The attitudes of Truman and Stalin

What the specification asks for

“The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The attitudes of Truman and Stalin.” — examined through causation and difference. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Truman

Truman became President on 12 April 1945 having been Vice-President for eighty-two days, excluded from Yalta, and unaware of the Manhattan Project until Stimson briefed him within a fortnight. He had no relationship with Stalin and no investment in Roosevelt's approach.

His instincts were plainer and harder. He told Molotov at their first meeting in April that agreements had to be kept, and Molotov reportedly said he had never been talked to like that in his life. Truman's private view, recorded in his diary, was that the Soviets should be dealt with firmly and that concessions were read as weakness.

By 1947 that instinct had become policy in the Truman Doctrine, which framed the contest as one between free peoples and armed minorities and committed the United States to supporting the former — a universal commitment with no geographical limit, which is why it is a change of kind rather than of degree.

Stalin

Stalin's stated priority was security, and the record behind it is specific. The USSR had lost around 27 million people; Germany had invaded through Poland in 1914 and again in 1941; the intervention of 1918–20 was within living memory; and the atomic bomb was now held by a state that had not shared the programme with its ally.

His method was to secure the buffer by installing governments that would not permit an invasion route: coalition governments including communists first, communist control of the interior ministry and the police, then the elimination of rivals — the salami tactics Rákosi named. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and finally Czechoslovakia in February 1948 followed variations of that sequence.

Whether that was defensive or expansionist is the option's central question and cannot be settled by examining his motives, because the two are consistent with the same evidence. What can be said is that a buffer secured by installing governments against the wishes of their populations was bound to be read in the West as expansion — which is the mechanism the whole option rests on.

The security dilemma

Every measure each side took to make itself safer made the other less safe, and each read the other's response as proof of hostile intent. The Soviet buffer alarmed the West; the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid alarmed the USSR; Cominform and the coup in Prague alarmed the West further; NATO followed; the Warsaw Pact followed that.

This is why the strongest answers to 'who caused the Cold War' name a mechanism rather than a country. It also explains something a blame-based account cannot: why the process accelerated even in periods when neither leadership wanted a confrontation, and why it continued unchanged after Stalin's death in 1953.

The Czechoslovak case is the sharpest test of the two readings and is worth carrying into any answer. Czechoslovakia had a functioning democracy, a communist party that had won 38 per cent in a free election in 1946, a coalition government, and no invasion route for Moscow to defend. In February 1948 the non-communist ministers resigned in a dispute over the police, the communists took full control, and Jan Masaryk was found dead below a window. There is no security explanation for that, which is why it moved Western opinion further than anything else in the period.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

12 April 1945

Truman becomes President, with no briefing on Yalta or the bomb. Why this date: The change of personnel is one of the causes and is precisely datable.

April 1945

Truman's blunt first meeting with Molotov. Why this date: A concrete instance of the change of tone, quotable in a clause.

March 1947

The Truman Doctrine. Why this date: The universal commitment that converts an attitude into a policy.

February 1948

The Czechoslovak coup completes the Soviet bloc. Why this date: The one Eastern European country with a genuine democratic tradition and a strong domestic communist vote — which is why its fall persuaded Western opinion as nothing else had.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 82 days — Truman's time as Vice-President before becoming President.
• About 27 million — Soviet war dead — the number behind the security argument.
• 38 per cent — The Czechoslovak Communist Party's share in the free election of 1946, the highest communist vote in Europe. (Which makes the 1948 coup harder to explain as necessity and easier to explain as impatience.)

The people to place

• Harry Truman — President from April 1945; harder line, universal doctrine from March 1947.
• Joseph Stalin — Sought a security buffer by installing governments; the method guaranteed the Western reading.
• Vyacheslav Molotov — Soviet foreign minister; on the receiving end of Truman's first lecture and the negotiator throughout.
• Mátyás Rákosi — Hungarian communist leader who described the technique of eliminating rivals as salami tactics.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The revisionist reading: American economic power and the atomic monopoly set the terms of the post-war world, and Soviet policy in Eastern Europe was a defensive response by a devastated state to an unprecedented concentration of power. Contested by The orthodox reading, which points to the systematic elimination of non-communist parties in states with no history of Soviet occupation and no invasion route to protect, particularly Czechoslovakia..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Stalin planned to conquer Western Europe.

This: There is no evidence of such a plan, and the Red Army demobilised substantially after 1945. Soviet policy was to control the buffer, which was quite enough to alarm the West without requiring an invasion plan.

Not this: Truman started the Cold War by dropping the atomic bomb to intimidate the USSR.

This: The primary purpose was to end the Pacific war; the effect on Soviet calculations was understood and welcomed by some in Washington. Historians disagree about the weighting, and asserting one motive as established overstates the evidence.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Motive and effect.

The distinction: Soviet security aims and Western fears of expansion are compatible: the same actions produced both. An answer that decides the question by establishing intentions has answered a question the evidence cannot settle.

Blurred: Influence and control.

The distinction: Roosevelt and Churchill had accepted Soviet influence in Eastern Europe — Churchill's percentages agreement of October 1944 is explicit. What was not accepted was the elimination of all other parties. The distinction is where the Western grievance actually sits.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer explains how two governments produced an outcome neither had chosen, and can evidence each step from the other side's perspective. That is a harder claim than blaming either, and it is the one that survives the counter-evidence — which is why it is also the one that reaches the top band.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The security dilemma stated as a mechanism with one example from each side. It answers the option's central question without requiring the candidate to prove anybody's intentions, which is the position the evidence actually supports.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain two differences between the attitudes of Truman and Stalin in 1945. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
2. Explain two reasons for Soviet control of Eastern Europe after 1945. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Describe two ways the USSR extended its control over Eastern Europe. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'Stalin was responsible for the beginning of the Cold War.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The personalities of Truman and Stalin were the main reason for the breakdown of the wartime alliance.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Was the Cold War anybody's fault?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam
• Next lesson, in key topic 2: The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
• Also in this key topic: Long-term rivalry and ideological difference
• Key topic 1 · Reasons for the Cold War · A world divided: superpower relations, 1943–72 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of A world divided: Early developments in the Cold War, 1945–49 · The Cold War in the 1950s · Three crises: Berlin, Cuba and Czechoslovakia · The Thaw and moves towards Détente, 1963–72