Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Introduction

This will be an essay with two main purposes. The first is for me to explain whether or to what extent I hold Josef Stalin responsible for the beginning of the Cold War. The second is to explain the historiography of the beginning of the Cold War. This first is a matter of analysing and judging a set of past events. The second is a matter of discussing how others have analysed and judged these events.

Here is the summary judgement that I plan to develop in this essay. I accept that Stalin was a tyrant in his own country—paranoid, ruthless, happy to preside over a system that killed millions by direct murder or by starvation in the collectivisation famines. I take this view on the basis of my reading for this essay as evidenced in the Bibliography, and on my reading for the A-Level course module I am sitting on Russia in the twentieth century. This being said, what Stalin did in the Soviet Union should be set aside for reaching an overall judgement on the present question.

I will argue that the Cold War was a natural effect of the Second World War. It would have broken out no matter who was in charge of the Soviet Union. Stalin just happened to be in charge, and so he is associated with many of the key events that mark the beginning of the Cold War. But if almost anyone else had been in charge, there would still have been a Cold War. Its opening events might have been different, but would have led in the same direction.

Before developing this argument, however, I will explain the historiography. Before doing that, I will give the main agreed facts of how the Cold War began. These facts are necessary for putting my overall judgement in its right context.

East-West Relations, 1941-48: The Emergence of Cold War

After the German invasion of June 1941, the Soviet Union entered into a close alliance with Britain, and then with Britain and the United States. The three Allied leaders—Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin—met three times during the War. At Tehran in 1943, they agreed that Germany should be forced to an unconditional surrender, after which it should be kept weak. The Soviet Union would keep those parts of Poland taken under the Pact with Germany. There would be a new version of the League of Nations established, so that there would not be another war. Relations at this meeting were smooth and largely focused on the matters in hand.

So relations continued in the second meeting, at Yalta in February 1945. Here, the details were settled of the outline agreed in Tehran. Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation. There would be free elections in all the other liberated countries, particularly those now occupied by the Soviet Union. The revised League of Nations would be called the United Nations.

At the third meeting in Potsdam in August 1945, Germany was defeated and occupied. Churchill and Roosevelt had been replaced by Attlee and Truman. Stalin repeated his assurances given at Yalta, but there was little evidence that the Soviet Union was interested in genuinely free elections in the countries it occupied. (Roberts, 2006, pp. 274-75) The Americans were finishing the defeat of Japan by dropping two atomic bombs there. Relations were cold and formal. The Soviet Union distrusted the Americans—especially bearing in mind their possession of atom bombs as the ultimate weapon. They regarded Eastern and Central Europe as their just reward for the sacrifices they had made to victory against Germany: they had done most of the land fighting, and they had borne most of the losses of men and resources. The Americans saw the Soviet Union as an expansionist power. The weakness of Britain and the at best provisional restoration of French and Dutch colonial rule in Africa and Asia left large areas of the world open either to American or Soviet control, and the two Superpowers saw the next few years as a time of competition.

In February 1946, Stalin gave a speech in which he blamed the unravelling of the Grand Alliance as an inevitable fact of capitalist aggression: “[T]he capitalist system of world economy contains the elements of a general crisis and military conflicts.” (Stalin, 1946) A month later, Winston Churchill spoke at Fulton in Missouri of an “Iron Curtain” that had descended across Europe. This divided the countries liberated by Britain and America from those occupied and dominated from the Soviet Union. He spoke of a continued alliance between Britain and America to resist Communist tyranny throughout the world. (Churchill, 1946) In March 1947, Truman made a speech to Congress in which he promised American support to any country that felt threatened by Soviet Communism. (Truman, 1947)

The Soviet response was a war of propaganda against the West in all the territories it occupied and a strengthening of control. In 1948, the Soviet Union tried to cut off access for the Western Powers to their occupied areas of Berlin. This was broken by an American and British airlift of supplies. In 1949, the Soviet Union built its own atom bombs. In the same year, NATO was formed. In 1950, war broke out in Korea, where the Soviet Union and the Western Powers took opposite sites.

By now, it was more than clear that the Grand Alliance was over, and that the Soviet Union and the Western Powers were in a conflict that could only end with the collapse of either side. Because both sides had nuclear weapons, which were too horrific for either side to dare using, this was a Cold War. Although the two sides never went to war directly, there were indirect wars that occurred—for example in Korea, Vietnam and Angola. There was at least one first class crisis, which we refer to as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961, where the two sides became close to becoming nuclear. Between the second half of the 1940s and 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War was the uppermost fact in international relations. Every domestic and international dispute was related in some was to it.

The Cold War: Stalin to Blame? Historiography

To what extent can Stalin be blamed for the outbreak of this Cold War? So far, I have spoken of countries, and most historians do the same, when it comes to foreign policy. This is an appropriate method for discussing British and American foreign policy during and after the Second World War. If they were often decisive players in setting the foreign policy of their countries, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt was absolutely supreme. They both had to work within democratic institutions that were accountable to a free press. They had much freedom of movement, but were also constrained by the need to achieve consensus. Stalin, on the other hand  was the Soviet Union. Between 1928 and 1953, he was absolutely supreme. He sat at the top of a gigantic police state that murdered untold millions of people and terrified the survivors into conformity to his will. It was Stalin who decided on the Pact with Germany in 1939. (Conquest, 1991, pp. 220-21) It was Stalin who, in October 1940, proposed a military alliance with Germany. (Conquest, 1991, p. 231) It was Stalin who then directed military strategy in the war against Germany, and Stalin who decided on the virtual annexation of Eastern and Central Europe. (Service, 2004, p. 481) Whatever he decided was law within the Soviet Union and within every Communist Party that looked to Moscow. Nothing was done except on his orders, or with his knowledge and consent. He even directed Soviet religious policy. He persecuted the Church in the 1930s. He tolerated it and reestablished it after 1941. (Service, 2004, p. 496)

Those historians who blame the Soviet Union for origins of the Cold War—its progress after 1953 is a different matter—are ultimately blaming Stalin. For this reason, the two entities, The Soviet Union and Josef Stalin, can be taken as effectively identical.

So, to the matter of blame. Here, I turn to the historiography. I will leave aside the Soviet and Russian historiography. For most of the period since 1945, this has simply reflected the ideological needs of the government in power. I focus instead on the Western historiography, which is mainly American. This falls broadly into three schools of interpretation. There is the “Orthodox” school, which sees the Cold War as nearly entirely due to the actions of the Soviet Union, and therefore of its leader, Stalin. There is the “Revisionist” school, which sees the Cold War as at least partly due to the actions of the American ruling class and its big-business allies. There is the “post-Revisionist” school, which tries to find a middle course between these earlier schools. As with most historiographical debates, the main facts of what happened are not in dispute. It is a matter of deciding which facts are more important, and on the meaning of these facts.

The Orthodox School

Perhaps the earliest, and certainly the most notable early, writer in the Orthodox school was George F. Kennan, who had once been the American ambassador to Moscow. In 1947, writing under the name “X,” he outlined his view of what had caused the breakdown of relations between Washington and Moscow. He laid the whole blame on Moscow. The Communist ideology of the Soviet Union, he claimed, had made Soviet aggression inevitable. This ideology had produced

[a] quest for absolute power, pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times…. (Kennan, 1947, p. 856)

Absolute power was justified on the grounds of an irreconcilable conflict between socialism and capitalism. So long as capitalism remained in the Soviet Union, Soviet aggression was internal. Once internal capitalism had been liquidated, absolute power had to be legitimised on the grounds of external threats. The Soviet Union was therefore portrayed by its rulers as the one socialist utopia, surrounded on all sides by hostile capitalist powers:

Today the major part of the structure of Soviet power is committed to the perfection of the dictatorship and to the maintenance of the concept of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy cowering beyond the walls. (Kennan, 1947, p. 862)

For this reason, there was no point for Western leaders to ask what, if anything, they might have done wrong in their handling of the Soviet Union. The difficulties that emerged after Yalta were not the causes of the Cold War. They were merely occasions for an inevitable conflict to show itself. There was no reason for the Western powers to seek better relations with the Soviet Union, for there were none to be had.

If the Soviet Government occasionally sets its signature to documents which would indicate [sincere cooperation], this is to be regarded as a tactical manœuvre permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor. (Kennan, 1947, p. 866)

Kennan’s conclusion was that “we are going to continue for a long time to find the Russians difficult to deal with.” (Kennan, 1947) The answer was not immediate war, but a managed “containment” of the Soviet Union. Relations might eventually improve, but they could only improve if the Soviet leadership changed. Until then, the West had to defend itself from the Soviet aggression that had been the sole cause of the Cold War.

Kennan’s article was immensely influential, and it largely determined the next twenty years of American and Western Cold War policy. It was also academically influential. Through the 1950s, there were few Western scholars of foreign policy who saw the Cold War as other than an unfortunate burden placed on a Free World that wanted only to live at peace. There was, for example, Thomas Bailey, who bitterly condemned the alleged naivety of Western leaders who failed to see the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union in time to counter them. (Bailey, 1950) Or there was Herbert Feis, who explored the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. (Feis, 1957)

Indeed, one of the other canonic texts of the Orthodox School was published as late as 1967. For the most part, Arthur Schlesinger took the same line as Kennan:

Leninism and totalitarianism created a structure of thought and behavior which made postwar collaboration between Russia and America inherently impossible. (Schlesinger, 1967, p. 12)

What Schlesinger added, however, was a discussion of Stalin himself as a key player. Kennan had mentioned Stalin, quoting him from 1924 as defending the “organs of Suppression,” on the grounds that “as long as there is a capitalist encirclement there will be danger of intervention with all the consequences that flow from that danger.” (Kennan, 1947, p. 858) But this is a mention in passing. For Kennan, it was Soviet ideology that was the main driver of Soviet aggression. Schlesinger took Stalin as a key player in terms of his own personality and intentions.

According to Schlesinger,

[i]t is easy… to exaggerate the capacity of ideology to control events.” (Schlesinger, 1967, p. 47) Though he did not underestimate the role of ideology, he saw it as often an excuse for taking actions that were a matter of an actor’s free will.

If Stalin was an ideologist, he was also a pragmatist. If he saw everything through the lenses of Marxism-Leninism, he also, as the infallible expositor of the faith, could re-interpret Marxism-Leninism to justify anything he wanted to at any given moment. (Schlesinger, 1967, p. 48)

If Stalin did nothing to prevent the Soviet aggressions that Schlesinger saw at the start of the Cold War, it was because Stalin was “a man of deep and morbid obsessions and compulsions.” (Schlesinger, 1967, p. 49) He was paranoid. He trusted no one. He drove the creation of the Soviet police state as an expression of his own disgusting personal nature. He murdered on a vast scale. He had fantasies of world domination. He was literally mad, and all the evil effects of the choices he made in 1945 were his responsibility.

The Revisionist School

By the time Schlesinger wrote, however, the Orthodox school was no longer unchallenged. For the most part, his article can be seen as a response to a newer school of historiography. This was stimulated, though not created, by the souring experience of the American intervention in Vietnam and South-East Asia—wars that had no clearly-defined objectives and that were very expensive in terms of American lives and money. The Revisionists took their stand on a number of claims—that the Soviet Union was not solely or perhaps even mainly responsible for the Cold War; that the United States was at least as expansionist and aggressive as the Soviet Union, that the Orthodox school had entirely failed to understand the legitimate foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, and had interpreted a search for secure borders as a bid for world domination.

Perhaps the first Revisionist classic, by William Appleman Williams, predated the Vietnam War, though it took a critical view of American intentions in its foreign policy. (Williams, 1959) Perhaps the most comprehensive, by Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, came just at the end of that war. In this, the Kolkos placed the whole blame for the beginning of the Cold War on the United States. Its

ultimate objective at the end of World War II was both to sustain and to reform world capitalism. (Kolko, 1972)

Every initiative the Americans had taken in the rebuilding of Western Europe after the War was taken as acts of

enlightened self-interest… and part of an effort to forestall Communist penetration by raising the living standards… in Europe, and to reestablish normal trading patterns through which the whole world would realize prosperity and peace. (Kolko, 1972, p. 359)

What this meant was to make the world safe for American big business. The promotion of “freedom and democracy” was no more than a cover for preventing any conflict with “the interests of American capitalism.” (Kolko, 1972, p. 2) The Kolkos went to much trouble to establish that Soviet foreign policy was entirely responsive and defensive. It was a poor and mostly landlocked country unable to match the vast resources of the United States. The personality of Stalin had no place here, because there was never a Soviet threat.

Coming right at the end of the Cold War, Walter Le Feber explained the Cold War as the natural effect of two powers, marked by differences of history and structure, that were able to expand after 1945. In this expansion, he blamed the Americans for a lack of focus and an inability to understand the interests of the Soviet Union. He denied that Stalin was “paranoid and mentally ill.” (Feber, 1993, p. 20)

[H]is foreign policy displayed a realism, a careful calculation of forces and… diplomatic finesse…. Stalin’s priority was not world revolution but, once again, Russian security and his own personal power. (Feber, 1993, p. 22)

The Soviet Union had been devastated by invasion and war three times in the twentieth century. Its legitimate interests included a buffer zone in Eastern and Central Europe. It was plain stupidity or dishonesty if the Western Powers denied these interests. The Soviets and Stalin were right to interpret American foreign policy as hostile. “They were realists, not paranoid.” (Feber, 1993, p. 22)

The Post-Revisionist School

The facts in the debate between the Orthodox and Revisionist schools are largely agreed. Moreover, there is even a degree of overlap in what each side admits by way or interpretation. For example, Schlesinger fully admitted that the American Government failed to understand Soviet interests after 1943, and accepted that this misunderstanding contributed something to the beginnings of the Cold War. (Schlesinger, 1967) The main difference was that the Orthodox school was heavily pro-American, while the Revisionists—not necessarily pro-Soviet—were anti-American. They saw the American State as the head of a new empire, and their focus was on denouncing the diversion of their own country from what they believed it ought to be.

What the Post-Revisionists bring to the debate is more facts and the perspectives of time. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Until Vladimir Putin closed them again, the Soviet archives were now open to Western scholars. Until then, facts on the Soviet side had to be inferred, or were given in fragments by defectors or accidental admissions. Now, a much more synoptic view could be taken of what the leading players on both sides had brought to the beginnings of the Cold War.

This being said, a start was made even before 1991. In 1972, John Lewis Gaddis tried for impartiality. Without denouncing, he analysed the motivations of each side. The Americans saw the Second World War as an effect of their own failure to press for a different world order after 1918. Wilson had tried to bring about a world of states based on self-determination, that would settle their differences through the mediation of an impartial world congress—the League of Nations. Because he lost the 1920 election, his vision of this new world was stillborn. The Second World War followed within twenty years. Roosevelt and Truman acted in the shadow of this failure. They wanted unconditional German surrender, because that would remove the desire for German revenge that had led to 1939. And

American leaders regarded reconstruction of the world’s economy as important a goal as self-determination…. [T]o them, the coincidence of world depression with the rise of dictators seemed more than accidental. (Gaddis, 1972, p. 18)

This was misinterpreted by the Soviets as American imperialism. The Soviets were in turn misinterpreted. Their priority was to “keep Russia strong,” by constructing a sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe. (Gaddis, 1972, p. 354) However, the continual pushing of Communist ideology

led Washington policy-makers to mistake Stalin’s determination… for Russian security through spheres of influence for a renewed effort to spread Communism. (Gaddis, 1972, p. 355)

Gaddis returned to the subject in 2005, now with full information from the Soviet archives. He was able to take a more hostile view of Stalin:

[His] postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order…. Narcissism, paranoia, and absolute power came together in Stalin. (Gaddis, 2005, p. 22)

If this led to world peace, so much the better. If not, so much the worse. But he was determined to push for everything he could get for himself and his country. Added to this,

[his] understanding of his wartime allies and their postwar objectives was based more on wishful thinking than on an accurate assessment of priorities as seen from Washington and London. (Gaddis, 2005, p. 22)

Here was blame for the beginnings of the Cold War. Here is something like the present consensus on the subject. Stalin gambled. Stalin miscalculated. The American ruling class was less than perfect. But that long period of nuclear stalemate, ending only in 1991, can be blamed ultimately on the personality of Josef Stalin.

The Cold War: Stalin to Blame? My Own View

Here, I come to my own view. This is that all these schools are broadly right, and perhaps broadly wrong. I agree with Kennan that the Soviet Union was institutionally paranoid. I agree with Schlesinger that Stalin was individually paranoid. At the same time, I agree with the Revisionists that the Americans were not simply committed to the freedom and independence of all nations. I agree with Gaddis that no one side was to blame. I disagree with his claim that both sides miscalculated. Above all, I disagree with the Orthodox claims that Stalin had any special personal responsibility. I mostly agree with Feber.

The central fact of 1945 is not the defeat of Nazi Germany. That was merely unfinished business. The central fact is that, at the end of every general war, the winning coalition breaks up. Though in the first instance attacked, The United States and the Soviet Union persisted in the Second World War to advance their foreign policy interests. Until May 1945, these interests largely coincided in the defeat of Germany. After this, their interests were in conflict, and they turned on each other.

For America, the War had been as close as possible to a “good” war. American GDP had doubled since 1941. (Gaddis, 2005, p. 15) The Great Depression was a fading memory. It had displaced Britain as the greatest naval power. It indirectly controlled the vast territories of the British Empire. It had exclusive control of the Atom Bomb. It was supreme in the world—except for the Soviet Union. This was, to American eyes, an Evil Empire that was seeking to spread its evil ideology wherever its armed forces could occupy, and by Communist subversion throughout the world. Regardless of who ruled in Moscow, America would have regarded the Soviet Union as its next enemy.

For the Soviets, the War had been the most terrifying challenge in Russian history. Though it is hard to know how many were killed by the Germans or by their own Government, around thirty million Soviet citizens were dead. The industrial and agricultural heartlands of the country were devastated. By a supreme effort, the Soviet Union had prevailed against that terrifying challenge. It was now in control of Eastern and Central Europe and a large part of Germany. It had achieved every foreign policy objective Russia had conceived since the time of Peter the Great. It could never again be directly invaded from the West. It was hardly paranoia if these gains were to be seen as a buffer against invasion. It would not give them up without as bitter a fight as it had just finished.

There is also the consideration that the Soviet leaders were committed Marxists, and that they believed they were doing the peoples of their occupied territories a favour by giving them Communist governments. America’s immense economic and technological domination of the surrounding world was at least a potential challenge to the survival of their Workers’ State. It was natural for them to keep their armies at something like full mobilization, and to use Communist parties everywhere to counter Western hostility.

Indeed, the whole sweep of Soviet foreign policy in the 1940s can be seen as the steady pursuit of traditional Russian interests, these being protection of the frontiers. When the Second World War began in September 1939, Stalin declared his country neutral. His formal position was that this was a war between capitalist powers, and Communist parties in the Allied countries were ordered to give no assistance. (Conquest, 1991, pp. 220-21) In fact, he was in alliance with Hitler. Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, the two countries agreed to close trade links and a division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence or zones of direct control.

Many historians see this as a personal error of Stalin. Seen in terms of Russia’s traditional interests, it was wholly reasonable. Stalin’s only error was one of fact. He expected this war to be a repeat of the last—a long stalemate on the Western Front. This would weaken all the capitalist powers, and take pressure off the Soviet Union on all its frontiers. His deal with Hitler gave him control over the buffer states of Eastern Europe. This being so, he had no interest in joining the fight. He did not and could not expect the sudden collapse of France in 1940.

A year after the fall of France, however, he simply reaffirmed his foreign policy aims, now in alliance with the other side. This was not in itself the act of a paranoid tyrant. It was the act of a prudent Russian leader. Undoubtedly, Stalin made the relevant decisions in Soviet foreign policy. He was there at every step on the road to the Cold War. But I cannot imagine how any other Soviet or even Russian leader would have done otherwise. Khrushchev might have smiled more often. Trotsky would have been more polished in his justifications. Kerensky would have killed fewer people. Nicholas II would have said God rather than History was on his side. Vladimir Putin would have been smoother in every respect. The objective circumstances of the Soviet Union were what they were. Stalin just happened to be in charge. All he did was to add an unpleasant personal touch to the pursuit of traditional Russian interests.

Or, compared with the other leaders just mentioned, all he added was unusual determination and unusual competence. When it seemed in the national interest, he was friendly to Hitler. When it seemed in the national interest, he was friendly with Britain and America. When it seemed in the national interest, he turned hostile.

For the details of what happened between Yalta and the Korean War, we need to consider the character of Stalin—just as we need to look at the American leaders. For the overall fact that the Soviet Union and the United States would never live at peace with each other until one was utterly overcome, we need to look at the wider circumstances of world politics once Germany and Japan were obliterated as great powers, and once Britain was bankrupt.

In conclusion, Stalin cannot be held responsible for the beginnings of the Cold War. In this respect, he was not a maker of History, but a puppet of History.

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Reprinted from Sean Gabb's website