Stalin and the Bomb by David Holloway

Author:David Holloway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1994-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

The War of Nerves

I

STALIN BELIEVED AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II that postwar international relations would resemble those of the interwar period. Germany and Japan would rise from defeat. World capitalism would run into crisis, and sharp contradictions would emerge between the leading capitalist states. These contradictions would lead inevitably to a new world war. Since the Soviet Union would be drawn into this war, as it had been drawn into World War II, it had to be prepared. Exactly when or how the war would start was not clear, but it was clear that it would happen, probably after about twenty years, the interval of time between World War I and World War II.

The atomic bomb did not alter Stalin’s conception of the postwar world. The bomb was, nevertheless, a factor which had to be taken into account in military strategy and foreign policy. War plans and military theory tell us something about the way in which the Soviet Union hoped to counter the United States atomic air offensive, and use its own nuclear weapons, in the event of war. They do not, however, reveal how Stalin assessed the impact of the atomic bomb on international relations. Stalin said very little about the bomb between 1946 and 1953, and what he did say was intended to create a particular impression. His statements have to be interpreted in the context of Soviet foreign policy.

After Hiroshima Stalin saw no immediate danger of war. Atomic diplomacy seemed to him the greater threat – atomic bombs were “meant to frighten those with weak nerves,” he told Alexander Werth in September 1946 – and he took steps to show that the Soviet Union would not be intimidated. This remained the basic Soviet position as the Cold War took shape in 1947. The Soviet leaders regarded the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall plan as attempts to put pressure on the Soviet Union, and to weaken its influence in Europe, but they did not see these developments as the prelude to war.

When the British government decided in February 1947 that it could no longer supply aid to Greece and Turkey, Truman resolved to step into the breach. In his address to Congress on March 12, 1947 he framed the issue in a stark and dramatic way. “Totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States,” he declared. The United States should “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”1

Six days later, Nikolai Novikov, who had returned from Washington to Moscow to take part in a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, discussed Truman’s speech with Molotov. The speech showed, said Novikov, that the United States would support “reactionary regimes” in those countries where they existed, and would try to undermine the progressive regimes of Eastern Europe. Molotov replied with an ironical smile, Novikov writes in his memoirs. “The President is trying to intimidate us,” Molotov said, “to turn us at a stroke into obedient little boys.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.