Consolidation and maintenance: Stalin's foreign policy Notes

Foreign policy

Stalin’s Strategic Concerns in the 1930s: Fears of War and Isolation

1. USSR economically weak, lagging in industrialization vs. West
2. Rise of Fascism (Mussolini) and Nazism (Hitler) posed anti-communist threats
3. Japan’s aggression in Asia raised risk of a two-front war
4. 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact (Germany & Italy) explicitly targeted communism
5. Stalin saw need for military rearmament and diplomatic alliances
6. Domestic purges and foreign policy moves framed as responses to encirclement and hostility

The Spanish Civil War as a Test of Stalin’s Foreign Policy Strategy

1. Popular Front government appealed for help after fascist coup
2. Stalin hesitated, fearing provocation of Hitler and alienation of Britain/France
3. Faced pressure as sole communist leader in Europe
4. Intervention was limited but symbolic: fuel, tanks, aircraft, advisors
5. Support helped Republicans but was outmatched by Hitler and Mussolini’s backing of Franco

The “Moscow Gold” (1936)

1. Spain sent 510 tons of gold (world’s 4th largest reserve, worth ~$518m) to Moscow as payment for aid
2. Publicly presented as support, but effectively a transaction
3. Beevor: USSR inflated costs, charging ~$661m for its assistance
4. Created perception that the USSR profited from war, not acting ideologically
5. Loss of gold crippled Spain’s wartime finances and strained Soviet-Republican trust

The International Brigades and Soviet Influence

1. 32,000–35,000 volunteers from 50+ countries, organized by the Comintern
2. Symbol of international anti-fascist solidarity
3. Many were poorly trained and lacked combat experience
4. Travel arranged clandestinely via Paris and the Pyrenees due to intervention bans
5. Brigades used as tools of Soviet control, with loyalty to Stalin enforced
6. Trotskyists and dissenters purged within the ranks
7. Beevor: Spanish experience deepened Stalin’s paranoia and brutality, linking foreign intervention to domestic repression

The Failure of Collective Security

1. Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s initially sought collective security through alliances with Britain and France, spearheaded by Commissar Maxim Litvinov.
2. The USSR joined the League of Nations in 1934 and endorsed Popular Front strategies, but Western democracies remained reluctant to fully cooperate.
3. 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.
4. Stalin interpreted this as a betrayal and a sign that Western democracies might prefer a Nazi-Soviet war.
5. Simultaneously, Stalin dismissed his pro-Western foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, replacing him with Vyacheslav Molotov, a figure more open to negotiations with fascist regimes.

Nazi Soviet Pact

1. Stalin sought pragmatic security assurances leading to secret negotiations with Germany.
2. Signed on 23 August 1939, the Nazi–Soviet Pact (also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) was a diplomatic coup for both powers.
3. 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.
4. Germany secured a one-front war by avoiding Soviet opposition to its planned invasion of Poland.
5. 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.
6. Moreover, the secret clauses betrayed smaller nations and highlighted the realpolitik behind Stalin’s diplomacy.
7. 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

1. The practical consequences of the Nazi–Soviet Pact began with the invasion of Poland.
2. On 1 September 1939, Germany launched its attack.
   1. Stalin hesitated but soon followed, ordering the Red Army to invade eastern Poland on 17 September.
3. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland was brutal.
   1. This culminated in the Katyn Massacre of 1940, where over 4,000 Polish officers were executed by the NKVD

The Baltic Annexations and the Winter War (1939–40)

1. USSR forced Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania into “mutual assistance” treaties → annexed in 1940
2. Finland refused territorial concessions → USSR launched the Winter War (Nov 1939)
3. Soviets gained land but suffered 200,000+ casualties and reputational damage
4. War revealed post-purge military weaknesses: poor leadership, disorganization, low morale
5. Hitler observed these failures, reinforcing his belief the USSR could be defeated
6. Stalin’s buffer-zone strategy secured land but bred hostility, especially with Finland, later allied with Germany

Stalin’s foreign policy from 1941

1. The Nazi–Soviet Pact’s collapse with Germany’s invasion of the USSR forced Stalin into a new geopolitical reality.
2. The Grand Alliance formed after 1941, often referred to as the "marriage of convenience," brought together nations with profoundly different ideologies (liberal democracies and a totalitarian communist state) against a common enemy.
3. The USSR’s collaboration with the Western powers was therefore pragmatic, focused on military survival and defeating Nazi Germany, but always colored by mutual suspicion.
4. While military unity was real, political trust remained elusive, foreshadowing the tensions that would soon crystallize into the Cold War.
5. In the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa, Stalin received no fewer than 84 separate warnings about an imminent German invasion.
6. These came from a variety of sources: the British, who had decrypted German military communications through the ENIGMA code, Soviet agents like Richard Sorge in Tokyo and even German deserters.
7. Yet Stalin dismissed them all.
8. The Wehrmacht's sudden invasion in June 1941 dealt a severe blow to the Soviet military.
9. Stalin's misjudgment not only exposed the USSR to devastating early defeats but also shattered the illusion of trust that had briefly existed between the two totalitarian regimes.

The End of the War

1. By 1943, the tide of war had turned decisively against Nazi Germany. As the Red Army pushed westward across Eastern Europe, Soviet propaganda presented this advance as a “liberation” of territories under fascist occupation.
2. However Soviet forces imposed communist regimes, dissolved political pluralism, and orchestrated mass arrests and deportations.
3. This complex duality, liberation from Nazism followed by Soviet domination, lies at the heart of post-war Eastern European historical memory.
4. Moreover, the Red Army’s behavior during its advance was often brutal: an estimated 2 million German women were raped, reflecting both the collapse of military discipline and a campaign of revenge for Nazi atrocities.
5. Soviet soldiers were acutely aware of the devastation wrought by the Germans (some 70,000 Soviet villages were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred) and their retribution was unrestrained.

How did Stalin win the war?

1. One of the keys to Soviet victory lay in the transformation of its economy into a war machine.
2. Already structured as a planned economy, the USSR transitioned quickly into “total war” mode after June 1941.
3. Central authority under Stalin and the State Committee of Defence (GOKO) took control of resource allocation.
4. Stalin also used sheer coercion to maintain control: Order No. 270 and later directives made surrender and desertion capital offenses, punishing not only soldiers but also their families.
5. Propaganda reframed the war as a patriotic struggle, the "Great Patriotic War," rather than an ideological crusade for socialism.
6. By invoking national identity, Stalin successfully mobilized the population beyond ideological lines.
7. The Soviet people, however, bore a heavy burden: immense sacrifices in labor, living standards, and life itself were demanded in service of the war effort, a toll Stalin framed as both necessary and glorious in defense of the motherland.
8. The USSR’s vast geography and harsh climate also played crucial roles in halting the German advance and giving Soviet forces the space and time needed to regroup.
9. The Wehrmacht's rapid push toward Moscow in 1941 was ultimately stalled not only by Soviet resistance but also by the onset of the Russian winter nicknamed “General Winter.”
10. Snow, frost, and impassable roads bogged down the German offensive and left troops poorly equipped for prolonged combat in sub-zero conditions.

Soviet Survival and Victory in the Second World War

1. Equally important was the Soviet capacity to shift its industrial base eastward, beyond the reach of German bombers.
   1. More than 10 million people and much of the USSR’s heavy industry were relocated across the Urals.
2. This relocation preserved Soviet industrial output and ensured a steady supply of arms and materiel.
   1. The combination of natural geography, strategic retreat, and logistical adaptability turned the Soviet Union’s size once seen as a vulnerability into a formidable advantage in the war against Nazi Germany.
3. Though the Eastern Front bore the brunt of the fighting in Europe, Soviet victory was not achieved in isolation.
   1. The USSR benefitted substantially from Allied assistance, especially through the U.S. Lend-Lease program.
   2. Delivered as early as 1941, American aid included trucks, jeeps, food, and raw materials vital to sustaining Soviet logistics.
   3. Britain, too, supported the Soviet war effort by shipping supplies through the dangerous Arctic convoys to Murmansk.
4. These material contributions, while often downplayed in Soviet narratives, were essential in maintaining the Red Army’s mobility and resilience.
5. The wider context of the war also helped ease pressure on Soviet forces.
   1. The German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943 coincided with Allied victories at El Alamein and the invasion of Sicily, forcing Germany to divide its forces and open additional fronts.
6. Victory solidified Stalin’s position domestically and internationally.
   1. He emerged not only as the ruler of a victorious superpower but also as a geopolitical heavyweight on the global stage.
   2. However, the economic toll of the war was immense
   3. Stalin’s post-war message to his people was one of continued hardship and sacrifice reaffirming the authoritarian ethos of the regime even in the wake of triumph.

Postwar Isolation and the Institutionalization of Anti-Western Sentiment

1. Following World War II, Stalin's foreign policy increasingly focused on consolidating Soviet security through isolation and ideological entrenchment.
   1. The portrayal of the West, especially Britain and the United States, as imminent threats to the USSR's sovereignty enabled Stalin to extend wartime mobilization into the postwar era.
2. Economic recovery was framed as a continuation of wartime resistance, requiring collective sacrifice, vigilance, and loyalty.
   1. This narrative justified delayed reconstruction, prolonged shortages, and the suppression of alternative worldviews.
3. The policy of anti-cosmopolitanism emerged as a cultural and ideological campaign aimed at severing Soviet intellectual and cultural life from Western influence.
   1. Soviet citizens were discouraged from foreign contacts, foreign literature was censored, and anyone perceived as sympathetic to the West risked persecution.
4. This reinforced Stalin’s broader objective: to prevent the emergence of internal dissent by stoking fear of external corruption.
5. The onset of the Cold War further validated this insular stance, as Stalin depicted the USSR as a besieged socialist fortress.
   1. Thus, foreign policy was used to legitimize authoritarian continuity, portraying Stalin’s leadership as the only bulwark against a new capitalist encroachment.