In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, also known as the North Atlantic Alliance) was founded. For many years, this military-political structure became the main military bloc opposing the USSR and then post-Soviet Russia. Soviet and Russian defensive strategies were built on countering the threats of the aggressive NATO bloc, as the North Atlantic Alliance was called in Soviet times. The armies of NATO countries have always been studied as a potential enemy. But relations between NATO and the USSR were not so straightforward. It is interesting, but at different periods of its history the Soviet Union was more than once “in the balance” of joining the North Atlantic Alliance.
Subsequently, Anders Fogh Rasmussen argued that NATO was created to counter Soviet aggression in Europe. The post-war period was indeed the era of real expansion of the Soviet Union and the socialist model in post-Hitler Europe. At once, a number of countries of Eastern and Central Europe fell completely into the orbit of Soviet influence - Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania. The second half of the 1940s - the civil war in Greece, where the coming to power of a strong communist movement was also quite real. Under these conditions, the West, mortally afraid of the Soviet threat, began to form the NATO bloc.
Initially, NATO included 12 countries - the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and Portugal. The thirteenth in this list could be … the Soviet Union. At least such a possibility was discussed by high-ranking representatives of the Soviet leadership. Back in 1949, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, in one of his notes, expressed interest in the proposal of the head of the British diplomatic department, Ernst Bevin, to establish the Western Union Defense Organization (NATO's immediate predecessor). It was proposed to discuss the possibility of cooperation with this structure of the Soviet Union, and even the participation of the USSR in it. In fact,there was nothing surprising here - even four years before the creation of NATO, the Soviet Union and the Western powers were allies and fought together on the fronts of World War II against Nazi Germany, and then Japan.
At first, after the end of World War II, both the Western powers and the Soviet Union feared a revival of aggressive sentiments in Germany. It was for this purpose that Germany remained under the control of the occupation forces, was divided into zones of occupation, and there was no talk of reviving the German armed forces. In this context, the joint participation of the Soviet Union and Western countries in a military-political bloc directed against the revival of fascism would be quite logical. This, by the way, was recognized in 1951 by the then First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko. However, the true goals of the creation of the NATO bloc soon became clear - not to oppose the possible revival of Nazism and fascism, but to the Soviet Union.
The fact that the Soviet Union had no aggressive intentions towards NATO member countries is evidenced by the fact that the retaliatory step - the creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization - was taken by the socialist countries only in 1955, six years after the creation of NATO. Until that time, the USSR counted on normalization of relations and even considered the likelihood of its entry into the North Atlantic Alliance. But the West did not even want to hear that the USSR would become a NATO member, since the very fact of this deprived the existence of the North Atlantic alliance of all meaning.
In 1952, the first expansion of NATO took place - two very strategically important countries - Turkey and Greece - were admitted to the bloc (in the latter, by that time, the communist armed resistance was suppressed). In the same year, on August 25, Joseph Stalin received the French ambassador, Louis Jokes. The diplomat told the Soviet leader about the attitude of General Charles de Gaulle, who enjoyed Stalin's respect, towards the North Atlantic Alliance. Jocks emphasized that in France NATO is viewed exclusively as a peaceful organization, the creation and activities of which do not contradict the UN Charter and do not run counter to the norms of international law. These words evoked the irony of the Soviet leader.
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Stalin turned to Andrei Vyshinsky with the question whether in this case the Soviet Union should also join the peaceful NATO bloc. However, in every joke there is a grain of truth, and Stalin's words were no exception - the generalissimo could indeed consider the possibility of the Soviet Union joining NATO. This move would hinder the aggressive plans of the United States and Great Britain and nullify their efforts to consolidate the European countries to resist the Soviet Union.
In 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died, and already in 1954 the Soviet Union returned to discussing the possibility of joining NATO. In February 1954, at a conference of foreign ministers in Berlin, representatives of the Soviet Union proposed to conclude a common European treaty on collective security, for their part providing guarantees for the unification of West and East Germany subject to the approval of its neutral status in the country's constitution. Thus, in reality, it was the Soviet Union, and not the West, 36 years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, who initiated the revival of the unified German statehood. And it was precisely the Western countries that did not accept Moscow's proposal, since it ran counter to their direct military-political interests.
The proposal of the USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov to create a European collective security treaty was rejected by his Western colleagues. Formally, the representatives of the Western powers were unhappy with the exclusion of the United States and China from the number of parties to the treaty. In principle, this was quite logical, since the United States of America can hardly be called a European state. Moscow wanted to deal with European security with those countries that are really in Europe. Secondly, the British side accused the Soviet leadership of political intrigues with the aim of destroying the NATO bloc.
Nevertheless, Vyacheslav Molotov did not abandon plans to conclude a collective security treaty - this indicates the great patience of Soviet diplomats. Moscow returned to finalizing the principles for concluding an agreement. Already on March 10, 1954, Andrei Gromyko gave Vyacheslav Molotov a draft of new proposals for concluding a collective security treaty in Europe for review. This project also spoke about the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the North Atlantic Alliance on special conditions.
Vyacheslav Molotov began to rework the project. In particular, he emphasized that the Soviet Union does not object to US participation in the collective security treaty in Europe, but only if the US and NATO pursue a peaceful and neutral policy towards other European countries. On March 26, 1954, Nikita Khrushchev and Georgy Malenkov approved the final text of the draft, which spoke about the main condition of the Soviet Union's membership in NATO - the refusal of the North Atlantic Alliance from any manifestations of aggression against any states of the world.
Thus, the Soviet Union expressed genuine readiness for honest cooperation with the West in the name of peace in post-war Europe. On March 31, 1954, the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR applied for membership in the North Atlantic Alliance (as in the case of UN membership, the applications of Ukraine and Belarus were a tactical move aimed at securing more votes in NATO if).
The Soviet Union's application to join NATO provoked a violent reaction in Western Europe. Many political and public figures, parties and movements enthusiastically approved this initiative, rightly seeing in it a step of the USSR on the way to ensuring European collective security. If the USSR became a NATO member, the threat of war in Europe would be reduced to a minimum. But the leadership of the United States, Great Britain and France took the Soviet idea with hostility.
First of all, this rejection was due to the fact that sooner or later the United States would have to leave the ranks of NATO and, accordingly, not participate in a common European security treaty. The absence of the United States in the treaty would mean the dominance of the Soviet Union, since Britain and France could no longer be viewed as a serious counterweight to the Soviet state. But here, too, Moscow expressed its readiness for further concessions - the Soviet Union agreed to include the United States of America in the draft European security treaty as a full and permanent partner.
Nevertheless, the leaders of Western countries did not even want to hear about the creation of a single organization within the Soviet Union in Europe. They saw this as a threat to their dominant positions and believed that this would lead to an increase in pro-Soviet sentiments within European states, to a gradual "Sovietization" of Europe. Therefore, on May 7, 1954, the United States, Great Britain and France officially responded to the Soviet application for joining NATO with a refusal.
The official announcement emphasized that the Soviet Union's proposal was unrealistic and therefore did not even deserve discussion. Naturally, it was required to explain why the West refuses the Soviet Union. Therefore, the requirements for joining NATO, which were obviously unacceptable to the Soviet side, were put forward - to withdraw Soviet troops from Austria and Germany, abandon military bases in the Far East, and sign a general disarmament treaty.
But Moscow did not lose hope of reaching a consensus. Therefore, the diplomatic departments of the USSR and Western countries continued their correspondence and negotiations on this issue until the next conference of foreign ministers, which took place in October-November 1955 in Geneva. In the same year, realizing that plans to conclude a common European treaty remain unrealizable, the leadership of the Soviet Union decided to create its own military-political bloc.
On May 14, 1955, a meeting of European states on the issues of ensuring peace and security in Europe was held in Warsaw. The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was signed there, signed by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. The signing of the document marked the beginning of the history of the Warsaw Pact Organization - a military-political union of the listed states. The Political Advisory Council and the Joint Command of the Armed Forces were established to coordinate actions. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev was appointed the first commander in chief of the OKVS.
Thus, the attempts to conclude a common European security treaty, which the Soviet Union assiduously undertaken, were actually thwarted precisely at the initiative of the Western powers pursuing their narrow political goals. Contrary to the cliches of Western propaganda, it is the West, and not the Soviet Union, that bears full responsibility for the Cold War and all events associated with it. It is interesting that in 1983, under Yu. V. Andropov, the Soviet Union once again raised the issue of a possible entry into the North Atlantic Alliance, but it dropped by itself after the infamous incident with the South Korean Boeing.
If in the 1950s - 1980s the West had at least formal grounds not to admit the Soviet Union to NATO, appealing to the colossal differences in the political and economic systems of the Country of Soviets and Western states, then after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition of post-Soviet Russia to a completely different a political and economic model borrowed from the West, this reason seemed to have disappeared. Nevertheless, nobody wanted to see Russia in NATO. Even in the 1990s, when the "democrats" were in power in the country, the West again "kicked" Boris Yeltsin and his entourage, who were hatching plans to integrate Russia into NATO.
At present, NATO membership for Russia no longer makes any sense. The North Atlantic alliance itself is bursting at the seams, as evidenced, for example, by the deterioration of relations between Turkey, one of the key NATO members, and the United States and the European Union. In addition, in Europe itself, there is growing discontent with gambles in which NATO countries are involved because of American political ambitions.
Author: Ilya Polonsky