater or lesser degree de-sovietised. German occupation policies were inconsistent and often brutal, failing to win large-scalesupportfromthelocalpopulation.Nevertheless,Sovietinsti - tutionsvirtuallydisappeared.Theauthorityofthepartyevaporated.The collectivefarmsystemcollapsedeventhoughtheGermanstriedtokeepit intactasausefulmeansofgraincollection.Churcheswerere -established.

Inthefirsttwoyearsofwar,Sovieteffortstocreateapartisanmovement failed disastrously. By contrast, anti-Soviet resistance broke out in the firstdaysofthewar,especiallyinthenewlyacquiredterritories.By1943 the occupied territories had become a twilight zone in which nationalist

Inthefirsttwoyearsofwar,Sovieteffortstocreateapartisanmovement failed disastrously. By contrast, anti-Soviet resistance broke out in the firstdaysofthewar,especiallyinthenewlyacquiredterritories.By1943 the occupied territories had become a twilight zone in which nationalist