General answers are hard to imagine for the many puzzling questions
that are raised by Soviet relations with the world in the early
years of the Cold War. Why was Moscow more frightened by the
Marshall Plan than the Truman Doctrine? Why would the Soviet Union
abandon its closest socialist ally, Yugoslavia, just when the Cold
War was getting under way? How could Khrushchev's de-Stalinized
domestic and foreign policies at first cause a warming of relations
with China, and then lead to the loss of its most important
strategic ally? What can explain Stalin's failure to ally with the
leaders of the decolonizing world against imperialism and
Khrushchev's enthusiastic embrace of these leaders as
anti-imperialist at a time of the first detente of the Cold War?
It would seem that only idiosyncratic explanations could be
offered for these seemingly incoherent policy outcomes. Or, at
best, they could be explained by the personalities of Stalin and
Khrushchev as leaders. The latter, although plausible, is
incorrect. In fact, the most Stalinist of Soviet leaders, the
secret police chief and sociopath, Lavrentii Beria, was the most
enthusiastic proponent of de-Stalinized foreign and domestic
policies after Stalin's death in March 1953.
Ted Hopf argues, instead, that it was Soviet identity that explains
these anomalies. During Stalin's rule, a discourse of danger
prevailed in Soviet society, where any deviations from the
idealized version of the New Soviet Man, were understood as
threatening the very survival of the Soviet project itself. But the
discourse of danger did not go unchallenged. Even under the rule of
Stalin, Soviet society understood a socialist Soviet Union as a
more secure, diverse, and socially democratic place. This discourse
of difference, with its broader conception of what the socialist
project meant, and who could contribute to it, was empowered after
Stalin's death, first by Beria, then by Malenkov, and then by
Khrushchev, and the rest of the post-Stalin Soviet leadership. This
discourse of difference allowed for the de-Stalinization of Eastern
Europe, with the consequent revolts in Poland and Hungary, a
rapprochement with Tito's Yugoslavia, and an initial warming of
relations with China. But it also sowed the seeds of the split with
China, as the latter moved in the very Stalinist direction at home
just rejected by Moscow. And, contrary to conventional and
scholarly wisdom, a moderation of authoritarianism at home, a
product of the discourse of difference, did not lead to a
moderation of Soviet foreign policy abroad. Instead, it led to the
opening of an entirely new, and bloody, front in the decolonizing
world.
In sum, this book argues for paying attention to how societies
understand themselves, even in the most repressive of regimes. Who
knows, their ideas about national identity, might come to power
sometime, as was the case in Iran in 1979, and throughout the Arab
world today.
General
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