According to Stalin, Churchill was the man who would take the last kopeck out of your pocket. For years, the latter waged a "little private war" with the Soviet leader, as he put it himself. However, a completely different picture of their relationship emerges from the secret correspondence between the two leaders, as well as from their meetings and conversations ...
Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin never cease to arouse strong emotions and fascinate. Much space has been devoted to the analysis of their characters in research on the Second World War, and their relationship is extensively confirmed in official documents kept in the archives of both governments and in private collections of participants in the events.
Now that the documents from the Soviet archives have been made available, a fuller, more detailed description and analysis can be made. The Soviet records of the meetings are completely different, and often paint a much less dramatic picture than the British documents, which for many years were the basis for assessing the relationship between Churchill and Stalin.
"Look at the eyes"
Churchill's personal contacts with Stalin played a complicated role in the traditional narrative of Churchill's wartime views on the USSR and thus Churchill as a World War II leader. One of the main threads of this narrative, introduced by Churchill himself, is "looking at the eyes" - adopting an attitude of openness to military cooperation, rejecting any illusions about the USSR or Stalin that could hinder it, and constantly remembering Stalin's plans for Eastern Europe. / P>
Historians who paid a lot of attention to Churchill's attitudes prefer not to present it as radically as we do, but this approach is still presented in analyzes aimed at the general public. Historians differ in the degree of consistency attributed to the views and attitudes of the then leader of Great Britain. Some believe that Churchill was influenced by years of hatred of Bolshevism. Others believe that Churchill was a much less coherent figure, torn between the aforementioned position and the willingness to cooperate with the Soviets that was realistically possible.
Some historians believe that Churchill was influenced by years of hatred of Bolshevism
Churchill's attitude was not simple or coherent, but it was a product of contradictory elements - his attitude towards communism (native and Soviet origin) and the USSR and towards Stalin. Strengthened by the conditions of a jointly waged war.
An examination of Churchill's personal contacts with Stalin proves that although his attitude towards Bolshevism remained unchanged, the same cannot be said of his attitude towards Stalin . Taking into account the extent to which Stalin was supposed to deviate significantly from the simple personification of the worst perversions of Bolshevism is crucial for understanding the paradoxical nature of Churchill's attitude, which developed during the coalition period in 1941–1945.
A Little Private War
By cultivating his contacts with Stalin as a war-time (fraternal) commander, Churchill was able to reconcile his own contradictory impulses:on the one hand, his desire to accept the Soviets as powerful and important partners in his mission to defeat Hitler, and on the other, his reflexive withdrawal under the influence of suspicions about their methods and old and current goals.
To some extent Churchill used an imaginary image of both his great allies:he created the image of Franklin Roosevelt only partially reflecting this complex figure (consisting of a certain dose of romanticism and wishful thinking). Roosevelt became for Churchill the epitome of an America like Britain needed. There are also reasonable grounds to believe that he was presenting Stalin in a similar way.
In the case of the Soviet leader, Churchill beamed at the thought of Stalin in chief and then proceeded to view their relationship as "brotherhood in arms" (projecting that image onto himself as well) - a term he never used for Roosevelt.
The text is an excerpt from the book "Churchill and Stalin. Toxic Brothers "by Geoffrey Roberts, which was released by Bellona.
As in the case of Churchill, Stalin's early career in no way foreshadowed the possibility of a cordial relationship with the British Prime Minister. In the 1920s, Great Britain was seen as the main threat to the young USSR. Churchill was one of the originators of the Allied intervention in Russia in 1919–1920, waging his "little private war," as he would later tell Stalin. In a word, Churchill was well qualified to become the archetype of the British imperialist.
Sometimes it is suspected that Churchill interested Stalin when he spoke out loudly against the policy of appeasement in the mid-1930s. The hostility of Neville Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, to the USSR was widely known, so Churchill appeared in a more favorable light against the background of his political opponent.
Force correlation
However, the traditional image of Stalin in Western historiography shows him as an ideological man, insensitive to the personality factor, seeing people as types with predictable behavior defined by the principles of Marxism-Leninism. A variation of this view was the position emphasizing Stalin's dark, suspicious mind, almost bordering on paranoia.
In neither of these interpretations could a true personal bond arise between the two statesmen beyond a determined, cold manipulation Iosif Wissarionowicz. The picture is extremely persistent:in the recent biography of Churchill, Max Hastings portrays Stalin as a diplomat as a machine-like being.
Stalin, however, appreciated Churchill's personal importance, and as we shall see, he approached their account in a way that could not be reduced to a simple formula. Historiography, which has been drawn up since the partial opening of the Soviet archives, shows that while ideology formed the basis of Stalin's worldview, he also had a well-developed sense of what he termed "force correlation."
Although he had total power in the country, it was more conditional in international relations, requiring active diplomatic efforts and flexibility - an alternative to the traditional image of Stalin as the extreme opportunist.
For many years, the main source of research into Stalin's personal relationship to Churchill was a handful of secondary or tertiary testimonies, often problematic in some way.
For many years, the main source of research into Stalin's personal relationship to Churchill was a handful of secondary or tertiary testimonies, often problematic in some way. The memories of conversations with Stalin by the disappointed Yugoslav communist, Milovan Djilas, were most often cited. His notes of Stalin's statements about Churchill became the final oracle:Churchill was the man who would take the last kopeck out of your pocket.
Djilas believed that Stalin viewed Churchill as a dangerous bourgeois politician. Djilas is hardly an objective observer, however, and the material now available paints a fuller, more varied picture of how Stalin viewed Churchill in the context of his desire for further cooperation - a picture clearly influenced by emotion and cold calculation.
Dangerous bourgeois statesman
Djilas saw the Churchill-Stalin relationship through the prism of his ideologically colored reading of the world, his changing sense of the interests and needs of the Soviet state, and his own understanding of Churchill. This understanding was undoubtedly influenced by Churchill's image as a "dangerous bourgeois statesman" as well as the interpretation of Churchill's specific attitude towards the USSR and major war issues such as the future of Germany and the involvement of the British in military action.
These views were shaped not only by his prejudices, but also by information obtained from sources such as the Soviet ambassador to London, Ivan Mayski, who played a significant role both through personal contacts and extensive and sometimes extremely sincere correspondence.
The diligence with which the messages were arranged certainly proves that Stalin saw Churchill as a man who could be influenced, shaped by persuasion or by playing on feelings of guilt and gratitude and using Churchill's soldier instincts to push him into offensive action. but in conflict with the political instinct ordering the saving of Great Britain's strength and human resources.
Thus, it was emotions and attempts to manipulate them that constituted the core of Churchill-Stalin relations in both forms - in personal contacts and correspondence. The way they perceived each other defined bounded rationality, in which everyone created their own picture of reality, shaped the terms used in correspondence, and attempted to gain an advantage.
Which led to a more complex and interesting situation than the approach focused on fundamental ideologies, which in many superficial studies play the role of a key factor to be considered in the analysis of the relationship between the two leaders.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from the book "Churchill and Stalin. Toxic Brothers "by Geoffrey Roberts, which was released by Bellona.