ABSTRACT
THE LAST STALIN YEARS (1946-1953) Context Although the Soviet Union emerged victorious in 1945, the problems confronting the nation in general, and the military in particular, were immense. War had wrought extensive economic loss and social dislocation and had taken a heavy toll in human lives. Massive wartime population transfers followed by peacetime adjustment of borders and juggling of peoples, and a sizeable demobilization of armed forces personnel threatened further social instability. These factors combined with wartime popular hopes for postwar liberalization of the totalitarian Soviet state to create a potential for political unrest as well. These largely domestic concerns of Stalin were coupled with his concern over the political nature of the postwar world. By war's end it was clear that a new combination of capitalistic competitor states had emerged - one dominated by the United States. It was also clear that, while war had drained Soviet economic strength and peacetime reconstruction would continue to drain it, war had enhanced the United States' economic potential. American development and use of atomic weapons vividly underscored this point. The preeminent postwar Soviet international concern was to create around the USSR's borders a cordon sanitaire, a buffer against future foreign military aggression and the threat of foreign ideas. The ideological imperative of spreading revolution (liberation) and the realities of the principle "to the victor belongs the spoils" justified this policy.
