ADDING A SOVIET PERSPECTIVE

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ADDING A SOVIET PERSPECTIVE TO TEACHING THE COLD
WAR
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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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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.
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• 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.

7
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http//www.krugosvet.ru/enc/istoriya/HOLODNAYA_VON
A.html
8
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_VON
A.html
9
"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
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What does from a Soviet perspective mean?
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LIMITS TO REVELATIONS
1) Partial opening, then reclosing of Soviet-era
archives
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LIMITS TO REVELATIONS
2) Seductive fallacy of the out-of-context
document(s).
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LIMITS TO REVELATIONS
No remotely candid or reliable account of
internal deliberations exists.
14
LIMITS TO REVELATIONS
No real way of knowing whether Kremlin leadership
really held in private the views it put forth
for public consumption.
15
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.
16
A Soviet perspective emphasizes bilateral
geopolitical relations not the same as Soviet
bloc perspective (communism actually wasnt
monolithic).
17
Other geopolitical perspectives possible, e.g.
Chinese French and especially Non-Aligned .
18
Many but not all aspects of the Soviet
perspective are shared today (at least
publicly) by Putin and other prominent Russian
leaders.
19
Original sin from Soviet perspective
totalitarian model developed in the 1950s out
of postwar social-science research.
20

• In their definition of totalitarianism the
  American political analysts Carl Friedrich and
  Zbigniew Brzezinski identified six key elements
  of a totalitarian system
• an official ideology intended to achieve a
  perfect final stage of mankind
• a single mass party, closely interwoven with the
  state bureaucracy and typically led by one man
• the partys control over the military
• the partys monopoly of the means of effective
  communication
• state terror enforced by a ubiquitous secret
  police and
• central direction and control of the entire
  economy.

http//www.allrussias.com/soviet_russia/model_1.as
p
21
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.
22
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 Stalins
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.
23
Soviets of course were guilty of exactly same
thing in looking at the US. They had a hard time
distinguishing who matters and who doesnt, 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.
24
During the Cold War, the military-industrial
complex on both sides was locked in a symbiotic
relationship.
25
The US tendency to view the Soviet bloc as
monolithic had an analog in a Soviet tendency to
view the West as monolithic.
26
The standard American interpretation has
wartime cooperation giving way after the war to
distrust and discord, such that by 1946
(Churchills 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.
27
The Soviet interpretation tends to locate the
beginnings of the Cold 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?ids309
28
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.
29
From the Soviet perspective, the Red Army
reflecting and validating the Soviet system
defeated Hitler more or less independently of the
other Allies.
30
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

31
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

32
By early 1946, competing pessimistic assessments
were circulating secretly at the highest levels
on both sides of the looming split.
33
http//www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_col
lections/coldwar/documents/B21_06-06_01.jpg
34
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
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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.
36
Text of George Kennans Long Telegram http//ww
w.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/coldwar/doc
s/tele.html Text of the Novikov
Telegram http//academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/histo
ry/johnson/novikov.htm
37
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.
38
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
39
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. --Marga
ret 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.
40
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 indefinite expansion of
their power and doctrines. -- Winston
Churchill, Sinews Of Peace (Fulton MO), 3/5/46
http//www.historyguide.org/europe/churchill.html
41
The Germans made their invasion of the USSR
through Finland, Poland, Rumania and Hungary.
They were able to make their invasion through
these countries because, at the time, governments
hostile to the Soviet Union existed in those
countries. What can be surprising about the
fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its
future safety, is trying to see that
governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet
Union should exist in these countries? How can
anyone who has not taken leave of his wits
describe these peaceful aspirations of the Soviet
Union as expansionist tendencies on the part of
our State? -- Joseph Stalin, Interview with
Pravda correspondent concerning Mr. Winston
Churchills speech, March 1946.
http//www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/w
orks/1946/03/x01.htm
42
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_casualti
es_of_the_Soviet_UnionOfficial_Figures_Released_i
n_1993-1995_by_Russian_Government
43
Rather, the Soviet Union perceived the Truman
administration under NSC 68 (whose thrust could
be deduced even if the full document was secret)
moving towards armed confrontation, and an
extremely aggressive foreign policy.
44
By mid-1950 then, if not sooner, the Cold War was
on in its full (suppressed) fury.
45
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 the Cold War to NJ students can help
make these points.