David Reynolds on Joseph Stalin

“For Stalin, even more than for his partners, the wartime alliance constituted a marriage of convenience. He never shook off his fear that the British and Americans might sign a separate peace with Hitler—he even alluded to this concern obliquely during Churchill’s visit in October 1944—and their delays in opening a second front were seen as sinister confirmation. Having turned the Nazi tide by its own efforts, the Soviet Union, he believed, must also provide for its own postwar security; for Stalin, that meant preventing Germany from becoming a threat once again, probably by dismembering the country into small states on the pre-Bismarck model. It also required a quiescent, client state in Poland—historically the gateway for German aggression. More generally, Stalin wanted to regain Russian territories lost in World War I, including eastern Poland and the Baltic states, and to expand into traditional czarist areas of influence, particularly around the Black Sea (Russia’s gateway to the Mediterranean) and on the Pacific. The concept of territorial security was therefore fundamental to his regime.”

“So Stalin was very different from Hitler, a true megalomaniac who lusted for world domination. But, because of both his personal background and recent Soviet experience, Stalin’s craving for security was “insatiable”—he was always seeking more territory and more influence—and this lay at the root of growing friction with the West. Furthermore, as a Marxist-Leninist, Stalin never abandoned the hope of eventual international revolution. He recognized that in the modern world change could come by political means—“today socialism is possible even under the English monarchy”—but believed that the vast upheavals of the war were part of the structural “crisis of capitalism.” For the moment, he said in January 1945, the Soviet Union had joined the “democratic” faction of capitalists against the “fascist” faction, because Hitler posed the greater threat, but “in the future” the Soviets would confront their former allies.”

“In the winter of 1944–5, however, Stalin was still concentrating on victory in Europe and then on entering the war against Japan to secure his territorial aims. Moreover he knew that his shattered country was in no position for a new conflict in the immediate future. In fact he anticipated substantial economic aid, indirectly via agreed reparations from Germany and directly through a peacetime version of American lend-lease. This meant staying on good terms with his wartime allies. The Italian and French communist parties, both strongly placed because of their prominence in the wartime resistance, were warned against a revolutionary bid for power because Italy and France were both firmly in the British and American sphere. Stalin took the same line on Greece once Churchill had made clear Britain’s special interest. On the other hand, he treated the rest of the percentages deal as giving him the carte blanche he desired in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Guided by Marxist-Leninist ideology about the innate antagonisms of the capitalist powers, he was also ready to exploit policy differences between Britain and America. Roosevelt’s ostentatious digs at Churchill during the Teheran conference—intended to relieve Stalin’s suspicions of a combined Anglo-American front—seemed to confirm the aptness of this tactic. He felt he could work with the Allies while playing one off against the other.”