Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

  Both Truman and Stalin knew that the American A-bomb was ready for use, but Truman did not know that Stalin knew. In fact Soviet espionage had reported accurately to Moscow, and on this occasion Stalin did not disbelieve his agents. When Truman informed him about the American technological advance, Stalin had prepared himself to be unperturbed — and Truman was astounded by his sangfroid. In the same period Stalin buttonholed his commanders, urging them to bring forward the Soviet offensive against Japan. But technical reasons obstructed any change in schedule, and Stalin restrained an inclination to insist on the impossible. Increasingly the Western Allies ignored him. Truman, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek issued their own ultimatum to the Japanese government from Potsdam. Nobody consulted Stalin.12

  Arriving back in Moscow, Stalin kept pestering Vasilevski in Stavka. The response from Vasilevski was that Soviet forces would be ready to attack the Japanese no later than 9 August. But even this was too late. Truman had taken his decision to instruct American bombers to undertake their first military operation with nuclear weapons. On 6 August a B-29 took off from Tinian island to drop a bomb on Hiroshima. A fresh stage in human destructiveness had been reached as an entire city was reduced to rubble by a single military overflight. Still Stalin hoped to include himself in the victory. On 7 August he signed the order for Soviet forces to invade Manchuria two days later. But again he was preempted. The failure of the Japanese to sue for peace led Truman to sanction a further bombing raid by B-29s on 8 August. This time the target was Nagasaki. The result was the same: the city became an instant ruin and the population was annihilated. The Japanese government, at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, surrendered on 2 September 1945. Stalin had lost the race for Tokyo. The Manchurian campaign still went ahead as planned in Moscow and the Kwantung Army was attacked. But really Japan’s fate lay in the hands of President Truman.13

  The only lever left to Stalin in diplomacy was his impassivity. At a reception for Averell Harriman and the diplomat George Kennan on 8 August he made a point of seeming unconcerned about the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also displayed knowledge about the German and British attempts to build A-bombs. Evidently he wished to let Truman know that Soviet spies were briefing the Kremlin about the development of military nuclear technology worldwide. He deliberately let slip that the Soviet Union had its own atomic-bomb project.14 Stalin acted his chosen role to perfection. American diplomats knew very well that the Soviet political elite had been depressed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USSR’s pre-eminence with the USA and the United Kingdom as a victorious power had been put into question, and the immense sacrifices offered across the Soviet Union in 1941–5 could soon prove to have brought little benefit to its citizens. Stalin had won many hands without having the aces to finish the game.

  44. VICTORY!

  In the early hours of 9 May 1945 radio announcer Isaak Levitan read out the news everyone had been greedy for. The war with Germany was over. Popular excitement had been growing for days. When the moment came, the celebrations were tumultuous; they occurred across the USSR and in all the countries which had fought Hitler’s New Order. The Soviet government had arranged a fireworks display for the evening in Moscow, but people had started their festivities hours earlier. Millions thronged the central districts. Everywhere there was dancing and singing. Any man in the green uniform of the Red Army stood a fair chance of being hugged and kissed. A crowd gathered outside the US embassy as the chant went up: ‘Hurrah for Roosevelt!’ The American President was so much identified with the Grand Alliance that few remembered he had died in April. Behaviour was unrestrained. Prodigious drinking occurred; the police overlooked young men urinating against the walls of the Moskva Hotel. Restaurants and cafeterias were packed with customers where food was scarce but vodka plentiful.1 There was joy that Nazism had been crushed under the tank tracks of the Red Army.

  Stalin’s daughter Svetlana phoned him after the radio broadcast: ‘Papa, congratulations to you: victory!’ ‘Yes, victory,’ he replied. ‘Thanks. Congratulations to you too. How are you?’ The estrangement of father and daughter melted in the warmth of the moment.2 Khrushchëv was less lucky. When he made a similar phone call, Stalin rebuked him. ‘He made it known,’ Khrushchëv suggested, ‘that I was taking up his valuable time. Well, I simply froze to the spot. What was this about? Why? I took it all badly and cursed myself thoroughly: why had I phoned him? After all, I knew his character and could have expected no good whatever to come of it. I knew he would want to show me that the past was already a stage we had gone through and that he was now thinking about great new matters.’3

  Stalin delivered an ‘address to the people’ starting: ‘Comrades! Men and women compatriots!’4 Gone were the gentler vocatives of his radio broadcast at the start of Operation Barbarossa. The USSR had been saved and the ‘great banner of freedom of peoples and peace between peoples’ could at last be waved. The Great Patriotic War was over.5 But, if his style was solemn, it was also gracious at least for his Russian listeners. At a banquet for Red Army commanders on 24 May he declared:6

  Comrades, allow me to propose one last toast.

  I would like to propose a toast to the health of our Soviet people and, above all, of the Russian people because it is the outstanding nation of all the nations forming part of the Soviet Union.

  I propose this toast to the health of the Russian people because in this war it earned general recognition as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country.

  Previously he had never unequivocally endorsed one nation out of the many which composed the USSR. To many Russians it seemed that the oven of war had smelted the base metals out of him and produced a stainless Leader who deserved their trust and admiration.

  These were canting words since Stalin was as much afraid of Russians as proud of them. But it suited him to put the Russian people on an even higher pedestal of official esteem than before the war. Intuitively, it would seem, he understood that he needed to grant legitimacy to a national patriotism less qualified by Marxism–Leninism. At least he did this for a while. (And perhaps even Stalin got a bit carried away by the euphoria of the moment.) What had appeared completely inconceivable in summer 1941 had come to pass. Hitler was dead. Nearly all the eastern half of Europe was under Soviet military control. The USSR was treated by the USA and the United Kingdom as co-arbiter of the fate of the world.

  Allegedly Stalin had wanted Hitler caught alive and was annoyed by his suicide, and there was a story that Zhukov had vowed to parade him in a cage on Red Square. This may indeed have been how a commander might have bragged to his political master. But it is improbable that Stalin would have allowed such a spectacle: he still wished to avoid giving unnecessary offence to his allies. The goal of the USA and the United Kingdom was the methodical de-Nazification of German public life, and they hoped to persuade Germans to abandon their affection for Hitler. Conquerors had last humiliated their enemy leaders in such a fashion during the triumphs granted to successful Roman commanders. Cheated of catching his quarry alive, Stalin instructed his intelligence agencies to bring him the physical remains. This was done in deadly secrecy; once it had been ascertained that the charred parts of a burnt corpse outside Hitler’s bunker were those of the Führer, they were conveyed to the Soviet capital. Stalin’s sense of urgency derived from political concerns. Nothing was to be left on German soil which could later become a focus for pro-Nazi nostalgia.

  In a peculiar way this was an involuntary gesture of respect for Hitler, as Stalin was implying that his dead enemy was still dangerous. Towards most other leaders in the world apart from Churchill and Roosevelt he felt condescension at best. (What he thought about Mussolini remains mysterious, but the only Italian he took seriously was the communist party leader Palmiro Togliatti.) Churchill’s successor Clement Attlee made little imprint on his consciousness. Even Truman failed to impress him. Whereas Roosevelt had aroused his personal curiosity, he barely gave his successor a seco
nd thought. There is nothing in the records of Stalin’s conversations to indicate an appreciation of Truman’s talents. He was more appreciative of Churchill. Yet the United Kingdom, as Stalin’s economic experts such as Jeno Varga demonstrated to him, was no longer the force in world affairs it had once been. Churchill could huff and puff, but the house of the USSR would not fall down. Stalin saw himself as one of history’s outstanding figures. When he came across domineering characters of his own type such as Mao Tse-tung, he refused to treat them decently. Mao arrived in Moscow in December 1949 after seizing power in Beijing, and he was told none too politely that the USSR expected massive concessions from China. In any case Stalin, mounting to his crest of post-war grandeur, had no intention of allowing a fellow communist to rival his prestige. Master of world communism and leader of a triumphant state, he desired to bask alone in the world’s acclaim.

  The day set aside to celebrate the triumph over Nazism was 24 June 1945. There was to be a parade on Red Square in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Victorious regiments which had returned from Germany and eastern Europe were to march in triumph before the Kremlin Wall. It was put to Stalin that he should take pride of place, riding a white horse in the traditional Russian mode. (This was how Russia’s generals had headed military parades through Tbilisi.) An Arab steed was found which Stalin tried to mount. The result was humiliation. Stalin gave the stallion an inappropriate jab with his spurs. The stallion reared up. Stalin, grabbing the mane ineffectually, was thrown to the ground. He injured his head and shoulder and was in a vile mood as he got to his feet. Spitting in anger, he declared: ‘Let Zhukov lead the parade. He’s an old cavalryman.’7 Some days before the parade he summoned Zhukov, who had returned from Berlin, and asked whether he could handle a horse. Zhukov had belonged to the Red Cavalry in the Civil War; but his first instinct was to remonstrate that Stalin should head the parade as Supreme Commander. Without revealing his equestrian difficulties, Stalin replied: ‘I’m too old to lead parades. You’re younger. You lead it.’8

  The ceremonial arrangements were meticulously realised on the day itself. While Stalin and other political leaders stood on top of the Lenin Mausoleum below the Kremlin Wall, Marshal Zhukov rode across Red Square to salute him. The entire Soviet military effort between 1941 and 1945 was acclaimed. A regiment from each front in the war marched behind Zhukov. All saluted Stalin. The packed crowd, drawn from people whom the authorities wanted to reward, roared approval. The climax of the ceremony came when the banners of the defeated Wehrmacht were carried over the cobbled space to be cast down directly in front of Stalin. The weather was not at its best; there had been an earlier downpour.9 But the applause for Stalin and the troops of the Soviet armed forces cancelled the gloom. He had risen to the apex of his career and was being recognised as father of the peoples of the USSR.

  All went to plan on 24 June apart from the unseasonable rain, and the Soviet order seemed stronger than ever. The Red Army dominated to the River Elbe. Eastern and east-central Europe were subject to Soviet military and political control and, while the war in the Pacific continued, Red forces were being readied to take part in the final offensive against Japan. Secretly, too, the USSR was intensifying its research on the technology needed to make an atomic bomb. Already its armaments industry was capable of supplying its military forces with all they needed to maintain Soviet power and prestige. The political and economic system consolidated before the Second World War remained intact. Party, ministries and police had firm authority, and the tasks of peaceful reconstruction of industry, agriculture, transport, schooling and healthcare seemed well within the USSR’s capacity to discharge. Hierarchy and discipline were at their peak. Morale in the country was high. Stalin’s despotism appeared an impregnable citadel.

  Next day at the Kremlin reception for participants in the Victory Parade he was triumphant:10

  I offer a toast to those simple, ordinary, modest people, to the ‘little cogs’ who keep our great state mechanism in an active condition in all fields of science, economy and military affairs. There are a lot of them; their name is legion because there are tens of millions of such people.

  The ‘people’ for him were mere cogs in the machinery of state and not individuals and groups of flesh and blood with social, cultural and psychological needs and aspirations. The state took precedence over society.

  Yet Stalin, while masterminding an image of omnipotence for the Soviet state, did not himself believe in it. The USSR had daunting problems. He ordered the security agencies to collate information with a view to making the Soviet case for reparations when the Allies next conferred. Catalogues of devastation were compiled. Twenty-six million Soviet citizens had perished in the Second World War. Stalin was not innocent of blame: his policies of imprisonment and deportation had added to the total (as had his disastrous policy of agricultural collectivisation, which impeded the USSR’s capacity to feed itself). But most victims died at the front or under Nazi occupation. Some 1.8 million Soviet civilians were reportedly killed by the Germans in the RSFSR; double that number was recorded for Ukraine.11 The dead were not the only human losses in the USSR. Millions of people were left badly wounded or malnourished, their lives having been wrecked beyond repair. Countless children had been orphaned and fended for themselves without public support or private charity. Whole districts in the western borderlands had been depopulated so drastically that farming had ceased. The Soviet Union had paid a high price for its victory, and it would take years to recover.

  As the NKVD completed its cataloguing tasks (while not ceasing to discharge the duty of arresting all enemies of Stalin and the state), the scale of the catastrophe was made clear. In the zone of the USSR previously under German occupation scarcely a factory, mine or commercial enterprise had escaped destruction. The Wehrmacht was not the sole culprit: Stalin had adopted a scorched-earth policy after 22 June 1941 so as to deprive Hitler of material assets. Yet the subsequent German retreat in 1943–4 had taken place over a lengthier period, and this had provided the Wehrmacht with time to carry out systematic destruction. The record put together by NKVD almost defies belief. No fewer than 1,710 Soviet towns had been obliterated by the Germans along with around seventy thousand villages. Even where the Wehrmacht failed to set fire to entire townships, it succeeded in burning down hospitals, radio stations, schools and libraries. Cultural vandalism was as near to comprehensive as Hitler could make it. If Stalin had a crisis in the availability of human resources, he faced an equally appalling set of tasks in consequence of the devastation of the material environment.

  Not only that: the structure of administrative control was much more shaky than it had been before the war. Displaced persons were everywhere; and as the troops came back from Europe, the chaos increased. No picture of this was permitted to appear in the newspapers or the newsreels. The emphasis continued to fall upon the bravery and efficiency of the Red Army in Germany and the other occupied countries of central and eastern Europe. The reality was very different. The Soviet order was most easily restored in the larger cities, especially those which had never been under German rule. But the intense concentration on military tasks in the Great Patriotic War had led to the running down of those aspects of civilian administration which were not narrowly connected with the fight against the Germans. In the zone previously occupied by the Wehrmacht the shambles of organisation was acute. In places it was hard to believe that the Soviet order had ever existed as peasants reverted to a way of life which predated the October Revolution. Private trade and popular social customs had reasserted themselves over communist requirements. Stalin’s writ was unchallengeable in Moscow, Leningrad and other conurbations, but in smaller localities, especially the villages (where most of the population still lived), the arm of the authorities was not long enough to affect daily lives.

  And despite the Red Army’s triumph in Europe there were problems in several countries under Soviet occupation. The military, security, diplomatic and political agencies
of the USSR, already stretched to the limit before 1945, had somehow to cope with the responsibilities of peace. Yugoslavia was unusual in as much as its own internal forces under Tito had liberated it from the Germans. Elsewhere the Reds had played the crucial part in defeating the Wehrmacht. Victory proved simpler than occupation. Few people in central and eastern Europe wished to be subject to communist rule. Stalin and the Politburo knew how effectively the communists had been eradicated by Hitler and his allies and how little support the national communist leaders in Moscow-based emigration had in their homelands.

  Somehow Stalin had to devise a way of gaining popular sympathy in these occupied countries while solving a vast number of urgent tasks. Food supplies had to be found. Economies had to be regenerated and post-Nazi administrations set up. Functionaries had to be checked for political reliability. The shattered cities and damaged roads and railways had to be restored. At the same time Stalin was determined to gain reparations from the former enemy countries, not only Germany but also Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This was bound to complicate the task of winning popularity for himself and for communism. The Western Allies were another difficulty. An understanding existed with them that a rough line ran from north to south in Europe separating the Soviet zone of influence from the zone to be dominated by the United States, Britain and France. Yet there was no clarity about the rights of victor powers to impose their political, economic and ideological models on the countries they occupied. Nor had the victors specified what methods of rule were acceptable. As the ashes of war settled, tensions among the Allies were rising.