Dare I point out that Europe had just been destabilized by World War II, and so stabilization was rather important. Plus, the economies of Eastern Europe had been destroyed by WWII. There was hunger in the USSR at the same time as the USSR was sending food aid to East Germany. Foreign engagement with no direct payoff was not likely to be popular with the average Soviet person, who was drinking tea made from tree bark.
--- On Fri, 10/2/09, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> The facts were that the British nor the Americans had the
> resources to build up capitalism in the East, so they had to
> deal with the military-bureaucratic regimes there. Indeed to
> the extent that Stalin's Cominform favoured stabilisation it
> was a useful ally to the US and Britain. After all the
> Soviet Union sabotaged people's resistance against the right
> wing militias in Greece, and stonewalled the Algerian FLN
> when they sought help, and local Communist parties were a
> conservative constraint on anti-imperialist and radical
> movements in northern Ireland, Portugal and Italy.
>
> Anyone who remembers the role that the Communist Parties
> played in the British labour movement will know that they
> were the most vicious opponents of direct action, as they
> were proponents of white's first policies in Algeria, and
> later in France. The persistence of the Soviet bloc was a
> painful irritant to Cold War ideologists, but local
> Stalinist regimes had a lot in common with western elites,
> not least their intuitive fear of political grassroots
> change.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>