" From the late 20's, when Stalin decreed 'socialism in one country', Soviet foreign policy was geared towards stability and security. The primary reason Stalin set up so many satellite states in Eastern Europe was to give the Soviet Union a security buffer between it and what he considered a resurgent and aggressive west. The Russian experience in WWII meant that they were (to an extent understandably) scared witless of a surprise attack from the West, be it fascist or capitalist. This gives a lot of context to Soviet actions in the Cold War - the Berlin Blockade as a response to what they considered Western intransigence over a unified and neutral Germany, Cuba as a response to American SRBM's in Turkey, right the way through to Afghanistan as a way to secure their southern border. So Russian aims in the Cold War weren't to 'defeat' the west (they believed this would happen anyway, through the Marxist doctrine of the historical inevitability of the c