Why did the Soviet Union maintain a presence in Eastern Europe? And why did Gorbachev seek to change the pattern of Soviet involvement there?

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Why did the Soviet Union maintain a presence in Eastern Europe? And why did Gorbachev seek to change the pattern of Soviet involvement there?

This paper will introduce the development of Soviet internationalism alongside the development of Soviet interests in Eastern Europe. It will be argued that the Soviet interests which developed out of the Wars became fixed alongside the ideology behind internationalism. The legacy of Stalinism influenced the development of Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe and Soviet internationalism and the Cold war meant that the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe would persist until Gorbachev. The Soviets could not consider withdrawing from Eastern Europe so long as they were governed by an ideology which viewed the world as two distinct and opposing camps.

The development and persistence of Soviet Internationalism

Soviet interests in Eastern Europe developed through its desire to end strategic vulnerabilities Russia had endured since Napoleon. The ease of access to the heartlands of Russia through Eastern Europe meant that the Russian strategic meant that the Russian strategic focus lay on securing themselves against the kind of attacks they suffered during the First World War and The Second World War. The Second World War provided the Soviet Union an opportunity to end another strategic frailty-access to warm seas. According to D’Encausse, “throughout its history as a continental power, Russia has dreamed of an opening to the sea and has battled to reach that goal” (D’Encausse, H, 1987, pg. 3). The Soviet Union had grown powerful toward the end of the Second World War with its military straddling much of Eastern Europe. If the Soviet Union had entered the Second World War defending communism, they ended the War defending Russian strategic interests accompanied by an ideological shift from socialism as a competitor with capitalism to socialism as capitalism’s main adversary. Stalin’s eyes turned toward Eastern Europe and through his dissolution of the Comintern he sought to make ‘unthreatening’ appeals to a common Slavic identity. According to D’Encausse, “The may 15, 1943, decision” to dissolve the Comintern “which suggested a definitive retreat by the USSR to within its own borders, in fact signified a more dynamic opening to the external world because it was based upon a real and growing phenomenon, power” (D’Encausse, H, 1987, pg. 7). Soviet intentions became clearer when the ‘iron curtain’ was realised at Yalta and at Potsdam. However, Stalin did not wish to move the Soviet Union into Europe, he wished to isolate Eastern Europe outside of Western influence and under the control of the Soviet powers based in Moscow.

Stalin’s aims in Eastern Europe epitomise Soviet aims because of the fact that his policies set the tone for Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe and his policies were still influencing Soviet Society when Gorbachev came to power. His alienation of Eastern Europe from the West was both ideological and practical in nature. Stalin wished to undermine Slavic western sentiments and construct and autarkic socialist regime governed from Moscow. The shift in the traditional site of socialist power away from Germany was accompanied by a manipulation of the theoretical application of Marxism/Leninism to better suit the needs of the Soviet policy toward Europe after the War. It had become clear to Stalin that the collapse of capitalism in the West was not immanent and capitalism was more stable than previously recognised. The Soviet Union would have to be at the forefront of a competition with the west which would demand the economic and political compliance of Eastern European states to support the effort. According to Dawisha, “Having opened the floodgates for ‘creative Marxism’, Stalin and his influential minister of culture, Andrei Zhdanov, enunciated the famous ‘two-camp theory’, which both reflected and strengthened the post-war division of the world into two great power blocs” (Dawisha, K, 1988, pg. 15). Soviet policy was therefore motivated under Stalin by the emergence of an anti-European sentiment that had germinated prior to and during the Second World War and this sentiment gave rise to a shift in the parties ideological standpoint. The Soviet presence and control over Eastern Europe became a symbol for the success and progress (potential or actual) of the communist system as a whole. Communism could not exist in one country alone because ideologically it would not be possible to oppose capitalism, nor would it be possible to do so politically and economically. Only with the arrival of Gorbachev who saw that the historical reasons for the relationship to exist in that form were gone or in decline. His new political thinking was to reshape the relationship and lead to the eventual collapse of the system.

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According to Campbell, “by the spring of 1948 Stalin had succeeded in his primary purpose, which was to seal off the entire area from the Arctic to the borders of Greece from the military and effective political influence of the west” (Campbell, J, cited in Terry, S (ed), 1984, pg.5). The onset of the Cold War would make the security of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe a more pressing concern. The extension of the Stalinist system throughout Eastern Europe set the tone for their mutual development. The Soviet Union would either suffer the burden of the Stalinist system ...

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