Gellately, Robert Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 767 themselves as individuals, the youngsters of 1930s Romania sought, in terms which were meaningful to them if not to us, to build a better society for the collective nation. Moreover, Clark under-estimates Legionary popularity. Even if, as he contends, the election results of 1937 were ‘still surprisingly low given the number of legionary propagandists’ (p. 153) there is, nevertheless, ample evidence to suggest that the Legion would have come second had the authorities not falsified the results. Moreover, one reason new elections were not held in March 1938 is because the authorities feared that the Legion would win the elections. Marshal Antonescu declared during his post-war trial that he was convinced that had he held elections in 1940, it would have led to an outright Legionary victory. Thus, although this volume includes much useful new information on the history and organization of the Legionary movement, it does not give the reader a real sense of why it resonated so strongly with a whole generation of Romanians. UCL SSEES Rebecca Haynes Gellately, Robert, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2013. xiv + 477 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. £20.00. Robert Gellately has written an impressive book which considers Stalin’s policies at home and abroad during and after World War Two. It is a highly readable and engaging account of this dreadful, and yet in some ways heroic, period in Soviet history. The author has marshalled his evidence very skilfully using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, and much archival material which was previously unavailable. Gellately recounts the ruthless and frequently brutal way in which Stalin acted over the period, but suggests that Stalin did not act in this way because he was mentally unsound or just interested in power for its own sake. Instead, Gellately argues that Stalin was largely motivated by his commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology. Thus, when Stalin expanded the Soviet empire after the war, this was not to recreate the tsarist empire, as some have suggested, but to continue the Bolshevik mission of international revolution. Stalin had promoted the idea of ‘Socialism in One Country’ at the time of the ‘Great Debate’ in the 1920s, but Gellately shows that Stalin had never given up on the idea of international revolution, and he quickly came to recognize that World War Two presented an opportunity to export Marxism-Leninism. When it comes to the Cold War, Gellately’s views on Stalin led him to adopt an Orthodox perspective. Thus, Gellately places primary blame for the Cold SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 768 War firmly on Stalin’s shoulders. The Revisionists were wrong, he writes, in suggesting that a more conciliatory stance towards the Soviet Union could have avoided the Cold War. There was nothing the West could have done to reassure Stalin and make him more compliant in Eastern Europe. ‘If anything’, writes Gellately, ‘the West was woefully complacent until 1947 or 1948 when the die was cast’ (p. 9). Indeed, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s willingness to seek compromise is criticized because it was perceived in Moscow as a sign of weakness which even ‘emboldened Stalin’ (p. 10) in his desire to expand his Soviet Empire. The book is convincing in terms of its primary purpose. The argument that Stalin was driven by a strong ideological commitment might not be entirely original but, at a minimum, writers in future will always have to take seriously this aspect of Stalin’s character. Furthermore, short of the West surrendering all of its interests in Europe, it is increasingly difficult to believe that the Cold War could have been avoided whilst Stalin was in the Kremlin. The Orthodox view was surely right at least to that extent. However, it is important scholars do not rebalance their analyses too far, as Gellately himself acknowledges. Ideology was always a factor, but power also remained central to all of Stalin’s calculations. In Eastern Europe after the war it was never enough to be a good Communist leader, you had to be a good Communist leader chosen and controlled by Stalin. Stalin was suspicious of both Tito...