by Riazanovsky
revival developed in German-occupied territory. While the Soviet government maintained control over the people, in certain respects it relaxed somewhat its iron grip. Many Soviet citizens apparently felt more free than before the war. In particular, some kolkhozes simply collapsed, the peasants dividing the land and farming it in private. On the whole, because of lessened controls and a great demand for food, many peasants improved their position during the war years. In the German zone of occupation the people immediately disbanded the collectives. The Nazis, however, later in part reintroduced them as useful devices to control peasants and obtain their produce. The war also led to closer and friendlier relations with Western allies and made widespread contacts of the Soviet and the non-Soviet world inevitable. Moreover, millions of Soviet citizens, prisoners of war, deportees, escapees, and victorious Red Army soldiers, had their first look at life outside Soviet borders. Other millions, the inhabitants of the Baltic countries, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina, brought up under alien systems and in different circumstances, were joined to the Soviet Union.
Another obvious result of the Second World War was the great rise in the Soviet position and importance in the world. The U.S.S.R. came to dominate eastern Europe, except for Greece, and much of central Europe. Barring the Allied expeditionary forces, it had no military rival on the entire continent. The international Communist movement, which had reached its nadir with the Soviet-German treaty and Hitler's victory in the west, was experiencing a veritable renaissance. After the German attack on the U.S.S.R., Communists had played major roles in numerous resistance movements, and they emerged as a great political force in many European countries, including such important Western states as France and Italy. With the total defeat and unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, the earlier defeat of Italy, and the collapse of France, only exhausted Great Britain and the United States remained as major obstacles to Soviet ambition in the whole wide world.
In a sense, Stalin and the Politburo had their postwar policy cut out for them. They had to rebuild the Soviet Union and to continue the industrial and general economic advance. They had to reimpose a full measure of socialism on the recalcitrant peasant, and to supervise and control closely such non-Marxist sources of inspiration and belief as religion and nationalism. They had to combat the "contamination" that had come to their country from the non-Soviet world, and they had to make all their people, including the inhabitants of the newly acquired territories, into good Soviet citizens. They had to maintain complete control over the army. They had to exploit the new position of the U.S.S.R. and the new, sweeping opportunities open to the Soviet Union and international communism in the
postwar world. Those numerous observers who were surprised by the course of Soviet politics at home and abroad from 1945 until Stalin's death in the spring of 1953 for the most part either had altogether failed to understand the nature of the Soviet system or believed that it had undergone a fundamental change during the Second World War.
Reconstruction and Economic Development
To repair war damage and resume the economic advance, Stalin and the Politburo resorted, characteristically, to a five-year plan, and indeed to a sequence of such plans. The Fourth Five-Year Plan, which lasted from
1946 to 1950 and was proclaimed overfulfilled in four years and three months, was cut out of the same cloth as its predecessors. It stressed heavy industry, which absorbed some 85 per cent of the total investment, particularly emphasizing the production of coal, electrical power, iron, steel, timber, cement, agricultural machinery, and trucks. The demobilization of more than ten million men provided the needed additional manpower, for the total number of workers and employees had declined from 31 million in 1940 to 19 million in 1943. The rebuilding of devastated towns and villages, which had begun as soon as the Germans had left, gathered momentum after the inauguration of the Plan. But the Fourth Five-Year Plan aimed at more than restoration: Russian industry, especially heavy industry, was supposed to achieve new heights of production, while labor productivity was to rise 36 per cent, based on an increase in the amount of capital per worker of about 50 per cent. As usual, every effort was made to force the Soviet people to work hard. A financial reform of December
1947 virtually wiped out wartime savings by requiring Soviet citizens to exchange the money they had for a new currency at the rate of ten to one. Piece work and bonuses received added emphasis. Official retail prices went up, although the concurrent abolition of rationing and of certain other forms of distribution alleviated somewhat the hardships of the consumer. Foreign economists noted a certain improvement in the urban standard of living as well as a redistribution of real income within the urban population, primarily against the poorer groups.
The Fourth Five-Year Plan obtained a great boost from reparations and other payments collected from defeated Germany and its allies. In 1947, for example, three-fourths of Soviet imports came from eastern Europe and the Soviet zone of Germany, that is, from the area dominated by Red military might. The total value of Soviet "political" imports, including reparations, especially favorable trade provisions, and other economic arrangements, as well as resources spent by different countries for the support of Red Army troops stationed in those countries, has been estimated at the extraordinary figure of over twenty billion dollars. Some reparations
were made in the form of complete factories that were dismantled, transported to the Soviet Union, and reassembled there.
In the end the Plan could well be considered a success in industry, much like its predecessors, in spite of the frequently inferior quality of products and uneven results, which included large overfulfillments and underfulfillments. While industry was rebuilt and even expanded in Ukraine and other western areas, the Plan marked a further industrial shift east, which grew in relative economic importance compared to the prewar period. By mobilizing resources the Soviet Union managed to maintain during the Fourth and Fifth Five-Year Plans the very high annual industrial growth rate characteristic of the first three plans and estimated by Western economists at some 12 to 14 per cent on the average - a figure composed of much higher rates in the late forties and much lower in the early fifties. The Fifth Five-Year Plan lasted from 1951 to 1955 and thus continued beyond Stalin's rule. Similar to all the others in nature and accomplishments, it apparently made great advances in such complex fields as aviation and armament industries and atomic energy. Its completed projects included the Volga-Don canal.
Agriculture, as usual, formed an essential aspect of the plans and, again as usual, proved particularly difficult to manage successfully. The war, to repeat, produced sweeping destruction, a further sharp decline in the already insufficient supply of domestic animals, and at the same time a breakdown of discipline in many kolkhozes, where members proceeded to divide the land and farm it individually or at least to expand their private plots at the expense of the collective. Discipline was soon restored. By September 1, 1947, about fourteen million acres had been taken away from the private holdings of members of collectives as exceeding the permissible norm. Moreover, the Politburo and the government mounted a new offensive aimed at turning the peasants at long last into good socialists. This was to be done by greatly increasing the size of the collectives - thereby decreasing their number - and at the same time increasing the size of working units in a collective, in the interests of further mechanization and division of labor. Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as one of the leaders in postwar Soviet agriculture, spoke even of grouping peasants in agrogoroda, veritable agricultural towns, which would do away once and for all with the diffusion of labor, the isolation, and the backwardness characteristic of the countryside. The agrogoroda proved unrealistic, or at least premature, but authorities did move to consolidate some 250,000 kolkhozes into fewer than 100,000 larger units. In spite of all the efforts - some hostile critics believe largely because of them - peasants failed to satisfy the demands of Soviet leaders, and insufficient agricultural production
remained a major weakness of the Soviet economy, as Khrushchev in effect admitted after Stalin's death.
Politics and Administration
The postwar period also brought some political changes. As already mentioned, the Soviet Union acquired five new republics during the time of the Russo-German agreement. They were lost, together with other large territories, when Germany and its allies invaded the U.S.S.R. and reacquired when the Red Army advanced west. The five Soviet Socialist Republics, the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian, raised the total number of component units of the U.S.S.R. to sixteen. In July 1956, however, the Karelo-Finnish S.S.R. was downgraded to its prewar status of an autonomous republic within the R.S.F.S.R., reducing the number of union republics to fifteen. The Karelo-Finnish Republic, consisting both of some older Soviet lands and of territory acquired from Finland in 1940 and again in 1944, largely failed as an expression of Finnish culture and nationality; in particular, because the inhabitants had a choice of staying or moving to Finland, virtually no people remained in the area that the Soviet Union annexed from Finland. The downgrading, therefore, seemed logical, although it might have been connected with the desire to Russify that strategic area still more effectively. While the number of union republics increased as a result of the Second World War, the number of autonomous republics was reduced: five of the latter, the Volga-German Autonomous Republic and four in the Crimea, the northern Caucasus, and adjacent areas were disbanded for sympathizing with or assisting the Germans, their populations being transported to distant regions. In the case of the Volga Germans, the N.K.V.D. apparently staged a fake parachute raid, pretending to be a Nazi spearhead in order to uncover the sympathies of the people. Mass deportations also took place in the newly acquired areas that were rapidly and ruthlessly incorporated into the Soviet system. For example, most of the members of the upper and middle classes, including a great many intellectuals, disappeared from the Baltic republics. The concentration-camp empire of Stalin and Beria bulged at the seams.
By contrast, although the Union expanded and rigorous measures were applied to bring all parts of it into conformity with the established order, the Soviet political system itself changed little. Union-wide elections were held in 1946 for the first time since 1937, and again in 1950. The new Supreme Soviets acted, of course, as no more than rubber stamps for Stalin and the government. Republican and other local elections also took place. The minimum age for office holders was raised from eighteen to twenty-three. In 1946 people's commissariats became ministries. More important, their number was reduced in the postwar years and they were more strongly centralized in Moscow. Shortly before his death, Stalin carried out a po-
tentially important change in the top Party administration: the Politburo as well as the Organizational Bureau were abolished and replaced by the Presidium to consist of ten Politburo members, the eleventh being dropped, plus another fifteen high Soviet leaders. But Stalin died without calling together the Presidium. After his death its announced membership was reduced to ten, so that as an institution it differed from the Politburo in nothing but name, and even the name was restored after Khrushchev's fall.
The postwar years witnessed also a militant reaffirmation of Communist orthodoxy in ideology and culture. While more will be said about this subject in a later chapter, it might be noted here that scholarship, literature, and the arts all suffered from the imposition of a Party strait jacket. Moreover, Andrew Zhdanov, a member of the Politburo and the Party boss of Leningrad during the frightful siege, who led the campaign to restore orthodoxy, emerged as Stalin's most prominent lieutenant from 1946 until Zhdanov's sudden death in August 1948. That death - engineered by Stalin in the opinion of some specialists - again left the problem of succession wide open. The aging dictator was surrounded during his last years by a few surviving old leaders, his long-time associates, such as Molotov, Marshal Clement Voroshilov, Lazarus Kaganovich, and Anastasius Miko-yan, as well as by some younger men who had become prominent after the great purge, notably Beria, Khrushchev, and George Malenkov. Malenkov in particular appeared to gain consistently in importance and to loom as Stalin's most likely successor.
Foreign Policy
Stalin's last decade saw extremely important developments in Soviet foreign policy. Crucial events of the postwar years included the expansion of Soviet power in eastern Europe, the breakdown of the wartime cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and its Western allies, and the polarization of the world into the Communist and the anti-Communist blocs, headed by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively. That the Soviet Union proved intractable in its dealings with the West, that it did what it could to expand its own bloc, and that it received support from the Communist movement all over the world, followed logically from the nature and new opportunities of Soviet communism. A persistent refusal on the part of many circles in the West to face reality testified simply to their wishful thinking or ignorance. Yet it does not follow that every Soviet move was a cleverly calculated step of a prearranged conspiracy. It appears more likely that the Soviet leaders, too, had prepared little for the postwar period, and that in their preparation they had concentrated on such objectives as rendering Germany permanently harmless. The sweeping Soviet expansion in eastern Europe occurred at least in part because of special
circumstances: the rapid Western withdrawal of forces and demobilization, the fact that it became apparent that free elections in most eastern European countries would result in anti-Soviet governments, and the pressure of local Communists as well as, possibly, the urging of the more activist group within the Soviet leadership. In the opinion of Mosely and certain other observers, Stalin embarked on a policy of intransigence and expansion shortly after Yalta.
The Soviet Union and the Allies co-operated long enough to put into operation their arrangement for dividing and ruling Germany and to bring top Nazi leaders to trial before an international tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946. Also, in February 1947, the victorious powers signed peace treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. The Soviet Union confirmed its territorial gains from Rumania and Finland, including a lease of the Finnish base of Porkkala, and obtained extensive reparations. Rounding out its acquisitions, the U.S.S.R. obtained the so-called Carpatho-Ruthenian area from friendly Czechoslovakia in 1945. While most inhabitants of that region spoke Ukrainian, they had not been connected with any Russian state since the days of Kievan Russia.
But on the whole co-operation between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers broke down quickly and decisively. No agreement on the international control of atomic energy could be reached, the Soviet Union refusing to participate in the Atomic Energy Commission created by the United Nations in 1946. In the same year a grave crisis developed over the efforts of the Soviet government to obtain significant concessions from Persia, or Iran, and its refusal to follow the example of Great Britain and the United States and withdraw its troops from that country after the end of the war. Although, as a result of Western pressure and the airing of the question in the United Nations, Soviet forces did finally leave Iran, the hostility between former allies became increasingly apparent.
The Communist seizure of power in eastern Europe contributed very heavily to the division of the world into two opposed blocs. While many details of the process varied from country to country, the end result in each case, that is, in Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Poland, was the firm entrenchment of a Communist regime co-operating with and dominated by the Soviet Union. The same happened in eastern Germany. Only Greece and Finland managed to escape the Communist grasp. Liberated Greece fell into the British rather than the Soviet sphere, and its government, supported by Great Britain and the United States, managed to win a bitter civil war from the Communist-led Left. The fact that Finland survived as a free nation remains puzzling. It could be that Moscow first overestimated the strength of Finnish Communists, who did play a prominent part in the government of the country immediately after the
war, and then decided not to force the issue in a changing international
situation after the Finnish Communists failed to seize power. In particular, the Soviet Union probably wanted to avoid driving Sweden into the camp of Soviet enemies. Similarly - at a greater distance from the U.S.S.R. - the large and strong Communist and allied parties in France and Italy, very prominent in the first years following the war, were forced out of coalition governments and had to limit themselves to the role of an opposition bent largely on obstruction.
It has frequently been said that communism won in Europe only in countries occupied by the Red Army, and that point deserves to be kept in mind. Yet it does not tell the whole story. Whereas in Poland, for example, native Communists were extremely weak, in Yugoslavia and Albania they had led resistance movements against the Axis powers and had attained dominant positions at the end of the war. Perhaps more important, the Soviet Union preferred to rely in all cases on local Party members, while holding the Red Army in readiness as the ultimate argument. Usually, the "reactionary" elements, including monarchs where such were present and the upper classes in general as well as Fascists, would be forced out of political life and a "united front" of "progressive" elements formed to govern the country. Next the Communists destroyed or at least weakened and neutralized their partners in the front to establish in effect, if not always in form, their single-party dictatorship even though the party might be known as the "workers' " or "socialist unity" party rather than simply "Communist." It is worth noting that the eastern European Communists had the most trouble with agrarian parties, just as the Bolsheviks had met their most dangerous rivals in the Socialist Revolutionaries. In Roman Catholic countries, such as Poland and Hungary, they also experienced strong and persistent opposition from the Church. The Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia proved particularly disturbing to the non-Communist world, because it occurred as late as 1948 and disposed of a regime headed by President Benes which had enjoyed popular support and maintained friendly relations with the Soviet Union. The new totalitarian governments in eastern Europe proclaimed themselves to be "popular democracies." They followed the Soviet lead in introducing economic plans, industrializ-,. ing, collectivizing agriculture - sometimes gradually, however - and establishing minute regulation of all phases of life, including culture. As in the U.S.S.R., the political police played a key role in social transformation and control. An "iron curtain" came to separate the Communist world from the non-Communist.