Book Review
The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War,
1943-53
Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons, eds., The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 194353. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. xxv + 448 pp.
This impressive volume consists of papers originally written for a conference in Cortona, Italy in
September 1994. It thus is based on archival research conducted by West European and Russian
scholars in the initial period of openness following the collapse of Communism, when documents
were more readily available. The book covers three main topics: the Soviet Union and the
postwar European order; the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) and the consolidation
of a Soviet bloc; and relations between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. Italy is heavily
represented, both among the authors and in the subjects of individual chapters, but the approach
[End Page 180] is comprehensive. There are solid chapters on Norway and Denmark, Germany,
Finland, Poland, the Balkans, and Greece.
The book does not deal explicitly with the well-researched U.S.-Soviet dimension of the early
Cold War, but in the introduction Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons relate the book's findings to the
different schools of American Cold War historiography--orthodox, revisionist, and post-revisionist-and conclude that "the tendency is to opt for the first or third of these schools, which place more
weight on the effects of Soviet policy." Many of the essays demonstrate that Stalin had farreaching objectives in Europe and was seeking to extend Soviet influence by transforming the
European countries along socialist lines. At the same time, the authors also stress the instances
of restraint in Soviet policy. They present evidence that Stalin sought to avoid premature conflict
with the West, especially in countries outside the Soviet sphere of influence in East-Central
Europe. Even within that sphere, he initially tried to moderate the pace of Sovietization to avoid
alarming Western governments and alienating potential non-Communist allies.
Aleksei M. Filitov's chapter, analyzing Soviet planning for the future of Europe, draws on the files
of the commission headed by Ivan Maisky and Maksim Litvinov, which Filitov was able to
examine (in part) in the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Filitov points out that a
memorandum written by Maisky on 11 January 1944 set forth two fundamental aims for Soviet
policy in the postwar period: (1) to establish a long period of peace in which the Soviet Union
would become sufficiently strong to deter aggression from any power or combination of powers in
Europe and Asia; and (2) to ensure that Europe, or at least continental Europe, became "socialist,
thereby excluding the possibility of wars occurring in this part of the world" (p. 47). Filitov believes
that the first of these objectives was to be accomplished over a 10-year period, the second in 3050 years.
Like the other authors, however, Filitov is cautious in drawing conclusions about how ideas
translated into policy. Time and again, the authors provide insights drawn from the words and
actions of government and party officials, planning documents, and conversations involving Stalin
and other leaders, but they stop short of drawing definitive conclusions about the decision-making
process within the Soviet leadership. Such conclusions must await further research in archival
sources not yet available. Elena Aga-Rossi and Victor Zaslavsky conclude in their chapter on the
Soviet Union and the Italian Communist Party that the existence of Soviet minimum and
maximum programs for postwar Europe "seems to have found its documentary confirmation" (p.
191). Still, more evidence is needed to complete the picture and establish definitively how Soviet
leaders made concrete policy choices relating to these programs.
Most of the chapters are based on material from the Soviet archives, but several that focus on
Western policy draw exclusively on new Western sources. The essay by Georges-Henri Soutou
on General Charles de Gaulle and the Soviet Union from 1943 to 1945, which focuses on the
December 1944 Franco-Soviet pact, is one of the most interesting. For a time, de Gaulle thought
that this pact would be France's main instrument for managing Soviet and German power in the
post-war period. De Gaulle reluctantly concluded that it was necessary to abandon Eastern
Europe if France wanted to achieve an understanding with Moscow about Germany, and he
clearly linked his [End Page 181] policy toward the Soviet Union with his desire for a future
French-led West European federation. Soutou analyzes the contradictions in de Gaulle's own
policies, and points out the numerous misrepresentations of the 1944 negotiations in the
general's Mémoires de guerre, tracing themes that resonate with current discussions about the
future of post-Cold War Europe.
At a time when governments and commentators in Central and Eastern Europe are prone to
claim that the West betrayed them at Yalta and afterward (perhaps to bolster their efforts to gain
rapid admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union as acts of
historical restitution), careful archival research reminds us that many officials in these countries
eagerly cooperated with the Soviet Union. Some even resisted calls from Moscow to slow the
pace of Sovietization, if only for tactical reasons. Vesselin Dimitrov documents how the Bulgarian
Communist Party hastened the political, and in many cases physical, destruction of the nonCommunist opposition, while other authors stress the radicalizing tendencies in the eastern zone
of Germany and elsewhere in the Soviet bloc. Similarly, using Soviet documents, Rossi and
Zaslavsky convincingly demonstrate that Moscow's control over the Italian Communist Party was
virtually total. The politically expedient efforts by Palmiro Togliatti and his successors to project
differences between the Italian and Soviet Communist parties back into the 1940s had no basis in
fact. In this as in many other chapters, The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War contributes
significantly to a more complete understanding of the tragedy of the Cold War in Europe--a
tragedy that includes but goes well beyond occupation by the Red Army in 1944 and 1945.
John Van Oudenaren
Library of Congress