The Soviet Union emerged from the Second World War badly damaged.

Victory in the war

was achieved at an appalling cost, with massive destruction of Soviet cities, towns and
villages, huge loss of lives, both military and civilian, and millions of people displaced or
made homeless by the war. Compared with the losses of the USSR, the combined war
casualties of the United States and the British Empire seemed almost insignificant. Yet the
Soviet Union was also greatly strengthened by the Great Patriotic War. Between 1941 and
1945 the USSR had become a military-industrial superpower. The sacrifices of the war
enhanced a sense of national pride and vindicated Stalin’s role as the ‘Great Leader’. Across
much of the world belief in the ideology of Soviet Communism was enhanced; and the role
of the Red Army in liberating Eastern and Central Europe greatly widened the Soviet sphere
of influence.
After 1945, Stalin’s rule re-established an iron grip on the USSR and its new satellite states
under what is often termed ‘High Stalinism’. There was an intense focus on economic
reconstruction, which required the continuation of sacrifices in people’s standard of living.
At the same time, Soviet foreign policy was focused on facing down the enmity of the
capitalist powers in the struggles of the Cold War. The peoples of the USSR lived in fear of
enemies abroad and of political repression at home. Only after Stalin died in 1953 was the
way open for new relationships: between the USSR and the West, and between the Soviet
regime and the people.
The price of victory: Post-war
reconstruction
The USSR was greatly damaged by the immense national effort that had been required to
win the war. Its people had been driven to endure great sacrifices and hardship. In 1945,
many hoped for a period of relaxation and reward. This did not happen. The iron grip of the
command economy remained; new sacrifices were demanded to push through post-war
reconstruction, and to face down new threats from foreign enemies in the developing Cold
War. Many parts of the USSR experienced a terrible famine in 1946-47. Military spending was
still given high priority. Living standards continued to be far lower than in the West, and
consumer goods remained scarce. Even so, there was a significant recovery under the
fourth Five Year Plan (1946-50), especially in heavy industry. By 1953, the USSR was
unmistakably a military-industrial superpower.
 The battle of
Stalingrad

The great battle at Stalingrad in

1942-43 left almost the entire
city in ruins.

(Public Domain in Russia)

The war inflicted massive destruction upon Soviet Russia. This was partly the collateral
damage of huge and costly battles, as armies advanced and retreated across European
Russia and Ukraine. However, it also resulted from deliberate ‘scorched earth tactics’
designed to prevent valuable factories and equipment from falling into enemy hands.
Statistical Table of Soviet War Losses Soviet War Losses

Soldiers killed in action 6.33m

Non-combat deaths 0.55m
Missing in action and POWs 4.56m
Civilian deaths caused by enemy actions 7.42m
Civilian deaths caused by famine and disease 4.10m
Deaths of forced labourers in Nazi Empire 2.16m
Homeless citizens of the USSR in 1945 25.0m

Total War Losses 26.12m

Population of USSR in June 1941 196.69m

Population of USSR in January 1946 170.50m (Table reconstructed by Chris
Rowe from material in Wikipedia
entries on Soviet war casualties)
The Dnieper River Dam

The Dnieper River Dam, at Zaporzhia in Ukraine was vital for hydroelectric (Public Domain in
the Ukraine)
power generation in the USSR. The dam was deliberately destroyed by Soviet
engineers in 1941 as the invading German armies overran Ukraine. Its repair
and reopening in 1947 was one of the great achievements of post-war
reconstruction.
The need to rebuild cities

(RIA Novosti Archive

The need to rebuild so many cities and towns in the Soviet Union after the
via Wikimedia
war. Here we see some of the danger to Leningrad inflicted during the commons, Vsevolod
blockade of the city by the German Army Group North from September Tarasevich, CC BY-
SA 3.0)
1941 until it was lifted on 27 January 1944.
Soviet economic Agriculture had been particularly devastated by the war.
recovery after 1945 Total production had fallen by one-third; the grain harvest in
1945 was a mere 47 million tonnes, lower per head of
population than even the famine year of 1921. civilian
industrial production had also declined by at leat one-third
(on one Western estimate by three-fifths). The first stages of
recovery were naturally extremely painful. The huge
problems were compounded by the bad harvest of 1946.
Famine conditions prevailed in many regions; deaths due to
hunger and illness caused by famine in 1947 amounted to at
least one million.
After these initial difficulties, recovery was rapid. By 1950,
industrial production considerably exceeded, and agricultural
production slightly exceeded, pre-war levels.

(R.W. Davies, Soviet Economic

Development from Lenin to
Khrushchev, Cambridge 1998, pp
64-65)
The rise of the Soviet Empire

At the end of Soviet Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ the Red Army controlled much of Eastern
and Central Europe. This military occupation became the basis of Soviet political domination
in the post-war years. There were extensive territorial changes and shifts of population. The
Baltic States and parts of eastern Poland were incorporated into the USSR. Between 1945
and 1948, ‘friendly governments’ were installed in such ‘satellite states’ as Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Until 1948, Yugoslavia was also seen as a
Soviet satellite, until Tito broke with Stalin and Yugoslavia became ‘non-aligned’ (neither
allied with the USSR or the west).
This extension of Soviet influence was not the result of agreed peace treaties. It took place
in the formative stages of the emerging Cold War and the division of Europe between East
and West. At the time and ever since, historians have disagreed as to how far the actions of
the Soviet Union at this time was driven by Communist ideology and Stalin’s deliberate
expansionist aims, or by the provocations of Western, especially American, disregard for the
legitimate interests of the Soviet Union. By 1949, the USSR was established as a military-
industrial superpower. The Soviet Bloc now faced the Western Alliance in a bipolar world.
 The Potsdam Conference, 1945

(US Army Archives, Public Domain)

Clement Attlee, the British prime minister, Harry Truman, American president, and Josef
Stalin, the new ‘Big Three’ at the Potsdam Conference. In contrast to the conference in
Yalta, Stalin was by far the most prestigious and experienced leader at Potsdam, following
the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945 and the electoral defeat of Churchill, which
occurred during the conference. In August 1945, at Potsdam near Berlin, the ‘Big Three’
powers met to complete the post-war peace settlement that had been partially planned at
the Yalta Conference a few months before. The tensions of the emerging Cold War were
already apparent at Potsdam; no final peace treaty was concluded.
Stalin’s ‘Game Plan’

A Cartoon satirising Stalin’s ‘Game Plan’ to ensure

Soviet domination of post-war Europe.

(Daily Mail, 16.06.1947. London, via Europeana,

(c) Leslie Illingworth Associated Newspaper / Solo
Syndication, London)

The liberation of Eastern and Central Europe by the Red Army led, by 1948, to Soviet
political control over the satellite states, such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In
the West, this emergence of a ‘Soviet Empire’ was explained as the result of Stalin’s
deliberate ‘Game Plan’ in which the USSR used ‘salami tactics’ to undermine political
opponents and ensure Communist control.
From the Soviet viewpoint, the emergence of Communist regimes was due to the popular
appeal of Communism; and to the USSR’s justified concerns to defend itself in the future.
As a result of the German invasions, the Soviet Union has Stalin on Churchill’s
irrevocably lost in battles, and during the German occupation
‘Iron Curtain’
and through the expulsion of Soviet citizens to German slave
labour camps, about 7 million people. In other words, the Soviet
Union has lost in men several times more than Britain and the Comments by Stalin in an
United States together. interview with Soviet
newspaper Pravda in
It may be that some quarters are trying to push into oblivion
March 1946. Stalin was
these sacrifices of the Soviet people which enabled the
responding to Winston
liberation of the countries of Europe from the Hitlerite yoke.
But the Soviet Union cannot forget them.
Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’
speech, given ten days
It can be asked, therefore, what can be surprising in the fact earlier at Fulton,
that the Soviet Union, in a desire to ensure its security for the
Missouri.
future, tries to achieve a situation where these countries should
have governments whose relations to the Soviet Union are loyal?
How can anyone who has not lost his reason describe these
peaceful aspirations of the Soviet Union as ‘expansionist
tendencies’?
Mr Churchill wanders around the truth when he speaks of the
growing influence of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe.
The growth of Communist influence cannot be considered (Jussi Hanhimäki and Odd Arne
accidental. It is normal. The influence of the Communists grew Westad, The Cold War: A History in
because during the hard years of the dominance of fascism in Documents and Eyewitness
Accounts, Oxford 2004, p.49)
Europe the Communists proved themselves to be reliable, daring
and self-sacrificing fighters for the liberty of peoples.
The Marshall Plan
In theory, the post-war economic
reconstruction of the USSR and its satellite
states in the Soviet Bloc might have
benefited from American aid under the
Marshall Plan, in the same way as Western
Europe did in the years from 1947.
In fact, the Soviet Union denounced the offer
of US aid as a ‘capitalist and imperialist trick’
that was deliberately hostile to the USSR and
its allies.
Post-war economic recovery in the Soviet
Bloc continued to be much slower and less
comfortable than in Western Europe.
(Jussi Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A
History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, Oxford 2004,
p.128)
It is becoming more and more evident to
everyone that the implementation of the
Marshall Plan will mean placing European
countries under the economic and
political control of the United States,
with direct American interference in the
internal affairs of these countries..
Moreover, this plan is an attempt to split
Europe into two camps and, with the help
of the United Kingdom and France, to
complete the formation of a bloc of
several countries hostile to the interests
of the democratic countries of Eastern
Europe, and most particularly to the
interests of the Soviet Union. The
intention is to make use of Western
Germany and German heavy industry in
the Ruhr as the basis for America
expansion in Europe, in disregard of the
interests of those countries who suffered
from German aggression.
‘Subjugation’ through the Marshall Plan

This cartoon in 1949 by Kukryniksy, the name

jointly used by three Soviet cartoonists,
shows General Marshall holding two horse
halters, one labelled for France and the other
for Germany.

(© Deutsches Historisches Museum)

 The westward expansion of the
USSR

Military occupation by the Red Army

after its advances in 1944-45 led to
significant territorial changes. The
previously independent Baltic States
were incorporated into the USSR. The
borders of Poland shifted to the west.
Governments ‘friendly’ to the USSR
were assisted into power in the satellite
states.
This map shows the westward expansion
of the USSR, and its growing control
over ‘satellite states’ in Eastern and
Central Europe between 1945 and 1948.

(Mosedschurte, CC BY-SA 3.0 unported)

Estimations on the number of expelled Germans

Allied map used at Potsdam to determine the number of Germans that (U.S. Department
of State, CC BY-SA
would have to be expelled from the eastern German territories using 3.0 unported)
different border scenarios.
Germany

The Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park,

East Berlin.

(Pubic Domain)

From 1945, the key to Stalin’s aims in Europe was Germany, and its capital Berlin. Stalin
pushed the Red Army into costly offensives in order to capture Berlin before the western
allies reached the city. He believed that Berlin should be a single city, predominantly under
Soviet control and influence – and that such control over Berlin was the rightful reward for
the huge sacrifices that had been made by the USSR to achieve victory over Nazism.
Subsequent events were unwelcome to Stalin. The Four-power occupation led to separate
administrations in the western zones in Berlin, and in the western parts of Germany. In June
1948, Stalin launched the Berlin Blockade in order to regain the Soviet control of the city
that had briefly existed in 1945. When this blockade was defeated by the Berlin Airlift, the
division of Berlin, and of Germany, became permanent, something Stalin had never wanted
or envisaged.
 The atomic bomb

‘Joe One’. Testing of the first

Soviet atomic bomb, 1949

(Public Domain)

From 1945 to 1949, the United States and its allies held a monopoly of nuclear weapons.
Stalin’s regime regarded this as a dangerous threat; huge resources were put into the
development of a Soviet atom bomb, coordinated by L.P. Beria.
The successful test of ‘Joe One’ in 1949 fundamentally altered the balance of power in the
Cold War. The Soviet Union was now a military-industrial superpower.
The period of ‘High Stalinism’

Stalin’s dictatorship had in many ways softened during the Great Patriotic War. There was
less emphasis on Communist ideology, less persecution of religion, more emphasis on Russian
nationalism and the unity of the people in the face of Nazism. There were widespread hopes
that victory in the war would lead to a new era of reform and internal freedoms. This did
not happen. From 1945, Stalin brutally re-asserted his political control. In this period of
‘High Stalinism’, more people than ever before were sent to the labour camps of the Gulag.
The apparatus of the police state was strengthened and internal dissent was crushed.
Stalin’s 70th birthday celebrations in 1949 elevated the personality cult of Stalin to new
heights. In 1952, the suppression of the so-called Doctors’ Plot against Stalin was used as a
springboard for a new round of purges like those of the 1930s. Only when Stalin died in
March 1953 was there a chance to break out from the fear and rigidity that had prevented
change and modernisation of the Soviet Union.
I firmly believed that after victory Recollections of the Soviet novelist,
everything would suddenly change. When journalist and war reporter, Ilya
I recall conversations at the front and at Ehrenburg.
the rear, when I re-read letters, it
reminds me how everybody expected that
once victory had been won, people would
As the war ended, millions of ordinary Soviet
know real happiness.
people celebrated victory with wild
enthusiasm. They hoped that the immense
sacrifices they had made for the war effort
We realized, of course, that the country
would be rewarded by better economic
had been devastated, impoverished, that
times, and by a relaxation of the harsh
we would have to work hard, and we did
political regime that had pushed people to
not have fantasies about mountains of
the limits in the 1930s and during the war.
gold. But we believed that victory would
These hopes were not fulfilled. In the
bring justice, that human dignity would
immediate post-war years, Stalin plunged the
triumph.
USSR into an era of repression and fear and
renewed calls for sacrifices in the face of a
national emergency.

(Cited by Jerry F. Hough, “Debates About the Postwar

World,” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union
(edited by Susan J. Linz), Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld
(1985), p. 255)
Leopold Trepper
Trepper was a Jewish Communist, born in
Poland in 1904. During the interwar years he
was an activist in Palestine and Paris, and
studied in Moscow at Marchlevski Institute,
the university for foreign Communists. From
1941, Trepper was leader of the ‘Red
Orchestra’ (Rote Kapelle) the left-wing spy-
ring inside Nazi-occupied Europe. He
returned to Moscow in 1944, after France was
liberated. He was awarded a medal as a Hero
of the Soviet Union. But his knowledge of the
world outside the USSR made him an object
of suspicion in Stalin’s Russia. He was sent to
the Gulag, and remained there until 1955.
(From The Great Game, the memoirs of Leopold Trepper,
first published in 1975, pp 331-336)
As I walked down the aircraft steps, I
tried to make out my people in the
darkness. In vain; nobody was waiting for
me. Some high-ranking officers walked
over and greeted me warmly. They
invited me to get in their car. I spent my
first week in Moscow in isolation,
drafting my report. One day, a colonel
came in and told me I had to move to a
different apartment. We got into a car.
Not a word was said. Night had fallen but
I knew Moscow well enough to have some
idea where we were going. When we
arrived at Dzerzhinsky Square, home of
the infamous Lubianka, the reality was
blinding. I was a prisoner.
 Prisoners and Forced
1937 1941 1953 Labour, in the USSR
1937-53

[thousands]
One aspect of renewed
In prisons 545 488 276
repression after 1945 was
the increase in the prison
In camps 821 1501 1728 population and in the
exploitation of forced
labour.
In ‘colonies’ 375 420 741

In ‘special settlements’ 917 930 2754

Total 2.66m 3.36m 5.51m

(Graph constructed by Chris Rowe,

using source material in RW Davies,
soviet economic development from
Lenin to Krushchev, Cambridge 1998)
Map of camps in the Archipelag Gulag

(Antonu, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

 Stalin’s 70th birthday

The Stalin Cult reached its peak in 1949

with the official celebrations of Stalin’s
70th birthday. These lavish celebrations
not only took place inside the USSR;
they were matched by similar stage-
managed outpourings of public
adoration all over the Soviet Bloc and
China, as shown in the picture.

(Public Domain in China)

 The Generalissimo

The Generalissimo. Marshal Stalin,

circa 1945

(British National Archive, Public

Domain)

A cult of personality surrounding Stalin emerged in the 1930s, with numerous statues and
portraits flattering the Great Leader.
After leading the USSR to victory in the Great Patriotic War, Stalin’s cult was raised to new
heights, not only within the USSR but all round the Soviet Bloc. It reached its peak in 1949
with the official celebrations of Stalin’s 70th birthday. These lavish celebrations not only
took place inside the USSR; they were matched by similar stage-managed events all over the
Soviet Bloc and China.
The Stalin Cult after 1945

Invariably the propaganda promoting a

cult of personality around Joseph Stalin
presented him, usually in military
uniform, as a strong leader, a guide, an
inspiration to all, a kind father figure
with the implication that he looked
after the Soviet people as if they were
“his children”.

"Stalin’s kindness enlightens the future of our children”.

(From James Vaughan collection on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

2.0 generic)
 The relations with
China

In 1949, shortly after the

Communist Revolution in
China, Stalin was seen as
the heroic leader of
worldwide Communism.
It was only in 1956, after
Khruschev’s Secret
Speech criticising Stalin,
that tensions arose
between China and the
Celebrations of Stalin’s 70th birthday in Communist China.
USSR, leading to the
‘Sino-Soviet split’.
(Public Domain in China)
An ungainly dwarf of a man passed through gilded and Stalin the
marbled imperial halls, and a path opened up before him; Generalissimo
radiant, admiring glances followed him, while the ears of
courtiers strained to catch his every word. And he, sure of
Djilas was a Yugoslav
himself and his works, obviously paid no attention to all this.
Communist and, after the
His country was in ruins, hungry and exhausted. But his
war, second only to Tito
armies and his generals, heavy with fat and medals, and
in the Yugoslav
drunk with vodka and victory, had already trampled half of
Communist Party. He
Europe under their feet, and he was convinced they would
knew Stalin well. After
soon trample over the other half. He knew that he was one
1948, Djilas became
of the cruelest, most despotic figures in human history. But
disillusioned with Stalin.
this did not worry him one bit; for he was convinced he was
carrying out the will of history.

(Milovan Djilas, Conversations with

Stalin, Harmondsworth, 1969,
p.5)
Recollections of I’d first gone to Moscow in 1944, during the war. At that
Harrison Salisbury time, of course, we were still allies; there was still a certain
camaraderie and a feeling of being together. All that was
gone when I returned in 1949. I had many friends in Moscow,
Many observers noted the
from the war. I telephoned several of them. Either the
extent to which the
telephone did not answer or they hung up when they heard
Soviet Union became
my voice. As I walked along Gorky Street, I would meet
repressed and fearful
people I knew. At first, I tried to speak to them, but they
after the end of the war
would look right through me. I quickly understood that it was
in 1945. Some historians
too dangerous for them to talk to me. I was regarded at that
regard this period of High
time by the police and the government, I suppose, as a
Stalinism as a new
dangerous spy. For any Russian to have any contact with me
development, influenced
might lead to arrest, and possibly a one-way ticket to
by Stalin’s increasing
Siberia.
paranoia; others regard it
as a return to the
methods of terror he had
already used in the later
1930s.

(Recollections of Harrison Salisbury,

an American journalist who had
worked in Moscow during the war
and made a return visit in 1949)
The Cultural Purge

Andrei Zhdanov, leader of the Communist Party in

Leningrad and a key figure in the Stalin regime
after 1945.

(Public Domain)

From 1948, Andrei Zhdanov was put in charge of a harsh crackdown on any aspects of Soviet
arts and culture that were ‘politically unreliable’. Many writers and composers were
intimidated during this cultural purge, known as the ‘Zhdanovschina’.
In 1949 Zhdanov, a heavy drinker, died of a massive heart attack in a sanitarium in Moscow.
Prior to his death he had been relieved of his post by Stalin. Some claim this was because of
his drinking others that he had angered Stalin because he had not condemned Yugoslavia as
strongly as Malenkov at the meeting in 1948 of the Cominform. Four years after his death,
Stalin claimed that Zhdanov had been a victim of the Doctors’ Plot.
“The terror”

Many observers of the USSR in the last stages of Stalin’s

regime have described it as a time of paranoia. Even key
figures within Stalin’s inner circle, Beria, Molotov,
Kaganovich and Mikoyan, feared for their lives. They
expected a new wave of terror as repressive as those of
the 1930s. In 1952 a number of highly-qualified doctors,
mostly Jewish, were arrested and denounced as spies
and traitors. In 1934, Stalin had used the assassination of
Kirov to launch the terror. In 1952 he was intending to do
the same again using the so-called ‘Doctors Plot’.
Molotov, Beria, Khruschev and others feared that this
denunciation of the plot would be the start of a massive
(Public Domain)
Party purge that would include themselves.
The Proclamation announces that Dr Lydia Timashuk, a
medical assistant at the Kremlin hospital, had been
awarded the Order of Lenin for denouncing the Doctors’
Plot. She had been encouraged by the KGB to claim that
Zhdanov’s death from a heart attack had been the result
of deliberate mistreatment by his Doctors.
Dr Yakov Rapoport
Dr Yakov Rapoport was
one of the eminent
specialists who was
denounced as part of the
Doctors Plot. For many
weeks he was held in
solitary confinement at
Lefortovo prison. This
account of what
happened next is from a
report in the New York
Times, based on Dr
Rapoport’s memoirs,
which were published in
May 1988.
Death seemed inevitable, the investigations a sham. But
suddenly the questioners started asking about certain
symptoms that indicated a patient had a fatal illness. They
inquired about good specialists. But the specialists were all
in prison.
Then, while his doctors suggested therapy under the glare of
the interrogators' lamps, Stalin died. And because he died,
the doctors did not. Dr. Rapoport was not told of Stalin's
death. The country was in deep mourning, but all he knew
was that the tone of the interrogations was changing. A few
weeks after the strange questioning about medical
symptoms, he was taken to a new investigator, who first
spoke to castigate the old investigator for Dr. Rapoport's
emaciated appearance. Said the new man: ''Please forget
what happened during the investigation.'' Some weeks later,
Dr. Rapoport was released. As he was revelling in the chance
to use a razor and brush his teeth, his wife told him Stalin
had died.

(J. Lewis & P. Whitehead, Stalin: A

Time for Judgement, London 1991,
p.117)
The end of Stalinism: 1953-1956

When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet Union was plunged into turmoil. Within the regime,
there was a lengthy power struggle which brought about the removal and execution of
Beria and the gradual emergence of Nikita Khrushchev as leader. The power struggle was not
only about which personality would gain dominance; it was also a fierce debate about
policies, and about ‘de-Stalinisation’ - the urgent need for political and economic change
after the stagnation of Stalin’s last years. Abroad, the death of Stalin seemed to open the
way for reforms and greater freedoms in the satellite States and for reducing international
tensions.
Briefly, it appeared that there might be a ‘thaw’ in the Cold War, symbolised by the
international agreement in 1955 that resolved the status of Vienna and ended the four-
power military occupation there. In 1956, however, the outbreak of revolution in Hungary
led to a brutal Soviet crackdown and an assault on Budapest by the Red Army. The crushing
of the Budapest Rising re-established the hostility between the superpowers and ended the
‘Khrushchev Thaw’. Both at home and abroad, the legacy of Stalin remained very difficult to
escape from.
Two Prisoners in At that time I still thought that, for all his faults, Stalin was
Labour Camps recall the last real Communist in the Politburo – that he really
wanted something good – and I even cried in secret. I’m not
how they felt on
ashamed to admit it, but when they were burying him and
hearing the news that
the horns were blowing I went into an empty hut where
Stalin was dead. there was nobody , so I could not be seen by either my
comrade prisoners or by the guards; and I cried, because I
knew that when my brother had perished in the war he had
First part: Lev Kopelev, a died shouting for the Motherland, and for Stalin.
committed Communist,
who in later life changed
his mind about Stalin and
his regime.
There were actually women in the camp who cried when they
Second part: Alice
heard the news Stalin had died, but 99 per cent just jumped
Mulkigian, a young woman,
for joy and said, ‘Today is a Holiday!’
who was an American
citizen who spent five We all had a cup of tea and we celebrated because Stalin was
years imprisoned in a dead, and we all said, ‘None too soon!’.
women’s labour camp in
It was one of the happiest moments, and we felt that
Kazakhstan
(J. Lewis & P. Whitehead, Stalin: A something good was going to happen, because things just
Time for Judgement, London 1991, could not have continued as they were.
p.129)
 Parade in Dresden

The death of Stalin led to a mass outpouring

of organised grief across the USSR and
throughout the Soviet Bloc. This parade in
Dresden, East Germany, in March 1953 was
held to mark the tragic sorrow’ occasioned by
the death of Josef Stalin. 200 000 citizens of
Dresden took part in the ceremonies
organised by the Communist leadership of the
GDR.
The lavish ceremonies to mark the passing of
the Great Leader could not conceal extensive
instability and uncertainty about who might
succeed Stalin, the prospects for some
slackening of the grip of the regime over the
people, and possible changed relationships
(Bundesarchiv, Bild 18684-0002, Erich Hohne, CC-
between the USSR and the West.
BY-SA 3.0 )
 Soviet tanks
suppressing
demonstrations in
Leipzig

Soviet tanks on the streets of

Leipzig, suppressing popular
demonstrations 17 June 1953.

(Bundesarchiv, B285 Bild-14676,

CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The death of Stalin encouraged hopes for liberalisation and reform within the Soviet Bloc.
There were bread riots and disturbances in East Berlin and other cities in the GDR. The
rulers of the GDR had to impose repressive measures, including the deployment of Soviet
armed forces.
Later, in 1956, revelations about Stalin’s faults and crimes in the ‘Secret Speech’ by
Khrushchev stimulated hopes of reform and there was further unrest in the satellite states,
especially in Poland and Hungary.
The power vacuum

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria seen ‘off duty’

around 1940, with his daughter. Stalin can
be seen in the background.

(Public Domain)

The death of Stalin led to political uncertainty in the USSR and in the satellite states. There
was no provision for appointing a new leader. This power vacuum could only be resolved by
a power struggle between the key men in Stalin’s inner circle, such as Vyacheslav Molotov,
Georgii Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev. All these men were especially afraid of Beria, who
had controlled the secret police since the 1930s.
He had survived Stalin’s purges and held great power in the regime: in the terror of the
1930s, during the Second World War, and as the co-ordinator of Soviet Russia’s development
of atomic weapons. Beria’s ruthlessness meant that he was greatly feared by his colleagues
in the Politburo.
The removal of Beria
An account of the
removal of Lavrentiy
Pavlovich Beria in the
power struggle that
followed the death of
Stalin in March 1953.
(HISTORY TODAY Volume 53 Issue
12, December 2003)
On June 26th, at a hastily convened meeting of the Presidium,
Khrushchev launched a blistering attack on Beria, accusing him of
being a cynical careerist, long in the pay of British intelligence,
and no true Communist. Beria was taken aback and said, ‘What’s
going on, Nikita?’. Khrushchev told him he would soon find out.
Molotov and others chimed in against Beria and Khrushchev
proposed a motion for his instant dismissal. Before a vote could
be taken, the panicky Malenkov pressed a button on his desk as
the pre-arranged signal to Marshal Zhukov and a group of armed
soldiers in a nearby room. They immediately burst in, seized
Beria and manhandled him away. Beria’s men were guarding the
Kremlin, so Zhukov had to wait until nightfall before smuggling
Beria out in the back of a car. He was taken first to the Lefortovo
Prison and subsequently to the headquarters of General
Moskalenko, commander of Moscow District Air Defence, where
he was imprisoned in an underground bunker.
Beria’s arrest was kept as quiet as possible while his principal
supporters were rounded up – some were rumoured to have been
shot out of hand – and regular troops were moved into Moscow.
Then the Central Committee of the Party spent five days
convincing itself of Beria’s guilt before an experienced
prosecutor, loyal to Khrushchev, was appointed to make certain
that Beria was tried, condemned and executed with the
maximum appearance of legality. Beria was finally executed on
23 December 1953.
 The new leadership of the USSR
after Stalin

(Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-33241-0001, CC-BY-SA)

By 1955, Nikita Khrushchev virtually controlled the Politburo, though Bulganin held the post
of Premier. Stalin’s ‘old guard’ had been moved aside. Stalin and Beria were dead; and,
although he still held official posts, Vyacheslav Molotov (standing on the far left) had been
marginalised. Khrushchev (second from right) stands next to Nikolai Bulganin at a gala
reception in Moscow in honour of the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.
The Krushchev Thaw

(Public Domain in China and the US)

From 1954, the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ improved relations with many foreign countries. There
were cultural exchanges with the West. Khrushchev and Bulganin led friendly diplomatic
missions to India in 1955, and to Britain and China in 1956. At that time, it was not yet clear
that Khrushchev was the dominant leader in the USSR. Many observers wrongly believed he
was sharing power with Bulganin.
This period of improved international relations did not last. China was offended by the
attacks on Stalin in Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’; and the crushing of the Hungarian Rising
caused renewed hostility between East and West. Here we see Nikita Khrushchev and
Nikolai Bulganin with Chinese Communist officials in February 1956, during the ‘Soviet
‘charm offensive’ to improve foreign relations after the death of Stalin.
 The Austrian State Treaty

Main staircase in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna,

where the Austrian State Treaty was signed on 15 May
1955 by representatives of the Allied occupying
powers and the Austrian government.

(Jorge Royan, CC-BY-SA 3.0, unported)

A significant moment in the improvement of diplomatic relations during the ‘Khrushchev

Thaw’ was the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. The Four Occupying Powers (USSR, Britain,
France, and the United States) agreed to bring the military occupation of Vienna to an end,
and to restore Austria as an independent republic, neutral in the Cold War.
It was hoped that the success of the Vienna agreement would lead to a similar resolution of
the problem of Berlin.
The Austrian State Treaty

Negotiations over the future status of Austria began in

1947 but were downgraded in priority because of the
importance given to an Allied settlement of the future of
Germany. The Cold War climate from 1950 onwards also
put a brake on negotiations. After Stalin’s death the
Khrushchev thaw led the western powers to believe that
a negotiated treaty on Austria was possible. The main
obstacle was the neutrality of Austria. Julius Raab, who
had succeeded Leopold Figl as Austrian Chancellor on 2
April 1953 replaced his vocal anti-Communist Foreign
Minister Karl Gruber with Figl.
The new Foreign Minister then used diplomatic channels (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)
to ask the Indian government, which had good relations
with the USSR, to convince Moscow that an independent
Austria would be neutral. In April 1955 Raab was invited
to Moscow for meetings with Molotov which led to a draft
Treaty. Washington was not particularly happy about
being out-manoeuvred but the Treaty was signed by the
Four Powers and Austria on 15 May, 1955.
Krushchev’s Secret Speech
A young Mikhail Gorbachev had attended the
20th Party Congress in 1956 as deputy chief
of Agitprop from his region’s Komsomol. Fifty
years later Mikhail Gorbachev was reported
as saying that Khrushchev’s speech had far
wider implications than just the critique of
the cult of personality around Stalin and
many of the decisions Stalin had made. It
also paved the way for political reforms
including perestroika.
(Krushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ to the 20th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 24-25 February 1956)
We must state that after the war the
situation became even more complicated.
Stalin became even more capricious,
irritable, and brutal; in particular his
suspicions grew. His persecution mania
reached unbelievable dimensions. Many
workers become enemies before his very
eyes. After the war Stalin separated
himself from the collective leadership
even more. Everything was decided by
him alone without any consideration for
anyone or anything. This unbelievable
suspicion was cleverly taken advantage of
by the abject provocateur and vile
enemy, Beria, who murdered thousands
of Communists and loyal Soviet people.
 The period of reform in Poland

Gomulka addressing Communist party colleagues in

Warsaw during the ‘period of reform’ in 1956.

(Public Domain in Poland and the US)

Khrushchev’s so-called Secret Speech in February 1956 raised hopes in the satellite states of
the Soviet Empire that there would be liberalisation and reform. The Communist leader of
Poland, Wladislaw Gomulka, who had a good relationship with Khrushchev, started a
cautious programme of reforms. Gomulka’s promises of reform did not get very far; there
was a surge of popular dissent against the restrictions and shortages faced by ordinary
people.
This dissent was then crushed by the Polish Communist regime, using the army and the
police.
‘We Demand Bread!’,
Poznan, 1956

Popular protests against

the Communist regime in
Poland were particularly
intense in the city of
Poznan in Silesia.
In June 1956, a
demonstration by about
100 000 workers was put
down by force, involving
several hundred tanks
and about 10 000 troops
of the army and internal
security police. Some
A protest by Polish workers in Poznan, June 1956
dozens of people were
killed. (Polish Secret Police, Public Domain in Poland and the US)
Tanks on the streets of Poznan, 1956

Soviet tanks on a deserted Josef Stalin (Public Domain in Poland and the US)

Square, Poznan, June 1956

Budapest, 1956

RUSSIANS GO HOME! Anti-Soviet slogan in

Budapest, October 1956.

(FORTEPAN/Pesti Srác, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

In October 1956 in Hungary, there were popular protests and demands for reform, similar to
those that had occurred in Poland in June. These protests were encouraged by Imre Nagy
and other reformist Communist leaders in Hungary, who believed that Khrushchev’s ‘Secret
Speech’ should lead to liberalisation throughout the Soviet Bloc.
In Hungary these protests spilled over into full-scale revolution and dreams of
independence. There was a temporary withdrawal of Soviet forces from Hungary. But, after
a brief pause, the USSR sent large-scale forces into the streets of Budapest and the Rising
was brutally suppressed.
 Budapest, 1956

Demonstrations in
Budapest during the
demands for political and
economic reform in
Hungary in October 1956.

(FORTEPAN/Nagy Gyula, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

 Heroes Square in
Budapest, 1956

All that remains of the huge

statue to Josef Stalin is his empty
boots.

(FORTEPAN/Pesti Srác, CC BY-SA

3.0)

At first the protests in Hungary demanded internal reforms, supported by the moderate
leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party. These protests became more radical and
nationalist, with violent attacks on the hated secret police and demands for the removal of
Soviet troops from Hungary.
During the brief period when Soviet forces pulled out of Hungary there were hopes that the
revolution might succeed. Later, the Red Army returned in strength and the revolution was
brutally suppressed. Its leaders were executed.
Soviet power restored in Hungary

The restoration of Soviet control. A street in (FORTEPAN/Nagy Gyula, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Budapest after the 1956 Hungarian Rising.

Myth of Liberation Suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Union
in 1956 was not the definitive turning point in Western Cold
War policy toward Eastern Europe, forcing the West to
abandon initiatives aimed at liberating the region from
Soviet control. The real turning point in American policy had
been in 1953. The East German uprising and mass protests in
Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria spawned discussion in
Washington of more interventionist “liberation” policies. But
by the end of that year the Eisenhower Administration that
had assumed office amidst electoral campaign rhetoric of
“liberation” concluded in National Security Council Report
No. 174 (December 1953) that only an unacceptable war
could end Soviet control of Eastern Europe.
U.S. policy was formally defined as promoting evolutionary
reform within the Soviet European space rather than
liberation as revolutionary change. This policy reflected the
conclusions of some twenty U.S. government studies, that
Soviet control of Eastern Europe was a fact of life.

(A. Ross Johnson, Looking Back at

the Cold War: 1956 Wilson Center
Cold War International History
Project, October 2016)
After Stalin’s death, there were many trips abroad. Expectations and
Khrushchev went to China; in May 1955 to Yugoslavia, then to realities
India, Burma, Indonesia and so on. Very soon, however,
Khrushchev began to think that a quiet termination of the
The authors were Russian
Cold War could not be accomplished, because policy-making
experts whose researches
in the United States remained in the hands of staunch
were based on Soviet
enemies who could be convinced only by force. Two
archives opened up after
developments in particular influenced this conclusion. One
the collapse of the USSR
was the relentless policy of encirclement and roll-back of the
in 1991.
Soviet Union conducted by John Foster Dulles, the US
Secretary of State; the other was a revolt of party leaders
within the Soviet system.
The Polish and Hungarian revolts in 1956 took Khrushchev
aback. They underlined the fragility of the Socialist camp,
and cast a long shadow over Khrushchev’s optimistic
expectations. ‘Peaceful co-existence’ remained his long-term
project, but he learned a lesson about the bipolar and ‘zero-
sum’ nature of the Cold War.

(Vladislav Zubok and Constantine

Pleshakov, From Inside the Kremlin’s
Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev,
Harvard University Press 1996 pp
186-7)
 STALIN, THE USSR AND THE WORLD
1945-1956
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