Long Essay 1 - For your delictation or not!

Hi All,

Here is my "Long Essay 1". It has not copied that well i.e. footnotes have ended up being endnotes and some of the formatting has been lost. That said, it is published below for those of you who might have an interset in it...?

Pip

What was the impact of the death of Stalin on the development of the Cold War?

Introduction

Even before his death, Stalin’s potential successors were manoeuvring to fill the inevitable vacuum that his departure would leave. The thesis of this essay is that Stalin’s death had a number of impacts on the development of the Cold War and provided the catalyst for others. Specifically, that it:

· Enabled the USSR to move away from Marxist-Leninist ideology on the inevitability of war and provided the greatest opportunity for East-West détente, since the beginning of the Cold War.

· Led, both the U.S. and the USSR, to conclude that bi-lateral negotiations were best conducted from a position of overpowering strength.

· Whilst providing the catalyst for the first summit of the Cold War leaders since World War II, caused a deterioration in American-British relations due to disagreement over how to exploit the aftermath of his death.

· Prompted widespread crises in the Soviet Bloc, which ultimately resulted in a reinforcement of the immediate post World War II position in Germany and Eastern Europe.

· Enabled a quick resolution of the Korean War.

· Led to an acceleration of the nuclear arms race.

· Provided the catalyst for a deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations, despite USSR efforts to the contrary.

· Led to further expansion of the Cold War in the Third World.

· Enabled the started of the reform process that would, ultimately, result in the collapse of the USSR.

Ideology and the Opportunity for Détente

The Cold War was inevitable as long as Stalin, the main perpetrator, led the USSR.[1] As one of victors of World War II, he felt justified in taking any action to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. The underlying Soviet ideology was that capitalism would eventually fail and that communism would prevail. Also, that capitalists were irredeemably hostile and a new world war was inevitable. Security was therefore critical and Stalin depended heavily on military might. By autumn 1945 he already had doubts about the sustainability of the wartime alliance with the U.S. and the UK.[2] He was motivated not only by ideological and geo-strategic ambitions but also by the opportunity to expand the communist bloc. Ideology was, however, frequently adjusted to shifting circumstances. Stalin’s foreign policy was actually defensive in nature, reactive and prudent. He had no master plan to rule, and spread communism throughout, the World, but to establish it safely and solidly in Russia.[3] Yet, instead of postponing a confrontation with the West, and gaining the much-needed respite for post war recovery, Stalin managed to draw closer to it with every step. At the time of his death, East-West relations were at a low point and the tenets of the Cold War had been firmly established in that ‘neither the U.S. nor the USSR would accept the others vision of a postwar world, even as neither would risk war – at least not intentionally to achieve their own’.[4]

After Stalin’s death, the USSR was initially governed by a collective leadership headed by Beria and Malenkov. The election, six weeks earlier of a military General, Eisenhower, as President in the U.S. had been seen by the USSR as a possible precursor to war. As early as Stalin’s funeral, however, Malenkov declared that there were no issues in Soviet-American relations that could not be resolved by peaceful means.[5] Neither Beria nor Malenkov shared Marxist doctrine on the inevitability of war. The new and more flexible Soviet foreign policy should, however, also be viewed in the context of the intense succession struggle, where the ensuing foreign policy manipulation constituted an international liability.[6]

The fall of Beria and Malenkov and associated rise of Khrushchev did not stop the transformation of Soviet foreign policy.[7] Khrushchev’s foreign policy was initially based on revolutionary and ideological theory. Later, he would adapt the revolutionary-imperial paradigm to the realities of the nuclear age and the Cold War. Believing the essentials of Stalin’s foreign policy and, safe with thermonuclear deterrence, he concentrated on the existing Soviet Bloc rather than its further expansion.[8] Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization approach was ‘essentially a series of political manoeuvres to achieve sole power’.[9]

In a watershed speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956 Khrushchev’s broke significantly with Stalinist dogma and said that; a new world war was not inevitable. Under this new approach, later labeled détente, socialism could take differing forms; tolerating a modicum of diversity and domestic autonomy, emphasizing ideological and political bonds and reinforcing economic and military ties.[10] To Khrushchev, de-Stalinization and peaceful co-existence meant just a more effective prosecution of the Cold War. He aimed to undermine Western resistance to Communist gains, increase East-West trade, and project a friendlier image in the Third World. Whilst Khrushchev preferred peaceful co-existence he did not, however, fully abandon the revolutionary-imperial paradigm.[11] Even with massive thermonuclear tests, he still hoped to de-escalate the Cold War and the arms race. Although he held summits with Western leaders and co-authored the partial nuclear test ban of 1963, he was still responsible for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev’s foreign policies were largely reversed by his successor, Brezhnev, whose conservatism did not mean the end of reform and a return to full Stalinism.

Whilst Stalin was central to the Cold War, his death had presented the ‘greatest opportunity since 1943-45 for those in the Soviet leadership prepared to move away from the Universalist ideology of communism and the practice of global confrontation’.[12]

Negotiations from a Position of Strength

The changed behaviour of the USSR after Stalin’s death was widely misinterpreted by the West as simply new Cold War tactics. The election of Eisenhower had done little to reduce mutual mistrust. Therefore, the potential of Beria and Malenkov’s more moderate approach went largely unrecognized. Indeed, Eisenhower wanted to conduct the Cold War with more vigour and condemned Truman’s policy of containment, which he maintained had lost China to the Communists and had resulted in an inappropriate strategy in Korea. He had not had the time to formulate his foreign policy by the time Stalin died and therefore, for all his rhetoric, he actually continued Truman’s policy of containment. He remained, however, convinced that the USSR was an implacable and devious enemy, which posed a military, political and ideological threat. Beria had ‘no doubt that the imperialist West would destroy the USSR as soon as it was strong enough to do so’.[13] Therefore, USSR foreign policy was based on being strong enough so as not to be touched. The actions of Stalin’s immediate successors, for all their strategies of détente, were severely constrained and eventually shattered, not only by the hard-line of the U.S. but also their own determination not to be “rolled back”. The only course of action thought possible, by both sides, was to negotiate from a position of overpowering strength.[14]

Summit and American-British Relations

Churchill proposed a summit of the Cold War leaders as an opportunity to test the willingness of Beria and Malenkov to resolve outstanding disagreements and perhaps even bring the Cold War to an end.[15] The U.S. considered his proposal to be a ‘foolishly premature lurch towards appeasement’ feeling that more time was needed to assess the actions of the new Soviet leadership.[16] Churchill, undeterred, opened direct communications with the USSR, saying that the tension of the Cold War should be reduced and that bringing the Korean War to an end would contribute to this objective’.[17]

Churchill suggested linking the summit to the possibility of a re-united and neutral Germany. This was a key issue blocking East-West détente and caused a sharp split in the Kremlin centring on the concern that a united Germany would soon fall within the sphere of the West.[18] Churchill’s attempt to revive the cause of German reunification actually failed to obtain the support of his own cabinet for the opposite reason. The Soviets proposed a coalition of East and West Germans to prepare a peace treaty which would neutralize Germany and then, and only then, could Germany have free elections. The U.S. rejected the proposal saying that free elections must take place first and then a peace treaty drawn, believing that détente was impossible. Although abandoning his scheme for German re-unification Churchill continued to press Eisenhower; who eventually agreed to a summit. Eisenhower, however, also demanded that a number of other issues needed to be resolved simultaneously by the Soviets if they truly wanted détente. In May 1953, Eisenhower, referring to the difference of opinion on how to exploit the aftermath of the death of Stalin, considered that relations with Britain had become worse than at any time since the end of World War II. Relations would, however, further deteriorate during the eventual summit in 1954 and the Suez Crisis in 1956 before they eventually improved. It was, however, the death of Stalin that had provided the catalyst for Churchill’s initiative for direct dialogue in the first place.

Eastern Europe and Germany

Would-be reformers in Eastern Europe were heartened by the prospect of a loosening Soviet grip under Beria and Malenkov and soon started to test the limits of the Kremlins tolerance for diversity and national independence. The seeming end of Stalinist methods brought an unexpected, albeit short-lived, revolt by East German workers in June 1953; a presage of things to come. The thermonuclear bomb had made Eastern Europe, in terms of territory, less important for Soviet security.[19] Beria and Malenkov had reversed the GDRs Sovietization campaign and Beria even seemed willing to allow German unification in return for neutrality. He was especially concerned about the long-term costs of propping up the GDR. To Beria, all that was needed was a peaceful Germany and whether socialist or not.[20] Khrushchev was appalled by Beria’s apparent willingness to hand over 18 million East Germans to what he saw as American imperialist rule. The German issue provided Khrushchev with the opportunity to oust Beria and subsequently Malenkov.

Crises in Czechoslovakia, riots in Poland and a bloodbath in Hungary, followed; all inconceivable in Stalin’s era. The tenuousness of Moscow’s control over Eastern Europe was further demonstrated by an increasingly independent Tito in Yugoslavia. Following these crises, security was again defined in territorial terms, as much as on nuclear weapons. Hereafter, whilst there were ‘many roads to socialism, the route-map would be provided by the Soviet Union’.[21] The immediate post World War II status quo in Eastern Europe and Germany had, de facto, been re-established.

The Korean War

Fearing an anti-communist “domino effect”, Stalin had put extraordinary pressure on Mao to support Kim Il Sung in North Korea.[22] He had, however, backed away from direct conflict with the U.S. but the Korean War had already, by that time, both militarized and globalized the superpower conflict. By the time of his death the armistice talks had stagnated. Beria and Malenkov, concerned that Eisenhower might escalate the conflict, therefore pressurized the Chinese and North Koreans to drop their demand for the compulsory repatriation of prisoners of war and to conclude the peace talks.[23] A year later the Vietminh were similarly pressurized by their Soviet patrons to accept a settlement that denied them their military gains against the French.[24]

The Nuclear Arms Race

Beria and Malenkov recognized Stalin’s legacy of global over-commitment and the danger of nuclear war. Whilst Stalin had been chained to geopolitical and ideological schemes from the past, for Beria and Malenkov, the Cold War was, primarily, a nuclear arms race recognizing that nuclear weapons provided the ultimate answer to problems of security and international policy.[25] Malenkov warned that a nuclear war could destroy not just capitalism but civilization at large. He was thereby guilty of a major ideological heresy in contradicting the Marxist prediction of the end of capitalism.[26]

The Soviet nuclear test in 1949 broke the US nuclear monopoly but, at the time of Stalin’s death, the USSR did not have one single atomic bomb operationally deployed. The first Soviet test of a thermonuclear device was conducted in August 1953, and with the U.S. thermonuclear monopoly broken, the Soviets stood ready to negotiate on Cold War issues. Eisenhower placed increasing reliance on nuclear weapons and the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile doubled between 1953 -1955; the U.S. flaunting superior nuclear and air power. He was, ‘prepared to consider starting a nuclear war if necessary – not only if the Soviets invaded Europe but also if the Cold War costs became [too] high’.[27] Khrushchev, however, considered that nuclear weapons were so destructive that they would never be used. Whilst not wanting an East-West military conflict he was, though, willing to threaten nuclear war and cut back on conventional forces. This resulted in accelerating the nuclear arms race and actually brought nuclear war closer than ever before.

Sino-Soviet Relations

‘So long as Stalin had been alive, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong may have bristled at the condescension shown him in Moscow, but he acknowledged Russian primacy in the international communist movement’.[28] In sharp contrast to Stalin, Khrushchev lavished Mao with attention and hospitality, using him for support to oust Beria and Malenkov. Yet Mao thought Khrushchev incapable as a leader and poured scorn on him. Khrushchev did much to try and heal the growing split that Stalin’s action over Korea had perpetuated. What Stalin’s death meant to Mao is unclear, perhaps, ‘it was simply an opportunity to draw a line under a policy that had served its purpose - to demonstrate Chinese strength and independence - but which otherwise had no natural terminus’.[29] Hence the Chinese willingness to bring the impasse in the Korean War armistice talks to an end.

Mao certainly judged Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign unwise but his main objection to the new Soviet leadership lay in its failure to support China militarily.[30] It was only after Stalin’s death that an independent Chinese foreign policy emerged but with Mao then considering himself to be the chief communist ideologist. Indeed, ‘Mao appears to have been a much more committed Marxist-Leninist than previously suspected’.[31] Mao was, simultaneously, also trying to establish his credentials as a moderate statesman, independent of the USSR. Soviet attempts to improve relations actually made them worse in the longer term, laying the foundations for the Sino-Soviet split a decade later. Indeed, one of the major causes of the Sino-Soviet split was Mao’s disagreement with Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful co-existence and a lessening of world tension. Also, Khrushchev came under increasing pressure from the Chinese, who maintained that by supporting non-communists in the Third World he was abandoning the socialist struggle. Therefore Stalin’s death provided the catalyst for the deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations.

The Third World

Stalin had repudiated Lenin’s policy of flexibility and ‘denied that full independence could be achieved under non communist leadership’.[32] During the first phase of de-colonization after World War II, this policy resulted in communist led independence struggles in Southeast Asia, further impacting on the Cold War. By pursuing the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary mission in the Third World, which Stalin had mostly ignored, Khrushchev sought to outdo the West. He considered that newly independent states did not have to be aligned to either of the Superpowers, feeling that their neutrality would have an inherently anti-Western bias, given the legacy of European colonialism and that the USSR would thereby profit.[33] Ironically, and simultaneously, U.S. foreign policy was becoming increasingly anti-communist and less anti-colonial. Therefore the U.S. felt that it could not ignore the types of regimes within newly independent states, which led them to support some less than democratic governments in order to counter potential Soviet influence.

The result of the Soviet policy of seeking influence in the Third World through aid and trade after Stalin’s death did not therefore result in any let up in the waging of the Cold War but simply increased Superpower competition and widened the conflict geographically.

The Collapse of the USSR

Khrushchev’s Twentieth Party speech in 1956, and his pledge to return to Leninism, has been widely regarded as the bravest and most reckless thing he ever did, and that the Soviet regime never fully recovered.[34] He has been referred to as both the last revolutionary and the first reformer in the Kremlin. Gorbachev’s view was that he had simply continued the reform that Khrushchev had started in the immediate post Stalin years. Indeed, Gorbachev felt that Khrushchev had not gone far enough in either analyzing the roots of Stalinism or attacking them. ‘Khrushchev’s attempt to ease the Cold War had been contradictory and ultimately self defeating’.[35] Gorbachev said that, ‘it took more than a little courage for the party and its leadership, headed by Khrushchev, to criticize the personality cult and its consequences and to restore socialist legality’.[36] Stalin’s death therefore allowed Khrushchev to begin the process that ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR, although to have gone beyond his attack on Stalin and to admit his own guilt would have undermined his own position as well.

Conclusion

Stalin’s legacy survived not only his own death, but also the efforts at de-Stalinization by his successors. This was largely because Leninist ideology was too useful a political tool.[37] His death had a huge impact on the development of the Cold War but, ironically, ‘the issues over which Soviet-American conflict had arisen at the end of World War II were still unresolved, for the most part, in the mid-1980’s’.[38]


P. J. Leighton 4th January 2006


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[1] Gaddis (1997), p. 292
[2] Swain (2003), pp. 55-56
[3] Maxey (1950), p. 672
[4] Taubman (2003), p. 113
[5] Reynolds (2000), p. 112
[6] Keylor (2003), p. 65
[7] Zubok (1996), p. 169
[8] Reynolds (2000), p. 112
[9] Rayfield (2004), p. 456
[10] Brzezinski (1967), pp.168-80
[11] Zubok (1996), p. 175
[12] Ibid, p. 139
[13] Ibid, p. 149
[14] McMahon (2003), p. 60
[15] Keylor (2003), p. 66
[16] McMahon (2003), p. 60
[17] Lowe (2000), p. 94
[18] Keylor (2003), p. 66
[19] Reynolds (2000), p. 119
[20] Ibid, p. 248
[21] Ibid, p. 114
[22] Gaddis (1997), p. 285
[23] Lowe (2000), p. 90
[24] Keylor (2003), p. 64
[25] Zubok (1996), p. 149
[26] Taubman (2001), p. 266
[27] LaFeber (2002), p. 160
[28] Freedman (2000), p. 255
[29] Moran (2001), p. 82
[30] Freedman (2000), p. 255
[31] Gaddis (1997), p. 290
[32] Crockatt (1995), p. 175
[33] Ibid
[34] Taubman (2001), p. 274
[35] Ibid, p. 648
[36] Pravda (3rd November 1987), p. 3
[37] Strayer (1998), p. 54
[38] Gaddis (1997), p. 113