Author(s): Constantin CORNEANU
Publication name: Romanian Intelligence Studies Review
Publisher name: Mihai Viteazul National Intelligence Academy
Publication type: Journal article
Publication date: June 30, 2016
Pagination:
Issue/ Volume: 15/2016
DOI:
Abstract
Despite the internal turmoil meant to strengthen the social, economic
and political regime lay down in October 1917, after the end of the Civil War,
the USSR continued to establish itself externally as a great center of power in
the international relations arena, harboring immense geopolitical ambitions.
The Moscow regime would gradually normalise international relations, after
1922, but without settling the debts of the Czarist state and without
relinquishing its lead as a world revolution hub. On the one hand, the USSR will
continue to maintain „normal” diplomatic and commercial relations with other
powers and will also control the activity of communist parties in other countries
via the Comintern, the ultimate goal of such parties being to destabilize the
existing governments with which the USSR maintained „normal” relations. The
pinnacle of this policy of „peaceful coexistence”, inaugurated by the Peace of
Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918), was reached on August 23, 1939, through the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union
engaged until June 22, 1941 in a race against time in order to consolidate their
political, economic and military positions in areas of peak strategic and
geopolitical interest. Has June 22, 1941 sparked the early confrontation between
the two geopolitical options that marked European and world evolution
throughout the twentieth century? The answer to this question continues to
breed numerous and fierce historiographical controversies.
Keywords: Stalin, USSR, Hitler, Germany, the Red Army, Moscow, Berlin.
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