\tDans la plus r\u00e9cente livraison de La Revue de l’OTAN<\/em>, un petit article passionnant pr\u00e9sentant certaines trouvailles d’historiens d’Europe de l’est travaillant sur la position et la politique du Pacte de Varsovie pendant la Guerre froide. (Cet article est disponible sur le site de l’OTAN\/NATO Review.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’int\u00e9r\u00eat de ce r\u00e9sum\u00e9 des travaux en cours est qu’il confirme puissamment un courant r\u00e9visionniste qui s’est install\u00e9 depuis la fin de la Guerre froide, et particuli\u00e8rement depuis qu’un acc\u00e8s satisfaisant a pu \u00eatre m\u00e9nag\u00e9 vers les archives des divers pays et organisations communistes. D’une fa\u00e7on g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, ce courant met en \u00e9vidence combien le bloc de l’est, et notamment l’URSS du temps de Staline et au-del\u00e0, appr\u00e9henda la Guerre froide en position d\u00e9fensive, craignant continuellement une attaque occidentale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’introduction de l’article de NATO Review<\/em> appara\u00eetra suffisamment significatif \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard, pour bien en mesurer l’esprit :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab Traditionally, the danger of the Cold War turning hot was considered to have been greatest in the early 1950s in the aftermath of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. As Konrad Adenauer put it in his memoirs: \u00ab\u00a0Stalin was planning the same procedure for West Germany as had been used in Korea.\u00a0\u00bb Indeed, the notion of an imminent Soviet march into Western Europe in the 1950s was advanced by many historians, including the then Czech \u00e9migr\u00e9 Karel Kaplan in \u00ab\u00a0Dans les Archives du Comit\u00e9 Central: Trente ans de secrets du Bloc Sovi\u00e9tique\u00a0\u00bb (Albin Michel, 1978). Basing his thesis on an interview with former Czechoslovak Defence Minister Alexej Cepicka, Kaplan claimed that Stalin called upon Eastern Europe’s Communist leaders to prepare an invasion of Western Europe at a meeting in Moscow in January 1951.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb This interpretation of events has since been challenged by many researchers. Convinced that the Soviet Union was never such a formidable enemy, Czech-born American historian Vojtech Mastny, for example, concluded in \u00ab\u00a0The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years\u00a0\u00bb (Oxford University Press, 1996) that Stalin feared imminent Western attack in Europe, which he believed would come in the wake of a series of Western defeats in Korea. As a result, Mastny argued that what others viewed as a call to prepare for attack against the West should, in fact, be interpreted as a call to prepare for defence of the East.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb New evidence, uncovered in the archives of the former Eastern bloc, appears to add weight to Mastny’s arguments. In particular, the transcript of the January 1951 Moscow meeting, drafted by Romanian Armed Forces Minister Emil Bodnaras and recently uncovered in Bucharest, seems to confirm the defensive character of Stalin’s intentions, an interpretation that is further supported by the fact that no preparation for an invasion of Western Europe was made at the time. Indeed, well into the 1950s, all Europe’s Communist armies concentrated on territorial defence. From the Czechoslovak archives, for example, we know that although military exercises did occasionally include offensive operations, they almost never took place outside Czechoslovakia. In the few cases when forays into foreign territory were envisioned, it was only in the framework of a successful counter-attack.<\/em> \u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tSi l’on signale cette publication, c’est \u00e9videmment parce que la source lui donne un cr\u00e9dit inattendu. L’OTAN cautionne de facto<\/em> des recherches et des publications qui mettent en question l’un des fondements essentiels de la coh\u00e9rence politique de l’Alliance pendant la Guerre froide. (A cette lumi\u00e8re, il serait int\u00e9ressant de r\u00e9examiner la d\u00e9marche de l’URSS demandant son adh\u00e9sion \u00e0 l’OTAN en mars 1954. Poutine avait curieusement ressorti le document original pr\u00e9sentant cette demande officielle de l’URSS en 1954 pour le montrer \u00e0 un George W. Bush tr\u00e8s surpris, lors de la rencontre au sommet des deux chefs d’\u00c9tat, en juin 2001.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tUn autre point int\u00e9ressant est de confronter cette nouvelle approche du r\u00f4le et de la politique du Pacte de Varsovie avec ce qu’on a appris, depuis une dizaine d’ann\u00e9es, sur diverses activit\u00e9s occidentales, et particuli\u00e8rement sur le r\u00f4le et la politique de provocation du Strategic Air Command du g\u00e9n\u00e9ral LeMay dans ces m\u00eames ann\u00e9es 1950 qui sont particuli\u00e8rement l’objet des \u00e9tudes que signale La Revue de l’OTAN<\/em>. (Voir notre texte sur cette question, \u00e0 partir d’une recension du livre de Paul Lashmar, \u00ab\u00a0Spy Flights in the Cold War\u00a0\u00bb.<\/a>) Ainsi se mettent en place divers facteurs qui devraient \u00eatre utilis\u00e9s avec profit pour une r\u00e9-appr\u00e9ciation g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la Guerre froide et des responsabilit\u00e9s diverses pendant cette p\u00e9riode.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCe travail historique a une grande importance, \u00e9galement, pour la situation actuelle. La l\u00e9gitimit\u00e9 de l’alliance transatlantique est en grande partie fond\u00e9e sur la l\u00e9gitimit\u00e9 de l’attitude occidentale face \u00e0 ce qui fut per\u00e7ue comme une attitude agressive et expansionniste du bloc communiste. C’est en effet sur l’attitude agressive et expansionniste suppos\u00e9e de l’URSS, et non sur le caract\u00e8re politiquement et humainement inacceptable du communisme sovi\u00e9tique et de ses d\u00e9riv\u00e9s, — caract\u00e8re qui reste, lui, ind\u00e9niable et largement document\u00e9e par les recherches historiques — qu’est fond\u00e9e l’alliance occidentale \u00e0 son origine. Il est essentiel de faire cette distinction, surtout \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re des d\u00e9bats que nous connaissons aujourd’hui, autour des questions des rapports entre Europe et USA. On comprend qu’une mise en cause historique de cette attitude agressive et expansionniste du monde communiste pendant la Guerre froide constitue une importante mise en question de la l\u00e9gitimit\u00e9 m\u00eame de la solidarit\u00e9 transatlantique.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Une nouvelle appr\u00e9ciation du r\u00f4le du Pacte de Varsovie Dans la plus r\u00e9cente livraison de La Revue de l’OTAN, un petit article passionnant pr\u00e9sentant certaines trouvailles d’historiens d’Europe de l’est travaillant sur la position et la politique du Pacte de Varsovie pendant la Guerre froide. (Cet article est disponible sur le site de l’OTAN\/NATO Review.)… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2631,3106,2645,2649,584,3209,3211,3210],"class_list":["post-64968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-de-lectures","tag-de","tag-froide","tag-guerre","tag-lotan","tag-otan","tag-pacte","tag-revue","tag-varsovie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}