Though, in the name of Communist solidarity and the formation of a classless society, the Soviet

Union has tried its utmost to consolidate all Communist nations in one Communist super-State
under its absolute control, yet national sentiment has proved too strong a force and has successfully
thwarted all its efforts.
(Basic Principles of Geopolitics and History, by Debabrata Sen)
At the same time the state structure of Eastern Europe was perceived to be fluid. This view was not
exclusively communist; the area's inter-war history had been disappointing, and in 1943 Britain had
toyed with ideas of an Eastern, or at least Danubian, Federation. Stalin did not like them. But he
allowed the canvassing, after the war, both of various Balkan federations and of a more ambitious
extension of the Soviet Union, merging 'the Ukraine with Hungary and Rumania, and Byelorussia
with Poland and Czechoslovakia, while the Balkan states were to be joined with Russia'.
In November 1941 Maisky had sketched a scheme for a Balkan federation centred on Yugoslavia,
a federation of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and another of the Baltic states, all to lean
economically and militarily on Russia (FRUS 1941, i, pp. 337-8). In 1948 Gottwald suggested to
Stalin that Czechoslovakia accede to the Soviet Union (Khrushchev Remembers, iii, p. 131); and an
SED leader told Wolfgang Leonhard it was quite possible, though not inevitable, that in due course
all the People's Democracies would join 'as new Union Republics' (Child of the Revolution (1957)
p. 403). As late as 1972 Zhivkov agreed with Brezhnev to create conditions for Bulgaria to do so,
something he continued to hope for until the advent of Gorbachev (Keesing's, 37745)
(The Cold War: The Great Powers and Their Allies, by J. P. D. Dunbabin)
Litvinov's memorandum assigned Sweden, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
all of the Balkans excluding Greece, and Turkey to the Soviet security sphere. The British sphere
would include Western Europe, with Denmark, Germany, Austria, and Italy constituting a neutral
zone. Litvinov's appetite was bigger than that of Maisky ten months earlier, as shown by his
addition of Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey to the earlier list. It exceeded Kennan's worst
expectations and would have given Churchill and Eden a terrible fright. Litvinov was doubtless
emboldened by the successes of the Red Army, which by November 1944 was in possession of
much of Poland and had entered Hungary. But no Soviet success could explain the addition of
Sweden and Turkey, nor were there any plans to invade those countries, as they remained neutral
and had no German troops on their territory. On January 11, 1945, in preparation for the Yalta
Conference, Litvinov sent Molotov and Vyshinsky a second memo that repeated major provisions of
his earlier memorandum of November 1944 and the article he published later that year in The War
and the Working Class. He maintained that ideally the Soviet security sphere would include
Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and
Turkey. Litvinov expected the British to oppose the inclusion of Yugoslavia and Turkey in the
Soviet sphere. He also thought that it would be unwise to discuss security spheres with the
Americans, given the negative attitude of the American media to the idea. Personally, Roosevelt, as
a realist, wrote Litvinov, perhaps sees the inevitability of spheres, zones, and blocs arising in
Europe, but, taking account of public opinion, he will not venture to give his agreement to that in
any form. 15 Like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, Litvinov's plan was a proposal to
formally divide the world in two irrespective of the will of the nations in question, which could be
coerced into acquiescence once an agreement was reached. It was an ambitious plan, to say the
least, but it accepted some limits, as Litvinov had no desire to dominate southern Europe. The
Soviets wanted control of the Straits in order to turn the Black Sea into an internal lake, not to
dominate the Mediterranean. Greece had a special place in the Russian imperial psyche, given its
Orthodox heritage and the Greek project of Empress Catherine II, which was meant to take
possession of Constantinople. In the twentieth century, however, Greece was never high on the list
of Russian and Soviet geopolitical objectives.
(Yalta: The Price of Peace, by S. M. Plokhy)

Last but not least, the Soviet Union did not want to risk a split of the country. Soviet documents
reveal as early as 1946 that the Soviets very much feared this possibility. On 16 September 1946,
the Deputy Political Advisor of the Soviet element, Mikhail Koptelov, asked the leaders of the CPA
if "the rumours about the about the attempts to split Austria in a Western and a Eastern zone are
true."32 The communists accused the other Austrian political parties especially the conservative
People's Party and the United States of having such plans in mind. On the other hand, the
Austrian communists themselves, in the following year, developed a strategy aiming for the
secession of the Soviet zone under communist leadership. In 1948, the party leaders Johann
Koplenig and Friedl Fiirnberg were even summoned to Moscow where Andrei Zhdanov told them
that he had learned that the Austrian communists felt that "a division of Austria would be better than
any other alternative." 33 However, the Soviet Union would not agree to a scenario that entailed a
partition of the country. Zhdanov clearly stated that this was not acceptable to the Soviet leadership.
The CPA leaders had to recant their strategy. As long as the Western powers occupied the western
provinces of Austria, a division of Austria would have provided them with the strategically more
important part of the country. Regardless of the Soviet goal to create a communist-led government
in Austria and to transform the country into a people's democracy, the solution of a partition of
Austria seems to have been unacceptable to the Kremlin. Nevertheless, the Soviet attitude toward
Austria's inner political affairs, the clandestine involvement in the party system, especially the
support of the communists, the strong pro-communist propaganda efforts, and the hostile and
intransigent attitude to all non-communist political forces are signs of how the Soviet Union tried to
fulfill its mission to assist Austria' s peaceful transition to people' s democracy and socialism.
Obviously, the idea of "democratizing" Austria was not given up, at least not until 1953. Many years
later, after the signing of the Austrian State Treaty and the Soviet withdrawal, Viacheslav Molotov
still deplored that the Soviets had left Austria "without making it democratic."34 In his article
"Rethinking the Role of Ideology in the in the International Politics during the Cold War,"" the
historian Nigel Gould-Davies asserts that Soviet leaders did take the communist ideology as
seriously as the security interests of their country. The "dual" nature of Soviet foreign policy made it
possible to pursue Realpolitik and ideology at the same time (with uncertain success as it turned
out). The Austrian example shows that Soviet foreign policy was neither as irrational and obsessed
with world revolution as Cold War historiography tried to make us think, nor as apolitical as many
revisionists believed.
Thus those East European communists who hoped to turn their countries into republics of the
Soviet Union met with Stalin's strict disapproval. The countries of Eastern and Central Europe
would be reconstituted on a national basis. Not only that, Stalin shared the postwar proclivities of
national majorities in these newly constituted countries to expel their minorities. He raised no
objections to Polish and Czechoslovak attempts to engage in the ethnic cleansing of Germans and
Ukrainians in the former case, or Germans and Hungarians in the latter. There is also no reason to
doubt Stalin's repeated injunctions that Germany should be independent and united, though early on
in the war Stalin was perfectly willing to go along with Winston Churchill and Theodore
Roosevelt's ruminations about carving up Germany into various territorial units. Even in the
immediate postwar period, Stalin feared, as did the Americans and British, that a divided Germany
would provoke German nationalism and revanchism and cause another war. In Stalin's scheme of
things, Austria would be independent, in part as a way to deny her to a potentially greater Germany,
in part because he thought that a small and weak Austria would be easier to influence and to
dominate. The second principle of Soviet foreign policy under Stalin in this period had to do with
the eventual transformation of European nations into socialist entities. This would be a long-term
process, which would see each country take its own peaceful road to socialism. Repeatedly, Stalin
told communist leaders from both Eastern and Western Europe that there was no reason they needed
to endure the Soviet trauma of civil war and dictatorship of the proletariat. Through the formation
of multiparty national fronts, modeled on the "Popular Fronts" of the 1930s, all the countries of

Europe, including Germany and Austria, would evolve in the direction of People's Democracies.
Everywhere there would be parliamentary institutions and coalition governments of the left and
center. Communist parties were instructed by Stalin to reign in or to expel radicals and
revolutionaries, so-called "sectarians," who were considered extremely dangerous opponents of
Soviet aims in Europe. Stalin even told members of the British Labor Party that they should ignore
the monarchy and work for the peaceful construction of a People's Democracy in Great Britain. The
third principle of Stalin's foreign policy in this period was that of spheres of influence, one shared
by Churchill and Great Britain, but undermined, rhetorically at least, by Roosevelt and the United
States. The most consistent demand for Soviet influence during the war involved those territories
conceded to the Soviet Union by the Nazi-Soviet Pact, including its secret annexes. This meant that
the Baltics, Moldova (Bessarabia), and Eastern Poland (Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine)
would be incorporated into the Soviet Union. In addition, Germany would lose East Prussia, and
Czechoslovakia would cede Carpatho-Ukraine. According to an 1 1 January 1 945 memorandum by
Deputy Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, in addition to territorial gains in the west, the Soviets
sought a sphere of influence in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
Turkey, and Finland. Interestingly, Albania was not mentioned, perhaps because it would be
"swallowed," as Stalin later mentioned in discussions with Milovan Djilas, by Yugoslavia. Litvinov
also noted that the Soviets would seek a sphere of influence in Sweden and Norway. The British
sphere of influence would include Greece and Western Europe: Holland, Belgium, France, Spain,
and Portugal. Between the Soviet and British spheres of influence, wrote Litvinov, was the "neutral
zone," Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, T . .] in which both sides could
cooperate on an equal basis with ongoing consultations between themselves." Litvinov added that
the British would not be happy at all about having Sweden, Norway, Turkey, and Yugoslavia in the
Soviet zone. They would also try to include Sweden and Norway, as well as Denmark and Italy
(from the neutral zone) in their sphere of influence. In such a case, Litvinov assumed, there would
be room for "trade and compromise."' The fourth principle of Stalin's foreign policy at the end of
the war and beginning of the peace related to the eventual disposition of Red Army forces.
"Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system," so Stalin famously
proclaimed to Milovan Djilas during World War II, "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his
army can reach. It cannot be otherwise'" This statement is often used by historians to demonstrate
that Stalin understood both that the Soviet system would be spread as far as the Red Army was able
to march and that the Anglo-Americans would impose their bourgeois form of democracy on the
territories that they liberated from the Nazis. The presence of Red Army forces in every area,
however, did not assure the development of a Soviet-style system. The Soviets fully occupied the
Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea from 9 May 1 945 to 5 April 1 946 when, with
the quiet urging of the Danes (but little pressure from the Allies), they withdrew all of their troops
and returned Bornholm to the Danish government. Similarly, the Soviets withdrew from Austria,
though it took until the State Treaty in 1955 to do so. In neither case, one should add, was a Sovietstyle government constructed. One could also point to those countries, on the other hand, like
Czechoslovakia and Finland, where the immediate withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1 945 did not
obviate the development of governments "friendly" to Moscow.
(Austrian Foreign Policy in Historical Context, by Gnter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, Michael Gehler)
Party leader Johann Koplenig startlingly abandoned the persistent Party line of demanding
Austrian "neutralism". This, said Koplenig, in face of Western encouragement of German militarism
no longer sufficed. He called for the setting up of a Government "which would put Austria in the
front rank of the nations fighting German militarism". That was a clear directive from Moscow to
drag Austria behind the Curtain as a new "People's Democracy". This would mean the reduction of
Vienna to the status of Berlin and the setting up of a communist dictatorship in Eastern Austria. This
in turn would necessitate the establishment of a West-Austrian government in Salzburg or the union
of Western Austria and Western Germany pending liberation. Again, after the long and from an

Eastern as much as from a Western standpoint generally successful period of quadrupartite

control, it is difficult to imagine that the Soviets intend thus to create a new cold-war focus in
Austria.
(The Contemporary Review)
Yet despite the failure of the Spartacist uprisings in Berlin in January 1919 and the collapse of the
short-lived Communist republic in Bavaria in May, the Soviet government had not lost all hope in
the revolutionary potential of the German working class. In March 1920, an abortive coup by rightwing forces (the so-called Kapp putsch) sparked a general strike in Berlin and a brief Communist
uprising in the Ruhr. Lenin now predicted that "the time is not far off when we shall march hand in
hand with a German Soviet government." Soviet diplomats helped smuggle arms and explosives to
Communist groups in Germany, and Soviet officials began to intervene directly in the internal
politics of the German working-class movement.
(Revolution and War, by Stephen M. Walt)
Opening the Ninth Party Congress on 29 March 1920, Lenin told the delegates they were meeting
at the 'moment' of victory 'of the Soviet revolution in the first country to make this revolution' and
'victory over the combined forces of world capitalism and imperialism'. He announced another
long-awaited event as well: the outbreak of communist revolution in Germany. (A general strike in
Berlin had frustrated a right-wing coup, the Kapp Putsch; and in the aftermath, a 'Red Army' had
sprung up in the Ruhr, and a 'Soviet Republic' had been proclaimed in Saxony.) 'The proletarian
Soviet power in Germany', he said, 'is spreading irresistibly. The time is not far off when we shall
be marching hand in hand with a German Soviet government'.
(The Red Army, 1918-1941: From Vanguard of World Revolution to America's Ally, by Earl F
Ziemke)
Thus, by the retrieval of Transylvania, Romania would be compensated for the ceding of
Bessarabia and Bukovina in the most satisfactory manner, being constrained, at the same time, to
look for the support of the Soviet Union against Hungary, who would never accept as definitive its
loss of Transylvania14 . The Soviets were still taking into consideration, at the time, the alternative
of forming a federation which would include both Romania and Hungary and an autonomous
Transylvania, fact that would allow the Soviet Union to have a better control over the two states15,
alternative that had been abandoned afterwards, however. This way of solving the Transylvanian
problem has imposed itself in Moscow, yet, long before the summer of 1944. In fact, from the very
end of 1943, the right of having the first word in questions concerning the fate of Eastern Europe
had been recognized, practically, to the Soviet Union by the other members of the Coalition.
(The Soviet Administration in Northern Transylvania, by Marcela Slgean)
As early as the spring of 1944 the Soviet government was ready to give all Transylvania back to
Rumania. When King Michael brought his country over to the Allies in August, it was on the
understanding that Rumania would get back the whole of Transylvania or 'the major part thereof,
subject to confirmation at the Peace Conference. This understanding was confirmed in the armistice
terms. In Transylvania itself, this decision came as something of a surprise. Soviet thought had
seemed, in its general principles, to favour autonomy for much-disputed, racially mixed areas, as for
example in the case of Macedonia. Soviet propaganda during the war had seemed to back the idea
of an autonomous or even independent Transylvania. The Hungarian and Rumanian Communists of
Transylvania had worked and consulted together with this end in view. Now Russia, together with
the Western Powers, was giving back Transylvania unconditionally to Rumania.
(Truce in the Balkans, by Elisabeth Barker)

"The Switzerland of the East," i.e., Transylvania as envisaged by Jaszi and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky,
would have almost total independence in public administration, within the Hungarian state a plan
almost identical to the one drafted by Kossuth in exile.21 Between 1944 and 1946, this plan
received support from many sides. The Soviet Union seemed to support it when it hinted that the
form of government for Romania-Hungary under Soviet military control, in effect in Northern
Transylvania since November 14, 1944 would be extended to all of Transylvania. In 1944, a
working group led by Litvinov, elaborated another plan in Moscow. The plan thought it feasible to
have an independent Transylvania between Hungary and Romania, naturally, as part of the Soviet
sphere of influence and the bridgehead of Soviet policy in the Balkans. This was also incorporated
in several American analyses, underlining that the Soviet plans included an autonomous or
independent Transylvania.
(Romania and Transylvania in the 20th Century, by Ildik Lipcsey, Sabin Gherman, Adrian
Severin)
From the very beginnings, both communist parties realized that the way in which the border
dispute would be finally solved would determine their popularity. Putting aside their internationalist
allegiance, the Hungarian and Romanian communists tried hard at the time to get Moscow's backing
for a convenient territorial arrangement. The Hungarian communists hoped that some justice would
be done and they would get, if not the entire Northern Transylvania back, at least parts of it. After
all, as compared to 1920, when Hungary had been punished with heavy territorial losses for being
on the losing side, during the Second World War both countries fought on the wrong side. The
Romanian communists formed a delegation - which included Gheorghiu- Dej, Ana Pauker and
Gheorghe Apostol - that went to Stalin to plead for the incorporation of the whole Transylvania into
Romania. Leaving aside the thesis of self- determination up to the point of secession, they made use
of arguments from the nationalist repertory, stressing the importance of the short-lived union of
Transylvania with Moldavia and Wallachia under a medieval ruler Michael the Brave. Although
Stalin was unimpressed by their historical knowledge, he promised to give the region back to
Romania for switching sides during the Second World War, on 23 August 19441. According to
Hungarian sources, Stalin, just like Hitler five years before, pushed Romania and Hungary to
compete each other for Transylvania. At a meeting in Budapest in 1945, a Soviet representative told
the local communists that the country that would become first entirely communist would get the
entire region of Transylvania2. In short, the two communist leaderships, which hoped to increase
their political role in domestic affairs with the backing of Moscow, inherited from their bourgeois
predecessors a border problem. More importantly, due to the need to acquire popular support, their
border problem ranked high on their agendas. It is still not clear what were the criteria according to
which Stalin decided to return the whole region of Transylvania to the Romanians. In June 1944, the
committee in charge of drafting a report on the Soviet position regarding the postwar world
reorganization, led by M.M. Litvinov, advanced three possible solutions: (a) to give Northern
Transylvania back to Romania; (b) to leave it to Hungary; and (c) to create an independent
Transylvania under Moscow's tutelage. The report, although more favorable to Romania than to
Hungary, proposed nevertheless the third solution.
(Studia politica: Romanian political science review)
The authorities in Portugal were also firmly convinced that if the Spanish republican forces
triumphed in Spain not only would Portugal go communist but it would cease to be a truly
independent state because the ambitions of the Spanish left were not confined to the defence of the
Spanish Republic but included the establishment of a federation of Iberian soviet republics with
Portugal, possibly associated with Galicia, merely one amongst many. In such an eventuality the
Portuguese colonial empire would cease to exist.45 According to the American journalist Edward
Knoblaugh, the republican prime minister, Largo Caballero, was committed to Portugal's absorption

into a Spanish soviet republic. Even in defeat many republicans continued to believe in the idea of a
federation of Iberian states which might include Portugal.
(The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection, 1936-1941, by Glyn Stone)
Monteiro was anxious to help but he was also clearly perturbed by reports which are reaching him
of conditions in Spain. He emphasized many times over that the objective of the Left in Spain was
to overrun Portugal and to establish a Iberian Soviet Republic. In these circumstances it is not
surprising that Portugal was watchful and even fearful.
(Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939)
The "military operations" in France no doubt refer to Soviet special services' measures to support a
Moscow-inspired uprising that the French Communist Party would organize to establish the Soviet
Republic of France. It would start out being a fraternal state before becoming an integral part of the
USSR. This crazy idea was for a short time Stalin's cherished dream during the postwar period, and
he shared his thoughts about it with Maurice Thorez. Later it was discovered that this was not just
idle chatter. On a tip-off from KGB Captain Oleg Lyalin, a defector to the West, two weapons
dumps were found in Brittany. They were to be used by Soviet sleepers in the event of a Socialist
revolution in France. Stalin had clearly dropped the plans, realizing that they were sure to fail. But
whatever support Lubyanka could supply, was in place. Similar coups were being planned in Turkey
and Iran where an enormous spy network was active.
(Toxic Politics, by Arkadi Vaksberg)
Moscow contented itself with the territorial acquisition of Transcarpathia and did not act upon the
proposal of some overzealous Slovak Communists to break Slovakia away and turn it into a Soviet
republic. It showed its readiness to tolerate some sort of pluralist system in Czechoslovakia
dominated by the Communists, relying on the region's most Russophile or even Sovietophile
populace outside of Bulgaria.
(War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West, by Vojtech
Mastny,Sven S. Holtsmark,Andreas Wenger)
Minister Molotov visited Berlin for two days of discussions. Hitler questioned his visitors to
uncover Soviet intentions. Molotov indicated that Stalin wanted to annex Finland and make
Bulgaria and the Dardanelles a Soviet sphere of influence.
(World War II: A Military History, by Alan Warren)
The military operations of the first month of the Winter War on the Soviet side were under the local
control of the Leningrad military district, whose strategic aim was to occupy Finland and transform
it into a Soviet republic. Setting up the Kuusinen government had merely been one means to this
end.
(From Grand Duchy to Modern State, by Osmo Jussila, Seppo Hentil, Jukka Nevakivi)
A puppet Communist government-in-waiting was established for Finland, and Stalin drew up plans
to incorporate Finland into the Soviet Union as the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic.
(Russia's War, by Richard Overy)
The Comintern and its supporters in the KKE were seeking a Macedonian state separate from
Greece so that the Soviet Union could have a port on the Aegean Sea. Not all the KKE members,
however, supported the idea, and were soon expelled from the party.
(Communism in History and Theory: the European experience, by Donald F. Busky)

The 'Pact', the subject of a pamphlet issued by the Greek government in June 1947 under the title
The Conspiracy against Greece, was supposedly an agreement for the establishment of a Balkan
Union of Soviet Republics with (Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian) Macedonia as an independent
Republic within the Union, so that Bulgaria could obtain an outlet to the Aegean.
(The British labour government and the Greek Civil War, 1945-1949, by Thanasis D. Sfikas)
In 1948, on the ideological plane, the Yugoslav Communists were not in principle against the
incorporation of Yugoslavia into the Soviet Union ; on the practical plane they would not agree to
have the security police controlled from outside.
(Soviet survey, Congress for Cultural Freedom)
There is a phrase in a Dmitrov's diary: Stalin: We are going to put forward a proposal to the
Bulgarians regarding the conclusion ofa pact on mutual aid. We are backing the territorial claims of
Bulgaria, including Midiya-Enos, Eastern Thrace, Dedeagac, Drama and Kavala. We also demand a
base to prevent the Turks from using the Straits against us. Should such a pact be concluded, Turkey
would not dare fight against Bulgaria, and the situation in the Balkans would be different.33 Stalin
suggested that Dmitrov assist in bringing this proposal to the notice of the broader strata of
Bulgarian society.
(Stalin and the Turkish Crisis of the Cold War, 19451953 Di Jamil Hasanl)
A cable from the U.S. envoy Earle, for instance, read: The secretary of the illegal Bulgarian
Communist organization informs me that Sobolev asked the King for naval and air bases in
Bulgaria. Russia in return offered to force Turkey to give Adrianople and Turkish Thrace to
Bulgaria and to exert all possible pressure on Greece to cede Grecian Thrace. [The Secretary] says
that the King has courteously but firmly refused Russia's proposals.
(Crown of Thorns: The Reign of King Boris III of Bulgaria, 1918-1943 by Stephane Groueff)
Stalin had sent Arkadi Sobolev, the secretary-general of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, to
Sofia late in the month with an offer guaranteeing the kingdom against Turkey and promising aid in
obtaining territory in Turkish Thrace.
(The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944, by Frederick B. Chary)
In view of the community of interests of the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, the Soviet Union repeats
its proposal of September 1939 to conclude a mutual assistance pact with Bulgaria, which would be
helpful to Bulgaria in realizing her national aspirations not only in western (Greek) but also in
eastern (Turkish) Thrace.
(Greek-Soviet Relations, 1917-1941, by Andrew L. Zapantis)
On November 12, 1940, in Berlin, Molotov was interrogating Hitler as to the possible German
reaction in case of a Russian annexation of the Straits ; and Sobolev, the then secretary-general of
the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, on a visit to Sofia, was offering Turkish Thrace to
Bulgaria as a price for her participation in an aggression against Turkey. Sofia refused and
informed Berlin and Ankara about this offer which had, as a result, a Bulgarian-Turkish pact of nonaggression (February 17, 1941).
(The Contemporary Review)
that last November, Sobolev, Secretary General of the Soviet Foreign Office, had visited Sofia
on a mysterious errand which the Turkish Government learned was a proposal to enter into a pact of
mutual assistance directed professedly against Turkey a proposal which there was even some
reason to believe had been gilded with an offer to assure to Bulgaria a portion of Turkish Thrace.
(Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers)

Sofia hardly deviated from the Soviet line in foreign policy, except intermittently over Macedonia
or some other Balkan issue, and in September 1973 Zhivkov declared that Bulgaria and the Soviet
Union would 'act as a single body, breathing with the same lungs and nourished by the same blood
stream'. He made a second attempt, the first having been a decade previously, to incorporate
Bulgaria into the USSR.
(Eastern Europe in the 20th Century, by R. J. Crampton)
More interesting were reports regarding the future incorporation of Rumania and Bulgaria into the
USSR. They began to appear during the early summer of 1948. The Kremlin supposedly exerted
considerable pressure at this time to have the Rumanians conduct a plebiscite by which the people
would express their overwhelming desire to become a Soviet Republic within the USSR. After the
Rumanian plebiscite, Bulgaria would similarly express a spontaneous desire to become a member of
the Soviet Union. The Soviets would thus gain a common border with Greece and European Turkey
and would realize an historic aspiration of Russian foreign policy. Reports of this plan of
incorporation were said to have been carefully checked and confirmed. The organ of the
Cominform in Bucharest, moreover, did not deny these May reports until the following September.
(Soviet imperialism: Russia's drive toward world domination, by Ernest Day Carman)
With respect to territorial integrity, it was the Soviet attempt at the end of World War Two to
incorporate parts of north-eastern Turkey into the Soviet Union that facilitated the abandoning of
Ataturk's foreign policy principle of 'non-alignment' by his follower Ismet Inonu.
(The Greek-Turkish conflict in the 1990s, by Dimitri Constas)
In June 1945 Molotov, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, formally presented a demand to the
Turkish Ambassador in Moscow for the surrender of three Anatolian provinces, which were
supposed to have belonged to Georgia (Kars, Ardahan and Artvin). Since Moscow was also
preparing to support Armenian claims to several other Anatolian provinces, war against Turkey
or at least action in North-Eastern Turkey seemed possible, and Stalin wanted to clear the
strategic Georgian-Turkish border of a Muslim population likely to be hostile to Soviet intentions.
The removal of several small and harmless nationalities was a simple safety device in an offensive
plan against a neutral neighbour (a plan which was to be abandoned in June 1953 when Molotov
renounced both Armenian and Georgian claims to Turkish border areas).
(The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State, by Alexandre Bennigsen, Marie Broxup)
It appears that when in June 1945, one month after the close of the war in Europe, the Turks
approached the Soviet government for a new treaty of alliance, they were informed that this was
conditional on the establishment of a new regime for the Straits, and also on the return to Russia of
the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, which she had voluntarily restored to Turkey in 1921;
apparently she now hoped to find oil there. At his speech at Fulton (Missouri) in March 1946 Mr.
Churchill disclosed that at the Potsdam Conference the U.S.A. and Britain offered Russia a joint
guarantee of the complete freedom of the Straits in peace and war; 'but we were told that this was
not enough. Russia must have a fortress inside the Straits from which she could dominate Istanbul'.
In the months that followed, Armenians, both within the Soviet Republic of Armenia and in other
parts of the world, were encouraged to make propaganda for the return to Russia of Kars and
Ardahan. In December 1945 the Soviet press and radio gave wide publicity to the claim put forward
by Georgian professors to a coastal belt of north-eastern Turkey some 180 miles in length, on the
grounds that this had been Georgian territory 2,000years ago.
(A Short History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times, by George Eden
Kirk)

The territory of Wilsonian Armenia would not extend as far as that claimed by the Armenian
Nationalists at the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War, but it would add to the Soviet
Union (Armenian S.S.R.) an important territory which would include, besides the officially
demanded Kars region, parts of the Turkish vilayets of Erzerum, Van, Bitlis (Mus), and Trebzon.
Other historical plans for the restoration of Great Armenia would certainly revive as soon as the
reshuffling of Eastern Turkey started. Early in 1914, an agreement was reached between Russia and
Turkey concerning a large area (109,000 square miles), in which Russia was to assume the
protection of the Armenians. In lyiy, the National Armenian Delegation in Paris presented the most
extensive plan of a Great Armenia, stretching from the Russian borders on the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean ports of Adana and Alexandrette. The weak point in all these programmes is that at
present the number of Armenians in these areas is extremely small. They were of course done away
with by cruel and inhumane means. For three decades now the regions have been inhabited by
Turks, whose annexation to the Soviet Union would mean not the creation of a Great Armenia but
the emergence of a new national minority within the Soviet Union or the creation of a small Turkish
Soviet Republic. A number of Armenian organisations abroad, especially in Egypt and the United
States, are actively at work in favour of this " Great Armenian " programme ; the Soviet
Government is ready to grant facilities for emigrants to return to their " new homes.
When the Soviet-Turkish conflict developed in 1945 and the Turkish Government made it clear
that it would resist on both the Dardanelles and Kars issues, the Soviet Government augmented its
pressure to advance a programme of territorial reshuffling which, were it realised, would mean a far
greater loss to Turkey than the cession of the Kars region. As the Conference of Foreign Ministers
was about to begin in Moscow, on December 14, 1945, the Kommunist, published in Tiflis, capital
of Soviet Georgia, printed a long and detailed letter by two Georgian scholars. The letter, obviously
written upon instructions from Moscow, was immediately reprinted by all the leading Soviet
newspapers. In this letter, entitled About Our Legitimate Claims Against Turkey, Messrs. Zhanasha
and Bendzenishvili recalled the fact that centuries ago a Georgian State had embraced the southeastern shore of the Black Sea, occupying a large area later conquered by the Turks. Therefore, the
authors demanded the restitution to Soviet Georgia of the Turkish provinces of Ardahan, Olta,
Tortun, Ispir, Baiburt, Giimushaneh, and Eastern Lizistan, including Trabzon and Giresun. This
territory, they said, " is just a part of the areas forcibly detached from Georgia." The weakness of
this argumentation was obvious particularly in Russia, where " historical claims " of this kind were
ridiculed for decades after the Revolution, and where demands based on mere historical
reminiscences were known to have been raised by Mussolini in regard to the Caucasus, by Hitler,
by Rumania, and so forth. But there was no other way to justify the new demands ; it was
impossible to avow that the Government of the Russian Empire had intended to annex the very
same territories and had even reached an agreement in regard to them with its Allies in the First
World War.
(Free Europe)
Many academic and U.S. intelligence specialists concur in the belief that Russia's long-term
solution is the absorption of Afghanistan into the Soviet Union as a Soviet Socialist Republic.76 In
fact, Soviet policy under Brezhnev and Andropev has been a direct continuation of Russia's strategy
in Central Asia devised over a century ago called, "Russification," but in the Soviet era termed,
"sovietization.
(The Soviet Union in the third world)
Department of State, Special Report no. 106, December.) More ominous, Lt. Gen. Ghulam Siddiq
Miraki, the deputy chief of KHAD who defected to Pakistan, claimed to have access to information
on a Soviet plan to annex all of Afghanistan. The plan was allegedly abandoned after after Babrak
failed to achieve a PDPA consensus that would have allowed him to petition for more Soviet troops
and admission into the USSR, but an alternative plan for the Soviet Union to annex at least the nine

northern Afghan provinces was supposedly still under consideration as of Brezhnev's death in
November. (AP, 16 December.) Later articles in the official press extolling the benefits of union
republic membership in the USSR may have been connected in some way with this allegation
(Kabul New Times, 25 December). Meanwhile, there were continued reports that the USSR had all
but annexed the Wakhan Corridor, the finger of Afghan territory extending to the Chinese border in
the northeast (NYT, 8 December). Nevertheless, there were incentives for
(Yearbook on international communist affairs )
In fact, the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 for two geopolitical objectives. To incorporate
Afghanistan into the USSR, just as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and other countries had
already been, and To expand the Soviet Union's borders to the south to reach through Pakistan to the
Indian Ocean and to the oil rich countries in the Persian Gulf region.
(The Truth of Terrorism, by Akhtar Kassimyar)
The foreign pres's had reported that the Soviet Union planned to annex Wakhan and that its troops
would not be withdrawn from there.
(Pakistan Year Book)
"The Soviet thrust into Afghanistan in 1 979 and the apparent intention to annex the Wakhan
territory effectively sealed off the only border between Afghanistan and China. Moreover, control of
the Wakhan provided the Soviet Union with a common border with Kashmir. It also presented
Pakistan with a new neighbor in its sensitive northwest frontier region."
(The Middle East: a political dictionary, by Lawrence Ziring)
The Soviet withdrawal offer contains some significant small print. Most important, the Kremlin
says it will continue to occupy, and possibly even annex, the Wakhan Strip in north eastern most
Afghanistan, a zone that borders China, Pakistan and the Soviet Union. As the Pakistanis are all too
aware that would give them a frontier with the Soviet Union.
(Afkr Inquiry)
So far as can be determined, Moscow's eventual goal is the absorption of Iran into the U.S.S.R. A
number of moves within Iran since World War II illustrate Soviet policy.
(Iran: oasis of stabiity in Middle East?, by Donald Newton Wilber)
Ever since the spring of 1942, press reports, alleged to have emanated from Moscow, circulated a
story to the effect that Russia would advocate the establishment of an independent Soviet Republic
of Manchuria and also of Korea. Many rumors of a similar nature have ben going the rounds every
now and then until many well informed people in this country are of the opinion that it has become
an open secret. During the San Francisco Conference the existence of a secret understanding was
disclosed through a highly reliable source. This arrangement was made at Yalta between our late
President, the British Prime Minister, and the Soviet Premier to the effect that Korea and Manchuria
would be within the orbit of Russian influence and that the United States and Great Britain shall
remain noncommittal to Korea until after the defeat of Japan. The report of this discovery was
published in the press, and the oflicials of our State Department in San Francisco and Washington at
once denied the truth of the report.
(Congressional Record)
Stalin outlined his plan of attack "his main effort to be with a highly mobile force that would
sweep down from the Lake Baikal area through Outer and Inner Mongolia. The purpose of this
wide movement was to separate the Japanese forces in Manchuria from those in China." 104 Of

course his purpose was also to turn Manchuria into a Russian puppet state, which was precisely
what Chiang Kai-shek so bitterly and properly opposed.
(The Roosevelt Myth, by John Thomas Flynn)
While the Soviet Union's objective was to incorporate Sinkiang into the territory of the USSR or to
make it a satellite like Outer Mongolia, the aim of the Chinese Communists was to keep it under
China's sovereignty and to make it a base of socialist industrialization.
(Sinkiang: pawn or pivot?, by Allen Suess Whiting, Shicai Sheng)
A. Larin's conclusions about Stalin's geopolitical calculations appear entirely justified, since in
1945 no one could precisely predict how events in China would unfold, and how the opposition
between the CPC and the Kuomintang would develop. In particular, Moscow did not exclude the
possibility of creating a buffer state on the territory of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang
headed by the CPC and under Soviet control as a counterbalance to Kuomintang China, behind
which the US stood. In December 1945, Chiang Kai-shek again sent Chiang Ching- kuo to Moscow
to meet Stalin.
(Far Eastern Affairs)
In his National Press Club speech of January, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that
Russia is engaged in "detaching" from China and "attaching" to Russia the northern areas of China.
"This process," said Mr. Acheson, "is completed in Outer Mongolia. It is nearly completed in
Manchuria." He went on to include Inner Mongolia and Sin- kiang, and to say that "this fact that the
Soviet Union is taking the four northern provinces of China is the single most significant, most
important fact in the relations of any foreign power with Asia.
(Owen Lattimore & Loss, by Robert P. Newman)
The main item of Kovalev's account revolves round an alleged incident in July 1949 when Gao
was a member of a secret Chinese mission, headed by Liu Shaoqi, sent to Moscow to conduct talks
with Stalin. During a meeting of the delegation with the Soviet leadership, Gao is said to have
called for Manchuria to become the seventeenth republic of the USSR; reportedly he also made
other suggestions which seemed intended to bring Moscow into Chinese affairs as a bulwark against
potential American actions. Kovalev reports that Stalin wisely poured scorn on Gao and his
proposal. This is a pretty outlandish story, to Khrushchev, for example, was aware that some
Chinese thought of Gao as Moscow's man: see Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, vol. 2,
ed. S. Talbott (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), p.
(Mao's conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953-55, by Paul Wingrove)
Despite his own promises to support Chiang's claims to Hong Kong, Stalin covertly supported
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He himself planned to incorporate substantial additional
territories, including parts of Northeastern China, into the Soviet Union, and so was reluctant to
support Chinese demands for the reunification of all Chinese lands.
(Where Empires Collided, by Michael B. Share)
In September 1939, Chiang received intelligence reports of a plan reportedly given to Wang
Jingwei's pro- Japanese group by Japanese military headquarters and proposing a partition of China
into Soviet and Japanese spheres of influence. Xinjiang, Outer Mongolia, Tibet, and China's
northwest were to be a part of the Soviet sphere.31 Chiang also received reports from China's
embassies in Washington and London of newspaper accounts that Soviet- Japanese discussions of a
nonaggression treaty were already under way. Such reports sometimes asserted that mutual
Japanese-Soviet recognition of spheres of influence in China was to be one component of this
treaty.

(Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937-1945, by John W. Garver)

The StalinHitler Pact opened up the prospect that Stalin might do a similar deal with japan, with
China a second Poland. Indeed, at this very moment, the Kremlin signed a ceasefire with Japan,
bringing to a halt fighting that had been going on between the Soviet Red Army and the Japanese on
the border of Outer Mongolia and Manchukuo. The Poland scenario caused Chiang Kai-shek acute
concern, which he raised with Moscow. Mao's reaction, however, was one of delight. His whole
strategy for the war with japan was aimed at prevailing on Russia to step in. Now a real chance
appeared that Stalin might occupy part of China, and put Mao in charge. In late September that year,
when Edgar Snow asked Mao how he felt about a Sovietjapanese pact, Mao's reply was
enthusiastic. He said that Russia might sign such a pact 'as long as this does not hinder its support
for . . . the interest of the world liberation movement [i.e., Mao himself and the CCP]'. Asked
whether 'Soviet help to China's liberation movement may take a somewhat similar form' to Russian
occupation of Poland, Mao gave a very positive reply: 'it is quite within the possibilities of
Leninism'. The Poland scenario was now Mao's model for China.
Again, Mao was hoping that Russia would partition China with japan. Mao even had an ideal
demarcation line, the Yangtze, which flows across the middle of China. To his inner circle, Mao
dreamed of 'drawing a border . . . at the Yangtze. with us ruling one half . . .' Replicating the Poland
scenario was indeed at the front of Stalin's mind, and Russia began talks with japan in September
1939, right after the signing of the NaziSoviet Pact, with the future of China very much at the
centre of the negotiations.
The terms Japan offered on China did not begin to match Stalin's expectations. Tokyo would agree
only to a Russian sphere of influence in Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang, which was hardly alluring
to Stalin, as these two places were already in his pocket. japan also considered 'recognising and
accepting the three northwestern provinces (Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia) remaining a Chinese
Communist base' - on condition that Russia agreed to 'restrain the antijapanese activities of the
Chinese Communists'. But this idea was again not nearly enough for Stalin, as the CCP was already
occupying a much larger territory than these three provinces. Moscow's failure to strike a deal with
Tokyo meant that Stalin's priority remained staving off the possibility of a japanese attack on Russia
and that meant Mao could not have his allout war on Chiang yet. Stalin wanted a united China
which could continue to bog down the japanese.
(Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang, Jon Halliday)
Stalin and his associates initially assumed that their principal relationship would be with
Nationalist China in the post- 1945 years. In a very real sense, they pursued a "two Chinas" policy
in the early period after the war, being careful to keep official relations with the Nationalist
government correct, but at the same time, providing sanctuary and assistance to the Communists in
Manchuria, which they briefly occupied. Even after significant Communist military victories, Stalin
assumed (and perhaps wanted) a China that would be divided roughly at the Yangtze River, with the
Communists to the north, the Nationalists to the south. It is also true that Mao Zedong was not
Stalin's favorite Communist. Stalin regarded Mao with suspicion, both with respect to his
understanding of Marxism, and more importantly, with respect to his attitude toward the Soviet
Union. But the Russians realized that after the early 1940s at least, there were no viable alternatives
within the movement. To Stalin, it was vitally important to ensure that the Soviet Union would
never again be threatened with a two-front war. Thus, as a buffer-state system was being
constructed to the West, it was essential to see Japan eliminated as a future menace, Korea or at
least a portion absorbed ideologically, and China (or several Chinas) cultivated by
whatever means necessary.
(East Asian Security in the Post-Cold War Era, by Sheldon W. Simon)

Mao Tse-tung. who had been instructed to oppose Japanese aggression. went so far in reverse as to
see the advantages of Stalin concluding a nonaggression pact with Japan that would divide China.
Mao wanted a "Polish solution" for his country. His thinking was that the Soviets would make him
head of a puppet govermnent.and he was ready to consign hall the country to the Japanese
occupation. In September 1939. Mao was prepared to collaborate with the Japanese. hoping that at
the very least they would strike down his nationalist enemies.
(Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe, by Robert Gellately)
We can thus confidently assume that the stage had been set for a strategic partnership between
Moscow and the CCP by the beginning of 1949. It is nonetheless easily conceivable that Stalin
would have preferred to deal in the future with a China in two parts. Truman was even convinced
that the Soviet Union would have preferred a divided and weak Chinese neighbor to a united China
under a dynamic Communist leadership.266 The idea of a Communist North Chinese buffer state
that was dependent on the USSR between the USSR and an American protectorate in a KMT-led
South China would have been attractive to Moscow from the perspective of security. This state,
could in turn, have been divided into two security zones: the first would include Manchuria, with an
increased Soviet influence along the lines of a traditional sphere of influence; and the second, the
area from the Great Wall to the e Yangtze line. Tensions between these two Chinas would have put
Moscow in a position to exploit them to its own advantage. A unified China under a Mao Zedong,
who had repeatedly demonstrated his unwillingness to be subservient to Moscow, must have
seemed less attractive in comparison.
(The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945-1950, by Dieter Heinzig)
The resultant memorandum speculated that the Soviet Union would have two options in expanding
its influence in postwar Northeast Asia. Moscow might either encourage the Chinese Communists
to set up a soviet republic in Manchuria or use Mongolian nationalism to create a SovietMongolian
bloc. According to British officials, the latter option had the advantage of using the nationality
principle and therefore appearing less disturbing to the Anglo -American opinion. In following the
second option, the Soviets would encourage Japanese-trained Mongolian armed forces and political
groups in Inner Mongolia and Manchuria to join with Outer Mongolia in a strong movement for
unifying all Mongols in a single state, or a Greater Mongolia.
(Recast All under Heaven, by Xiaoyuan Liu)
During the first few months of the party's postwar growth some Communist leaders demanded
outright incorporation of Korea into the Soviet Union. This line was soon dropped in order not to
make difficult the more immediate task of reunion with South Korea.
(Soviet Russia and the Far East, by David J. Dallin)
After this request was refused, Japanese Communists on Hokkaido, of whom there are still about
40,000, tried to transform Hokkaido into an independent Soviet republic or one at any rate
independent from the rest of Japan. The Communists had no hope of succeeding, partly because of
the presence of American forces in Hokkaido, and also because many people in Hokkaido were
refugees from the Kurils and south Sakhalin, having been driven out of those places by the
Russians. But the Communists are still around, and the Russians are too close for comfort.
(The heart of Japan, by Alexander Campbell)
In his confidential letter of August 16th, 1945, however, Stalin proposed two amendments to the
General Order No. 1. One was to include the Kurile Islands in the Russian section for the surrender
of the Japanese Army. The other was to divide Hokkaido into two portions on the line leading from
the city of Kushiro on the eastern coast to the city of Rumoi on the Western coast, including the two
named cities, and that the northern half of it should be assigned to the Russian occupation. In his

reply of August 18th, Truman refused to assign the northern half of Hokkaido to the Soviet
occupation, while agreeing to Stalin's request to modify the Order to include all the Kurile Island to
be assigned to the Soviet commander, upon the condition that the United States Government would
be given air base on the central Kuriles for military and commercial purposes.
(The Japan Annual of International Affairs)
Plan to Divide Japan It is reported that there was a plan to divide Japan, after it was defeated in
World War II, into five parts and have the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China govern
the parts. If the plan had been realized, Japan would doubtless have become a very different country
from what it is now. It is said that the plan was discovered by Makoto lokibe, lecturer at Hiroshima
University, from material is which was released to the public for the first tune this summer at the
National Archives in Washington. According to this plan, the Soviet Union was to govern Hokkaido
and the Tohoku area, the United States the Kanto and Chubu areas, China and the United States 20
the Kinki area, China the Shikoku area and Britain the Kyushu and Chugoku areas.
()
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, made plans to form a "West African Soviet
Republic" and frequently cited the applicability of the Soviet multinational structure to Africa.
(Soviet strategy in Southern Africa: Gorbachev's pragmatic approach, by Peter Vanneman)
16 Feb. Gold Coast. Dr Nkrumah, leader of the Convention People's Party, said in evidence at his
trial that when in England he had made plans to establish a 'West African Soviet Republic',
including the Gold Coast.
(Chronology of international events and documents, Royal Institute of International Affairs)
His ambitions reached comic heights when in response to a description of a 1946 army base in the
Far East designed as a launch pad for an invasion of the United States he mentioned that he
"wouldn't mind getting Alaska back," but that the "time hadn't arrived for such tasks" (Chuev 1991:
71 ).
(Trust And Mistrust In International Relations, by Andrew H. Kydd)
For years, ignoring Norway's sovereign rights, the Soviet Union had been playing the bully and
trying to annex the Svalbard Islands under the signboard of "opening up resources."
(Daily report: People's Republic of China, by United States. Foreign Broadcast Information
Service)
The final consequence was the secret war as we know it today and as we have known it since V.E.
Day 1945. A new plan was drawn up, probably some time in the autumn of 1941. Denmark was to
be occupied by the Red Army, which would bring Norway into the Soviet zone of influence. The
occupation of Bornholm would be the key to the Baltic. Greece was to be captured from within,
with the EAM/ELAS forces as the spearhead of the coup d'etat. With Tito as the partisan leader the
collaboration of Jugoslavia would be secured.
(Pattern for Conquest, by John Baker White)
On the contrary, it appeared that the Soviets were making plans to stay on for an indefinite
period.11 Kai Myring, a New York Times correspondent, visited the island in the latter part of May
1945, a few days after the Soviet occupation commenced. Although he spent the first few hours of
his stay being questioned by Red Army officials, Myring managed to spend three days on Bornholm
before returning by boat to Sweden. He reported that Soviet influence was predominant and that the
Red Army, from all appearances, was making preparations for a protracted stay. The Soviet soldiers,
he said, were already referring to the island as "Russian Denmark."

Russian occupation had been fore- shadowed as early as April 1945 when the Moscow radio
announced that the Red Army intended to occupy points in Denmark. A possible explanation of this
move and others like it appeared in a Pravda dispatch transmitted to Paris on May 27, 1945. "The
Soviet Union," it proclaimed, "is a great democratic power capable of assuring the security not only
of its own frontiers but also of the peoples of Europe, and the sooner this is recognized the better it
will be for humanity." 14 Almost a year later, the Moscow New Times of April 1, 1946, stated that
the Soviet withdrawal had caught the reactionary slanderers unawares, especially those who had
accused the Soviet Union of converting Born- holm into a "Russian Malta in the Baltic".
The Narkomindel evidently started negotiations with the Chinese Government shortly after the
conclusion of the Crimea Conference in February 1945. Its demands, however, extended
considerably beyond the terms agreed upon in the Yalta. Unconfirmed reports that the Soviet Union
had bid for the huge Chinese island of Formosa appeared in the New York Times on May 11, 1945.
This was supposedly in addition to Soviet proposals for Red Army occupation of Manchuria, and a
protectorate over Korea.1 By the time of Potsdam in July 1945, James F. Byrnes, then U.S.
Secretary of State, had received a report that the USSR had brought increased pressure on the
Chinese to accept excessive Russian territorial demands.2
(Soviet Territorial Aggrandizement, 1939-1948, by Ernest Day Carman)
For Maisky, the postwar settlement was to guarantee Soviet security both in Europe and in Asia for
long enough to build such strength "that no power or combination of powers . . . could even think of
aggression" there. It would be necessary for Europe, or at least continental Europe, to become
Socialist, "thereby excluding the possibility of wars occurring in this part of the world." The
military buildup would take about ten years after the war and full Socialization thirty to fifty years.
With Germany defeated, France was potentially the only rival military power on the Continent.
Maisky advised that any French revival be blocked.39 Thus at Yalta, Stalin opposed giving the
French an occupation zone in Germany; he joked that France should be nothing more than a holiday
resort.
Stalin's naval ambitions showed in late-war attempts to gain bases in both northern Norway (lying
on the route from his naval bases to the Atlantic) and on the Danish island of Bornholm, which
blocked the exits from the Baltic. In 1944-45 Soviet troops advancing to occupy Petsamo went on
to occupy the northern tip of Norway. In November 1944 the Soviets asked the Norwegian
government for base rights on Bear Island and on Svalbard (Spitzbergen), an archipelago off the
northern Norwegian coast where they already operated mines. The next April the Norwegians
offered to agree that the defense of Svalbard was a joint Soviet-Norwegian responsibility. The
Soviet Foreign Ministry thought they were accepting the idea that Soviet bases would balance a
British attempt to gain bases and thus to "Portugalize" Norway. By July 1945, the Soviet General
Staff was urging at the least a twenty-five- to thirty-year lease on the Varanger area of Norway. In
March 1945 the deputy Soviet ambassador to Sweden suggested seizing Bornholm. After
considerable discussion, on 4 May the Baltic Fleet was ordered to seize it. As ordered, the local
Soviet commander told the Danes that his presence was temporary, pending settlement of military
questions relating to Germany.
(The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War, by Norman Friedman)
Norwegian newspapers have already noticed the sensational parts of the publication, namely the
Soviet proposals regarding continental Norway soon after the end of the hostilities in Europe (doc.
274 a.o.). Whereas the Soviet proposals to Norway from November 1944 regarding a revision of the
Spitsbergen convention of 1920 and a Soviet-Norwegian condominium in the archipelago (as well
as the Bear Island) have been known, the other desires of subordinate Soviet civil and military
bureaucracy have remained inside the Russian cabinets and are now made public for the first time.
The essence of the proposals was the following: the advance of Soviet troops from northeastern to
northwestern Norway as far as to Narvik (doc. 274); a formal great powers' tripartite veto upon a

possible alliance (block) between the Nordic countries (N 275); a joint Soviet- Norwegian defence
of continental northern Norway, empowering the USSR to build its naval and air bases in Kirkenes,
Vardoe, Vad- soe and as far as in Tromsoe; later a correction of the continental border would have
been undertaken (N 276). Simultaneously, the Soviet general staff extended its desiderata to
embrace the Varanger peninsula and the Varanger fjord (N 277); the claims regarding Spitsbergen
were to be supported by a Soviet naval expedition and the installation of a permanent garrison as
well as of a naval base there without waiting for a formal revision of the 1920 convention (N 278).
Almost all of these proposals were put before the Soviet leaders in June and July 1945. Afterwards,
as far as the reviewed book shows, only the Soviet general staff persisted (as late as until April,
1947) in its proposal regarding a base on Spitsbergen (N 295). The lack of higher level Kremlin
papers forbids us to explain both the rise and the fall of this peculiar Soviet expansionism in the
North Atlantic.
(Finnish Review of East European Studies)
In inplement- ing its plans in the Antarctic the USSR has in effect openly embarked upon a policy
of expansion. Soviet legal scholars have begun to discuss the principle of "effective occupation" of
these territories which have not yet been annexed. The Soviet standpoint, that Antarctica was
discovered by Russians and is therefore Russian, could lead to serious international complications.
(Military Power and National Objectives, Army Library (U.S.)
From recent observation, it appears that the Communist Party has for the time being camouflaged
its program for the setting up of an independent Negro Soviet Republic in the so-called Black Belt
of the South. This proposal was and is cunningly calculated to promote civil war in which the Negro
people would be sacrificed to the machinations of Moscow. This proposal, as camouflaged as it may
be, remains inherent in current Communist propaganda.
(Hearings regarding communist infiltration of minority groups, United States. Congress. House.
Committee on Un-American Activities)
The American Negro now came to be defined as an oppressed nation and the slogan "selfdetermination in the black belt" became an official policy of the Communist Party. It promoted
establishment of a Negro Soviet republic in the "black belt," defined basically as the southern
states.8 Although the official policy emerged in Moscow, some Negro communists had previously
been involved in nationalistic activities and must have contributed significantly to the new stance.
(Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought, by Allison Blakely)
The American Communist Party raised the slogan of self-determination for the so-called "black
belt" in 1928, when it disclosed its plan to carve a "Negro Soviet Republic" out of five Southern
states. The scheme was laid down in American Negro Problems by Communist John Pepper, an
agent of Stalin.
(The Review of the News)
Harry Haywood (also known as Heywood Hall), a young black recruit to the Communist Party
who was studying at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) in Moscow,
received support from the Soviets to lead a drive to characterize the Negro question in the United
States as a national question Haywood argued that in 215 contiguous Southern counties, running
from the Tidewater to East Texas, the black majorities constituted an oppressed "nation within a
nation" that had been blocked from the larger nation by the residue of slavery and the betrayal of
Reconstruction. Thus, in the South, the goal of blacks was self-determination (i.e., not necessarily
separation of the races, but the right of choice by the black majority); in the North, their goal was
political, economic, and social equality.
(Encyclopedia of Black studies, by Molefi K. Asante, Ama Mazama)

When the official resolutions appeared in 1928 and 1930, they explained a difference in the
communist policy in the North and South of the U.S. In the North, where Blacks were a national
minority, the struggle would be for social and political equality; in the South, where Blacks held a
majority in certain regions (the Black Belt), the African American nationality had the right to secede
and form a separate republic if it so desired. However, if a revolution were successful in the larger
nation, communists would urge the Black population to remain as part of the larger state entity. (If
Blacks did opt to secede, Euro-Americans might reside in the Black republic with minority rights.)
Nevertheless, Solomon's opinion is that the nation thesis was flawed. While Lenin was accurate in
recognizing nationalist feelings among the Black population, he thought that these would be
undermined by the expansion of the capitalist economy (industrialization, migration) because the
economy was inseparable from that of the larger nation.
(Radical Relevance, by Laura Gray-Rosendale, Steven Rosendale)
In the third article, John Pepper argued that the Black Belt of the South was not only a Negro
nation but "virtually a colony within the body of the United States of America." Segregated housing
strengthened the basis of a Negro national movement in the North and East. And while Negroes in
general should make their own decision about the form their self-determination should take, "Negro
Communists should emphasize in their propaganda the establishment of a Negro Soviet Republic."
The fourth article, by Harry Haywood, came closest to the official position adopted by the Sixth
World Congress. For him, the American Negroes constituted a "national minority" and the Negro
problem was rooted economically "in the agrarian question in the South." He ridiculed Communists
like Lovestone who expected the migration northward to deprive the Negro masses in the South of
their "compact unity" and the process of industrialization to free the Negro peasantry of its "halffeudal" bondage. While he urged the Communists to continue the struggle for full social and
political equality, he advocated "a national-revolutionary movement" for the right of "national selfdetermination" to go as far as an "independent Negro state."
(American Communism and Soviet Russia, by Theodore Draper)
In his speech of March 7, 1959, Khrushchev insisted that the evolution of nations under Soviet
control would foreshadow the evolution of nations on a global scale, for the multinational Soviet
state was viewed as the prototype for the assimilation of all nations into a Soviet world-state after
the future global victory of Communism.92 The party program of 1961 again emphasized the
inevitability of the assimilation of Soviet people and nations. It reaffirmed that the new
''international'' culture was to be Russian-based and Russian-dominated, and stressed the essential
role of the Russian language.93 Khrushchev's speech to the Congress that adopted the new program
further made explicit the connection between Russifi- cation and the fusion of nations. He warned
that, ''even the smallest manifestations of nationalistic survivals must be eradicated.
(The Prospects for Liberal Nationalism in Post-Leninist States, by Cheng Chen)
At the XVI Party Congress, Stalin had been concerned with the eventual formation of a single,
new language under communism. But in his essay on linguistics, in which he talked about the
hybridization of two languages resulting in the triumph of one and the death of the other, he was
referring only to the epoch "before the world-wide victory of socialism."75 Clearly, the implication
was that for the time being one language (presumably Russian) would emerge triumphant until a
new language could form with the victory of socialism. And maybe not just for the time being:
Molotov later recalled that Stalin took up the question of linguistics in part because he believed that
after the worldwide victory of communism the Russian language would dominate the globe.
(Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, by Ethan Pollock)