Stalin (55 page)

Despite some initial successes by the North, this start to the war dampened Kim Il Sung’s confidence. Stalin demanded that the war go on and encouraged the North Koreans with advice and new deliveries of military hardware. “In our opinion the attack absolutely must continue and the sooner South Korea is liberated the less chance there is for intervention,” Stalin wrote the Soviet ambassador in Pyongyang on 1 July 1950.
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But the wager on a victorious conclusion to the war before serious American forces could reach the peninsula failed. After capturing almost all of South Korea by September, the North Koreans were not able to fully expel its government. The Americans launched a powerful counterstrike. Under the UN flag, coalition forces advanced rapidly and by the end of October had captured most of North Korea and taken Pyongyang. The time had come for the Soviet side to play its final card: the Chinese “volunteers.”

Now began the confusing and still little-studied negotiations between Stalin and the Chinese leadership. At one point it appeared they had ended in failure. On 13 October Stalin sent the following directive to Kim Il Sung: “We feel that continuing resistance is pointless. The Chinese comrades are refusing to take part militarily. Under these circumstances you must prepare to evacuate completely to China and/or the USSR. It is of the utmost importance to withdraw all troops and military hardware. Draw up a detailed plan of action and follow it rigorously. The potential for fighting the enemy in the future must be preserved.”
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The Soviet ambassador urgently met with the North Korean leaders and read them Stalin’s telegram. As the ambassador reported, “Kim Il Sung stated that it was very hard for them [to accept Stalin’s recommendation], but since there is such advice they will fulfill it.”
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How serious was Stalin’s directive? Was he truly prepared to lose North Korea? Apparently he was. If the Chinese refused to send troops, Stalin had no other option since he categorically rejected the idea of bringing in Soviet troops. It is also possible, however, that Stalin believed the decision to evacuate forces might lead the Chinese to think twice. The American advance was more threatening to China than to the USSR. Furthermore, having announced his intention to withdraw, Stalin continued to try to engage the Chinese. He made concessions on the question of arms deliveries and offered more specific promises to deploy Soviet air cover. These efforts bore fruit. Mao agreed to enter the war. “The old man writes to us that we must step up,” is how he described Stalin’s demands to his comrades.
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Battered by the Chinese, the South Koreans and their allies withdrew from North Korea. In early 1951 they lost Seoul for the second time. Then came a counterstrike from the South. It was beginning to look like neither side could achieve a decisive victory. The Soviet Union tried to stay in the shadows, although Stalin did keep his promise to provide covert air support for Kim Il Sung’s and Mao Zedong’s forces. The main victims of this great-power standoff were the Korean people. Millions of lives were lost, and the Koreans were forced to live as a divided nation. Those in the North endured one of history’s most brutal dictatorships, a regime that largely followed the Stalinist model.

The Korean War heightened international tensions and spurred the arms race. While the development of military industries had always been an unquestioned priority for the Soviet leadership, during the final years of Stalin’s life the buildup moved to a new level. In January 1951 a meeting was held between the Soviet leadership and top officials from the Eastern bloc. Archival documents relating to this meeting remain classified. The only reason historians know it even took place is that it is mentioned in various memoirs. The most detailed description of what happened there is given in the memoirs of Hungarian Communist Party leader Matyas Rakosi. According to his account, the Soviet side was represented by Stalin and several members of the Politburo and military. The East European countries sent their first party secretaries and defense ministers (only the Polish party secretary was absent). Sergei Shtemenko, chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of the USSR, gave a speech about the growing threat from NATO and the need to counterbalance it with a military buildup by the socialist countries. The Soviet leadership assigned the satellite countries the task of greatly increasing the size of their armies within three years and creating a military-industrial foundation to support this enhanced military might. Shtemenko provided specific numerical targets.

Rakosi states that Shtemenko’s numbers provoked debate. He quotes the Polish defense minister, Konstantin Rokossovsky, as saying that the army the Poles were being asked to assemble by 1953 was already being planned but would not be attainable until 1956. Other representatives also questioned their countries’ abilities to manage such a rapid buildup. The Soviets, however, were adamant. Stalin answered Rokossovsky that the timetable set forth by the Poles could remain in place only if Rokossovsky could guarantee no new wars before 1956. Absent such a guarantee, it was better to adopt Shtemenko’s proposal.
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We do not know what plans were on the drawing board for the Soviet military or to what extent they were realized. There is nevertheless sufficient evidence to conclude that Stalin was aiming for a serious military buildup. According to official figures, the army, which had been reduced to 2.9 million soldiers by 1949, had reached 5.8 million by 1953.
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Investment in the military and naval ministries, as well as production of military arms and hardware, grew by 60 percent in 1951 and 40 percent in 1952. As a comparison, government investment in the non-military sectors of the Soviet economy grew by 6 percent in 1951 and 7 percent in 1952.
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Development of nuclear weaponry and delivery systems remained the highest-priority and most expensive military program. In addition to the nuclear project, significant resources were dedicated to rocket technology, jet-propelled aviation, and an air defense system for Moscow.
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During the final months of his life, Stalin showed his determination to outpace his rivals in the arms race. In February 1953 he approved major programs in aviation and naval ship construction. The first provided for the creation of 106 bomber divisions by the end of 1955, up from 32 as of 1953. In order to outfit new divisions, the plan was to build 10,300 planes during 1953–1955 and increase the air and naval forces by 290,000 people. The second program allocated huge resources to the construction of heavy and medium cruisers before 1959. Soviet military bases were established in the Far Eastern regions of Kamchatka and Chukotka, close to the maritime boundary with the United States.
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Did this buildup mean that Stalin was planning to launch a preemptive strike and unleash a new world war? There is no evidence to support this line of speculation. It is important to note that the massive arms buildup programs were planned to take place over several years. Historians of Soviet foreign policy also note Stalin’s caution and pragmatism in the international arena. During the postwar years he behaved toward the West approximately as he had toward Nazi Germany before the war. He preferred behind-the-scenes maneuvering over direct confrontation. This approach had been on display in the Korean War. While encouraging its continuation, Stalin had consistently avoided direct conflict with the Americans. He had intentionally dragged out the signing of an armistice, seeing the war as a way to let others get their hands dirty weakening the United States. In a private conversation with the Chinese leader Zhou Enlai a few months before his death, Stalin frankly and cynically explained: “This war is causing the Americans a lot of headaches. The North Koreans have lost nothing, except for the casualties they took during this war.… You have to have self-control, patience. Of course you have to understand the Koreans—they’ve taken a lot of casualties, but you have to explain to them that this is something big. You have to have patience, you have to have great self-control.”
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It took Stalin’s death to free the Koreans from the obligation of taking casualties to further another country’s interests. His heirs pursued a policy of relaxing international tensions and reducing the burden of the arms race. By July 1953 a decision was made to conclude a truce in Korea. Stalin’s death brought an end to the USSR’s ruinous military buildup, including the creation of armadas of bombers. The country could not endure the strains of the arms race and demanded the reforms that Stalin had refused to give it.

Military spending was not the only reason for a ballooning government budget during Stalin’s final years. There is copious evidence of the
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’s passion for large-scale, expensive projects toward the end of his life. These projects were often cast by official propaganda as “the Stalinist building of communism.” They included huge hydroelectric power plants, canals, and rail lines into the nation’s inaccessible polar reaches. To strengthen communication with newly acquired Far Eastern territories, a ferry crossing and a 13.6-kilometer underwater tunnel to the island of Sakhalin were planned, along with a rail line connecting the tunnel with the country’s train network. As was usually the case with Stalinism, behind the appealing propagandistic façade lurked an unsavory reality: communism was largely being built on the backs of prisoners.
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Exorbitant spending on infrastructure once again plunged the Soviet economy into financial crisis. The chaotic proliferation of projects led to losses on uncompleted construction, which later had to be finished at far greater cost than initially projected. In 1951 and 1952 this extravagance reached its limit. Construction projects fell behind schedule and the launch of new ones was delayed. The picture was completed by stagnation in agriculture and consumer spending—the sectors that funded heavy industry. Undaunted, Stalin devised a plan for a new surge of capital investment in 1953.
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At the end of his life he stubbornly repeated the mistakes of the First Five-Year Plan’s forced industrialization.

As far as can be determined from available documents, this unfolding crisis was not seriously discussed at the upper echelons of power. Until the very end Stalin demanded the expansion of heavy industry and military buildup at any cost. As in the past, he agreed to limited concessions and policy adjustments only when problems grew so severe that his hand was forced. Clearly unwilling to acknowledge the systemic crisis, he reluctantly addressed only its most obvious manifestations.

As often happened, the first signs of approaching calamity came from the most disadvantaged sector of the Soviet economy: agriculture. The Soviet countryside bore the brunt of unbalanced economic policies and of the new obligations and taxes that supported growing government expenditures. Under the inefficient kolkhoz system, agriculture was stagnant and incapable of feeding the country. The livestock situation was particularly bad. Even official Soviet statistics showed that there were no more head of cattle in the country in early 1953 than there had been in 1939, and that number was one-third less what it had been in 1928. The number of pigs in 1953 was the same as in 1928.
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The numerous complaints sent to Moscow from across the country painted a desperate picture. Some of these cries for help reached Stalin.

Among the letters received in October and November 1952 and selected to be shown to Stalin were a few complaints from various parts of the USSR about the hardships suffered on collective farms.
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A veterinarian from the Orekhovo-Zuevo District of Moscow Oblast, N. I. Kholodov, called for incentives for work by kolkhozniks, who were essentially forced to labor for no pay. Kholodov wrote:

According to our press, we have tremendous achievements in agriculture.… Let us take a look at how matters stand in reality. The rye was poorly harvested, poorly because there is colossal waste in the harvesting process.… The potatoes have been harvested somehow, but what kind of a harvest is this? They were dug up by workers mobilized from plants and factories who were drawing 50% of their salaries for this period, and they do not try to gather all the potatoes because they do not have an interest in this; they try to finish up as quickly as possible and gather only what is on top.…

Now let us look at animal husbandry. Even talking about it is embarrassing: annual yield of milk from year to year does not exceed 1,200–1,400 liters per forage-fed cow. This is ridiculous—it’s what you get from your average goat.

Alongside these tales of dysfunction in the countryside, Stalin’s mail in late 1952 contained eloquent accounts of empty store shelves in cities. In early November the
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took notice of a letter from V. F. Deikina, the party secretary for a railway station in Riazan Oblast. She wrote:

It is now October, and here we have to wait in line for black bread, and sometimes you can’t get any at all, and workers are saying so many unpleasant words and they don’t believe what’s written [in newspapers] and say that we’re being deceived.… I’ll stick to the facts since there’s not enough paper to describe it all and send it in a letter.

 1. You have to stand in line for black bread.

 2. You can’t get white bread at all.

 3. There’s neither butter nor vegetable oil.

 4. There’s no meat in the stores.

 5. There’s no sausage.

 6. There are no groats of any kind.

 7. There’s no macaroni or other flour products.

 8. There’s no sugar.

 9. There are no potatoes in the stores.

10. There is no milk or other dairy products.

11. There is no form of animal fat (lard, etc.).…

I’m not a slanderer and I’m not being spiteful; I’m writing the bitter truth, but that’s the way it is.… The local leadership gets everything illegally, under the table, so to speak; their underlings deliver everything to their apartments. For them the people can do as they please; that’s not their concern.… I am asking for a commission to be sent to bring the guilty to justice, to teach the right people how to plan for needs. Otherwise, those with full bellies don’t believe the hungry.