Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

Yet what did Stalin want to do in the world? If he is judged by his own speeches and articles, he looked upon global politics through the lens of Marxism–Leninism and rejected any suggestion that Soviet foreign policy was based on the selfish pragmatism of the USSR as a single state. Repeatedly he declared his indebtedness to the ideas of Vladimir Lenin. At Congresses he cited this as the party’s main legacy. Lenin had argued that, so long as capitalism survived around the world, imperialist rivalries would recur. Economic competition between advanced industrial powers would inevitably spill over into diplomatic conflicts and outright wars. Those powers lacking overseas colonies and informal dependencies were bound to seek access to the markets of their more fortunate rivals. A Second World War — and possibly further global wars — would be the inevitable result. In his address to the Eighteenth Party Congress, Stalin picked up this theme. The diplomatic and military conflicts of the 1930s appeared to him as confirmation of Lenin’s analysis in every detail: capitalism was inherently incapable of maintaining peace around the globe.

  From this viewpoint the treaties signed at the end of the Great War were a prescription for future military explosion. Germany had been humbled at Versailles in 1919 and its determination to reassert itself would cause ceaseless trouble. The USA, victorious in the First World War, had an interest in dismantling the British Empire and in restricting Japanese influence in the Pacific region. Throughout Europe and Asia there were suppurating sores in international relations which could lead to wars. Supposedly the problem lay with the persistence of the global capitalist economy. The USSR meanwhile remained a pariah state. When the League of Nations met for the first time in January 1920, it withheld a seat from the Soviet regime. The post-war treaties, moreover, created successor states in eastern Europe hostile to the October Revolution. The perceived danger for the Politburo was that somehow this volatile situation might result in a crusade against the USSR.

  For Stalin, as had been true for Lenin before him, the primary aim of Soviet security policy was to stay clear of entanglement in conflicts between capitalist powers. Since the mid-1920s Stalin had emphasised a concern with building ‘socialism in a single country’. This did not mean that he urged pacifism or envisaged permanent abstention from military activity; indeed he looked forward to the possibility that the Red Army might exploit difficulties among capitalist powers as a result of their wars. He had never revoked his statement in Problems of Leninism that more revolutions were needed for the Soviet state to secure itself against the possibility of foreign military intervention and overthrow.4 For the most part he emphasised another aspect of Lenin’s thought, namely that the USSR should seek to stay out of world wars. As he put it, he and his fellow leaders were not going to ‘pull chestnuts out of the fire’ on behalf of capitalist powers.

  Such considerations conditioned Soviet foreign policy in the inter-war period. But they were of a generalised nature and led many contemporary politicians and diplomats — and subsequent writers — to suppose that Stalin was a pragmatist who had put ideology behind him. This is a tricky topic. It is true that, if account is taken of the somersaults in Soviet diplomatic activity, Lenin and Stalin showed little consistency. In Lenin’s time the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been signed in 1918 and some observers, including a lot of communists, treated this as an abandonment of Bolshevik revolutionary goals. Yet the Red Army invaded Poland in 1920 and engaged in ‘revolutionary war’. Similar inconsistency was evident from the late 1920s. At first Stalin used the Comintern to instruct communist parties in Europe to regard social-democratic and labour parties as their greatest enemies; but he then insisted that communists should join ‘popular fronts’ with such parties. Of course the Marxist–Leninist stress on the importance of flexibility in Soviet foreign policy was hardly distinctive: it is an almost universal characteristic of diplomacy regardless of time, place or political orientation. Marxism–Leninism after 1917 was reinventing the ancient wheel of international relations.

  And even when Stalin appeared ‘ideological’, he never overlooked practical considerations. The USSR was an isolated state whose structure of politics and economy posed a challenge to the world’s capitalist powers. Hostility to the Soviet Union had led to military intervention in the Civil War; this put the Politburo on constant alert for a possible repetition. Stalin and his associates had a pragmatic interest in ending their international isolation; they looked for opportunities for revolutionary self-assertion. There were few ways to alter the fundamental situation short of demolishing the legacy of the October Revolution. At the very least the USSR would have had to reintroduce the market economy and recognise the debts owed by Russian governments before October 1917.

  Nothing about Stalin suggested that he would contemplate such a step. Accused by Trotski of betraying the October Revolution, he indeed distorted and eliminated much of Lenin’s legacy. But a Leninist of a sort he remained while introducing a personal dimension to his handling of international relations. He acted as if politics were fundamentally a matter of unmasking and neutralising conspiracies at home and abroad. Lenin had not been averse to impugning the motives of foreign states; he had not failed to trump up the charge in March 1921 that the Kronstadt mutineers were in league with governments hostile to the Soviet state. Stalin, moreover, made little distinction between types of capitalist state. He was equally ready to deal with fascists, liberal democrats and socialists in governments abroad; the popular-front policy was premised on pragmatic judgement rather than ideological preference. Yet this was no different from the attitude struck by Lenin, who in 1920 had urged the German communists to form an alliance with the German extreme right as a means of undermining the Weimar Republic and tearing up the Treaty of Versailles. Trotski in exile exaggerated the discrepancy between the viewpoints on Soviet foreign policy taken by Lenin and Stalin.5

  But how could Stalin translate these principles into action? In the early 1930s he had no constructive programme of foreign policy except for his aim to enable the USSR to survive. He did not shape events but instead reacted to them. This remained true while few options for alliance were available to a Soviet state whose very existence was a challenge to the world’s other powers. The best Stalin could hope for was to neutralise the threats of a crusade against the USSR. He was agitated by signs of expansionism on his borders. To the north and south there was little menace, but the omens were dire to the east. In December 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria and installed the puppet state of Manchukuo under the heel of the Kwantung Army. Militarism held sway in Tokyo. The Kremlin was concerned lest this might be the prelude to an attack on the USSR through Siberia.

  During the First Five-Year Plan Stalin saw reasons to be hopeful about developments to the west. There was in fact much congruence between policy at home and policy abroad: at the beginning of the 1930s it was extremely radical in both cases. Communist parties across Europe were encouraged to go on to the political attack against their governments. Ultra-leftist campaigns were approved. The Comintern, which had tended towards caution in Germany after the failure of revolution to occur there and had eliminated leftist leaders who sympathised with Trotski, started to campaign against those whom it accused of ‘rightism’. The basis for Stalin’s optimism was the acute trouble in the world economy. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 created havoc in every capitalist country. While the Politburo and Gosplan planned and achieved a massive increase in Soviet industrial output, the markets in North America and Europe fell into disarray — and no country was more economically disrupted than Germany. Communists in the main German cities took political advantage, claiming that the Great Depression signalled the final crisis of capitalism around the globe. Stalin agreed with this interpretation, which fitted Bolshevism’s long-standing predictions and analyses.

  Thus it came about that during the Reichstag electoral campaign in July 1932 he instructed the Executive Committee of the Comintern to order the German Communist Party to treat the social-democrats rather than Hitler’s NSDAP as
the main enemy. Hegemony over the political left was to be given precedence over struggling against Nazism. This egregious mistake is taken as evidence that he had no serious perspective on the general situation in Europe. German communist leaders were alarmed by his instruction and a delegation was sent to him. When they pleaded that the danger from the Nazis was a most urgent one, he retorted that he had taken this into account. Stalin understood that Hitler might do well in the elections. His riposte to his visitors, who included Franz Neumann, was blunt. He argued: ‘Don’t you think, Neumann, that if the nationalists come to power in Germany, they’ll be so completely preoccupied with the West that we’ll be able to build up socialism in peace?’ By this he seemed to mean that the Nazis as fundamental adversaries of the Treaty of Versailles would cause havoc in Europe. He appeared to believe that the result would probably be to the advantage of the Comintern in the cause of spreading revolution westwards from Russia.6

  In fact the defeated leader of the Right Deviation, Bukharin, had anticipated that Hitler would be a much more aggressive and effective leader than Stalin supposed; and this prognosis was vindicated when the Führer, building on his electoral success, became German Chancellor in January 1933. He tore up the Treaty of Rapallo. He withdrew the Wehrmacht from its collaboration with the Red Army. He fulminated against the Bolshevik political and ideological menace to Europe. The contents of Mein Kampf were shown to have been no aberration as Hitler asserted himself in Europe. Stalin’s assessment of German political trends had been proved dangerously naïve. The threat from the West had become as acute as the threat from the East, and Germany and Japan became the twin focus of changes in Soviet foreign policy for the rest of the decade. Stalin took little note of North America beyond encouraging closer commercial links between the USSR and the USA. About South America, Africa and the rest of Asia he had little to say. The Politburo continued to avoid risky revolutionary initiatives. Armaments production was kept as a high priority. Discussions were held in Moscow to elaborate a foreign policy adequate to deal with German expansionism.

  The Politburo, shocked by Hitler’s success in Germany, took steps to increase Soviet security. One such improvement was achieved that same year when the USA announced its decision to give diplomatic recognition to the USSR. This suited the interests of American business abroad. Having spent years enhancing Soviet influence in Europe, Stalin had acquired a window on to the New World.7

  Meanwhile the Red Army was reinforced in the Far East in case Tokyo should try to use its Manchurian quasi-colony as the base for an invasion of the USSR. Stalin had not forgotten about the Japanese incursions into eastern Siberia before the Bolsheviks won the Civil War in Russia. As regards Germany, there was greater room for manoeuvre. People’s Commissar of External Affairs Maxim Litvinov argued that rapprochement with all Europe’s anti-fascist parties and the formation of popular fronts were essential for Soviet interests. This had the support of Georgi Dimitrov, who had been released from a German prison in February 1934 and given political asylum in the USSR. Dimitrov objected to the official characterisation of the leaders and members of other socialist parties as ‘social-fascists’.8 Although the ideas originated with Litvinov and Dimitrov, sanction had to come from the Politburo and in particular from Stalin. France was recognised as the country in Europe which needed to be pulled into the Soviet embrace. Like the USSR, France felt threatened by Hitler’s foreign policy; it was reasonable for Stalin to assume that a reconciliation between the USSR and France would suit both governments.

  Stalin also accepted advice from Litvinov to adopt a policy of ‘collective security’. At the Seventeenth Party Congress in January 1934 he expressed satisfaction at the improvement in diplomatic relations with France and Poland. Although he denied this implied a reversal of the USSR’s antagonism to the Treaty of Versailles, he objected to the stated anti-Soviet pretensions of Nazi leaders and offered no olive branch to Germany. His hopes at that time lay with the USA (and even in Japan, which he thought could be induced into co-operating with the USSR). ‘We stand’, said Stalin,

  for peace and for the cause of peace. But we’re not afraid of threats and we’re ready to respond blow for blow to warmongers. Anyone wanting peace and seeking businesslike links with us will always have our support. But those who are trying to attack our country will receive crushing retaliation to teach them in future not to push their pigs’ snouts into our Soviet garden patch.

  That’s what our foreign policy is about.9

  But he omitted to say how these aims could be achieved. What was clear was that Soviet leaders were seeking a way out of their isolation.

  The formation of popular fronts would involve communist support for anti-fascist coalition governments. At last the threat from Nazi Germany was recognised as being of a unique order. Dimitrov argued that the Comintern had to be reorganised to deal with this. In October he argued that the Comintern was over-centralised. Communist parties abroad, he wrote to Stalin, should be given the latitude to react autonomously to national conditions.10 This did not mean that the foreign communist parties would have a choice about whether to set up popular fronts. They were peremptorily told to set them up.11 Dimitrov was writing about secondary matters; he wanted the parties to handle day-to-day affairs without constantly referring them upwards. He was hoping for pies in the sky. While calling for independence for these parties, he did not break the chains of their continued subjection.

  Stalin approved these ideas of Dimitrov without much modification. Dimitrov was proving a fertile source of ideas for allowing the USSR and Europe’s communist parties to adapt to fast-changing political and military realities. Stalin failed to come up with novel ideas of his own. Nevertheless such changes as were made to foreign policy had to have his personal permission; and while giving Dimitrov his head in the Comintern, he and Litvinov had other fish to fry. Stalin did not limit the USSR’s initiatives in international relations to contacts with left-of-centre parties. He also wanted reconciliation with the French government of Gaston Doumergue. Steadily the Soviet leadership was edging its way to a policy founded on treaties of ‘collective security’. With this in mind, Stalin permitted his diplomats to apply for and secure the USSR’s entry into the League of Nations in September 1934. Not only France but also Czechoslovakia and Romania were the object of Soviet overtures.12 Stalin was aided by the general fear of a Germany resurgent under Hitler. The existence of the Third Reich scared these states, and all of them were considering surmounting their fundamental distaste for dealing with the USSR. The Red Army’s potential as an anti-Nazi force in eastern and central Europe made negotiations with the Kremlin more attractive than at any time since the October Revolution.

  There was much disagreement among observers about Stalin’s purposes. To some it seemed that he was steadily moving towards a more traditional Russian agenda in foreign policy. The particular treaties and alliances did not matter for them: such things always changed in each generation. But the idea was gaining currency that Stalin had abandoned the internationalist objective of Leninism and wished for the USSR’s recognition as a great power with no interest in the overturning of the world political and economic system. Others accepted this as true but qualified the judgement. To them it seemed obvious that both the geopolitical position of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s personal preference dictated an inclination towards rapprochement with Germany at the expense of good relations with the United Kingdom and France. Yet such an analysis was challenged by those who felt that Stalin lacked the mental preparation to be anything else than reactive as a global statesman.

  They underestimated his thoughtful adaptiveness and the extent of his break with Marxism–Leninism. Equally clearly he was eager to avoid the mistakes made under Lenin’s leadership. He told guests at a dinner party attended by Georgi Dimitrov that Lenin had been wrong to call for a European civil war during the Great War.13 He also set about studying the history of international relations, and much scholarly research on this was publ
ished at his instigation in Moscow in the 1930s. While thrusting this information into the frame of his worldview, he retained a readiness to keep Soviet foreign policy flexible. Lenin had come to power with this attitude. Stalin had been impressed and sought to emulate him. Just as Lenin had confronted and survived the deadly diplomatic trial of strength with Germany in 1917–18, Stalin was determined to prove his mettle in the contests of the 1930s. As the threats in Europe and Asia grew, he wanted to be intellectually prepared. Without such knowledge, he knew, he could be caught out of his depth; and he had no desire to put himself as an innocent into the arms of the People’s Commissariat of External Affairs or of the Communist International.

  Civil war had broken out in Spain in July 1936 when the fascist general Francisco Franco revolted against the Republican coalition government of Diego Barrio (who derived authority from a popular front). Franco appealed for assistance from Germany and Italy. Both complied, and Hitler’s Luftwaffe was given experience in bombing towns and villages. Meanwhile France and the United Kingdom, while sympathising with the elected government, maintained a position of neutrality. The Spanish government rallied all the forces it could on the political left. Spain’s communists in particular stood by it.

  In Moscow the time had come for a decision on whether or not to intervene as Hitler and Mussolini had already done. Deployment of Red military units was not feasible at such a distance. But the revolutionary tradition impelled Stalin to look favourably on the request from Madrid for help. So too did the awareness that if no resistance to German assertiveness were shown, Europe as a whole would be exposed to the expansionist aims of the Third Reich. Failure to act would be taken as a sign that the policy of the popular front had no substance. Finance and munitions were dispatched by boat to Spain from Leningrad. Simultaneously the Communist International sent the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti under the alias Ercoli to direct the activities of the Spanish communists. Togliatti and his fellow political and military emissaries found a chaotic scene. At Stalin’s command they sought to turn the Spanish Communist Party into the leading force on the left without actually entering the government coalition. The policy of the popular front was maintained and Moscow frowned on all talk of a communist seizure of power. Dimitrov came into his own by leading the implementation of the general line agreed in the Kremlin: he knew it was not safe to ignore his master’s voice.14