Stalin and Putin, Molotov and Lavrov

Parallels between Putin, Stalin, Molotov, and Putin's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. The similarities are striking and should be remembered.

From The Article

By David Herman

In six years, from 1939 until the late summer of 1945, Stalin and Molotov dealt with three British Prime Ministers (Chamberlain, Churchill and Attlee) and three British Foreign Secretaries (Halifax, Eden and Bevin). They also dealt with two American Presidents (FDR and Truman) and four US Secretaries of State (Cordell Hull, Edward Stettinius Jr., Joseph Grew and James Byrnes. The last three Secretaries of State lasted 208 days, 5 days and 1 year and 202 days.

Stalin, by contrast, ruled the Soviet Union for almost thirty years, from 1924 until his death in 1953. Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (head of government) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs for thirteen years, from 1939 to 1949, during the era of the Second World War, and again from 1953 to 1956. Molotov is perhaps best known for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939. Molotov was still in office when Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged in 1946.

In other words, Stalin and Molotov saw British Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries, US Presidents and Secretaries of State, come and go like taxi drivers. Only the Soviet leadership and their cynical and brutal policies were a still point in a turning world. Whether it was lying about the terrible massacre at Katyn, the betrayal of the Poles during the Warsaw Uprising or the brutal treatment of Poles, Ukrainians and others during and after the Second World War, you could always predict the policies of the Soviet Union during and after the Second World War.

Sadly, you can see exactly the same pattern today with Russia. Putin succeeded Yeltsin as Russia’s President in 1999, continued as President until 2008, then became Prime Minister until 2012 and has been President ever since. He has ruled Russia continuously for almost 25 years. Sergey Lavrov has served as Putin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs for 19 years since 2004. He is the longest-serving Russian foreign minister since Andrei Gromyko from 1957-85, during the Soviet Union: nearly 28 years. Who would bet against Lavrov overtaking Gromyko’s record?

During their time in power, Putin and Lavrov – like Stalin and Molotov – have seen western Prime Ministers and Presidents, Foreign Secretaries and Secretaries of State come and go. Putin succeeded Yeltsin when Tony Blair had barely started as Prime Minister. During his more than 24 years of rule, he has dealt with eight British Prime Ministers and fourteen Foreign Secretaries, five US Presidents (including Trump twice) and more than a dozen US Secretaries of State, none of whom has served even five years.

It is little wonder that Putin and Lavrov show such contempt for western leaders. They know none of them will stick around. Even if Trump were to change the US Constitution, he is already 78 and unlikely to live long enough to serve more than three terms, perhaps not even more than two. Western leaders’ policies will keep changing as they rotate. Perhaps the only exception was Merkel, who was Germany’s Chancellor for more than sixteen years. But her reputation has sunk so fast that the three huge biographies that appeared when she retired have probably already been pulped.

With Putin and Lavrov, just as with Stalin and Molotov, their policies have remained disturbingly consistent, unlike those of their western counterparts. One minute, Biden supported Ukraine and criticised Israel. The next moment, Trump humiliates Zelensky and supports Netanyahu as he resumes bombing Gaza.

Curiously, our news media make little of this. On 18 March an interviewer asked Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem what she thought of David Lammy’s latest attack on Israel for its alleged breach of human rights. She couldn’t have been more dismissive, as she pointed out that what concerns Israel is the reaction of Saudi Arabia, not what the British Foreign Secretary has to say about anything. What was curious was not her reaction, which made complete sense — and Lavrov would have said exactly the same — but the parochialism of the interviewer and his producer(s), who seemed to be under the illusion that any key player overseas would care deeply about what David Lammy has to say about their country.

It’s not just that Western statesmen come and go: there is also the crucial issue of their age and state of health. Winston Churchill was over seventy at the time of the first two summits of the three great Allied powers and was out of office before the third. Roosevelt was in terrible health at Yalta. He had died and been replaced by Truman at Potsdam just a few months later. The constant churning of key figures in charge of British and US foreign policy perhaps contributed to the hopelessness of Allied policy, as they gave away central and eastern Europe to Soviet rule for the next half century. Anthony Eden was famously ill at the time of Suez, just over ten years later, which added to the sense of British weakness and decline.

Howard Brenton’s recent play, Churchill in Moscow, treated all this as farce. The play is set during Churchill’s encounter with Stalin and Molotov in Moscow in 1942. Brenton writes as if there was nothing much at stake in these negotiations and seems more interested in the amount of food and drink they consumed.

It is worth contrasting this trivial play with Rachel Seiffert’s new novel, Once the Deed is Done (Virago, £22), set in postwar occupied Germany. She brings to life the terrible fate of Polish and Ukrainian DPs who are waiting to hear of their fate, whether or not they will be sent home by the British to live under Soviet rule: “Impatient for news of their home towns, their home districts. Which country would they land in? Which side would the border fall?” Ruth, a British relief worker, is puzzled by their reaction. “Why not go home to their old home country?” They had heard the reports about the pacts agreed at Potsdam, and the handovers to new governments: “These pacts were sealed with Stalin. With Stalin – you understand us?”

Today, eighty years later, people in central and east Europe, and most obviously in Ukraine, feel the same way and watch incredulously as Trump and Rubio not only betray Ukraine, but also Poland and the Baltic Republics, because who knows which will be the next to be invaded by Putin and betrayed by the Americans? All we can predict is that our politicians and news media, with some distinguished exceptions like Tim Garton Ash, Timothy Snyder and Bernard Henri-Levy, will look on naively, just as their predecessors did after Munich, Yalta and Potsdam. Once Trump has wrought terrible destruction on the people of Ukraine, perhaps our Prime Minister (whoever it may be by then) will offer him a third state visit, or another golf course, while Putin and Lavrov watch, laugh and reconquer yet another east European country.