>>> Brett Knowlton <brettk at unica-usa.com> 12/09/99 04:38PM >>>
Come on, Charles. The Nazi/Soviet Pact also allowed Stalin to conquer
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Eastern Poland without having to worry about
German interference. The Soviets also invaded Finland. The Soviets
behaved like imperialists themselves, at least in this respect. Were these
also necessary evils?
This was not a purely defensive move by a beleaguered nation.
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Charles: No , I would say these were militarily and strategic defensive moves by a nation that had been highly beleagured by the imperialist nations( or deleaguered of nations like Ethiopia). There is a complex and somewhat differentiated historical background to these several nations of course. But by 1940 the Germans were rapidly mopping up the nations between Germany and USSR in preparation for their gigantic invasion of USSR. The Soviet takeovers of the nations you mention was very much a defensive necessary evil, although it didn't stop the German war machine, the biggest in the world, when it got going. The stop came much later at Stalingrad.
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Furthermore, the Soviets won the war against Fascism because they were attacked. You claim Stalin did this to "prepare for war," but there is no reason to believe Stalin ever planned to fight Hitler, at least none that I'm aware of. By all accounts the Russians were taken by surprise by the German invasion.
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Charles: There is every reason to believe that the CPSU had been preparing for years , since they defeated the first imperialist invasion of 14 or so nations, including the U.S. , Britain, France, Japan , Poland, preparing to fight some capitalist invasion. It might have been as in 1919 ,a "NATO" of that day, all the big capitalists of the day in a coalition; or it certainly may have been Germany ,as it became more evident , as the Nazis built up their war machine and Hitler openly said that the best place for the German's to get more land and some slaves was to conquer Russia. The whole rapid industrialization program that Stalin has been famous and infamous for was in part a necessary premise for the Soviets to build a military strong enough to sustain an assault from the powerfully industrial capitalist nations. So, it is abundantly clear that the Soviets had been anticipating war from capitalism in some form. They certainly did not exclude that the Germans would be part o! f the attack, and as I say ,definitely so after the Nazis came into power. The Nazis made it clear that they considered the Communists their main enemy. See Dimitroff _United Front Against Fascism_.
There are debates as to whether when the German attack actually came that the Soviets or Stalin or someone did not know immediately ahead of time, i.e. did not calculate the exact moment of attack correctly. But the German army was superior. The Soviets won by a sort of sucker punch, rope a dope. Letting the Germans take a big swing and then catching them when they were stretched out with a full punch, caught in the Russian winter , etc., etc. But on the other hand the Soviets couldn't show that by retreating early.
CB