The Social Consequences of World War II for the USSR

Abstract

A text for this chapter may be found in ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ by Immanuel Kant. The eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher included in the ‘Idea’ the observation: ‘The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is subordinate to the problem of a law-governed external relationship with other states, and cannot be solved until the latter is solved.¹ Towards such an end, Kant believed that a considerable contribution could be made by enlightened absolutism of a monarchical variety. It is unlikely that he would have found the same enthusiasm for the latter-day republican-enlightened absolutism introduced by Lenin and the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution of 1917. Moreover, the concept of global class conflict persuaded the new government to reject what they believed to be outdated concepts of the state and of its external relationship. However, by the 1930s, when World War II was arising out of the ashes of the First, little of this ideology remained alive and the practice of diplomacy had resumed a more traditional shape.