So... in Western Media and culture, we're often presented with the common narrative that the Soviets were aggressors intent on conquering Western Europe, and that if we didn't spend money on a big military, nukes, or support for NATO, that we'd all be speaking Russian today. Generally, the Soviets were the "baddies" and NATO was the "good guys".
As a result, much of Foreign Policy during the Cold War was taught from the Western POV, that the Soviets were out there spreading communism and threatening to conquer to whole world.
My question is: what was the view from the other side of the Iron Curtain? At a cursory glance, it would appear that the West/NATO was just as aggressive as the Soviets in it's own foreign policy (support for dicatorships, aggressive anti-communism, etc.), and may have even precipiated the Cold War by taking a former ally and casting them as the enemy. Examples include:
I know the Soviets were no saints, but I'm wondering how many sins the NATO allies committed as well.
Thanks!
The irony of all of it is that the Eastern Bloc was just as, if not more, abhorrent towards the idea of war. The idea of a war was very frightening to the leaders, especially those who had seen 27 million of their countrymen killed in the last European war.
It is the mistake of the West to take contingency plans such as Seven Days to the River Rhine as proof of the East preparing for for aggression. I will dispel this notion and then explain the Eastern point of view. Two thins must be noted about SDRR: It expects that a nuclear attack on Poland from NATO occurs without any prior Soviet attack. The nature of SDRR is how the East planned to react if they were nuked (For those too lazy to read it, the idea was the overwhelm West Germany with troops, and simultaneously occupy Austria. As the title says, the goal was to have troops on the Rhine a week after the initiation of the operation. Second, is must be noted that even the West had plans like this, they just aren't classified. Every nation draws up war plans, even against their allies.
Now, here is how the East approached the situation:
It was not until the 1970's the the East surpassed the West in missile counts. Until then, the East felt extremely threatened by the West. There were many leaders who incorrectly believed that a war of aggression coming from NATO was inevitable. Even those who could survey the situation a little more still thought that the West was preparing to eliminate them. The USSR and it's Bloc completely understood the consequence of a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and they worked tirelessly to avoid it. In the Korean War, the Soviets gave lackluster support, only providing air cover in North Korea. Compare that to the U.S. sending over 300,000 troops.
This would happen again in the Vietnam War, and the East only intervened in Communist states. While there thousands of spies in foreign countries working against their states, the East only used it's militaries in Eastern countries that strayed out of line (East Germany, 1953, Hungary, 1956, Czechoslovakia, 1968, Afghanistan, 1979) whereas the West sent it's militaries into and/or overthrew the governments of several Communist/Independent states (Korea, 1950, Iran, 1953, Guatemala, 1954, Cuba, 1961, Vietnam, 1965, Grenada, 1983,). So to the East, they felt as if they regulated their own affairs, but the West was always stepping into everyone's affairs.
The Eastern leaders believed that if they could achieve weapon superiority, they could simply wait for capitalism to fall apart. So arms were greatly increased, and by 1974 the USSR had a larger strike capability than the US.
The East needed to appear strong, but it did not want to do anything to provoke a direct war. That's why so much of it's propaganda and diplomatic talk revolved around peace. It claimed to be the harbinger of peace. And though everyone assumed it was false because the East was trying to mask it's aggressive intentions, it was actually done as a sincere effort to avoid a war. The East knew that no one would be able to rebuild after a war, and saw it as pointless. Their thinking was how they could react to Western aggression without losing face/starting a war.
There are three camps in Cold War historiography:
The Orthodoxy is what you just termed the "common narrative" and what you are acquainted to.
Revisionism is what entered the serious discourse while napalm was getting dropped on Vietnam.
They point to how Stalin held elections in Czechoslovakia yielding results quite reminiscent of what was also happening in the West.
They point to how all the parties found today in Germany - CDU, FDP, SPD, KPD were initially founded in the Soviet Zone.
The start of the Cold War is traced to the Allies breaking many of their promises. They didn't leave Russia a zone in Japan, they ceased landlease prematurely, they didn't do a unified Germany. While demanding fair elections in Romania they pulled very flawed elections in Italy.
The revisionists believe that Stalin expected a common block. He was ready for concession and expected the same but was pushed into the defensive position because the Allies felt too secure over having a nuclear bomb.
Post-Revisionism is the current attitude giving concessions to whatever sounds most plausible in both of the accounts.
source: The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War edited by Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde