When the Red Army moved through Eastern Europe in 1945, it faced the problem of creating what the men in the Kremlin called “friendly” governments. In several countries, Joseph Stalin in short order resolved the dilemma by putting into power Communists who had arrived in the van of his army. In the Western mind, Stalin represented a force inexorably driven by a logic inherent in all totalitarian systems. Stalin became the reincarnation of Hitler, a dictator who sought to impose his system on all territories under his sway—and whose appetite could not be sated. Such a view left little ambiguity in interpreting Stalin's foreign policy. It offered no room for an assessment that Soviet foreign policy was driven by a mix of motives, not only by aggression steeped in Communist ideology, but also by considerations of national security, opportunism, and compromise.