Stalin Embattled 1943-1948

Fülszöveg

In Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948, an
analysis of Stalin's foreign policy and the
politics of Communism in the postwar
era, William McCagg dissolves many
myths about' a period which shaped to-
day's world. He challenges in particular
the Cold War notion that Stalin's trouble
with Tito and Mao Tse-tung in 1945 was
atypical and that at home, in the Krem-
lin, his control was complete.
McCagg bases his study on a mass
of fascinating archival work by Soviet,
Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Polish, and
Yugoslav historians and on recent
studies of American and British policy,
as well as on the public documents of the
Soviet, European, and Asian Communist
parties. Applying modern research
methods to the study of Communism in
this critical period, he proposes that Sta-
lin, who was a Marxist-Leninist, sensed
the potential for insurrection at the end
of the war and recognized that rev-
olutionaries might attack his imperialist
allies. Accordingly, from 1944 through
the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

In Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948, an
analysis of Stalin's foreign policy and the
politics of Communism in the postwar
era, William McCagg dissolves many
myths about' a period which shaped to-
day's world. He challenges in particular
the Cold War notion that Stalin's trouble
with Tito and Mao Tse-tung in 1945 was
atypical and that at home, in the Krem-
lin, his control was complete.
McCagg bases his study on a mass
of fascinating archival work by Soviet,
Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Polish, and
Yugoslav historians and on recent
studies of American and British policy,
as well as on the public documents of the
Soviet, European, and Asian Communist
parties. Applying modern research
methods to the study of Communism in
this critical period, he proposes that Sta-
lin, who was a Marxist-Leninist, sensed
the potential for insurrection at the end
of the war and recognized that rev-
olutionaries might attack his imperialist
allies. Accordingly, from 1944 through
the confrontation with Tito in 1948, he
did everything in his power to inhibit
revolutionary activity abroad which he
could not directly control. McCagg finds,
however, that Stalin's foreign policy
after the war differed from the contain-
ment policies pursued by the Western
Powers. During 1945 his willingness to
encourage the peaceful spread of rev-
olution abroad enabled the Soviet Com-
munist Party to resume moral leadership
on the domestic political scene, subtly
and unexpectedly usurping his author-
ity. To meet this challenge, and to dispel
the expectations that the victory had
aroused, Stalin resorted to foreign policy
probings of Western solidarity which,
because of their contrast with his normal
conservatism, have bewildered all histo-
rians of the era. Vissza