Were the Soviets Interested in a Communist West? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. Note: nostalgia *is* allowed.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14667593
To what extent was the Soviet leadership interested in exporting communism to Western countries?

I know that communist parties in Italy and France were very large.

Did the Soviets want to see these countries turn communist and if so did they hold up much hope for this to happen?

How did the Soviets regard the prospect of a communist Britain or USA? In 1935 was this something that interested them or did they think the Anglo-Saxon world was a lost cause?
#14667595
Political Interest wrote:To what extent was the Soviet leadership interested in exporting communism to Western countries?

I know that communist parties in Italy and France were very large.

Did the Soviets want to see these countries turn communist and if so did they hold up much hope for this to happen?

How did the Soviets regard the prospect of a communist Britain or USA? In 1935 was this something that interested them or did they think the Anglo-Saxon world was a lost cause?

You ask three questions and the last one is somewhat bizarre with your reference to "the Anglo-Saxon world". I hardly know what to make of that.
As for the first two questions, I think there were people who believed in a communist philosophy and had a wish to see it established everywhere. The leadership, however were probably the same as power-hungry people who make it into politics in so many countries. To what extent they believed in their own propaganda is questionable. The leaders of the Soviet Union would surely have liked to see countries adopt their system and be on friendly terms. It stands to reason. They did ruin any hope of this when their suppression of human rights, individual freedoms, and the imposition of a police state became common knowledge.
#14667596
This might interest you:

Trotsky: If America Should Go Communist (1934)

But generally, of course the communists were interested in that, generally. But it really very much depended on what kind of communist you were for how this was going to be accomplished and how it was to be done.

To the right, you had some that advocated open war with the west and a forced conversion to communism.

For Stalin, socialism was a reality in the Soviet Union and so emphasis was put on protecting the Soviet Union.

For Trotskyists, socialism was only possible in an international context; like Lenin, they saw the Soviet Union as a, "a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist," at first; and as time went on as a, "Degenerated workers' state."

Trotsky's last position being:

Trotsky wrote:We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.


Though some of his followers went further after his death and didn't want a Soviet Union.

Regardless, in all of these tendencies, the assumption was that there would—and should be—a communist west.
#14671757
Well Marx never designed communism to be employed by poor nations. So, there's that caveat.

In the real world however, it really depends on America's meddling. Italy almost certainly becomes Communist in the 50s without the CIA's involvement. Hard to say about France but inclined to believe they would too.

This means West Germany, England and Spain are the big anti-communist factions in Europe. However if the OP is talking about the 1930s before WWII, that's a whole other ballgame. Some sort of coalition of communists and socialists would probably take over in France while it's hard to say if Mussolini would have been overthrown in Italy by the socialist wing. This also plays into the idea that Hitler never comes to power in Germany. For this we have to imagine that somehow the SPD can control government. Or it's possible the SPD takes control in the 60s in the event of WWII.

Anyways, I think it's mostly a European imagination. It doesn't take too much to envision a Communist Europe outside of Britain. Communism is impossible in USA/
Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Yale course on Ukrainian history: https://www.you[…]

So the evidence shows that it was almost certainl[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

Find Someone Who Loves You Like Israel Loves Att[…]

Hmmm, it the Ukraine aid package is all over mains[…]