Exactly 70 years ago, Winston Churchill delivered his famous Fulton speech. Thus, today the Cold War celebrates its anniversary, and it is customary to count it down from this speech. But why did it become possible in conditions when the USSR was counting on cooperation with the West? Why did Churchill suddenly take up arms against Stalin, whom he had previously called "the father of his country"?
In the summer of 1945, the British Conservatives lost the election, and at the time of his famous speech, Winston Churchill did not formally hold any government posts (except for the post of leader of the opposition, which in Great Britain is called "Her Majesty's Opposition"). He was in the USA as a private person - he came to rest. And he did not hold his speech in the House of Lords, not in the hall of the American Congress, but in a simple auditorium of Westminster College for 200 students in Fulton, Missouri, USA. Fulton was a deep provincial town, located far from the main highways and railways, and only 8 thousand people lived in it.
True, fifteen hundred people gathered to listen to the legendary prime minister of Great Britain and the first minister of defense in the history of the empire. But formally, again, it was just a lecture. And not so long: Churchill finished in just 15 minutes. Why did his performance receive such a resonance and was taken seriously on both sides of the ocean?
Informal environment and global politics
Today, Fulton College of Westminster hosts a permanent exhibition dedicated to the historic visit, including a memorial library and a special archive. At the beginning of the 2000s, the Russian-American political scientist Nikolai Zlobin published in Russian a number of materials from this collection, thanks to which we can get acquainted with the details of the preparations for Churchill's visit to Fulton, as they say, first-hand.
Westminster College in the 40s was known only for the fact that it had the oldest student fraternity organization in the United States. Operating at the college since 1937, the Green Foundation, named after lawyer and graduate John Green, aimed to organize annual lectures on international relations within the walls of the university. They were supposed to be read, according to the charter of the foundation, "a man with an international reputation." Of the VIPs who performed at the college before Churchill, only one American congressman and ex-Italian foreign minister who emigrated to the United States is known. With all this, the president of McClure College raved about the idea of inviting Winston Churchill, but until a certain moment he did not know how to approach this issue.
By the way, an interesting fact: the lecture fee, according to the rules of the Green Foundation, was 5 thousand dollars.
The rest is considered to be an incredible coincidence. In 1945, after the defeat in the elections, a personal physician recommended that Churchill rest in a warm climate. An old friend of the British politician invited him to his home in Florida. And the president of Westminster College, McClure, found out that his classmate, General Vine, had been appointed military adviser to US President Harry Truman. Vine became infected with McClure's idea and infected Truman with it, since the US president himself was born in a small town in Missouri just 100 miles from Fulton and loved his native state very much.
So the president of the college enlisted the support of the US president and through him conveyed an invitation to the ex-prime minister of Great Britain to give a lecture. Moreover, Truman added in the invitation that we are talking about a magnificent educational institution in his home state, and he, the President of the United States, will personally represent Churchill at this event. It would be politically incorrect to refuse a personal request to the head of state, and the issue was resolved positively.
The story, of course, looks like a fictionalization of the Great American Dream, but we have no other.
One way or something like this, on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill appeared in Fulton, accompanied by US President Harry Truman, officials from the presidential administration, business circles, representatives of the press, and so on. Such a representative composition in itself forced to treat the "private" "just lecture" of the ex-prime minister with close attention. However, the President of the United States was the first to step on the stage and make an introductory speech, which made it possible to conclude: Churchill, who does not formally hold political posts, speaks at least with the approval (if not on behalf of) Truman.
Thoughtful and "Unthinkable"
In the USSR, since 1942, the concepts of post-war political and economic cooperation with the United States and Europe have been developed, in general terms they were announced at the meeting of the "Big Three" in Tehran in 1943. In 1944, Molotov was presented with a note "On the Desirable Foundations of the Future World." It paid great attention to the development of relations with Great Britain and the United States - it was understood that the Soviet economy, ravaged by the war, would focus on obtaining loans from these countries.
This is a historical fact - Stalin planned to place large orders in the United States to rebuild the country. And he even began to implement this plan. Back in Tehran, Stalin and Roosevelt talked about loans. And when in May 1945, due to the end of the war, the United States stopped supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease, Moscow immediately turned to Washington with a request to continue cooperation. After negotiations, which lasted until October 1945, an agreement was signed on the allocation of a loan to the Union in the amount of $ 244 million. The United States subsequently interrupted the implementation of this treaty.
There is no evidence that at the end of World War II the USSR planned to continue the "communist expansion", despite the fact that the popularity of the Soviet Union in the world was as high as ever. The authority of the communist idea was also high - in Italy, Spain, France and other countries of Western Europe, the Communist parties grew stronger. The political establishment of the United States and Great Britain was more frightened by this than ever.
In the spring and summer of 1945, Winston Churchill seriously considered the possibility of an attack on the USSR (Operation Unthinkable) in order to prevent the establishment of the “final domination” of the communist doctrine in Europe. Churchill saw the opportunity to resist Stalin only in the close alliance of England and the United States, realizing that by the end of the war England had completely lost its status as a great power, and the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Looking ahead, let us say that in 1947 Churchill urged Truman to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR in order to finally solve the Soviet problem that irritated him so much.
The Laborites who came to power after Churchill's resignation were much more loyal to the USSR. For which they were criticized by Churchill as the leader of the opposition. The ex-prime minister devoted his first foreign policy speech in this role to deepening cooperation with the United States, and the second to harsh criticism of the Laborites, who decided to take the position of a "mediator" in Soviet-American relations.
How much money did the USSR spend on helping other countries
The United States hesitated. As Ronald Reagan said much later, Churchill in his Fulton speech "addressed a nation that was at the pinnacle of world power, but was not accustomed to the severity of this power and historically did not want to interfere in the affairs of Europe." To a large extent, the indecision of the United States was also associated with public sentiments, which, after the victory in the war, were largely on the side of the USSR.
In this sense, Churchill, with his radical speech, presented President Truman with a difficult choice: either to lead and lead the "Big West", becoming a hegemon, or not to do so - with unpredictable consequences. Truman, for his part, probed public opinion - would the people follow such an idea, would the prospect of confrontation with the USSR cause indignation? In which case, one could refer to the personal opinion of a retired politician who is in the United States on a private visit, expressed at a provincial university in a provincial town.
In all this, there is already much less "The Great American Dream", an amazing combination of circumstances and unique details. But the combination of geopolitical factors and political positions paints just such a picture.
"Churchill begins the cause of unleashing war"
It makes no sense to analyze in detail the Fulton speech itself - its Russian translations are available for review. Churchill spoke of the United States at the pinnacle of its power and the United States taking responsibility for the future of the world. About the general strategic concept of the West, concluded in the need to bring freedom, security and prosperity to all mankind. On the need for protection from tyranny. That it is impossible to close our eyes to the situation when a significant number of people in many countries of the world (including very powerful ones!) Do not enjoy the freedoms of the West, live under the rule of a dictatorship, in conditions of one-party system and police arbitrariness. About how important it is to carry them all the principles of freedom and human rights - this great product of the Anglo-Saxon world. And that the mission of Great Britain and the United States is precisely this.
In order for the new world configuration to be crystal clear and the enemy to be defined, Churchill goes from bluntness to specifics: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent. On the other side of the curtain, the communist parties … seek to establish totalitarian control. Almost all of these countries are run by police governments …”. On the other side of the curtain, there are their own problems - communist sympathies are growing in Italy, France, "in many countries around the world, far from the borders of Russia, communist fifth columns have been created." Turkey and Persia are concerned about the increased role of the USSR. The activity of the Soviets in the Far East is alarming.
“I felt obliged to describe to you a shadow that falls on the whole world both in the West and in the East,” Churchill proclaimed in Tolkien's way. Europe needs to unite, a new alliance is needed to counter these tendencies, he said.
In fact, it was a statement about a new world hegemon, about the possibility of intervention in the affairs of other states (the mission is to carry the values of the West to all people in all countries of the world), about the creation of an anti-Soviet bloc and the beginning of a confrontation between two ideologies on a global scale. And since the Fulton speech touched upon military cooperation between Great Britain and the United States (navy, aviation, the creation of foreign bases), then in the future - not only an ideological confrontation.
For a week, the Soviet Union watched the reaction of Western politicians and public opinion to the theses voiced in Fulton. On March 14, without waiting for condemnation and attempts to dissociate himself from the proclaimed doctrine, Stalin spoke in Pravda: “Mr. Churchill and his friends are strikingly reminiscent of Hitler and his friends in this respect. Hitler began the cause of unleashing the war by proclaiming a racial theory, declaring that only people who speak German represent a full-fledged nation. Mr. Churchill also begins the cause of unleashing the war with a racial theory, arguing that only nations that speak English are full-fledged nations, called upon to decide the fate of the whole world."
So the Cold War, previously only looming on the horizon, became a reality. History, which, after the end of World War II, could have followed many paths, including the path of cooperation between the USSR and the West, turned onto the path of confrontation.
