Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

  The British Empire was in decline, and Stalin cannot have been surprised that the Americans were eager to expand their political and military hegemony over the maximum number of countries. As the United Kingdom’s weakness was exposed, world politics became contest between the USSR and the USA. Stalin had to manoeuvre carefully. Negotiations to found the United Nations Organisation had begun in San Francisco in April 1945. Stalin wished to have the USSR made a member of the Security Council and to secure a right of veto within it. Molotov negotiated on Stalin’s orders. It was not a congenial experience as the Americans were no longer worried about the sensitivities of their Soviet interlocutors.2

  The policies of the USSR became clearer in 1946. By then Churchill was out of office but his speech at Fulton, Missouri on 5 March rejected any attempt at conciliation. Churchill spoke of an ‘iron curtain’ drawn down the centre of Europe by Stalin and the communist leadership. Concessions to the USSR should cease. Churchill was summarising what Truman had said in piecemeal fashion since the outset of his Presidency. But this left a lacuna in Anglo-American strategic thought. It was filled by a telegram sent from Moscow by American diplomat George Kennan on 22 February. Kennan argued that the Western Allies should seek to ‘contain’ their global adversary rather than use military force. By their further development of nuclear weapons the Americans also could deter the USSR from adventurism and aggression. This was the core of American state doctrine over succeeding years, and any member of the USA’s leadership who challenged it was removed. President Truman became ever more assertive in his diplomatic dealings. The British were helpmates rather than decision-makers, but they approved the new orientation; and Stalin, regularly supplied with information from his intelligence agencies, knew that limits had been placed on his activity in global affairs if he wished to avoid armed confrontation with a stronger enemy.

  The year 1947 pivoted the Grand Alliance towards open disharmony. Several events increased the mutual antipathy. Every crisis strengthened the belief of leading politicians, including Truman and Stalin, that their chronic suspicion of the rival power and its leader had been justified. Resumed co-operation would be difficult. The Allies lurched into the Cold War. Truman and Stalin spoke fractiously about each other. Each felt empowered by military victory to enhance his state’s influence in the world and to ensure that his rival — whether in Washington or in Moscow — did not get away with anything.

  The USSR had gone on flexing its muscles after the Second World War without getting into a fight. Avoidance of a Third World War was the supreme immediate priority. Little was done in the Far East. Stalin accepted that the Americans had unchallengeable control of Japan and its political and economic development; he contented himself with possession of the Kurile islands obtained in accord with the Yalta agreements. He also concluded that prolonged occupation of northern Iran by the Red Army would endanger relations with the USA. The Western Allies repeatedly demanded the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces, and in April 1947 Stalin at last acceded to this. The Iranian government proceeded to suppress separatist movements in the north of its country. But the Soviet Army pulled back, never to return. Stalin simultaneously tried to put pressure on Turkey for territorial concessions. In this instance President Truman’s robust defence of Turkish sovereignty saved the situation from developing into an emergency. Stalin’s chimerical ambitions to turn Libya into a protectorate of the USSR were also quietly abandoned after British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin flew into a rage in negotiations with Soviet diplomats.3

  The serious trouble started on 5 June 1947 when US Secretary of State George Marshall announced economic assistance to European countries which had suffered from Nazi aggression. The offer was also available to the USSR, and Stalin’s original scheme had been for representatives of Bulgaria and Romania to attend the subsequent exploratory gathering in Paris with the purpose of disrupting it; but he had second thoughts, becoming convinced that a ‘Western block against the Soviet Union’ was being organised.4 Marshall intended to undermine Soviet hegemony over the countries of eastern Europe by providing them with American financial help. The Ministry of External Affairs in Moscow explored whether funds really would be released to the USSR for its post-war recovery. The answer was that the Americans made open markets the condition for aid. As Truman and Marshall knew, there was never any chance that Stalin and his associates would accept such restrictions. The Marshall Plan was tied to the geopolitical objectives of the USA and these included the drastic reduction of the USSR’s power in Europe. Even Jeno Varga, who had suggested the possibility of a parliamentary road to communism in Europe, saw the Marshall Plan as a dagger pointed at Moscow.5 Moderation in Soviet foreign policy came to a halt. Thus began the Cold War, so called because it never involved direct military conflict between the USSR and the USA.

  Having conquered eastern Europe, Stalin would not relinquish his gains. He held to a traditional view of security based on buffer states. This was an approach soon to be made obsolete by long-range bombers and nuclear missiles. It also overlooked the huge onus taken upon itself by the USSR in occupying these countries and becoming responsible for their internal affairs. Most communist leaders in eastern Europe anticipated Stalin’s reaction and broke off negotiations with the Americans in Paris.

  Yet the Czechoslovak government, which included communist ministers, was eager to go to Paris to discuss Marshall’s proposals. A delegation led by Klement Gottwald was received in Moscow on 10 July 1947. Stalin was furious:6

  We were astonished that you had decided to participate in that gathering. For us this question is a question about the friendship of the Soviet Union with the Czechoslovak republic. Whether you wish it or not, you are objectively helping to isolate the Soviet Union. You can see what’s happening. All the countries which have friendly relations with us are refraining from participation in this gathering whereas Czechoslovakia, which also has friendly relations with us, is participating.

  Communist leader Gottwald left his liberal Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk to twist in the wind. Masaryk asked Stalin to bear in mind Czechoslovak industry’s dependence on the West; he added that the Poles had wished to go to Paris. But Stalin was unmoved. Resistance crumbled, and Masaryk begged Stalin and Molotov to help the Czechoslovaks to formulate the text of their withdrawal from participation. Stalin simply advised him to copy the Bulgarian model. Masaryk salvaged a scrap of national pride by pointing out that the government would not be meeting until the following evening; but the entire delegation ended by thanking Stalin and Molotov for the ‘necessary pieces of advice’.7

  Stalin was flinging mud in the face of the USA, and the world was his witness. Overnight it became easier for Truman to get his way with governments which had doubts about the hardening American line towards the USSR; he was also helped in his campaign to convince the US Congress that financial aid at least to western Europe lay among the objective interests of the USA. Stalin had been pushed to the point of strategic decision. He confronted a definite challenge: the American President wanted to pull the greatest possible number of European states under his country’s hegemony and to bring benefit to its industrial and commercial corporations. The USSR’s economy remained in a desperate plight and the Americans had no objective incentive to facilitate its recovery. Even so, Stalin could have handled the situation with more finesse. Instead of tossing the terms back in Truman’s face, he could have drawn out the negotiations and proved to the world that the apparent altruism of the Marshall Plan concealed American self-interest. But Stalin had made up his mind. He never again met Truman after Potsdam and did not seek to. Nor could he be bothered with negotiating with Western diplomats. The USA had thrown down the gauntlet and he would pick it up.

  Even so, the Americans declined to go further in trying to detach eastern Europe from the USSR. The policy of containment was interpreted as involving acceptance that such countries fell within the zone of Soviet influence. The chance of liberating these countries had been at i
ts highest in 1945. Western public opinion could be manipulated, but only to a certain extent two years later. The Americans and the British had been taught to respect ‘Uncle Joe’; they had also been told that the war would be over when Germany and Japan had been defeated. It would not have been easy to induce British or American soldiers to start fighting in mid-1947.

  Soviet retaliation against the American initiative was not long in coming. In September 1947 a conference of communist parties was convoked at Sklarska Poręba in Poland. Stalin did not deign to attend. Having ordered the creation of a tight system of co-ordination by telephone and telegram, he sent Zhdanov on his behalf. Zhdanov had been well briefed and contacted Moscow whenever anything unpredicted arose. The organisational objective was to form an Informational Bureau (or Cominform) to co-ordinate communist activity in the countries of eastern Europe as well as in Italy and France. As relations worsened with the USA, Stalin withdrew permission for a diversity of national transitions to communism. The call was made for an acceleration of communisation in eastern Europe; and, in western Europe, the French and Italian parties were reprimanded for their reluctance to drop their parliamentary orientation (even though it had been Stalin who had instigated it!). The completion of a rigid communist order was the goal to the east of the Elbe. Stalin also had his ambitions elsewhere. He intended to disrupt ‘Anglo-American’ hegemony in western Europe by the sole political means to hand: communist party militancy.8

  Yet blatant American interference in the Italian elections through subsidies to the Christian-Democratic Party proved effective. In the two halves of Europe the armed camps of former allies confronted each other. Ambiguity, however, remained over Germany, where the USA, the USSR, the United Kingdom and France had occupying forces in their respective zones. Each of these powers also controlled its own sector in Berlin, which lay within the USSR’s zone.

  Stalin, annoyed and frustrated by developments, decided to probe Western resolve at an early opportunity. Soviet representatives proposed the formation of a united German government. The condition for this would be Germany’s demilitarisation. Stalin seemed to want either a communist or a neutral Germany as his further aim. He also aspired to an increase in reparations to the USSR. On 24 June 1948 Stalin started a blockade of the American, British and French zones of the city. Unable to secure the kind of Germany he found acceptable, he opted to cut off the eastern zone under the USSR’s occupation from the rest of the country. The Soviet Army patrolled the border. Confrontation was inevitable, but Stalin gambled on the Western Allies being unwilling to risk war. He miscalculated. The Americans and British flew in supplies to their sectors of Berlin, and it was Stalin himself who had to decide whether to begin military hostility. The Berlin airlift continued through to May 1949. Stalin gave up. Western resolve had been tested and found to be too firm. Relations between the USSR and the USA deteriorated. A Western initiative inaugurated the Federal Republic of Germany in September 1949. In October the Kremlin sanctioned the German Democratic Republic’s creation in response.

  This was a turbulent environment. Like everyone else, Stalin was surprised by particular events and situations, and much of his time was spent on reacting to successive emergencies. Yet nothing happened which challenged his general operational assumptions about global politics. He did not expect favours from the Americans, and the Marshall Plan confirmed his darkest suspicions. The phrase used by Zhdanov at the founding Cominform Conference about the existence of ‘two camps’ in perpetual, unavoidable competition appeared prophetic. First to form an overt military alliance was the capitalist camp. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) came into existence in April 1949. Under the USA’s leadership it included the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Luxemburg. Greece and Turkey joined three years later and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. Most countries in North America and western Europe adhered to NATO: it was a mighty and coherent alliance with the obvious but unstated purpose of seeing off any Soviet attack; and for all its European members its great virtue lay in binding the American government and military forces into their endeavour to keep the Soviet Army behind the Iron Curtain. In 1936 there had been an Anti-Comintern Pact; in 1949 an Anti-Cominform Pact had been established in all but name.

  Western security concerns were increased on 29 August 1949 when Soviet scientists successfully tested their own A-bomb. Beria had used the ebullient Igor Kurchatov as the technical chief of the project. Kurchatov assembled a team of capable physicists. Soviet intelligence agencies handed over secret material taken by their agents from the Americans, and this hastened progress. The quest for uranium was facilitated by the consignment of hundreds of thousands of repatriated POWs to the mines in Siberia. Few survived the experience. By mid-1949 the USSR, from its own mines as well as from deposits in Czechoslovakia, had acquired sufficient plutonium and uranium-235 to go ahead with the construction of a Soviet bomb.9

  Stalin took an active interest. The main figures in the research project were called before him in a lengthy meeting. Each had to report on his progress, and Stalin fired questions at them. Mikhail Pervukhin had to explain to him the difference between heavy water and ordinary water.10 He told Stalin what he needed to know. Not having studied physics at the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary, the Leader started with only the most rudimentary grasp of the scientific principles. His ignorance had earlier been downright dangerous for the scientists. Having recently re-read Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism, he was convinced that space and time were absolute, unchallengeable concepts in all human endeavours. (This contrasted with his dismissal of the controversy over the same book before the First World War as ‘a storm in a teacup’.)11 Einsteinian physics were therefore to be regarded as a bourgeois mystification. The problem was that such physics were crucial to the completion of the A-bomb project. Beria, caught between wanting to appear as Stalin’s ideological apostle and wishing to produce an A-bomb for him, decided he needed clearance from the Boss for the Soviet physicists to use Einstein’s equations. Stalin, ever the pragmatist in matters of power, gave his jovial assent: ‘Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later.’12

  Kurchatov and his team pulled it off in the desert outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan — and to his amazement, as the mushroom cloud gathered on the horizon, he was hugged by Beria. Such a display of emotion was unprecedented. But Beria, who had spent the past four years threatening Kurchatov, had lived under the same shadow cast by Stalin. A failed bomb test could have led to his death sentence. Instead he could report success to the Kremlin. Stalin was also delighted. The USSR had entered the portals of the world’s nuclear-powers elite, and Stalin himself could come to any future diplomatic negotiations as the equal of the American and British leaders.

  This in turn opened him to persuasion that the USSR should assume an assertive posture in world politics. There were other reasons for his ebullience. Not only had the communist subjugation of eastern Europe occurred without serious setbacks but also the Chinese Communist Party had seized power in Beijing in October 1949. Communism had acquired possession of a third of the world’s land surface. Mao Tse-tung had won his victory in the teeth of Stalin’s reluctance to support him against the nationalist Chiang Kai-shek. The revolutionary outcome in China did not soften Stalin’s attitude to Mao: he expected the new communist state to submit itself to the higher interest of world communism as delineated by Moscow. In practice this meant accepting the priority of Soviet needs over Chinese ones. Stalin continued to regard it as the USSR’s right to hold on to Port Arthur as a military base and to dominate Manchuria. The USSR’s military superiority and its willingness to render economic assistance compelled Mao to bite his tongue when he made a lengthy visit to Moscow from December 1949. The direct talks between Mao and Stalin became tricky when Stalin made clear from the start that he would not repeal the Sino-Soviet treaty of 1945, which had been concluded at a moment of China’s extreme weakness and be
fore the communist seizure of power.13

  Mao did not secure all the military and economic assistance he was after. Stalin assured him that China was not yet threatened by foreign powers: ‘Japan is still not back on its feet and is therefore not ready for war.’14 As usual he added that the USA was in no mood for a big war. Stalin, hoping to distract his Chinese comrade with a campaign which would not upset the Soviet–American relationship, advised that Beijing should confine itself to conquering Taiwan and Tibet. Mao’s frustration grew. Having taken power in China only weeks before, he was almost under house arrest at a government dacha outside Moscow as Stalin and he conferred. But then on 22 January 1950 Stalin suddenly reversed his position and told Mao of his willingness to sign a new Sino-Soviet treaty.

  The question arises as to who or what was to blame for the descent into the Cold War. President Truman played his part. His language was hostile to the USSR and communism. The Marshall Plan in particular was framed in such a way as to make it well nigh inconceivable that Stalin would not take offence. Yet at the start even Molotov was inclined to accept the aid.15 Truman was determined to promote the American economic cause in the world; he also had a genuine concern about the oppression which his predecessor’s deals with Stalin had spread across eastern Europe. The USA had an economy undamaged by war and a society which, apart from its soldiers, had no direct experience of it. Its state and people were committed to the economics of the market. Its economic interest groups sought access to every country of the world. It was a military power greater than any rival. The USA did not threaten to declare war on the USSR, but it acted to maximise its hegemony over world politics and the result was a set of tensions which could always spill over into diplomatic confrontation or even a Third World War.