Table Of ContentStalin’s Cold War
Global Conflict and Security since 1945
Editors:Professor Saki R. Dockrill, King’s College London and
Dr. William Rosenau, RAND
Palgrave Macmillan’s new book series Global Conflict and Security since 1945 seeks
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Ambassador James Dobbins, Director International Security and Defence Policy
Center, RAND
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Vice Principal (Research), King’s College London
Professor Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University and former Director of
RAND’s Washington Office
Titles in the series include:
Vesselin Dimitrov
STALIN’S COLD WAR: Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in
Bulgaria, 1941–48
James Ellison
UNITED STATES, BRITAIN AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CRISIS, 1963–69
Peter Lowe
CONTENDING WITH NATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM: British Policy Towards
South-East Asia, 1945–65
Jon Roper
OVER THIRTY YEARS: The United States and the Legacy of the Vietnam War.
Global Conflict and Security since 1945
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Stalin’s Cold War
Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and
Communism in Bulgaria, 1941–48
Vesselin Dimitrov
© Vesselin Dimitrov 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-52138-4
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2008 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dimitrov,Vesselin,1974–
Stalin’s cold war :Soviet foreign policy,democracy and communism in
Bulgaria,1941–1948 / Vesselin Dimitrov.
p.cm.—(Global conflict since 1945)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Soviet Union – Foreign relations – 1917–1945.2.Soviet Union –
Foreign relations – 1945–1991.3.Bulgaria – Politics and government –
1944–1990.4.Political parties – Bulgaria – History – 20th century.
5.Communism – Bulgaria.6.Dimitrov,Georgi,1882–1949.7.Western
countries – Foreign relations – Soviet Union.8.Soviet Union – Foreign
relations – Western countries.9.Cold War.I.Title.
DK268.5.D56 2007
327.47049909(cid:2)044—dc22 2007018605
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
To my parents
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations and Non-English Words x
Introduction:Casting a New Look at the Origins
of the Cold War 1
1. Prelude: Stalin, Dimitrov and the
Nazi Threat (1933–41) 13
2. Great Power Diplomacy, Resistance and
Popular Front in Bulgaria (June 1941–September 1944) 41
3. Wartime Coalition: Unity and Conflict
(September 1944–April 1945) 69
4. The Break-up of the Wartime Coalition
(May–August 1945) 104
5. The Search for Common Ground (September
1945–March 1946) 128
6. The Hardening of Battle Lines (April–October 1946) 145
7. Towards Confrontation (October
1946–September 1947) 162
8. The End of National Communism
(September 1947–December 1948) 173
Conclusion: Reinterpreting the Origins of the Cold War 181
Notes 205
Bibliography 226
Index 233
vii
Acknowledgements
In the course of writing this work, I have accumulated numerous debts,
of which unfortunately I am able to acknowledge only the most impor-
tant. I would like, first of all, to thank Jonathan Haslam, who super-
vised my doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge, from which
this book grew, for his inspiration and encouragement. I would also
like to express my gratitude to Richard Crampton, University of
Oxford, and Orlando Figes, then at the University of Cambridge and
subsequently at Birkbeck College, University of London, who acted as
examiners of the thesis and offered valuable and generous advice. I am
grateful to Neil McKendrick, the Master of Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge, and the Fellows of the College, who offered me a Research
Fellowship based on the thesis, which I was regretfully unable to take
up because of my appointment at the London School of Economics
and Political Science. I would like to extend my gratitude to my col-
leagues in the Government Department at the London School of
Economics, with whom it has been a genuine pleasure to work for
more than eleven years. I would especially like to mention Dominic
Lieven and Sebastian Balfour, whose kindness, wisdom and friendship
I value most highly. I would also like to thank Anita Prazmowska of
the Department of International History at the London School of
Economics, for her generous advice and support.
I would like to express my gratitude to the directors of the Bulgarian
national archives, V. Metodiev and S. Doinov, the director of the
Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation (AVP RF), I. Lebedev,
the director and deputy director of the Russian State Archive of Social
and Political History (RGASPI), K. Anderson and O. Naumov, and their
staff, as well as the staff at the Public Record Office in London, for giv-
ing me access to their collections and providing prompt and courteous
assistance.
I would like to thank Saki Dockrill, the academic editor of Palgrave
Macmillan’s Global Conflict and Security since 1945series, Michael Strang,
Palgrave’s History Publisher and his assistant Ruth Ireland, for their
support in the course of preparing this book for publication.
viii
Acknowledgements ix
I am particularly grateful to my parents for their understanding and
encouragement, and I dedicate this work to them. I would also like to
mention my grandfathers, who had stood on the opposite sides of the
conflict analysed in this book, and yet were both able to retain, in their
different ways, their dignity, idealism and optimism.
VESSELINDIMITROV
London, October 2006
