ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problem of learning in the development of Soviet policy toward Western Europe since 1945. Western Europe was for long the focus of both the hopes and fears of Soviet foreign policy makers. These hopes and fears were closely connected. The hopes traditionally rested on the prospect of fraternal socialist revolutions relieving Soviet Russia of its isolation in a capitalist world. A significant reason for the failure of the Soviet policy of collective security in Europe from 1933 to 1939 was the ideological abyss that separated East from West. The impotence of the East German regime in the face of a workers' revolt in June 1953 had convinced Beria that the Soviets were best rid of Ulbricht and his followers. This suggests that for some in the Soviet leadership the growth of unrest within the Eastern bloc might drive home the lesson that hegemony over the region was no solution to Soviet security.
