ABSTRACT
The expansion of Soviet military power into the center of Europe has been the most significant and enduring consequence of the Second World War. It gave rise to the cold war and constitutes a permanent threat to the nations of Western Europe. The Soviet leadership has grown more sophisticated and does not view Western Europe as a political unit, hence Moscow’s increasingly differentiated policy. In the early postwar years, Soviet policy toward Western Europe was determined by Stalin’s priorities in Eastern Europe. Stalin saw in the American proposal to aid Europe’s economic recovery, formalized in June 1947, a challenge to Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, and he came out strongly against the Marshall Plan, even though a minimal Soviet participation might have killed the enterprise in the US Congress and prolonged Western Europe’s internal weaknesses.
