Russian Life & People Digest
Question by : Did Stalin want to secretely take over the German Occupie countries?
Today in school we were learning WWII. And our teacher said Stalin secretely wanted to take over the countries the Germans occupied when the Russians took back the countries. But why would he want to do that when Russia was the largest country in the world?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Stuckatome
Stalin was a crazy dictator. Simples
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Spellbound says
Firstly Stalin was ONLY acting according to the agreements made between him, Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta.
The answer is both yes and no.
Stalin believed that communism was inevitable in ALL industrialised and developed countries – it just might need a “helping hand”. So, yes, Stalin wanted to take over Eastern Europe.
Stalin was NOT an imperialist, he did not want to take over the countries that the Nazis occupied, he believed that he was liberating them, and putting in governments to begin the process of turning them into communist countries. So, no, he did not want to rule over Eastern Europe – but to act as a guide and mentor – albeit a fairly brutal one.
He also thought that as the Western Allies were establishing capitalist and Democratic governments in the countries that they liberated – ideas alien to many of them – then why shouldn’t he do the same?
And, why should he allow the countries that his armies liberated, at enormous human and material cost, turn into states which would potentially be hostile?
BTW – Russia was PART of the Soviet Union, it was not the name for the whole country in this period.
Your teacher seems to know little about Stalin or the agreements made as the war was ending – Stalin did not secretly want to take over Eastern Europe.
No – please read a book about the Soviet Union, you may be surprised!
no says
There was no secret about it. Our VERY weak and stupid President, Roosevelt was told of Stalin’s ambitions, but he said, “I can control Uncle Joe”. Stalin was a power hungry, murderous dictator. He wanted more land and more people to enslave. Even if he didn’t “need” the people, he had to conquer so that no one could show the world that Capitalism fed more people than Socialistic Slavery. He could keep it from his own people by censorship and he kept his people from escaping by having his border guards kill anyone who tried to leave.
John de Witt says
It wasn’t much of a secret.