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Giving the Devil His Due
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# : |
10846 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1986 |
2,117 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
Heller and Neckrich present a devastating attack on Stalin's foreign policy before and during World War II. Much of their attack is to the point, but sometimes, I believe, they fail to give the devil his due. Surely Stalin was an extremely nasty and even evil man running a terrible and even criminal system. But he was steeped in European realpolitik. And he knew how to defend the interests of his regime, if not those of the Russian nations. Stalin made his pact with Hitler not because he underestimated him or because of ideological similarities, but because the pact best supported the interests of the regime in the circumstances of the time.
As overlord of a totalitarian system, there was no reason to expect Stalin to place the aims of humanity, or of democracy, over those of his regime. To have expected otherwise, as many political leaders, intellectuals, and media experts did, earned only Stalin's contempt as "useful idiots," a term coined by Lenin. I still remember a professor making fun of me to his amused audience after I predicted a Nazi-Soviet pact, by explaining that I did not "know the first thing about socialist foreign policy." Things are not much different in the current era.
Stalin did admire Hitler, at least at times. And Hitler at times admired Stalin's revolutionary thoroughness. But that admiration was always ambivalent, and for good reasons. Stalin was prepared to deal with Hitler. But he would have been even more pleased if he could have arranged for Hitler and the West to devastate each other. And the West had an interest in throwing Hitler against Stalin. What was there to choose between them except comparative evil and comparative menace? Even during the alliance of World War II, Stalin understood
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