the Politburo and the government mounted a new offensive aimed at turning the peasants at long last into good socialists. This was to be done by greatly increasing the size of the collectives - thereby decreasing their number - and at the same time increasing the size of working units in a collective, in the interests of further mechanization and division of labor. Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as one of the leaders in postwar Soviet agriculture, spoke even of grouping peasants in
The postwar period also brought some political changes. As already mentioned, the Soviet Union acquired five new republics during the time of the Russo-German agreement. They were lost, together with other large territories, when Germany and its allies invaded the U.S.S.R. and reacquired when the Red Army advanced west. The five Soviet Socialist Republics, the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian, raised the total number of component units of the U.S.S.R. to sixteen. In July 1956, however, the Karelo-Finnish S.S.R. was downgraded to its prewar status of an autonomous republic within the R.S.F.S.R., reducing the number of union republics to fifteen. The Karelo-Finnish Republic, consisting both of some older Soviet lands and of territory acquired from Finland in 1940 and again in 1944, largely failed as an expression of Finnish culture and nationality; in particular, because the inhabitants had a choice of staying or moving to Finland, virtually no people remained in the area that the Soviet Union annexed from Finland. The downgrading, therefore, seemed logical, although it might have been connected with the desire to Russify that strategic area still more effectively. While the number of union republics increased as a result of the Second World War, the number of autonomous republics was reduced: five of the latter, the Volga-German Autonomous Republic and four in the Crimea, the northern Caucasus, and adjacent areas were disbanded for sympathizing with or assisting the Germans, their populations being transported to distant regions. In the case of the Volga Germans, the N.K.V.D. apparently staged a fake parachute raid, pretending to be a Nazi spearhead in order to uncover the sympathies of the people. Mass deportations also took place in the newly acquired areas that were rapidly and ruthlessly incorporated into the Soviet system. For example, most of the members of the upper and middle classes, including a great many intellectuals, disappeared from the Baltic republics. The concentration-camp empire of Stalin and Beria bulged at the seams.
By contrast, although the Union expanded and rigorous measures were applied to bring all parts of it into conformity with the established order, the Soviet political system itself changed little. Union-wide elections were held in 1946 for the first time since 1937, and again in 1950. The new Supreme Soviets acted, of course, as no more than rubber stamps for Stalin and the government. Republican and other local elections also took place. The minimum age for office holders was raised from eighteen to twenty-three. In 1946 people's commissariats became ministries. More important, their number was reduced in the postwar years and they were more strongly centralized in Moscow. Shortly before his death, Stalin carried out a po-
tentially important change in the top Party administration: the Politburo as well as the Organizational Bureau were abolished and replaced by the Presidium to consist of ten Politburo members, the eleventh being dropped, plus another fifteen high Soviet leaders. But Stalin died without calling together the Presidium. After his death its announced membership was reduced to ten, so that as an institution it differed from the Politburo in nothing but name, and even the name was restored after Khrushchev's fall.
The postwar years witnessed also a militant reaffirmation of Communist orthodoxy in ideology and culture. While more will be said about this subject in a later chapter, it might be noted here that scholarship, literature, and the arts all suffered from the imposition of a Party strait jacket. Moreover, Andrew Zhdanov, a member of the Politburo and the Party boss of Leningrad during the frightful siege, who led the campaign to restore orthodoxy, emerged as Stalin's most prominent lieutenant from 1946 until Zhdanov's sudden death in August 1948. That death - engineered by Stalin in the opinion of some specialists - again left the problem of succession wide open. The aging dictator was surrounded during his last years by a few surviving old leaders, his long-time associates, such as Molotov, Marshal Clement Voroshilov, Lazarus Kaganovich, and Anastasius Miko-yan, as well as by some younger men who had become prominent after the great purge, notably Beria, Khrushchev, and George Malenkov. Malenkov in particular appeared to gain consistently in importance and to loom as Stalin's most likely successor.
Stalin's last decade saw extremely important developments in Soviet foreign policy. Crucial events of the postwar years included the expansion of Soviet power in eastern Europe, the breakdown of the wartime cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and its Western allies, and the polarization of the world into the Communist and the anti- Communist blocs, headed by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively. That the Soviet Union proved intractable in its dealings with the West, that it did what it could to expand its own bloc, and that it received support from the Communist movement all over the world, followed logically from the nature and new opportunities of Soviet communism. A persistent refusal on the part of many circles in the West to face reality testified simply to their wishful thinking or ignorance. Yet it does not follow that every Soviet move was a cleverly calculated step of a prearranged conspiracy. It appears more likely that the Soviet leaders, too, had prepared little for the postwar period, and that in their preparation they had concentrated on such objectives as rendering Germany permanently harmless. The sweeping Soviet expansion in eastern Europe occurred at least in part because of special
circumstances: the rapid Western withdrawal of forces and demobilization, the fact that it became apparent that free elections in most eastern European countries would result in anti-Soviet governments, and the pressure of local Communists as well as, possibly, the urging of the more activist group within the Soviet leadership. In the opinion of Mosely and certain other observers, Stalin embarked on a policy of intransigence and expansion shortly after Yalta.
The Soviet Union and the Allies co-operated long enough to put into operation their arrangement for dividing and ruling Germany and to bring top Nazi leaders to trial before an international tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946. Also, in February 1947, the victorious powers signed peace treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. The Soviet Union confirmed its territorial gains from Rumania and Finland, including a lease of the Finnish base of Porkkala, and obtained extensive reparations. Rounding out its acquisitions, the U.S.S.R. obtained the so- called Carpatho-Ruthenian area from friendly Czechoslovakia in 1945. While most inhabitants of that region spoke Ukrainian, they had not been connected with any Russian state since the days of Kievan Russia.
But on the whole co-operation between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers broke down quickly and decisively. No agreement on the international control of atomic energy could be reached, the Soviet Union refusing to participate in the Atomic Energy Commission created by the United Nations in 1946. In the same year a grave crisis developed over the efforts of the Soviet government to obtain significant concessions from Persia, or Iran, and its refusal to follow the example of Great Britain and the United States and withdraw its troops from that country after the end of the war. Although, as a result of Western pressure and the airing of the question in the United Nations, Soviet forces did finally leave Iran, the hostility between former allies became increasingly apparent.
The Communist seizure of power in eastern Europe contributed very heavily to the division of the world into two opposed blocs. While many details of the process varied from country to country, the end result in each case, that is, in Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Poland, was the firm entrenchment of a Communist regime co-operating with and dominated by the Soviet Union. The same happened in eastern Germany. Only Greece and Finland managed to escape the Communist grasp. Liberated Greece fell into the British rather than the Soviet sphere, and its government, supported by Great Britain and the United States, managed to win a bitter civil war from the Communist-led Left. The fact that Finland survived as a free nation remains puzzling. It could be that Moscow first overestimated the strength of Finnish Communists, who did play a prominent part in the government of the country immediately after the war, and then decided not to force the issue in a changing international
situation after the Finnish Communists failed to seize power. In particular, the Soviet Union probably wanted to avoid driving Sweden into the camp of Soviet enemies. Similarly - at a greater distance from the U.S.S.R. - the
