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going to break the nonaggression pact and attack the Soviet Union and hence
for the disastrous casualties and territorial losses the Soviets suffered during the
first weeks of World War II. After a puzzling weeklong absence, Stalin reap-
peared and throughout the next four years rallied the country to victory. He
relaxed the tenor of Soviet domestic politics somewhat, especially in the area of
religion, allowing greater freedom to the Orthodox Church and identifying the
Soviet struggle with age-old Russian nationalist themes. In foreign policy, he
forged an alliance with the United States and Great Britain that survived until
victory was achieved, and he held his own in negotiations with Allied leaders
Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill. Through clever diplomacy and the sheer might of the Soviet war
machine, Stalin created a bloc of satellite nations of Eastern Europe that sur-
vived until 1989.
By 1945, Stalin found himself at the peak of his power, the undisputed ruler
of a country that had borne extremely heavy losses and emerged from the war
devastated but an undisputed superpower. The opening to the West and the lib-
eralization that some had expected quickly gave way to a cold war, exacerbated
by the development of atomic weapons, which the Soviet Union first produced
in 1949. The years between 1945 and 1953 remain among the least studied of
Stalin's rule. His increasing paranoia and secretiveness shaped the behavior of
his associates, who feared a return to the purges of the 1930s. The alleged con-
spiracy uncovered in January 1953, known as the Doctors' Plot, foreshadowed
to many the beginning of a mass purge, particularly targeting Soviet Jews.
Soviet relations with the outside world were also affected by the acquisition
of a bloc of satellites in Eastern Europe and by the successful Communist revo-
lution in China of 1949. Friction with the United States arose over the future of
Eastern Europe and Germany. The more restrictive regime at home became evi-
dent with a crackdown on the intellectual community and the establishment of
a new five-year plan.
Stalin's death from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953, was met with
relief and joy in some quarters and with tears in others from those who had
come to believe the mythology of the “Little Father.” His body was placed next to
Lenin's in the Red Square mausoleum, in keeping with the personality cult he
had crafted. Stalin's death was followed by a power struggle among the Soviet
political elite, of which the Ukrainian party leader Nikita Khrushchev was now
a prominent member. By December 1953, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's feared police
chief, had been quietly executed six months after his dramatic arrest at a Krem-
lin meeting. Georgii Malenkov, initially considered the most likely successor to
Stalin, remained prime minister but had relinquished the more influential post
of first secretary of the Communist party, the position given to Khrushchev in
September 1953. The two coexisted uneasily until February 1955, when Malen-
kov was forced to resign, although he stayed on as a member of the Presidium,
as the Politburo was known from 1946 to 1964.
By 1956, Khrushchev had emerged as the unchallenged leader of the Soviet
Union. With his ally, Nikolai Bulganin, as prime minister, Khrushchev became
the long-term successor to Stalin, although he had one more challenge to sur-
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