Stalin (31 page)

What was Stalin’s reaction to the suffering of his fellow citizens? The historical record gives no clear answer to this question, but there is no evidence that he felt the slightest remorse or pity. Nevertheless, he could not entirely ignore political realities. Although he still despised imaginary enemies and feared imaginary conspiracies, he never repeated his experiment in large-scale terror. After 1938, repression continued on a smaller scale and in a more routine manner.

The Great Terror damaged the Soviet Union’s international reputation. Stalin undoubtedly understood that people in the West, especially on the left, were shocked to learn that prominent revolutionaries were being put to death. In an effort to minimize the impact on public opinion, the campaign of repression was paralleled by an energetic propaganda campaign. Accounts of the Moscow trials—at which Lenin’s comrades-in-arms and other Old Bolsheviks admitted plotting terrorist acts against Stalin and having ties with foreign intelligence agencies—were translated into European languages and widely circulated. Prominent Western intellectuals and cultural figures were invited to Moscow. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger met personally with Stalin and then wrote a book casting the Soviet Union in a favorable light. Caught between the hammer of Nazism and the anvil of Stalinism, many were ready to delude themselves as to the regime’s true nature. The West’s political decision makers, however, had every reason not only to distrust Stalin, but also to see the hysteria over supposed enemies as evidence of weakness. The purge of Red Army commanders and the execution of well-known Soviet marshals in particular made the regime appear unstable. The West clearly saw the Terror in very different terms than Stalin. Obsessed with the idea of a fifth column, Stalin simply failed to understand that his moves to arrest and shoot so many of his own citizens looked more like weakness and instability than strength.

To some extent the Western observers were right. Signs of the Terror’s devastating impact on Soviet military might soon became apparent. In June 1938, the NKVD general in charge of the Far East, Genrikh Liushkov, crossed the Soviet border into Manchuria and offered his services to the Japanese. This was of course a traitorous act, but Liushkov was pushed in that direction by Stalin. After faithfully serving the regime and spilling rivers of other people’s blood, he realized it would soon be his own turn to bleed. When a summons came to report to Moscow, Liushkov decided that his best option was to defect. Given his years as a top NKVD official in Moscow, his experience working face-to-face with Stalin, and his role as secret police chief of the militarily critical Far Eastern region, he had a great deal to offer. He was well informed about military readiness in the Far East and the makeup and placement of Soviet troops—and he shared all this information with the enemy. Stalin further undermined military preparedness in the Far East by ordering another wave of arrests within the army. Meanwhile, in July and August 1938, the Red Army clashed with Japanese forces near Lake Khasan, an area near the borders with Korea and China. Stalin closely monitored this conflict and demanded decisive action. In a conversation with the commander of the Far Eastern front, Marshal Vasily Bliukher (who had expressed his reluctance to use aviation), Stalin issued the following order: “I don’t understand your fear that bombing might hurt the Korean population or your fear that aviation won’t be able to fulfill its mission because of fog. Who forbade you to hurt the Korean population in time of war with Japan? Why would you care about Koreans when the Japanese are striking at lots of our people? What do a few clouds matter to Bolshevik aviation when it wants to truly defend the honor of its Motherland?”
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While the Battle of Lake Khasan ended favorably for the Soviet side, the clash exposed significant shortcomings in the combat readiness of Red Army troops and command structures. As usual, Stalin assumed that the army’s poor performance was the result of treachery. Marshal Bliukher was arrested and died in prison after being brutally tortured.

Repression and the perception of Soviet weakness were not the primary causes of Stalin’s deteriorating relations with the West. The mass arrests just added to Western leaders’ list of reasons for mistrusting him. A warming of relations with France in the mid-1930s did not last, despite the threat posed to both countries by the rapid rise of Nazism. In the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Western democracies found themselves in frequent disagreement. Underlying this tendency toward poor relations, despite their common collective security concerns, was the fundamental incompatibility of Stalinism with “bourgeois” democracy. During the second half of the 1930s Western leaders preferred to appease Hitler rather than form an alliance with Stalin, a trend that reached its climax with the Munich Agreement. On 30 September 1938, the leaders of Great Britain and France, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, signed an agreement with Hitler and Mussolini handing over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, an area primarily populated by German speakers, to Germany. Czechoslovakia was forced to accept this devastating pact. The Soviet Union was simply ignored, even though it and France had signed mutual assistance agreements with Czechoslovakia. Stalin was shut out of European great power politics.

Stalin undoubtedly took such marginalization as a personal insult. Munich only intensified his fear that the democracies and fascists were conspiring against the USSR and planning to channel Nazi aggression eastward. He could not respond from a position of strength. In addition to expressing his outrage, in late September Stalin ordered a Red Army troop buildup along the USSR’s western border, a purely demonstrative move that is unlikely to have worried the Germans. In any event, just days later, in mid-October, the Politburo decided to disband the reserve units that had been mobilized in response to the events in Czechoslovakia. A total of 330,000 troops, 27,500 horses, and 5,000 vehicles and tractors were released from active duty.
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In practical terms, Stalin could do little about the Munich Agreement beyond trying to drive a wedge between the Western democracies and Hitler. To this end, he made a series of statements condemning Great Britain and France, while opening the door to improved bilateral relations with Germany. The most significant overture to Germany came during a speech at the Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, in which Stalin warned the English and French that he had no intention of “pulling the chestnuts out of the fire” for them (a line that earned this address the nickname “the chestnut speech” in the West) and accused them of attempting to provoke conflict between the USSR and Germany. He told Germany that the Western powers had not succeeded in “enraging the Soviet Union against Germany, poisoning the atmosphere, and provoking conflict with Germany on no apparent grounds.”
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These pronouncements took on special significance several days later when Europe’s fragile peace was broken. Hitler, confident that no one would stop him, seized the entire territory of Czechoslovakia. Even the most optimistic observers now realized that Munich had made world war all but inevitable. As a third party to the growing conflict, Stalin and the Soviet Union were in a position to choose sides.

The spring and summer of 1939 were a time of urgent diplomatic maneuvering and negotiation. Understanding the nature of these efforts and the actual intentions of the parties involved was difficult enough for their direct participants, to say nothing of historians today. Nobody trusted anybody, and all were trying to outsmart their adversaries and partners alike. Such confusion was surely true of the talks between the Soviet Union and the Western powers of England and France. Progress was painfully slow, despite the efforts of Soviet foreign affairs commissar Maksim Litvinov, who staked his reputation on building cohesion among anti-Hitler forces.
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In early May 1939, Stalin relieved Litvinov of his duties and put Molotov in charge of foreign affairs. This change was undoubtedly intended as a gesture of friendship toward Germany, but it also radically reshaped foreign policy decision making. The new arrangement allowed Stalin to take full control of foreign affairs, not only in terms of their guiding principles (as he had always done), but also their day-to-day operations. Molotov, with whom Stalin was in almost constant conversation, was a more convenient foreign-policy right hand than Litvinov, who rarely visited Stalin’s office. Such practical details were important to the
vozhd
. At the top tier of Soviet power, government was adapted to Stalin’s habits and rhythms, and the choice of Molotov to oversee foreign affairs at this critical time is a prime example of this adaptation.

What was uppermost in Stalin’s mind during this period—putting pressure on his Western partners or exploring the possibility of an alliance with the Nazis? It is tempting to assume that he had decided to align himself with Hitler long before the fateful events of 1939. Arguments in favor of this view include the general idea of an affinity between totalitarian regimes and Stalin’s mistrust of the changeable Western democracies, which seemed inclined to retreat in the face of brute force. But the foundation for a Nazi-Soviet alliance was actually flimsy. The available evidence offering insights into Stalin’s thinking is open to interpretation. On one hand, Mikoyan reported that Stalin spoke approvingly of Hitler’s 1934 purges.
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We also know that the Soviet leader initiated overtures aimed at establishing direct contact with Hitler.
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Most damning of all was the result: an impressive demonstration of Soviet-German “friendship” in the fall of 1939. But on the other hand, there is convincing evidence that Stalin had little faith in Hitler as a potential ally. If he trusted the German leader, there likely would not have been a powerful anti-Nazi propaganda campaign waged in the USSR or mass repression against Soviet Germans—both of which were carried out over the strong objections of the Nazi government. Stalin’s attitude toward the Germans seemed to alternate between approval and annoyance. Responding to a September 1938 NKVD memorandum about the destruction of a cemetery dating to World War I for German soldiers and officers in Leningrad Oblast, rather than replying with his usual laconic “in favor,” Stalin wrote, “Correct (tear it down and fill it in).”
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The German interpreter present at negotiations with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Moscow also offers some insight into the Soviet leader’s mindset. Stalin apparently rejected a draft of an upbeat press communiqué with the words: “Don’t you think that we should give more consideration to public opinion in both our countries? We’ve been slinging mud at one another for years now.”
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Whatever Stalin’s true inclinations were, it was Hitler who took the initiative in bringing about a Soviet-German non-aggression pact. As soon as the German chancellor decided that his invasion of Poland, scheduled for 1 September, would require Soviet cooperation, he took steps to promote a rapprochement between the two countries. On 21 August Stalin received a personal correspondence from Hitler hinting rather transparently at his plans for Poland and expressing the urgent desire to conclude a non-aggression pact within a few days. Hitler asked that Stalin receive von Ribbentrop in Moscow the very next day or at least on 23 August. On 21 August Molotov handed Stalin’s response to the German ambassador in Moscow. Von Ribbentrop could come to Moscow on the later date.
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Stalin and Molotov were both there to receive the German foreign minister. The meeting was cordial, even amicable. Each side got what it wanted. In addition to the non-aggression pact, Stalin insisted that a secret protocol be drawn up stipulating that Germany and the Soviet Union would divide up Eastern Europe. The eastern portion of Poland, which then included the western parts of both Ukraine and Belarus; Latvia; Estonia; and Finland were recognized as belonging within the Soviet sphere. Germany also supported Soviet pretensions to Bessarabia. Western Poland and Lithuania would go to Germany. Subsequent negotiations gave Lithuania to the Soviets. The protocol wound up being a sort of Brest-Litovsk in reverse. Hitler needed a worry-free border with the USSR, and he would pay for it with territorial concessions.

Stalin kept the threads of the Soviet-German negotiations in his own hands. The only other person involved was Molotov. What history calls the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was actually an agreement between Stalin and Hitler. Stalin took total responsibility for the “friendship” with Germany and doubtless had very specific motives for entering into the risky alliance. The nature of these motives is one of the most important questions facing his biographers.

First, there were the political and moral aspects of the problem. Stalin, no doubt, was fully aware of the agreements’ political and moral undesirability. We can infer this from the persistence with which the Soviet Union denied that a secret protocol existed. When copies came to light, Soviet leaders proclaimed them to be forgeries. Stalin understood that the sudden switch from hatred toward the Nazis to friendship would be ideologically disorienting, both within the USSR and in the world Communist movement. This problem was secondary, however, and could be dealt with using the boilerplate explanation: the pact was in the ultimate interests of socialism. Within the USSR, skeptics could be dealt with in the usual manner. The moral issue actually took on greater weight later, after Germany’s defeat, when the international community condemned Nazism as an absolute evil.

In 1939, even the most democratic of Western politicians took a flexible approach to dealing with the Nazis—anything to avoid war. Great Britain and France could hardly be proud of these policies, and it would be naive to expect Stalin to sympathize with their approach. Nobody was refusing to deal with Hitler out of principle; it was a matter of what agreements were achievable and acceptable. In terms of political pragmatism, Stalin was no worse than the Western parties to the Munich Agreement. In signing the Munich pact, Great Britain and France not only shielded themselves from Hitler’s aggression—or so they thought—but also placed a number of small countries, not just the Sudetenland, in peril. Stalin took his self-interest a step further and joined in the division of Eastern Europe. He was sure that Munich had pushed Hitler’s aggression eastward, so it only made sense for him to set the Führer’s mind at rest about the East and attempt to turn him back toward the West. From the Soviet perspective, Stalin was only trying to get back what was rightfully Russia’s. Redressing a historical injustice by restoring parts of the Russian Empire that had been taken by force when the country was weakened by war and revolution must have been a part of the Soviet dictator’s thinking. This motive drew sympathy not only within the USSR, but among some foreigners as well.