The last paragraph of my article in the October issue of Labour Affairs was somewhat garbled in the typing. It was about the idea that the Soviet Union became imperialist at the end of the Second World War, and that was a factor leading to its downfall.
The point being made was that the authority asserted by the Soviet State over countries in Eastern Europe in 1945 was different in kind to the authority asserted by the British States, and other European States over their Empires.
Those European colonies were established by conquest. Russian control in Eastern Europe was also established by conquest—but it was conquest of an alliance of states that had attacked it with the object of destroying it.
Those States did not call off their war when Russia demonstrated its power of resisting them. It was not that kind of war.
Britain did not conquer and govern India in response to an Indian attack on it. Nor was that the case with regard to Ireland, or any of its many other Imperial possessions.
Britain could have lifted its subjugation of India, Ireland, etc. without any danger to itself. It stood in no danger from the Empire it had wantonly subjugated if it let go of it.
Russia could, of course, have refrained from conquest. It could have stopped its defensive action when it reached its borders of August 1941, and left the invaders free to decide what to do about it! Maybe that would have been the pedantically correct thing to do. Didn’t Marx suggest something like that in the War of 1870?
If Stalin had done that, he would have left the European situation in an interesting condition. Perhaps it would have been the best thing.
But it was not what the West wanted. Its terms for settlement with the Axis Powers was unconditional surrender by the enemy, and it would probably have denounced a separate Russian settlement as betrayal.
Although Russia had greatly weakened the invading Armies in the course of driving them back to their starting point, the West did not feel confident of carrying through the War it had started to the unconditional surrender of Germany. It needed Russia to do that for it before preparing for its own war on Russia.
If Russia had stopped at its own borders—so as not to be Imperialist—the War would possibly have ended with three power blocks in Europe.
And Churchill, who had considerable influence despite losing the British Election in 1945, said he had always seen Russia as the man enemy, describing the War that was fought as “unnecessary”—a distraction caused by diplomatic bungling.
Brendan Clifford
