The problem, however, was that many foreign communists exhibited an annoying independence. Non-ruling parties were eager to make gains; communists who had seized power in Eastern Europe were often too ideologically fervid to heed Stalin’s cautionary advice. The Chinese communists are a good example: despite Stalin’s suggestion that they form a coalition with the nationalists, they made a hard push for military victory in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Similarly Stalin opposed the Greek communist insurrection of 1946–8 as premature. The Czechoslovakian coup of February 1948—an event usually interpreted as awakening even the most generous Western observers to Stalin’s ambitions—was very likely launched by the Czech communists themselves, not at Moscow’s behest. Finally, the Soviet–Yugoslavian rupture of 1948 originated in Stalin’s inability to moderate Tito’s recklessness either at home or abroad.
Stalin sought to impose his will on the Eastern European communists by a variety of means. One was territorial expansion. A series of post-war treaties annexed large parts of eastern Prussia, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and Ruthenia to the Soviet state. This westward expansion gave the Soviet Union a common border with its Czechoslovak and Hungarian client states. Another instrument was the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), established in 1948, specifically to ensure Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. Finally after the break with Tito, Stalin resorted to an ‘anti-nationalism’ campaign of terror and purges. Important communist leaders such as R. Slansky (Czechoslovakia), T. Kostov (Bulgaria), W. Gomulka (Poland), and L. Rajk (Hungary) were imprisoned or executed, as were thousands of others.
Certain elements of Stalin’s post-war domestic and foreign agendas were closely interrelated. The key imperatives—war avoidance and economic reconstruction—were obviously congruent. The explosion in the labour camp population also served to fulfil several of Stalin’s goals; it mobilized forced labour to rebuild the country and insulated Soviet society from first-hand testimony about the West. And, significantly, Stalin did achieve several key objectives. A robust Soviet economy rose out of the rubble of war; the USSR enhanced its military power. Stalin’s regime made significant investments in military research and development, developed a plan to modernize its military hardware, and broke the American nuclear monopoly by acquiring its own atomic bomb in 1949.
Yet it is also obvious that other components in Stalin’s programme were contradictory. Bellicose rhetoric, if essential to justify the demands on the Soviet population, invalidated both the Soviet peace offensives as well as efforts to confuse the West about Soviet intentions. The same point applies to efforts to control Eastern Europe. Since Stalin’s authority over the foreign communists was at first imperfect, he could not prevent such events as the Greek civil war from frightening Western statesmen. But his own territorial expansion and political terror, used to solidify his power in Eastern Europe, tended to confirm, rather than allay, Western suspicions. The most important contradictions lay in the irreconcilability among Stalin’s domestic and foreign objectives. In 1945 Stalin had expected a rapid American withdrawal from a weakened, squabbling Europe. By 1949, largely because of his own policies, he found himself confronting European states that were reacquiring confidence and repairing the damage of war. NATO was cementing Western unity and the United States had extended an open-ended political commitment to the new alliance. After Stalin authorized the Korean War (partially as a subtle bid to enhance his influence with Mao Tse-tung) that American commitment became much more military.
Stalin’s Last Years
In December 1949 Stalin celebrated his seventieth birthday. It was an occasion of national jubilation. The price of many consumer goods was lowered. Party and state organizations all over the country vied with each other in tendering gifts and extravagant professions of loyalty to the great leader. A special exhibition—‘J. V. Stalin in Representational Art’—opened, featuring scores of paintings and sculptures to glorify every phase of his life. The official review of the exhibition bore the title: ‘An Inexhaustible Source of Creative Inspiration’.
