The Iron Curtain and the evolution of East-West rivalry

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X is Cominform, set up in September 1947, and Y is Comecon, set up in January 1949.

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Source A is critical of Tito's leadership because it accuses the Yugoslav leaders of being unfriendly to the Soviet Union, insulting Soviet advisers and putting nationalism before communism. Saying they had abandoned the teachings of Marx and Lenin was the worst accusation one communist could make against another. The call on 'healthy elements' to replace the leaders was really an appeal for the Yugoslav communists to overthrow Tito. I know the quarrel had grown because Tito refused to let Soviet advisers control the Yugoslav army and economy and made his own plans, such as a Balkan federation with Bulgaria.

The provenance also shows this. Cominform had been set up by Stalin in 1947 to keep communist parties loyal to Moscow, so this resolution expressed Stalin's anger. He wanted to make an example of Tito so that no other Eastern European leader would dare to follow an independent path.

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Source B is useful because it shows how the American government came to see the Soviet Union in 1946. Kennan argues that the Soviet leaders were insecure, used Marxism to justify their rule and believed they could never live peacefully alongside capitalism, so they would expand wherever they could. His conclusion that Soviet power was 'highly sensitive to logic of force' is important, because it became the basis of containment. The provenance makes it very valuable: Kennan was a Russia expert at the US embassy in Moscow, writing secretly to his own government, so he could be frank. His telegram was read widely in Washington and helped shape Truman's tougher policy, which led to the Truman Doctrine in 1947. However, it is one diplomat's interpretation of Soviet motives, not proof of Stalin's intentions; Stalin's actions in Poland and Romania could also be explained by a desire for security after the German invasion.

Source C is useful because it shows the other side of the breakdown. Novikov claims the USA was aiming at world supremacy, building bases around the world and preparing for war against the USSR. This reflects real Soviet fears: the USA had the atomic bomb, which it had used on Japan in 1945, it had ended Lend-Lease, and in 1946 Truman had sat beside Churchill during the 'Iron Curtain' speech. Novikov was well placed, as ambassador in Washington, but he wrote the report at the request of Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, so he probably told the Soviet leaders what they already believed. That is a limitation as evidence of American aims, but it makes the source very useful for understanding Soviet thinking.

Overall, the two sources are most useful together. They are almost mirror images: each side's diplomat portrays the other as aggressive and expansionist. They show that the breakdown in 1946 was caused by mutual suspicion and ideology as much as by particular events, although an historian would need other evidence, such as what actually happened in Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe, to judge how accurate each side's fears were.

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There is a case that the USA was more to blame. When Truman became President in April 1945 he took a much harder line than Roosevelt, and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 gave the USA a monopoly of nuclear weapons, which Stalin saw as a threat and a form of pressure. Lend-Lease was ended abruptly, and the Americans would not agree to large reparations from the western zones of Germany. In 1946 Truman sat beside Churchill during the 'Iron Curtain' speech, and Kennan's Long Telegram led to the policy of containment. From the Soviet point of view, the USA was building bases around the world, as the Soviet ambassador Novikov reported in 1946. In 1947 the Truman Doctrine declared that the world must choose between two ways of life, and the Marshall Plan seemed to Stalin to be 'dollar imperialism' designed to buy influence in Europe. In 1948 the Western powers moved to create a separate West German state and introduced a new currency, and in 1949 they formed NATO. Seen from Moscow, the USA was the aggressor, and it was far more powerful than the war-shattered USSR.

However, there is a strong case that the USSR was more to blame. At Yalta Stalin had promised free elections in Eastern Europe, but he broke this promise. Communists backed by the Red Army took over the police, removed their rivals through 'salami tactics' and rigged elections, as in Poland in January 1947. Soviet troops stayed in northern Iran into 1946, and the USSR pressed Turkey for control of the Straits. Many American actions were responses to these events: the Truman Doctrine came after Britain could no longer support Greece and Turkey, and Congress passed the Marshall Plan only after the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. Most seriously, in June 1948 Stalin blockaded West Berlin, trying to force the Western powers out by cutting more than two million people off from food and fuel. NATO was a direct response to that.

It can also be argued that neither side was wholly to blame, because the rivalry came from mutual suspicion. Each side believed it was acting defensively. Stalin, whose country had lost an estimated 20 million or more people, wanted security and believed capitalism was bound to be hostile. The Americans, remembering the appeasement of the 1930s, believed that if communism was not contained it would spread, as Kennan argued. Each defensive step looked aggressive to the other, creating a cycle of action and reaction.

Overall, I disagree with the statement. The USA did make the rivalry worse, especially with the Marshall Plan and its policy in Germany, and its greater power made Stalin feel threatened. But the Soviet Union was more to blame, because its actions in Eastern Europe came first, broke the agreements made at Yalta and were carried out by force, and the Berlin Blockade was the most aggressive act of the period. Most American policies were reactions to Soviet expansion, even if they were sometimes presented in ways that deepened Soviet suspicions.