Editing Marshall Plan (section)

==Rejection by Stalin==
{{Eastern Bloc sidebar|Cold War events}}
British Foreign Secretary [[Ernest Bevin]] heard Marshall's radio broadcast speech and immediately contacted French Foreign Minister [[Georges Bidault]] to begin preparing a quick European response to (and acceptance of) the offer, which led to the creation of the [[Committee of European Economic Co-operation]]. The two agreed that it would be necessary to invite the Soviets as the other major allied power. Marshall's speech had explicitly included an invitation to the Soviets, feeling that excluding them would have been a sign of distrust. State Department officials, however, knew that [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] would almost certainly not participate and that any plan that would send large amounts of aid to the Soviets was unlikely to get Congressional approval.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-union-rejects-marshall-plan-assistance/ |title=Soviet Union rejects Marshall Plan assistance |publisher=A&E Television Networks |date=June 29, 2020 |website=HISTORY |access-date=June 6, 2022}}</ref>

===Initial reactions===
Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference on October 10, 1946, Molotov had already stated Soviet fears: "If American capital was given a free hand in the small states ruined and enfeebled by the war [it] would buy up the local industries, appropriate the more attractive Romanian, Yugoslav ... enterprises and would become the master in these small states."{{sfn|McCauley|2016|p=147}} While the Soviet ambassador in Washington suspected that the Marshall Plan could lead to the creation of an anti-Soviet bloc, Stalin was open to the offer.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}} He directed that—in negotiations to be held in Paris regarding the aid—countries in the Eastern Bloc should not reject economic conditions being placed upon them.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}} Stalin only changed his outlook when he learned that (a) credit would only be extended under conditions of economic cooperation, and (b) aid would also be extended to Germany in total, an eventuality which Stalin thought would hamper the Soviets' ability to exercise influence in western Germany.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}}{{clarify|date=August 2021}}<!--The way in which 'aid being extended to Germany in total' could 'hamper the Soviets' ability to exercise influence in western Germany' is not obvious and should be explained.-->

Initially, Stalin maneuvered to kill the plan, or at least hamper it using destructive participation in the Paris talks regarding conditions.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}} He quickly realized, however, that this would be impossible after Molotov reported—following his arrival in Paris in July 1947—that conditions for the credit were non-negotiable.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}} Looming as just as large a concern was the Czechoslovak eagerness to accept the aid, as well as indications of a similar Polish attitude.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=138}}

===Compulsory Eastern Bloc rejection===
Soviet Foreign Minister [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] left Paris, rejecting the plan.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=139}} After that, statements were made suggesting a future confrontation with the West, calling the United States both a "fascizing" power and the "center of worldwide [[Reactionary|reaction]] and anti-Soviet activity", with all U.S.-aligned countries branded as enemies.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=139}} The Soviets blamed the United States for communist losses in elections in Belgium, France, and Italy months earlier, in the spring of 1947.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=139}} It claimed that "marshallization" must be resisted and prevented by any means and that French and Italian communist parties were to make maximum efforts to sabotage the implementation of the plan.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=139}} In addition, Western embassies in Moscow were isolated, with their personnel being denied contact with Soviet officials.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=139}}

On July 12, a larger meeting was convened in Paris. Every country in Europe was invited, with the exceptions of Spain (a World War II neutral that had sympathized with the [[Axis powers]]) and the small states of [[Andorra]], [[San Marino]], [[Monaco]], and [[Liechtenstein]]. The Soviet Union was invited with the understanding that it would likely refuse. The states of the future [[Eastern Bloc]] were also approached, and [[Czechoslovakia]] and [[Poland]] agreed to attend. In one of the most evident signs and reflections of tight Soviet control and domination over the region, [[Jan Masaryk]], the foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering Czechoslovakia's possible involvement with and joining of the Marshall Plan. The prime minister of Poland, [[Józef Cyrankiewicz]], was rewarded by Stalin for his country's rejection of the plan which came in the form of the Soviet Union's offer of a lucrative [[trade agreement]] lasting for five years, a grant amounting to the approximate equivalent of $450 million (in 1948; the sum would have been $4.4 billion in 2014{{sfn|U.S. Inflation Calculator|2021}}) in the form of long-term credit and loans and the provision of 200,000 tonnes of grain, heavy and manufacturing machinery and factories and heavy industries to Poland.{{sfn|Carnations|1948}}

The Marshall Plan participants were not surprised when the Czechoslovakian and Polish delegations were prevented from attending the Paris meeting. The other [[Eastern Bloc]] states immediately rejected the offer.{{sfn|Schain|2001|p=132}} [[Finland]] also declined, to avoid antagonizing the Soviets (see also [[Finlandization]]). The Soviet Union's "alternative" to the Marshall plan which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with western Europe, became known as the [[Molotov Plan]], and later, the [[Comecon]]. In a 1947 speech to the United Nations, Soviet deputy foreign minister [[Andrei Vyshinsky]] said that the Marshall Plan violated the principles of the United Nations. He accused the United States of attempting to impose its will on other independent states while at the same time using economic resources distributed as a relief to needy nations as an instrument of political pressure.{{sfn|Vyshinsky|1947}}

===Yugoslavia===
Although all other communist European countries had deferred to Stalin and rejected the aid, the Yugoslavs, led by Josip Broz (Tito), initially went along and rejected the Marshall Plan. However, in 1948 [[Tito-Stalin Split|Tito broke decisively with Stalin]] on other issues. Yugoslavia requested American aid. American leaders were internally divided, but finally agreed and began sending money on a small scale in 1949 and on a much larger scale in 1950–53. The American aid was not part of the Marshall Plan.{{sfn|Lampe|1990|pp=[https://archive.org/details/yugoslavamerican00lamp/page/28 28–37]}}

===Szklarska Poręba meeting===
In late September, the Soviet Union called a meeting of nine European communist parties at the resort town of [[Szklarska Poręba]] in southwest Poland.{{sfn|Behrman|2007|p=}} A [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) report was read at the outset to set the heavily [[Anti-Western sentiment|anti-Western]] tone, stating now that "international politics is dominated by the ruling clique of the American imperialists" which have embarked upon the "enslavement of the weakened capitalist countries of Europe".{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=140}}Communist parties were to struggle against the US presence in Europe by any means necessary, including sabotage.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=146}} The report further claimed that "reactionary imperialist elements throughout the world, particularly in the United States, in Britain and France, had put particular hope on Germany and Japan, primarily on Hitlerite Germany—first as a force most capable of striking a blow at the Soviet Union".{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=142}}

Referring to the Eastern Bloc, the report stated that "the Red Army's liberating role was complemented by an upsurge of the freedom-loving peoples' liberation struggle against the fascist predators and their hirelings."{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=142}}It argued that "the bosses of Wall Street" were "tak[ing] the place of Germany, Japan, and Italy".{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=142}} The Marshall Plan was described as "the American plan for the enslavement of Europe".{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=142}} It described the world now breaking down "into basically two camps—the imperialist and antidemocratic camp on the one hand, and the anti-imperialist and democratic camp on the other".{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=142}}

Although the Eastern Bloc countries, except Czechoslovakia, had immediately rejected Marshall Plan aid, Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run-up to the Marshall Plan.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=148}} The meeting's chair, Andrei Zhdanov, who was in permanent radio contact with the Kremlin from whom he received instructions,{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=140}} also castigated communist parties in France and Italy for collaboration with those countries' domestic agendas.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=145}} Zhdanov warned that if they continued to fail to maintain international contact with Moscow to consult on all matters, "extremely harmful consequences for the development of the brother parties' work" would result.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=145}}

Party rules prevented Italian and French communist leaders from pointing out that it was Stalin who had directed them not to take opposition stances in 1944.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=145}} The French communist party, like others, was then to redirect its mission to "destroy capitalist economy" and that the Soviet Communist Information Bureau ([[Cominform]]) would take control of the French Communist Party's activities to oppose the Marshall Plan.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=146}} When they asked Zhdanov if they should prepare for armed revolt when they returned home, he did not answer.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=146}} In a follow-up conversation with Stalin, he explained that an armed struggle would be impossible and that the struggle against the Marshall Plan was to be waged under the slogan of national independence.{{sfn|Wettig|2008|p=147}}