Customer Reviews

Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin

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Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George F. Kennan, provides a magnificent, sweeping view of the diplomatic history of the first half of the 20th Century. The book is based on lectures Kennan delivered at Oxford and Harvard between 1957 and 1960 and is written in a relaxed, conversational style. One can almost imaging him holding forth over a glass of port after dinner. This book covers the years 1917-1950 and provides a suitable postscript to Kennan's more detailed two volume history of Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920: Russia Leaves the War and The Decision to Intervene (which I previously reviewed on Amazon.)

Some of the more valuable insights I gained from Russia and the West include the following:

Both the Russians and the western allies failed to appreciate the primary motivation of the other in 1917. The West was focused on defeating Germany in WWI, to the exclusion of the internal situation in Russia. The Russians, Bolsheviks and Whites alike, were focused on establishing and controlling a stable national government in Russia. By pressing the provisional Russian Government (of Alexander Kerensky that held power February-November 1917) to vigorously continue the war against Germany, the West contributed to the Bolshevik revolution and Russia's resulting withdrawal from the war.

Western demands for unconditional German surrender in WWI, the punitive nature of the Versailles treaty, and western refusal to treat Weimar Germany as a worthy partner contributed significantly Germany's (unenthusiastic) rapprochement with the Soviet Union in the Rapallo Treaty and to Hitler's rise to power.

Soviet foreign policy between the World Wars was marked by seeking diplomatic recognition, trade, and financial credits from the West. Simultaneously, Soviet policy denounced the bourgeois, capitalist western governments as the implacable class enemies of the working classes, including the workers of the West, and stridently called for the western workers to rise up and overthrow their governments. These Soviet policies grossly violated the established norms of diplomatic conduct, which were based on mutual acceptance of the legitimacy and equality other nations, and harkened back to an era of omnipotent despots who dealt with foreign entities as illegitimate and inferior.

Stalin's purges in the Great Terror of the late 1930s are likely to have been motivated, in part, by his desire to eliminate any internal opponents who could be in a position to question his handling of the emerging Nazi threat. Stalin's options, confronting or collaborating with Hitler, were both fraught with potential danger for Russia and his hold on power. By eliminating most of the other leading Bolsheviks (Kirov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc) Stalin bought himself insurance against any internal threat to his power in the event that his handling of the external threat failed.

Following Hitler's successes in the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, Stalin was faced with simultaneous and competing proposals for alliances with Germany and with Britain and France. The British-French failure to stand up to Hitler in the previous three crises was probably decisive in Stalin's acceptance of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact which gave Hitler a free hand to attack Poland from the west and rewarded Stalin with the eastern half of Poland plus the three Baltic states. Stalin subsequently overplayed his hand with Hitler by demanding Soviet dominance in the Balkans. This affront, together with Britain's stubborn refusal to surrender and Germany's inability to invade Britain, led to Hitler's invasion of Russia.

In all these events, plus many more, Kennan provides marvelous insight into the logic, strategies, successes, and failures of national leaders and diplomats of both Russia and the West.

I fully agree with the first comment and would add that much of the insight this book provides is applicable to world affairs in general. Kennan approaches the fateful decisions that lead up to World War II and shaped the European landscape for more than 70 years with great wisdom and humility. This is a very personal account of diplomatic history, replete with lessons today's generations would do well to learn. Far from a dry tome, this book brings to light the personalities involved and the uncertainties and pressures they faced. Highly recommended.

This volume reads well 50 years after writing. A proponent of looking at the world realistically, Kennan shows how personalities of the world's leaders do influence events, even when not always intended. There are also observations about national traits and the interplay of conflicting motives that bear on the international political problems of any age.