While the Soviet reaction to the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine was rather muted, Moscow’s response to the Marshall Plan proved to be much more consequential. Originally, the overture by the US secretary of state was met with a mixture of mistrust, interest, and uncertainty, but the main Soviet line was to gather more information from its former Western partners and to use the proposal to Soviet advantage. Soviet diplomats were instructed to clarify the scale and conditions of the proposed plan and to insist that it be organized on a national basis and not as an integrated program, which the Kremlin feared would come under US control. Neither did the Kremlin want German resources to be used in the program unless outstanding Soviet demands for reparations and for supervision of the industries of the Ruhr were met. What the Soviets feared most was that Eastern Europe would fall under the West’s economic hegemony and that Germany would become integrated into a US-led orbit.
Those fears were quickly confirmed at the very beginning of the Paris Conference. The British and the French insisted on an all-European plan using German economic resources. They displayed little desire to modify the American proposal. Molotov wrote Stalin that it was clear that the Western partners "are eager to use this opportunity to break in to the internal economies of European countries and especially to redirect the flows of European trade in their own interests.”2° The Soviet leaders knew only too well that in an open competition they stood little chance against US economic power, and that Western economic penetration would soon be followed by political inroads. The Marshall Plan, in the Kremlin’s view, would prove to be a Trojan horse, designed to undermine the centerpiece of its postwar strategic desiderata - the security zone in Eastern and Central Europe.
After Molotov’s unsuccessful attempts to hamstring the Marshall Plan, Stalin rejected it and forced his allies to do the same. These developments triggered a further revision of Soviet strategic guidelines. The Kremlin concluded that the United States had decided to rebuild Western Europe (including the western part of Germany) as a junior partner in a transatlantic bloc against the USSR. Instead of a multipolar system, in which the Kremlin could play off capitalist powers against each other, it now had to reckon with an American-led antiSoviet global coalition. All the unsettling signs of American policy now merged into a single threat that seemed to endanger the very existence of the Soviet Union and its allies. Frustrating this design became the overriding Soviet goal.
On the operational level, the Kremlin tried to disrupt the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Western Europe and to consolidate its own control over Eastern Europe. The Cominform was created in September 1947 as the principal vehicle through which to achieve these goals. Its ideological underpinning - the concept of "two camps" - provided a rationale for strict discipline among Europe’s Communist Parties and for their unconditional support of Soviet policy.
Moscow directed Western Communists to destabilize "the capitalist economy" and to abort implementation of the Marshall Plan by general strikes, militant demonstrations, and even underground preparations for armed resistance. This radical departure from the earlier "people’s democracy” strategy contributed to the isolation of West European Communist Parties, but Stalin was not concerned about this consequence. Yet, even while seeking to thwart the Marshall Plan, the Kremlin calibrated its steps carefully to avoid American overreaction. Fearing US military intervention in Italy, Moscow cautioned Italian Communists against trying to take power through armed insurrection. The Italian Communists’ subsequent electoral defeat in April 1948 ended the Kremlin’s hopes for Communist takeovers in Western Europe.
In Eastern Europe, Stalin tightened the screws within his orbit. The intensification of the Cold War terminated any lingering restraints on the full-scale Sovietization of the region. The Kremlin gave the green light to its Communist clients in Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary to crack down on their opponents. The new agenda was to intensify the class struggle, monopolize political power, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and launch a crash program of industrialization. The establishment of Soviet-type regimes in Eastern Europe was accompanied by the negotiation of new security arrangements between Moscow and its clients. Identical treaties of "friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance” were signed in early 1948 with Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, providing for mutual assistance in case of aggression from Germany and its associates.
The Soviet camp’s weakest link remained Czechoslovakia, where Communists still shared power with other parties. In the post-Marshall Plan environment, this exception could not be tolerated, and in February 1948 Moscow exploited a political crisis to orchestrate a final showdown. As Czechoslovakia was being transformed, Stalin dissolved the Soviet-Yugoslav alliance. He was infuriated by Tito’s unsanctioned preparations for military intervention in Albania and by the signing of a separate treaty with Bulgaria. When, in addition, Yugoslavia refused in March 1948 to share sensitive information about its economy with Moscow, the Soviet government recalled its military and civilian advisers, declined to grant Belgrade a loan, refused to sign a trade treaty, and launched a vitriolic campaign against Tito’s leadership. Stalin wanted to remove or intimidate Tito, thereby teaching his other new allies an important lesson about deference to the Kremlin’s leadership. Failing to achieve this, Stalin used the conflict to tighten his grip over other countries in Eastern Europe. Purges took place everywhere in the region, deepening the alienation between the Communist regimes and the peoples they governed.122
The political unification of the Soviet bloc called for similar steps in the economic sphere. The growing economic integration of Western Europe impelled the Kremlin to increase the coordination of trade and economic policies throughout Eastern Europe and to promote its dependence on the Soviet Union. Moscow also curtailed trade and economic ties between those countries and the West. In December 1948, the Politburo laid the basis for the establishment of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (formally established in January 1949).
But the most dangerous crisis of the early Cold War arose over the crucial issue of Germany. The Soviets were alarmed by the decisive turn of Western policy in late 1947-early 1948. Western decisions to unify the French and British-American zones, end de-Nazification, rebuild German industrial power, and establish a separate West German state were seen in Moscow as a threat to the very existence of the Soviet state - a resurrected lethal enemy, backed by the world’s strongest economy. Analyzing developments, the Soviet Foreign Ministry concluded that "the Western powers are transforming Germany into their stronghold and including it in the newly formed military-political bloc, directed against the Soviet Union and the new democracies."123
In a desperate attempt to stop what was happening, Stalin struck back at the Allies’ weakest point - their positions in West Berlin, deep inside the Soviet occupation zone. When Stalin closed the communication routes between the western zones of Germany and the western zones of Berlin, his main aim was to force the allies to reverse their decisions regarding western Germany. Yet, even while undertaking such a dangerous gamble, Stalin was careful to avoid a direct military confrontation. There were no troop movements or other signs of military preparations, and when the allies introduced a massive airlift to West Berlin there was no attempt to disrupt it. Faced with the failure of his strategy, Stalin was ready to negotiate, but the Western powers took this as a sign of weakness and refused to bargain. Again, as with Turkey and Iran, Stalin’s heavy-handedness proved to be counterproductive and he was forced to retreat. The Berlin blockade provided a stronger impetus than had ever existed for the Western powers to establish a separate West German state and to effect closer military cooperation.
Soviet diplomats and intelligence analysts closely followed the negotiations in Washington that led to the North Atlantic Treaty. Particularly troubling from the Soviet viewpoint were US plans to expand its strategic reach by including Italy and Portugal in the emerging alliance, along with at least one Scandinavian country. Still, there was little Moscow could do other than verbally protest and instigate Communist-led anti-NATO campaigns in countries such as Italy and France.
Inside the Soviet Union, there were also mounting tensions in 1948-49. The earlier postwar trends of demobilization and defense cuts were reversed. The anti-Western xenophobic campaign was intensified and turned into a witch-hunt against "rootless cosmopolitans" - mostly Jewish professionals and other allegedly disloyal individuals. In so doing, grassroots anti-Semitism was fomented to eliminate the remnants of Western influence and to rally the Soviet mob against foreign enemies as well as their "domestic agents."
While being cynically manipulative, this mania also reflected the Kremlin’s real anxieties. Stalin and his lieutenants were certain that the West would redouble its efforts to organize a "fifth column" inside the Soviet bloc, and there was enough evidence to feed those suspicions - covert operations by the newly established Central Intelligence Agency, the use of emigre groups to prepare anti-Soviet revolts in Eastern Europe should war erupt, growing contacts between anti-Soviet Russian immigrants and US government officials, and American usage of the former Nazi intelligence network specializing in Soviet affairs.
Among ordinary Soviet citizens, the official anti-Western propaganda found some resonance. For them, the "hostile encirclement" was recognizable in US military bases around the Soviet Union, its atomic monopoly, its publicized war plans, and the saber-rattling rhetoric of American officials. The aggressive US posture, designed to destabilize the Soviet system, produced, at least in the short run, the opposite effect. It made Stalin’s charges more credible, allowing him to blame the West for his country’s postwar economic troubles; it also brought the regime and its people closer together instead of setting them apart. No less importantly, the hostile challenge from abroad provided a powerful catalyst for the system to develop its awesome mobilization potential and to justify unending sacrifices from the Soviet people.
World History
