The Russian Ally: Moving to Cold War

Abstract

As war drew to a close, the British authorities became increasingly aware of the role which languages would have to play in their peace-making relationships, particularly in working alongside the most powerful of their non-Anglophone allies, the USSR. In formal negotiations and on the ground, in the day-to-day occupation of Germany, it was evident that British personnel would now be coming into direct and potentially frequent contact with their Russian colleagues. Whilst British officials had certainly maintained communication with the USSR throughout the war, the post-war division of Germany into occupation zones, and the specific situation of Berlin within this, meant that there would be a major increase in face-to-face meetings between the two sides, with a larger proportion of British servicemen and women having to negotiate ongoing business with representatives from the USSR. This chapter examines how the British authorities sought to address this problem and traces the ways in which the importance attached to the Russian language itself developed during this period in response to the changing international climate. From a position of desperate shortage of Russian language capacity and ad hoc measures to remedy this, the Government moved towards a national languages policy, designed to mobilize a large cadre of British-born soldiers who would be specifically tasked with learning to understand and speak the Russian language.