The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, Part 2

 

By Steven Jonas 

In Part 1 of this two-part series, after an introduction about the setting for the October 25 Revolution of 1917 (November 7, 1917 on the "new," Gregorian, Calendar), I noted that for the entire 75 years of its existence, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics faced what can be called "The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union." In Part 1, I very briefly reviewed that setting and what has happened to the development of socialism world-wide in the past 100 years. I also listed many of the major historical events which, ranging from diplomatic and economic isolation, to a refusal to join together to confront a common enemy, to continuing decades-long overt and covert pressure for "regime change" (finally achieved at the end of the War), to open military attack and engagement, taken together made up the War.

In Part 2, I discuss each one of those events in a bit of detail. Of course, as I noted, a full treatment would require much more space than we have on OpEdNews. Indeed, a book could well be written on the subject. But this can be considered a start on a subject which has been widely ignored. However, in my view it has to be taken into account in any accounting of what happened in and to that great socio-historical experiment known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Major Elements of the 75 Years War: 

1. What has been called "The Intervention," on the side of the "White Russian" resistance to the Red Revolution, began almost immediately after its initial success in overthrowing the Provisional Government. It was an armed counter-revolution led by the principal capitalist/imperialist power of the time, Great Britain. Winston Churchill was a leading promoter of the Intervention. Among the other nations involved were the United States, Japan, Romania, China, Greece, Serbia, Italy, and Canada.

2. After the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921 (and the withdrawal from Soviet territory of the Intervening nations), the Western Powers were slow to recognize the Soviet government. The United States was the last to do so, in 1933.

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3. As the Nazi threats to peace in Europe developed in the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union offered on a number of occasion to negotiate an anti-Nazi pact, primarily with the two major Western powers, France and Great Britain. They consistently refused. Indeed, in both countries there was considerable pro-Nazi political sentiment.

4. The "non-intervention" policy of the "Western Democracies" (including the United States) in the Spanish Civil War made the continuing anti-Soviet policy clear. One major factor in these Western powers' refusal even to send arms to the Spanish Republican government was that the Spanish Communist Party was a significant component of the governing coalition of the Spanish Republic. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany not only sent weapons but also fought on the side of the Spanish fascist rebellion. The Soviet Union played a limited role in supplying arms to the Republic.

5. Then came Munich  With Nazi Germany threatening to invade Czechoslovakia the Soviet Union offered military assistance to the Czechs, as well as the British and the French, in order to thwart the invasion. In fact, the Red Force was warming up on airfields just across the Czech border, ready to fly to the aid of the Czech army. But for Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, it was more important to keep Hitler pointing east, towards the Soviet Union, a declared enemy from the time of Mein Kampf--- the famous "Drang Nach Osten" --- than it was to save the Czechs from the Nazis. After vainly trying, on numerous occasions, to get the British and the French to sign a joint defense pact against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union finally gave up. With the signing of the "Nazi-Soviet pact" on August 25, 1939, they bought time against what they knew was eventually going to come from the Nazis.

6. The Nazi invasion --- Operation Barbarossa --- was launched on June 22, 1941. It was the only "hot" component of The 75 Years War.

7. The delay by the United States and Great Britain in opening of the Second Front in France on June 6, 1944, was interpreted by some as being content to let the Soviet Union bleed, especially after it had won what came to be recognized as the turning point of the Second World War, victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, on February 2, 1943. In the course of the War, all told, the Soviet Union lost between 25 and 27 million dead, military and civilian. Total U.S. military casualties in World War II amounted to about 400,000. 

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Source: OpEdNews.com