Why is Russia such an asshole? Is it the West's fault? (Part 2) 1945-1952

The United States vs. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Truman vs Stalin

Look at Part 1 here:

Bias Reveal

Cold War History has been narrated in roughly 4 ways:

1. The Boomer American Conservative view: USA good, USSR evil

2. The Lefty Millennial view/Anti-Western view: USA and USSR are equally bad, America just won

3. The Boomer American Liberal: USA bad, USSR evil

4. The Communist view: USA evil, USSR good

Now call me biased, but I lean somewhere between #1 and #3: US: net good, USSR net bad. Viewpoint #1 is ignorant at best and evil at worst. It ignores the unjustified interventions in Africa (removing Lumumba in Democratic Republic of Congo & Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in the 60s), Middle East(removing Mossadegh in Iran), and Latin America (Eisenhower’s coup in Guatemala & Ford aiding a military coup in Argentina).

I think view #2 makes sense if you grew up in Latin America, the Middle East, or Africa, locations where American foreign policy were at its worst. But if you only focus on those regions, while ignoring the successes of American foreign policy in Western Europe, Israel*, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, then your lens is too narrow.

I think there’s a non-insignificant amount of narrowly-focused, left leaning groups who only see the wrongs of American intervention, while turning a blind eye/are ignorant to the heinous interventions carried out by the the Soviet Union in the third world. For instance, the Soviet Union funded the Derg in Ethiopia which despite raising literacy, accidently starved millions due to their ridiculous collective farming practices. The USSR also tried to establish communist secessionist groups to leave Iran at the start of the Cold War (to take their oil).

Organizations that critique American foreign policy constantly talk about how the US was bad for helping the Shah depose Mossadegh in 1953. Yet, no one talks about how a few years earlier in Iran in 1946, the USSR was funding secessionist groups in Iran - (Yellow) Mahabad & Iranian Azerbaijan (green, different from Soviet Azerbaijan) to take their oil also… If we go a few years earlier in 1941, in WW2, Soviet Union straight up invaded Iran with UK!

#3 is to me most intellectually honest. Both the US and USSR funded terrible regimes. It makes sense to label the US as “bad” and the USSR has “evil” since, on balance, the states that America funded ended up being more desirable places to live in than states funded by the USSR (West Germany was better than East Germany, South Korea is better than North Korea). I believe America’s interventions in Europe and East Asia were the most morally defensible out of all of America’s interventions on balance. The fact that most European countries that were former Russian allies (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovenia, etc.) went to join the American, Western side of NATO & the EU (and Ukraine is currently fighting to become more Western), shows me that overall the values America claims to have (democracy, capitalism, & liberalism) is better than the values the Soviet Union had (autocracy & communism) or what Russia currently has (autocracy & mafia capitalism).

#4 I view as vacuous. The reason why communism died is because people had enough of it. In 1989-1991, there were revolutions in Eastern Europe which ended the communist rule: from Poland, Hungary, Latvia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union itself. People could not stand secret police, lack of economic growth, living shittier & poorer lives than capitalist democracies, the lack of religious freedom, and the inability to raise capital to start a business. These uprisings are proof that, despite the inequality that exist in liberal capitalist societies, they are still superior to one-party communist societies.

Even in China and Vietnam, both of them renounced Soviet style communism. After Mao died, Deng Xiaopeng reformed China and allowed “some capitalism” by following some policies from Japan. Vietnam also reformed their economy and allowed “Some capitalism” with the Doi Moi reforms of the 1980s.

So now that you know my biases. You can keep that in mind as I continue this article.

Last time, we discussed a little bit about the history of Russia. In the 1800s Russia was so big, encompassing Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and etc. It was one of the last European absolute monarchies ruled by the Romanov family, and it’s borders encompassed lands from at least 16 other nations. It was also the laughing stock of Europe. Russia just got its smacked around by Japan in the 1904 Russo-Japanese war.

During WW1 , since Russia was an unindustrialized backwater that barely had rifles, people got pissed of fighting a stupid war, and then The Romanov Dynasty of Russia had 2 revolutions. First by liberal democrats, and then a few months later they had another coup by communists led by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin which lead to the Russian Civil war in the late 1910s.

Russia was invaded by the Central Powers of WW1: Germany, Austria-Hungary, & Ottoman Turkey. But also, when Russia turned communist, the U.S., Japan, France, UK, Australia, Greece,, Italy, Czechoslovakia, ,and Canada easily invaded Russia. Although the communists stayed in power and unified Russia, its ancient cousins (Belarus, Ukraine) the Central Asian “Stan” colonies (Kazak, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tajiki, & Turkmen), and the Caucasian countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, & Georgia) into the USSR, the fact that North America & Europe invaded Russia so easily during that time made Soviet leaders (especially Lenin, then Stalin) paranoid.

Then WW2 happened, and the Nazis killed a quarter of all Soviet Ukrainians and Soviet Belarusians. This made Stalin scarred for life, and he decided that the Soviet Union needed buffer countries from Germany & the West.

FDR vs. Stalin

Stalin had to iron out his differences of what post WW2 Europe would look like with Winston Churchill and FDR at Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union.

The Yalta Conference - U.S. and UK wanted Nazi occupied Eastern Europe to be full of democratic republics. While Stalin wanted it to be full of socialist people’s republics (AKA Russian buffer states).

During WW2 as Stalin was allied with the America/UK against Hitler, Stalin was slowly annexing territories (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), bringing the Soviet Union from 12 republics to 15. FDR wanted Stalin to join the UN, IMF, and World Bank and allow free elections in eastern and central Europe. Stalin joined the UN, promised to allow free elections (*wink wink*) but not the IMF & World bank, he saw those institutions as instruments of global capitalism. The UN permanent security council was confirmed here to be compromised of the big 5 allied forces: America, UK, The Soviet Union, France, and the Republic of China.

Also, Stalin played FDR like a violin; Stalin also lied on his promise to allow free elections. The Soviet Union occupied the territories formerly conquered by Nazi Germany and funded the communists to take over the country through coups, murdering non-communist elites, unfair elections, & forceful intervention in the country’s politics(Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, & Hungary). Stalin also appointed the leaders in Soviet Occupied East Germany. And because of communism’s popularity at the time: Albania & Yugoslavia became communist through communists beating the German and Italian fascists, taking over the country and then sought Soviet support (for a bit).

Truman vs. Stalin

After FDR died and Truman took over as President who was far less conciliatory to Stalin than FDR was. Truman had a foreign policy goal of containment — stop soviet expansionism and let Soviet Union implode on the inside by its own brain dead policies. The Truman doctrine basically stated that communism needed to be killed before it takes over the whole world, including America. From the Soviet perspective, the US emerged from WW2 as an aspiring imperialist power and hoped to dominate the world, using “stopping communism and ending despotism” as a convenient pretext. (In my opinion, both are true at the same time).

Europe Intervention

Greek Civil War

The Communist states of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, & Albania (but not the Soviet Union directly!) funded communists in Greece to kill the monarchists. Truman would counteract communists by sending military aid & economic aid to the constitutional monarchists and anti-communists to kill the communists. The monarchists won Greece in 1949.

Meddling in Italy

By the end of WW2, communism was somewhat popular in Italy. The Italian communist party had over 2M members. Truman ordered the CIA to stop the worldwide spread of communism by doing super shady operations that America can claim “plausible deniability”. The CIA funded the Italian Christian democrats with over $3M to defeat the Italian communists.

Marshall Plan vs. Cominform

Truman also made the Marshall plan to sending financial aid, promoting market economies, and industrial development in Europe. The plan was by killing poverty, unemployment, and homelessness in Europe, they weren’t turn communist. By distributing $13B in economic aid, Europe made the Organization for European Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) & strengthened West Germany. Truman offered aid to Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and other states too, but they worried that taking the aid would kill communism in their nations. So Soviet Union made the Cominform instead (Russian OECD). By 1948, Josip Tito of Yugoslovia left the Eastern Bloc to pursue his own brand of socialism so he founded the Non-Aligned Movement.

West vs. East Germany

Also after WW2, Stalin wanted a weak Germany, so Germany can never slaughter millions of Soviet citizens again. Germany would be split in 4 zones, and each occupier would get reparations from that zone (USSR got East Germany, France, US, and UK got West Germany). America used the Marshall plan to make a strong West German state & Soviet Union used Cominform to make a strong East German State.

Creation of NATO

America also made NATO to wrap Western Europe around a nuclear umbrella. If Stalin invaded Western Europe before NATO was made, he could have won since Western Europe was destroyed.

Middle Eastern Intervention - Turkey & Iran

In the middle east in 1946, Stalin tried (unsuccessfully) taking territory from Iran, funding two secessionist states. He also demanded Turkey surrender territory to the Soviet Union on the grounds that Ottoman Turkey stole historically Russian land. Truman sent the American sixth fleet in the eastern Mediterranean as a warning to Stalin. Stalin backed down but now Truman was now wanted to take pre-emptive action to stop Stalin from ever trying to expand again.

East Asia - Mongolia, Japan, Taiwan, China & Korea

The USSR already made Mongolia communist in the 1920s when it funded communists to overthrow the former Chinese backed government..

After Truman nuked Japan twice, Truman didn’t give the Soviet Union any occupied territory in Japan. US exclusively occupied Japan. But America did allow USSR to occupy Japan’s colony, Korea. The US took the South and USSR took the north. Stalin eventually greenlit North Korea to invade the South.

Also, due to Japan’s surrender, Japan lost it’s Chinese colony in Manchuria, which Stalin snatched up and handed Manchuria and the captured weapons to Mao & his communists to kill the nationalists in the Chinese Civil War. The Communists won and kicked out the nationalists to Taiwan.

Next time we’ll talk about Stalin’s death and how the cold war changed under Eisenhower & Khrushchev →

Links are underlined!

https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War