Cold War MegaThread
Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2023 9:09 am
Cold War
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Contents
VICTORS WRITE HISTORY
AID TO GREEK GUERILLAS
STALIN INSISTS ART REFLECT REALITY
SU PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP SAVED THE SU AND THE CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES
SU DID NOT SOCIALIZE EASTERN EUROPE WHEN IT COULD HAVE
US STOLE SOME ISLANDS IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER
GROMYKO JUSTIFIES THE HELP GIVEN TO HUNGARY
GROMYKO EXTOLS MOLOTOV’S ROLE IN THE GOVT
US TRIES TO DICTATE PEACE IN ASIA AND DETERMINE EAST EUROPE GOVTS
SU TOOK BACK AFTER WWII TERRITORY THAT WAS THEIRS
SU REVIVES AFTER WWII BY INTEGRATING EASTERN EUROPE NOT EXPLOITING IT
STALIN CONVENED THE 1952 PARTY CONGRESS
KIM IL SUNG STARTED THE KOREAN WAR NOT STALIN
TITO PUSHED THE HUNGARIAN INVASION
KHRUSHCHOV AND STALIN WRESTLE WITH THE EAST GERMAN PROBLEM
STALIN ATTACKS MAO FOR RELYING ON PEASANTS ONLY AND NON-MARXISM
SU BUILT UP AUSTRIAN ECONOMY AFTER THE WAR
STALIN WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR GOMULKA’S IMPRISONMENT
MOLOTOV SAYS CHURCHILL WAS THE SMARTEST 100% IMPERIALIST
MOLOTOV JUSTIFIES DECLINING MARSHALL PLAN AID
MOLOTOV AND STALIN SUPPORT THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
MOLOTOV SAYS MAO WAS NEVER A MARXIST AND HAD IMPRACTICAL IDEAS
CHOU EN-LAI WAS PRACTICAL AND CLEVER BUT NO THEORIST
MOLOTOV SPOKE AGAINST TITO BUT NO ONE SUPPORTED HIM
MOLOTOV SAYS TITO IS A PETTY-BOURGEOIS OPPOSED TO SOCIALISM
STANDARD OF LIVING IS HIGHER IN SOCIALIST EASTERN EUROPE THAN THE SU
STALIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING AN ATOMIC BOMB
STALIN’S ATOMIC DIPLOMACY
HISS WAS NOT A PAID OR CONTROLLED SOVIET AGENT
TIMASHUK’S LETTER REGARDING THE DOCTOR’S PLOT
STALIN PROMOTES ZHUKOV
MOLOTOV’S WIFE WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE ANTI-ZIONISM EFFORT
EAST GERMAN RIOTS CAUSED BY DISAGREEMENT IN GOVT
STALIN IS VERY UPSET WHEN GOES OUT AND SEES THE WAR’S DESTRUCTION
STALIN DID NOT BELIEVE THERE WAS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE FOR A DOCTOR’S PLOT
STALIN FORESAW A RAPID RECOVERY OF GERMANY
SU DID NOT FORCE SOCIALISM ON EASTERN EUROPE BUT IT AROSE INTERNALLY
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VICTORS WRITE HISTORY
What the 21st century will call them [acts which could be considered treasonous] will depend on who are the victors. The victors always write the history books.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 122
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AID TO GREEK GUERILLAS
Second Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
March-April 1949
In conclusion, I mentioned to Comrade Stalin the threats the external enemies were making towards Albania.
He listened to me attentively and, on the problems I had raised, expressed his opinion:
“As for the Greek people’s war,” he said among other things, “we, too, have always considered it a just war, have supported and backed it whole-heartedly. Any people’s war is not waged by the communists alone, but by the people, and the important thing is that the communists should lead it.”
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.
Here [Greece] we meet another “left” criticism of Stalin, similar to that made about his role in Spain but even further removed from the facts of the matter. As in the rest of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Communist had led and armed the heroic Greek underground and partisan fighters. In 1944 the British sent an expeditionary force commanded by general Scobie to land in Greece, ostensibly to aid in the disarming of the defeated Nazi and Italian troops. As unsuspecting as their comrades in Vietnam and Korea, who were to be likewise “assisted,” the Greek partisans were slaughtered by their British “allies,” who used tanks and planes in all-out offensive, which ended in February 1945 with the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship under a restored monarchy. The British even rearmed and used the defeated Nazi “Security Battalions.” After partially recovering from this treachery, the partisan forces rebuilt their guerrilla apparatus and prepared to resist the combined forces of Greek fascism and Anglo-American imperialism. By late 1948 full-scale civil war raged, with the right-wing forces backed up by the intervention of U.S. planes, artillery, and troops. The Greek resistance had its back broken by another betrayal, not at all by Stalin, but by Tito, who closed the Yugoslav borders to the Soviet military supplies that were already hard put to reach the landlocked popular forces. This was one of the two main reasons why Stalin, together with the Chinese, led the successful fight to have the Yugoslav “Communist” Party officially thrown out of the international Communist movement.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 34
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STALIN INSISTS ART REFLECT REALITY
Fifth Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
April 1951
Some days after this meeting, on April 6, I went to the Bolshoi Theatre to see the new opera ‘From the Depths of Heart’ which, as I was told before the performance, dealt with the new ”life in the collective farm village. That same evening Comrade Stalin, too, had come to see this opera. He sat in the box of the first floor closest to the stage, whereas I, together with two of our comrades and two Soviet comrades who accompanied us, was in the box in the second floor, on the opposite side.
The next day I was told that Stalin had made a very severe criticism of this opera, which had already been extolled by some critics as a musical work of value. I was told that Comrade Stalin had criticized the opera, because it did not reflect the life in the collectivized village correctly and objectively. Comrade Stalin had said that in this work life in the collective farm had been idealized, truthfulness has suffered, the struggle of the masses against various shortcomings and difficulties was not reflected, and everything was covered with a false lustre and the dangerous idea that everything is going smoothly and well.
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.
The great idea is to confer upon the writer (while at the same time enlarging the scope of his work), the mission of setting out, as clearly as possible, the scientific and moral evidences of socialism–but without paralyzing literary activity by pinning it down exclusively to political propaganda. This application of the social sense to creative work implies the definite abolition of “art for art’s sake,” and of individually selfish art with its narrowness and its pessimism.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 207
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SU PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP SAVED THE SU AND THE CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES
Had the USSR been a political democracy of the Western type during the past 20 years, had its people been permitted to choose what was soft, easy, and pleasant, rather than what was hard, painful, and necessary, the Soviet Union would not exist today. Its destroyers would also, in all likelihood, have destroyed the independence of Britain and the freedom of America as well, for the military collapse of Russia would have rendered the victors invulnerable and invincible. Dictatorship has been the price of survival for the USSR and for the United Nations.. Herein lies its justification — except in the eyes of those who are conccerned only with the propriety of means and never with the primacy of ends, or with the eternal verities to the exclusion of the tough tasks of the day, or with the virtues of national suicide under unrestricted freedom as against the vices of national survival by way of coercion.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 326
Had nazi and Japanese forces effected a junction in India in 1942, the defense of Russia and Britain, and prospectively of America, would have become all but impossible.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 559
In World War II Russia saved the west by defeating the fascist powers.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 7
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SU DID NOT SOCIALIZE EASTERN EUROPE WHEN IT COULD HAVE
What is surprising is not that so-called “totalitarian” methods of winning friends and influencing people were displayed in these lands during and after their liberation, but that dictatorial devices were not employed more extensively. Moscow had the power (at the risk, to be sure, of a rupture with the Atlantic Powers) to give unqualified support to Communist groups and to Sovietize this whole vast region. With judicious moderation, it refrained from doing so. In no case did its program precipitate civil war within the lands freed by the Red Army, despite widespread resentment at requisitions by Soviet troops who lived off the land.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 526
Soon, it became clear that none of the ruined nations of East Europe could hope for reconstruction loans from Washington, unless they remade their governments to suit the USA. To some extent they were willing to do this. Bulgaria changed its cabinet at Washington’s order and postponed an election when America protested its form. All of the East European nations hoped for American loans and were willing to make adjustments. They offered industrial concessions to foreign capital; they were ready to postpone socialism, as Lenin did in the days of NEP. Nor did Moscow object to this; Moscow was not at all anxious to take on the economic problems of East Europe, in addition to her own. If these lands could get American loans by concessions to capitalism, Moscow was not disposed to interfere.
In the first years after victory– Moscow handled affairs in East Europe with a loose hand. Americans supposed the arriving Red Army would at once “sovietize” these eastern nations, nationalize industry, collective farms. American correspondents were amazed to discover that the Red Army did not even stop King Michael’s jailing of Communists; they called it Romania’s affair. When I was in Poland in 1945, it was “treason” to urge collective farming, lest this alienate the peasant. Moscow intended to have “friendly nations” on her border but many of Moscow’s acts in 1945-46–the long tolerance of King Michael’s brutally reactionary regime in Romania, the lack of Russian support to Communists fighting in Greece, the calling off of Bulgarian elections because of an American protest, the acceptance of three Poles from London into the Warsaw cabinet–indicated that Stalin would make many concessions in East Europe to keep his wartime friendship with Britain and the United States.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 108
I visited Rumania after the Russian occupation. All the government authorities and the common people testified to the fact that Russia gave freedom to the democratic elements in Rumania to govern themselves.
I also visited Finland. An election was held after the Russians had freed it from the Germans. As far as I could find out, no one charged that the election had been influenced by the Russians. The electoral results showed the Finnish Communists to be in the minority. Similarly in Hungary and Austria, the Soviets permitted governments to be formed which are not communist by any stretch of the imagination.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 99
Stalin does not wish to have a Communist government set up in the occupied areas now. He would prefer a liberal democratic coalition of elements friendly to Russia–officials who would not be secretly plotting war against either Poland or the Soviet Union [as did the Germans].
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 102
What, then, does the Soviet Union want in the countries which surround her?
First of all, friendly governments. Russia would prefer not to have communist governments now, but does not object to communist control if that is the genuine desire of the majority of the population of the country concerned. I saw an example of this last in the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, now Soviet Republics. On my visit there I found that the workers and peasants, who make up a majority of the population, were all in favor of being part of the Soviet Union. The middle classes wanted to be independent, but admitted that they had an oppressive dictatorship before the present government. The propertied classes wanted to do away with Soviet rule so that they could get back their factories and property. Every person I met, without exception, preferred the Republics to the German occupation. These countries prospered after they became Soviet republics, and it is likely that popular support for the present status will increase rather than lessen.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 103
…But I can till you something about what it was like when the Red Army conquered Rumania and from this you may… be able to piece together a pattern of a destiny soon to unfold throughout the Balkans.
In Dorohoi and Botosani, two prefectures in Rumanian Moldavia which had been held by the Russians since April, 1944, I talked to mayors and to village officials, to trade unionists and to farmers, to Jewish refugees from Antonescu’s concentration camps and to a Rumanian chief of police, to representatives of several large American business organizations and to a mother superior in a Rumanian convent.
All these people, some with satisfaction and others with regret, agreed on one thing: they said the Russians had not instigated any revolutionary movements. They said the Red Army had observed the Molotov declaration with disciplined correctness–and we saw the declaration posted wherever the hammer and sickle flew.
There appeared to be no open effort by the Red Army to propagandize the masses in favor of communism or socialism. Pictures of the King and Queen and of the late Dowager Queen Marie still hung on the walls of official buildings, while Stalin’s portrait was strangely absent, except in offices of the Red Army. On the surface of things, nothing suggested that the inhabitants did not enjoy a degree of liberty which, considering that Rumania was still a country at war against Russia, was astonishing. In fact, many of the Rumanians apparently wanted to fight on the winning side now. The handsome young Russian commandant of Dorohoi told me that peasants were coming to him every day, asking to enlist in the Red Army.
“The loyalty of the population is remarkable,” said he. “Men wish to become soldiers and women wish to join up as nurses. We have to refuse as politely as we can.”
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 28
…Will Russia put her dearly won understandings with Britain and America in jeopardy by attempting to establish paramountcy of Communism? I was speculating about this one day with an elderly Communist, and this is what he said: “If any one had told me a few years ago that there would be no revolution in Eastern Europe after this war, I would have called that man crazy. But that’s the way it is now. Russia above all wants stability in this part of the world and where the Red Army goes there will be no revolution.”
It seemed true enough, if you applied traditional Marxist definitions of a working-class revolution. In the liberated lands beyond Soviet borders one saw no proletarian uprisings of the conventional pattern. There were no open exhortations to workers to overthrow the bourgeoisie; no demands for a “workers and peasants dictatorship”; no open denunciations of capitalism; no extravagant prophecies of an early Communist or socialist Europe. The familiar terminology of class warfare seemed almost to have disappeared from the lexicon of Europe’s Leftists. If the Kremlin was fostering revolution it was doing so with a hand heavily gloved in velvet, and it was pointing rather than pushing.
…”But no one can say that the Comintern or the Soviet government is bolshevizing these countries,” he [a loyal follower of Stalin] rejoined.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 59
At the same time, however, Stalin managed to establish and to obtain his allies sanction for two principles, both very hazy, by which political life in the Russian zone was to be guided. One was that he should be free to intervene against pro-Nazi and fascist parties and groups and to establish a democratic order in the countries neighboring Russia. The other was that the Governments of those countries should be ‘friendly to Russia’. For the first time Stalin applied these principles to the Polish issue, which stood at the center of allied diplomatic activity throughout the last part of the war. His purpose was to prevail upon the western allies that they should abandon the Polish government in London, on the ground that it was neither democratic nor friendly to Russia…. Apart from the fact that he undoubtedly believed that what he did served a profoundly Democratic purpose, the strength of his argument was in the fact that the Polish Government in London had indeed been a motley coalition of half-Conservative peasants, moderate Socialists, and of people who could not by any criterion, ‘eastern’ or ‘western’, be labeled democrats. The core of its administration consisted of the followers of the Polish dictators Pilsudski and Rydz-Smigly. More important still, the members of that Government, democratic and anti-democratic, were, with very few exceptions, possessed by that Russophobia which had been the hereditary propensity of Polish policy, a propensity enhanced by what the Poles had suffered at Russian hands since 1939. In truth, of all Polish parties, only the Communists were friendly to Russia’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 520
The question must be asked whether Stalin, while he was bargaining for his zone of influence, already contemplated putting it under exclusive Communist control. Had the scheme of revolution been in his mind at the time of Tehran or Yalta? Had it finally taken shape at the time of Potsdam? His detractors as well as his apologists concur on this point, for both want us to see an extremely shrewd and far-sided design behind his actions. Yet Stalin’s actions show many strange and striking contradictions which do not indicate that he had any revolutionary master-plan. They suggest, on the contrary, that he had none. Here are a few of the most glaring contradictions. If Stalin consistently prepared to install a Communist government in Warsaw, why did he so stubbornly refuse to make any concessions to Poles over their eastern frontier? Would it not have been all the same to him whether, say, Lvov, that Polish-Ukrainian city, was ruled from Communist Kiev or from Communist Warsaw? Yet such a concession would have enormously strengthened the hands of the Polish left. Similarly, if he had beforehand planned revolution for eastern Germany, why did he detach from Germany and incorporate into Poland all the German provinces east of the Neisse and the 0der, the acquisition of which even the Poles themselves had not dreamt? Why did he insist on the expulsion of the whole German population from those lands, an act that could not but further embitter the German people not only against the Poles but also against Russia and communism. His claim for reparations to be paid by Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Finland, understandable as it was in view of the devastation of the Ukraine and other Soviet lands, could not but have the same damaging effect on the Communist cause in those countries. This was even truer of Stalin’s demand for the liquidation of the bulk of German industry. Already at Teheran, if not earlier, he had given notice that he would raise that demand; at Yalta he proposed that 80 percent of German industry should be dismantled within two years after the cease-fire; and he did not abate that demand at Potsdam. He could not have been unaware that his scheme, as chimerical as ruthless, if it had been carried out, would have entailed the dispersal of the German working-class, the main, if not the only, social force to which communism could have appealed and whose support it might have enlisted. Not a single one of these policies can by any stretch of the imagination be described as a stepping-stone towards revolution. On the contrary, in every one of those moves, Stalin himself was laboriously erecting formidable barriers to revolution. This alone seems to warrant the conclusion that even at the close of the war his intentions were still extremely self-contradictory, to say the least.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 536
Mikolajczyk reports a curious conversation with Stalin in August 1944. Not without peasant-like slyness, the Polish politician tried to sound Stalin on his plans for Germany, and told him that German prisoners, captured by the Poles, allegedly expressed the hope that after the war Germany would embrace communism and, as the foremost Communist state, go on to rule the world. Stalin, so Mikolajczyk reports, replied indignantly that ‘communism fitted Germany as a saddle fitted a cow’. This contemptuous aphorism undoubtedly reflected his mood. It harmonized so perfectly with the whole trend of his policy vis-a-vis Germany, it was so spontaneous, so organic, so much in line with what we know of his old disbelief in western European communism, and it accorded so much with all that he said and did in those days, that it could not have been sheer tactical bluff.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 537
Early in 1947, he still hesitated whether he should carry to its conclusion the ‘revolution from above’ in eastern Europe, where he still tolerated non-Communist parties in the governments and allowed some scope to capitalist interests.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 581
Since the Allied Control Commissions had been established in the ex-Nazi satellite states of Rumania and Bulgaria as well as Hungary, Soviet control over these states was only to be 75-25, while Britain (“in accord with the USA”) would enjoy 90-10 control in Greece.
Rose, Lisle Abbott. After Yalta. New York: Scribner, 1973, p. 15
At this stage, to avoid the charge of a Communist takeover, Stalin took care to see that the governments formed, with Soviet approval, were coalitions of radical and peasant parties with Communists holding key ministries, such the Ministry of the Interior responsible for the police. In the case of Hungary, four non-Communist parties were represented and Communists held only two ministerial offices. In Bulgaria a similar coalition had been formed under the umbrella of the Fatherland Front.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 895
In the first two years after the war, only Yugoslavia and Albania could be described as single-party Communist states, although even here the name was avoided in favor of the People’s Front and Democratic Front. The governments of the other five– Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria–were all coalitions. In two cases at least ( Czechoslovakia and Hungary) they were genuine coalitions in which several parties with their own organizations and very different views combined to carry out a short-term radical program with such reforms as the redistribution of land. When elections were held in Czechoslovakia in May 1946 and Hungary in November 1945 they were generally regarded as fair, producing a Communist success in the first case with 38 percent of the vote, and a Communist defeat in the second, with 57 percent for the Small Farmers’ party.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 928
… and it was security infinitely more than any ideological considerations which determined Stalin to create in Eastern and part of Central Europe a “friendly” cordon sanitaire, in place of that hostile cordon sanitaire which had been set up by the Western powers at the end of the First World War.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 56
Finland, which no longer represented any danger to the Soviet Union after the Second World War, continues to be a Western-type democracy to this day, and so does Austria. It has even been suggested by one American historian that Stalin would have been perfectly satisfied if half a dozen ” Finlands” could have been set up in Eastern Europe. But this was scarcely possible in a country like Poland, with its long tradition of Russo-phobia, nor very easy in countries like Romania and Hungary, once the Cold War, with its challenge to Russia’s “sphere of influence,” had got going in earnest–which it did from the very moment the Second World War had ended.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 56
He [Stalin] also denied–and this was characteristic of 1946–that there were “totalitarian police states” in the East European countries–Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria were governed by “a bloc of several parties ranging from four to six, and the more or less loyal opposition parties can take part in the government….”
Obviously, Stalin was not on very solid ground here, but to keep in with the West he had been anxious since the war to meet the Western powers at least part of the way. He had not–not yet–tried to impose all-communist governments on the Eastern countries, and at that time he valued the East/West coexistence as symbolized by Czechoslovakia and Finland. Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as ex-fascist powers, had to be dealt with rather more “vigilantly,” but even here pro-forma appearances were still being kept up, as they were in the very special case of Poland. If Yugoslavia was the most extremely communist country of the lot it was, in fact, against Stalin’s wishes.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 113
For the present [1947] Hungary was a strange amalgam of people’s democracy and bourgeois democracy, and American imperialism had not yet given up hope a winning her over and turning her into an anti-Soviet base.
… there were still many strongholds of “bourgeois democracy” in Hungary. A large part of industry and most of trade was still in private hands. The kulaks, dodging their duties, were supplying the black market. Many of the civil servants were still pre-war, and had served under Horthy. Clerical reaction was still very strong, as were the reactionary and pro–fascist parties in parliament, and there were right-wing anti–communist elements among the government parties.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 323
One of the troubles with the Hungarian CP had been that some of its older members had imagined that the experiment of 1919 would be resumed with the help of the Red Army, and that a Soviet Hungary would now be firmly set up. It took some time to explain to them that there could be no question of restoring the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that a people’s democracy, in which the CP cooperated with other progressive forces, was something quite different.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 324
Communism was triumphant and its leaders celebrated their victory. A technical point, however, had to be clarified. No one had yet explained how the new communist states were to be fitted into a Marxist-Leninist scheme of historical stages. Stalin had insisted that they should remain formally independent countries (and he discouraged early proposals for them to be simply annexed to the USSR as had been done with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 517
On 28 January 1945 Stalin said, “We have no wish to impose anything on the other Slavic peoples. We do not interfere in their internal affairs. Let them do what they can. The crisis of capitalism has manifested itself in the division of the capitalists into two factions– one fascist, the other democratic. The alliance between ourselves and the democratic faction of capitalists came about because the latter had a stake in preventing Hitler’s domination, for that brutal state would have driven the working class to extremes and to the overthrow of capitalism itself. We are currently allied with one faction against the other, but in the future we will be against the first faction of capitalist, too.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 358
Perhaps we are mistaken when we suppose that the Soviet form is the only one that leads to socialism. In practice, it turns out that the Soviet form is the best, but by no means the only, form. There may be other forms–the democratic republic and even under certain conditions the constitutional monarchy….
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 358
On 7 June 1945 Stalin proposed that they declare categorically that the path of imposing the Soviet system on Germany is an incorrect one; an anti-fascist democratic parliamentary regime must be established. The Communist Party proposes a bloc of anti-fascist parties with a common platform. Don’t speak so glowingly of the Soviet Union, and so on.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 372
On 6 December 1948 Stalin said to some Communist East European leaders, “In your country, where the working-class seized power not by means of an uprising but with help from outside–with the help of the Soviet army, in other words–the seizure of power was easier; you can do without the Soviet form, going back to the model of Marx and Engels– i.e., the people’s democratic parliamentary form. We are of the opinion that you can do without the Soviet regime. In your case, you will be able to carry out the transition from capitalism to socialism by means of a people’s democracy. The people’s democracy will play the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat….
As long as there are antagonistic classes, there will be dictatorship of the proletariat. But in your country, it will be a dictatorship of a different type. You can do without a Soviet regime.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 451
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US STOLE SOME ISLANDS IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER
At the same time, however, the U.S.A. was already hatching plans to take over the protectorates of the Marian, Carolingian and Marshall Islands in Micronesia–which in due course they did, thus breaking the U.N. Charter with an act of flagrant imperialistic robbery.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 121
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GROMYKO JUSTIFIES THE HELP GIVEN TO HUNGARY
Let me say something about the events that took place in Hungary in 1956. I was not yet Foreign Minister, but I was informed about the upheaval being experienced by a friendly country that had taken the path to socialism.
I must emphasize as strongly as I can that the help given to Hungary by the Soviet Union was absolutely justified.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 231
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GROMYKO EXTOLS MOLOTOV’S ROLE IN THE GOVT
Unquestionably, Molotov occupies a special place in the history of Soviet diplomacy. While continuing to hold a series of senior party jobs, he took over as Foreign Commissar from Litvinov in 1939, was succeeded as Foreign Minister–the title of post of commissar having been changed to minister in 1946–by Vyshinsky in 1949, and then held the post again from 1953 to 1956. He was in effect second in command throughout the Stalin period.
Of course, the main guidelines of foreign policy were determined by the Politburo, but even there Stalin’s opinion was decisive, and he left Molotov responsible for dealing with a number of issues involving other countries. In the U.S.A., Britain, and other Western countries Molotov was regarded as a ‘hardliner’ in foreign policy, but in fact he was no harder than the party and its Central Committee.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 313
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US TRIES TO DICTATE PEACE IN ASIA AND DETERMINE EAST EUROPE GOVTS
In the East, Washington not only took sole charge of the armistice with Japan, freezing both Russia and China out of the arrangements, but made supplementary terms with the Japanese generals, by which they kept on fighting the Chinese Communists until America’s $300 million airlift could bring Chang Kai-shek’s troops north to accept the surrender. In the West, Washington ordered Bulgaria to add to her cabinet some men of America’s choice, if she wished to be recognized. The Russians were astounded. “We don’t tell France, Belgium, or Holland to change their cabinets,” they said.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 107
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SU TOOK BACK AFTER WWII TERRITORY THAT WAS THEIRS
Insult seemed added to injury when American commentators more and more grudged Russia “the great territory grabbed in the war.” To Russians, this was their own territory, lost in the first world war, only partially regained in the second. The Russians had lost or ceded 330,000 square miles in the first war, and regained 250,000 square miles in the second, a net loss of 80,000 square miles, which roughly covered the territory ceded to Finland and Poland.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 111
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SU REVIVES AFTER WWII BY INTEGRATING EASTERN EUROPE NOT EXPLOITING IT
Let me illustrate by an anecdote. Ten years ago, I met a Czech in Moscow; he had come to make an economic treaty with the USSR. I asked him what truth there was in the American claim that Moscow exploited the East European lands. He replied: “when we deal with the Chiefs of Soviet industry, they bargain for their prices and we bargain for ours. They are tough bargainers. But if they press too hard then Gottwald takes it up with Stalin for a ‘political settlement,’ and says the terms will ruin us…. Then Stalin gives us help.”
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 127
Patrascanu accepted the armistice in the name of the King, and under the circumstances the terms seemed surprisingly moderate. Rumania had to pay an indemnity of $300 million, no more than that imposed on Finland. She lost no territory and earned a chance, by joining in an alliance with Russia, of getting back her prewar control of Transylvania, which Hitler had handed over to Hungary’s Admiral Horthy. Patrascanu seemed to think he had made a fair bargain.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 41
To speed up reconstruction and to raise the standard of living he had to draw on the economic resources of other nations.
In theory he could do that in three different ways. He might have asked the western allies, especially United States, for assistance. In the heyday of the alliance there had been much talk of American loans to Russia and of Russo-American trade. But amid the tensions and conflicts that developed later, the vistas of economic co-operation faded. Stalin must, anyhow, have been reluctant to bring his country to that position of relative dependence in which any debtor inevitably finds itself vis-a-vis his creditor. His choice was practically limited to two methods, one essentially nationalist, the other revolutionary. The nationalist method consisted in the imposition of tribute on the vanquished nations, the dismantlement and transfer to Russia of their industries, the levying of reparations from their current output, and the direct use of their labor. The revolutionary method, promising to bear fruit more slowly but more permanently, consisted in the broadening of the base on which planned economy was to operate, in an economic link-up between Russia and the countries within her orbit. The gradual integration into the system of planned economy of several small and medium-sized countries, most of which had been industrially more developed than Russia before the ’30s, promised to quicken the tempo of Russia’s as well as of their own reconstruction. The first condition of that integration was that communism should be in power in the countries concerned.
We have seen that the two policies, the nationalist and the revolutionary, clashed on crucial points. Stalin did not, nevertheless, make a clear-cut choice between the two; he pursued both lines simultaneously; but whereas the nationalist one predominated during the war, the revolutionary one was to gain momentum after the war.
… He now replaced his socialism in one country by something that might be termed ‘socialism in one zone’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 551-552
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STALIN CONVENED THE 1952 PARTY CONGRESS
In 1952 Stalin called us together and suggested that we should convene a party Congress.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 276
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KIM IL SUNG STARTED THE KOREAN WAR NOT STALIN
Nevertheless, Stalin decided to ask Mao Tse-tung’s opinion about Kim Il Sung’s suggestion. I must stress that the war wasn’t Stalin’s idea, but Kim Il Sung’s. Kim was the initiator.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 368
I’m telling the truth now for the sake of history: it was the initiative [to start the Korean War] of Comrade Kim Il Sung, and he was supported by Stalin and many others–in fact, by everybody.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 144
It was not Stalin’s initiative, but he supported Kim Il Sung. Although I blame Stalin for all the crimes he committed, on this I am with him. If I had had to make a decision, I would also have given my consent to Kim. This was a question of the internal affairs of Korea. It was only natural that the people of Korea were fighting then, and are still fighting, to become a unified, socialist Korea.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 145
Throughout 1949 the Soviet Union delivered weapons and other military equipment to North Korea at an intense pace, each consignment personally approved by Stalin. The North probed the South to test the strength of its defenses. They crossed the border and conducted ‘reconnaissance in force’. Following one such sortie, Shtykov [the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea] received a threatening telegram from Stalin, dated October 27, 1949: ‘You were forbidden to advise the government of North Korea to undertake active operations against the South Koreans without permission of the Center… You failed to report the preparation of major offensive actions by two police brigades and in practice you allowed our military advisers to take part in these actions…. We require an explanation.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 153
A key document is a special report from Shtykov to Stalin dated January 19, 1950:
“On the evening of January 17… Kim Il-sung declared that when he had been in Moscow, Comrade Stalin had told him he should not invade South Korea; if the army of Syngman Rhee were to invade the North, then it would be right to make a counter offensive against the South. But since up to this time Syngman Rhee has not started an offensive, it means that the liberation of the people of the southern part of the country continues to be delayed.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 154
The Korean communist leader Kim Il-Sung went to Moscow in March 1949 and requested a large increase in assistance so that he might attack the South. Stalin refused, advising the Korean comrades to get on with their preparations but to fight only if invaded.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 553
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TITO PUSHED THE HUNGARIAN INVASION
We reported to Tito on why we had come and confronted him with our decision to send troops into Budapest. We asked for his reaction. I expected even more strenuous objections from Tito than the ones we had encountered during our discussions with the Polish comrades. But we were pleasantly surprised. Tito said we were absolutely right and that we should send our soldiers into action as quickly as possible. He said we had an obligation to help Hungary crush the counterrevolution. He assured us that he completely understood the necessity of taking these measures. We had been ready for resistance, but instead we received his wholehearted support. I would even say he went further than we did in urging a speedy and decisive resolution of the problem.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 421
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KHRUSHCHOV AND STALIN WRESTLE WITH THE EAST GERMAN PROBLEM
Meanwhile, Walter Ulbricht and our other comrades in the GDR were facing serious troubles directly stemming from the ambiguous status of West Berlin. Berlin was an open city, which posed two problems: First, there was the problem of people crossing from East Berlin into West Berlin. The GDR had to cope with an enemy who was economically very powerful and therefore very appealing to the GDR’s own citizens. West Germany was all the more enticing to East Germans because they all spoke the same language. An East German with adequate professional qualifications had no difficulty finding a job if he moved to West Germany. The resulting drain of workers was creating a simply disastrous situation in the GDR, which was already suffering from a shortage of manual labor, not to mention specialized labor. If things had continued like this much longer, I don’t know what would have happened. I spent a great deal of time trying to think of a way out. How could we introduce incentives in the GDR to counteract the force behind the exodus of East German youths to West Germany? Here was an important question–the question of incentives. How could we create conditions in the GDR which would enable the state to regulate the steady attrition of its working force?
The second problem was the problem of the West Berliners’ easy access to East Berlin. Residents of West Berlin could cross freely into East Berlin, where they took advantage of all sorts of communal services like barbershops and so on. Because prices were much lower in East Berlin, West Berliners were also buying up all sorts of products which were in wide demand–products like meat, animal oil, and other food items, and the GDR was losing millions of marks.
Of course, even if we had a peace treaty, it wouldn’t have solved these problems because Berlin’s status as a free city would have been stipulated in the treaty and the gates would have remained open….
The GDR’s economic problems were considerably relieved by the establishment of border control between East and West Berlin. Comrade Ulbricht himself told me that the economy of the GDR immediately began to improve after the establishment of border control. The demand for food products in East Berlin went down because West Berliners were no longer able to shop there. This meant that the limited supply of consumer products was available exclusively to the citizens of East Berlin….
Of of course there were some difficulties. The East Berliners who had jobs in West Berlin were suddenly out of work. But there was never any problem of unemployment. On the contrary, most of the people affected were construction workers, who were very much needed in East Germany. They were all given jobs suitable to their qualifications….
If the GDR had fully tapped the moral and material potential which will someday be harnessed by the dictatorship of the working-class, there could be unrestricted passage back and forth between East and West Berlin. Unfortunately, the GDR–and not only the GDR–has yet to reach a level of moral and material development where competition with the West is possible. The reason is simply that West Germany possesses more material potential and therefore has more material goods than the GDR…. If we had at our disposal more material potential and had more ability to supply our material needs, there’s no question but that our people would be content with what they would have and they would no longer try to cross over to the West in such numbers that the drain has become a major threat to a state like the GDR.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 454-456
When the two German republics were being formed, West Berlin became a stumbling block and destroyed relations among former allies as well as between the East and the West. The West began to step up subversive efforts inside the GDR, using West Berlin as a base. This was fairly easy for the West to do because Germans were used against Germans. The usual problems of language, of a strange culture, and of outward appearance of agents did not exist as the West looked for agents to send into the East. Besides, there used to be unrestricted travel and communication between the two sides. The borders were open borders. Of course, this meant that the German Democratic Republic also had the opportunity to send agents against the Federal Republic of Germany, but the Western countries took the most advantage of the situation.
Therefore, the issue of how to combat Western influence arose. The best and most logical way to fight it was to try to win the minds of the people by using culture and politics to create better living conditions. That way people would really have the opportunity to exercise free choice.
However, given the conditions that developed in the two German states, there was no real freedom of choice to speak of. That is because West Germany was richer, with more industrial potential, more natural resources, and more production capacity. It was hard for East Germany to compete.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 163
Moreover, West Germany was supported by the United States’ industrial and financial might. The GDR was fighting not only against the opportunities that existed within West Germany, but also against the added material incentives of the United States.
The West’s goal was to turn West Berlin into what is called a mirror of Western life, a showcase for the capitalist world, in order to attract the people of East Berlin into resisting the steps toward socialism being taken in the GDR. These tactics might have seemed perfectly acceptable: let each person make up his or her own mind. There was no contradiction in this. It was a war for people’s minds, not an armed conflict. In fact, we Communists also wage a war for people’s minds all over the world when we demonstrate the advantages of the socialist system of production and when we talk about how socialism is a more democratic system that gives more opportunity to the people. Socialism makes better use of the resources accumulated by the people and provides better distribution of riches among the people.
Yet if you looked at the situation that way, the picture was not quite right. The GDR’s natural resources and its production capabilities were significantly less than those of West Germany. West Germany had the support of the United States, a rich country that you could say had robbed the entire world and grown fat off the first and second world wars. Thanks to more than one war, the United States had expanded its production capabilities. The Soviet Union, by contrast, had suffered more than any other country in the war and had a greater need than any other for the basic necessities: food, clothing, and housing. The Soviet Union’s cities and towns, its technology, its machine-building factories and steel mills, and its housing had all been destroyed.
The Soviet Union never had a chance to compete fairly, to pit its material resources against those of the West. While the Soviet Union bled during World War II, the United States prospered and developed its power.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 164
For this reason, after the war the Americans had accumulated enormous military resources, including clothing and rations. When they reduced the size of their own armed forces they threw their surpluses to West Berlin and West Germany. In this way the competition was uneven from the very start.
The historical role of Marxist-Leninist teachings and the opportunities these teachings afford the working people of all countries are understood only by the most forward-looking segment of society, the most advanced portion of the working-class and intelligentsia. Unfortunately, at a certain stage, ideological issues are decided by the stomach, that is, by seeing who can provide the most for the people’s daily needs. Therefore, the attraction of one or the other system is literally decided by the shop windows, by the price of goods, and by wages. In these areas, of course, we had no chance of competing with the West, especially in West Berlin, where capitalism gave handouts to sharply contrast the material wealth of West Berlin with the living conditions in East Berlin.
Also, dividing a single people, making them live under different sociopolitical conditions, created enormous difficulties. West Germany had the chance to make itself more appealing, especially to professionals such as engineers, doctors, teachers, and highly skilled workers. This category of people was particularly attracted to move to the West. Naturally, workers tended to follow their employers.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 165
By 1961 an unstable situation had been created in the GDR. At the time, there was an economic boom in West Germany. West Germany needed workers badly and lured them from Italy, Spain, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and other countries. Numbers of the intelligentsia, students, and people with higher education, left the GDR because West Germany paid office workers more than they were paid in the GDR and other socialist countries. The question of whether this or that system is progressive ought to be decided in political terms. However, many people decide it in the pit of their stomach. They don’t consider tomorrow’s gains but only today’s income– and today West Germany industry pays you more.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 168
Walter Ulbricht even asked us to help by providing a labor force. This was a difficult issue to face. We didn’t want to give them unskilled workers. Why? Because we didn’t want our workers to clean their toilets. I had to tell Comrade Ulbricht: “Imagine how a Soviet worker would feel. He won the war and now he has to clean your toilets. It will not only be humiliating–it will produce an explosive reaction in our people. We cannot do this. Find a way out yourself.”
What could he do? He had to appeal for stronger discipline; but they still kept on running away because qualified workers could find better conditions in West Germany.
I spoke to Pervukhin, our ambassador in Germany, about the establishment of border control. He gave me a map of West Berlin…. I asked Pervukhin to share the idea with Ulbricht…. Ulbricht beamed with pleasure. “This is the solution! This will help. I am for this.”
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 169
Of greater interest to me personally were the opportunities I had of observing life in Berlin. In West Berlin a great deal of the rubble and ruins which I had seen in 1945 had been cleared way, and instead of half-demolished houses there were now open spaces with paved streets going through them, which still bore their former names on signposts, but new buildings were going up and the less damaged houses were being restored. Familiar shops and large stores had been reopened in temporary premises; there were many flourishing restaurants and bars; theaters had been rebuilt and were well attended. Street traffic was normal, and people were going briskly about their business. West Berlin was still very much alive.
East Berlin was a sad contrast. War damage had probably been no greater than in West Berlin, but the pace of restoration was infinitely slower. With the exception of one long street, the Stalin Allee, consisting of blocks of newly-built houses in the Soviet style, it looked as if the war had ended overnight. On every hand stood streets of ruined houses and shells of churches and large public buildings. At night the streets were badly lighted compared with the brilliantly illuminated streets of the West. Traffic was meager, and people moved about in a listless way…. It was a depressing picture, and immediately revealed the difference in living conditions between the two zones.
Birse, Arthur Herbert. Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 226
Nowhere was the conflict of the powers more intense than in Germany; and nowhere was it more sharply focused than in Berlin. There the contrast between American affluence and Russian destitution was brutally exposed for everyone to see. While the United States and Britain were already pumping economic aid into western Germany, Russia was still draining the resources of East Germany which she needed for her reconstruction. It was only too easy for anti-Russian propagandists to present this outcome of the war, and of long and complex preceding historic developments, as the test of the opposed socio-political systems; and to a claim that western capitalism brought prosperity and freedom while Russian Communism could live only by spoliation and slavery.
Of that condominium [the joint condominium over Germany] hardly a trace was now left: Stalin had refused the western powers any say in the conduct of East German affairs just as they had denied him any share in the control of western Germany…. In the spring of 1948 the issue was brought to a head. The western powers, anxious to hasten the economic rehabilitation of their parts of Germany, proposed to introduce a currency reform under which the old depreciated Mark was to be replaced by a new one. The reform put a seal upon Germany’s division; and it posed at once the question of Berlin’s currency. Russia could not allow the city to become financially incorporated into West Germany; nor could the western powers permit it to be financially absorbed by East Germany. If two different currencies were to circulate in Berlin, the result would be a chronic conflict, for while a growing volume of goods in the West was bound to assure the stability of the new Mark, the value of the eastern currency would be undermined by a continued scarcity of goods. To forestall this, Stalin ventured a desperate gamble. He ordered a blockade of those sectors of Berlin that were held by the Americans, the British, and the French. Soon all traffic heading for West Berlin, whether by land or by water, was brought to a standstill.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 588-589
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STALIN ATTACKS MAO FOR RELYING ON PEASANTS ONLY AND NON-MARXISM
Stalin was always fairly critical of Mao Tse-tung. He had a name for Mao, and it describes him accurately from a purely Marxist point of view. Stalin used to say that Mao was a “margarine Marxist”.
When Mao’s victorious revolutionary army was approaching Shanghai, he halted their march and refused to capture the city. Stalin asked Mao, “Why didn’t you take Shanghai?”
“There’s a population of 6 million there,” answered Mao. “If we take the city, then we’ll have to feed all those people, and where do we find food to do it?”
Now, I ask you, is that a Marxist talking?
Mao Tse-tung has always relied on the peasants and not on the working-class. That’s why he didn’t take Shanghai. He didn’t want to take responsibility for the welfare of the workers. Stalin properly criticized Mao for this deviation from true Marxism. But the fact remains that Mao, relying on the peasants and ignoring the working-class, achieved victory. Not that his victory was some sort of miracle, but it was certainly a new twist to Marxist philosophy since it was achieved without the proletariat. In short, Mao Tse-tung is a petty-bourgeois whose interests are alien, and have been alien all along, to those of the working class.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 462
On 10 February 1948 Stalin said, “I also doubted that the Chinese could succeed, and advised them to come to a temporary agreement with Chiang Kai-shek. Officially, they agreed with us, but in practice, they continued mobilizing the Chinese people. And when they openly put forward the question: Will we go on with our fight? We have the support of our people. We said: Fine, what do you need? It turned out that the conditions there were very favorable. The Chinese proved to be right, and we were wrong.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 443
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SU BUILT UP AUSTRIAN ECONOMY AFTER THE WAR
Like Germany, Austria was divided up between the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union. And, like Berlin, Vienna was divided into zones.
We owned things in Austria. We had factories, and we were running them. We set up management systems and established an economic network among the factories. They probably belonged to German capitalists, but we confiscated them and assumed ownership.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 73
Austria was a first step for us, a demonstration that we could conduct negotiations and conduct them well…. Austria became a neutral country.
So we celebrated a great international victory. It was the European debut for a country bumpkin, and it did us a lot of good. The bumpkin had learned a thing or two. We could orient ourselves without directives from Stalin.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 80
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STALIN WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR GOMULKA’S IMPRISONMENT
In connection with Gomulka’s imprisonment, I cannot agree that Stalin was responsible. I knew for a fact, I heard it from Stalin, that he did not order Gomulka’s arrest; on the contrary, he even voiced doubts about the arrest. He trusted Gomulka.
After Gomulka was restored to power, relations between our two countries improved. Anti-Soviet slander began to die out, and for this Gomulka needs to be recognized. He was in a very good position; you might say, he had suffered. He had been in prison several years and people said it was at Stalin’s request, although I categorically deny that in this case.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 116
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MOLOTOV SAYS CHURCHILL WAS THE SMARTEST 100% IMPERIALIST
MOLOTOV: I knew them all, the capitalists, but Churchill was the strongest, the smartest among them. Of course he was a 100 percent imperialist.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 45
To my mind, Churchill, as an imperialist, was the cleverest among them.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 47
“…And Churchill? Churchill is the kind who, if you don’t watch him, will slip a kopeck out of your pocket. Yes, a kopeck out of your pocket! By God, a kopeck out of your pocket! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill–even for kopeks.”
He underscored several times that we ought to beware of the Intelligence Service and of English duplicity, especially with regard to Tito’s life. “They were the ones who killed General Sikorski in a plane and then neatly shot down the plane–no proof, no witnesses.”
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 73
Churchill was an imperialist to the core.
Goebbels was the first one to use the “iron curtain.” It was often used by Churchill, that’s for sure.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 59
The overriding truth is that Churchill is an imperialist to the core of his being–which indeed Churchill was, unabashedly so–and could never understand how important it is for me, Roosevelt, to respect Stalin’s wishes and views wherever possible because of the need of the U.S. and the USSR to co-operate in the postwar world to wipe out imperialism, colonialism, and other forces antagonistic to democracy.
Nisbet, Robert A. Roosevelt and Stalin. Washington, D.C. : Regnery Gateway, c1988, p. 67
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MOLOTOV JUSTIFIES DECLINING MARSHALL PLAN AID
There was much turmoil. But if Western writers believe we were wrong to refuse the Marshall Plan, we must have done the right thing. Absolutely. We can prove it now as easily as two times two is four. At first we decided in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to propose to all the socialist countries that they participate; but we quickly realized that was wrong. The imperialists were drawing us into their company, but as subordinates. We would have been absolutely dependent on them….
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 62
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MOLOTOV AND STALIN SUPPORT THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
MIKHAILOVICH: One point is not clear to me…. In the formation of the state of Israel, the Americans were opposed.
MOLOTOV: Everyone objected but us–me and Stalin. Some asked me why we favored it. We are supporters of international freedom. Why should we be opposed if, strictly speaking, that meant pursuing a hostile nationalist policy? In our time, it’s true, the Bolsheviks were and remained anti-Zionist. We were even against the Bund, though it was considered to be a socialist organization. Yet it’s one thing to be anti-Zionist and antibourgeois, and quite another to be against the Jewish people…. Otherwise we favored a separate Israeli state. But we remained anti-Zionist.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 65
Israel has turned out badly. But Lord Almighty! That’s American imperialism for you.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 66
This seems mainly to have been due in part at least to his current maneuvers to use Israel, whose statehood he had been the first to recognize, against the West.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 291
I have met Israelis who received military training in the Soviet Union, certainly with Stalin’s approval. But Stalin later abandoned the Jewish policy advocated by my father [Beria], which he had supported at the outset.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 208
The Jewish Committee continued [after the death of Mikhoels], and Stalin would be the first to recognize Israel.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 574
As Israel defended itself against an invasion by five Arab armies, Stalin authorized arms supplies through Czechoslovakia, an infusion of substantial support that proved essential to Israel’s success in the war.
Naumov & Teptsov. Stalin’s Secret Pogrom. New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press, 2001, p. 40
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MOLOTOV SAYS MAO WAS NEVER A MARXIST AND HAD IMPRACTICAL IDEAS
I talked with Mao and then suggested to Stalin that he receive him. He was a clever man, a peasant leader, a kind of Chinese Pugachev. He was far from a Marxist, of course–he confessed to me that he had never read Marx’s Das Kapital….
When I was in Mongolia talking with the Chinese ambassador–he was nice to me–I said, “You want to create a metals industry quickly, but the measures you have planned–backyard blast furnaces–are improbable and won’t work.” I criticized the Chinese, and our people reproved me later. But it was such obvious stupidity!… Backyard blast furnaces to produce worthless metals–nonsense.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 81
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CHOU EN-LAI WAS PRACTICAL AND CLEVER BUT NO THEORIST
I had to deal with Chou En-lai. He was a courteous, well-read man, a practical worker rather than a theorist. But very clever.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 82
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MOLOTOV SPOKE AGAINST TITO BUT NO ONE SUPPORTED HIM
In 1953-54 I spoke out [against reconciliation with Tito’s] Yugoslavia at the Politburo. No one supported me, neither Malenkov nor even Kaganovich, though he was a Stalinist! Khrushchev was not alone. There were hundreds and thousands like him, otherwise on his own he would not have gotten very far. He simply pandered to the state of mind of the people. But where did that lead? Even now there are lots of Khrushchev’s….
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 83
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MOLOTOV SAYS TITO IS A PETTY-BOURGEOIS OPPOSED TO SOCIALISM
Tito is not an imperialist, he is a petty bourgeois, an opponent of socialism.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 84
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STANDARD OF LIVING IS HIGHER IN SOCIALIST EASTERN EUROPE THAN THE SU
MOLOTOV: I agree with you (Golovanov) that the standard of living in the socialist countries (of Eastern Europe) is higher than ours, but by 1 1/2 times, not twice ours…. I believe the standard of living is higher in the socialist countries; they consume more meat, have more footwear per capita. As to how much, I assume one and half times more. But I also believe this serves our interests. Take another example. Our Baltic peoples live at a higher level than Muscovites. We need this. It is a policy that is in keeping with the interests of Moscow.
Central Asia has rapidly industrialized in the period of Soviet power and the standard of living of its people raised to approximate Southern European levels. This contrasts sharply with the acute differential between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, the colonial character of whose relationship with the U.S. is manifested in a much lower standard of living.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 295
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STALIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING AN ATOMIC BOMB
Stalin was fascinated by the potential of the bomb. In late October 1942, he had suggested that the plan for our offensive to surround the Germans at Stalingrad be called Uranium.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 203
On July 20th, 1945, 10 days after the information on the imminent explosion of the American nuclear bomb was reported to Stalin, he made up his mind to set up the Special State Committee on Problem No. 1, making it a more powerful, Politburo committee. On August 20th, 1945, two weeks after the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, we once again reorganized our atomic project. Beria was appointed chairman of the new Special State Committee.
[Footnote] By upgrading it to the status of a Politburo committee, under the aegis of the Communist party, Stalin stressed the urgency of its task and increased its power to complete the bomb.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 202
Meetings were usually in Beria’s study; heated discussions erupted from time to time. I remember Pervukhin, deputy prime minister, indignantly reprimanding and attacking Voznesensky, a member of the Politburo and his superior, for his reluctance to consider allocations of supplies of nonferrous metals for the needs of chemical processing plants that were engaged in the project. I had always assumed that members of the bureaucratic structures were subordinated to each other in accordance with their status. A member of the Politburo was always beyond criticism, at least by a person in a lower rank. It was not so in the special committee, where Politburo members and key ministers behaved almost as equals. It also startled me that Pervukhin was Beria’s deputy in this committee, in which Voznesensky & Malenkov, members of the Politburo and far outranking Pervukhin, were ordinary members.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 204
For me, Kurchatov remains a genius, the Russian Oppenheimer, but not a scientific giant like Bohr or Fermi. He was certainly helped by the intelligence we supplied, and his efforts would have been for naught without Beria’s talent in mobilizing the nation’s resources.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 211
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STALIN’S ATOMIC DIPLOMACY
Just as Fuchs enabled us to determine that the United States was not ready for nuclear war against the Soviet Union, Penkovsky told the United States that Khrushchev was not prepared for nuclear war against the United States.
Stalin pursued a tough policy of confrontation against the United States when the Cold War started; he knew he did not have to be afraid of the American nuclear threat, at least until the end of the 1940s. Only by 1955 did we estimate the stockpile of American and British nuclear weapons to be sufficient to destroy the Soviet Union.
That information helped to assure a communist victory in China’s civil war in 1947-1948. We were aware that President Truman was seriously considering the use of nuclear weapons to prevent a Chinese communist victory. Then Stalin initiated the Berlin crisis, blockading the Western-controlled sectors of the city in 1948. Western press reports indicated that Truman and Attlee, the British Prime Minister, were prepared to use nuclear weapons to prevent Berlin’s fall to communism, but we knew that the Americans did not have enough nuclear weapons to deal with both Berlin and China. The American government overestimated our threat in Berlin and lost the opportunity to use the nuclear threat to support the Chinese nationalists.
Stalin provoked the Berlin crisis deliberately to divert attention from the crucial struggle for power in China. In 1951, when we were discussing plans for military operations against American bases, Molotov told me that our position in Berlin helped the Chinese communists. For Stalin, the Chinese communist victory supported his policy of confrontation with America. He was preoccupied with the idea of a Sino-Soviet axis against the Western world. Stalin’s view of Mao Tse-tung, of course, was that he was a junior partner. I remember that when Mao came to Moscow in 1950 Stalin treated him with respect, but as a junior partner.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 210
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HISS WAS NOT A PAID OR CONTROLLED SOVIET AGENT
One of the officials we had established confidential relations with was Alger Hiss, a member of the American delegation. I had the feeling that Hiss was acting under the instructions of Hopkins. In conversation, Hiss disclosed to Oumansky, and then Litvinov, official U.S. attitudes and plans; he was also very close to our sources who were cooperating with Soviet intelligence and to our active intelligence operators in the United States. Within this framework of exchange of confidential information were references to Hiss as the source who told us the Americans were prepared to make a deal in Europe.
On our list of psychological profiles, Hiss was identified as highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union and a strong supporter of postwar collaboration between American and Soviet institutions. However, there was no indication that he was a paid or controlled agent, which I would have known or would have been marked.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 227
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TIMASHUK’S LETTER REGARDING THE DOCTOR’S PLOT
It is generally believed that the Doctors’ Plot began with a hysterical letter to Stalin accusing Jewish doctors of plans to murder the leadership by means of maltreatment and poisoning. The notorious letter of Lydia Timashuk, a doctor in the Kremlin PolyClinic, was written and sent to Stalin not in 1952, just prior to the arrest of the doctors, but in August 1948. To her letter, which charged that Academician Vinogradov was maltreating Zhdanov and others and caused Zhdanov’s death, Stalin’s reaction had been: “Absurd.” Her letter remained on file for three years without action and was only dug up at the end of 1951….
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 298
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STALIN PROMOTES ZHUKOV
Zhukov continued to be commander of the military districts in Odessa and Siberia, and in 1952 Stalin made him a candidate member of the Central Committee.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 314
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MOLOTOV’S WIFE WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE ANTI-ZIONISM EFFORT
What startled me most was that Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, had maintained clandestine contacts through Mikhoels and Jewish activists with her brother in the United States. A letter to her brother dated October 5th, 1946, before she was arrested, was purely Communist in outlook but otherwise nonpolitical…. In her testimony she had denied that she had attended a synagogue service in Moscow in March 1945 devoted to Jews who had died in the war. Four independent witnesses placed her there. The diplomatic corps was also represented. Surely Molotov encouraged her to go because it was useful to have American observers see his wife there after the Yalta conference, but as she was his wife, his instruction was oral, without record. Later, she did not want to implicate him so she denied that episode, but it was used against her and against him in the anti-Semitic campaign and in ousting him from power.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 343
In February 1949 the initiative for the arrest of Molotov’s wife came not from Stalin but from people who were competing for his succession.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 169
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EAST GERMAN RIOTS CAUSED BY DISAGREEMENT IN GOVT
Ulbricht, together with other GDR leaders, was called to Moscow in early June 1953, and we informed them of our policy, approved by the Presidium on June 12….
While I did not attend the meeting with the East German delegation–at which Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Molotov, Semyonov, and General Grechko (commander of Soviet troops in Germany) were present–I later learned that Ulbricht strongly disagreed. Therefore, Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev decided to remove him.
The outburst of strikes and riots that occurred on June 17 may have resulted from the rebel leaders thinking that the government could not respond. Another theory is that Ulbricht provoked the uprising by refusing to meet the demand for increased pay for the striking workers. I believe both factors were involved.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 365
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STALIN IS VERY UPSET WHEN GOES OUT AND SEES THE WAR’S DESTRUCTION
He [my father] went south in the summer of 1946 on his first vacation since 1937. He traveled by car…. The procession stopped in towns along the way…. My father wanted to see for himself how people were living. What he saw was havoc wrought by the war on every side.
The housekeeper Valechka, who accompanied my father on all his journeys, told me recently how upset he was when he saw that people were still living in dugouts and that everything was still in ruins. She also told me how some party leaders who later rose very high came to see him in the south and report on agricultural conditions in the Ukraine. They brought watermelons and other melons so huge you couldn’t put your arms around them. They brought fruits and vegetables and golden sheaves of grain, the point being to show off how rich the Ukraine was.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 189
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STALIN DID NOT BELIEVE THERE WAS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE FOR A DOCTOR’S PLOT
The “case of the Kremlin doctors” was underway that last winter. My father’s housekeeper told me not long ago that my father was exceedingly distressed at the turn events took. She heard it discussed at the dinner table. She was waiting on the table, as usual, when my father remarked that he didn’t believe the doctors were “dishonest” and that the only evidence against them, after all, was the “reports” of Dr. Timashuk. Everyone, as usual, remained silent.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 207
The sensational episode of the “Doctors Case” is also put on Stalin’s shoulders. The theory is that Stalin wanted to get rid of the doctors and thus, get rid of Beria. This was not the truth at all. The newspaper “Russian Vestnik” printed my interview with the journalist Leontiev. When you read this interview, you can see by which methods the “comrades-in-arms” of Stalin tried to take over the government.
LEONTIEV: Rybin, please tell us, how the “Doctors episode” came on the scene. How come the KGB was involved in medicine?
RYBIN: In 1952, Stalin was not feeling well. To take medicines, Stalin did not like to indulge in this, and did not altogether believe in them, knowing full well that sometimes there are side effects on the organs of a person. The difficulty of doctors is that sometimes they do not make a proper diagnosis. There are many cases of a wrong diagnosis, since each person has a different organism that does not always behave the same when taking medicine….
LEONTIEV: Dr. Timashchuk, did she work with the KGB? Why did this doctor write a letter to you? How were the relations between doctors and the KGB?
RYBIN: Doctor-cardiologist Timashchuk did not work with the KGB, but she analyzed the situation in the Kremlin with the doctors correctly, how these doctors are treating the government personnel. Thereafter, she brought this material, in which the KGB got interested in her revelations. This was not a spy, not a complaint, but actual research into the prescriptions and diagnostic analysis of what the Kremlin doctors were doing…. What made this Soviet patriot, Dr. Timashchuk, suspect what was really going on?
In 1945, Shcherbakov died; in 1948, Zhdanov; in 1949 Dimitrov; in 1952 Choibalsan. Before, on personal command by Yagoda, Menzhinsky was “cured” and Gorky and his son were also “cured.” All this pointed to the problem that all was not well with the “Kremlin doctors.” I, during the 1930s, was working in the Secretariat of Ordjonikidze, who was also ailing with an irregular heartbeat. The head of the Secretariat, Semushkin, called in the doctors. Dr. Levin also “cured” Menzhinsky and Gorky. That Ordjonikidze shot himself –is only a legend.
LEONTIEV: But why did the KGB get involved with the doctors of medicine?
RYBIN: This was caused by an observation of Dr. Timashchuk, who was concerned about the health and life of our government leaders. Putting her on the pedestal was the work of our press in 1952. The high death rate of the leadership of our country was a signal that all was not well in the Kremlin with the doctors! This situation made the KGB very wary and concerned.
In August of 1952, a very important meeting on this problem was held, in which I took part. Some persons immediately demanded the arrest of the doctors, pointing to the facts already established as to the guilt of some diagnosticians and wrongly prescribed medicines… tied into the sudden death of Dimitrov. Others suggested that a loyal Commission be appointed to look into this question thoroughly… composed of impartial doctors and medical experts. Only then should this question be decided upon and steps taken to remedy the situation and sentence the guilty doctors. During this heated debate, the calm voice of the Government Security Organ, Vlasik, Major General, stated the following: “All the diagnostic machinery, apparatus used by the Kremlin doctors, should be analyzed, looked into by experts. We found out that the apparatus was in order.” Could Vlasik present such a statement, if Stalin was only interested in the wholesale arrest of all the Kremlin doctors? Of course not. But the diagnosis by some doctors was suspect.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 87-89
LEONTIEV: Was there any reaction on the part of Stalin to this “Doctors Case”?
RYBIN: Colonel Tukov stated, “Once, Stalin in the car as we were riding, asked, ‘ ‘what must we do? They died one after another, Shcherbakov, Zhdanov, Dimitrov, Choibalsan, but before this, Menzhinsky…Gorky…. It is impossible that this should happen… that one after another, State leaders die so quickly! It looks like we must replace the old doctors in the Kremlin and get younger doctors to take their place.’
I replied, “Comrade Stalin, older doctors have more experience, practice, while younger ones are still green without practice.”
“No, we must replace them. There are too many things that are unexplainable, too many complaints from families. The NKVD demands the arrest of these doctors which ‘cured’ Dimitrov, Zhdanov, and others?”
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 91
According to Sudoplatov, who at that time headed one of the departments of the MGB, Stalin was extremely critical of the “Doctors’ plot” case as prepared by Ryumin, regarding it as primitive and unconvincing. Ryumin was removed on Stalin’s orders and transferred to reserve duty on 14 November 1952.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores Medvedev. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 32
“I am not sure at what point she [Valya Istomina] was promoted to housekeeper. Nor do I know how much he could trust her and tell her, although she told me once that he said to her that he didn’t believe that the doctors plot was actually a plot, that the doctors had been set out, they were innocent.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 247
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STALIN FORESAW A RAPID RECOVERY OF GERMANY
Someone expressed doubt that the Germans would be able to recuperate within fifty years. But Stalin was of a different opinion. “No, they will recover, and very quickly. That is a highly developed industrial country with an extremely qualified and numerous working-class and technical intelligentsia. Give them 12 to 15 years and they’ll be on their feet again. And this is why the unity of the Slavs is important.”
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 114
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SU DID NOT FORCE SOCIALISM ON EASTERN EUROPE BUT IT AROSE INTERNALLY
The common notion in the capitalist world that the countries of Eastern Europe had a kind of regimented socialization thrust upon them by Soviet bayonets is, of course, a myth, again based ultimately on the bourgeois view of the workers as robots. True, as the Soviet armies, in pursuit of the Nazi armies, moved through Eastern Europe, this very action involved the overthrow of the pro-Nazi governments, in, for example, Rumania and Bulgaria. Revolt would have come anyway, however, once the Nazi political power behind those governments crumbled. And it is true also that in some of these nations Soviet representatives later helped–as they should have–to develop socioeconomic bases for socialist construction. The real power and initiative, however, had to come from, and did come from, the peoples of those countries themselves. Furthermore, in two of these nations, Albania and Yugoslavia, the Soviet armies were not directly involved. The revolutions there arose almost entirely from internal actions. In Yugoslavia, for instance, a partisan army of 80,000 was mustered to fight the German invasion; by the end of the war this army and grown to 800,000 and was holding down more German divisions than the combined U.S.-British forces in Italy. Furthermore, Yugoslavia before the war had had a strong Communist Party, with a bloc of deputies in the national parliament. And Czechoslovakia had had powerful Socialist and Communist Parties from the 1920s on.
In short, in many of these countries there had been a considerable socialist-oriented political movement, which, although suppressed by the Nazis, managed to survive and form a core when the Nazi and native reactionary forces were defeated. For instance, in Bulgaria, one of the most economically backward of these countries–a poor, partly feudal nation in contrast to capitalist Czechoslovakia–the Communist Party in 1932 elected 19 of 35 members to the city council of Sofia. When the Nazi dictatorship was overthrown, following the war, an election was held by “direct, secret, and universal suffrage” (according to the Statesman’s Yearbook for 1955), in which the anti-fascist Fatherland Front of Communist, Socialist, and peasant parties won 364 seats to the opposition’s 101. Clearly this movement grew mainly out of the situation within Bulgaria. We might note, too, that in Czechoslovakia in 1946, the Communist Party won 38 percent of the vote in a national election.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 99
Nor did Stalin yet give any clear impression that he would sponsor revolution in the countries of the Russian zone. Communist propagandists there spoke a nationalist and even clerical language. King Michael of Romania was left on his throne; and he was even awarded one of the highest Russian military orders for his part in the coup in consequence of which Rumania had broken away from Germany. The Soviet generals and the local Communist leaders did honor to the Greek Orthodox clergy in the Balkan countries. In Poland they courted the Roman Catholic clergy. There was no talk yet of socialization of industry. Only long overdue land reforms were initiated.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 519
The old Bolshevism, in other words, believed in revolution from below, such as the upheaval of 1917 had been. The revolution which Stalin now carried into eastern and central Europe was primarily a revolution from above. It was decreed, inspired, and managed by the great power dominant in that area. Although the local Communist parties were its immediate agents and executors, the great party of the revolution, which remained in the background, was the Red Army. This is not to say that the working classes on the spot did not participate in the upheaval. Without their participation the venture would have been only a flash in the pan. No revolution can be carried out from above only, without the willing cooperation of important elements in the nation affected by it. What took place within the Russian orbit was, therefore, semi-conquest and semi-revolution. This makes the evaluation of this phenomenon so very difficult. Had it been nothing but conquest it would have been easy to denounce it as plain Russian imperialism. Had it been nothing but revolution, those at least who recognize the right of the nation to make its revolution–a right of which every nation has made use–would have had no scruples in acclaiming it. But it is the blending of conquest and revolution that makes the essence of ‘socialism in one’s zone’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 554
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Contents
VICTORS WRITE HISTORY
AID TO GREEK GUERILLAS
STALIN INSISTS ART REFLECT REALITY
SU PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP SAVED THE SU AND THE CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES
SU DID NOT SOCIALIZE EASTERN EUROPE WHEN IT COULD HAVE
US STOLE SOME ISLANDS IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER
GROMYKO JUSTIFIES THE HELP GIVEN TO HUNGARY
GROMYKO EXTOLS MOLOTOV’S ROLE IN THE GOVT
US TRIES TO DICTATE PEACE IN ASIA AND DETERMINE EAST EUROPE GOVTS
SU TOOK BACK AFTER WWII TERRITORY THAT WAS THEIRS
SU REVIVES AFTER WWII BY INTEGRATING EASTERN EUROPE NOT EXPLOITING IT
STALIN CONVENED THE 1952 PARTY CONGRESS
KIM IL SUNG STARTED THE KOREAN WAR NOT STALIN
TITO PUSHED THE HUNGARIAN INVASION
KHRUSHCHOV AND STALIN WRESTLE WITH THE EAST GERMAN PROBLEM
STALIN ATTACKS MAO FOR RELYING ON PEASANTS ONLY AND NON-MARXISM
SU BUILT UP AUSTRIAN ECONOMY AFTER THE WAR
STALIN WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR GOMULKA’S IMPRISONMENT
MOLOTOV SAYS CHURCHILL WAS THE SMARTEST 100% IMPERIALIST
MOLOTOV JUSTIFIES DECLINING MARSHALL PLAN AID
MOLOTOV AND STALIN SUPPORT THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
MOLOTOV SAYS MAO WAS NEVER A MARXIST AND HAD IMPRACTICAL IDEAS
CHOU EN-LAI WAS PRACTICAL AND CLEVER BUT NO THEORIST
MOLOTOV SPOKE AGAINST TITO BUT NO ONE SUPPORTED HIM
MOLOTOV SAYS TITO IS A PETTY-BOURGEOIS OPPOSED TO SOCIALISM
STANDARD OF LIVING IS HIGHER IN SOCIALIST EASTERN EUROPE THAN THE SU
STALIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING AN ATOMIC BOMB
STALIN’S ATOMIC DIPLOMACY
HISS WAS NOT A PAID OR CONTROLLED SOVIET AGENT
TIMASHUK’S LETTER REGARDING THE DOCTOR’S PLOT
STALIN PROMOTES ZHUKOV
MOLOTOV’S WIFE WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE ANTI-ZIONISM EFFORT
EAST GERMAN RIOTS CAUSED BY DISAGREEMENT IN GOVT
STALIN IS VERY UPSET WHEN GOES OUT AND SEES THE WAR’S DESTRUCTION
STALIN DID NOT BELIEVE THERE WAS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE FOR A DOCTOR’S PLOT
STALIN FORESAW A RAPID RECOVERY OF GERMANY
SU DID NOT FORCE SOCIALISM ON EASTERN EUROPE BUT IT AROSE INTERNALLY
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VICTORS WRITE HISTORY
What the 21st century will call them [acts which could be considered treasonous] will depend on who are the victors. The victors always write the history books.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 122
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AID TO GREEK GUERILLAS
Second Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
March-April 1949
In conclusion, I mentioned to Comrade Stalin the threats the external enemies were making towards Albania.
He listened to me attentively and, on the problems I had raised, expressed his opinion:
“As for the Greek people’s war,” he said among other things, “we, too, have always considered it a just war, have supported and backed it whole-heartedly. Any people’s war is not waged by the communists alone, but by the people, and the important thing is that the communists should lead it.”
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.
Here [Greece] we meet another “left” criticism of Stalin, similar to that made about his role in Spain but even further removed from the facts of the matter. As in the rest of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Communist had led and armed the heroic Greek underground and partisan fighters. In 1944 the British sent an expeditionary force commanded by general Scobie to land in Greece, ostensibly to aid in the disarming of the defeated Nazi and Italian troops. As unsuspecting as their comrades in Vietnam and Korea, who were to be likewise “assisted,” the Greek partisans were slaughtered by their British “allies,” who used tanks and planes in all-out offensive, which ended in February 1945 with the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship under a restored monarchy. The British even rearmed and used the defeated Nazi “Security Battalions.” After partially recovering from this treachery, the partisan forces rebuilt their guerrilla apparatus and prepared to resist the combined forces of Greek fascism and Anglo-American imperialism. By late 1948 full-scale civil war raged, with the right-wing forces backed up by the intervention of U.S. planes, artillery, and troops. The Greek resistance had its back broken by another betrayal, not at all by Stalin, but by Tito, who closed the Yugoslav borders to the Soviet military supplies that were already hard put to reach the landlocked popular forces. This was one of the two main reasons why Stalin, together with the Chinese, led the successful fight to have the Yugoslav “Communist” Party officially thrown out of the international Communist movement.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 34
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STALIN INSISTS ART REFLECT REALITY
Fifth Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
April 1951
Some days after this meeting, on April 6, I went to the Bolshoi Theatre to see the new opera ‘From the Depths of Heart’ which, as I was told before the performance, dealt with the new ”life in the collective farm village. That same evening Comrade Stalin, too, had come to see this opera. He sat in the box of the first floor closest to the stage, whereas I, together with two of our comrades and two Soviet comrades who accompanied us, was in the box in the second floor, on the opposite side.
The next day I was told that Stalin had made a very severe criticism of this opera, which had already been extolled by some critics as a musical work of value. I was told that Comrade Stalin had criticized the opera, because it did not reflect the life in the collectivized village correctly and objectively. Comrade Stalin had said that in this work life in the collective farm had been idealized, truthfulness has suffered, the struggle of the masses against various shortcomings and difficulties was not reflected, and everything was covered with a false lustre and the dangerous idea that everything is going smoothly and well.
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.
The great idea is to confer upon the writer (while at the same time enlarging the scope of his work), the mission of setting out, as clearly as possible, the scientific and moral evidences of socialism–but without paralyzing literary activity by pinning it down exclusively to political propaganda. This application of the social sense to creative work implies the definite abolition of “art for art’s sake,” and of individually selfish art with its narrowness and its pessimism.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 207
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SU PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP SAVED THE SU AND THE CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES
Had the USSR been a political democracy of the Western type during the past 20 years, had its people been permitted to choose what was soft, easy, and pleasant, rather than what was hard, painful, and necessary, the Soviet Union would not exist today. Its destroyers would also, in all likelihood, have destroyed the independence of Britain and the freedom of America as well, for the military collapse of Russia would have rendered the victors invulnerable and invincible. Dictatorship has been the price of survival for the USSR and for the United Nations.. Herein lies its justification — except in the eyes of those who are conccerned only with the propriety of means and never with the primacy of ends, or with the eternal verities to the exclusion of the tough tasks of the day, or with the virtues of national suicide under unrestricted freedom as against the vices of national survival by way of coercion.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 326
Had nazi and Japanese forces effected a junction in India in 1942, the defense of Russia and Britain, and prospectively of America, would have become all but impossible.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 559
In World War II Russia saved the west by defeating the fascist powers.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 7
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SU DID NOT SOCIALIZE EASTERN EUROPE WHEN IT COULD HAVE
What is surprising is not that so-called “totalitarian” methods of winning friends and influencing people were displayed in these lands during and after their liberation, but that dictatorial devices were not employed more extensively. Moscow had the power (at the risk, to be sure, of a rupture with the Atlantic Powers) to give unqualified support to Communist groups and to Sovietize this whole vast region. With judicious moderation, it refrained from doing so. In no case did its program precipitate civil war within the lands freed by the Red Army, despite widespread resentment at requisitions by Soviet troops who lived off the land.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 526
Soon, it became clear that none of the ruined nations of East Europe could hope for reconstruction loans from Washington, unless they remade their governments to suit the USA. To some extent they were willing to do this. Bulgaria changed its cabinet at Washington’s order and postponed an election when America protested its form. All of the East European nations hoped for American loans and were willing to make adjustments. They offered industrial concessions to foreign capital; they were ready to postpone socialism, as Lenin did in the days of NEP. Nor did Moscow object to this; Moscow was not at all anxious to take on the economic problems of East Europe, in addition to her own. If these lands could get American loans by concessions to capitalism, Moscow was not disposed to interfere.
In the first years after victory– Moscow handled affairs in East Europe with a loose hand. Americans supposed the arriving Red Army would at once “sovietize” these eastern nations, nationalize industry, collective farms. American correspondents were amazed to discover that the Red Army did not even stop King Michael’s jailing of Communists; they called it Romania’s affair. When I was in Poland in 1945, it was “treason” to urge collective farming, lest this alienate the peasant. Moscow intended to have “friendly nations” on her border but many of Moscow’s acts in 1945-46–the long tolerance of King Michael’s brutally reactionary regime in Romania, the lack of Russian support to Communists fighting in Greece, the calling off of Bulgarian elections because of an American protest, the acceptance of three Poles from London into the Warsaw cabinet–indicated that Stalin would make many concessions in East Europe to keep his wartime friendship with Britain and the United States.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 108
I visited Rumania after the Russian occupation. All the government authorities and the common people testified to the fact that Russia gave freedom to the democratic elements in Rumania to govern themselves.
I also visited Finland. An election was held after the Russians had freed it from the Germans. As far as I could find out, no one charged that the election had been influenced by the Russians. The electoral results showed the Finnish Communists to be in the minority. Similarly in Hungary and Austria, the Soviets permitted governments to be formed which are not communist by any stretch of the imagination.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 99
Stalin does not wish to have a Communist government set up in the occupied areas now. He would prefer a liberal democratic coalition of elements friendly to Russia–officials who would not be secretly plotting war against either Poland or the Soviet Union [as did the Germans].
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 102
What, then, does the Soviet Union want in the countries which surround her?
First of all, friendly governments. Russia would prefer not to have communist governments now, but does not object to communist control if that is the genuine desire of the majority of the population of the country concerned. I saw an example of this last in the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, now Soviet Republics. On my visit there I found that the workers and peasants, who make up a majority of the population, were all in favor of being part of the Soviet Union. The middle classes wanted to be independent, but admitted that they had an oppressive dictatorship before the present government. The propertied classes wanted to do away with Soviet rule so that they could get back their factories and property. Every person I met, without exception, preferred the Republics to the German occupation. These countries prospered after they became Soviet republics, and it is likely that popular support for the present status will increase rather than lessen.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers’ Press, Inc., c1946, p. 103
…But I can till you something about what it was like when the Red Army conquered Rumania and from this you may… be able to piece together a pattern of a destiny soon to unfold throughout the Balkans.
In Dorohoi and Botosani, two prefectures in Rumanian Moldavia which had been held by the Russians since April, 1944, I talked to mayors and to village officials, to trade unionists and to farmers, to Jewish refugees from Antonescu’s concentration camps and to a Rumanian chief of police, to representatives of several large American business organizations and to a mother superior in a Rumanian convent.
All these people, some with satisfaction and others with regret, agreed on one thing: they said the Russians had not instigated any revolutionary movements. They said the Red Army had observed the Molotov declaration with disciplined correctness–and we saw the declaration posted wherever the hammer and sickle flew.
There appeared to be no open effort by the Red Army to propagandize the masses in favor of communism or socialism. Pictures of the King and Queen and of the late Dowager Queen Marie still hung on the walls of official buildings, while Stalin’s portrait was strangely absent, except in offices of the Red Army. On the surface of things, nothing suggested that the inhabitants did not enjoy a degree of liberty which, considering that Rumania was still a country at war against Russia, was astonishing. In fact, many of the Rumanians apparently wanted to fight on the winning side now. The handsome young Russian commandant of Dorohoi told me that peasants were coming to him every day, asking to enlist in the Red Army.
“The loyalty of the population is remarkable,” said he. “Men wish to become soldiers and women wish to join up as nurses. We have to refuse as politely as we can.”
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 28
…Will Russia put her dearly won understandings with Britain and America in jeopardy by attempting to establish paramountcy of Communism? I was speculating about this one day with an elderly Communist, and this is what he said: “If any one had told me a few years ago that there would be no revolution in Eastern Europe after this war, I would have called that man crazy. But that’s the way it is now. Russia above all wants stability in this part of the world and where the Red Army goes there will be no revolution.”
It seemed true enough, if you applied traditional Marxist definitions of a working-class revolution. In the liberated lands beyond Soviet borders one saw no proletarian uprisings of the conventional pattern. There were no open exhortations to workers to overthrow the bourgeoisie; no demands for a “workers and peasants dictatorship”; no open denunciations of capitalism; no extravagant prophecies of an early Communist or socialist Europe. The familiar terminology of class warfare seemed almost to have disappeared from the lexicon of Europe’s Leftists. If the Kremlin was fostering revolution it was doing so with a hand heavily gloved in velvet, and it was pointing rather than pushing.
…”But no one can say that the Comintern or the Soviet government is bolshevizing these countries,” he [a loyal follower of Stalin] rejoined.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 59
At the same time, however, Stalin managed to establish and to obtain his allies sanction for two principles, both very hazy, by which political life in the Russian zone was to be guided. One was that he should be free to intervene against pro-Nazi and fascist parties and groups and to establish a democratic order in the countries neighboring Russia. The other was that the Governments of those countries should be ‘friendly to Russia’. For the first time Stalin applied these principles to the Polish issue, which stood at the center of allied diplomatic activity throughout the last part of the war. His purpose was to prevail upon the western allies that they should abandon the Polish government in London, on the ground that it was neither democratic nor friendly to Russia…. Apart from the fact that he undoubtedly believed that what he did served a profoundly Democratic purpose, the strength of his argument was in the fact that the Polish Government in London had indeed been a motley coalition of half-Conservative peasants, moderate Socialists, and of people who could not by any criterion, ‘eastern’ or ‘western’, be labeled democrats. The core of its administration consisted of the followers of the Polish dictators Pilsudski and Rydz-Smigly. More important still, the members of that Government, democratic and anti-democratic, were, with very few exceptions, possessed by that Russophobia which had been the hereditary propensity of Polish policy, a propensity enhanced by what the Poles had suffered at Russian hands since 1939. In truth, of all Polish parties, only the Communists were friendly to Russia’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 520
The question must be asked whether Stalin, while he was bargaining for his zone of influence, already contemplated putting it under exclusive Communist control. Had the scheme of revolution been in his mind at the time of Tehran or Yalta? Had it finally taken shape at the time of Potsdam? His detractors as well as his apologists concur on this point, for both want us to see an extremely shrewd and far-sided design behind his actions. Yet Stalin’s actions show many strange and striking contradictions which do not indicate that he had any revolutionary master-plan. They suggest, on the contrary, that he had none. Here are a few of the most glaring contradictions. If Stalin consistently prepared to install a Communist government in Warsaw, why did he so stubbornly refuse to make any concessions to Poles over their eastern frontier? Would it not have been all the same to him whether, say, Lvov, that Polish-Ukrainian city, was ruled from Communist Kiev or from Communist Warsaw? Yet such a concession would have enormously strengthened the hands of the Polish left. Similarly, if he had beforehand planned revolution for eastern Germany, why did he detach from Germany and incorporate into Poland all the German provinces east of the Neisse and the 0der, the acquisition of which even the Poles themselves had not dreamt? Why did he insist on the expulsion of the whole German population from those lands, an act that could not but further embitter the German people not only against the Poles but also against Russia and communism. His claim for reparations to be paid by Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Finland, understandable as it was in view of the devastation of the Ukraine and other Soviet lands, could not but have the same damaging effect on the Communist cause in those countries. This was even truer of Stalin’s demand for the liquidation of the bulk of German industry. Already at Teheran, if not earlier, he had given notice that he would raise that demand; at Yalta he proposed that 80 percent of German industry should be dismantled within two years after the cease-fire; and he did not abate that demand at Potsdam. He could not have been unaware that his scheme, as chimerical as ruthless, if it had been carried out, would have entailed the dispersal of the German working-class, the main, if not the only, social force to which communism could have appealed and whose support it might have enlisted. Not a single one of these policies can by any stretch of the imagination be described as a stepping-stone towards revolution. On the contrary, in every one of those moves, Stalin himself was laboriously erecting formidable barriers to revolution. This alone seems to warrant the conclusion that even at the close of the war his intentions were still extremely self-contradictory, to say the least.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 536
Mikolajczyk reports a curious conversation with Stalin in August 1944. Not without peasant-like slyness, the Polish politician tried to sound Stalin on his plans for Germany, and told him that German prisoners, captured by the Poles, allegedly expressed the hope that after the war Germany would embrace communism and, as the foremost Communist state, go on to rule the world. Stalin, so Mikolajczyk reports, replied indignantly that ‘communism fitted Germany as a saddle fitted a cow’. This contemptuous aphorism undoubtedly reflected his mood. It harmonized so perfectly with the whole trend of his policy vis-a-vis Germany, it was so spontaneous, so organic, so much in line with what we know of his old disbelief in western European communism, and it accorded so much with all that he said and did in those days, that it could not have been sheer tactical bluff.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 537
Early in 1947, he still hesitated whether he should carry to its conclusion the ‘revolution from above’ in eastern Europe, where he still tolerated non-Communist parties in the governments and allowed some scope to capitalist interests.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 581
Since the Allied Control Commissions had been established in the ex-Nazi satellite states of Rumania and Bulgaria as well as Hungary, Soviet control over these states was only to be 75-25, while Britain (“in accord with the USA”) would enjoy 90-10 control in Greece.
Rose, Lisle Abbott. After Yalta. New York: Scribner, 1973, p. 15
At this stage, to avoid the charge of a Communist takeover, Stalin took care to see that the governments formed, with Soviet approval, were coalitions of radical and peasant parties with Communists holding key ministries, such the Ministry of the Interior responsible for the police. In the case of Hungary, four non-Communist parties were represented and Communists held only two ministerial offices. In Bulgaria a similar coalition had been formed under the umbrella of the Fatherland Front.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 895
In the first two years after the war, only Yugoslavia and Albania could be described as single-party Communist states, although even here the name was avoided in favor of the People’s Front and Democratic Front. The governments of the other five– Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria–were all coalitions. In two cases at least ( Czechoslovakia and Hungary) they were genuine coalitions in which several parties with their own organizations and very different views combined to carry out a short-term radical program with such reforms as the redistribution of land. When elections were held in Czechoslovakia in May 1946 and Hungary in November 1945 they were generally regarded as fair, producing a Communist success in the first case with 38 percent of the vote, and a Communist defeat in the second, with 57 percent for the Small Farmers’ party.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 928
… and it was security infinitely more than any ideological considerations which determined Stalin to create in Eastern and part of Central Europe a “friendly” cordon sanitaire, in place of that hostile cordon sanitaire which had been set up by the Western powers at the end of the First World War.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 56
Finland, which no longer represented any danger to the Soviet Union after the Second World War, continues to be a Western-type democracy to this day, and so does Austria. It has even been suggested by one American historian that Stalin would have been perfectly satisfied if half a dozen ” Finlands” could have been set up in Eastern Europe. But this was scarcely possible in a country like Poland, with its long tradition of Russo-phobia, nor very easy in countries like Romania and Hungary, once the Cold War, with its challenge to Russia’s “sphere of influence,” had got going in earnest–which it did from the very moment the Second World War had ended.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.,1971, p. 56
He [Stalin] also denied–and this was characteristic of 1946–that there were “totalitarian police states” in the East European countries–Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria were governed by “a bloc of several parties ranging from four to six, and the more or less loyal opposition parties can take part in the government….”
Obviously, Stalin was not on very solid ground here, but to keep in with the West he had been anxious since the war to meet the Western powers at least part of the way. He had not–not yet–tried to impose all-communist governments on the Eastern countries, and at that time he valued the East/West coexistence as symbolized by Czechoslovakia and Finland. Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as ex-fascist powers, had to be dealt with rather more “vigilantly,” but even here pro-forma appearances were still being kept up, as they were in the very special case of Poland. If Yugoslavia was the most extremely communist country of the lot it was, in fact, against Stalin’s wishes.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 113
For the present [1947] Hungary was a strange amalgam of people’s democracy and bourgeois democracy, and American imperialism had not yet given up hope a winning her over and turning her into an anti-Soviet base.
… there were still many strongholds of “bourgeois democracy” in Hungary. A large part of industry and most of trade was still in private hands. The kulaks, dodging their duties, were supplying the black market. Many of the civil servants were still pre-war, and had served under Horthy. Clerical reaction was still very strong, as were the reactionary and pro–fascist parties in parliament, and there were right-wing anti–communist elements among the government parties.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 323
One of the troubles with the Hungarian CP had been that some of its older members had imagined that the experiment of 1919 would be resumed with the help of the Red Army, and that a Soviet Hungary would now be firmly set up. It took some time to explain to them that there could be no question of restoring the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that a people’s democracy, in which the CP cooperated with other progressive forces, was something quite different.
Werth, Alexander. Russia; The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 324
Communism was triumphant and its leaders celebrated their victory. A technical point, however, had to be clarified. No one had yet explained how the new communist states were to be fitted into a Marxist-Leninist scheme of historical stages. Stalin had insisted that they should remain formally independent countries (and he discouraged early proposals for them to be simply annexed to the USSR as had been done with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 517
On 28 January 1945 Stalin said, “We have no wish to impose anything on the other Slavic peoples. We do not interfere in their internal affairs. Let them do what they can. The crisis of capitalism has manifested itself in the division of the capitalists into two factions– one fascist, the other democratic. The alliance between ourselves and the democratic faction of capitalists came about because the latter had a stake in preventing Hitler’s domination, for that brutal state would have driven the working class to extremes and to the overthrow of capitalism itself. We are currently allied with one faction against the other, but in the future we will be against the first faction of capitalist, too.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 358
Perhaps we are mistaken when we suppose that the Soviet form is the only one that leads to socialism. In practice, it turns out that the Soviet form is the best, but by no means the only, form. There may be other forms–the democratic republic and even under certain conditions the constitutional monarchy….
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 358
On 7 June 1945 Stalin proposed that they declare categorically that the path of imposing the Soviet system on Germany is an incorrect one; an anti-fascist democratic parliamentary regime must be established. The Communist Party proposes a bloc of anti-fascist parties with a common platform. Don’t speak so glowingly of the Soviet Union, and so on.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 372
On 6 December 1948 Stalin said to some Communist East European leaders, “In your country, where the working-class seized power not by means of an uprising but with help from outside–with the help of the Soviet army, in other words–the seizure of power was easier; you can do without the Soviet form, going back to the model of Marx and Engels– i.e., the people’s democratic parliamentary form. We are of the opinion that you can do without the Soviet regime. In your case, you will be able to carry out the transition from capitalism to socialism by means of a people’s democracy. The people’s democracy will play the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat….
As long as there are antagonistic classes, there will be dictatorship of the proletariat. But in your country, it will be a dictatorship of a different type. You can do without a Soviet regime.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 451
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US STOLE SOME ISLANDS IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER
At the same time, however, the U.S.A. was already hatching plans to take over the protectorates of the Marian, Carolingian and Marshall Islands in Micronesia–which in due course they did, thus breaking the U.N. Charter with an act of flagrant imperialistic robbery.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 121
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GROMYKO JUSTIFIES THE HELP GIVEN TO HUNGARY
Let me say something about the events that took place in Hungary in 1956. I was not yet Foreign Minister, but I was informed about the upheaval being experienced by a friendly country that had taken the path to socialism.
I must emphasize as strongly as I can that the help given to Hungary by the Soviet Union was absolutely justified.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 231
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GROMYKO EXTOLS MOLOTOV’S ROLE IN THE GOVT
Unquestionably, Molotov occupies a special place in the history of Soviet diplomacy. While continuing to hold a series of senior party jobs, he took over as Foreign Commissar from Litvinov in 1939, was succeeded as Foreign Minister–the title of post of commissar having been changed to minister in 1946–by Vyshinsky in 1949, and then held the post again from 1953 to 1956. He was in effect second in command throughout the Stalin period.
Of course, the main guidelines of foreign policy were determined by the Politburo, but even there Stalin’s opinion was decisive, and he left Molotov responsible for dealing with a number of issues involving other countries. In the U.S.A., Britain, and other Western countries Molotov was regarded as a ‘hardliner’ in foreign policy, but in fact he was no harder than the party and its Central Committee.
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 313
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US TRIES TO DICTATE PEACE IN ASIA AND DETERMINE EAST EUROPE GOVTS
In the East, Washington not only took sole charge of the armistice with Japan, freezing both Russia and China out of the arrangements, but made supplementary terms with the Japanese generals, by which they kept on fighting the Chinese Communists until America’s $300 million airlift could bring Chang Kai-shek’s troops north to accept the surrender. In the West, Washington ordered Bulgaria to add to her cabinet some men of America’s choice, if she wished to be recognized. The Russians were astounded. “We don’t tell France, Belgium, or Holland to change their cabinets,” they said.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 107
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SU TOOK BACK AFTER WWII TERRITORY THAT WAS THEIRS
Insult seemed added to injury when American commentators more and more grudged Russia “the great territory grabbed in the war.” To Russians, this was their own territory, lost in the first world war, only partially regained in the second. The Russians had lost or ceded 330,000 square miles in the first war, and regained 250,000 square miles in the second, a net loss of 80,000 square miles, which roughly covered the territory ceded to Finland and Poland.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 111
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SU REVIVES AFTER WWII BY INTEGRATING EASTERN EUROPE NOT EXPLOITING IT
Let me illustrate by an anecdote. Ten years ago, I met a Czech in Moscow; he had come to make an economic treaty with the USSR. I asked him what truth there was in the American claim that Moscow exploited the East European lands. He replied: “when we deal with the Chiefs of Soviet industry, they bargain for their prices and we bargain for ours. They are tough bargainers. But if they press too hard then Gottwald takes it up with Stalin for a ‘political settlement,’ and says the terms will ruin us…. Then Stalin gives us help.”
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 127
Patrascanu accepted the armistice in the name of the King, and under the circumstances the terms seemed surprisingly moderate. Rumania had to pay an indemnity of $300 million, no more than that imposed on Finland. She lost no territory and earned a chance, by joining in an alliance with Russia, of getting back her prewar control of Transylvania, which Hitler had handed over to Hungary’s Admiral Horthy. Patrascanu seemed to think he had made a fair bargain.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 41
To speed up reconstruction and to raise the standard of living he had to draw on the economic resources of other nations.
In theory he could do that in three different ways. He might have asked the western allies, especially United States, for assistance. In the heyday of the alliance there had been much talk of American loans to Russia and of Russo-American trade. But amid the tensions and conflicts that developed later, the vistas of economic co-operation faded. Stalin must, anyhow, have been reluctant to bring his country to that position of relative dependence in which any debtor inevitably finds itself vis-a-vis his creditor. His choice was practically limited to two methods, one essentially nationalist, the other revolutionary. The nationalist method consisted in the imposition of tribute on the vanquished nations, the dismantlement and transfer to Russia of their industries, the levying of reparations from their current output, and the direct use of their labor. The revolutionary method, promising to bear fruit more slowly but more permanently, consisted in the broadening of the base on which planned economy was to operate, in an economic link-up between Russia and the countries within her orbit. The gradual integration into the system of planned economy of several small and medium-sized countries, most of which had been industrially more developed than Russia before the ’30s, promised to quicken the tempo of Russia’s as well as of their own reconstruction. The first condition of that integration was that communism should be in power in the countries concerned.
We have seen that the two policies, the nationalist and the revolutionary, clashed on crucial points. Stalin did not, nevertheless, make a clear-cut choice between the two; he pursued both lines simultaneously; but whereas the nationalist one predominated during the war, the revolutionary one was to gain momentum after the war.
… He now replaced his socialism in one country by something that might be termed ‘socialism in one zone’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 551-552
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STALIN CONVENED THE 1952 PARTY CONGRESS
In 1952 Stalin called us together and suggested that we should convene a party Congress.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 276
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KIM IL SUNG STARTED THE KOREAN WAR NOT STALIN
Nevertheless, Stalin decided to ask Mao Tse-tung’s opinion about Kim Il Sung’s suggestion. I must stress that the war wasn’t Stalin’s idea, but Kim Il Sung’s. Kim was the initiator.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 368
I’m telling the truth now for the sake of history: it was the initiative [to start the Korean War] of Comrade Kim Il Sung, and he was supported by Stalin and many others–in fact, by everybody.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 144
It was not Stalin’s initiative, but he supported Kim Il Sung. Although I blame Stalin for all the crimes he committed, on this I am with him. If I had had to make a decision, I would also have given my consent to Kim. This was a question of the internal affairs of Korea. It was only natural that the people of Korea were fighting then, and are still fighting, to become a unified, socialist Korea.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 145
Throughout 1949 the Soviet Union delivered weapons and other military equipment to North Korea at an intense pace, each consignment personally approved by Stalin. The North probed the South to test the strength of its defenses. They crossed the border and conducted ‘reconnaissance in force’. Following one such sortie, Shtykov [the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea] received a threatening telegram from Stalin, dated October 27, 1949: ‘You were forbidden to advise the government of North Korea to undertake active operations against the South Koreans without permission of the Center… You failed to report the preparation of major offensive actions by two police brigades and in practice you allowed our military advisers to take part in these actions…. We require an explanation.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 153
A key document is a special report from Shtykov to Stalin dated January 19, 1950:
“On the evening of January 17… Kim Il-sung declared that when he had been in Moscow, Comrade Stalin had told him he should not invade South Korea; if the army of Syngman Rhee were to invade the North, then it would be right to make a counter offensive against the South. But since up to this time Syngman Rhee has not started an offensive, it means that the liberation of the people of the southern part of the country continues to be delayed.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Autopsy for an Empire. New York: Free Press, c1998, p. 154
The Korean communist leader Kim Il-Sung went to Moscow in March 1949 and requested a large increase in assistance so that he might attack the South. Stalin refused, advising the Korean comrades to get on with their preparations but to fight only if invaded.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 553
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TITO PUSHED THE HUNGARIAN INVASION
We reported to Tito on why we had come and confronted him with our decision to send troops into Budapest. We asked for his reaction. I expected even more strenuous objections from Tito than the ones we had encountered during our discussions with the Polish comrades. But we were pleasantly surprised. Tito said we were absolutely right and that we should send our soldiers into action as quickly as possible. He said we had an obligation to help Hungary crush the counterrevolution. He assured us that he completely understood the necessity of taking these measures. We had been ready for resistance, but instead we received his wholehearted support. I would even say he went further than we did in urging a speedy and decisive resolution of the problem.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 421
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KHRUSHCHOV AND STALIN WRESTLE WITH THE EAST GERMAN PROBLEM
Meanwhile, Walter Ulbricht and our other comrades in the GDR were facing serious troubles directly stemming from the ambiguous status of West Berlin. Berlin was an open city, which posed two problems: First, there was the problem of people crossing from East Berlin into West Berlin. The GDR had to cope with an enemy who was economically very powerful and therefore very appealing to the GDR’s own citizens. West Germany was all the more enticing to East Germans because they all spoke the same language. An East German with adequate professional qualifications had no difficulty finding a job if he moved to West Germany. The resulting drain of workers was creating a simply disastrous situation in the GDR, which was already suffering from a shortage of manual labor, not to mention specialized labor. If things had continued like this much longer, I don’t know what would have happened. I spent a great deal of time trying to think of a way out. How could we introduce incentives in the GDR to counteract the force behind the exodus of East German youths to West Germany? Here was an important question–the question of incentives. How could we create conditions in the GDR which would enable the state to regulate the steady attrition of its working force?
The second problem was the problem of the West Berliners’ easy access to East Berlin. Residents of West Berlin could cross freely into East Berlin, where they took advantage of all sorts of communal services like barbershops and so on. Because prices were much lower in East Berlin, West Berliners were also buying up all sorts of products which were in wide demand–products like meat, animal oil, and other food items, and the GDR was losing millions of marks.
Of course, even if we had a peace treaty, it wouldn’t have solved these problems because Berlin’s status as a free city would have been stipulated in the treaty and the gates would have remained open….
The GDR’s economic problems were considerably relieved by the establishment of border control between East and West Berlin. Comrade Ulbricht himself told me that the economy of the GDR immediately began to improve after the establishment of border control. The demand for food products in East Berlin went down because West Berliners were no longer able to shop there. This meant that the limited supply of consumer products was available exclusively to the citizens of East Berlin….
Of of course there were some difficulties. The East Berliners who had jobs in West Berlin were suddenly out of work. But there was never any problem of unemployment. On the contrary, most of the people affected were construction workers, who were very much needed in East Germany. They were all given jobs suitable to their qualifications….
If the GDR had fully tapped the moral and material potential which will someday be harnessed by the dictatorship of the working-class, there could be unrestricted passage back and forth between East and West Berlin. Unfortunately, the GDR–and not only the GDR–has yet to reach a level of moral and material development where competition with the West is possible. The reason is simply that West Germany possesses more material potential and therefore has more material goods than the GDR…. If we had at our disposal more material potential and had more ability to supply our material needs, there’s no question but that our people would be content with what they would have and they would no longer try to cross over to the West in such numbers that the drain has become a major threat to a state like the GDR.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 454-456
When the two German republics were being formed, West Berlin became a stumbling block and destroyed relations among former allies as well as between the East and the West. The West began to step up subversive efforts inside the GDR, using West Berlin as a base. This was fairly easy for the West to do because Germans were used against Germans. The usual problems of language, of a strange culture, and of outward appearance of agents did not exist as the West looked for agents to send into the East. Besides, there used to be unrestricted travel and communication between the two sides. The borders were open borders. Of course, this meant that the German Democratic Republic also had the opportunity to send agents against the Federal Republic of Germany, but the Western countries took the most advantage of the situation.
Therefore, the issue of how to combat Western influence arose. The best and most logical way to fight it was to try to win the minds of the people by using culture and politics to create better living conditions. That way people would really have the opportunity to exercise free choice.
However, given the conditions that developed in the two German states, there was no real freedom of choice to speak of. That is because West Germany was richer, with more industrial potential, more natural resources, and more production capacity. It was hard for East Germany to compete.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 163
Moreover, West Germany was supported by the United States’ industrial and financial might. The GDR was fighting not only against the opportunities that existed within West Germany, but also against the added material incentives of the United States.
The West’s goal was to turn West Berlin into what is called a mirror of Western life, a showcase for the capitalist world, in order to attract the people of East Berlin into resisting the steps toward socialism being taken in the GDR. These tactics might have seemed perfectly acceptable: let each person make up his or her own mind. There was no contradiction in this. It was a war for people’s minds, not an armed conflict. In fact, we Communists also wage a war for people’s minds all over the world when we demonstrate the advantages of the socialist system of production and when we talk about how socialism is a more democratic system that gives more opportunity to the people. Socialism makes better use of the resources accumulated by the people and provides better distribution of riches among the people.
Yet if you looked at the situation that way, the picture was not quite right. The GDR’s natural resources and its production capabilities were significantly less than those of West Germany. West Germany had the support of the United States, a rich country that you could say had robbed the entire world and grown fat off the first and second world wars. Thanks to more than one war, the United States had expanded its production capabilities. The Soviet Union, by contrast, had suffered more than any other country in the war and had a greater need than any other for the basic necessities: food, clothing, and housing. The Soviet Union’s cities and towns, its technology, its machine-building factories and steel mills, and its housing had all been destroyed.
The Soviet Union never had a chance to compete fairly, to pit its material resources against those of the West. While the Soviet Union bled during World War II, the United States prospered and developed its power.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 164
For this reason, after the war the Americans had accumulated enormous military resources, including clothing and rations. When they reduced the size of their own armed forces they threw their surpluses to West Berlin and West Germany. In this way the competition was uneven from the very start.
The historical role of Marxist-Leninist teachings and the opportunities these teachings afford the working people of all countries are understood only by the most forward-looking segment of society, the most advanced portion of the working-class and intelligentsia. Unfortunately, at a certain stage, ideological issues are decided by the stomach, that is, by seeing who can provide the most for the people’s daily needs. Therefore, the attraction of one or the other system is literally decided by the shop windows, by the price of goods, and by wages. In these areas, of course, we had no chance of competing with the West, especially in West Berlin, where capitalism gave handouts to sharply contrast the material wealth of West Berlin with the living conditions in East Berlin.
Also, dividing a single people, making them live under different sociopolitical conditions, created enormous difficulties. West Germany had the chance to make itself more appealing, especially to professionals such as engineers, doctors, teachers, and highly skilled workers. This category of people was particularly attracted to move to the West. Naturally, workers tended to follow their employers.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 165
By 1961 an unstable situation had been created in the GDR. At the time, there was an economic boom in West Germany. West Germany needed workers badly and lured them from Italy, Spain, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and other countries. Numbers of the intelligentsia, students, and people with higher education, left the GDR because West Germany paid office workers more than they were paid in the GDR and other socialist countries. The question of whether this or that system is progressive ought to be decided in political terms. However, many people decide it in the pit of their stomach. They don’t consider tomorrow’s gains but only today’s income– and today West Germany industry pays you more.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 168
Walter Ulbricht even asked us to help by providing a labor force. This was a difficult issue to face. We didn’t want to give them unskilled workers. Why? Because we didn’t want our workers to clean their toilets. I had to tell Comrade Ulbricht: “Imagine how a Soviet worker would feel. He won the war and now he has to clean your toilets. It will not only be humiliating–it will produce an explosive reaction in our people. We cannot do this. Find a way out yourself.”
What could he do? He had to appeal for stronger discipline; but they still kept on running away because qualified workers could find better conditions in West Germany.
I spoke to Pervukhin, our ambassador in Germany, about the establishment of border control. He gave me a map of West Berlin…. I asked Pervukhin to share the idea with Ulbricht…. Ulbricht beamed with pleasure. “This is the solution! This will help. I am for this.”
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 169
Of greater interest to me personally were the opportunities I had of observing life in Berlin. In West Berlin a great deal of the rubble and ruins which I had seen in 1945 had been cleared way, and instead of half-demolished houses there were now open spaces with paved streets going through them, which still bore their former names on signposts, but new buildings were going up and the less damaged houses were being restored. Familiar shops and large stores had been reopened in temporary premises; there were many flourishing restaurants and bars; theaters had been rebuilt and were well attended. Street traffic was normal, and people were going briskly about their business. West Berlin was still very much alive.
East Berlin was a sad contrast. War damage had probably been no greater than in West Berlin, but the pace of restoration was infinitely slower. With the exception of one long street, the Stalin Allee, consisting of blocks of newly-built houses in the Soviet style, it looked as if the war had ended overnight. On every hand stood streets of ruined houses and shells of churches and large public buildings. At night the streets were badly lighted compared with the brilliantly illuminated streets of the West. Traffic was meager, and people moved about in a listless way…. It was a depressing picture, and immediately revealed the difference in living conditions between the two zones.
Birse, Arthur Herbert. Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 226
Nowhere was the conflict of the powers more intense than in Germany; and nowhere was it more sharply focused than in Berlin. There the contrast between American affluence and Russian destitution was brutally exposed for everyone to see. While the United States and Britain were already pumping economic aid into western Germany, Russia was still draining the resources of East Germany which she needed for her reconstruction. It was only too easy for anti-Russian propagandists to present this outcome of the war, and of long and complex preceding historic developments, as the test of the opposed socio-political systems; and to a claim that western capitalism brought prosperity and freedom while Russian Communism could live only by spoliation and slavery.
Of that condominium [the joint condominium over Germany] hardly a trace was now left: Stalin had refused the western powers any say in the conduct of East German affairs just as they had denied him any share in the control of western Germany…. In the spring of 1948 the issue was brought to a head. The western powers, anxious to hasten the economic rehabilitation of their parts of Germany, proposed to introduce a currency reform under which the old depreciated Mark was to be replaced by a new one. The reform put a seal upon Germany’s division; and it posed at once the question of Berlin’s currency. Russia could not allow the city to become financially incorporated into West Germany; nor could the western powers permit it to be financially absorbed by East Germany. If two different currencies were to circulate in Berlin, the result would be a chronic conflict, for while a growing volume of goods in the West was bound to assure the stability of the new Mark, the value of the eastern currency would be undermined by a continued scarcity of goods. To forestall this, Stalin ventured a desperate gamble. He ordered a blockade of those sectors of Berlin that were held by the Americans, the British, and the French. Soon all traffic heading for West Berlin, whether by land or by water, was brought to a standstill.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 588-589
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STALIN ATTACKS MAO FOR RELYING ON PEASANTS ONLY AND NON-MARXISM
Stalin was always fairly critical of Mao Tse-tung. He had a name for Mao, and it describes him accurately from a purely Marxist point of view. Stalin used to say that Mao was a “margarine Marxist”.
When Mao’s victorious revolutionary army was approaching Shanghai, he halted their march and refused to capture the city. Stalin asked Mao, “Why didn’t you take Shanghai?”
“There’s a population of 6 million there,” answered Mao. “If we take the city, then we’ll have to feed all those people, and where do we find food to do it?”
Now, I ask you, is that a Marxist talking?
Mao Tse-tung has always relied on the peasants and not on the working-class. That’s why he didn’t take Shanghai. He didn’t want to take responsibility for the welfare of the workers. Stalin properly criticized Mao for this deviation from true Marxism. But the fact remains that Mao, relying on the peasants and ignoring the working-class, achieved victory. Not that his victory was some sort of miracle, but it was certainly a new twist to Marxist philosophy since it was achieved without the proletariat. In short, Mao Tse-tung is a petty-bourgeois whose interests are alien, and have been alien all along, to those of the working class.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 462
On 10 February 1948 Stalin said, “I also doubted that the Chinese could succeed, and advised them to come to a temporary agreement with Chiang Kai-shek. Officially, they agreed with us, but in practice, they continued mobilizing the Chinese people. And when they openly put forward the question: Will we go on with our fight? We have the support of our people. We said: Fine, what do you need? It turned out that the conditions there were very favorable. The Chinese proved to be right, and we were wrong.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 443
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SU BUILT UP AUSTRIAN ECONOMY AFTER THE WAR
Like Germany, Austria was divided up between the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union. And, like Berlin, Vienna was divided into zones.
We owned things in Austria. We had factories, and we were running them. We set up management systems and established an economic network among the factories. They probably belonged to German capitalists, but we confiscated them and assumed ownership.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 73
Austria was a first step for us, a demonstration that we could conduct negotiations and conduct them well…. Austria became a neutral country.
So we celebrated a great international victory. It was the European debut for a country bumpkin, and it did us a lot of good. The bumpkin had learned a thing or two. We could orient ourselves without directives from Stalin.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 80
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STALIN WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR GOMULKA’S IMPRISONMENT
In connection with Gomulka’s imprisonment, I cannot agree that Stalin was responsible. I knew for a fact, I heard it from Stalin, that he did not order Gomulka’s arrest; on the contrary, he even voiced doubts about the arrest. He trusted Gomulka.
After Gomulka was restored to power, relations between our two countries improved. Anti-Soviet slander began to die out, and for this Gomulka needs to be recognized. He was in a very good position; you might say, he had suffered. He had been in prison several years and people said it was at Stalin’s request, although I categorically deny that in this case.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 116
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MOLOTOV SAYS CHURCHILL WAS THE SMARTEST 100% IMPERIALIST
MOLOTOV: I knew them all, the capitalists, but Churchill was the strongest, the smartest among them. Of course he was a 100 percent imperialist.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 45
To my mind, Churchill, as an imperialist, was the cleverest among them.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 47
“…And Churchill? Churchill is the kind who, if you don’t watch him, will slip a kopeck out of your pocket. Yes, a kopeck out of your pocket! By God, a kopeck out of your pocket! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill–even for kopeks.”
He underscored several times that we ought to beware of the Intelligence Service and of English duplicity, especially with regard to Tito’s life. “They were the ones who killed General Sikorski in a plane and then neatly shot down the plane–no proof, no witnesses.”
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 73
Churchill was an imperialist to the core.
Goebbels was the first one to use the “iron curtain.” It was often used by Churchill, that’s for sure.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 59
The overriding truth is that Churchill is an imperialist to the core of his being–which indeed Churchill was, unabashedly so–and could never understand how important it is for me, Roosevelt, to respect Stalin’s wishes and views wherever possible because of the need of the U.S. and the USSR to co-operate in the postwar world to wipe out imperialism, colonialism, and other forces antagonistic to democracy.
Nisbet, Robert A. Roosevelt and Stalin. Washington, D.C. : Regnery Gateway, c1988, p. 67
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MOLOTOV JUSTIFIES DECLINING MARSHALL PLAN AID
There was much turmoil. But if Western writers believe we were wrong to refuse the Marshall Plan, we must have done the right thing. Absolutely. We can prove it now as easily as two times two is four. At first we decided in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to propose to all the socialist countries that they participate; but we quickly realized that was wrong. The imperialists were drawing us into their company, but as subordinates. We would have been absolutely dependent on them….
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 62
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MOLOTOV AND STALIN SUPPORT THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
MIKHAILOVICH: One point is not clear to me…. In the formation of the state of Israel, the Americans were opposed.
MOLOTOV: Everyone objected but us–me and Stalin. Some asked me why we favored it. We are supporters of international freedom. Why should we be opposed if, strictly speaking, that meant pursuing a hostile nationalist policy? In our time, it’s true, the Bolsheviks were and remained anti-Zionist. We were even against the Bund, though it was considered to be a socialist organization. Yet it’s one thing to be anti-Zionist and antibourgeois, and quite another to be against the Jewish people…. Otherwise we favored a separate Israeli state. But we remained anti-Zionist.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 65
Israel has turned out badly. But Lord Almighty! That’s American imperialism for you.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 66
This seems mainly to have been due in part at least to his current maneuvers to use Israel, whose statehood he had been the first to recognize, against the West.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 291
I have met Israelis who received military training in the Soviet Union, certainly with Stalin’s approval. But Stalin later abandoned the Jewish policy advocated by my father [Beria], which he had supported at the outset.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 208
The Jewish Committee continued [after the death of Mikhoels], and Stalin would be the first to recognize Israel.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 574
As Israel defended itself against an invasion by five Arab armies, Stalin authorized arms supplies through Czechoslovakia, an infusion of substantial support that proved essential to Israel’s success in the war.
Naumov & Teptsov. Stalin’s Secret Pogrom. New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press, 2001, p. 40
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MOLOTOV SAYS MAO WAS NEVER A MARXIST AND HAD IMPRACTICAL IDEAS
I talked with Mao and then suggested to Stalin that he receive him. He was a clever man, a peasant leader, a kind of Chinese Pugachev. He was far from a Marxist, of course–he confessed to me that he had never read Marx’s Das Kapital….
When I was in Mongolia talking with the Chinese ambassador–he was nice to me–I said, “You want to create a metals industry quickly, but the measures you have planned–backyard blast furnaces–are improbable and won’t work.” I criticized the Chinese, and our people reproved me later. But it was such obvious stupidity!… Backyard blast furnaces to produce worthless metals–nonsense.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 81
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CHOU EN-LAI WAS PRACTICAL AND CLEVER BUT NO THEORIST
I had to deal with Chou En-lai. He was a courteous, well-read man, a practical worker rather than a theorist. But very clever.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 82
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MOLOTOV SPOKE AGAINST TITO BUT NO ONE SUPPORTED HIM
In 1953-54 I spoke out [against reconciliation with Tito’s] Yugoslavia at the Politburo. No one supported me, neither Malenkov nor even Kaganovich, though he was a Stalinist! Khrushchev was not alone. There were hundreds and thousands like him, otherwise on his own he would not have gotten very far. He simply pandered to the state of mind of the people. But where did that lead? Even now there are lots of Khrushchev’s….
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 83
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MOLOTOV SAYS TITO IS A PETTY-BOURGEOIS OPPOSED TO SOCIALISM
Tito is not an imperialist, he is a petty bourgeois, an opponent of socialism.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 84
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STANDARD OF LIVING IS HIGHER IN SOCIALIST EASTERN EUROPE THAN THE SU
MOLOTOV: I agree with you (Golovanov) that the standard of living in the socialist countries (of Eastern Europe) is higher than ours, but by 1 1/2 times, not twice ours…. I believe the standard of living is higher in the socialist countries; they consume more meat, have more footwear per capita. As to how much, I assume one and half times more. But I also believe this serves our interests. Take another example. Our Baltic peoples live at a higher level than Muscovites. We need this. It is a policy that is in keeping with the interests of Moscow.
Central Asia has rapidly industrialized in the period of Soviet power and the standard of living of its people raised to approximate Southern European levels. This contrasts sharply with the acute differential between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, the colonial character of whose relationship with the U.S. is manifested in a much lower standard of living.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 295
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STALIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING AN ATOMIC BOMB
Stalin was fascinated by the potential of the bomb. In late October 1942, he had suggested that the plan for our offensive to surround the Germans at Stalingrad be called Uranium.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 203
On July 20th, 1945, 10 days after the information on the imminent explosion of the American nuclear bomb was reported to Stalin, he made up his mind to set up the Special State Committee on Problem No. 1, making it a more powerful, Politburo committee. On August 20th, 1945, two weeks after the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, we once again reorganized our atomic project. Beria was appointed chairman of the new Special State Committee.
[Footnote] By upgrading it to the status of a Politburo committee, under the aegis of the Communist party, Stalin stressed the urgency of its task and increased its power to complete the bomb.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 202
Meetings were usually in Beria’s study; heated discussions erupted from time to time. I remember Pervukhin, deputy prime minister, indignantly reprimanding and attacking Voznesensky, a member of the Politburo and his superior, for his reluctance to consider allocations of supplies of nonferrous metals for the needs of chemical processing plants that were engaged in the project. I had always assumed that members of the bureaucratic structures were subordinated to each other in accordance with their status. A member of the Politburo was always beyond criticism, at least by a person in a lower rank. It was not so in the special committee, where Politburo members and key ministers behaved almost as equals. It also startled me that Pervukhin was Beria’s deputy in this committee, in which Voznesensky & Malenkov, members of the Politburo and far outranking Pervukhin, were ordinary members.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 204
For me, Kurchatov remains a genius, the Russian Oppenheimer, but not a scientific giant like Bohr or Fermi. He was certainly helped by the intelligence we supplied, and his efforts would have been for naught without Beria’s talent in mobilizing the nation’s resources.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 211
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STALIN’S ATOMIC DIPLOMACY
Just as Fuchs enabled us to determine that the United States was not ready for nuclear war against the Soviet Union, Penkovsky told the United States that Khrushchev was not prepared for nuclear war against the United States.
Stalin pursued a tough policy of confrontation against the United States when the Cold War started; he knew he did not have to be afraid of the American nuclear threat, at least until the end of the 1940s. Only by 1955 did we estimate the stockpile of American and British nuclear weapons to be sufficient to destroy the Soviet Union.
That information helped to assure a communist victory in China’s civil war in 1947-1948. We were aware that President Truman was seriously considering the use of nuclear weapons to prevent a Chinese communist victory. Then Stalin initiated the Berlin crisis, blockading the Western-controlled sectors of the city in 1948. Western press reports indicated that Truman and Attlee, the British Prime Minister, were prepared to use nuclear weapons to prevent Berlin’s fall to communism, but we knew that the Americans did not have enough nuclear weapons to deal with both Berlin and China. The American government overestimated our threat in Berlin and lost the opportunity to use the nuclear threat to support the Chinese nationalists.
Stalin provoked the Berlin crisis deliberately to divert attention from the crucial struggle for power in China. In 1951, when we were discussing plans for military operations against American bases, Molotov told me that our position in Berlin helped the Chinese communists. For Stalin, the Chinese communist victory supported his policy of confrontation with America. He was preoccupied with the idea of a Sino-Soviet axis against the Western world. Stalin’s view of Mao Tse-tung, of course, was that he was a junior partner. I remember that when Mao came to Moscow in 1950 Stalin treated him with respect, but as a junior partner.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 210
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HISS WAS NOT A PAID OR CONTROLLED SOVIET AGENT
One of the officials we had established confidential relations with was Alger Hiss, a member of the American delegation. I had the feeling that Hiss was acting under the instructions of Hopkins. In conversation, Hiss disclosed to Oumansky, and then Litvinov, official U.S. attitudes and plans; he was also very close to our sources who were cooperating with Soviet intelligence and to our active intelligence operators in the United States. Within this framework of exchange of confidential information were references to Hiss as the source who told us the Americans were prepared to make a deal in Europe.
On our list of psychological profiles, Hiss was identified as highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union and a strong supporter of postwar collaboration between American and Soviet institutions. However, there was no indication that he was a paid or controlled agent, which I would have known or would have been marked.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 227
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TIMASHUK’S LETTER REGARDING THE DOCTOR’S PLOT
It is generally believed that the Doctors’ Plot began with a hysterical letter to Stalin accusing Jewish doctors of plans to murder the leadership by means of maltreatment and poisoning. The notorious letter of Lydia Timashuk, a doctor in the Kremlin PolyClinic, was written and sent to Stalin not in 1952, just prior to the arrest of the doctors, but in August 1948. To her letter, which charged that Academician Vinogradov was maltreating Zhdanov and others and caused Zhdanov’s death, Stalin’s reaction had been: “Absurd.” Her letter remained on file for three years without action and was only dug up at the end of 1951….
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 298
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STALIN PROMOTES ZHUKOV
Zhukov continued to be commander of the military districts in Odessa and Siberia, and in 1952 Stalin made him a candidate member of the Central Committee.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 314
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MOLOTOV’S WIFE WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE ANTI-ZIONISM EFFORT
What startled me most was that Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, had maintained clandestine contacts through Mikhoels and Jewish activists with her brother in the United States. A letter to her brother dated October 5th, 1946, before she was arrested, was purely Communist in outlook but otherwise nonpolitical…. In her testimony she had denied that she had attended a synagogue service in Moscow in March 1945 devoted to Jews who had died in the war. Four independent witnesses placed her there. The diplomatic corps was also represented. Surely Molotov encouraged her to go because it was useful to have American observers see his wife there after the Yalta conference, but as she was his wife, his instruction was oral, without record. Later, she did not want to implicate him so she denied that episode, but it was used against her and against him in the anti-Semitic campaign and in ousting him from power.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 343
In February 1949 the initiative for the arrest of Molotov’s wife came not from Stalin but from people who were competing for his succession.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 169
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EAST GERMAN RIOTS CAUSED BY DISAGREEMENT IN GOVT
Ulbricht, together with other GDR leaders, was called to Moscow in early June 1953, and we informed them of our policy, approved by the Presidium on June 12….
While I did not attend the meeting with the East German delegation–at which Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Molotov, Semyonov, and General Grechko (commander of Soviet troops in Germany) were present–I later learned that Ulbricht strongly disagreed. Therefore, Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev decided to remove him.
The outburst of strikes and riots that occurred on June 17 may have resulted from the rebel leaders thinking that the government could not respond. Another theory is that Ulbricht provoked the uprising by refusing to meet the demand for increased pay for the striking workers. I believe both factors were involved.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 365
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STALIN IS VERY UPSET WHEN GOES OUT AND SEES THE WAR’S DESTRUCTION
He [my father] went south in the summer of 1946 on his first vacation since 1937. He traveled by car…. The procession stopped in towns along the way…. My father wanted to see for himself how people were living. What he saw was havoc wrought by the war on every side.
The housekeeper Valechka, who accompanied my father on all his journeys, told me recently how upset he was when he saw that people were still living in dugouts and that everything was still in ruins. She also told me how some party leaders who later rose very high came to see him in the south and report on agricultural conditions in the Ukraine. They brought watermelons and other melons so huge you couldn’t put your arms around them. They brought fruits and vegetables and golden sheaves of grain, the point being to show off how rich the Ukraine was.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 189
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STALIN DID NOT BELIEVE THERE WAS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE FOR A DOCTOR’S PLOT
The “case of the Kremlin doctors” was underway that last winter. My father’s housekeeper told me not long ago that my father was exceedingly distressed at the turn events took. She heard it discussed at the dinner table. She was waiting on the table, as usual, when my father remarked that he didn’t believe the doctors were “dishonest” and that the only evidence against them, after all, was the “reports” of Dr. Timashuk. Everyone, as usual, remained silent.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 207
The sensational episode of the “Doctors Case” is also put on Stalin’s shoulders. The theory is that Stalin wanted to get rid of the doctors and thus, get rid of Beria. This was not the truth at all. The newspaper “Russian Vestnik” printed my interview with the journalist Leontiev. When you read this interview, you can see by which methods the “comrades-in-arms” of Stalin tried to take over the government.
LEONTIEV: Rybin, please tell us, how the “Doctors episode” came on the scene. How come the KGB was involved in medicine?
RYBIN: In 1952, Stalin was not feeling well. To take medicines, Stalin did not like to indulge in this, and did not altogether believe in them, knowing full well that sometimes there are side effects on the organs of a person. The difficulty of doctors is that sometimes they do not make a proper diagnosis. There are many cases of a wrong diagnosis, since each person has a different organism that does not always behave the same when taking medicine….
LEONTIEV: Dr. Timashchuk, did she work with the KGB? Why did this doctor write a letter to you? How were the relations between doctors and the KGB?
RYBIN: Doctor-cardiologist Timashchuk did not work with the KGB, but she analyzed the situation in the Kremlin with the doctors correctly, how these doctors are treating the government personnel. Thereafter, she brought this material, in which the KGB got interested in her revelations. This was not a spy, not a complaint, but actual research into the prescriptions and diagnostic analysis of what the Kremlin doctors were doing…. What made this Soviet patriot, Dr. Timashchuk, suspect what was really going on?
In 1945, Shcherbakov died; in 1948, Zhdanov; in 1949 Dimitrov; in 1952 Choibalsan. Before, on personal command by Yagoda, Menzhinsky was “cured” and Gorky and his son were also “cured.” All this pointed to the problem that all was not well with the “Kremlin doctors.” I, during the 1930s, was working in the Secretariat of Ordjonikidze, who was also ailing with an irregular heartbeat. The head of the Secretariat, Semushkin, called in the doctors. Dr. Levin also “cured” Menzhinsky and Gorky. That Ordjonikidze shot himself –is only a legend.
LEONTIEV: But why did the KGB get involved with the doctors of medicine?
RYBIN: This was caused by an observation of Dr. Timashchuk, who was concerned about the health and life of our government leaders. Putting her on the pedestal was the work of our press in 1952. The high death rate of the leadership of our country was a signal that all was not well in the Kremlin with the doctors! This situation made the KGB very wary and concerned.
In August of 1952, a very important meeting on this problem was held, in which I took part. Some persons immediately demanded the arrest of the doctors, pointing to the facts already established as to the guilt of some diagnosticians and wrongly prescribed medicines… tied into the sudden death of Dimitrov. Others suggested that a loyal Commission be appointed to look into this question thoroughly… composed of impartial doctors and medical experts. Only then should this question be decided upon and steps taken to remedy the situation and sentence the guilty doctors. During this heated debate, the calm voice of the Government Security Organ, Vlasik, Major General, stated the following: “All the diagnostic machinery, apparatus used by the Kremlin doctors, should be analyzed, looked into by experts. We found out that the apparatus was in order.” Could Vlasik present such a statement, if Stalin was only interested in the wholesale arrest of all the Kremlin doctors? Of course not. But the diagnosis by some doctors was suspect.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 87-89
LEONTIEV: Was there any reaction on the part of Stalin to this “Doctors Case”?
RYBIN: Colonel Tukov stated, “Once, Stalin in the car as we were riding, asked, ‘ ‘what must we do? They died one after another, Shcherbakov, Zhdanov, Dimitrov, Choibalsan, but before this, Menzhinsky…Gorky…. It is impossible that this should happen… that one after another, State leaders die so quickly! It looks like we must replace the old doctors in the Kremlin and get younger doctors to take their place.’
I replied, “Comrade Stalin, older doctors have more experience, practice, while younger ones are still green without practice.”
“No, we must replace them. There are too many things that are unexplainable, too many complaints from families. The NKVD demands the arrest of these doctors which ‘cured’ Dimitrov, Zhdanov, and others?”
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 91
According to Sudoplatov, who at that time headed one of the departments of the MGB, Stalin was extremely critical of the “Doctors’ plot” case as prepared by Ryumin, regarding it as primitive and unconvincing. Ryumin was removed on Stalin’s orders and transferred to reserve duty on 14 November 1952.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores Medvedev. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 32
“I am not sure at what point she [Valya Istomina] was promoted to housekeeper. Nor do I know how much he could trust her and tell her, although she told me once that he said to her that he didn’t believe that the doctors plot was actually a plot, that the doctors had been set out, they were innocent.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 247
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STALIN FORESAW A RAPID RECOVERY OF GERMANY
Someone expressed doubt that the Germans would be able to recuperate within fifty years. But Stalin was of a different opinion. “No, they will recover, and very quickly. That is a highly developed industrial country with an extremely qualified and numerous working-class and technical intelligentsia. Give them 12 to 15 years and they’ll be on their feet again. And this is why the unity of the Slavs is important.”
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 114
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SU DID NOT FORCE SOCIALISM ON EASTERN EUROPE BUT IT AROSE INTERNALLY
The common notion in the capitalist world that the countries of Eastern Europe had a kind of regimented socialization thrust upon them by Soviet bayonets is, of course, a myth, again based ultimately on the bourgeois view of the workers as robots. True, as the Soviet armies, in pursuit of the Nazi armies, moved through Eastern Europe, this very action involved the overthrow of the pro-Nazi governments, in, for example, Rumania and Bulgaria. Revolt would have come anyway, however, once the Nazi political power behind those governments crumbled. And it is true also that in some of these nations Soviet representatives later helped–as they should have–to develop socioeconomic bases for socialist construction. The real power and initiative, however, had to come from, and did come from, the peoples of those countries themselves. Furthermore, in two of these nations, Albania and Yugoslavia, the Soviet armies were not directly involved. The revolutions there arose almost entirely from internal actions. In Yugoslavia, for instance, a partisan army of 80,000 was mustered to fight the German invasion; by the end of the war this army and grown to 800,000 and was holding down more German divisions than the combined U.S.-British forces in Italy. Furthermore, Yugoslavia before the war had had a strong Communist Party, with a bloc of deputies in the national parliament. And Czechoslovakia had had powerful Socialist and Communist Parties from the 1920s on.
In short, in many of these countries there had been a considerable socialist-oriented political movement, which, although suppressed by the Nazis, managed to survive and form a core when the Nazi and native reactionary forces were defeated. For instance, in Bulgaria, one of the most economically backward of these countries–a poor, partly feudal nation in contrast to capitalist Czechoslovakia–the Communist Party in 1932 elected 19 of 35 members to the city council of Sofia. When the Nazi dictatorship was overthrown, following the war, an election was held by “direct, secret, and universal suffrage” (according to the Statesman’s Yearbook for 1955), in which the anti-fascist Fatherland Front of Communist, Socialist, and peasant parties won 364 seats to the opposition’s 101. Clearly this movement grew mainly out of the situation within Bulgaria. We might note, too, that in Czechoslovakia in 1946, the Communist Party won 38 percent of the vote in a national election.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 99
Nor did Stalin yet give any clear impression that he would sponsor revolution in the countries of the Russian zone. Communist propagandists there spoke a nationalist and even clerical language. King Michael of Romania was left on his throne; and he was even awarded one of the highest Russian military orders for his part in the coup in consequence of which Rumania had broken away from Germany. The Soviet generals and the local Communist leaders did honor to the Greek Orthodox clergy in the Balkan countries. In Poland they courted the Roman Catholic clergy. There was no talk yet of socialization of industry. Only long overdue land reforms were initiated.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 519
The old Bolshevism, in other words, believed in revolution from below, such as the upheaval of 1917 had been. The revolution which Stalin now carried into eastern and central Europe was primarily a revolution from above. It was decreed, inspired, and managed by the great power dominant in that area. Although the local Communist parties were its immediate agents and executors, the great party of the revolution, which remained in the background, was the Red Army. This is not to say that the working classes on the spot did not participate in the upheaval. Without their participation the venture would have been only a flash in the pan. No revolution can be carried out from above only, without the willing cooperation of important elements in the nation affected by it. What took place within the Russian orbit was, therefore, semi-conquest and semi-revolution. This makes the evaluation of this phenomenon so very difficult. Had it been nothing but conquest it would have been easy to denounce it as plain Russian imperialism. Had it been nothing but revolution, those at least who recognize the right of the nation to make its revolution–a right of which every nation has made use–would have had no scruples in acclaiming it. But it is the blending of conquest and revolution that makes the essence of ‘socialism in one’s zone’.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 554
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