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I cannot agree with Professor Moise's characterization of the mid-1950s as a period of Soviet 'moderation'. Perhaps it can be described as a period of confusion following the death of Stalin, the revelation of the extreme nature of his crimes against his own people and those under communist subjugation. The Soviet government struggled to justify Stalin's excesses within the context of Leninist thought, and Soviet apologists in the West went through a similar challenge in their own thinking. This was not moderation, it was at best, confusion and at worst, embarrassment. It was also a period that witness the rise of wars of liberation as the Soviet Union attempted to export its ideology by supporting armed struggle throughout the third world. The period also culminated with the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crises, not exactly signs of moderation. CDR H. J. Hendrix, USN (PhD) Commanding Officer, Tacron ELEVEN -------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Leszek Gluchowski" <lwgluch@cogeco.ca> Date: Mon, September 17, 2007 1:39 pm Even if we accept (and I do) that the Soviet Union moderated very dramatically after February 1956, FDRs optimism regarding its evolution is still quite misplaced. I would suggest for instance that Stalin's death in 1953 and the subsequent de-Stalinization campaign did not prevent Khrushchev and his Politburo from invading Communist Hungary in November 1956. The retreat from de-Stalinization under Brezhnev and his Politburo in the mid 1960 helped to pave the way for the Warsaw Pact invasion of Communist Czechoslovakia in August 1968, as well as the threats to invade Communist Poland a little more than a decade later. The old men in the Kremlin continued to brutalize their own populations until the very end. More important, at least for those more interested in Soviet relations with their foes in the West, it was in 1970s that the USSR became a nuclear superpower and therefore a very real threat to the USA and its NATO allies. Leo Gluchowski
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