Cold War: Past and Present

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The state of relations between the USSR and the imperialist countries has always been a fluctuating one-sometimes even from hour to hour. Needless to say, neither side has ever dropped the guard of suspicion and defensiveness which is characteristic of all international diplomacy.

Nonetheless there have been long periods which are clearly identifiable changes of climate in these relations.

Hence the almost simultaneous Japanese attack on the USA and the Nazi attack on the USSR in 1941 opened a period of close co-operation of the two sides as wartime allies and then, in the agreements to divide the world effected at the famous series of summit conferences in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, as mutually recognised joint arbiters of the political fate of virtually every country.

This alliance was, of course, an alliance of counter-revolutionary forces. It showed itself most potent and ruthless in the face of autonomous movements of the masses which pointed, as in Greece, in the direction of socialist revolution.

Incompatible

• The fluctuations in the relationship, however-most notably the development of the 'Cold War' from 1947 to the mid 1950s—cannot be understood without a realisation that imperialism: and Stalinism are counter-revolutionary forces which rest on different social bases-the one on capitalist and the other on nationalised property forms-which are ultimately incompatible with one another.

Thus Stalinism and imperialism are at once united and opposed social forces.

And it is this contradiction which has expressed itself in the series of 'freezes' and 'thaws' of their relations in the post-war period.

But also this complex relationship is itself complicated by other elements; some old-such as the use of international postures to help resolve internal political problems in both the Stalinist and the imperialist states; and others new-such as the existence since the mid 1950s on either side of a power to unleash almost instant mutual destruction through nuclear warfare.

The Cold War of the late 1940s and early 1950s did not begin overnight. All its major elements were to be found in the policy of the imperialist allies during the war, especially the aggressive stance of Churchill towards the USSR.

Basic harmony

On the surface, however, a basic harmony was maintained between the Stalinist and imperialist powers. The imperialists allowed Stalin, as agreed, to set up regimes (initially bourgeois ones) in Eastern Europe which were under Soviet guidance.

They looked on with particular satisfaction as, in doing so, Stalin acted ruthlessly against the independent movement of the masses.

In Greece and Iran Stalin dutifully betrayed the mass movement and allowed imperialism to secure its control. In Western Europe he used his influence with the mass CPs in Italy and France to ensure that the process of rebuilding the capitalist state should be successful.

In S.E. Asia the Vietnamese CP; was the most enthusiastic force welcoming the post-war arrival of imperialist occupying armies.

And in the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 Stalin conceded just about every important point in dispute between the USSR and imperialism: for instance, he dropped his demand that each of the Socialist Republics of the USSR should have a seat.

Despite the political weakness of imperialism in Europe and in many parts of Asia, Stalin nonetheless made many of these specific concessions in recognition of the overall strength of the USA, which had emerged from the war economically more powerful than ever (the USSR had lost 42% of its industrial capacity and 20 million people) and with a monopoly of the atomic bomb.

Monopoly.

It was in fact the USA's measures to underline that monopoly and to maintain it which began the process of hardening of hostile attitudes which developed into. the Cold War.

Truman's decision to drop the two bombs (the only ones the US then possessed) on Japan in August 1945 was at least as much designed as a demonstration to Moscow as to Tokyo.

The rigorous embargo put on the distribution of all nuclear information in 1945 was one of a series of aggressive measures which the US took as the war came to an end.

Another was the sudden and unilateral abandonment of lendlease economic aid, from which the Soviet Union was the main and most needy beneficiary.

These changes coincided with the death of Roosevelt and the accession of Truman to the US Presidency, a change which helped to bring a more rightwing, aggressively anti-communist layer into the centre of political power in the US, a trend later reinforced by the growth of McCarthyism and, in a more genteel way, the election of Eisenhower in 1952.

It was in 1947 that the decisive turns in imperialist policy came. The imperialists were by then confident that (with Stalin's unacknowledged help) the potentially revolutionary mobilisations of the working classes and oppressed masses had been defeated in Greece, Iran, and most important of all in Italy and Marshall Plan And now the main fear was the prospect of the possible future growth of Soviet strategic strength.

In April and May of 1947the revolutionary threat having been restrained by the Stalinists -the Italian and French bourgeoisies felt confident enough to expel the Communist ministers from their governments.

A month later, the US launched the Marshall Plan for European capitalist economic recovery. Economic aid was offered under the plan to the USSR and to the East European countries in its sphere of influence, but this was rightly seen by the Kremlin as an attempt by capitalism to re-penetrate the now heavily or completely nationalised economies and it was rejected in July 1947.

There followed a rapidly escalating series of measures by both sides which culminated in the creation of two armed alliances explicitly directed against each other.

Ini • October 1947 Stalin Iounded the Comintorm. And in February 1948 he gave the go-ahead to the proclamation of the North Korean Peoples Republic and for the coup which established a Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia.

In March 1948. the imperialists signed the Brussels Pact which resulted in the formation of the anti-communist NATO alliance. In January 1949 Stalin founded Comecon (though the explicitly military Warsaw Pact did not follow until 1955).

In June 1948 the imperialists declared that they intended to abandon efforts to negotiate a solution to . the German problem, and unilaterally went ahead with a monetary reform in the Western zones.

The Soviet reply, the Berlin blockade, was surprisingly broken by an imperialist airlift and was lifted in May 1949. But if Berlin was the first major confrontation of the Cold War, the biggest was to be the Korean War of 1950-51.

Although many of the actions taken by Stalin through this period of the Cold War were provocative, the main cause of the turn around in relations hetween Stalinism and imperialpoly 19i and china in eptemJIVi ism was an imperialist offensive ber 1958. against the USSR expressed in The temperature went down the Truman Doctrine' of "con- even further with the constructainment' tion Kerin wall This was first enunciated as November 1958 and later with US policy in 1947 and then the failure of the Paris summit later brought to full fruition meeting of 1960, and reached a under Eisenhower and Dulles nadir with the Cuba missile after 1952 with the creation of crisis of October 1962. There a ring of i military allances were further conflicts after the around the soviet Union invasion of Czechoslovakia 1n (NATO, CENTO, SEATO, etc). 1968.

The offensive was partly But nothing, not even the based on a realisation on the Gerane. ono American involve part of the imperialist powers ment in the Indo-Chinese war, that their military advantage reversed The growing mo ve which resulted from the atomic towards detente from the monopoly might prove to be Stalinist bureaucracv and the short-lived. increase economic and In spite of the sometimes cultural relations hy the 1970s, brought the SALT agreeprovocative defensive policies of the Kremlin in the face of and the Helsinki anal this offensive, Stalin and his Belgrade conferences on successors knew that the US Security and Cooperation in nuclear monopoly left them Europe.

tive n this context the provo ca with little alternative but to step down before any confrontation reached a final invading Afghanistan in 1979/ decisive stage. 80 and the imperialist decision to use this as a pretext for the reversal of a whole series of Relative strength aspects of detente is not easy to explain.

The imperialists correctly t might appear more prob calculated that Stalin would not ble that the continued evidenc dare to use the only other of powerful mass movements in weapon-potentially devastating various parts of the world would -available to him: the mobilis- bring the two-counter-revoluation of the working class tionary forces into an even more against capitalism. powerful embrace, especially in view of the growing evidence of So the Cold War was a period in which their counter- economic and political crisis in revolutionary common interests hoth imperialist and Stalinist were recognised by both imper- regimes. ialism and Stalinism but in It is clear from the world which imperialism offensively situation that the explanation took advantage of its relative for the recent moves towards a strength against Stalinism. It new Cold War' lies not in any was based therefore on the rela- new mood of self confidence tive strength of imperialism. among the imperialists (as in the case of the last Cold War) but It was not long before this situation began to reverse itself. rather in the marked relative Whereas the death of Roosevelt weakening of imperialism 1n had accelerated, though not relation to Stalinism (though in determined, the imperialist Cold the context of the weakening of War offensive after 1945, the both of them in relation to death of Stalin accelerated but e movement of the worke did not determine the thaw' in id oppressed masse the Cold War which began to The economic crisis, and the disintegration of the ring of emerge in the mid-1950s and which by 1958 was expressed in alliances vith states borderin Kruschev's policy of peaceful he USSR have led the imperial coexistence* and later the imper- ists to make a desperate attempt ialist conception of detente. to build a new alliance with What had really changed was China, and to rebuild alliances with anti-communist states the balance of military power.

This was necessary to put the Whatever the difficulties, USSR back in a position of it seems clear that the US is initiative in international rela- determined to pull together its tions and to allow the common available supporters in a new Soviet more aggressive "anticounter-revolutionary interests of the two sides to express alignment designed themselves once again in a primarily to curb the rise of warming of relations. revolutionary struggles.

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SUCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 4 June 1980