ADDING A SOVIET PERSPECTIVETO TEACHING THE COLD WAR

NJ 6.2.12.A.5.a (end of grade 12) Explain how and why differences in ideologies and policies between the

United States and the USSR resulted in a cold war, the formation of new alliances, and periodic military clashes.

NJ 6.1.12.A.12.a (end of grade 12) Analyze ideological differences and other factors that contributed to the

Cold War and to United States involvement in conflicts intended to contain communism, including the Korean War,

the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War.

NJ 6.2.12.B.5.a (end of grade 12) Determine the impact of geography on decisions made by the Soviet Union and the

United States to expand and protect their spheres of influence.

NJ 6.2.12.B.5.b (end of grade 12) Analyze the reasons for the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,

and evaluate the impact of these events on changing national boundaries in Eastern Europe and Asia.

• NJ 6.2.12.C.5.a (end of grade 12) Explain how and why Western European countries and Japan achieved rapid economic recovery after World War II.

• NJ 6.2.12.C.5.b (end of grade 12) Compare and contrast free market capitalism, Western European democratic socialism, and Soviet communism.

• NJ 6.2.12.C.5.c (end of grade 12) Assess the impact of the international arms race, the space race, and nuclear proliferation on international politics from multiple perspectives.

ХОЛОДНАЯ ВОЙНА – мировая конфронтация между двумя военно-политическими блоками во главе с СССР и США, не дошедшая до открытого военного столкновения.

http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/istoriya/HOLODNAYA_VONA.html

COLD WAR – a global confrontation between two military-political blocs headed by the USSR and the USA, not reaching open military confrontation.

http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/istoriya/HOLODNAYA_VONA.html

"Cold War" - a period in international relations and Soviet foreign policy which lasted almost 40 years after the Second World War. The essence of the "Cold War" was the political, military, strategic and ideological confrontation of the capitalist and a so-called “socialist” system. The Cold War drew in an entire planet. It divided the world into two parts, two military-political and economic groups, two socio-political systems. The world was double-poled (“bipolar”). This competition had a peculiar political logic: he who is not with us is against us. All events in the world came to be viewed through this "black and white" perspective of competition. In everything and everywhere, each side saw the insidious hand of the enemy, while trying to annoy him by any means.

http://www.coldwar.narod.ru/concept.htm

What does “from a Soviet perspective” mean?

LIMITS TO REVELATIONS

1) Partial opening, then reclosing of Soviet-era archives

LIMITS TO REVELATIONS

2) Seductive fallacy of the out-of-context document(s).

LIMITS TO REVELATIONS

No remotely candid or reliable account of internal deliberations exists.

LIMITS TO REVELATIONS

No real way of knowing whether Kremlin leadership really held in private the views

it put forth for public consumption.

LIMITS TO REVELATIONS

No good way yet without knowing Russian of getting at Soviet daily life/ ordinary perspectives on the Cold War era.

Particularly impossible to know honestly what the average citizen knew/felt/believed.

A “Soviet perspective” emphasizes bilateral geopolitical relations;

not the same as “Soviet bloc perspective” (communism actually wasn’t monolithic).

Other geopolitical perspectives possible, e.g. Chinese; French;

and especially Non-Aligned .

Many – but not all – aspects of the “Soviet perspective” are shared today (at least publicly) by Putin

and other prominent Russian leaders.

‘Original sin’ from Soviet perspective: “totalitarian model”developed in the 1950s out of postwar social-science research.

“In their definition of totalitarianism the American political analysts Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski identified six key elements of a totalitarian system:

(1) an official ideology intended to achieve a “perfect final stage of mankind”;

(2) a single mass party, closely interwoven with the state bureaucracy and typically led by one man

(3) the party’s control over the military; (4) the party’s monopoly of the means of effective

communication; (5) state terror enforced by a ubiquitous secret police; and (6) central direction and control of the entire economy.”

http://www.allrussias.com/soviet_russia/model_1.asp

Dominant in western scholarship and also policy-panning circles until at least the 1970s, the totalitarian model postulates fundamental Soviet illegitimacy, antagonism with the

capitalist world, and the militant export of revolution. It also assumes late-1930s

Soviet policies to be normal, structural features of the postwar Soviet state.

From the Soviet perspective, many Stalinist policies of the 1930s and the war

years (purges, the GULAG, repression, etc.) were exceptional rather than

normal. Certainly after Stalin’s death the leadership moved away from coercion in

favor of cooption: I call it “compassionate Stalinism.” Yet hardliners in US

continued to fixate on “totalitarian” attributes.

Soviets of course were guilty of exactly same thing in looking at the US. They had a hard time distinguishing

who matters and who doesn’t, and a hard time comprehending unfettered political discourse. It was easy to find prominent hardliners in the US to provide

fodder for Soviet hardliners -- and vice versa.

During the Cold War, the military-industrial complex on both sides was locked in a symbiotic relationship.

The US tendency to view the Soviet bloc as monolithic had an analog in a Soviet tendency to view

the West as monolithic.

The ‘standard’ American interpretation has wartime cooperation giving way after the war to distrust and discord,

such that by 1946 (Churchill’s Fulton MO speech) the falling-out was well under way and by 1947

relations had deteriorated to the point that a “Cold War” was under way.

The Soviet interpretation tends to locate the beginnings of theCold War split already during WW II:

“In fact, the war between the two systems, the two ideologies, has not stopped since 1917, but took shape as a

fully conscious opposition specifically after World War II.…the second global war, in essence, was

the birthplace of the Cold War.”

http://studhelps.ru/07/dok.php?id=s309

There was a strong Soviet sense that US and British strategists were willing to fight Hitler to the last Russian.

That is, a combination of deliberate political footdragging and strategic decisions left it to the Soviet Union

to absorb the brunt of the Nazi war effort.

From the Soviet perspective, the Red Army – reflectingand validating the Soviet system – defeated Hitler

more or less independently of the other Allies.

WW II ROOTS OF THE COLD WAR:

• Too much emphasis on air power• Rooseveltian contradictions: discrepancy

between rhetoric of cooperation, realist recognition of Soviet interests and domestic realpolitik on the other

• Realization towards the end of the war that Soviet occupation of a considerable part of East Europe was a fait accompli, likely to produce de facto spheres of influence

• Wartime conferences (Yalta, Potsdam) that effectively postulated spheres of influence

• Delayed second front; North African campaign instead of invasion of France

WW II ROOTS OF THE COLD WAR:

• Diametrically opposed visions for postwar reconstruction. US planners wanted to repair and correct European capitalism; Soviet view saw politics as secondary to economics, such that capitalism in East Europe would always be a threat unless displaced by friendly socialist governments

• Reality was that even though the US had atomic bombs, Soviet Union was powerful enough militarily to be relatively equal

By early 1946, competing pessimistic assessments werecirculating secretly at the highest levels

on both sides of the looming split.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/B21_06-06_01.jpg

“…we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world's greatest peoples and resources of world's richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism. In addition, it has an elaborate and far flung apparatus for exertion of its influence in other countries, an apparatus of amazing flexibility and versatility, managed by people whose experience and skill in underground methods are presumably without parallel in history. Finally, it is seemingly inaccessible to considerations of reality in its basic reactions….” - - George Kennan, “Long Telegram,” 2/22/46

“The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopolistic capital, is characterized in the postwar period by a striving for world supremacy. This is the real meaning of the many statements by President Truman and other representatives of American ruling circles: that the United States has the right to lead the

world. All the forces of American diplomacy-the army, the air force, the navy, industry, and science-are enlisted in the

service of this foreign policy. For this purpose broad plans for expansion have been developed and are being implemented

through diplomacy and the establishment of a system of naval and air bases stretching far beyond the boundaries of the

United States, through the arms race, and through the creation of ever newer types of weapons.”

-- Nikolai Novikov, “Novikov Telegram,” 9/27/46.

Text of George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”:http://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/coldwar/docs/tele.html

Text of the “Novikov Telegram”:http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/novikov.htm

Soviet perspective: moving in 1946-47 towards a postwar drawdown in military forces, getting on with

reconstruction of country, consolidation of socialist regimes in strategically vital parts of East Europe.

“The main tasks of the new five-year plan are to rehabilitate the devastated regions of our country, to restore industry and agriculture to the prewar level, and then to exceed that level to a more or less considerable extent. Apart from the fact that the rationing system is to be abolished in the very near future (loud and prolonged applause), special attention will be devoted to the production of consumers’ goods, to raising the standard of living of the working people by steadily reducing the prices of all commodities (loud and prolonged applause)….” --Joseph Stalin, “Speech delivered by J. V. Stalin at a meeting of voters of the Stalin electoral district, Moscow,” 2/9/46.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/SS46.html

“On February 9, 1946, the Russian dictator [Stalin] had made a speech in Moscow on the eve of a so-called election. It was a brutal, blunt rejection of any hope of peace with the West. Stalin blamed World War II on capitalism, and declared that as long as capitalists controlled any part of the world, there was no hope of peace. The Soviet Union must rearm, and forget all about producing consumer goods….”

--Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (NY 1973), 308-9.

Cited in Nikolai V. Sviachev and Nikolai N. Yakovlev, Russia And The United States: US-Soviet Relations From The Soviet Point Of View (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 217-8.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

…I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What

they desire is the fruits of war and the indefiniteexpansion of their power and doctrines….

-- Winston Churchill, “Sinews Of Peace” (Fulton MO), 3/5/46

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/churchill.html

“The Germans made their invasion of the USSR throughFinland, Poland, Rumania and Hungary. [They] wereable to make their invasion through these countries because,at the time, governments hostile to the Soviet Unionexisted in those countries.……What can be surprising about the fact that the Soviet Union,anxious for its future safety, is trying to see that governmentsloyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist inthese countries? How can anyone who has not taken leave of his wits describe these peaceful aspirations of the Soviet Unionas expansionist tendencies on the part of our State?

-- Joseph Stalin, Interview with Pravda correspondent concerning Mr. Winston Churchill’s speech, March 1946.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1946/03/x01.htm

There is no credible evidence whatsoever (at least so far)that the Soviet Union ever seriously contemplated a

postwar military takeover of Western Europe.20-25 million wartime deaths argued strongly for peace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union#Official_Figures_Released_in_1993-1995_by_Russian_Government

Rather, the Soviet Union perceived the Truman administration under NSC 68

(whose thrust could be deduced even if the full documentwas secret) moving towards armed confrontation, and an

extremely aggressive foreign policy.

By mid-1950 then, if not sooner, the Cold War was on in its full (suppressed) fury.

Conclusion: both sides imputed the worst intentions to each other; based mutually reinforcing policies on possibilities rather than likely realities; were prisoners of ideological conviction.

Incorporating a Soviet perspective in teaching theCold War to NJ students can help make these points.