IB History Key Policies Notes

Soviet Expansion in Eastern Europe

1. Stalin sought a buffer zone of friendly states in Eastern Europe to protect the USSR from future Western invasion after the devastation of the Second World War
2. Salami tactics sliced away opposition parties piece by piece - coalition governments were gradually transformed into one-party communist states
3. Poland (1947), Hungary (1947), Romania (1947), and Czechoslovakia (1948) all fell under communist control through rigged elections and political intimidation
4. The Czechoslovak coup (February 1948) shocked the West because a functioning democracy was overthrown from within by its own communist party
5. Cominform (1947) coordinated communist parties across Europe and enforced ideological loyalty to Moscow, ensuring satellite states followed the Soviet line
6. Yugoslavia under Tito was expelled from Cominform (1948) for pursuing an independent path, serving as a warning to other Eastern Bloc states
7. Comecon (1949) integrated Eastern Bloc economies under Soviet direction, providing raw materials and labour while blocking participation in the Marshall Plan
8. Soviet control relied on secret police, rigged elections, censorship, and the presence of the Red Army across the satellite states
9. Western leaders viewed Soviet expansion as proof of communist aggression, which directly justified the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the policy of containment

The Berlin Blockade

1. Stalin blockaded West Berlin (June 1948 - May 1949) to force the Western Allies out of the city and prevent the creation of a unified West German state
2. The trigger was the Western introduction of the Deutschmark in their zones, which Stalin viewed as economic aggression that would undermine Soviet influence in Berlin
3. All road, rail, and canal links to West Berlin were cut off, leaving two million civilians facing starvation and fuel shortages
4. The Western Allies responded with the Berlin Airlift, flying in up to 13,000 tonnes of supplies daily at its peak across nearly 277,000 flights
5. Stalin lifted the blockade in May 1949 without achieving his objectives, making it a major propaganda defeat for the USSR
6. The crisis accelerated the creation of NATO (April 1949) and the permanent division of Germany into the FRG and the GDR
7. The blockade demonstrated that Stalin was willing to use coercion but unwilling to risk direct military conflict with the West

The Soviet Nuclear Programme

1. The USSR tested its first atomic bomb (August 1949), ending the American nuclear monopoly four years earlier than Western intelligence expected
2. Soviet espionage, notably Klaus Fuchs, provided critical data from the Manhattan Project and accelerated the development timeline significantly
3. Stalin viewed nuclear weapons as essential for Soviet security and superpower status in the post-war international order
4. The US responded by developing the hydrogen bomb (1952), triggering a nuclear arms race that defined the Cold War for decades
5. Nuclear parity later underpinned the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, making direct superpower war unthinkable
6. The Soviet bomb shocked US policymakers and contributed to the adoption of NSC-68, which massively expanded American defence spending and militarised containment

The Korean War and Proxy Conflict

1. Stalin approved Kim Il-sung's invasion of South Korea (June 1950) after calculating that the US would not intervene following Dean Acheson's exclusion of Korea from the American defence perimeter
2. The USSR provided military equipment, advisers, and logistical support to North Korea but carefully avoided committing ground troops to prevent direct confrontation with the US
3. Soviet pilots secretly flew MiG-15s against UN forces in a covert involvement that Moscow publicly denied throughout the conflict
4. Mao's China entered the war (October 1950) with Soviet backing, demonstrating the new Sino-Soviet alliance in action on the battlefield
5. The Korean War confirmed the Cold War as a global conflict, extending superpower rivalry beyond Europe to Asia for the first time
6. Stalin used the war to tie down US resources and test Western resolve without risking a direct Soviet-American military confrontation
7. The war ended in stalemate with the armistice of July 1953, and Korea remained divided along the 38th parallel as it had been before the conflict

Domestic Policy - Reconstruction and Repression

1. The Fourth Five-Year Plan (1946-1950) prioritised heavy industry and military production over consumer goods, continuing the pre-war pattern of Stalinist economics
2. Industrial output reportedly surpassed pre-war levels by 1950, though statistics were inflated by Soviet propaganda and the true picture was far more mixed
3. Reconstruction relied heavily on forced labour from the Gulag system and reparations extracted from occupied Germany, including the dismantling of entire factories
4. Zhdanovshchina (1946-1948) imposed rigid ideological conformity on Soviet arts, science, and intellectual life under Andrei Zhdanov's direction
5. Writers, composers, and filmmakers were censored or persecuted for showing Western influence or insufficient patriotism toward the Soviet state
6. Lysenkoism rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of pseudo-science, setting Soviet biology back by decades and harming agricultural research
7. The Doctors' Plot (January 1953) accused predominantly Jewish doctors of conspiring to poison Soviet leaders, triggering a wave of antisemitic paranoia
8. The Plot is widely seen as preparation for a new purge - only Stalin's death (March 1953) prevented its escalation into a broader campaign of terror
9. Post-war Soviet society remained tightly controlled, with personal freedoms, religious practice, and political dissent all ruthlessly suppressed

Rejection of the Marshall Plan

1. Stalin rejected the Marshall Plan (1947), viewing American economic aid as a tool to extend capitalist influence into Europe and undermine Soviet control
2. Eastern Bloc states were pressured to refuse participation - Czechoslovakia was forced to reverse its initial acceptance under direct Soviet pressure
3. The Soviet view was that Marshall Plan aid came with political strings attached, designed to create economic dependency on the United States
4. Rejection of the Marshall Plan deepened the economic division of Europe, as Western economies recovered rapidly while Eastern Bloc states stagnated under central planning
5. Comecon was established partly as a Soviet alternative to the Marshall Plan, though it never matched the scale of American economic assistance
6. The Marshall Plan's success in Western Europe strengthened the argument that capitalism could deliver prosperity, indirectly challenging Soviet ideological claims

Relationship with Mao and China

1. The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship (1950) allied the USSR with Mao's China, creating a vast communist bloc stretching from Central Europe to the Pacific
2. Stalin treated Mao as a junior partner, offering limited aid and making Mao wait weeks for an audience during his visit to Moscow in 1949-1950
3. Tensions over ideological leadership, the level of Soviet economic aid, and mutual respect sowed the seeds of the later Sino-Soviet split
4. The Korean War strained the relationship further - China bore the bulk of the fighting while the USSR provided equipment but avoided direct involvement
5. Stalin's refusal to share nuclear technology with China was a source of lasting resentment that contributed to the breakdown under Khrushchev
6. The alliance appeared monolithic to the West, fuelling fears of a unified communist threat, but internal tensions were already significant by 1953
7. The Warsaw Pact (1955) was established after Stalin's death, but its foundations were laid by his network of bilateral defence treaties with Eastern Bloc states

Stalin's Foreign Policy Legacy

1. Stalin's foreign policy combined ideological expansionism with pragmatic caution, extending Soviet influence while avoiding direct military confrontation with the United States
2. US containment policy - the Truman Doctrine, NATO, and the Marshall Plan - was a direct response to perceived Soviet expansionism under Stalin
3. By 1953 the Cold War had solidified into two hostile blocs, each armed with nuclear weapons and competing for global influence across multiple continents
4. Stalin left his successors a heavily militarised state, an expensive network of satellite states, and a dangerous nuclear rivalry that would define international relations for decades
5. The question of whether Stalin's policies were primarily offensive or defensive remains one of the most contested debates in Cold War historiography