Transcript Slide 1

ADDING A SOVIET PERSPECTIVE
TO 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 военнополитическими 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 socalled “socialist” system. The Cold War drew in an
entire planet. It divided the world into two parts, two
military-political and economic groups, two sociopolitical 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 policypanning 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 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?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 – reflecting
and 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 were
circulating 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 indefinite
expansion 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 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 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 document
was 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 the
Cold War to NJ students can help make these points.