The Role of the Soviet Union

"The role of the SU in Europe has been fundementally different. Suffering the most terrible invasion from Nazi Germany, it bore the main brunt of the antifascist war in Europe and defeated the aggressors at an immense cost in human life and resources. The Soviet Union could not appear in the countries it liberated as a wealthy benefactor, and yet it was determined that there would be no new imperialist attack from the West.

"The road it chose to ensure this was to forestall US penetration of Eastern Europe with the so-called 'iron curtain', making it clear that the United States would not be able to use its economic power to gain influence in the sphere allotted to the Soviet Union by the Yalta agreement. The US response to this, of course, was to try and reverse the Yalta partition and use the nuclear threat to 'roll back' the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe though it flinched from the all-out war that would have been necessary to achieve this end.

"The concern of the Soviet Union to create a reliable buffer zone between itself and US imperialism was understandable. But the choice that was made, whatever the reasons behind it, meant not relying on the peoples newly liberated from fascism and their common interest with the Soviet Union in rejecting US imperialism and a new war, but relying instead on the military supremacy of the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe to maintain a sphere of influence, even at the cost of provoking major anti-Soviet sentiment among its 100 million people.