>>> nathan at newman.org 11/14/00 04:43PM >>>
The Hitler-Soviet Pact was not the most pleasant deal, and the invasion and
subjection of Poland was reprehensible, but the need for the deal was
obvious after the West had made its own deal at Munich - essentially
pointing Hitler in Russia's direction. The Western powers have no standing
to criticize Stalin on that point after happily handing Central Europe over
to Hitler.
What was more reprehensible was not the deal but the contortions of the CPUSA and other communist parties in its ideological approach to the deal. Instead of promoting it as a pragmatic way to deal with the threat of Hitler, the CPUSA suddenly dropped their anti-fascist position in favor of their "The Yanks aren't Coming" propaganda line - a reversal that discredited them intellectually among a wide range of folks who could understand the pragmatic threat to the Soviet Union but not the ideological backflip.
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CB: Things change, things change back and forth, and sometimes things change quickly, and sometimes things change back and forth quickly, especially in crises. That's dialectics. The Soviets had a tiger by the tail and there tends to be a whipping action.
What is missed by many in this is the world historic cunning, spy vs. spy, ultimate European epic war strategizing which involves a world historic level of what I guess I will call intrigue. There are layers and layers of deception and Machiavellianism to the tenth power. To be pragamtic and make their strategic gambit work, the Soviets had to make it look good to the Nazis, hold their enemies closer to them than their friends sometime.
For example, they had to make the Nazis think that the Soviet motivation was imperialist land grabbing. The Nazis could understand that motive as it was their's. Don't forget that in the old treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks had ceded land to Germany. It would be believable to the Germans that the Soviets wanted the territory they had ceded. Without this posture, the German's would be looking for the Soviet motive for making the treaty, and might guess the real motive of delaying the war.
One must look at the situation with a bit more street smarts than the average intellectual uses usually. Put on your wily cap when you really want to be pragmatic.To be pragmatic, the Soviets could not announce to the CPUSA and parties around the world that they were just being pragmatic. The Nazis were listening. The CPUSA had to be wily and figure that out without it being announced from Moscow. There may have been lagtime in figuring it out in the CPUSA ( understandable because it is like the ultimate spy novel) and certainly imperfection in the campaign, thus the whiplash effect you note in CPUSA response. But to the CPUSA's credit, it essentially got it correct. They certainly got it more correct than all those on the left who like to feel morally-politicallly superior to the Soviets ( or the CPUSA) because the Soviets made a pact with the Devil.
This is a bit of the naive American looking at old jaded Europe phenomenon from Henry James and all that.
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And the backflip when Hitler invaded just added to the cynicism towards the Party and its maneuverings. The contortions were essentially the beginning of the end of the party's broader influence and assisted the anti-Communist forces in their conservative ascendancy in unions and other broad formations.
-- Nathan Newman