Between 25 and 27 March 1949 the world witnessed a ‘peace conference’ in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel of New York City, with numerous artists, writers and other popular figures from all over the world attending. The Soviet delegation consisted also of the composer Dmitry Shostakovich who had gained world-wide fame with his ‘Leningrad Symphony’ (No. 7), helping to mobilise resistance against Hitler’s Germany. Shostakovich had not wanted to join the Soviet delegation, but Stalin, having strongly promoted that conference, had personally insisted on it.
Nuclear arms race and peace
At that time the only nuclear power was the United States, which had used two nuclear bombs in August 1945, destroying the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thereby quickly ending the Second World War in the Pacific. In the following years, witnessing an intensifying ‘Cold War’, the US seemed to be able to use its ‘nuclear monopoly’ to check Soviet ambitions. Yet, five months after the New York conference, on 29 August 1949, the first Soviet nuclear bomb exploded in the test area of Semipalatinsk.
The designs of that bomb had been stolen by Soviet spies in the US, notably the nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs. This was the beginning of the ‘nuclear stalemate’ between East and West. The rationale was that nuclear weapons could not be used, because “who shoots first will die second” – the ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD).
Stalin’s was very much interested in the New York peace conference because of its propaganda effects and his goal of winning time for his armament efforts. ‘Peace lovers’ could mobilise public opinion in Western countries due to freedom of expression, whilst the Soviet Communist Party could suppress any popular dissent in the countries its armies controlled. Stalin had learned from his predecessor Lenin, who in 1917 had effectively used the exhausted Russian population’s yearning for peace to end Russia’s involvement in WWI and gain power. Lenin’s successful slogan had been “peace, bread and land”, to appeal particularly to the underprivileged masses.
Baltic ‘zone of peace’
As a doctoral student of political science I researched a specific ‘zone of peace’ concept, the arms control initiatives in the Baltic Sea region during the Cold War. Neutral Sweden had renounced building and possessing nuclear weapons and proposed a nuclear-free-zone in the Baltic region (the Undén plan of 1961). Finland’s President Urho Kekkonen, joining the Swedish initiative, followed with his own proposal in December 1963. Even earlier, in 1957, the Polish foreign minister Adam Rapacki had proposed a nuclear-free-zone in Central Europe.
All these initiatives concerned European countries which didn’t possess nuclear weapons. However the US was stationing nuclear warheads in Western European countries to counter the Soviet nuclear build-up and the danger of blackmail against the European NATO countries. (As Putin is doing in 2024). My research, conducted also in Stockholm and Helsinki, led me to the conclusion that these ‘peace initiatives’ had much less to do with nuclear weapons but with specific political interests of the countries concerned.
In the case of Finland this was most obvious: On 6 April 1948 the Finns had to conclude a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding some 15% of their territory they had lost in the ‘Winter War’ (1940) and recaptured afterwards, when Hitler’s armies invaded the Soviet Union. They also had to agree that “in times of crisis” and impending war, Finland would have to accept the stationing of Soviet troops on their territory.
In November 1961 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had activated the ‘consultation clause’ of this treaty with Finland, threatening the deployment of Soviet troops. Obviously, President Kekkonen’s ‘peace initiative’ was about preventing such a step and strengthening Finland’s quest for neutrality, staying outside the East-West controversies.
GDR peace propaganda
Since the second half of the 1950s the East German regime engaged in its own ‘peace offensive’, calling for a “Baltic Sea of peace”. It had nothing to do with ‘peace’, but was only a propaganda coup, aiming at the recognition of the GDR as the second German state alongside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic however regarded itself as the sole legitimate representative of the German people. The controversy ended in 1975 after the Federal Republic, with its ‘Neue Ostpolitik’ (New Eastern Policy) accepted the existing situation in Europe, the inviolability of borders and the existence of the GDR.
Therefore, during the East-West conflict the human yearning for peace – a completely understandable and noble motive every sensible person shares – had become a political tool for Western European countries to safeguard or seek neutrality. It had also become a political tool for communist propaganda, mobilising people in Western countries against their governments and thereby weakening the Western alliance, NATO. Erich Honecker used this ‘peace’ as a justification for the GDR in his 1984 speech.
Post-Soviet ‘peace’
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the doctrine of socialism/communism seemed finished. Post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin turned into an authoritarian dictatorship, controlled by the secret services. The Communist Party lost significance but the dictatorship remained. Putin conducted numerous brutal wars in an attempt to restore the Soviet Union. In the GDR, where a clear majority of the population in a free election had opted for joining the Federal Republic, the leading Communist party, the SED, was dissolved. Many of its members joined the successor party, ‘Die Linke’ (The Left).
While is not clear how much the communist ideals have survived, there are individuals who have very much learned lessons from those times. One of them is Sahra Wagenknecht, a devout communist during GDR times. She of course doesn’t talk about restoring socialism today, but rather about “social justice” and addressing East Germans’ complaints. There is one Communist tactic in particular, she is using very skilfully, that of ‘peace’. Since the Russian fully-flegded war against Ukraine, started in February 2022, she has permanently called for an “immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations”. This obviously mobilised much more than 10% of voters in three East German Federal States, as I reported recently.
An immediate ceasefire would only cement the Russian occupation of significant parts of Ukrainian territory and would allow Putin to continue his aggression in the future. The intensive diplomacy (peace negotiations) of France and Germany from 2014 to 2022 to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine’s south-eastern Donbas region only allowed Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022. A ceasefire now would allow Putin to continue deporting Ukrainian citizens and accept, or even encourage, further Russian war crimes, which is exactly the opposite of ‘peace’.
Wagenknecht’s ‘peace appeal’
Wagenknecht’s ‘peace appeal’ is nothing but a truly cynical move to use the human yearning for peace for personal purposes to gain political power, all the more because it is implicitly justifying brutal military aggression and horrible war crimes. It shows how much she has learned from Lenin and Stalin!
Real peace can only be achieved when international law is fully restored, the aggressor duly punished and the rights of every individual are being protected. Hopefully, Germany’s population will wake up and a great majority of voters in the next national election in 2025 will teach Wagenknecht the truth.
