So it is
clear why, when Soviet Russia made peace with Finland
in 1944, it demanded and received permanently Petsamo
and a small surrounding region.
clear why, when Soviet Russia made peace with Finland
in 1944, it demanded and received permanently Petsamo
and a small surrounding region.
Soviet Union - 1952 - Soviet Civilization
handle.
net/2027/mdp.
39015020686591 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
violation of self-determination through foreign interven-
tion has been in general a tool of reaction and imperial-
ism, especially since the Metternich period of the early
nineteenth century. And they point out that the flagrant
military intervention directed against various countries
between the First World War and the Second was clearly
on behalf of old-time imperialist or outright fascist inte-
rests. In the next section I discuss the principle of self-
determination in relation to certain actions of the Soviet
Union since the beginning of the Second World War
in 1939.
2. Does Soviet Russia Wage Aggression?
The principle of self-determination of peoples leads
naturally to the question of whether the Soviet Union
has been guilty of aggression against foreign countries.
The tendency has been in the West to favor self-determ-
ination only so long as it is applied in a way unfavorable
to the U. S. S. R. and the new socialist governments which
have sprung into existence since the defeat of world
fascism. The same sort of people who supported the
widespread imperialist intervention against the Soviet
Republic during its early years today claim that Soviet
Russia is itself imperialistic because during World War
II it took back the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania) and Eastern Poland, and because Communist-
led regimes have come into power throughout most of
Eastern Europe and in China.
As to the Baltic provinces and Eastern Poland, we
should recall that these were torn from Russia after the
First World War by means of force and power politics,
which had as their objective the weakening of the Soviet
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
Republic and the creation of a "cordon sanitaire," both
to hem it in from a military standpoint and to protect
Europe from its influence. In 1920 the American Gov-
ernment quite rightly protested against this dismember-
ment of Russia and called for the restitution of the old
Russian boundaries, except in regard to Armenia, Fin-
land and ethnic Poland. *
The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
were first set up in 1918 with the aid of the Kaiser's
armies and in line with the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
which formalized Germany's conquests and spheres of
influence in Eastern Europe. They were soon recognized
by the Allies, which, for their own obvious reasons,
wished to see these anti-Soviet outposts become perma-
nent. When the American Government finally granted
them recognition in 1922, Secretary of State Charles
Evans Hughes made this significant reservation: "The
United States has consistently maintained that the dis-
turbed conditions of Russian affairs may not be made
the occasion for the alienation of Russian territory, and
this principle is not deemed to be infringed upon by the
recognition at this time of the governments of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania. "20 Thus Mr. Hughes qualified his
recognition statement so as to leave the door open for a
future return of these nations to Russia.
The matter of Armenia quickly became an academic
one, since the idea of America's accepting a mandate for
that country rapidly faded away and since a native Com-
munist group gained the upper hand in 1920 and pro-
claimed an Armenian Autonomous Republic linked up
with the U. S. S. R. Finland also became an academic
issue, due to the fact that the Soviet regime under Lenin
? See p. 265.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
recognized the full independence of the Finnish Govern-
ment in 1918.
But why did the American Government later change
its attitude on the right of Russia to the Baltic States
and that part of Poland inhabited principally by Russian
peoples? The reason is perfectly clear. When the U. S.
State Department made its declarations against Russian
dismemberment in 1920 and 1922, it thought that the
Soviet Republic was soon going to collapse. But when
instead Premier Lenin and his colleagues actually con-
solidated their power, Washington shifted its attitude,
not because of the fundamental rights or wrongs of the
question, but because it wanted Soviet socialism to re-
main as weak as possible. In short, the guiding principle
in American policy was that a non-Communist, merely
liberal, Russian regime had a right to the old Tsarist
frontiers, but not a radical, Communist one.
There can be no doubt that economically speaking
the Baltic States, which were conquered by the Tsars
back in the eighteenth century, belong naturally with
Russia and Russia with them. Peter the Great acquired
Estonia and Latvia in 1721 and Catherine the Great
Lithuania in 1795. The only year-round ice-free ports
which Russia had in the west and which were directly
accessible to the Atlantic Ocean were in these territories.
Prior to the First World War almost a third of Russia's
exports and imports went through these outlets to the
sea. The artificial separation of the Baltic States from
the U. S. S. R. in 1918 proved an immense handicap to
the Soviet Union and disrupted the economies of those
three countries themselves.
It became widely believed that between the two
world wars the Baltic nations were beautiful little demo-
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
cracies functioning on behalf of liberty. This was far
from true. As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1943, these
three states "some years before the war fell into the hands
of fascist rulers and became the focal points of intrigue
against Russia. Thus the last Lithuanian parliament had
been dissolved in 1927 by a conspiracy of army officers;
the Latvian Republic became fascist in 1934; and Estonia,
though it never went quite that far, fell under strong
fascist influence between 1933 and 1937. "21
In mid-June of 1940, as France and the Low Coun-
tries crumpled under the Nazi blitzkrieg, the Soviet
Government charged that the three Baltic States had
violated their mutual-aid pacts with the U. S. S. R. and
sent in troops to occupy them. This Soviet move, how-
ever hard-boiled in conception and execution, definitely
forestalled'Hitler, who all along had been casting cove-
tous eyes in the direction of these weak and strategically
situated nations. A few weeks after the Soviet military
occupation, newly elected parliaments in Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania proclaimed their countries Soviet Repub-
lics; and in August the Supreme Soviet officially admitted
them into the U. S. S. R. For the Baltic peoples this was
a logical step, particularly from the economic viewpoint.
For the Soviet Union it was an essential development
from the viewpoint of self-defense against the Nazi threat;
and a justified recovery of lands wrested from the
U. S. S. R. in defiance of historical right.
An even clearer case for the revision of Soviet boun-
daries during the Second World War concerned Eastern
Poland, with its population of around 11,000,000 in 1939
consisting of approximately 5,000,000 Ukrainians, 2,500-
000 Belorussians, 2,500,000 Poles and 1,000,000 Jews.
The regions comprising Eastern Poland, except a small
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
southern area known as East Galicia, were all part of the
old Tsarist Empire and were taken away from an ex-
hausted Soviet Russia under the Treaty of Riga in 1921
by the Polish imperialists after their unprovoked war of
aggression against the Socialist Republic. At the time
even the anti-Soviet Allies protested against Poland,
which had also seized the Lithuanian capital, Vilna
(Vilnius), grabbing so much territory that was obviously
non-Polish. In fact, before the Polish-Soviet war broke
out, the Supreme Council of Allied Powers had recom-
mended as a just boundary the so-called Curzon Line,
which was first officially proposed at a meeting in 1919
presided over by America's Under Secretary of State,
Frank L. Polk. The Curzon Line assigned to Soviet
Russia almost all of what later became Eastern Poland.
In September of 1939, as the Polish Government was
collapsing under the impact of Hitler's attack, the Soviet
army marched into Eastern Poland and occupied it.
This was an important and reasonable anti-Nazi move
and had not the Soviets effected it, the Germans un-
doubtedly would have taken over Eastern Poland them-
selves. To repeat what Prime Minister Churchill said
in a speech shortly afterwards,* "That the Russian
armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for
the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. "
In October, 1939, the peoples of Eastern Poland
voted overwhelmingly to join the Belorussian and Uk-
rainian Republics and thus to become part of the U. S. S. R.
The new Polish-Soviet boundary, along most of its 400-
odd miles, was close to the old Curzon Line. At the end
of World War II Poland received territorial compensa-
tion in acquiring from Germany substantial regions in
* See p. 9.
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? SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY
Silesia and East Prussia, including 300 miles of the Baltic
coastline. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945,
systematic repatriation took place between the Belo-
russian and Ukrainian Republics, on the one hand, and
Poland on the other. Hence today there are relatively
few Poles left in the Soviet Union and relatively few Belo-
russians or Ukrainians still living in Poland.
Again to quote Winston Churchill, he told the British
House of Commons in February, 1944, that at the Tehe-
ran Conference "I took occasion to raise personally with
Marshal Stalin the question of the future of Poland. . . .
We ourselves have never in the past guaranteed, on
behalf of His Majesty's Government, any particular
frontier line to Poland. We did not approve of the Polish
occupation of Vilna in 1920. The British view in 1919
stands expressed in the so-called Curzon Line, which
attempted to deal, at any rate partially, with the problem.
. . . Russia has the right of reassurance against future
attacks from the west, and we are going all the way with
her to see that she gets it, not only by the might of her
arms but by the approval and assent of the United Na-
tions. . . . I cannot feel that the Russian demand for a
reassurance about her western frontiers goes beyond the
limits of what is reasonable or just. Marshal Stalin and
I also spoke and agreed upon the need for Poland to
obtain compensation at the expense of Germany both
in the north and in the west. "22
Bessarabia in the Balkans raises another question
concerning alleged Soviet aggression. It was stolen, as
all the world knows, from Russia in 1918 by Romania.
Bessarabia had been an integral part of the Tsarist Em-
pire since 1812 and in fact fifty-five years previous to
Romania's establishment as an independent state. Its an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
nexation by the Romanians was never recognized by the
Soviet Union or even by the United States. As in the
case of the Baltic States, Bessarabia's forced separation
from the U. S. S. R. proved very bad economically, especial-
ly for Bessarabia. By applying heavy diplomatic pressure
on Romania in 1940, the Soviet Government was able to
regain this province without violence; and also took from
Romania at the same time Northern Bukovina with its
primarily Ukrainian population.
The case of Finland belongs in a special category.
The Soviet invasion of Finland in the fall of 1939 was
certainly an act of aggression and a terrible mistake. It
has always seemed to me that had the Soviet Government
been more patient in this situation, it might well have
been able to work out a reasonably satisfactory redrawing
of the Finnish frontier. However, the Nazis had gone
on the rampage and all Europe was in turmoil. The
Soviets were justifiably feeling extremely nervous about
their western borders and the possibility of soon having
to defend them. One of the weakest spots was in the
vicinity of Leningrad, which was the Soviet Union's
second city and an industrial, munitions, shipping and
naval center of paramount importance. Here the boun-
dary with Finland was less than twenty miles away. To
imagine a quite comparable situation, what would the
United States do if Long Island, up to within twenty
miles of New York City, belonged to a small, hostile,
foreign nation that was continually intriguing with
foreign Powers against the security and welfare of the
U. S. A. ?
At any rate the Soviet army struck against the Finns
and outraged the public opinion of the democratic world.
The result, however, was that in the Finnish-Soviet peace
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
treaty of 1940 the frontier near Leningrad was pushed
back some eighty miles and the U. S. S. R. acquired some
strategic territory farther north. A U. S. Army manual
used during the World War II for information officers
and orientation course teachers said, in reference to the
Soviet attack on Finland: "Without attempting any
moral judgments on the matter, it is enough to state the
military fact that had the U. S. S. R. not acted so, the
Allied cause would be weaker today. " Actually, the
Soviets later held Leningrad against Hitler only with
the utmost difficulty and sacrifice. Both the Finns and
the Nazis attacked from the north; and the new border
may well have been the decisive factor in saving the city.
The fact that Finland so readily joined hands with
Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in 1941, in what
President Roosevelt called "this hateful partnership,"
indicated that it was scarcely the pure-hearted little
democracy which anti-Soviet propagandists had painted
it. During the Second World War the Finns and Nazis
used the Arctic port of Petsamo as an important sub-
marine and airplane base against Allied ships sailing the
northern route with supplies for the U. S. S. R.
So it is
clear why, when Soviet Russia made peace with Finland
in 1944, it demanded and received permanently Petsamo
and a small surrounding region. In this treaty the revised
Finnish frontiers which the Soviets had won in 1939-40
were also restored.
After the downfall of Hitler the Soviet Union, with
the concurrence of President Truman and Prime Minis-
ter Atlee in the Potsdam Declaration, annexed the north-
east third of East Prussia, including the big Baltic port
of Koenigsberg, which was renamed Kaliningrad after the
late Mikhail Kalinin, prominent peasant and government
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? SOVIET CTVILIZATIOH
leader in the Communist regime. This again meant a
strengthening of the U. S. S. R. 's western defenses, but also
comes under the heading of spoils of victory. In June,
1945, the Czechoslovak Government ceded to Soviet
Russia and the Ukrainian Republic the province of Car-
patho-Ukraine, or Ruthenia, a heavily forested, moun-
tainous strip of land at the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia.
Approximately 500,000 of its 725,000 inhabitants were
Ukrainians.
Following the defeat of Japan by the United Nations,
the Soviet Union, on the basis of agreements made be-
tween Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt
and Premier Stalin at the 1945 Yalta Conference, took
over southern Sakhalin Island, which the Japanese had
acquired from Russia after the war of 1904-05; and the
Kurile Islands, from which the Tsarist Government had
agreed to withdraw in 1875 in return for Japan relin-
quishing its claims to any part of Sakhalin. These acces-
sions in the Far East considerably improved the Soviet
defensive position in that quarter. Finally, in 1944, the
Tannu Tuva People's Republic, a region south of Siberia
in Central Asia which had been a colony of Tsarist Russia
but whose national independence the Soviets recognized
in 1918, voted to join the U. S. S. R. as an Autonomous
Region.
In my opinion the various Soviet territorial acquisi-
tions from 1939 to 1945 do not, despite the Finnish ven-
ture, add up to aggression or imperialism. In the first
place, with the exception of the Carpatho-Ukraine, East
Galicia, Northern Bukovina and part of East Prussia --
all small regions -- the Soviet Union added only territory
to which it had an historical claim through the expansion
of the Tsarist Empire. And the only territories to which
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
it still lays claim were part of pre-revolutionary Russia.
These are two districts in northeastern Turkey: Kars and
Ardahan, which were part of Russian Armenia and which
the Soviets were forced to cede to the Turks under the
Brest-Litovsk treaty imposed by imperial Germany.
Soviet Armenians consider these territories as an Ar-
menian terra irredenta.
In the second place, 95 percent of the populations
incorporated by the U. S. S. R. since 1930 were ethnically
Belorussian or Ukrainian and therefore properly be-
longed to the Soviet family of nations. In the third place,
except for Tannu Tuva, all the Soviet annexations cor-
responded with clear and definite security interests of the
U. S. S. R.
In line with the third point, we ought, I believe, to
make a special effort to comprehend the imperative neces-
sity which the Russians feel about having strategic boun-
daries that will provide relative security against aggres-
sion by land and sea. The United States has always been
protected by vast oceans to both east and west; yet even
so it has insisted upon military bases in the Atlantic and
Pacific hundreds and thousands of miles beyond its two
coastlines. For centuries Britain has had the effective
water barrier of the English Channel. But Russia ever
since its rise to statehood has repeatedly had to cope
with potential and actual enemies just over its borders,
east, west and south -- borders that today stretch out
approximately 19,000 miles and abut on eleven different
countries. No Great Power has been so vulnerable to
attack from so many directions; none has actually suffered
in its history from so many invasions on the part of hostile
nations. If the Russians sometimes appear apprehensive
about foreign aggression, we can well understand why.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
The question remains whether Soviet actions since
1945 spell military aggression or indicate a will to such
aggression. Admittedly the Soviet Government has com-
mitted a number of serious errors in foreign policy dur-
ing these post-war years, such as its failure to withdraw
its troops from Iran at the agreed-upon time in 1946, its
too-frequent use of the veto in the Security Council of the
United Nations, and its harsh and mistaken attitude
towards the Tito regime in Yugoslavia. But I am con-
vinced that during this period the U. S. S. R. has not been
guilty of aggression; and that it intends no aggression
in the future.
On the basis of agreements with Great Britain,
France and the United States after the final defeat of
Hitler, the Soviet Government for several years kept
military contingents in the western border states, in
Bulgaria and in Iran. But except for the Iranian inci-
dent, which was finally settled peacefully through a Soviet-
Iranian accord, Soviet troops have been withdrawn on
schedule. There are still Soviet forces in Austria and
Eastern Germany,* but American, British and French
troops likewise remain in Austria and Western Germany.
This unfortunate situation is due to the fact that the Big
Four, with Soviet Russia certainly bearing its share of
the blame, have been unable to agree upon peace treaties
for Austria and a unified Germany.
As to Soviet influence in foreign countries, most of the
Soviet Russians of course wish socialism to triumph every-
where just as most Americans would like democratic
capitalism to triumph everywhere. The Soviets, however,
have never favored trying to extend Communist prin-
? A few Soviet contingents are also stationed by agreement in Hungary
and Poland in order to safeguard communications with the Soviet forces
in Austria and Germany respectively.
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? SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY
ciples to other lands through the means of armed in-
vasion. They have instead supported the thesis that
"Revolution cannot be exported," but must be the out-
come of indigenous radical movements on the part of
whatever peoples are concerned. Especially since Joseph
Stalin wrested leadership from Leon Trotsky in 1927,
the Soviet Republic has pursued the idea of "building
socialism in one country" and letting the successful
example of Soviet socialism serve as a spur to other na-
tions. The Soviet method, then, of spreading socialism
is primarily that of rendering moral encouragement and
ideological stimulus.
Let us for a moment compare the course of the Rus-
sian Revolution with that of the other great European
upheaval of modern times -- the French Revolution
of 1789. The latter, after approximately ten years of
bloody struggle among the revolutionaries themselves,
fell into the hands of an ambitious and aggressive mil-
itary dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, who made himself
First Consul. Five years later, in 1804, Napoleon had
himself crowned Emperor of France and was soon march-
ing his armies all over Europe, defeating, subjugating and
annexing country after country on the continent in his
endeavor to set up a "Grand Empire. " After his threats
of invading England had come to nothing, he undertook
in 1812 the disastrous campaign against Russia.
Although Napoleon represented a reaction against
the Revolution, he maintained certain of the fundamen-
tal economic and social changes effected by it. And
before he was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, he
and his armies had spread anti-feudalistic ideas and insti-
tutions over much of Europe. Here indeed was a patent
example of an aggressive nation and government propa-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
gating their doctrines abroad by the sword. The Russian
Revolution, on the other hand, has at no point deterio-
rated into a military dictatorship or adopted the policy
of seeking to impose the Communist way of life on other
peoples through military aggression.
The Soviet Government as such took no part in either
the Third International (the Comintern), which went
out of existence in 1943; or in the Communist Informa-
tion Bureau (the Cominform), founded in 1945 to func-
tion as a coordinating body among the Communist Parties
of Eastern Europe, France and Italy. The Soviet Com-
munist Party of course has wielded enormous influence
in these two international organizations and Communist
Parties in every country have in general adopted policies
in agreement with those of the Soviet Communist Party
and the Soviet Government itself.
Foreign Communists claim, however, that they are
not automatically following a Soviet line, but that being
Marxists, they tend to think in the same manner as their
fellow-Marxists in the U. S. S. R. and to reach the same
conclusions. Their primary intellectual allegiance, they
assert, is to Marxism as a science; and it is to that they
render discipline. We must indeed recognize the pos-
sibility that rational men the world over in the field of
social science, as well as natural science, may arrive at the
same conclusions. As modern science has developed,
thinkers and researchers in different countries have more
and more found themselves in agreement on many dif-
ferent facts and principles. The Communists point out
that such parallelism in thought flowing across national
boundaries is being widely utilized today to brand and
prosecute non-Soviet Communists as Soviet agents. And
they have satirized the reasoning involved by suggesting
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
the following syllogism: Joseph Stalin believes that 2 and
2 make 4; Mr. X in the U. S. A. believes that 2 and 2
make 4; therefore Mr. X is a dangerous Soviet agent.
Non-Soviet Communists do not deny, however, that
since the Soviet Communist Party was the first one to put
across a successful revolution and to build socialism,
Communists everywhere naturally take into considera-
tion the Soviet Party's great experience and prestige, and
tend to defer, perfectly freely, to its wisdom. With the
recent rise of a triumphant Communist Party in a second
major Power, China, it is improbable that the Soviet
Communists will continue to play such a paramount role
as heretofore in the world Communist movement.
Yet even granting the extreme -- and I believe incor-
rect -- view that Communist Parties the world over slav-
ishly obey the orders of the Kremlin, the aim of these
Parties, as repeatedly set forth in official books, pamph-
lets, newspapers, speeches, demonstrations and political
campaigns, is not to embroil their respective nations in
war, but to establish socialism in their native lands and
urge on the populations to world peace. One of the most
effective slogans of the Russian Communist Party in the
Revolution of 1917 was precisely "Peace. " Ever since
then Communist Parties everywhere have steadily em-
phasized the peace issue, and in fact to such an extent
that capitalist governments have considered it necessary
continually to warn their peoples against "Communist
peace propaganda. " So, even if Moscow is laying down
this anti-war line for foreign Communist Parties, it is
not one that can sensibly be interpreted as a call to inter-
national aggression.
Plainly, the danger of "Soviet aggression" must be
distinguished from the tendency in one country or an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
other for Communist movements, exploiting backward
economic and social conditions, to come into power.
Western propaganda has illogically striven to equate
these two alleged dangers and to brand vigorous Com-
munist political action anywhere as an example of and
due to Soviet aggression.
This loose use of the term "aggression" is typical of
the vehement yet vague charges which the governments,
press and radio of the Western World fling about in
reference to the artificially concocted Soviet menace.
American commentators constantly talk as if the militant
propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union were itself
equivalent to military aggression. Perhaps such propa-
ganda can be classified as "ideological aggression"; but
if so, then the United States and England, with high-
powered press and radio networks circling the globe, can
certainly be accused of the same thing. The main point,
however, is the necessity for distinguishing clearly be-
tween military and ideological aggression. Throughout
modern times various revolutionary governments, highly
organized religions and dissenting philosophies have done
their best to spread their particular messages throughout
the world.
Americans and the American Republic have been
active from the beginning in secular missionary work.
It was President Thomas Jefferson who said, "Nor are
we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human
race. "23 There is nothing reprehensible as such in a
particular country or some group in a particular country
having a sense of world mission and trying to get their
ideas across national frontiers and into the minds of the
various peoples of the earth. With the remarkable de-
velopment of techniques of communication during the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
twentieth century, the opportunities for effective inter-
national propaganda have of course greatly increased.
Soviet Russia has taken advantage of these opportunities
to further the cause of universal socialism, as has the
United States on behalf of democratic capitalism. In
neither case is it reasonable or accurate to describe such
propaganda as "aggression. "
What many Americans in particular seem unable to
grasp is the indigenous origin, the fundamental moti-
vation and the broad scope of the revolutionary move-
ments which have been sweeping into the vacuum left
by the downfall of the Axis and achieving state power
throughout much of Europe and Asia. In an address in
1951, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas well
described what is happening: "The plain fact is that the
world is in a revolution which cannot be bought off with
dollars. There are rumblings in every village from the
Mediterranean to the Pacific. A force is gathering for a
mighty effort. We think of that force as Communistic.
Communists exploit the situation, stirring every discon-
tent and making the pot boil. The revolutions which are
brewing are not, however, Communist in origin nor will
they end even if Soviet Russia is crushed in war.
"The revolutionaries are hungry men who have been
exploited from time out of mind. This is the century
of their awakening and mobilization. . . . The spirit
which motivates these people is pretty much the same
as the one which inspired the French and American
Revolutions. . . . The complaints of the peasants of Asia
are just as specific as those in our own Declaration of
Independence; and to the people involved they are just
as important. . . . These people, though illiterate, are
intelligent. The people of Asia have a catalogue of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
specific complaints. The absence of medical care always
comes first. The absence of schools is always second. Then
comes land reform. . . . The right to vote, the right to
elect a representative government, the power to expel
and punish corrupt officials -- these too are important
claims to reform.
? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
violation of self-determination through foreign interven-
tion has been in general a tool of reaction and imperial-
ism, especially since the Metternich period of the early
nineteenth century. And they point out that the flagrant
military intervention directed against various countries
between the First World War and the Second was clearly
on behalf of old-time imperialist or outright fascist inte-
rests. In the next section I discuss the principle of self-
determination in relation to certain actions of the Soviet
Union since the beginning of the Second World War
in 1939.
2. Does Soviet Russia Wage Aggression?
The principle of self-determination of peoples leads
naturally to the question of whether the Soviet Union
has been guilty of aggression against foreign countries.
The tendency has been in the West to favor self-determ-
ination only so long as it is applied in a way unfavorable
to the U. S. S. R. and the new socialist governments which
have sprung into existence since the defeat of world
fascism. The same sort of people who supported the
widespread imperialist intervention against the Soviet
Republic during its early years today claim that Soviet
Russia is itself imperialistic because during World War
II it took back the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania) and Eastern Poland, and because Communist-
led regimes have come into power throughout most of
Eastern Europe and in China.
As to the Baltic provinces and Eastern Poland, we
should recall that these were torn from Russia after the
First World War by means of force and power politics,
which had as their objective the weakening of the Soviet
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
Republic and the creation of a "cordon sanitaire," both
to hem it in from a military standpoint and to protect
Europe from its influence. In 1920 the American Gov-
ernment quite rightly protested against this dismember-
ment of Russia and called for the restitution of the old
Russian boundaries, except in regard to Armenia, Fin-
land and ethnic Poland. *
The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
were first set up in 1918 with the aid of the Kaiser's
armies and in line with the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
which formalized Germany's conquests and spheres of
influence in Eastern Europe. They were soon recognized
by the Allies, which, for their own obvious reasons,
wished to see these anti-Soviet outposts become perma-
nent. When the American Government finally granted
them recognition in 1922, Secretary of State Charles
Evans Hughes made this significant reservation: "The
United States has consistently maintained that the dis-
turbed conditions of Russian affairs may not be made
the occasion for the alienation of Russian territory, and
this principle is not deemed to be infringed upon by the
recognition at this time of the governments of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania. "20 Thus Mr. Hughes qualified his
recognition statement so as to leave the door open for a
future return of these nations to Russia.
The matter of Armenia quickly became an academic
one, since the idea of America's accepting a mandate for
that country rapidly faded away and since a native Com-
munist group gained the upper hand in 1920 and pro-
claimed an Armenian Autonomous Republic linked up
with the U. S. S. R. Finland also became an academic
issue, due to the fact that the Soviet regime under Lenin
? See p. 265.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
recognized the full independence of the Finnish Govern-
ment in 1918.
But why did the American Government later change
its attitude on the right of Russia to the Baltic States
and that part of Poland inhabited principally by Russian
peoples? The reason is perfectly clear. When the U. S.
State Department made its declarations against Russian
dismemberment in 1920 and 1922, it thought that the
Soviet Republic was soon going to collapse. But when
instead Premier Lenin and his colleagues actually con-
solidated their power, Washington shifted its attitude,
not because of the fundamental rights or wrongs of the
question, but because it wanted Soviet socialism to re-
main as weak as possible. In short, the guiding principle
in American policy was that a non-Communist, merely
liberal, Russian regime had a right to the old Tsarist
frontiers, but not a radical, Communist one.
There can be no doubt that economically speaking
the Baltic States, which were conquered by the Tsars
back in the eighteenth century, belong naturally with
Russia and Russia with them. Peter the Great acquired
Estonia and Latvia in 1721 and Catherine the Great
Lithuania in 1795. The only year-round ice-free ports
which Russia had in the west and which were directly
accessible to the Atlantic Ocean were in these territories.
Prior to the First World War almost a third of Russia's
exports and imports went through these outlets to the
sea. The artificial separation of the Baltic States from
the U. S. S. R. in 1918 proved an immense handicap to
the Soviet Union and disrupted the economies of those
three countries themselves.
It became widely believed that between the two
world wars the Baltic nations were beautiful little demo-
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
cracies functioning on behalf of liberty. This was far
from true. As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1943, these
three states "some years before the war fell into the hands
of fascist rulers and became the focal points of intrigue
against Russia. Thus the last Lithuanian parliament had
been dissolved in 1927 by a conspiracy of army officers;
the Latvian Republic became fascist in 1934; and Estonia,
though it never went quite that far, fell under strong
fascist influence between 1933 and 1937. "21
In mid-June of 1940, as France and the Low Coun-
tries crumpled under the Nazi blitzkrieg, the Soviet
Government charged that the three Baltic States had
violated their mutual-aid pacts with the U. S. S. R. and
sent in troops to occupy them. This Soviet move, how-
ever hard-boiled in conception and execution, definitely
forestalled'Hitler, who all along had been casting cove-
tous eyes in the direction of these weak and strategically
situated nations. A few weeks after the Soviet military
occupation, newly elected parliaments in Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania proclaimed their countries Soviet Repub-
lics; and in August the Supreme Soviet officially admitted
them into the U. S. S. R. For the Baltic peoples this was
a logical step, particularly from the economic viewpoint.
For the Soviet Union it was an essential development
from the viewpoint of self-defense against the Nazi threat;
and a justified recovery of lands wrested from the
U. S. S. R. in defiance of historical right.
An even clearer case for the revision of Soviet boun-
daries during the Second World War concerned Eastern
Poland, with its population of around 11,000,000 in 1939
consisting of approximately 5,000,000 Ukrainians, 2,500-
000 Belorussians, 2,500,000 Poles and 1,000,000 Jews.
The regions comprising Eastern Poland, except a small
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
southern area known as East Galicia, were all part of the
old Tsarist Empire and were taken away from an ex-
hausted Soviet Russia under the Treaty of Riga in 1921
by the Polish imperialists after their unprovoked war of
aggression against the Socialist Republic. At the time
even the anti-Soviet Allies protested against Poland,
which had also seized the Lithuanian capital, Vilna
(Vilnius), grabbing so much territory that was obviously
non-Polish. In fact, before the Polish-Soviet war broke
out, the Supreme Council of Allied Powers had recom-
mended as a just boundary the so-called Curzon Line,
which was first officially proposed at a meeting in 1919
presided over by America's Under Secretary of State,
Frank L. Polk. The Curzon Line assigned to Soviet
Russia almost all of what later became Eastern Poland.
In September of 1939, as the Polish Government was
collapsing under the impact of Hitler's attack, the Soviet
army marched into Eastern Poland and occupied it.
This was an important and reasonable anti-Nazi move
and had not the Soviets effected it, the Germans un-
doubtedly would have taken over Eastern Poland them-
selves. To repeat what Prime Minister Churchill said
in a speech shortly afterwards,* "That the Russian
armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for
the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. "
In October, 1939, the peoples of Eastern Poland
voted overwhelmingly to join the Belorussian and Uk-
rainian Republics and thus to become part of the U. S. S. R.
The new Polish-Soviet boundary, along most of its 400-
odd miles, was close to the old Curzon Line. At the end
of World War II Poland received territorial compensa-
tion in acquiring from Germany substantial regions in
* See p. 9.
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? SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY
Silesia and East Prussia, including 300 miles of the Baltic
coastline. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945,
systematic repatriation took place between the Belo-
russian and Ukrainian Republics, on the one hand, and
Poland on the other. Hence today there are relatively
few Poles left in the Soviet Union and relatively few Belo-
russians or Ukrainians still living in Poland.
Again to quote Winston Churchill, he told the British
House of Commons in February, 1944, that at the Tehe-
ran Conference "I took occasion to raise personally with
Marshal Stalin the question of the future of Poland. . . .
We ourselves have never in the past guaranteed, on
behalf of His Majesty's Government, any particular
frontier line to Poland. We did not approve of the Polish
occupation of Vilna in 1920. The British view in 1919
stands expressed in the so-called Curzon Line, which
attempted to deal, at any rate partially, with the problem.
. . . Russia has the right of reassurance against future
attacks from the west, and we are going all the way with
her to see that she gets it, not only by the might of her
arms but by the approval and assent of the United Na-
tions. . . . I cannot feel that the Russian demand for a
reassurance about her western frontiers goes beyond the
limits of what is reasonable or just. Marshal Stalin and
I also spoke and agreed upon the need for Poland to
obtain compensation at the expense of Germany both
in the north and in the west. "22
Bessarabia in the Balkans raises another question
concerning alleged Soviet aggression. It was stolen, as
all the world knows, from Russia in 1918 by Romania.
Bessarabia had been an integral part of the Tsarist Em-
pire since 1812 and in fact fifty-five years previous to
Romania's establishment as an independent state. Its an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
nexation by the Romanians was never recognized by the
Soviet Union or even by the United States. As in the
case of the Baltic States, Bessarabia's forced separation
from the U. S. S. R. proved very bad economically, especial-
ly for Bessarabia. By applying heavy diplomatic pressure
on Romania in 1940, the Soviet Government was able to
regain this province without violence; and also took from
Romania at the same time Northern Bukovina with its
primarily Ukrainian population.
The case of Finland belongs in a special category.
The Soviet invasion of Finland in the fall of 1939 was
certainly an act of aggression and a terrible mistake. It
has always seemed to me that had the Soviet Government
been more patient in this situation, it might well have
been able to work out a reasonably satisfactory redrawing
of the Finnish frontier. However, the Nazis had gone
on the rampage and all Europe was in turmoil. The
Soviets were justifiably feeling extremely nervous about
their western borders and the possibility of soon having
to defend them. One of the weakest spots was in the
vicinity of Leningrad, which was the Soviet Union's
second city and an industrial, munitions, shipping and
naval center of paramount importance. Here the boun-
dary with Finland was less than twenty miles away. To
imagine a quite comparable situation, what would the
United States do if Long Island, up to within twenty
miles of New York City, belonged to a small, hostile,
foreign nation that was continually intriguing with
foreign Powers against the security and welfare of the
U. S. A. ?
At any rate the Soviet army struck against the Finns
and outraged the public opinion of the democratic world.
The result, however, was that in the Finnish-Soviet peace
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
treaty of 1940 the frontier near Leningrad was pushed
back some eighty miles and the U. S. S. R. acquired some
strategic territory farther north. A U. S. Army manual
used during the World War II for information officers
and orientation course teachers said, in reference to the
Soviet attack on Finland: "Without attempting any
moral judgments on the matter, it is enough to state the
military fact that had the U. S. S. R. not acted so, the
Allied cause would be weaker today. " Actually, the
Soviets later held Leningrad against Hitler only with
the utmost difficulty and sacrifice. Both the Finns and
the Nazis attacked from the north; and the new border
may well have been the decisive factor in saving the city.
The fact that Finland so readily joined hands with
Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in 1941, in what
President Roosevelt called "this hateful partnership,"
indicated that it was scarcely the pure-hearted little
democracy which anti-Soviet propagandists had painted
it. During the Second World War the Finns and Nazis
used the Arctic port of Petsamo as an important sub-
marine and airplane base against Allied ships sailing the
northern route with supplies for the U. S. S. R.
So it is
clear why, when Soviet Russia made peace with Finland
in 1944, it demanded and received permanently Petsamo
and a small surrounding region. In this treaty the revised
Finnish frontiers which the Soviets had won in 1939-40
were also restored.
After the downfall of Hitler the Soviet Union, with
the concurrence of President Truman and Prime Minis-
ter Atlee in the Potsdam Declaration, annexed the north-
east third of East Prussia, including the big Baltic port
of Koenigsberg, which was renamed Kaliningrad after the
late Mikhail Kalinin, prominent peasant and government
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? SOVIET CTVILIZATIOH
leader in the Communist regime. This again meant a
strengthening of the U. S. S. R. 's western defenses, but also
comes under the heading of spoils of victory. In June,
1945, the Czechoslovak Government ceded to Soviet
Russia and the Ukrainian Republic the province of Car-
patho-Ukraine, or Ruthenia, a heavily forested, moun-
tainous strip of land at the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia.
Approximately 500,000 of its 725,000 inhabitants were
Ukrainians.
Following the defeat of Japan by the United Nations,
the Soviet Union, on the basis of agreements made be-
tween Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt
and Premier Stalin at the 1945 Yalta Conference, took
over southern Sakhalin Island, which the Japanese had
acquired from Russia after the war of 1904-05; and the
Kurile Islands, from which the Tsarist Government had
agreed to withdraw in 1875 in return for Japan relin-
quishing its claims to any part of Sakhalin. These acces-
sions in the Far East considerably improved the Soviet
defensive position in that quarter. Finally, in 1944, the
Tannu Tuva People's Republic, a region south of Siberia
in Central Asia which had been a colony of Tsarist Russia
but whose national independence the Soviets recognized
in 1918, voted to join the U. S. S. R. as an Autonomous
Region.
In my opinion the various Soviet territorial acquisi-
tions from 1939 to 1945 do not, despite the Finnish ven-
ture, add up to aggression or imperialism. In the first
place, with the exception of the Carpatho-Ukraine, East
Galicia, Northern Bukovina and part of East Prussia --
all small regions -- the Soviet Union added only territory
to which it had an historical claim through the expansion
of the Tsarist Empire. And the only territories to which
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
it still lays claim were part of pre-revolutionary Russia.
These are two districts in northeastern Turkey: Kars and
Ardahan, which were part of Russian Armenia and which
the Soviets were forced to cede to the Turks under the
Brest-Litovsk treaty imposed by imperial Germany.
Soviet Armenians consider these territories as an Ar-
menian terra irredenta.
In the second place, 95 percent of the populations
incorporated by the U. S. S. R. since 1930 were ethnically
Belorussian or Ukrainian and therefore properly be-
longed to the Soviet family of nations. In the third place,
except for Tannu Tuva, all the Soviet annexations cor-
responded with clear and definite security interests of the
U. S. S. R.
In line with the third point, we ought, I believe, to
make a special effort to comprehend the imperative neces-
sity which the Russians feel about having strategic boun-
daries that will provide relative security against aggres-
sion by land and sea. The United States has always been
protected by vast oceans to both east and west; yet even
so it has insisted upon military bases in the Atlantic and
Pacific hundreds and thousands of miles beyond its two
coastlines. For centuries Britain has had the effective
water barrier of the English Channel. But Russia ever
since its rise to statehood has repeatedly had to cope
with potential and actual enemies just over its borders,
east, west and south -- borders that today stretch out
approximately 19,000 miles and abut on eleven different
countries. No Great Power has been so vulnerable to
attack from so many directions; none has actually suffered
in its history from so many invasions on the part of hostile
nations. If the Russians sometimes appear apprehensive
about foreign aggression, we can well understand why.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
The question remains whether Soviet actions since
1945 spell military aggression or indicate a will to such
aggression. Admittedly the Soviet Government has com-
mitted a number of serious errors in foreign policy dur-
ing these post-war years, such as its failure to withdraw
its troops from Iran at the agreed-upon time in 1946, its
too-frequent use of the veto in the Security Council of the
United Nations, and its harsh and mistaken attitude
towards the Tito regime in Yugoslavia. But I am con-
vinced that during this period the U. S. S. R. has not been
guilty of aggression; and that it intends no aggression
in the future.
On the basis of agreements with Great Britain,
France and the United States after the final defeat of
Hitler, the Soviet Government for several years kept
military contingents in the western border states, in
Bulgaria and in Iran. But except for the Iranian inci-
dent, which was finally settled peacefully through a Soviet-
Iranian accord, Soviet troops have been withdrawn on
schedule. There are still Soviet forces in Austria and
Eastern Germany,* but American, British and French
troops likewise remain in Austria and Western Germany.
This unfortunate situation is due to the fact that the Big
Four, with Soviet Russia certainly bearing its share of
the blame, have been unable to agree upon peace treaties
for Austria and a unified Germany.
As to Soviet influence in foreign countries, most of the
Soviet Russians of course wish socialism to triumph every-
where just as most Americans would like democratic
capitalism to triumph everywhere. The Soviets, however,
have never favored trying to extend Communist prin-
? A few Soviet contingents are also stationed by agreement in Hungary
and Poland in order to safeguard communications with the Soviet forces
in Austria and Germany respectively.
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? SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY
ciples to other lands through the means of armed in-
vasion. They have instead supported the thesis that
"Revolution cannot be exported," but must be the out-
come of indigenous radical movements on the part of
whatever peoples are concerned. Especially since Joseph
Stalin wrested leadership from Leon Trotsky in 1927,
the Soviet Republic has pursued the idea of "building
socialism in one country" and letting the successful
example of Soviet socialism serve as a spur to other na-
tions. The Soviet method, then, of spreading socialism
is primarily that of rendering moral encouragement and
ideological stimulus.
Let us for a moment compare the course of the Rus-
sian Revolution with that of the other great European
upheaval of modern times -- the French Revolution
of 1789. The latter, after approximately ten years of
bloody struggle among the revolutionaries themselves,
fell into the hands of an ambitious and aggressive mil-
itary dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, who made himself
First Consul. Five years later, in 1804, Napoleon had
himself crowned Emperor of France and was soon march-
ing his armies all over Europe, defeating, subjugating and
annexing country after country on the continent in his
endeavor to set up a "Grand Empire. " After his threats
of invading England had come to nothing, he undertook
in 1812 the disastrous campaign against Russia.
Although Napoleon represented a reaction against
the Revolution, he maintained certain of the fundamen-
tal economic and social changes effected by it. And
before he was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, he
and his armies had spread anti-feudalistic ideas and insti-
tutions over much of Europe. Here indeed was a patent
example of an aggressive nation and government propa-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
gating their doctrines abroad by the sword. The Russian
Revolution, on the other hand, has at no point deterio-
rated into a military dictatorship or adopted the policy
of seeking to impose the Communist way of life on other
peoples through military aggression.
The Soviet Government as such took no part in either
the Third International (the Comintern), which went
out of existence in 1943; or in the Communist Informa-
tion Bureau (the Cominform), founded in 1945 to func-
tion as a coordinating body among the Communist Parties
of Eastern Europe, France and Italy. The Soviet Com-
munist Party of course has wielded enormous influence
in these two international organizations and Communist
Parties in every country have in general adopted policies
in agreement with those of the Soviet Communist Party
and the Soviet Government itself.
Foreign Communists claim, however, that they are
not automatically following a Soviet line, but that being
Marxists, they tend to think in the same manner as their
fellow-Marxists in the U. S. S. R. and to reach the same
conclusions. Their primary intellectual allegiance, they
assert, is to Marxism as a science; and it is to that they
render discipline. We must indeed recognize the pos-
sibility that rational men the world over in the field of
social science, as well as natural science, may arrive at the
same conclusions. As modern science has developed,
thinkers and researchers in different countries have more
and more found themselves in agreement on many dif-
ferent facts and principles. The Communists point out
that such parallelism in thought flowing across national
boundaries is being widely utilized today to brand and
prosecute non-Soviet Communists as Soviet agents. And
they have satirized the reasoning involved by suggesting
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
the following syllogism: Joseph Stalin believes that 2 and
2 make 4; Mr. X in the U. S. A. believes that 2 and 2
make 4; therefore Mr. X is a dangerous Soviet agent.
Non-Soviet Communists do not deny, however, that
since the Soviet Communist Party was the first one to put
across a successful revolution and to build socialism,
Communists everywhere naturally take into considera-
tion the Soviet Party's great experience and prestige, and
tend to defer, perfectly freely, to its wisdom. With the
recent rise of a triumphant Communist Party in a second
major Power, China, it is improbable that the Soviet
Communists will continue to play such a paramount role
as heretofore in the world Communist movement.
Yet even granting the extreme -- and I believe incor-
rect -- view that Communist Parties the world over slav-
ishly obey the orders of the Kremlin, the aim of these
Parties, as repeatedly set forth in official books, pamph-
lets, newspapers, speeches, demonstrations and political
campaigns, is not to embroil their respective nations in
war, but to establish socialism in their native lands and
urge on the populations to world peace. One of the most
effective slogans of the Russian Communist Party in the
Revolution of 1917 was precisely "Peace. " Ever since
then Communist Parties everywhere have steadily em-
phasized the peace issue, and in fact to such an extent
that capitalist governments have considered it necessary
continually to warn their peoples against "Communist
peace propaganda. " So, even if Moscow is laying down
this anti-war line for foreign Communist Parties, it is
not one that can sensibly be interpreted as a call to inter-
national aggression.
Plainly, the danger of "Soviet aggression" must be
distinguished from the tendency in one country or an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
other for Communist movements, exploiting backward
economic and social conditions, to come into power.
Western propaganda has illogically striven to equate
these two alleged dangers and to brand vigorous Com-
munist political action anywhere as an example of and
due to Soviet aggression.
This loose use of the term "aggression" is typical of
the vehement yet vague charges which the governments,
press and radio of the Western World fling about in
reference to the artificially concocted Soviet menace.
American commentators constantly talk as if the militant
propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union were itself
equivalent to military aggression. Perhaps such propa-
ganda can be classified as "ideological aggression"; but
if so, then the United States and England, with high-
powered press and radio networks circling the globe, can
certainly be accused of the same thing. The main point,
however, is the necessity for distinguishing clearly be-
tween military and ideological aggression. Throughout
modern times various revolutionary governments, highly
organized religions and dissenting philosophies have done
their best to spread their particular messages throughout
the world.
Americans and the American Republic have been
active from the beginning in secular missionary work.
It was President Thomas Jefferson who said, "Nor are
we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human
race. "23 There is nothing reprehensible as such in a
particular country or some group in a particular country
having a sense of world mission and trying to get their
ideas across national frontiers and into the minds of the
various peoples of the earth. With the remarkable de-
velopment of techniques of communication during the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
twentieth century, the opportunities for effective inter-
national propaganda have of course greatly increased.
Soviet Russia has taken advantage of these opportunities
to further the cause of universal socialism, as has the
United States on behalf of democratic capitalism. In
neither case is it reasonable or accurate to describe such
propaganda as "aggression. "
What many Americans in particular seem unable to
grasp is the indigenous origin, the fundamental moti-
vation and the broad scope of the revolutionary move-
ments which have been sweeping into the vacuum left
by the downfall of the Axis and achieving state power
throughout much of Europe and Asia. In an address in
1951, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas well
described what is happening: "The plain fact is that the
world is in a revolution which cannot be bought off with
dollars. There are rumblings in every village from the
Mediterranean to the Pacific. A force is gathering for a
mighty effort. We think of that force as Communistic.
Communists exploit the situation, stirring every discon-
tent and making the pot boil. The revolutions which are
brewing are not, however, Communist in origin nor will
they end even if Soviet Russia is crushed in war.
"The revolutionaries are hungry men who have been
exploited from time out of mind. This is the century
of their awakening and mobilization. . . . The spirit
which motivates these people is pretty much the same
as the one which inspired the French and American
Revolutions. . . . The complaints of the peasants of Asia
are just as specific as those in our own Declaration of
Independence; and to the people involved they are just
as important. . . . These people, though illiterate, are
intelligent. The people of Asia have a catalogue of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
specific complaints. The absence of medical care always
comes first. The absence of schools is always second. Then
comes land reform. . . . The right to vote, the right to
elect a representative government, the power to expel
and punish corrupt officials -- these too are important
claims to reform.
