Foreign policy
- Stalin promoted “socialism in one country”: focus on building socialism within USSR
- Contrasted with Trotsky’s call for world revolution
- Foreign policy framed as defensive, protecting Soviet socialism
- Capitalist powers portrayed as hostile, justifying intervention abroad
- Assertive engagement abroad seen as necessary to safeguard Soviet development
Stalin’s Strategic Concerns in the 1930s: Fears of War and Isolation
- USSR economically weak, lagging in industrialization vs. West
- Rise of Fascism (Mussolini) and Nazism (Hitler) posed anti-communist threats
- Japan’s aggression in Asia raised risk of a two-front war
- 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact (Germany & Italy) explicitly targeted communism
- Stalin saw need for military rearmament and diplomatic alliances
- Domestic purges and foreign policy moves framed as responses to encirclement and hostility
- See more details on the advances in foreign policy of Mussolini, Hilter and Japan in Paper 1 - Prescribed Topic: The move to Global War.
The Spanish Civil War as a Test of Stalin’s Foreign Policy Strategy
- Popular Front government appealed for help after fascist coup
- Stalin hesitated, fearing provocation of Hitler and alienation of Britain/France
- Faced pressure as sole communist leader in Europe
- Intervention was limited but symbolic: fuel, tanks, aircraft, advisors
- Support helped Republicans but was outmatched by Hitler and Mussolini’s backing of Franco
- Antony Beevor notes that Soviet aid had mixed motivations.
- One interpretation suggests Stalin aimed to establish a pro-Soviet regime in Spain.
- Another presents the intervention as a genuine attempt to defend a legal government.
- However, Beevor argues that both views are overly simplistic, and that propaganda goals likely influenced the scale and style of Soviet involvement.
- Extensive Soviet press coverage romanticized the Spanish struggle, further embedding it in broader communist narratives of international solidarity.
The “Moscow Gold” (1936)
- Spain sent 510 tons of gold (world’s 4th largest reserve, worth ~$518m) to Moscow as payment for aid
- Publicly presented as support, but effectively a transaction
- Beevor: USSR inflated costs, charging ~$661m for its assistance
- Created perception that the USSR profited from war, not acting ideologically
- Loss of gold crippled Spain’s wartime finances and strained Soviet-Republican trust
- The intervention of the USSR in the Spanish Civil War can be used as contents for Topic 11: Causes and effects of 20th Century Wars.
The International Brigades and Soviet Influence
- 32,000–35,000 volunteers from 50+ countries, organized by the Comintern
- Symbol of international anti-fascist solidarity
- Many were poorly trained and lacked combat experience
- Travel arranged clandestinely via Paris and the Pyrenees due to intervention bans
- Brigades used as tools of Soviet control, with loyalty to Stalin enforced
- Trotskyists and dissenters purged within the ranks
- Beevor: Spanish experience deepened Stalin’s paranoia and brutality, linking foreign intervention to domestic repression
The Failure of Collective Security
- Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s initially sought collective security through alliances with Britain and France, spearheaded by Commissar Maxim Litvinov.
- The USSR joined the League of Nations in 1934 and endorsed Popular Front strategies, but Western democracies remained reluctant to fully cooperate.
- By 1939, Stalin's distrust of Britain and France had reached a peak, shaped by Western appeasement during the 1938 Munich Crisis, which excluded the USSR despite its alliance with Czechoslovakia.
- Stalin interpreted this as a betrayal and a sign that Western democracies might prefer a Nazi-Soviet war.
- Simultaneously, Stalin dismissed his pro-Western foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, replacing him with Vyacheslav Molotov, a figure more open to negotiations with fascist regimes.
- Stalin was right about this: part of the rationale behind appeasement was that Stalin would take care of the Nazis when they expanded further into the East.
- You can read more about this in Prescribed Topic 1: The move to global war.
Nazi Soviet Pact
- Stalin sought pragmatic security assurances leading to secret negotiations with Germany.
- Signed on 23 August 1939, the Nazi–Soviet Pact (also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) was a diplomatic coup for both powers.
- Publicly, it was a 10-year non-aggression treaty, secretly, it involved a protocol to divide Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
- Germany secured a one-front war by avoiding Soviet opposition to its planned invasion of Poland.
- For Stalin, the pact bought time to rebuild the Red Army, which had been weakened by purges, and offered territorial spoils, including the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and eastern Poland.
- Moreover, the secret clauses betrayed smaller nations and highlighted the realpolitik behind Stalin’s diplomacy.
- Germany even reassured Stalin that the Anti-Comintern Pact was not aimed at the USSR, downplaying objections from Italy and Japan.
Stalin and the Great Patriotic War
- The practical consequences of the Nazi–Soviet Pact began with the invasion of Poland.
- On 1 September 1939, Germany launched its attack.
- Stalin hesitated but soon followed, ordering the Red Army to invade eastern Poland on 17 September.
- The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland was brutal.
- This culminated in the Katyn Massacre of 1940, where over 4,000 Polish officers were executed by the NKVD
The Katyn Massacre
- The Katyn Massacre was the Soviet NKVD's execution of approximately 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals, and professionals in forests near Katyn, Kalinin (Tver), and Kharkiv.
- These prisoners, taken after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, were seen by Stalin’s regime as potential leaders of a future Polish resistance. The Soviet leadership approved the killings in March 1940, aiming to eliminate Poland’s intelligentsia and weaken its national identity.
- The mass graves were discovered by Nazi Germany in April 1943, after they occupied the area. The Nazis used the event for propaganda, blaming the Soviets.
- Stalin denied responsibility and blamed the Germans, a position the Soviet Union maintained until 1990, despite widespread international skepticism and evidence to the contrary.
The Baltic Annexations and the Winter War (1939–40)
- USSR forced Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania into “mutual assistance” treaties → annexed in 1940
- Finland refused territorial concessions → USSR launched the Winter War (Nov 1939)
- Soviets gained land but suffered 200,000+ casualties and reputational damage
- War revealed post-purge military weaknesses: poor leadership, disorganization, low morale
- Hitler observed these failures, reinforcing his belief the USSR could be defeated
- Stalin’s buffer-zone strategy secured land but bred hostility, especially with Finland, later allied with Germany
- See how Stalin’s domestic and foreign policy intertwine:
- His purges marred the USSR army’s capacity during WW2
- His pattern of executing perceived enemies in other countries is also a recognizable aspect of his overall leadership.
