Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

  The urgency of the task was demonstrated in summer 1940 as the Wehrmacht raced through the Low Countries into France, forcing Paris’s capitulation and the emergency evacuation of British forces from the beaches of Dunkirk. The fall of the United Kingdom seemed imminent. Timoshenko, with Stalin’s consent, restored a sense of pride to the Soviet officer corps. Political education was reduced as a proportion of required military training. Plans were put in hand for a new line of defence works to be constructed along the boundaries separating the German and Soviet spheres of interest. In order to realise this aim it appeared necessary to bring Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the USSR’s control. There was to be no repetition of the Finnish débâcle. A brief charade was played out. Incidents of ‘provocation’ were arranged for the Kremlin to have a pretext to intervene. Baltic politicians had to be intimidated. Ministers were summoned from the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Stalin and Molotov were bullies with decades of experience. The visitors to Moscow were given no choice but to accept annexation. Molotov snarled to the Latvian Foreign Minister: ‘You’re not going to return home until you give your signature to your self-inclusion in the USSR.’11 The three governments were militarily helpless. Resistance would lead to national disaster.

  Compliance, of course, would also bring disaster since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would undoubtedly undergo the same treatment as eastern Poland. In fact the bully-boy methods did not immediately result in signed requests for incorporation in the USSR. The Red Army therefore moved in force to secure Stalin’s aims, and NKVD units — some of which had been operating in Poland — were close behind. A façade of constitutionalism was maintained. Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov, closely liaising with his master Stalin, was sent to the Baltic region to carry out his orders behind the scenes. Police arrests took place under the cover of a news black-out. Executions and deportations ensued as the Soviet-dominated media announced fresh elections. Only candidates belonging to the communists, or at least supporting them, were allowed to stand. Parliaments assembled in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in July and declared total agreement with Moscow’s wishes. All petitioned, as Stalin had demanded, for incorporation in the USSR. For form’s sake Stalin declined to admit the three on the same day. Lithuania entered the USSR on 3 August, Latvia two days later and Estonia a day after that.

  Stalin was playing the geopolitical game for all it was worth. Communist political prospects in Europe had vanished. For Stalin, an inveterate opportunist, this was no problem. While not ceasing to believe in the superiority of communism over capitalism, he waited for the next chance to promote his kind of dictatorship abroad. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not the only places he had in his sights as lying within the zone of the USSR’s special interest. Stalin and his representatives persistently specified Romania and Bulgaria in this way. Nor did he fail to argue that Turkey fell within the Soviet zone of hegemony. And Stalin, while delivering abundant quotas of grain and oil to a Germany at war with France and the United Kingdom, demanded German technology in exchange. Berlin had to sanction the sale of Messerschmitt fighters, a Panzer-III tank and the cruiser Lutzow; it also showed the construction plans for the battleship Bismarck to Soviet specialists.12 Stalin has the reputation of having been gulled by Hitler. This was not how things appeared to Berlin in 1939–40. Stalin had driven a hard bargain and insisted on its complete fulfilment. As he pushed his case at the risk of raising tension between Moscow and Berlin, Hitler described him as a ‘cold-blooded blackmailer’.13

  What changed Stalin’s attitude was nothing that happened in eastern Europe or the Far East. France’s collapse in summer 1940 transformed everything. Soviet military planning had been based on the assumption that Hitler would encounter more effective resistance from the French armed forces than had been met in Poland. Geopolitics in Europe were turned upside down. Few observers gave the United Kingdom much chance of survival in the following months. For Stalin, the implications were dire. The Wehrmacht looked as if it was close to completing its tasks in the West. It would no longer face a two-front war if it turned its power against the USSR. Stalin’s relations with Hitler immediately reflected the consequences of France’s collapse. Truculent since August 1939, he began to appease. War with Germany had to be averted at any cost.14

  Appeasement was practised without any express declaration of a change in stance. But Stalin’s statements behind the scenes, recently made available, reveal his worries. At the October Revolution anniversary dinner in the Kremlin on 7 November 1940 he indicated his shock at the military developments. He did not limit himself to the French débâcle. The Soviet–Japanese War had indicated weaknesses in the country’s air force if not in its tanks. The Winter War with Finland had gone much worse for the USSR, revealing gross defects in organisation and planning. Then Germany had overwhelmed France in the summer campaign and driven the British back over the Channel. Stalin was blunt: ‘We’re not ready for war of the kind being fought between Germany and England.’15 Molotov was to recall him concluding around that time that ‘we would be able to confront the Germans on an equal basis only by 1943’.16 The diplomatic ramifications were enormous. Hitler had to be reassured that Soviet military intentions were entirely peaceful. His requests for raw materials had to be met even if German technology was not immediately available in exchange: late delivery, once complained about, was now forgivable.

  As the diplomatic world darkened in the first half of 1941, Stalin revised several of his political judgements. Already he had added to the Russian national ingredients in Marxism–Leninism. Steadily, as he looked out on the countries of Europe under the Nazi jackboot, he reached the conclusion that the Comintern’s usefulness had come to an end. If communism was going to appeal to broad popular opinion, it had to be regarded as a movement showing sensitivity to local national feelings. Perhaps Stalin also urgently wanted to reassure Hitler that Soviet expansionism was a defunct aspiration. He mentioned this to Dimitrov in April 1941; communist parties, he asserted,17

  should be made absolutely autonomous and not sections of the Comintern. They must be transformed into national communist parties with diverse denominations: workers’ party, Marxist party, etc. The name is not important. What is important is that they put down roots in their people and concentrate on their own specific tasks… The International was created in Marx’s time in the expectation of an approaching international revolution. The Comintern was created in Lenin’s time at an analogous moment. Today, national tasks emerge for each country as a supreme priority. Do not hold on tight to what was yesterday.

  Dimitrov had virtually been told that his job was obsolete.

  This did not mean that Stalin had given up faith in the ultimate worldwide success of communism; but what Dimitrov was hearing, in an indirect way, was a judgement that the military situation in Europe had become so complex and dangerous that it was no longer to the USSR’s advantage to maintain a co-ordinated communist movement under the direction of the Comintern. Stalin had not abandoned hope of controlling the activity of other communist parties. Instead he had made the provisional judgement that his policy of appeasing Germany would be enhanced if he put distance between his government and the Comintern. Only the outbreak of war with Germany delayed Stalin’s dissolution of the Comintern.

  Yet Stalin, while seeking to appease Hitler, wanted to keep up the morale of his own Red Army. On 5 May 1941 he addressed the ceremony for graduates of military academies in Moscow. His words, unreported in the press at the time, were combative. Instead of the reassuring words he issued to the media about Germany, he declared:18

  War with Germany is inevitable. If com[rade] Molotov can manage to postpone the war for two or three months through the M[inistry] of F[oreign] Affairs, that will be our good fortune, but you yourselves must go off and take measures to raise the combat readiness of our forces.

  Stalin urged the Soviet armed forces to prepare for war.19 He explained:20

  Until now we have conducted a peacef
ul, defensive policy and we’ve also educated our army in this spirit. True, we’ve earned something for our labours by conducting a peaceful policy. But now the situation must be changed. We have a strong and well-armed army.

  Stalin continued:

  A good defence signifies the need to attack. Attack is the best form of defence… We must now conduct a peaceful, defensive policy with attack. Yes, defence with attack. We must now re-teach our army and our commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack.

  Was this — as some have suggested — the index of an intention to attack Germany within the near future? Undeniably he had no scruples about stabbing friends and allies in the back. Hitler felt and acted the same way, and Nazi propaganda about Lebensraum and Slavic Untermenschen had not been forgotten in the Kremlin. It would have made strategic sense for Stalin to strike down Hitler before Hitler could invade the USSR. It is also true that Zhukov and Timoshenko were sketching plans for such an offensive.

  Yet none of this proves that Stalin genuinely contemplated his own offensive in the immediate future. A military graduation ceremony in the Europe and Asia of mid-1941 was hardly an occasion for a political leader to moderate the combat mentality of future officers. They needed to be readied for war; they also had to see that they had a political leadership willing to wage war. Moreover, it would have been remiss of Stalin to fail to instruct Zhukov and Timoshenko to plan for an offensive. All armies need to undertake multiple planning and the Red Army was no exception. Stalin wished to be able to deal with every possible contingency. He was realistic about the need for at least a couple of years before his forces could take on the Germans. He did not exclude the possibility of attacking Germany if and when the Wehrmacht seemed weak. The Marxist–Leninist tradition in foreign policy prescribed that the USSR should exploit the political, economic and military rivalries among capitalist powers. This was how states of all kinds had behaved since time immemorial. If Germany looked weak, the Soviet mountain eagle would swoop down and take its prey.

  Consequently Stalin’s priority in May and June 1941 was to avoid giving Hitler a reason to start a war. The General Staff had yet to complete a definitive comprehensive plan for defence.21 Diplomatic and economic appeasement remained foremost in Stalin’s mind. The analyses of military professionals in Berlin and Moscow had pinpointed the importance of beginning such hostilities in early summer in order to shatter the USSR’s defences before the onset of winter; and Stalin was hoping that all this was correct. Hitler had been prevented from invading the Soviet Union at the appropriate time because of trouble in Yugoslavia since the spring. But the secret decision had already been taken in Berlin: Hitler was going to attack as soon as he had amassed sufficient forces in German-occupied Poland. His confidence rested on ignorance of Soviet military capacity. Stalin’s secretiveness meant that the Germans had been kept in the dark about the USSR’s true strength. By the time such information started to reach Berlin, it was too late to persuade Hitler to call off the invasion.22

  Stalin hoped against hope that his diplomatic manoeuvres were paying off as midsummer approached. He ignored the rising mountain of information that Hitler was up to no good on his borders. Zhukov was becoming frantic. In mid-June he made one of his recurrent attempts to snap Stalin out of his policy of appeasement. Stalin angrily pounced on him: ‘What are you up to? Have you come here to scare us with the idea of war or is it that you really want a war? Haven’t you got enough medals and titles?’23 This was a punch below the belt that made Zhukov lose his temper even with Stalin. But the moment passed and the appeasement policy was maintained. Thus the conditions for the greatest military disaster of the twentieth century were unwittingly prepared by the supremely confident Leader in the Kremlin.

  37. BARBAROSSA

  In the hour before dawn on 22 June 1941 the German armed forces started Operation Barbarossa. There was no warning from Hitler; this was a classic Blitzkrieg and Stalin was in bed at the time in his Blizhnyaya dacha. In the diplomatic crisis of recent weeks he had judged that intelligence sources predicting a German invasion were just a provocation. Timoshenko as People’s Commissar of Defence and Zhukov as Chief of the General Staff thought him mistaken and had stayed up on duty all that last night. At 3.30 a.m. they received reports of heavy shelling along the Soviet–German frontier. They knew this for what it was: the beginning of war. Timoshenko ordered Zhukov to call Blizhnyaya by telephone. Zhukov obediently asked a sleepy Vlasik, the chief of Stalin’s bodyguard, to rouse the Leader.1

  Like a schoolboy rejecting proof of simple arithmetic, Stalin disbelieved his ears. Breathing heavily, he grunted to Zhukov that no counter-measures should be taken.2 The German armies had had no more compliant victim. Stalin’s only concession to Zhukov was to rise from his bed and return to Moscow by limousine. There he met Zhukov and Timoshenko along with Molotov, Beria, Voroshilov and Lev Mekhlis.3 (Mekhlis was a party bureaucrat who had carried out many tasks for Stalin in the Great Terror.) Pale and bewildered, he sat with them at the table clutching an empty pipe for comfort.4 He could not accept that he had been wrong about Hitler. He muttered that the outbreak of hostilities must have originated in a conspiracy within the Wehrmacht. Always there had to be a conspiracy. When Timoshenko demurred, Stalin retorted that ‘if it were necessary to organise a provocation, German generals would bomb their own cities’. Ludicrously he was still trying to persuade himself that the situation was reversible: ‘Hitler surely doesn’t know about it.’ He ordered Molotov to get in touch with Ambassador Schulenburg to clarify the situation. This was clutching at a final straw while Armageddon erupted. Schulenburg had in fact already requested an interview with Molotov in the Kremlin. In the meantime Timoshenko and Zhukov went on imploring Stalin’s permission to organise armed counter-measures.5

  Schulenburg, who had sought to discourage Hitler from invading, brought the unambiguous military news. Molotov reported back to Stalin: ‘The German government has declared war on us.’ Stalin slumped into his chair and an unbearable silence followed. It was broken by Zhukov, who put forward measures to hold up the forces of the enemy. Timoshenko corrected him: ‘Not to hold up but to annihilate.’ Even then, though, Stalin continued to stipulate that Soviet ground forces should not infringe German territorial integrity. Directive No. 2 was dispatched at 7.15 a.m.6

  The Germans swarmed like locusts over the western borderlands of the USSR. Nobody, except perhaps Stalin, seriously expected the Red Army to push them back quickly to the river Bug. A military calamity had occurred on a scale unprecedented in the wars of the twentieth century. Stalin had not yet got a grip on himself. He was visibly distraught and could not focus his mind on essential matters. When Timoshenko returned from the People’s Commissariat of Defence to confer, Stalin refused to see him. Politics, even at this moment, had to come first and he insisted that a Politburo meeting should take precedence. Finally at nine o’clock in the morning Timoshenko was allowed to present a plan for the creation of a Supreme Command. The Politburo meanwhile gave Molotov the task of speaking on radio at midday.7 Stalin still felt disoriented. If he had wanted, he could have given the address himself. But shock and embarrassment deflected him. He was determined to stay at the centre of things, however — and he knew that Molotov would not let him down at the microphone. Stalin was not wasting time with resentment about what Hitler had done to him. War had started in earnest. He and the USSR had to win it.

  How had he let himself be tricked? For weeks the Wehrmacht had been massing on the western banks of the River Bug as dozens of divisions were transferred from elsewhere in Europe. The Luftwaffe had sent squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet cities. All this had been reported to Stalin by his military intelligence agency. In May and June he had been continuously pressed by Timoshenko and Zhukov to sanction the dispositions for an outbreak of fighting. Richard Sorge, the Soviet agent in the Germany embassy in Tokyo, had raised the alarm. Winston Churchill had sent telegrams warning Stalin. The USSR’s spies in Germany had men
tioned the preparations being made. Even the Chinese Communist Party alerted Moscow about German intentions.8

  Yet Stalin had made up his mind. Rejecting the warnings, he put faith in his own judgement. That Stalin blundered is beyond question. Yet there were a few extenuating circumstances. Stalin expected there to be war with Germany sooner or later. Like military planners everywhere, he was astonished by Hitler’s easy triumph over France. The success achieved by the Wehrmacht in the West was likely to bring forward any decision by the Führer to turn eastwards and attack the USSR. But Stalin had some reason to believe that the Germans would not risk an attack in the year 1941. Although France had been humbled, Hitler had not dealt a fatal blow to the British. His armed forces had also met difficulties in the Balkans in the spring when action against the German occupation of Yugoslavia diverted troops needed for Operation Barbarossa. Stalin continued to hold to the belief that a successful invasion of the USSR would have to be started in early summer at the latest. Napoleon’s fate in 1812 had shown the importance of beating Russians without having to trudge through snow. By mid-June 1941 it looked as if the danger of a German crusade had faded.