Did Stalin Want to Join NATO?

ON 25 AUGUST 1952, Stalin received French Ambassador Louis Joxe for a working meeting at which the ambassador in reply to Stalin’s question about the nature of NATO from Charles de Gaulle’s perspective hinted that the bloc was an absolutely peaceful structure strictly within the UN Charter. “Stalin laughed and asked Vyshinsky, who was present during the conversation, whether the U.S.S.R. should join it then.” Nikolai Kochkin who had spent some time in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s archives pointed out: “From every indication, it was simply irony, but it cannot be ruled out that Stalin had some latent intentions” (Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn, No. 1-2, 2009, http://www.interaffiars.ru). In 1951, Andrei Gromyko repeatedly stated: “If this pact was aimed against the restoration of German aggression, the U.S.S.R. would join NATO.”

In March 1954, twelve months after Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union sent a note to the governments of the United States, France and Great Britain which said that the North Atlantic Alliance created a closed group of states and ignored the task of preventing another German aggression. The U.S.S.R., the only of the great powers – members of the anti-Hitler coalition left outside the Alliance, could not but treat it as an aggressive structure aimed against the Soviet Union. Under certain conditions, namely, if it united all great powers – members of the anti-Hitler coali-tion, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would have lost its aggressive nature. In view of this the Soviet government was prepared “to consider jointly with the interested governments the question of the participation of the U.S.S.R. in the North Atlantic Treaty.”

An analysis of numerous projects and memorandums, in short everything which was going on behind the scenes, testifies that the Soviet intention to join NATO was not a propaganda ploy. Moscow went even further: it did not exclude America’s involvement in the European security treaty. A year later, in 1955 at the Four-Power Conference in Geneva the Soviet Union revived the question of its potential NATO membership.

Related:

Why did the Soviet Union apply to join NATO?

Wilson Center: Molotov’s Proposal that the USSR Join NATO, March 1954

[2001] Soviets tried to join Nato in 1954