Webinar: The Cold War Reconstitution of Imperialism —Churchill’s Fulton Speech and the Greek Civil War

About this webinar

While one may debate when the Cold War started – with the announcement of the Truman Doctrine committing the US to intervene in countries to fight ‘communist subversion? With Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech at Westminster College, Fulton Missouri? With George Kenan’s ‘Long Telegram’ advising ‘containment’ of the Soviet Union? Or even with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki chiefly to intimidate the Soviet Union? – we are taking the opportunity of the 80th anniversary of the devastating Greek Civil War and Churchill’s speech to reflect on the reconstitution of imperialism in the critical years following the Second World War.

What were the stakes, in the Cold War generally and in the various hot conflicts with which it punctuated the decades that followed? How were former allies converted into enemies?How was the Atlantic Alliance constituted? What were the consequences, for Europe, the US, the Communist World and Third World?

Speakers (click links to watch speech on YouTube)

• Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos – journalist, writer, Editor of Defend Democracy Press

• Oleg Barabanov – Programme Director, Valdai Discussion Club

• Vladimir Shubin – Doctor of History, Professor, Chief Researcher at the RAS Institute of African Studies

• Richard Sakwa – former professor of Russian and European politics, University of Kent

• Ken Hammond – historian

• Moderator: Radhika Desai, International Manifesto Group.

Organised by The International Manifesto Group

Date and Time

Sunday 19th April, 11am EDT, 4pm BST, 6pm Athens,

 

Transcript

Radhika Desai

Hello and welcome to another webinar organized by the International Manifesto Group. As most of you will know, the International Manifesto Group is an international socialist and anti-imperialist group supporting the emergence of a multi- and pluripolar world. Our most important activity is the holding of these webinars about twice a month, informing audiences around the world on key moments and developments that have and are shaping the struggle for a multipolar, equal, peaceful, and sustainable world. Please check us out at the International Manifesto Group website, which is at www.internationalmanifesto.org. Please also share our events and videos widely. We post all these webinars on, and the individual contributions on, the International Manifesto Group YouTube page. And please also consider supporting us in any other way you can by subscribing to our YouTube channel, signing up for our newsletter, and supporting us with any donations that you can manage. Please also consider reading our manifesto and signing it.

My name is Radhika Desai, I’m the convener of the International Manifesto Group, and I will moderate this event. Our topic today is the Cold War reconstitution of Imperialism, and the subtitle is Churchill’s Fulton Speech and the Greek Civil War. Both of these events are being, you know, are 80 years old this year. In popular understanding, the Cold War was an ideological contest between capitalism and communism between the West and the East, and specifically between the United States and the Soviet Union, and of course also with China at a certain point in history. It is also understood that the Cold War maintained peace through regular and nuclear arms, and the enormous stockpiling of both regular and nuclear arms, and the threat of mutually assured destruction. Most people think that both sides in it were equally imperialist, and that it ended with the victory of the capitalist side proving that the Soviet system, and generally speaking, socialism, was economically, politically, and militarily coupled. These views were actually already false when at the height of the Cold War.

From our vantage point today, with the West in a precipitous decline, and the US waging a horrifically superfluous and exceedingly dangerous war, endangering lives and livelihoods around the world, threatening food, fuel, and environmental catastrophes, even more holes are appearing in this understanding, and I’d just like to enumerate some seven points that I think are important to consider. Was the Cold War, in which the West turned against its own allies of World War II, an ideological contest or the pursuit of imperialism through other means, made necessary thanks to the declining imperial capacities of the West, symbolized in no small terms by the onset of decolonization, which were, of course, also supported by the communist countries of the time? And also taking place under new leadership of the imperialist countries—the leadership of the United States—thanks to the boost that the Second World War, and for that matter, the First World War, gave to the US economy, and the destruction it wreaked on those of its allies? By that I mean its new Western allies. Indeed, wasn’t the Cold War central also to the US project of asserting supremacy over European and Japanese allies?

With current tensions in NATO particularly blown open by the war on Iran, one hopes that the truth about the relationship between the United States and its allies will out. One hopes that the truth about how the United States subordinated its allies, for instance, by twisting the UK’s arm over the loans it needed—it desperately needed after the Second World War—and of course, how it intervened bloodily in the Greek Civil War to make Greece today the nation not just spending more of its GDP on NATO armaments than any other NATO country, but doing so while being among those least capable of doing so. Greece today continues to spend huge amounts on NATO armaments, despite the severe economic blows it suffered after the Greek crisis of the 2010s, about a decade and more ago. And perhaps it will finally emerge that the US was no leader or hegemon, but always a mafia state, offering protection from dangers it generated itself, not just in the Third World, but also among its allies.

One hopes this will end talk of special relations like the UK-US special relationship, and also set back, if not dismantle, the Atlanticist project, the project that lies at the core of the Cold War, and more fundamentally, at the core of the reconstitution of imperialism after the Second World War. Secondly, wasn’t the new alliance of imperialist powers that Churchill was calling for in his Fulton speech simply a proposal for the reconstitution of the imperialist alliance, albeit in reduced circumstances, against what he called the World Organization, by which he clearly meant the United Nations, whose emergence left him so apprehensive? He, more than most, would have resented Britain, so recently presiding over the empire on which the sun never set, having to treat old colonial subjects and their leaders with the respect normally given to peers.

Thirdly, was the anti-communist ideological coloring simply a necessary manifestation of the fact that over the previous three fateful decades of crises of both capitalism and imperialism, the communist country bloc had emerged as the cutting edge of anti-imperialist forces, with the Bolsheviks publishing the secret treaties that led to the First World War, along with their peace decree, demanding self-determination for all the colonies—and let’s remember that Wilson limited his demand for self-determination to European countries. And, sorry, just lost my notes here. And, of course, the support that the communist bloc, the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries gave to anti-colonial movements around the world, no matter how much they had been restrained by post-war pacts like Yalta.

Fourthly, what was the content of imperialism? Was it just a willful domination of the world, or was it systematically connected to the needs of maintaining capitalism in the Western countries by opening up the rest of the world’s economies to US corporate penetration for markets, for investment outlets, for cheap inputs and cheap labor, with only the realities of the geopolitical economy of the post-war world—the strength of communist and nationalist forces—constituting constraints on the actions of the United States, in particular, and the West in general. Fifthly, when did the Cold War actually begin? Did it begin in ’46, with the Fulton Speech, or the US intervention in the Greek Civil War? Or was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 already the opening sort of salvo of the Cold War? Recent historical research has shown that rather than being necessary to save half a million American lives that would have been lost with an invasion of Japan, in reality, with Japan already suing for peace, those nuclear bombs were dropped in order to show the Soviet Union what mighty arms the US now possessed, and in the hope that this would ensure that it would be kept in its place and prevented from extending its influence beyond its borders.

Sixthly, how was the Cold War experience in the Soviet Union and China? And I must say that on this subject, a lot more research is probably needed, research in which colleagues from Russia today and colleagues studying China that are joining us in this panel will contribute. Notwithstanding the widespread “pox on both your houses” understanding that was shared even on the left, it’s my understanding that the posture of the East in this Cold War was always defensive, and that of the West always offensive. The Warsaw Pact, for instance, was not created until a full 5 years after the creation of NATO, and that only because Germany finally joined NATO. And finally, not the least reason why we must question these understandings is that both the expectations that were very much abroad at the end of the disintegration of the Soviet Union have been belied. That is, we have not had a… we are not living in a unipolar world, and the world has not enjoyed a peace dividend. On the contrary, the world has become multipolar, and partly as a consequence, the aggressive actions of the West, now unconstrained by the existence of the Soviet Union, have only multiplied.

To address these and many other questions, we have brought together a most distinguished and insightful panel of scholars, historical thinkers all of them, and they will help us to understand the Cold War, and related to the hot wars that have been so prolific since its end and are, of course, reaching a crescendo today. We have five speakers, and I will introduce them in turn. And each speaker will speak for about 12 to 15 minutes, and then we will have some time for questions and answers and discussion. So let me introduce our first speaker. Our first speaker is Professor Richard Sakwa. Richard Sakwa was Professor of History and International Relations at the University of Kent in Canterbury and the author of many, many books on the Soviet Union and its relationship with the West and, of course, of Russia and its current relationship with the West, including several important books about the Ukraine conflict. Most recently, his most recent book is The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire, which was just out last month. And of course, back in 2015, just after the Maidan events, Richard, you published Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands. So, Richard, please take it away. Thank you. Oh, and I have to ask you to unmute, sorry, give me half a second, Richard. Okay, there you go.

Richard Sakwa

Lovely. Thank you. And thank you very much for that introduction. I think that you’ve covered so many important issues there, and I hope that I can say a few words about that, and the others as well. So I think it’s a most important moment to be discussing these issues, given where we are today, and not just Iran, potentially over Cuba and so much else. So, what I wanted to do is just to make a few points, to give the big picture, as it were—some concepts, some way of perhaps thinking about it.

And the first one would be just to stress periodization, the time. And what I’m arguing, it seems to me now, is that 80 years after the end of the Second World War, after 1945, that we are, let me put it this way, once again in an open historical situation. That some of the glaciers, some of the complete frozen character of the elements emerging after the end of the Second World War—you’ve mentioned the Cold War and such, I’ll talk about that in a minute. But the emergence of the, you know, powerful U.S.-led alliance system, all of that is in flux for various reasons. And of course, it’s a moment of exceptional danger, where our old guideposts are no longer making sense, and it’s extremely difficult to get a handle on things. And within this… so we’re talking about 80 years. It’s not to say that the structures of power, imperialism, have disappeared, by no means, but simply that the character, the way the balance within the system is changing.

And so this 80 years is coming to an end, something new is emerging, and of course, this beast slouching to Bethlehem is a very ugly one, indeed. And so, some people are really looking back already to the safety, the good old days of the Cold War, can you believe it? Within those 80 years, I would argue that it went into two sub-phases. The first 40 years was embedding capitalism, embedding social relations within the welfare state, as Ruggie and others have argued. The emergence of this welfare state, in part, as you’ve alluded to, the existence of the Soviet Union, the existence of a geopolitical and ideological rival, kept the political West, the collective West, on its toes, and of course, fear that the people would turn towards the alternative, given the manifest inadequacies of even the achievements of the welfare state, but obviously the failures at the same time. And of course, the continuous, catastrophic position in international affairs. So, for 40 years, building welfare states, in the last 40 years, dismantling them in one way or another, or certainly making them less effective.

This first element is that Churchill’s Fulton speech, of course, did signal a Cold War, but at the time, the emphasis was less on the thinking of the Cold War, because it was, as it were, alerting to the fact that it may well be emerging. But the focus, interestingly enough, was on the Anglo-American alliance, the special relationship which Churchill made a lot of interest about. And that was the element to which Stalin responded, in particular saying that the imperialists are coming together, and in his response a little bit later in the Soviet media, that was the emphasis which he put on it. Nevertheless, the real Cold War, I think, could be signalled clearly—it was a long slide—was, in fact, Truman’s speech in March 1947, when he made his famous speech which was far more radical than Churchill’s, because Churchill was trying to save something. With Truman’s speech in March 1947, we were moving into a new phase entirely of that element.

The second point is, again, a point to which you’ve alluded: that after 1945, we saw the establishment of the Charter International System with the United Nations as its focus. Now, the establishment of the United Nations still generates an enormous amount of debate. The bottom line is, and I’m now thinking about Mark Mazower’s book already well over a decade ago, No Gilded Palace, in which he actually very convincingly argues that as far as Churchill was concerned, despite his huge ambivalence, and indeed, of course, the United States’ ambivalence about establishing what in those days was called a world government—of course, it wasn’t—certainly the fear, both in Washington and London, was that their freedom of action would be limited.

But ultimately, the creation and the decision at Yalta, which Stalin insisted on, that the major powers had veto rights as permanent members of the Security Council, meant first that they had a buy-in, as opposed to the League of Nations, which, of course, the United States in the end didn’t join, and the Soviet Union very late. So the idea was to get them in. And, of course, ultimately, amidst all those debates, as far as Churchill was concerned in the early times, the United Nations, the way it was formulated, would maintain the British Empire, which already at that stage was beginning to turn into what was called the British Commonwealth, including the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. So, it was a… but the key point is that it took on a life of its own.

Very early, in 1945, decolonization was not on the agenda, but the fact that they established this framework and the charter—the original charter was not focused on decolonization by any means. Just like the League of Nations temporized about, despite Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points on the national thing, it didn’t apply to the non-Western, non-imperial powers, of course, and Europe. But the same elements were in the original 1945 formulation of the United Nations, but that quickly changed, of course, under the pressure of India, the Chinese Revolution, and so much more, the Non-Aligned Movement in 1955.

And that’s a crucial point, because today, this international system, the United Nations, is under unprecedented attack. Not just simply the “border of peace,” which, you know, it’s more or less explicit: we will establish alternatives. Some, and I think mistakenly in Moscow and elsewhere, sometimes argue—it’s not the official position by any means—arguing that we need to start again, that maybe BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or some other organization could be the alternative. Now, I can understand why people are saying it may be important to start again with a new international system. I disagree. I think that there will be never any consensus. It simply won’t work. So, in other words, you abandon this, and there’s nothing and no fundamental new ideas in the wings, except, of course, an expanded membership including Africa, Latin America, and India, of course. And if India joins, I mentioned this, and of course the Pakistanis get very upset, and so on and so forth.

So this is the best we’ve got. But now, we’re at the point at which the United Nations does reflect normative multipolarity. All 193 states in the United Nations—and of course, there’s some 200 in total—are based on this important ideological principle of sovereign internationalism. It’s a very dynamic concept, that it’s internationalism coming together from multilateral world health organizations, UNESCO, you name it, the 30-odd United Nations institutions, plus many more. And of course, the United Nations is the source of legitimacy. So these wars are illegitimate, and of course, against international law in a fundamental sense. Without it, there’d be no rock on which you could stand, apart from an abstract ethical universalism, but at least we have an organization and a charter to which you can hold people’s feet to the fire. It hasn’t worked, but sometimes it’s there, and without it, it’ll be far worse. So it’s a genuinely universal body.

Now, my third point really to the imperial thing is that after 1945, in parallel to this international system, which the United States and United Kingdom did so much to establish but which doesn’t belong to them, we saw the establishment of the political West. We could call it the collective West, the Atlantic alliance system, it doesn’t matter. I think “the political West” is important to call it that, because it distinguishes it from the other Wests—what Alan Freeman calls the Columbian West since 1492, which is the explicitly imperial and colonial West, and indeed the cultural West, going back to Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Persian-Babylonian origins. There are many Wests, but this West, what I want to stress, is that after 1945, this US, UK, and then European alliance, this Atlantic Alliance, was… I don’t think that the general public, certainly, understands just how transformative this unique political formation was.

It had two key facets: an automatically imperial one, both within it—which was basically U.S. hegemony over Western Europe, which has stymied its intellectual, strategic security, and other development since then—but also the external factor, that this political West has been a reformulation of imperial agendas in a different way. Of course, it also has a Commonwealth aspect, the Republican aspect, the public goods aspect, and this ideology; it’s a contradictory political formation. It’s not monolithic; it has moments and contestation within it.

But the key point is that the political West does to its member states what Chris Bickerton and my former colleague Phil Cunliffe at Kent used to argue: just like membership of the European Union transforms nation states into member states. This is a process of state transformation, and that’s why you need to distinguish this political-cultural security formation away from the other Wests. Because it claimed to be universal, and after 1989, ’85-’89, it then began to subvert and usurp the Charter international system. It bombed Belgrade in Serbia in 1999 without UN sanction. It went to war in Iraq in 2003 without UN sanction, and so on.

So this political West claimed a universality that only belongs to the genuine universality of the Charter international system. So this tension between the system and models of political order within the system—we used to have the Soviet model of socialist internationalism, then we had this political West with its model of liberal globalism. I would distinguish that globalism is very different from internationalism; internationalism is genuinely independent actors coming together on a voluntary basis. Globalism is the vision of empire and ideological expansion by hegemonic and different means.

But this political West is where we are today. Of course, it’s changing fundamentally now. Obviously, the United States didn’t want to be bound by the Charter International system. Now it doesn’t want to be constrained by the political West; it’s become a burden. And that’s why I say we’re into a new phase where the United States is shedding its own limitations and constraints within that political West established after 1945. And that’s why this is really uncharted water. At the same time, peace movements are arguing for a better West, this “fourth West,” if you like, which would be perhaps a more humble and more modest actor in international politics, together with the Global South and so much more. So I’ll stop there, but it gives us a sort of framework in which we can start thinking about these questions. Thank you.

Radhika Desai

That was great, Richard. Thank you so much, and it’s so thought-provoking. Anyway, sorry, I just lost my train of thought, because I was thinking of asking Paul to please request Ken to unmute. But I’ll come back to it. But let me introduce our next speaker now. Our next speaker is Professor Ken Hammond. Ken teaches at New Mexico State University in the Department of History. He has been one of the most distinguished historians of China, in particular in the United States. He has also, of course, visited China a great deal, having served as a research fellow at the Institute of History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and many other places. He was co-director of the Confucius Institute at New Mexico State University. Two of his more notable books were Pepper Mountain: The Life, Death, and Posthumous Career of Yang Jixing, which came out in 2007, and his most recent book is China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future, which was published in 2023. So, Ken, please go ahead. We’ve heard just now from a foremost thinker about the Soviet and Russian role in the world, and now we are hearing from someone very attuned to China’s role in the world. Ken, please go ahead.

Ken Hammond

Sure, thank you so much, Radhika. I’m delighted to be here. I love these webinars, and it’s an honor to be taking part here today. Yeah, I want to shift the focus just for a bit over to Asia, particularly East and Southeast Asia, because I think that when we talk about the sort of reconfiguration of imperialism after the end of the Second World War, this is an arena in which we can see some things taking place that are maybe not quite such headline grabbers even at the time, but nonetheless, really, I think, demonstrate the dynamic at the outset of what becomes the Cold War—this period between the end of 1945, 1946, and probably, let’s say, 1949, by the time we have the victory of the Chinese Revolution.

And I think that there’s two fundamental dynamics that are going on within this moment, especially right after the end of the war. One that is fairly straightforward is the replacement of British leadership in the imperialist realm by that of the United States. This is, of course, a process that’s been going on after the First World War when the United States began to consolidate a new position. But it’s really after World War II that the United States emerges as kind of the dominant power within Western imperialism. And in many ways, we can think of the Cold War period and subsequent dynamics of Western imperialism as an era of American hegemony, right? And that’s something that is falling apart dramatically now, and yet it has shaped these last 80 years in very profound ways.

The other dynamic, of course, which is really what we talk about when we talk about the Cold War, was this reversal—very quick, but also unfolding in steps—in the relationship between the United States, in particular the West, this “political West,” and the Soviet Union and its allies, the Allied socialist states. Because during the war itself, of course, the United States had had to ally itself with the Soviet Union in the fight against fascism, in the fight to preserve its own imperialist interests, but also to defeat the threat of fascism and militarism, both in Europe and in East Asia.

So, these two dynamics unfold in tandem: the rise of America as the preeminent imperialist power, and the very profound shift from a period of alliance and cooperation with the Soviet Union to hostility to everything about the Soviet Union and everything even associated with the Soviet Union. So I want to just sketch out four particular cases across East and Southeast Asia that I think highlight just how profound a reversal, a change of course, this all really was.

And I’ll start with China, because, of course, China’s kind of the biggest arena for all this. During the latter part of World War II, the United States’ Office of Strategic Services had sent a military advisory mission to Yen’an, to the headquarters of the Communist Party of China and the Red Army—what’s called the Dixie Mission—and they spent certainly an extended period of time working with the Red Army, meeting with Chairman Mao, with Zhou Enlai, with Zhu De and others there, and reporting back to Washington, suggesting that in the post-war period, whatever the political dynamic was going to play out within China, the communist movement, which was primarily focused on making changes in the rural economy, should be supported and brought into the conversation about China’s political future.

And that begins to change very quickly after the end of the war. There’s a period where the United States does engage in some diplomatic activities, trying to broker some sort of coalition government between the Guomindang nationalists and the communists. But that falls apart fairly quickly, and then the United States pivots completely and puts its great military power, its assistance, behind the nationalist government, behind Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang forces. That proves to be a fool’s errand, and of course, as the Civil War progresses in China, any voices that were raised within the American foreign policy establishment trying to point out what the realities on the ground were in China—trying to suggest that this flat-out support for the nationalists was probably in the long run going to be counterproductive—those voices were ignored or silenced.

In the end, of course, in October of 1949, the revolution is triumphant, the People’s Republic is established. A relationship between the People’s China and the Soviet Union is launched with the Treaty of Friendship in February of 1950. And by that point, things have changed so dramatically that in the United States, we get this McCarthy era—just the darkest hours domestically of the Cold War. And anyone who spoke out in anything other than lockstep with this violent anti-communist view about China was labeled basically as traitors. Many of the scholars associated with China Studies either had their careers disrupted or left the country—Owen Lattimore, very famously, going off to England. The change there, the turnover that we see in the relationship with China is just so dramatic. The United States imposes its navy between the mainland and the island of Taiwan—just completely absolute hostility and antagonism for the new socialist government.

Meanwhile, over in Japan, Japan, of course, had been part of the Axis, had been a terrible, terrible enemy of the United States, the subject of terrible racist propaganda during the war, and of course, Japan was the country upon which the atomic bombs were dropped. So, we see with the occupation of Japan another very dramatic reversal, very dramatic transformation. And this is bound up with the emergence of the Cold War as well. Initially, in the first 2 or 3 years of the occupation, there was a fairly progressive sort of tint to the policies that the United States was supporting: the drafting of the Constitution, the peace provisions in the Constitution, things like that, but also the breaking up of the great corporate conglomerates, the Zaibatsu, a number of other policies, the release of left-wing political prisoners from prison where they had been held by the militarists. There’s a period in the early days of the occupation where it’s a fairly liberal, fairly progressive kind of thing.

But by 1948 or 1949, we see a radical change there—what’s called the Dodge mission, a Detroit lawyer who gets sent over by the United States to reorient the policies of the occupation. And this is what sets up the post-occupation dominance of what becomes the Liberal Democratic Party, which of course, persists all the way down to our present day. And again, it’s part of this reconfiguration of relationships with the Soviet Union, because Japan now comes to be seen as an ally, as a base for imperialist military activities—first the Korean War, later the Vietnam War. And of course, American military presence in Japan, especially in Okinawa, continues right down to the present day, with a lot of friction and tension with the people on the ground there.

The last two things I want to touch on are interlinked; I want to see them as a strong contrast. And this is the fate of European colonialism in first in French Indochina, and then in the Dutch East Indies, what becomes Indonesia. Because there’s a dramatic difference in the conduct of the United States towards these two struggles. In Indochina, what returns to being Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, during the war, the Viet Minh had fought against the Japanese. The French colonial authorities, under the direction of the Vichy government back in occupied France, had collaborated with the Japanese. The Viet Minh fought against the Japanese, and as with China, the OSS sent a mission—the DEER mission—to help out with that. And they, too, gave very positive feedback about the Viet Minh and encouraged the American government to consider aiding them, helping them in their struggles after the war.

But when the war comes to an end and Japan is defeated, the American government turns against the Viet Minh when, in August and September of 1945, they come into Hanoi and issue the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh actually incorporates language from the American Declaration of Independence back in 1776 in order to send a hand of friendship to the United States, and that’s just slapped aside. And the United States positions itself as the great supporter of French imperialism in its efforts to return to Indochina, and after the defeat of France in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, the United States says, “Well, if you can’t hack it anymore, we’ll just take over.” And of course, that leads to the Vietnam War and the terrible suffering that we inflict upon the people of Vietnam, and of course, the eventual victory of the Vietnamese Revolution and independence for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

In contrast to that, we have the experience of the independence struggle in Indonesia, where Sukarno and Hatta were viewed by American analysts not as communists, but as sort of bourgeois nationalists, almost. And so, the United States puts pressure on the post-war Dutch government, and of course, in the era of the Marshall Plan and all this assistance that’s being pumped into Western Europe, the United States has a lot of leverage and puts pressure on the Dutch government so that Indonesia is granted independence in 1949. You know, it’s like the litmus test: the one thing that mattered was whether a post-colonial country would open itself up to American imperialism, to American capitalism, or not. If they would, then we would support their independence. If they wouldn’t—if they were allied with the Soviet Union, if the independence movement was led by socialists or communists—then everything had to be done to block that. And so the contrast between these outcomes in Indochina and Indonesia is perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the degree to which Cold War mentality, the Cold War assertion of American imperial dominance and hegemony, played itself out. And I’m gonna let it go at that.

Radhika Desai

What I was thinking of in response to Richard’s remarks, which were also brilliant, is that it seems to me that the connecting link is France, isn’t it? I mean, the political West depended on essentially presiding, insofar as the political West constituted American dominance over its own allies. It was happier, it had an easier experience with the so-called defeated powers, with Germany and Japan. Whereas, of course, France was always the sore thumb that stuck out, and it was constantly fighting for its own imperial autonomy—a struggle that, to some extent, I think, still continues to this day. But anyway, I look forward to further discussion of this.

Our next speaker is also, I’m sure, going to be fireworks for us. I’d like to introduce Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos: journalist, writer, editor of the prolific and always worth reading Defend Democracy Press. Dimitrios was a former chief correspondent of the Athens News Agency in Moscow from 1989 to 1999, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Syriza party, former advisor to Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou on arms control and east-west relations, and many other things besides—one of the most engaging political interlocutors that I’ve ever had. I should mention that the International Manifesto Group was originally born in a Skype conversation between me and Dimitrios in the months after the pandemic started. Okay, Dimitrios, please.

Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos

Thank you, dear Radhika, for your very kind words. Thank you also for the invitation. You know, ancient Greeks have constructed the word truth from “A” and “lethe,” that is, “no oblivion.” Don’t forget the important things. This is the sense of truth, of identity. And I think that you’re right, also, when studying this transitory period between the supposedly great anti-fascist alliance and the Cold War to focus a little bit on Greece, given the fact that Greece is a kind of fractal, you know. As Churchill put it, it is producing more history than it can consume. So, here you can find in micrography all the main tendencies which are working on the world system.

By the way, regarding the Cold War—in the sense not of a simple containment of Russia which was happening for centuries by the British, but in the sense of a total ideological, political, and from time to time military war—I think it was never really interrupted. It began in October 1917. The very creation of the Soviet state, the creation of the October Revolution, was an unacceptable ideological and geopolitical challenge to the capitalist world, and to many Eastern regimes. So, for them, the Soviet Union had to disappear. This was the goal. And here, there is no symmetry. Because if, for Russia under Lenin, the aim was the world revolution, it was not after Lenin. After Lenin, the aim was to find a common way to coexist with the West. And sometimes, even, one has the impression that the greatest ambition of Russian elites—be they post-Leninist Soviet ones, or especially late Soviet ones and post-Soviet Russian ones—is to be recognized as equal partners of the West. Unfortunately, this is not possible.

The West does not want it, and it does not want it even after ’91, in spite of the transformation of Russia, because post-Soviet Russia keeps some of the elements of the Soviet heritage. For example, the nuclear arms, which give them some freedom and some possibilities which are unacceptable, especially in the new super-imperialism system which is created. So, the Cold War is continuing also after the end of the Cold War. It’s the permanent parameter in the relations between the capitalist West and Russia. But this asymmetry—the fact that the Soviets and the Russians have different ideas about what they want from the Westerns, and they don’t even understand, or the Soviet leadership does not want to understand, what is the real end game—that creates very peculiar situations, like the one Greece has lived in.

Usually, this Cold War period has some intervals of rapprochement or attenuation of hostility. A partial case is the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, when at least Germany is making some peace with the Soviet Union. Then we have the anti-fascist Alliance. Then we have the détente. Then we have the Gorbachev and Yeltsin period. In all cases, this has lasted for some period. The West has taken all the possible concessions from Moscow, and then they repeat the war in some forms against it. That is a permanent situation, and I think it is a structural symptom of the Western system.

Now, speaking about Greece: in Greece, during the occupation, we had a very vast armed resistance movement developed which was the largest in occupied Europe, proportionally to the size and population of the country. This movement was created by a number of pioneer communist fighters who only received a retroactive approval from the bureaucrats of the Politburo. And despite the intense opposition and even threats from the Greek bourgeois parties, they acted. They have profited from the fact that all Greek bourgeois parties were either sided with the Germans or they went to Egypt following the King and the British. This resistance movement was not, in reality, a resistance movement like the one in France, for example, or in Belgium. It has developed into a huge national, social, and political revolution—a deep one. It created its own government, while in the liberated areas of the country, it applied a very democratic, popular self-government and justice system that to some extent resembles Yugoslav self-management.

The National Liberation Front (EAM), at the time the Germans began to leave from Greece, was controlling four-fifths of Greek territory, 80%. They had 1,700,000 members out of a population of less than 7 million. When Athens was liberated, EAM’s army, the ELAS (National Liberation Army), was a regular army numbering 50,000 to 70,000 men and women, to which should be added 50,000 from the Reserve ELAS, 6,000 from the National Militia, and even naval and air forces. The partisans were armed with weapons mainly taken from the Germans and the Italians. The Communist Party, which had about 200 members in 1941, reached at least half a million by 1944. The EAM Revolution is one of the most important and deepest in European history, and it was mercilessly hunted by the British, the Americans, the Soviets, the Greek oligarchy, and even its own leadership. That is why official history in Greece and internationally keeps it as buried as possible. At the end of the German occupation, different estimations—at the time we had no polls—go from 80% to 95% of the Greeks supporting the communist-led resistance movement.

It is in Greece, really, that the Cold War begins with a form of civil war. There is another civil war inside the left between the forces who are controlled by the bureaucrats in Moscow and the genuine revolutionary figures who do not want to obey the more and more irrational orders they receive from Russia. In reality, Churchill, who is maybe the politician with the most acute class consciousness in the West, so to say, and political vision—and who said, I remind you, in July 1941, when he signed the military alliance with the Soviets, that we remain hostile to communism; he never said the opposite. In 1942, he is very anxious about the fact that the only serious resistance movement in Greece is dominated by communists, because Churchill, from 1942, is thinking of the post-war Europe, and he does not want to see a post-war Europe dominated by the Soviets.

I can tell you that in an interview he gave to me in 1991, Valentin Berezhkov, who was the interpreter for Stalin in his talks—one of the two interpreters in his talks with Churchill and of Molotov with Eden—when I asked him about those negotiations in October 1944 between Soviet Russia and Britain, he told me: “The British wanted Greece so much, and they knew they would not get it without our help, that they gave us everything we asked from them in the Balkans.” As I told you, in 1942 already, the British are threatening General Napoleon Zervas to oblige him to go to the mountains and create another anti-communist resistance movement. They say that if he does not do that, they will betray him to the Germans. Zervas goes to the mountains, and in 1943, he begins the first civil war. The civil war in Greece began in 1943, not in 1946 or ’47, as is established now in the West.

In 1943, the EDES, that is the organization created by Zervas, makes an agreement with the 22nd German Division; it makes a peace agreement, and then it attacks the communist organization, ELAS. And there, we see the first split between the British Foreign Office and the British Army. Because the British Army is more interested in fighting against the Germans, but the Foreign Office is more interested, especially after the Stalingrad Battle, to stop Russians from occupying Europe. There is even one officer—but this is not clear, this incident—a British officer who comes into direct negotiations with the German headquarters in Greece. But those archives, the British archives, are closed, and we don’t know exactly what were those deliberations.

So, this is the first civil war, which stops after some months. EAM is developing. It is controlling most of the country, and this is a very serious problem for Churchill. He does not know how to solve this problem, and he cannot solve it without help from Moscow. In early 1944, the British are suppressing the anti-monarchist and anti-fascist uprising of Greek military in Egypt and they confined them in concentration camps. In a memorandum to Eden on May 4th, Churchill says:

“If we want to prevent the domination of the Balkans from communism, we must raise the issue clearly with the Soviets, possibly even recall our ambassador from Moscow. The Foreign Office must devise the strongest attack against EAM so that it can be openly denounced. No help, weapons of any kind, or supplies should be given to it. All our help should be given to Zervas, and this should be increased. The ELAS people are the most treacherous, filthy brutes I have read about in official documents, and that is saying a great deal. I suppose that now they have been invited to join the new government. A brief truce is maybe necessary. In the meantime, let us prepare our cannons, for you must be sure that we shall arrive at the rupture with the National Liberation Front.”

In these words spoken by the Prime Minister of Great Britain one year before the end of World War II, the future of Greece is already outlined. What is about to happen to a European country that mounted the greatest resistance to the Nazis and was, in an exemplary way, destroyed—first by the Nazis, then by the British and the Americans. The next day, when he receives this memorandum, Eden meets the Soviet ambassador, tells him that they will do as the Soviets wish in Romania, but asks him regarding Greece, which is under British administration, to publicly support the Papandreou government in exile in Cairo, or at least discreetly advise the EAM to join it. In a message to Roosevelt on May 18, Churchill assures him that the Soviets have agreed to take responsibility for Romania and to give us responsibility for Greece.

Now, I can go into details on what happened afterwards, but I don’t want to abuse the time. I know that Radhika is a very strong moderator, from my own experience. So, I will tell you the main thing is the following. In May 1944, they organize a conference in Lebanon, where they are inviting the resistance and all the political parties. Philby—I found some time when I was looking for the documents in the Dimitrov archives in Moscow, I found a telegram by Philby which was saying exactly what will happen in Lebanon, and then what will happen in Greece. They knew everything, and they had told the Soviets.

So, they sign an incredible agreement, the resistance delegation in Lebanon betraying completely the guidelines they had from their leaders. When this is known in Greece, there is a revolt of the guerrillas in the mountains. The Politburo of the Communist Party is canceling the agreement, but there is a Russian military committee which comes to the mountains under Colonel Popov. We can suspect what was said from what happened afterwards. And also, we have what the Russian ambassador to Cairo said to the EAM representatives; he told them that it is better to go inside the Papandreou government—Papandreou was the man who was liked by the British—and accept those terms.

So after one and a half months, the Politburo decides to accept this agreement. In September 1944, the National Liberation Army accepts to be under the orders of the British General Scobie. In 1944, the British come to Greece on October 12. At the same time, Churchill goes to Moscow to discuss Greece. In December 1944, the communist ministers resigned because even the agreements they had made were not working. The next day, the British are organizing a Maidan-type provocation in Athens, in Syntagma Square. They are killing many peaceful demonstrators. They are provoking a general uproar in Greece, and they are using it in order to begin the occupation, the bombing, and occupation of Athens.

At this very time, the leadership of the guerrillas of the National Liberation Front orders the main bulk of the army of the partisans to leave Athens, not to enter Athens, and to go to northeastern Greece. For one month, mainly young people of the Reserve ELAS are fighting the British in Greece. They even put dynamite under the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens, but when the Politburo of the Communist Party learns about it, they tell them not to blow up Churchill. In spite of the victory of the “Whites,” so to say, and the British in December 1944, the main bulk of the partisan army still exists, and the popular support still exists. In February 1945, one day after the closure of the Yalta Agreement, when, obviously, Stalin has seen his agreement with Churchill being renewed, we have the signing of the Varkiza Agreement with which all Greek gorillas were disarmed.

Radhika Desai

Dimitrios, if you could please wrap up soon.

Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos

Yes. So, I’m not going to speak more because it is too much, but what I can say is that then we have a chapter of “White Terror,” well documented by the United Nations, and the third round of the civil war which had terrible consequences for Greece—especially because it destroyed the best Greeks and it made the governing economic and political elite the collaborators of the Nazis. It was a moral disaster. And as for the Soviet Union, I really don’t know if that helped them in any way. And one last remark: sometimes when I see the way now Russia and China are trying somehow to calm down Donald Trump, I am wondering if they don’t repeat the same mistakes they did during the 20th century. Thank you very much, and excuse me for taking a little bit more time, but it’s my subject.

Radhika Desai

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dimitrios. I think that was very informative, and I think you reminded people of the profound tragedy of Greek politics. Greece originated the idea of tragedy, and it has clearly suffered it in a major way itself. I suppose I can only say that you can look at this as telling the story of a series of betrayals, particularly by communist forces of progressive anti-imperialist causes, or you can see it as part of the weakness, more generally, of left and anti-imperialist forces as being part of an interregnum where left and anti-imperialist forces are important enough to elicit opposition but not strong enough to deal with that opposition.

But nevertheless, you’ve given us so much to think about. Our next speaker is Dr. Oleg Barabanov. Oleg is the program director of the Valdai Discussion Club, and he’s also Academic Director of European Studies at the prestigious MGIMO University, which of course is Russia’s diplomatic university, and professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Oleg’s writing covers left and right politics worldwide, Eurasia, and relations between Russia, China, and the United States. That includes covering nuclear matters. So, Oleg, please go ahead, the floor is yours.

Oleg Barabanov

Yes, thank you very much, Radhika, for your invitation to the seminar. I’m glad to be once again at the International Manifesto Group. And, from the Soviet perspective, if we take these years after the Second World War, maybe the most enigmatic or mysterious question is: why did Stalin stop? Because the Greek situation that was described by Dimitrios brilliantly now is only one example of the Soviets, of Stalin, leaving local communists to the mercy of their enemies.

But Greece was not the major example. The major example was Iran. Let’s remember that starting from August ’41, so just 2 months after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the USSR and the United Kingdom decided together on the joint occupation of Iran to stop the German influence there, to stop the pro-German activities there, and also to provide a shorter route for Lend-Lease from the United States to the USSR. So, the Soviets occupied the northern part of Iran, the British occupied the southern part of Iran, and stayed there for the whole period of the Second World War.

Radhika Desai

Oleg, sorry to interrupt, but if you could speak a bit louder. (Radhika Desai addresses the speaker to improve audio quality).

Oleg Barabanov

Understandable. In the Soviet part of Iran, they had a strong Communist Party formed in those years, and there was also an ethnic movement because there were parts of Iranian Azerbaijan in the northwestern part of Iran, bordering the Soviet Azerbaijani Republic. And so there was a huge local base. There was also a kind of People’s Republic proclaimed at the end of the Second World War in northwestern Iran. But the Soviets left. Stalin decided not to clash with the British, not to clash with the Americans, and the Soviets left. And all the communists were hanged, absolutely without mercy.

Another example is China. When the Soviet Union joined the anti-Japanese campaign in August 1945, there were Soviet troops in all what was named Manchuria traditionally—now we name it Dongbei—three northeastern Chinese provinces. The Soviet troops were there for a surprisingly short period; just a couple of months after the Japanese defeat and surrender, the Soviet troops left northeastern China, and the civil war between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communists started. Northeast China became one of the key theaters of the civil war in China in those years. Why the Soviets left from there is another mystery.

And there were other things. In Europe, there were plans of Italian communists to maybe organize a revolution, or use the Trieste crisis for their purposes. Stalin was silent and doing nothing. There are several possible explanations of why he stopped. Maybe the main one, at least for me, was connected exactly to nuclear weapons. Because in ’45, the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and there was a monopoly of the United States in nuclear weapons. It is a quite known anecdote that during the Potsdam-Berlin conference in summer ’45, Truman informed Stalin that “we just exploded the nuclear weapon.” Stalin remained a “poker face” man after that, but then he initiated the Soviet works on nuclear weapons.

We can debate—and there are many debates among historians—whether it was Soviet intelligence who provided the nuclear bomb to the Soviet Union or whether it was the nuclear scientists of the USSR themselves. Maybe it was 50-50. For me, it’s 75 for intelligence and 25 for scientists, but at least in ’46, the first experimental, very small nuclear reactor became operational in Moscow. And only at the end of ’48 and beginning ’49 did the industrial-scale reactor producing plutonium from nuclear spent fuel become operational in the Ural Mountains. So, only in August ’49 did the USSR explode its own nuclear bomb, and the American monopoly was broken.

In these years, since ’47 or ’48, there were several U.S. plans in the Pentagon and the National Security Council regarding military plans for war with the USSR, and about 20 main Soviet cities were indicated as targets for nuclear bombing. Another thing which Stalin did very quickly in ’49 after producing the Soviet nuclear bomb was to organize a base and airfields for strategic bombers of the Soviet Union in the extreme far northeast of the USSR, in the Chukotka Peninsula, just near Alaska and the Bering Strait. Because there were no missiles at that time—the intercontinental missiles appeared from ’55 to ’57 or so—there were only strategic bombers. For the Soviet Union, it was a quite difficult logistical task to reach the 48 states—not Alaska, but Washington, DC, or at least Seattle—with Soviet strategic bombers. So Stalin started to build this airfield in the extreme northeast.

After that, we see a huge change in Soviet policy. Stalin transformed from a “timid man” between ’46 to ’49 to the Stalin that we all knew. The Soviet Union actively supported North Korea in the Korean War with Soviet pilots, through China, with armaments and so on, and there was at least some initial deterrent against the United States. Because when General MacArthur wanted to use the nuclear bomb on North Korea and maybe on China during the Korean War, President Truman refused to do it, knowing that the Soviets had some bombs already. So, the first logic, the first explication, is nuclear.

The second one is that Stalin was more concerned with Eastern and Central Europe—the territory taken by the Soviet army at the end of the Second World War, given to the Soviet Union during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences by Churchill, Roosevelt, and then Truman. The main task was to organize some formal position for pro-Soviet communists in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and so on. For example, during the Second World War, in ’43, the Comintern was dissolved by Stalin, but it was reintroduced under a new name, Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), in ’48, but not to fight U.S. imperialism mainly, but to fight the Yugoslav communists under Josip Broz Tito, who clashed with the Soviet Union at that time. So, to have what he already had, and not to seek anything further.

The third explanation could be that Stalin was trustful to his words to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman. If they agreed that “East Europe is yours, and all the rest of the world is ours” and they shook hands on that, Stalin was trustful to that agreement. Maybe also the last thing is that Stalin was quite cautious and suspicious towards nationalistic leaders rising at that time in various countries of Asia. For example, he didn’t trust Jawaharlal Nehru at all. He said that he was a bourgeois puppet and anti-communist, and the USSR had nothing to do with newly independent India.

The same was more or less true about Indonesia. It was only after Stalin’s death, when Khrushchev came to power starting from ’54 or ’55, that the USSR started its closer connections with new nationalist regimes in Asia and North Africa—with India, with Burma, with Indonesia, with Egypt. In Egypt, Nasser was hanging communists and putting communists in prison, but it was not a problem for Khrushchev because for geopolitical reasons, nationalist Egypt—anti-communist, but nationalist and anti-Western—was a partner or an ally for the USSR. The same was true for Burma and to some extent in Indonesia. But Stalin was not inclined toward dialogue or rapprochement with new nationalist leaders in Asia and North Africa. So, maybe I’ll stop here. Thank you, Radhika.

Radhika Desai

Thank you so much, Oleg. That was really, again, so informative, addressing the meat of the issue, particularly around the stories of betrayals one can tell about the Cold War and why, as you say, Stalin stopped. That was brilliant. Our next and final speaker is Professor Vladimir Shubin. Professor Shubin is the director of the Center for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has written an enormous amount, and two of his English books are Social Democracy and Southern Africa, published in 1989, and more recently in 2008, The Hot “Cold War”: The Soviet Union and the Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa. Vladimir, please go ahead, the floor is yours.

Vladimir Shubin

So, do you hear me?

Radhika Desai

Yes.

Vladimir Shubin

To begin with, the very idea or term “Cold War” was not popular in our country in my years. We used to call it the anti-imperialist struggle with three detachments: socialist countries, the working class of the capitalist countries, and the national liberation movements. I think, to a large extent, it was correct, because the very idea of Cold War is a bit misleading. I would agree with Dimitrios, or at least partly agree, that the Cold War started in 1917. I can quote my old, late friend Brian Bunting, one of the South African communists, who used to say it started in 1920-21 after the “hot” civil war in Russia—people often forget—after the intervention of over a dozen foreign countries into the affairs of Russia.

Point number two: speaking about the Cold War, we should not forget the idea of the so-called bipolar world. People speak about bipolarity up to the 1980s, but in my opinion, this bipolarity was visible from the 1950 agreement with China up to mid, if not early ’60s. As you know, in the late ’60s we already had serious problems, including some skirmishes on the border with China. The world became very much multipolar already, as soon as armed forces are concerned; you remember de Gaulle withdrew French forces from NATO. As far as economic forces go, we mentioned the Non-Aligned Movement; it was not in 1955—that was Bandung, when China participated—it was created later.

In the situation we were facing in the early 1960s, there was no unipolar world as well. People often speak about the unipolar world, but I wrote an article about the fallacy of the unipolar world in the late ’90s, but when it was published, the editors put a question mark because they didn’t want to believe it. But I believe almost everybody now believes that this is wrong, and that the world is multipolar—or call it multi-center, or call it as you like.

I will have to say a few words about Greece. I am old enough to say that during the Greek Civil War I was in primary school, so my memory is not as good as it used to be, but I do remember there was a series of what we used to call propaganda for Greek revolutionaries in Russia. I still remember the youth magazine with the front cover showing young men and women with machine guns, and the heading was “They did not vote for the king.” That was the approach.

To illustrate how difficult it is to distinguish between the truth and fake stories, I can give you one example. The first head of African Affairs in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and one of my predecessors, was Petr Manchkha. He was heading this section from 1961 to 1982, but before that, he was dealing with the Balkans. He was one of the first to come to Albania. He told me that he was there in early 1942, crossing from Albania to Greece to attend a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. They went by horse. At the time, he for the first time understood there was something wrong with the leadership because Markos Vafiadis was given a poor horse. It was clear that he was not as respected as he was supposed to be. Many things were decided by the people themselves without any command from Moscow. He told me how the Greek communists applauded when they heard that a representative of the Communist Central Committee of the Soviet party was present.

One more point: he was with Zachariadis when they went in late 1949 to Sochi. People say he met Stalin there; I’m not sure, but at least Petr told me they were waiting and waiting. He contacted General Vlasik, head of Stalin’s security, who said “don’t worry, we know where you are.” Finally, they met Molotov, who was still the second man, though his importance was declining. They had a discussion with Zachariadis. I have a feeling, in fact I’m sure, that Zachariadis told him about Molotov, about the decision to stop the civil war. It looks like they had not informed Moscow before, or at least they had not got any permission from Moscow. So Molotov was not too happy with this statement. It contradicts many stories now written, but I do believe that, though Greece is not my field, this is one of the examples of the Cold War where we should not be reduced only to Soviet and American contradictions.

Maybe I should end by referring to the book by Professor Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. I am not idealizing it, but I believe it is still the best book on the Cold War in the sense of showing different stories from different countries and explaining that not everything was controlled by so-called superpowers. On a personal point, next month a book should be published in South Africa called From Cairo to Cape, covering 30 years of our involvement in Africa. Thank you very much.

Radhika Desai

Thank you so much, Professor Shubin. That was another really informative lecture. Let us now go to the question and answer session. Please use the “raise hand” function under the reactions tab. I also think there will be some comments that the various speakers would like to make vis-a-vis one another’s presentations. Questions? Okay, I see William Mallinson has raised his hand. William, please go ahead. You should be able to unmute now.

William Mallinson

Can you hear me now?

Radhika Desai

Yes.

William Mallinson

Look, let me quote a very short passage by Francis Noel-Baker about what we were really up to in the Balkans before we handed Greece to the Americans. This is what he wrote:

“Instead of helping to strengthen the Greek resistance of EAM by encouraging non-communist elements to join, we tried to weaken its influence to prevent it monopolizing the liberation movement by aiding its political opponents. The nationalists we tried to use were just those people with whom German propaganda against the Red Menace was most effective, and Goebbels was working night and day to prove that all resistance to the Germans was communist-inspired, which is nonsense. Little wonder that so many of our so-called nationalist friends turned Quisling.”

And that is exactly what it’s about. Let me jump in with a related fact before I go to sleep. We need to understand that the Cold War, in a sense, began in 1791, when the warmonger British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger lambasted and criticized Russia for wishing to divide up the Ottoman Empire. As Sismondi wrote, the same things return with new colors because things have always been the same. The Cold War began a long time before we thought. We had our periods of cooperation with Russia to balance it against Germany, but things are just the same today. The past sheds light on the future. We shall therefore remember the important role of atavism in the whole story, and institutional and personal matters, because at the end of the day, it boils down to individual fanatics. That’s all I’ve got to say as a historian who depends only on documents.

Finally, as regards the so-called Churchill-Stalin “naughty document” (the percentages agreement), many months before that—in fact, as you’ll see from one of my comments—the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in June ’44 had already said that we had agreed with the Russians that the Russians would let us take control in Greece. It’s absolutely true, as Oleg said, that that was the reality. I’ve gone on for much too long, but all this comes from pure documents, which is what I rely on as a dispassionate historian.

Radhika Desai

Thank you. It’s important to raise the point that a certain element of Russophobia has always been present. The best way that I can explain it is that, essentially, rather than seeing Russia and its expansion to become the biggest state in the world as something positive bringing peace to a very large chunk of the world, capitalist powers had necessarily to see it as something to be opposed because it was territory that they could not easily dominate. I think that is the root of the Russophobia, but there are many ins and outs to which you are pointing. This is part of the imperialism of the Western powers, and why we see the Cold War as playing a central role in the reconstitution of imperialism.

I have a question or two I’d like to pick. Richard and Ken, you referred to the differences among the Western powers. From the point of view of today, of 2026, if you were to look back on the Cold War period, how would you characterize not the unity but the tensions that remained within the “political West”? And do you think they may re-emerge today in a new context?

My second question is directed to Oleg, but also relates to what Dimitrios was saying: what exactly happened, and what kind of changes does Khrushchev represent, that you began to see less resistance to the imperialist project? Your explanation of why Stalin stopped is very persuasive, particularly as it matches the clear intention of the Americans in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was to scare the Russians and keep them in their place. Of course, after 1949, even though the Soviet Union had the bomb, their delivery mechanisms were not so hot. So, it was still in a vulnerable position into the late ’60s or early ’70s. I’d like to go to each of the speakers, perhaps in the order in which they spoke, to give some comments. Richard, we’ll go to you first.

Richard Sakwa

I’ve got it now. Thank you for your question about the tensions within the political West—this strange beast established after 1945 which lives to this day. Finally, it takes a maverick like Donald J. Trump to ask the sort of questions about the necessity for NATO or for the functions even of the European Union in this system. I’m not saying he gives the right answers, but finally, a US president is asking questions that should have been asked at the end of the first Cold War in 1989-91.

The big tensions: yes, there were always tensions. The initial one was Churchill wanting to preserve the empire and Roosevelt wanting to dismantle it—not for altruistic reasons, but to have access to the market and prevent imperial preferences. Afterwards, the big tension which continues to this day is the tension between Atlanticism—Washington-based and US-led—which has had differential relations with its subjects. It’s obviously the defeated powers, Japan and Germany, and then the core Western countries, the “legacy great powers,” particularly after Suez in 1956. As late as 1955 in Geneva, there were three great powers: the US, UK, and the Soviet Union. After Suez, no one mentions the United Kingdom again in terms of the summit.

The big tension is between Atlanticism and pan-continental Europeanism. This was on the agenda before the Cold War. If you recall, the final decision at Potsdam was effectively a united, neutral, disarmed Germany. If Germany had remained united and non-aligned, there wouldn’t have been a NATO, a Warsaw Pact, or a Cold War. We’ve now got more information about how the Soviet Union was genuine, and it perceived the moves toward the creation of a West German state in 1949 as a fundamental betrayal of Potsdam. This question of Germany is not over. We know from documents that in 1952, Stalin again came up with this German unification plan. The West always sees it as a plan to have a wedge between the two wings of the Atlantic Alliance.

In 1952, Khrushchev was also serious about the demilitarization of Germany, as was Beria before he was killed in late 1953. The failure of that led to Germany joining NATO in 1955, and the Warsaw Pact was established defensively. The fate of Germany was a fundamental issue. Then Gorbachev comes along and says “let’s have a common European home from Lisbon to Vladivostok”—powerful speeches, though not much follow-up. Putin later emphasized the Bolshaya Yevropa (Greater Europe) idea as late as 2008. Today we see this obsession: first, that Germany has to be part of that Western alliance; second, that we cannot have this pan-continental agenda because that would mean bringing in Russia.

After the end of the Cold War, we now see it was systemically and structurally impossible for Russia to join this “political West” because it was a US-led alliance and you cannot allow a subaltern to join it. If Russia joined, it would demand a voice, which would dilute US hegemony and the imperial project. The big challenge was from the Gaullists; de Gaulle moved out of the NATO Unified Military Command in 1966 and kicked NATO headquarters out of France to Brussels. Today we have this agenda on the table again. It’s exceptionally weak, but we see the so-called right-wing populists saying “it makes sense to get on with Russia.” This is the Trumpian line.

Trump is saying things which we would say he got right, and today there’s still talk of a new détente between the United States and Russia. That’s one reason why people would argue Russia is “pulling its punches” in various conflicts because there’s still this vision. Kirill Dmitriev is still continuing the “Alaska agenda” of a new détente. It’s there. A Russo-US détente would bypass the pan-continental vision from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Russia today is obviously moving as a post-Western political formation, but it cannot be a post-European formation. Its culture is European. I distinguish between being post-Western and post-European. This European reunification agenda is on the agenda, but not a Brussels-centered one—possibly a transformative one, perhaps from the left.

Finally, on the Cold War: what makes it specific is the nuclear shadow. Tensions and great power conflicts have been endemic over history, but the nuclear factor makes great power conflict in our age a “Cold War,” quite apart from the ideological mobilization and demonization of the enemy. Thank you.

Radhika Desai

Thanks so much, Richard. I just can’t help but say how serious is Trump about befriending Russia? He has moved in all sorts of directions, particularly vis-a-vis solving the Ukraine conflict. Secondly, if the Dmitriev project wins, will that not amount to a resubordination of Russia to Western capitalism? One wonders whether that is what would happen, or perhaps you will say things have changed and Putin has stabilized things. Finally, what of the alliance with China? People are now saying the new “RIC” is Russia, Iran, China. There are so many questions. Ken Hammond, I’ve asked you to unmute.

Ken Hammond

Yeah, I think I have. In terms of thinking about American hegemony, as you correctly noted, there are certainly tensions within the old imperial powers. I mentioned the U.S. pressuring the Dutch to get out of Indonesia, but France is the most interesting example. This takes us to another realm: Africa. During the Cold War, much of Africa was a great arena for struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, but France continues to play its own special role, especially in West Africa. Even today, although that is in a period of great flux, French forces have been expelled from some countries but still have a presence in others. The French have a very active diplomatic, political, and military agenda directed toward West Africa, which makes that an arena in which American imperialism is also very interested.

The Gaullist rivalry with the French certainly persists. It will be very interesting to see the next presidential election in France—whether the far right will finally triumph or whether the left will forge unity. But France’s position remains special. The British opted for the “special relationship” and have subordinated themselves to the United States thoroughly. The French, on the other hand, while needing American assistance in Indochina, once they walked away from that, began to chart an effort to go their own way. Macron has not really taken France very far from the United States, but their position in Africa remains unique. I’ll let it go at that.

Radhika Desai

Sure, thank you. Is the “political West” a result of the fact that, individually, none of these countries could manage imperialism, so they have to bandy together? Even Trump goes back and forth; today he doesn’t need NATO, and then tomorrow he wants them to help with the Straits of Hormuz. Dimitrios, you are next.

Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos

Yes, I understand that Oleg is trying a little bit to rationalize the behavior of Stalin, which seems rather irrational. First, I think the reason the Americans did not use nuclear arms was the fact that the Soviet Union had enormous political capital after its victory against the Nazis. It was politically impossible for Western leaders to wage a war. General Patton wanted it, and Dulles was making negotiations with the Germans to change camps, but they were politically impossible. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union, after Lenin’s death and especially during Stalin, knew only hard power; he did not understand smart power very well.

By the way, why would ordering the Greek communists to commit suicide—provoking a bloody civil war—help the defense of the Soviet Union? If they had more friendly forces around the world, they would defend more effectively against imperialism. The problem is deeper. Even in 1923, we see that Moscow practically quit the World Revolution. In October 1923, it ordered the German communists to stop the German Revolution which they were ready to launch. Stalin took power and his slogan was “Socialism in one country.” I don’t think he wanted any other socialist revolution. At least, he did everything for them not to exist, and when they did exist as autonomous powers—like in Albania, Yugoslavia, or China—he was always against them.

In China in 1927, he made the Guomindang a member of the Comintern, and the result was that they slaughtered all Chinese communists. Mao did not follow Stalin when he was told to make a compromise with the Guomindang, and at least we had the Chinese Revolution. In Yugoslavia, there was a wing of the party controlled by Stalin which wanted Tito not to take power but to take a compromise. Unfortunately, in Greece we did not have a Tito or a Mao; we had Zachariadis. Zachariadis was appointed by the Comintern to lead the Greek Communist Party in 1931. There is no doubt that what he did in Greece, he did on orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, believing he was doing his internationalist duty.

By the way, the British searched maniacally in Germany to find him because he was in Dachau. They found him, put him in a military plane, and transported him to Greece. What he did in Greece was to condemn and drive to death the real leader of the National Liberation Front and the ELAS. I don’t see how anyone can dissociate this from Soviet policy. In 1991, I was defending the Soviet Union’s legacy and advising my Russian friends not to idealize the West, but I cannot go to the other extreme and idealize the Soviet past. It was not ideal. If it was ideal, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed. It collapsed because of political choices. Oleg, you are right that Khrushchev and Andropov were much more Bolshevik than Stalin himself. Stalin exterminated more communists than Hitler; he exterminated all the close associates of Lenin. Jean-Jacques Marie, the French historian, writes that Stalin was programming a “Fourth Moscow Trial” to execute the leaders of various communist parties. It is a really crazy phenomenon.

Radhika Desai

Thank you so much, Dimitrios. A lot of food for thought. Oleg, you should be able to unmute now.

Oleg Barabanov

Thank you. Returning to your question on Khrushchev: there is a simplistic answer involving the political jokes that appeared during his liberalisation. One was: “Could you name three Soviet leaders whose surname starts with letter T? The first is a titan, Lenin; the second is a tyrant, Stalin; and the third is a tourist, Khrushchev.” He loved to travel. Stalin only left the Soviet Union twice: for the Tehran and Potsdam conferences. Khrushchev traveled a lot. I like what Dimitrios said—that Khrushchev was a real Bolshevik; he had some passion in his mind. In 1954, Khrushchev made an application for NATO, and I think it was not “trolling” like Putin did in the early 2000s; maybe it was genuine. It was taken very negatively.

After that, he decided to make more contacts in the non-West. Between ’54 and ’57, Molotov criticized Khrushchev for his opening to non-communist countries. Molotov remained firm to Stalin’s position: “The communists are with us, and those who are not with us, we exterminate them.” One of the reasons for the unsuccessful attempt to coup d’état in ’57 against Khrushchev was exactly his foreign policy. Khrushchev proclaimed communism coming into reality in 1980 in the program of 1961. He thought the future belonged to nationalist leaders in Asia and Africa, and it was in the interest of the USSR to support them.

There were some excesses. For example, regarding independence in the Belgian Congo (now Congo-Kinshasa), Khrushchev at the beginning thought the USSR would influence things, but then he stopped when he understood there could be negative consequences. The second example is the Cuban Missile Crisis; Khrushchev first convinced Castro to put Soviet missiles in Cuba, then decided to forget about it, and Castro became disillusioned. In 1960, Khrushchev spent a month and a half in New York for the United Nations debates on decolonization and disarmament. He was a very specific political personality—maybe not a Bolshevik by ideology, but a revolutionary by passion and heart.

Radhika Desai

Thank you, that’s also so informative, pointing to some deeper continuities as well. Finally, Professor Vladimir Shubin.

Vladimir Shubin

I will concentrate on one point. We speak about Stalin and Khrushchev, but what about Malenkov? The departure of Stalin was not so simple; for a year and a half, the real leader was Malenkov. Khrushchev was elected as the First Secretary—not General Secretary—in September ’53. Moreover, in his speech in August ’53, Malenkov spoke in a very polite way about foreign policy and mentioned even the possibility of nuclear disaster. After that, Molotov spoke against this point, arguing that imperialism would suffer more. Malenkov’s policy definitely was rather peaceful. To attribute everything to Khrushchev would be wrong.

The second point also regarding Stalin and national liberation movements: it is a bit more complicated. I recently had to review a project about our policy toward India which noted that even in the later Stalin period, we had contacts, mostly concerning the Korean War. India participated in certain aspects of the solution. So, even before Stalin’s death, the situation was changing vis-a-vis those national liberation movements. In my younger years, people used to say that the next war will be between capitalist countries. After Khrushchev, that idea started to be viewed as ridiculous, but look at what happens now with Trump and NATO—maybe that idea was not so wrong.

Radhika Desai

Thank you, Professor Shubin. Thank you to all the speakers for an absolutely fascinating set of reflections. Please share this widely; we’ve had people watching on Zoom and about 50 on the YouTube channel. Please watch out for our next webinar, which should be in early to mid-May. Thank you so much, and goodbye until