Rival visions of a world order were heightened by parallel developments of the Soviet and American strategies through the twenties and thirties. The Soviets launched their Internationals, global networks of Communist parties directed from and loyal to Moscow, frightening the Western capitalist countries with the specter of subversion, of fifth columns, of a red Trojan horse within the gates. On the other hand, capitalists built cartels, combines, and multinational companies- and created an economic cordon sanitaire around the Soviet Union, frightening the Russian leaders with the specter of encirclement, isolation, and new military invasion by capitalist armies.
—Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian foreign minister, signs the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, at the Kremlin, Moscow. Behind him stand Joachim von Ribbentrop (left) and Joseph Stalin. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
Timothy Snyder’s article stresses the significance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939 as the primary facilitator of the second world war, and therefore attributes major responsibility for the atrocities of the war to the Soviet Union. Such a reading of the historical events which preceded the outbreak of the war appears ostensibly plausible, and would, as Snyder suggests, prompt a reassessment of the generally-accepted western narrative, which, while not blind to Soviet misdeeds during the war, exclusively blames Nazi Germany for the horrific and unprecedented loss of human life during the second world war.
The problem with this analysis, however, is that it completely isolates the signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and ignores the broader context behind the outbreak of the second world war and its continuation.—click image for source…
Beyond that, the rise of Hitler with his pathological anti-Communism- and the simultaneous appearance of pro-Hitler cliques among industrialists and capitalist in France and England- seemed to Stalin part of the capitalist conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union. Equally certain that the capitalists were “cannibalistic sharks,” he devised a strategy of setting one against the other, forming a temporary alliance with Hitler to induce him to move to the West while he himself prepared for the eventual conflict that would come in the East.
Munich was proof enough to Stalin that the Western democracies were decadent and that they intended to bribe Hitler into spearheading the attack against Russia. Thus, each nation persuaded itself that the other was not merely a power rival but a terrifying demon that had to be destroyed.
Classic, professional diplomacy, of course, views the world struggle as a balance of power game. One’s adversary is not a demo or even an enemy, only another player in a game with rules and limits. But the religious crusaders do not play games, and for Woodrow Wilson, democracy was a religion, as Communism was for Lenin. What ensued was not big power rivalry but that most impassioned and cruel of all wars; a religious war of doctrines elevated to faiths.
These then are the origins of what came to be called, in the aftermath of World War II, the Cold War, a desperate struggle in the name of a new “world order” for the minds and souls, as well as the territories, of the entire world. ( to be continued)…
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