‘Masters of the Baltic’: Soviet Objectives Towards the Baltic on the Eve of the Second World War

Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: from World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006; 496 pp.; £28.00 hbk; ISBN 0300112041

Gunnar Åselius, The rise and fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic, 1921–1941, Cass Series in Naval Policy and History, London: Routledge, 2005; 288 pp.; £100.00 hbk; ISBN 0714655406

Pavel Petrov, Punalipuline Balti laevastik ja Eesti, translated from manuscript Krasnoznamennyi Baltiiski flot i Estonia, Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2008; 264 pp.; £13.20 hbk.; ISBN: 9789985626313

It is not easy to assess Soviet objectives in the Baltic on the eve of the Second World War, not least because of the relative neglect of this region in current historiography. The contrast to east-central Europe or south-eastern Europe, about which several monographs and edited volumes have appeared recently, is obvious. ¹ The books by Gunnar Åselius and Pavel Petrov are therefore a much needed contribution. These studies of Soviet naval strategy will be analysed in the context of the larger debate about Soviet foreign policy objectives in 1939–40, for which Geoffrey Roberts’ recent book Stalin’s Wars provides a fitting backdrop.

The neglect of the Baltic states surely cannot be viewed as a measure of their actual importance in the events leading to the war. This is in fact recognized by a number of historians. Silvio Pons writes in the context of the British–French–Soviet negotiations in spring 1939 that ‘for a long time the possibility of a German attack via the Baltic region had preoccupied Soviet strategists’, but he does not dwell further on this aspect in Moscow's thinking. ² In his textbook on the origins of the war, Victor Rothwell discusses ‘Soviet anxieties’ about fascist coups d’etat in the border states and observes, without quoting any evidence, that ‘in the summer of 1939 Stalin seems to have been in a highly nervous state about the security of Leningrad’. ³ Geoffrey Roberts has consistently emphasized the importance of the Baltic, noting, for example, that the Baltic question represented the ‘heart’ of the Hitler–Stalin pact of 23 August 1939, for it was largely a territorial spheres-of-influence arrangement over the Baltic region. ⁴

Clearly, we are dealing with a Baltic enigma in the context of Soviet preparations for war. It seems, however, that to date historians have only been scratching the surface of the problem – even though it can be argued that in 1939–41 the USSR was most active precisely in this region, from military operations to the population-cleansing activities of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del or NKVD). Despite the extent of the unknown, or perhaps precisely for this reason, Soviet activities in the Baltics have been employed as evidence for widely diverging interpretations of Soviet foreign policy. The basic disagreement is about the role of ideology: ‘realists’ consider it as little more than extravagant propaganda, while ‘traditionalists’ emphasize precisely the ideological underpinnings of Soviet foreign policy. Realists Gabriel Gorodetsky and Ingeborg Fleischauer, for instance, suggest that the USSR was essentially a status quo power and Stalin a pragmatic Realpolitiker. ⁵ Geoffrey Roberts agrees, noting that throughout the period of 1939–41 ‘ideology was far less important than a series of misperceptions and miscalculations’. ⁶ On the side of the traditionalists, Raack has probably gone farthest to explain Soviet policies in terms of an ideologically motivated expansionist ‘drive to the West’. ⁷ Gerhard Wettig is more balanced, but he too underlines that ‘doctrinal elements largely shaped action’. ⁸ However, it should be mentioned that a third option suggested by Silvio Pons promises to circumvent the narrow choice between realism and traditionalism by adopting a more nuanced interpretation of ideology. His focus on Soviet assumptions about the inevitability of war allows Pons to emphasise Moscow’s security concerns without necessarily minimizing the role of doctrine. ⁹

It seems, however, that implicit in this debate is the more fundamental question about the part played by Stalin in the start of the war. In this sense the Baltic states certainly represent an important test case. Why did Stalin want to guarantee them in spring 1939? Why did he strike a secret deal over them with Hitler? Why did he annex them into the USSR when less radical solutions might have been possible (military bases, people’s democracy)? These actions clearly put a strain on interpretations that stress the limited and security-oriented nature of Soviet foreign policy. Let us now see how Geoffrey Roberts responds to the challenge.

Although in his newest book Geoffrey Roberts gives more space to ideology than in his earlier works, he can still be seen as a historian of the ‘realist school'. Roberts acknowledges the violent features of Stalin's regime, but he nevertheless claims that this was a ‘system in transition', the ‘destination' of which was a ‘more relaxed Soviet political order that emerged after his death in 1953' (27). That this never happened in Stalin's lifetime was, according to Roberts, the heavy price of the Cold War – a conclusion that comes close to the convergence theory popular in the 1930s and during the war. The relaxed judgment about Stalin the statesman is important for his argument about Stalin the foreign policy maker: his behaviour on the international scene fits into the category of ‘normal’ realist politics, for the key to the Soviet riddle is ‘national interest', with ideology only coming second. ¹⁰ In Roberts' analysis, Stalin's decision to strike a bargain with Hitler on 23 August was a ‘dramatic, last-minute improvisation' (5), which rested on his recognition that the French and the British were only manoeuvring to provoke a Soviet-German war.

Remaining faithful to his earlier interpretations, Roberts casts the Soviet Union as a ‘neutral' during the Polish–German war. But he seems somewhat ill at ease when describing how Stalin collaborated with Hitler in a propaganda stunt to call an end to the ‘imperialist war' once the Polish campaign was over. Did Stalin really want the war to end? Traditionalist historians would categorically deny it. They would argue that Stalin had long hoped for the war to start. Why should he now want it to end? But Roberts tries to slip past this uncomfortable question with a vague comment: ‘Probably not, but he had no idea how long it would last or what course it might take, and there was no guarantee that any outcome would be favourable to the Soviet Union' (41). This comes across as a clumsy rhetorical attempt to gloss over an uncomfortable question.

Nevertheless, Roberts admits with this that the continuing of the war was in Stalin's interest, but in what way? Roberts mentions that Stalin made political and territorial gains in the border states, but he denies that there was any ‘grand plan’ for territorial expansion or for the export of revolution. The military invasion of eastern Poland was the result of age-old territorial grievances and a reflection of a new ‘patriotic identity' of the Soviet Union. The forcing of the Baltic governments to allow Soviet garrisons on their territory in September–October arose from strategic interests and Stalin did not want to sovietize these states as he had done in the eastern territories of Poland annexed in 1939. Roberts is thus careful not to mention the Soviet preparations for invading these states by force in September 1939, the evidence for which is impossible to overlook and which might, indeed, undermine Robert’s interpretation. It is, for example, now known that the Soviets had assembled some 270,000 soldiers on the borders of Estonia and Latvia and the troops had been given orders to march into enemy territory on 30 September – in case the diplomatic negotiations failed. ¹¹ From similar cases, such as the Soviet Winter War with Finland, it is reasonable to assume that the orders would indeed have been carried out and that the whole Baltic campaign would have assumed a completely different logic. Rapid sovietization on the model of eastern Poland would have been on order already in 1939, not in 1940, had the Baltic governments not given up resistance and allowed the passage of around 70,000 Soviet troops. ¹²

The Winter War, which added eastern Karelia to the USSR, ‘was not of Stalin's choosing', according to Roberts (47). Again, Roberts downplays the military preparations for war and depicts the conflict as a result of diplomatic misunderstanding. Roberts blames the Finns for the failure to take Soviet strategic requirements seriously. For Roberts the road to war began with Finnish–Soviet negotiations at the beginning of October and not in July, when Stalin ordered the commander of the Leningrad military district Kirill Meretskov to draw up plans for a ‘retaliatory attack' in case of a Finnish ‘provocation'. ¹³ Indeed, military preparations are not discussed. Moreover, when describing the Soviet attack on Finland, Roberts writes cryptically that a ‘casus belli was found in border clashes’ (47). In fact, there was no border clash but a Soviet-staged incident, in which the Red Army fired at its own positions! The start of the Winter War thus resembled Hitler's attack on Poland. ¹⁴ In his assessment of the Winter War itself Roberts differs from most historians, claiming that the operation was a Soviet victory, despite the heavy human toll: 70,000 Soviet and 60,000 Finnish soldiers killed, according to Roberts (52). This estimate for Soviet casualties is much lower and the estimate for Finnish casualties much higher, than those calculated by other scholars. ¹⁵

Finally, Roberts explains the sovietization of the Baltic states, which came to a head in summer 1940. Roberts views the operation quite rightly as an effort to bag all Soviet gains before a peace conference, which Stalin expected to convene after Hitler’s victory in the West. Nevertheless, Roberts refuses to see it as a naked aggression but points to the existence of ‘an urban-based, activist left-wing minority [which] welcomed the Red Army occupation and demanded Soviet power and incorporation into the USSR’ (56). This mood allegedly pushed Moscow to rethink its earlier policy of non-intervention and move towards sovietization. Now, we have another example of Roberts trying to embellish Soviet activities that were only thinly disguised as being responsive to popular sentiment. In general, I think, it requires a lot of imagination to suppose that Stalin was acting on the basis of opinion polls. But even if we suppose that he did, we should examine the evidence more carefully. It can then be found that the ‘activist left-wing minority’ was in fact a crowd hastily assembled by Soviet occupation authorities for staged demonstrations that were typical of the USSR throughout its existence and had little if any correlation with true public feelings. This is not to deny the existence of a communist minority. In Estonia’s case, for instance, there were about 150 party members in 1940. Among them there were a few notable intellectuals of leftist leanings, whom the Kremlin could use to camouflage the take-over. Needless to say, the personal views of these intellectuals were quite insignificant. The majority of them would probably have objected to outright incorporation, but their opinion was, of course, never asked. ¹⁶ It is useful to remember in this connection what Stalin had told to the Latvian foreign minister in September 1939: ‘There are no communists outside Russia. What you have in Latvia are Trotskyists: if they cause you trouble, shoot them’. ¹⁷

If reading Roberts' analysis of the Baltic tangle leaves the impression of Soviet improvisation, the other two books under review emphasize long-term strategic planning, suggesting that Moscow had a direct interest in signing the spheres-of-influence pact with Hitler, more than Roberts allows. Gunnar Åselius places Soviet policy in the context of Soviet strategic thinking in the Baltic theatre in the interwar years. In a situation where no new evidence has become available on Stalin’s decision making, the sources on military strategy are particularly valuable. Åselius, as well as Pavel Petrov, have used extensively the Russian State Archives of the Navy in St. Petersburg, which, in contrast to the archives of other services, have been relatively open.

The backdrop for Åselius’ analysis is the catastrophic performance of the Krasnoznamenny Baltiysky Flot (the Red Banner Baltic Fleet – henceforth KBF) in war against Germany in 1941, for which the author gives an institutional explanation. He focuses on the shifts in the strategic doctrine from battleships to small navy in the late 1920s and back to an ocean-going fleet around 1935. Åselius identifies three periods: first, the ‘old school' of the 1920s, which institutionally rested on tsarist naval cadres and which derived the battleship-leitmotif from the period before the First World War; second, the ‘young school' from 1927/8–35, which saw the rise of new Soviet cadres and the prioritising of a small, defensive navy; and third, after 1935, the ‘Soviet school', which suddenly brought back the idea of building a blue-water navy, which would turn the USSR into the world’s leading naval power. This ambitious naval construction programme was unrealistic and detrimental to actual performance. Only in October 1940, under the German threat, was the scheme cancelled and resources directed to the construction of lighter vessels, but by then it was too late.

It is the ‘Soviet school' that is most interesting in the context of the Second World War, but its content also remains most ambiguous. Åselius tries to place the different naval doctrines in the context of Soviet foreign-policy goals. Described in very broad strokes, the ‘old school' drew on the dogma of world revolution; the ‘young school' coincided with the popular-front policy of Moscow; but what was the underlying idea of the ‘Soviet school'? This remains somewhat unclear. Unfortunately, Åselius does not take sides in the debate on whether the objective of Stalin's battleship programme was to control only the seas adjacent to Soviet borders (argued by Robert W. Herrick) or in the long-term to challenge the western great powers on the high seas (suggested by Mikhail Monakov and Jürgen Rohwer). ¹⁸ He does note, however, that there was no plan for a global conflict and, by extension, for the integration of different theatres of war (Baltic, Pacific, Arctic and the Black Sea); the Baltic Sea remained the focus of naval strategy. He also seems to suppose that the dogma of world revolution, present in strategic documents of the 1920s, had been set aside in the 1930s.

But what about Soviet objectives towards the Baltic? Åselius’s most interesting finding, I think, is that since about 1935 Soviet strategists were counting on a German invasion towards Leningrad through Estonia, Latvia and possibly Finland. This is not entirely new, as some historians have guessed as much before (for example, Rothwell, quoted above), but Åselius fills the hypothesis with content. According to a Soviet intelligence analysis of 1935, the most likely scenario was that German troops would be deployed in Estonia or Latvia by sea transport. The operation would take about two weeks, during which time the enemy would do their utmost to block the KBF in its bases in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland. This was, roughly, what had happened in 1918. This apparently trivial assumption about an amphibious invasion had far-reaching consequences for military strategy as well as foreign policy. First, it would be most practical to repel such an invasion at sea, so as not to allow the enemy to complete the military build-up. As a result, Soviet strategic thinking went through a small revolution: defensive operations in the Gulf of Finland were no longer sufficient; the KBF had to cut through enemy sea routes in open waters. Whether the battleships were best for the task is another question, but it was evident that the new threat scenario required a more offensively capable navy.

Second, as the possibility of a German build-up in the Baltic states was taken as axiomatic, the function of these ‘buffer states’ for Soviet security was re-interpreted too. Until 1935, Soviet scenarios had counted on a coalition of border states, in which Poland would provide most of the land forces and Britain or France only a small naval force. With the advent of Hitler, however, there emerged a hostile power that could threaten the USSR on land as well as on sea. When Soviet intelligence detected increased German influence in the Baltic states, it was quickly concluded that Finland, Estonia and Latvia were willing to offer themselves as places d'armes against the USSR. Though such fears had been present earlier, only now did the position of these states as ‘buffers' assume a clearly negative meaning and it was decided that the neutrality of these states would not in any case be respected. According to the plan of Mikhail Tukhachevsky in 1937, in case of war in the West, the Red Army would have to spread out on the northern flank by occupying the Baltic states and Finland. For Finnish historian Ohto Manninen, these ideas formed the core of the military logic underpinning Soviet policy in 1939–40. ¹⁹

Third, the assumption might have played a part in Stalin's considerations in signing the pact with Hitler. It has been assumed that any German attack on the USSR had to pass through Poland, ²⁰ but this is not how Stalin saw it. In June Stalin told General Kirill Meretskov that Germany was ready to attack Poland and the USSR from any direction and that Finland could easily become a bridgehead. Accordingly, Meretskov was to devise a plan for occupying Finland as a precaution; similar plans were probably devised for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. ²¹ Hitler's early draft of Operation ‘White’, the plan for the destruction of Poland, had included the occupation of Lithuania and half of Latvia, thus being more obviously directed against Soviet interests. Only later was Poland identified as the sole victim, which opened up the possibility to offer the USSR a ‘fair’ bargain. In any case, Stalin was certainly triumphant when he could sign a pact that turned him from a nervous observer of Hitler’s conquests into a profiteer from the dissolution of the Versailles-Riga international system. In Moscow's eyes the Soviet westward expansion outweighed the direct border thus established with Germany. As Stalin explained to Dimitrov, it was good that the ‘socialist system' expanded to ‘new territories and peoples', ²² but Moscow had never had trust in bourgeois buffer states anyway.

To conclude, a possible interpretation, based on the insights of Åselius’ monograph, is the following: the Soviet strategists’ assumption that the Baltic presented a convenient invasion route for imperialist powers explains much of Soviet activities against the Baltic states in 1939–40 and is one of the keys for unlocking Stalin’s motives for signing the pact with Hitler.

It can be easily discerned from the previous discussion that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states followed a simple logic of ‘geopolitical facts': that it was imperative for Moscow to close the invasion route through the Baltics. But this seems far too simple, for the interpretation of geographical as well as of political realities is always influenced by cultural and political perceptions. In Stalin's USSR, it seems, these ‘realities' were gauged through the lenses of deep suspicion of the outside world but at the same time in a surprisingly offensive-optimistic spirit. It is the latter aspect of' the ‘fantasy of easy victory' – as Catherine Merridale has called it ²³ – to which Pavel Petrov’s volume on the activities of the KBF in 1939–41 adds valuable insights.

A number of works on Soviet military preparation have helped illuminate what kind of war Stalin was expecting to fight. The centrepiece of Stalinist military planning was the assumption that the enemy would be repelled and beaten on his own soil. ‘Decisive victory at low cost was not just a vision of the propagandists, it was the Red Army’s official goal,’ Merridale writes. ²⁴ Earl Frederick Ziemke and Roger R. Reese have quoted from the Red Army’s field service regulations of 1939: ‘if an enemy unleashes war on us, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army will be the most offensive-minded of all the attacking armies that ever existed’. ²⁵ As there is little hard evidence about Stalin’s objectives, it is sensible to look at the cultural habits that were being instilled in the Soviet armed forces, as it was preparing for the next inter-imperialist conflict. Clearly, no grand plan for a Soviet conquest of the world will be found, as there was none, but the shifts in the ‘intellectual horizon’ of the army that were triggered from the top may provide clues about Stalin’s thinking. This explains the significance, for example, of Stalin’s speech to the graduates of military academies on 5 May 1941, for one of the possible readings of the text is that it marked the start of the preparation for a preventive strike against Nazi Europe. ²⁶

It is in this context that Pavel Petrov's look into the culture of KBF, not just its plans and operations, in 1935–41 is important. The book contains a lot of detail about the role of the fleet in subduing the Baltic states between September 1939 and July 1940, as well as about its performance against Finland and later against Germany. It introduces novel archival evidence, which is always useful in the Russian context. Unfortunately, the analysis sometimes remains superficial. Petrov does evaluate the quality of strategic assessment by the navy leadership and the general performance of the fleet, but he does not discuss the place of the fleet's plans in the larger strategies of the Soviet high command, for instance in relation to the Tukhachevsky plan of 1937 mentioned earlier. By focusing on the operational level, however, Petrov achieves something useful: a convincing cultural angle on the day-to-day performance of the naval personnel.

Petrov points to the ever more ambitious tasks of the fleet for future wars, a process of steady inflation that started around 1935. He refers, for example, to the general operational plan for the Baltic fleet in 1937, which allowed the navy 10–12 days for mobilization, although it was assumed that the enemy would attack without a formal declaration of war leaving the Soviet side no time at all (38). Starting in 1935, Petrov assesses, the objectives set for the navy by the high command began to shift from a readiness for defence to a readiness for offence. In the Winter War the navy went into action against a small state in high spirits, but the result was a dismal failure. Not only did the KBF fail to sink a single Finnish warship, the quality of the navy personnel was illustrated by a number of anecdotal incidents (mates losing the course by 50 miles, Soviet submarine firing on an allied German cargo vessel for 20 minutes without a single hit, complete ignorance about the geography of the Finnish coastline). Despite such shortcomings, the fleet commander vice-admiral Vladimir Tributz remained optimistic: ‘As we are guarding the peaceful communist reconstruction in our own country, we are obliged to liquidate the military support base of White Finland on the side of the great Soviet sea power'. ‘We have to become the real masters of the Baltic,’ he insisted (117).

Apart from such declarations of confidence, which to a large extent were ritualistic, Petrov has unearthed a number of operational plans of the KBF from summer 1940 to spring 1941. The military revolution of 1940 in the West changed the Soviet threat perception, definitely for the worse. In a general action plan of early July it was presumed that the main enemy would in any case be Germany, but the Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and even parts of the British fleet could join in action against the USSR. The old assumption of capitalist encirclement thus re-appeared (218–9). Despite the dire prediction, the KBF was supposed to run operations in the entire Baltic Sea – destroying the main forces of the enemy fleet, bombing the sea- and airbases in Sweden, Finland and Germany (with the air arm of the KBF) and covering a landing for the conquest of Åland. That the emphasis was on offensive operations is clear also from a memorandum of the chief of staff of the KBF from June 5: this included the invasion of Åland and Gotland, submarine operations against Germany and the mining of German ports and the Swedish coast (120). A memorandum written by a commander of the KBF in August 1940 even recommended the ‘liquidation' of the independence of Sweden and of Finland ‘to the advantage of the USSR' and the turning of the Baltic Sea into a ‘Soviet lake’ (218–26). Characteristic of the ideology of offensive warfare was also the fact that little thought was given to the defence of the naval bases in the Baltic states – the war would be fought on enemy territory anyway – which contributed to the dismal failure of the KBF in 1941.

It is time to draw some very tentative conclusions. I think it is clear that historians must look at a great variety of sources in order to do some useful guesswork about Stalin’s objectives; in the Baltic context the histories of Soviet naval strategy are particularly important. Geoffrey Roberts’ neglect of military preparations renders at least part of his argument, particularly the thesis about the limited and security-oriented nature of Soviet aims, unconvincing. The ultimate question is, however, for what kind of war Stalin was preparing? It remains doubtful whether the dogma of world revolution played much part in Soviet thinking. Evidence suggests, though, that the Soviets were far from being content to sit behind their post-First World War borders and wait for an imperialist coalition to fall on their camp. The plan was rather to improve the strategic position, by occupying Finland and the other Baltic states if possible. In the event of an attack by a single power or by a coalition of imperialist powers, the Red Army and the navy were supposed to execute powerful counter-blows and to carry the war to enemy territory. If they had been successful, no one knows where they would have stopped on their way to becoming the true masters of the Baltic. In this connection it is perhaps fitting to refer to what Vyatcheslav Molotov had to say about Soviet failure in 1941: ‘our ideology stands for offensive operations when possible, and if not, we wait.’ ²⁷