Andrey Kolesnikov, Dmitry Trenin
SUMMARY
The history of cooperation between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain during the Second World War is an example of cooperation in exceptional circumstances in the presence of a common mortal enemy. The understanding that the enemy is common and the very survival of peoples and states depends on the fight against it did not come immediately. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union and Western states failed to unite to counter the threat from Nazi Germany. Mutual mistrust reached its climax after unsuccessful Soviet-Anglo-French negotiations, the Soviet Union’s non-aggression pact with Germany, and the outbreak of World War II. In London, Moscow was then viewed as a de facto ally of Berlin. However, the German invasion of the USSR immediately turned Great Britain, which fought Hitler alone, into an ally of the Soviet Union, and vice versa. The entry of the United States of America into World War II was provoked by an attack by Japan, Germany’s ally, on the American base at Pearl Harbor, but the strategic choice – whether to fight, and if so, on whose side – was made by US President Franklin Roosevelt long before that. … Joining forces with the USSR to fight Nazi Germany, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt proceeded from tough geopolitical realities. Ideological considerations for the duration of the war were pushed aside. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt proceeded from tough geopolitical realities. Ideological considerations for the duration of the war were pushed aside. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt proceeded from tough geopolitical realities. Ideological considerations for the duration of the war were pushed aside.
During four years of joint struggle, from June 1941 to September 1945, the USSR, the USA and Great Britain (and in fact the British Empire with its dominions and colonies) remained loyal allies, despite the obvious differences of interests and opposing ideological attitudes that caused in turn, significant disagreements and mutual claims. The USSR fought stubbornly on a huge front, the United States helped it with the supply of weapons and provided other assistance, Great Britain sent convoys with weapons and equipment. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did not agree to a separate peace with Hitler during the difficult first months of the war, which, in particular, was feared by the British establishment; in turn, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt abandoned the idea of a separate peace with Germany at the end of the war. Day after day the USSR fulfilled the promise given by Stalin to Roosevelt in Yalta,
The cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition during the war was formed as a result of objective circumstances. However, in the unification of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain into a military alliance, a huge role was played by the personal interaction of the leaders of states, who at that time had full power. If Roosevelt and Churchill were united by mutual trust and close values, then the relations of Western leaders with Stalin were based rather on respect for an irreplaceable ally and a willingness to take into account his interests to a certain extent. It is important to separately note the role of senior officials’ confidants, in particular, Roosevelt’s closest aide Harry Hopkins and Soviet Ambassador to London Ivan Maisky, who managed to settle practical issues of mutual relations.
The joint victory of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in the Second World War eliminated the common threat, but at the same time exacerbated the contradictions between the allies, which sharply increased during the post-war world order. Britain yielded to US demands in return for a “special relationship” with America, which meant London would become Washington’s preferred junior ally. The continuation of close cooperation between the USSR and the United States in the new circumstances, on the contrary, became objectively impossible due to insurmountable ideological and political differences. The American-Soviet post-war rivalry might not have turned into a confrontation on the brink of a collision, dubbed the Cold War. At the same time, this confrontation was not accidental either – arising as a result of mistakes, ill will or an unfavorable combination of circumstances.
The experience of alliance during the Second World War confirms that in the face of a serious threat, a pragmatic approach may turn out to be uncontested. In such circumstances, even deep contradictions recede into the background. It is widely known that Churchill said in June 1941 that he was and remains an enemy of communism, but if Hitler had invaded hell, he would have begun to help the devil. Stalin, for his part, did not disdain to abolish the Comintern in 1943 at the request of the allies – of course, this did not mean that the Soviet leader changed his ideological attitudes.
In turn, the experience of the first post-war years shows that after the removal of the threat from the common enemy, the contradictions between the temporary allies return and even become sharper; new conflicts arise due to the changed situation. Mobilization for a new struggle requires a powerful ideological stimulus and constant information and political pumping. The transition from a military alliance to a confrontation between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other took no more than three years. The “cold” nature of the confrontation was not due to a gentlemen’s agreement, but to the emergence of nuclear weapons, which guaranteed the destruction of both opponents and all of humanity in a new world war.
Thus, we can conclude that the experience of military alliance during the Second World War is not applicable to modern relations between Russia and the United States, as well as between the Russian Federation and the West in general. Those new risks that were subsequently at various times tried to be compared with the threat of the victory of Nazism – such as international terrorism, climate change or a pandemic – were either significantly smaller in scale or less obvious; in addition, they entailed different consequences for Russia and the countries of the West. In countering these threats, Russia, in terms of its capabilities and role, was, as a rule, incomparable with the USSR, which took over the blow of most of the forces of the German Wehrmacht in World War II and defeated the bulk of the armed forces of Germany. From the point of view of the American political mainstream, Russia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is a dying power. It is not necessary to agree with this assessment. But trying to revive the image of the anti-Hitler coalition to unite the efforts of Russia and the West in the fight against international terrorism, pandemic, climate change or other serious threats is a pointless and futile business. Such attempts only cause bewilderment among the sought-after allies.
Even if a real partnership between Russia and the United States in the future, under certain conditions, on the basis of important objective interests, turns out to be feasible, it will not be easy to achieve conditions of such cooperation acceptable to Russia. And his success, let alone failure, will not hesitate to return the situation to its former position, in which contradictions of interests and significant ideological (value) differences will again come to the fore.
UNION INCONCEIVABLE
Until the German attack on the USSR, the anti-Hitler coalition within the framework of the then widespread concept of collective security did not become a reality, although the threat of German aggression was felt both in the West and in the East of Europe. In 1938, Great Britain and France preferred to agree to an agreement with Hitler in Munich on the partition of Czechoslovakia, instead of, as provided for by cross-military-political agreements between Paris, Prague and Moscow, to jointly oppose Germany. Western leaders and elites feared not only a new war, but also a possible increase in the influence of the USSR and communism in Eastern Europe. The agreement with Hitler gave them the illusory hope, in the words of Chamberlain, for Peace for our time – peace with Germany for contemporaries.
In the spring and summer of 1939, when the situation in Eastern Europe continued to deteriorate, Soviet-Anglo-French military negotiations took place in Moscow. However, the attempt of their participants to agree on joint actions in the event of German aggression was unsuccessful. Western states have not decided what is more important for them: to enlist the help of the USSR in the event of a war, or to gain time – in the hope that the energy of German aggression will be directed to the east. As for Stalin, he no longer made any fundamental differences between Germany with its fascism and England and France with their Western democracy. In his view, these were two groups of capitalist countries hostile to the Soviet Union, fighting among themselves for markets and the next redivision of the world. From the Marxist-Leninist point of view, wars are immanent in imperialism.
Stalin made his choice proceeding from the fact that, in his opinion, at that time was more profitable for the Soviet Union. Paris and London were playing for time, not offering anything specifically. Warsaw and Bucharest strongly objected to the passage of the Red Army through their territories, fearing Sovietization. Against this background, Berlin’s proposal gave Moscow not only a respite from the inevitable war, but also an increase in territories in the main strategic direction. Moreover, the conclusion of a non-aggression pact with Germany and agreements on the division of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) unleashed the war in a western direction, weakening world capitalism as a whole. In Great Britain this was well understood: according to the then Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, “the German-Soviet pact meant war” 1 .
According to the notes of the head of the Comintern Georgy Dimitrov, Stalin in September 1939, that is, at the peak of his “friendship” with Germany, expressed himself on this score: “… we are not averse to them having a good fight and weakening each other … democratic ones have lost their former meaning ” 2 . Preparing for the inevitable, in his opinion, war with Germany, Stalin strengthened the strategic flanks of the USSR: by attacking intractable Finland, he pushed the border away from Leningrad; the annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – took control of the entire Baltic direction; the return of Bessarabia, whose occupation by Romania in 1918, Moscow never recognized, – covered Odessa and created a bridgehead for future actions in the southwest.
Stalin no longer thought about coalitions with Western countries against Germany. The Soviet-Finnish war actually turned Great Britain and France into opponents of the Soviet Union, which in the public consciousness of Western countries was increasingly associated with Hitler’s Germany. The British military command even planned airstrikes on Baku in order to undermine the oil production of the USSR. Stalin proceeded from the fact that the war with Germany will not begin before the summer of 1942 – after surrendering England 3 . The Soviet leader believed that, remembering the lessons of the First World War, Hitler would not dare to fight on two fronts. Stalin miscalculated. The unexpectedly quick and complete defeat of France and Hitler’s adventurism shattered his calculations.
UNION IS INEVITABLE
The alliance of Great Britain, the USSR and the United States was forced and was primarily a military alliance aimed at defeating the common enemy – Nazi Germany. The Allies also expressed their desire to build a new world order after the end of the war. Here, there were serious differences between the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, which were managed in one way or another, while the war continued and the allies needed each other. This alliance became inevitable thanks to the actions of Germany.
Germany’s attack on the USSR radically changed the situation in Europe and the balance of power in the world. Under these conditions, Churchill, who had been at the head of the British government since 1940, immediately took an extremely clear position. On the evening of June 22, 1941, he uttered the historic words: “Any person and any country fighting against Nazism will receive our help. Any person and any country marching along with Hitler is our enemy … Therefore, we must provide any assistance available to us to Russia and the Russian people ” 4 .
Churchill did not change his absolute rejection of communist ideology and practice, he had doubts about the ability of the USSR to withstand the onslaught of Germany, but in an emergency he was guided primarily by the national interests of Great Britain. Churchill perceived the invasion of the German Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union as a salvation for England, which, after the defeat of France, had already been forced to confront Germany alone for a year.
In the non-belligerent United States in the summer of 1941, isolationist sentiments were still strong. Democrat Senator Harry Truman, speaking almost simultaneously with Churchill, spoke in favor of not getting involved in the Soviet-German war directly, “to help Russia if Germany wins the war, and to help Germany if Russia wins the war” “They killed each other as much as possible” 5 . The position of President Roosevelt was different, considering Germany, along with its ally Japan, a threat to the United States. A Japanese air attack on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, led America to enter the war. On December 11, the United States declared war on Germany.
Thus, an alliance that was impossible in a relatively peaceful – more precisely, a pre-war – situation became inevitable in a war for the survival of states and peoples. The common threat hanging over the world did not rally the states, whose leaders still hoped that their countries would not be affected by the war or even find themselves in a better position if the aggressor turned in the other direction. It took the realization of the threat against their state so that the forces that were previously unconnected due to political and ideological differences would agree to an alliance with each other. Pure geopolitics played a role: despite the colossal changes in the period from 1918 to 1939-1941, the opposing coalitions in the Second World War were headed by the same states as in the First.
Allied relations between the USSR and the Western states were not easy to develop. Two fundamental problems were the cause of constant friction between the allies:
1) the opening of a second front in northern France, on which Stalin insisted from year to year and which Churchill had just as consistently opposed;
2) the desire of the Soviet side to obtain recognition from the partners as soon as possible of the borders of the USSR as of June 1941 6 .
Nevertheless, the members of the alliance showed loyalty to each other throughout the war. In the difficult first months of the war, Stalin did not agree to a separate peace with Hitler, which the British establishment feared. For their part, the Western allies abandoned the idea of a separate peace with Germany at the final stage of the war. The Red Army and the Allied troops not only did not clash in Germany, but were deployed precisely on those territories that were previously agreed upon between the Allied Powers.
Roosevelt, relying on the enormous economic, financial and military power of America, was guided by the principle of the community of free united nations, put forward by President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, and at the same time sought to consolidate the leadership of the United States as the main world arbiter. The Prime Minister of a war-weakened Britain, relying on a special relationship with the United States as a senior partner, tried at the same time to preserve the British Empire. The principles of the new world order were initially recorded in the Atlantic Charter, signed by Roosevelt and Churchill in August 1941.
The Soviet Union joined the Atlantic Charter in 1942. Since 1944, representatives of the USSR have actively participated in the creation of the United Nations. At the same time, Stalin proceeded not from theoretical propositions about the optimal world order, but from the traditional postulates of real politics (Realpolitik), above all the balance of forces, and thought in terms of geopolitics – such as state borders, spheres of influence, strategic depth, buffer states, etc. n. In this respect, he could communicate in the same language with Churchill. Roosevelt, for his part, being a sophisticated politician, was not, unlike Woodrow Wilson, an ideological dogmatist. He felt good personal relations with Stalin guarantee sustainable cooperation after the war, and was prepared to a certain extent, take into account the interests of the Soviet 7…
The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Second World War, the Red Army defeated most of the German armed forces. The United States provided assistance under the Lend-Lease program to Great Britain, and then to the Soviet Union. The so-called northern convoys were sent to the USSR with military assistance from Great Britain, which suffered serious losses from the actions of the German submarine fleet. The USSR and Great Britain jointly occupied Iran – the northern and southern parts of this country, respectively – in order to secure a southern corridor for communications. (This was not a unique case: in 1941, British troops, due to military necessity, occupied Iceland, which was soon transferred to the control of the US armed forces.)
Military actions of the Western allies and the USSR, operating in different theaters of military operations, were coordinated only in the most general plan, at the level of the supreme commanders. A joint command and a joint headquarters were created only between the United States and Great Britain. This loose form of coordination between the USSR and the Western allies was beneficial as it helped to avoid the problem of seniority and hierarchy in general.
While the war was going on, in order to achieve a common goal, the USSR and the Western allies made mutual compromises. It was possible to agree on the borders of post-war Poland (at the same time, this meant recognition by the West of the annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to the USSR), as well as the transfer of the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union. Despite the democratic idealism attributed to Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, who needed the help of the USSR in the war with Japan, was quite ready to act in the logic of geopolitical exchanges 8 . In turn, the “leader of the world communist movement” Stalin in 1943 dissolved the Comintern. There were very minor concessions – for example, the distribution in the West of Leon Trotsky’s book about Stalin, already ready in 1941, was postponed until the end of the war …. American and British state propaganda praised the military exploits of the Red Army and the courage of the Soviet people.
All three conferences of the Big Three – Roosevelt (then Harry Truman), Stalin and Churchill (who was replaced by Clement Attlee during the last conference) – were held on the territory of the Soviet Union (Yalta); the territory of the Soviet zone of occupation (Potsdam) or the territory as close as possible to the border of the USSR and formerly under the control of the Soviet Union (Tehran, where Roosevelt’s residence was located on the territory of the USSR embassy). This was explained by the need for Stalin to constantly and personally control the operations of the Red Army, but in fact it was a recognition of the role of the Soviet Union in the war and the exceptional importance of the Soviet-German front.
Through complex agreements, the Allies reached an agreement on the principles of building and functioning of a universal world organization – the UN. Its Charter enshrines the dominant position of the five powers that have become permanent members of the Security Council with the right to veto its decisions. Among the five, in addition to the United States, the USSR and the UK, included China, which fought against Japanese aggression, and France, liberated from the Nazis. Stalin, referring to the invitation to the UN of the British dominions, also achieved membership in the Organization for the two republics of the Soviet Union – Ukraine and Belarus. Especially for this, a provision on the right of the union republics to secede from the Union was included in the Constitution of the USSR in 1944, which was implemented in completely different conditions in 1991.
The most important long-term result of the allied interaction of Washington, Moscow and London are:
adoption of the UN Charter;
the formation on this basis of a world organization of states and a whole system of UN-related international organizations – from the IMF and the World Bank to UNESCO and WHO;
giving the UN Security Council a central role in international peace and defining the rules for the functioning of the Council.
Despite the limited direct impact of the UN on international relations, the existence and functioning of this organization streamlines world politics and provides a unique global platform for contacts and negotiations. And this is the most important enduring diplomatic legacy of the anti-Hitler coalition.
At the final banquet of the Yalta conference, held in the corporate Stalinist style (the banquet lasted four hours and was marked by 45 toasts), Stalin noted: interests 10 . The joint victory in the war marked the triumph of the alliance between Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. At the same time, it marked the beginning of the end of the Big Three.
IMPOSSIBLE UNION
The victory in the war sharply reduced the dependence of the allies on each other and just as sharply intensified their disagreements, which manifested themselves during the war. One of the most important controversial issues was the problem of principles and personalities in the formation of the Polish government. Stalin considered it necessary from the point of view of the future security of the USSR to create in Poland and, more broadly, in Eastern Europe, governments that were unconditionally loyal to the Soviet Union. He proceeded mainly from the need to create a geopolitical buffer against future Germany. Thus, the Yalta Declaration on a Liberated Europe from the very beginning faced the realities of power politics.
This approach was no stranger to Churchill. In October 1944, the British Prime Minister arrived in Moscow to discuss with Stalin the conditions for the formation of the post-war world. During the negotiations, Churchill proposed to Stalin a division of influence between the USSR and the West in a number of Balkan and Eastern European countries. At the same time, the influence was determined by the percentage ratio of pro-Soviet and pro-Western politicians in the governments of the respective states.
In assessing Churchill’s approach, Henry Kissinger noted: “There was a certain amount of audacious despair in British politics. Spheres of influence have never been defined as a percentage. There were no criteria or controls to enforce the sharing principle. Influence has always been determined by the presence of rival armies ” 11 . Stalin understood this perfectly. He easily agreed to the division of influence, proceeding from the fact that the territory of Eastern Europe was occupied by the Red Army. According to Kissinger, Stalin demanded “payment for his victories in the only currency he took seriously – in the form of control over territories” 12 . In such conditions, no calculations could prevent Moscow from bringing, for example, the 90% offered to it in Romania or 75% of the influence in Bulgaria to 100%.
Unlike Churchill, Roosevelt did not think about geopolitics as a percentage. The American president proceeded from the realities that emerged as a result of the war. Before Teheran Roosevelt came to the conclusion that Poland will have to pay after the war Stalin 13 . Later, he assured the Soviet leader that the United States would not interfere with the USSR in pursuing its policy towards Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, as well as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the territories of eastern Poland and Bessarabia with Northern Bukovina, which were included in the USSR in 1940 – despite the fact that formally Washington refused to recognize the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states.
In its most concentrated form, the policy of dividing territories into spheres of influence was applied to defeated Germany, as well as to Austria. Back in the fall of 1944, the Allies reached an agreement on the principles of governing Germany after the war. Germany and Austria were divided into zones of occupation, Berlin into sectors of occupation, and only in the center of Vienna a common sector was created. It is important to note that at the end of the war, the lines of actual contact between the Soviet and Western troops did not coincide with the boundaries of the respective zones. However, by the summer of 1945, the situation was streamlined and the troops were withdrawn into the zones and sectors of occupation assigned to their countries.
The establishment of zones of occupation did not yet mean the division of Germany as a country. Many in the United States considered such a section to be expedient (see, for example, the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau 14) and in England. Stalin, on the contrary, mindful of the consequences of the Versailles Peace, feared to stimulate German nationalism by a violent partition of the country and advocated a single neutral Germany under four-sided control. Formally, this position became common for the allies. Germany remained united, but ruled by four victorious powers (the “Big Three” plus France). Management was carried out through the Allied Control Council located in Berlin, consisting of the commanders-in-chief of the occupation forces and the executive body of the Council – the Allied Control Commission. Similar commissions were created in other countries – Germany’s allies from the Balkans to Finland.
Soon, however, joint management turned out to be problematic, and then impossible due to the difference in the interests and strategies of the USSR, on the one hand, and the Western powers, on the other. Sagacious adviser to the US Embassy in Moscow, George Kennan in the summer of 1945 saw the division of Europe and the division of Germany, the only realistic strategy for the Americas 15 . Since 1946, the integration of the three western zones has become the official policy of Washington. The United States, Great Britain, and France have come to the conclusion that it is better to have half of Germany under their control than half of control over a united Germany.
The split of Germany was the prologue to the split of Europe. Already in 1947, the United States, for the first time in its history, committed itself to providing economic and political support to Greece, where there was a civil war, as well as Turkey, countries that were previously in the informal sphere of influence of a weakened Great Britain. The Truman Doctrine, announced in the same year, proclaimed the defense of the “free world” from the communist threat 16 and Soviet penetration into the Eastern Mediterranean 17 . It was soon supplemented by the Marshall Plan, aimed at providing economic assistance to the countries of Western Europe, decreasing the popularity of communist parties in these countries, and eroding the influence of the USSR in Eastern Europe.
In Moscow, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were assessed as steps towards the creation of a Western bloc against the Soviet Union. Academician Yevgeny Varga, who was assigned to the analysis of the American plan, wrote about the unacceptable consequences for the USSR of US aid – the free movement of goods, opportunities, economic and political information 18 . For his part, Stalin embarked on a policy of communizing Eastern Europe, establishing “people’s democracy” regimes there. In 1948, the split between Germany and Europe became the ultimate reality. The currency reform in the western zones of Germany provoked the Berlin Crisis – the first open military-political confrontation between the collective West and the USSR in the Cold War. NATO was soon formed and the Korean War began.
This confrontation was caused by far not only the incompatibility of communist ideology and liberal capitalism. Even before Churchill’s Fulton speech on the “Iron Curtain”, but after Stalin’s speech at the Bolshoi Theater in February 1946 (in which he spoke about the victory of the Soviet state system in the war), J. Kennan prepared his now famous “Long Telegram” No. 511 …
Kennan wrote: “At the heart of the Kremlin’s neurotic perception of world events is the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Initially, it was the uncertainty of a peaceful, agricultural people trying to survive in the open plains in the immediate vicinity of the warlike nomadic tribes. On top of this, as Russia came into contact with the economically advanced West, the fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized communities began to be superimposed. This kind of insecurity in their own security is rather typical not for the Russian people, but for the Russian authorities; for the latter could not help but feel that their rule is relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological justification and unable to withstand comparison or juxtaposition with the political systems of Western countries. For this reason, they have always been afraid of foreign penetration … “nineteen
At the same time, due to geographical and historical circumstances, the United States was characterized by a sense of its own external security, combined with ideological messianism. The rapid growth of US economic and financial power during the first half of the twentieth century led to the fact that the isolationism of the American “city on the hill”, which Roosevelt was forced to overcome in order for the US to enter the war 20 , was replaced by the globalism of Pax Americana . The Soviet communist project clashed head-on with the expansive liberalism of the United States. This clash became the main ideological content of the Cold War.
Thus, the path from the common victory and triumph of the anti-Hitler coalition to the confrontation between the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the United States and Western allies, on the other, took three years. The victory laid the normative foundations of the world order – the Charter of the United Nations; formed a system of universal international institutions around the UN; created a worldwide platform for constant communication between states. The confrontation, on the contrary, gave the world order a geopolitical, ideological and military-political structure – a bipolar world divided in two, led by the USA and the USSR. The obvious threat of total annihilation in the event of the use of nuclear weapons by the parties had a deterrent effect on the policies of Washington and Moscow towards each other. Wars broke out on the flanks of the confrontation line
THE FUTILITY OF TRYING A “BIG DEAL”
The period of the Second World War is absolutely unique and cannot be compared with anything. Having a common mortal enemy is a much stronger cement for an alliance than just a coincidence of interests and ideologies (values). But this cement crumbles as soon as the goal – victory – is achieved. In the absence of a common enemy, alliance becomes impossible, and relations can develop, at best, on a pragmatic basis, if there is good will for this.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Churchill, who became British Prime Minister again, tried to reanimate the Big Three model, this time to ease tensions in the world, but was not understood by another WWII veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, who replaced Truman as President of the United States. 21 . Nevertheless, a temporary relaxation of tension between the West and the Soviet Union was nevertheless achieved. In 1955, the heads of government of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France gathered in Geneva to discuss the German question, and the term “the spirit of Geneva” was introduced into political circulation. But this ephemeral spirit testified only to a temporary change in the atmosphere and some modalities, but not to the very essence of the relationship.
The essence boiled down to dividing the world into spheres of influence of two blocs led by the Soviet Union and the United States of America. This section was not smooth and hassle-free. It took more dangerous crises in Berlin and around Cuba to finally establish a global equilibrium within a divided world. In Soviet political doctrine, since the time of Nikita Khrushchev, this new, relatively stable state of the system of international relations has come to be called the peaceful coexistence of the two systems. The recognition that there is no alternative for the coexistence of irreconcilable opponents in the nuclear age has become a kind of “big deal”.
Peaceful coexistence ruled out a world war, but it was a forced cohabitation of two hostile world forces. Their fierce confrontation continued, but the desire for self-preservation required pragmatic interaction to reduce the risks of collision. The process of mutual limitation of armaments and a certain reduction in the level of mutual hostility was launched, which in the USSR was called detente of international tension, and in the United States was called détente 22 .
The personal qualities of the leaders played a role. In the Soviet Union – Nikita Khrushchev, and then Leonid Brezhnev, who replaced him. The Soviet political workers who had gone through the Great Patriotic War, who later became the head of the party and state, tried to avoid the third world war. Both of them understood the importance of high-level contacts with American opponents. Relations with the United States remained a priority for them. Khrushchev went to aggravation in Berlin and Cuba, but he also went into direct dialogue with US President John F. Kennedy – a combat pilot of World War II – and did not allow a fatal collision. Brezhnev did not cancel the visit of US President Richard Nixon to Moscow in 1972 to sign arms control agreements, despite the intensification of American aerial bombardment of North Vietnam right on the eve of the visit.
The Kremlin leaders acted not only through the official channels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also through proxies who created their own, unofficial ones. As already noted, in London in the early years of the war, contact with Churchill and Eden was carried out by the USSR Ambassador Ivan Maisky; Roosevelt’s confidant in direct communication with Stalin was Harry Hopkins, whom the Soviet leader sincerely admired. Hopkins’ visits to Stalin in July 1941 and June 1945 symbolically opened the alliance of powers and closed it 23 .
Under President Kennedy, for some time his informal envoy was the journalist and editor Norman Cousins, who tried to help build good relations within, as he himself wrote, Kennedy’s “triumvirate” – Pope John XXIII – Khrushchev 24 . During this period Khrushchev’s confidant was his son-in-law Aleksey Adzhubey, editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper. The most famous and effective was the communication channel of Henry Kissinger – Anatoly Dobrynin. Kissinger himself counted these contacts from February 14, 1969, his first meeting with the Soviet ambassador, which took place just three weeks after taking office as President Nixon’s national security adviser. The interaction of Dobrynin and Kissinger has become one of the key instruments for shaping the policy of detente 25… Kissinger’s meetings with Brezhnev in the first half of the 1970s were so frequent that a special room was built for the American negotiator at the residence of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in Zavidovo – the speechwriters of the first person dubbed it the “Kitty House” 26 .
The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, tried to build a new Soviet-American relationship – something like a friendly world condominium – based on his concept of “new political thinking.” These attempts, however, were unsuccessful due to the progressive weakness of the Soviet Union, which ended in the collapse of the country.
Under the first President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, the question was raised and practically resolved not about the “big deal” between Moscow and Washington, but about Russia’s joining the collective West led by the United States. But Russia also failed to implement the idea of Western integration, mainly due to the unwillingness and then the decisive refusal of the Russian elites and society to recognize the unconditional leadership of the United States in these new relations.
Attempts to agree on the terms of integration continued until the early 2000s. Vladimir Putin, the then acting president, the BBC admitted the possibility of Russia joining NATO 27 . At the time, Putin had meaningful conversations about this with the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Lord George Robertson. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, after which Putin immediately announced Russia’s support for the United States and ordered real assistance to them in the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan, raised hopes in Moscow for a new alliance with Washington.
In November 2001, Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote: “… For the first time since 1945, the United States and Russia have found a common enemy – international terrorism… The fight against a common enemy creates such powerful coinciding interests that all other goals are subordinated to. An alliance can be lasting if the parties have other long-term interests as well. Such an interest, for example, can be the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons ” 28 .
The problem, however, was the terms of alliance. In May 2001, during a meeting of a group of experts with US President George W. Bush, the future American ambassador to Moscow, and then political scientist Michael McFaul suggested that the US task might look like this: “We must support democracy in Russia and encourage Russia to join international institutions established by the United States after World War II ” 29 . Bush, in turn, noted that America needs Russia on the side of the United States, because one day both countries will have to deal with China. In other words, it was about Russia’s joining the US-led international system on common, that is, subordinate, grounds.
RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC
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Putin, for his part, saw an alliance with the West differently. It was fundamentally important for him that Russia is perceived by the United States as an equal partner with the right and opportunity to participate in the joint adoption of important decisions. For Washington, such a demand was not only excessive, but also absolutely unacceptable, since it called into question the sole leadership of the United States in the international system it had created and thereby would undermine this system from within. Putin eventually figured it out himself. Toward the end of his second term, he uttered the famous speech at the Munich security conference, which sharply criticized the unipolar world and the behavior of its hegemon – the United States 30 .
Thus, the fight against international terrorism turned out to be an insufficiently solid basis for a new alliance of two already clearly different-sized powers, which were increasingly distancing from each other in terms of values and geopolitics. The attempt to “reset” Russian-American relations during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012) was based only on tactical considerations of the Washington administration and on the quite pragmatic interests of the Kremlin. This attempt did not last long and was overturned by the development of internal political dynamics in both countries and the growing contradictions between them in the international arena.
After Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, the specter of a “big deal” has emerged in Moscow again – and probably for the last time. The Kremlin saw the possibility of broad agreements with the republican administration, but, of course, not on the basis of Russia’s perception of Western values, but quite the opposite – on the basis of Trump’s indifference to this value framework, pure pragmatism and personal “chemistry” of the two presidents. Hopes for a pragmatic “docking” between Putin and Trump have been buried by a bitter political struggle within the United States, which has resulted in a further sharp deterioration in US-Russian relations.
Finally, at the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, for a very short time, an illusion appeared in Moscow that countering this common threat would help, if not improve relations with the United States, then at least mitigate the confrontation. In fact, a pandemic further exacerbate US-Russian relations efforts in the US and already unprecedented mistrust of Russia and podhlestnuv competition between the two countries in the vaccine market, grew into an information war 31 .
CONCLUSION
The Democratic Administration of Joseph Biden, which came to power in the United States as a result of the 2020 elections, demonstratively and sharply reduced the role of relations with Russia in US foreign policy. She had in advance abandoned her predecessor’s traditional promise to strive to improve relations with Moscow. Any reboot of them was resolutely ruled out. At the same time, Biden and his team significantly strengthened the ideological component of foreign policy and discarded diplomatic conventions in public rhetoric – including with regard to President Putin personally.
In such circumstances, an appeal to the idea of a “big deal” between the United States and Russia or, more broadly, between the transatlantic West and Russia, an idea traditionally present, at least in the background, in Russian political discourse seems to be an absolute utopia. Of course, there are areas of possible pragmatic interaction with the United States. Among them is usually called the prevention of military confrontation, ensuring strategic stability, efforts in favor of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons … And then, already swiftly – interaction on climate change, combating the coronavirus pandemic, and countering terrorism. But the real contradictions of interests and value differences are too great for any sustainable partnership between Russia and the United States to become possible in the foreseeable future.
So, the experience of the military Soviet-American-British coalition is unique and unrepeatable. The “big deal” between the Russian Federation and the United States – given that Russia is not a superpower that claims to be a global condominium with America – seems incredible in modern conditions. From the point of view of reducing the level of confrontation, the precedents of the 1960s – 1970s are of some importance (mainly as a model for the operation of informal communication channels), despite all the numerous differences between the then internal and international situation from the present. In essence, the move away from confrontation in the direction of less antagonistic rivalry is possible only in the event of major internal political changes in one or both states. There are no prerequisites for them now and in the foreseeable future.
The article was published in the framework of the project “Dialogue Russia – USA: Change of Generations”. The views expressed in this article reflect the personal views of the authors.
Courtesy: (carnegie.ru)
