Stalin Flashcards
What were Stalin’s overriding goals?
Security through expansion
Consolidation of a Soviet sphere of influence
What was the Stalin’s approach to these goals like?
Flexible to achieve these goals
What was Stalin’s personality like? 5
Suspicious and secretive
Authoritarian
Deeply xenophobic
No moral qualms about using terror and violence
Naturally averse to conciliation and compromise
Give an example of when Stalin promoted CW tension and why
February 1946, in a speech, Stalin warned the USSR of the danger of a future war waged by the capitalist powers. This justified the introduction of three further Five-Year Plans to strengthen the Soviet economy
Give 2 examples of mistakes that Stalin made
The Berlin Blockade was ill-conceived because it led to the creation of a capitalist West Germany and NATO
Stalin’s support for North Korea’s attack on the south failed to recognise the USA’s determination to defend South Korea or that the West would respond rapidly
Give three reasons why Stalin was weary of the West?
Western hostility to the 1917 Revolution and interventions in the Russian Civil War
Allied delays in opening up a second front in Europe during WW2
Abrupt end of lend-lease (1945), Soviet exclusion from the post-war administration of Japan, and US refusal to share nuclear secrets
Give three examples of when Stalin was aggressive and expansionist
Attempted to retain a presence in Iran after the war to secure access to oil supplies
Aimed to extend the USSR’s influence in Southern Europe: Stalin put pressure on Turkey to try to establish Soviet control over the Dardanelles
1947, Stalin remarked that if Churchill had delayed the second front by a year, ‘the Red Army would have come to France…[we] toyed with the idea of reaching Paris’
Give three examples of when Stalin was preoccupied with Soviet security
Russia had been invaded in 1915, 1918 and 1941
His policy of Poland and the Stalinization of EE reflected a genuine desire to protect the USSR from any future Western attack by creating a defensive buffer zone
Recognised Greece an area of British influence and didn’t object to US troops being in South Korea (1945-49) despite its proximity to the USSR
