Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Peter Ruggenthaler, The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin's Foreign Policy , 1945–1953 . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. 442 pp. $120.00.

2017; The MIT Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/jcws_r_00750

1531-3298

Radoslav Yordanov,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

This comprehensively researched book explores the Soviet Union's policy toward Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway from 1945 until the death of Iosif Stalin in 1953. In confronting this ambitious task, Peter Ruggenthaler seeks to answer a basic question: “What did neutrality look like when seen from Moscow in the early stage of the Cold War” (p. xx). He argues that Stalin viewed neutrality as a foreign policy instrument or “propaganda tool.” To demonstrate this point across several countries, Ruggenthaler highlights “the plans, strategies, tactical considerations and goals of the Soviet Central East European and East European policies on the basis of the most up-to-date state of research” (p. xvi). Covering all of this in a single volume would be nearly impossible, and Ruggenthaler therefore offers the caveat that he will not be presenting “theoretical disquisitions” on “neutrality,” “neutralization,” and “nonalignment” (p. xix). The resulting fast-paced, dense, insightful narrative, which is minimal on context and rich on well-documented facts and events, provides ample evidence to corroborate Ruggenthaler's premise.The book is based on exhaustive mining of important Russian archives. Through in-depth archival research at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) and less-thorough study, owing to access restrictions, at the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, and the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, Ruggenthaler elucidates Stalin's “‘real’ thinking and motives” and takes us “behind the scenes of the decision making process at the top level in Moscow” (p. 367). Consequently, one of the book's major academic strengths is its painstakingly organized treasure trove of documentary evidence, which will have lasting and undeniable value for historians of the period. The meticulously presented references, which constitute almost a third of the book, will stand the test of time, and their scholarly utility as a starting point for further research on the topic goes well beyond the scope of the tightly woven narrative.The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the period from 1945 until the watershed year of 1949, which plays a crucial part in the narrative by marking, on the one hand, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and, on the other hand, the Soviet Union's acquisition of nuclear weapons. The second portion covers the final few years of Stalin's life.The story moves from Central Europe to the Nordic countries, involving a long list of actors, ranging from the Austrian Communist Party Secretary General Johann Koplenig and Austrian Chancellor Karl Renner in Austria; through President Wilhelm Pieck and Socialist Unity Party General Secretary Walter Ulbricht in the German Democratic Republic (GDR); to President Juho Kusti Paasikivi and Prime Minister Urho Kekkonen in Finland. Ruggenthaler scrutinizes their actions from the perspective of the Soviet Union's interest in Europe's postwar division into spheres of influence between the newly formed Western and Eastern camps, led by Washington and Moscow respectively. In Central and Northern Europe, numerous presidents, prime ministers, and Communist party leaders come and go, whereas in Moscow, Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and later Andrei Vyshinskii are the enduring protagonists, providing the compositional adhesive for this wide-ranging account. In Ruggenthaler's story, Stalin and to a lesser extent his closest foreign policy aides were great schemers who used manipulative diplomatic maneuvers to further their objectives. Ruggenthaler's thematically driven narrative precludes an in-depth discussion of the local environment, but he provides the quintessential ingredients needed for understanding the motivations behind the Soviet leader's diplomatic overtures. However, those expecting a gripping tale must be prepared for a rather taxing exposition that demands the reader's utmost attention to the unifying theme; namely, the Soviet regime's use and abuse of neutrality as a foreign policy tool in the emerging bipolar world.Another cohesive element of the book is its discussion of the relative salience of neutrality in Stalin's conception of European security and of the global balance of power. Because Ruggenthaler sees Stalin's policy as neither purely defensive nor exclusively offensive, he borrows Vladimir Pechatnov's characterization of Stalin's approach as “defensive expansion” (p. 350). Ruggenthaler does not stop there, however, and enriches the discussion of the dual character of Soviet foreign policy by providing a convincing selection of case studies that illustrate Stalin's “double-track strategy.” The concept of neutrality was a tactical measure in Stalin's foreign policy arsenal that was “forever oscillating between imperialist and ideological considerations” through a “veil of secrecy and disinformation” aimed at promoting the “global expansion of Communism” (p. 367). As a result, by interpreting the immediate value of neutrality through the vantage point of Stalin's strategic postwar security imperatives, Ruggenthaler goes beyond a narrow discussion of neutrality and places it in a wider historical context, which adds considerable value to the book's academic appeal.Neutrality, as a tenet in Stalin's foreign policy, played a notable role in his “defensive expansionism” in the early years of the Cold War. Ruggenthaler sees neutrality as a “double-edged political tool” (p. 367) in Stalin's foreign policy, which is well distinguished both in the Soviet Union's relations with the Nordic countries and in its stance on the question of German unification. Ruggenthaler considers why some countries, like the GDR, were Sovietized, whereas others, like Finland or Austria, were not. The Soviet Union did not insist on Finland's Sovietization, Ruggenthaler finds, because such a step “would … have involved an unpredictable amount of bloodshed” (p. 140). Soviet perceptions of Sweden's policy of neutrality also attest to Stalin's dualistic approach to neutrality. Viewed in Moscow as “irritating in the extreme” (p. 130), a neutral Sweden was also regarded as a buffer zone between NATO and Finland, which justified the value of its neutral status in Moscow's geostrategic calculations. Thus, as Ruggenthaler's account suggests, the dividing line, separating the positive from the negative application of neutrality from Moscow's perspective was predicated on a careful calculation vis-à-vis the West. Stalin's strategy for East-Central Europe during the formative years of the Cold War “increasingly resembled a series of experiments to probe the Western powers’ limits of pain tolerance in terms of Realpolitik.” (p. 30; cf. p. 130). The way neutrality was seen in Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm, or Helsinki was not necessarily the way neutrality was seen in Moscow or Washington. Neutrality, we read, always came with a tint, and it was the prerogative of the great powers to ensure that this tint favored their own foreign policy objectives.In Central Europe, the question of German unification took a central place in Stalin's overtures toward the West, and, as Ruggenthaler argues, it played a vital role for the Soviet bloc's stabilization. The extended diplomatic posturing known as the “Battle of Notes” has been discussed at length in Western historiography. The in-depth interpretation and analysis of this episode in the early Cold War years, based on exhaustive original research, is one of this book's major virtues. Ruggenthaler's archival mining helps reconstruct a great deal of detail surrounding the events leading to the famous Stalin Note of March 1952. He maintains that the “Battle of Notes” was a diplomatic initiative on Stalin's part, aimed at stabilizing the system and the Eastern bloc (pp. 227, 366). By using the prospect of neutrality “as a decoy,” Stalin could more easily pursue his “real aims, the construction of Socialism in the GDR and the strengthening of the Soviet position in Germany” (p. 216). Ruggenthaler casts the Soviet leader as an astute geopolitical chess player who would not shy away from high-stakes gambits. However, given Stalin's generally risk-averse approach on issues of vital interest, such as German reunification and German rearmament, one wonders how he would have reacted if the Western governments had called his bluff.Finally, Ruggenthaler offers a discussion of some important methodological questions that have provoked considerable interest and debate among students of Soviet foreign policy. Vojtech Mastny, in his book The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 9, claimed that the greatest surprise “so far to have come out of the Russian archives is that there was no surprise” and that “the thinking of the insiders conformed substantially to what Moscow was publicly saying.” Ruggenthaler convincingly argues that the opposite is true: There was in fact “double bookkeeping” in Soviet decision-making—a situation that has been abundantly demonstrated by documents that were “not supposed ever to be subjected to scholarly scrutiny”. Upon closer examination, however, one may even suggest the existence of “triple bookkeeping,” as the then U.S. deputy chief of mission in Moscow, Jack Matlock, said in February 1978, concluding that Soviet leaders resorted to a layered policy when announcing their actions. One layer, Matlock wrote, was aimed for public consumption; a second layer was aimed at the United States and “to some extent other western countries privately”; a third layer, “at the bottom [was] their real policy which will be reflected in their actions, particularly covert, but only partially represented in the upper layers” (Cited from a memorandum of 13 September 1978 in Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter, National Security Affairs Staff Material, Collection 27, Box 2, Folder 2/78). One may add to this discussion that secrecy, deceit, and misinformation were the natural byproducts of Soviet decision-making, targeting a variety of recipients. Therefore, the past twenty years of researching Stalin's foreign policy in the partly accessible Russian archives, from Mastny to Ruggenthaler, may suggest that even if there is no enormous surprise to be discovered, one can easily find a wealth of very interesting smaller secrets and surprises that cumulatively can lead to far-reaching reassessments of certain matters.To conclude, this is a well-constructed, richly researched, and beautifully produced book (albeit with some minor translation and typographic issues) that adds a nuanced analysis to the prodigious body of literature on Stalin's policy toward Europe after World War II. It shows that the Soviet leader, as a “flexibly pragmatic” ideologue, whose Realpolitik tendencies, wedged between cautious foreign policy deliberations and ideological imperatives, saw neutrality rather cynically as an instrument, a means to an end, and not as an aim in itself. (The characterization of Stalin as “flexibly pragmatic” comes from Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, New York: Penguin Press, 2014, p. 736). Ruggenthaler's book also confirms, as do other analyses of Stalin's postwar foreign policy, the striking contrast between Stalin's ruthless domestic policies and his “defensive expansionism” abroad, thus deepening our understanding of the intricacies of Soviet foreign policy in the period, from its deliberation and planning at the top to its implementation on the ground. The book's dense, richly textured narrative might seem intimidating at first glance, but Ruggenthaler's insightful premise, thorough research, and compelling arguments will be a starting point for all future studies of this topic.