Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

  This has led to speculation that he was playing a long-term hand with a view to a deal with Germany. This was a tradition in Soviet foreign policy. When socialist revolution failed to break out in Berlin after October 1917, Lenin persistently sought to regenerate the Soviet economy by means of German concessionaires. Without German assistance, whether socialist or capitalist, he saw little chance of restoring industry and agriculture across the country. The Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 went some way in this direction. Did Stalin have a similar orientation? It is surely most unlikely. He had introduced the First Five-Year Plan so as to liberate the USSR from dependency on all foreign support, even if, for a few years, imports of American and German technology had to continue.

  Stalin’s observation of the world since the Wall Street Crash confirmed his set of ideas. To him, capitalism appeared inherently unstable. It was also, however, still dangerous. Until such time as the Red Army was an unchallengeable force on two continents it behoved Soviet diplomacy to manoeuvre towards agreements with foreign powers. Even Germany, despite being ranged on the opposite side in the Spanish Civil War, was not necessarily irreconcilable. Like Japan, Germany was a constant geopolitical factor to be taken into account in his calculations. But increasingly he felt that the USSR’s industrial and military achievements were allowing a more active foreign policy. In the 1920s, when military commanders Mannerheim and Piłsudski held power in Finland and Poland, the Politburo was perpetually worried about their depredatory intentions. In the following decade these fears diminished. The Red Army was a power to be reckoned with. In 1939 its forces were at war with Japan and holding their own. The People’s Commissariat of External Affairs could deal with bordering states — Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria — from a position of strength. Their potential to cause damage to the USSR would only be realised if they concerted their efforts. But after Hitler’s rise to power they were more concerned about being conquered by the Germans than exercised by thoughts of bringing down Bolshevism in Moscow.

  Germany, though, could act independently. Its successive campaigns of expansion had been condoned by the United Kingdom and France. Soviet diplomatic attempts to organise resistance had been rebuffed. Stalin had offered assistance to Czechoslovakia before its destruction in March 1939. Whether he was seriously intending to commit the Red Army is doubtful. He was making a public statement of the USSR’s anti-fascism in the knowledge that the British and French were most unlikely to take a stand against Hitler. The Czechoslovaks themselves were reluctant to have Soviet armed units on their soil. In spring and summer 1939 Hitler increased the pressure on Poland. He evidently had his eyes on Danzig on the Baltic coast. Poland was under military threat, and yet its politicians refused to ally with the USSR. Soviet–Polish enmity was an irremovable feature of Warsaw’s calculations. In these circumstances it was hardly surprising that Stalin began to consider whether a deal with Hitler might be preferable to standing wholly outside developments in eastern Europe.

  Stalin relied primarily upon military power, intelligence reports and diplomatic finesse to see him through. The Comintern was a weak source of assistance. The Chinese communists were incapable of defeating the Japanese and had yet to crush the Kuomintang. The German communists were dead or in concentration camps — and a few were émigrés in the USSR. Communism as a political force in central and eastern Europe was on its knees. In Spain and Italy too it was battered. In the rest of the world, including North America, it still counted for little. In the United Kingdom it was a minor irritant to the status quo, mainly to the British Labour Party. In only one country, France, did the communist party retain a mass following. But the French communists were but one party on the left. Although they could organise industrial strikes and political demonstrations, they were chiefly a disruptive factor in national politics. Stalin was often criticised, especially by Trotski’s Fourth International, for turning away from the Comintern in the 1930s. The reality was that the world communist movement offered little hope of making revolutions.

  Even if a revolution had broken out, there would have been complications for Soviet military and security policy. The USSR had few options in the last years of the decade. Stalin, who had always been sceptical about forecasts of a European revolutionary upsurge, reposed his immediate confidence in the activity of the Soviet state. This did not mean that he had abandoned belief in the inevitability of socialist revolution around the world. The global ‘transition’, he thought, would eventually take place as had been predicted by Marx, Engels and Lenin. But he was realistic about the current weakness of the world communist movement; and being a man who liked to operate with a broad programmatic scheme at any given time, he put his trust in his army, in his intelligence agencies and — above all — in himself and his subordinate partner Molotov.

  Stalin and Molotov, with their limited diplomatic experience, assumed dual responsibility; and although Molotov occasionally stood up to Stalin in matters of ideology,12 they never clashed about foreign policy. But this commonalty increased the country’s jeopardy. Stalin could scarcely have fashioned a more perilous arrangement in which decisions of state might be taken. He alone took the supreme decisions. On his mental acuity depended the fate of his country and peace in Europe and the Far East. Most leaders would have lost sleep over this burden of responsibility. Not Stalin. He was supremely self-confident now that he had liquidated those prominent intellectuals who had made him feel edgy and — deep down in his mental recesses — inadequate. He learned fast and prided himself on his mastery of detail. He had never lacked will power. The rest of the Politburo, terrified by the purges of 1937–8 and immersed in their other vast functions of governance, left foreign policy to the Boss. Steadily the inner group was left out of discussions. Yet its members remained impressed by his competence and determination. This was a situation which beckoned to disaster. Disaster was not long in paying a visit.

  36. THE DEVILS SUP

  An event occurred in the early hours of 24 August 1939 which shocked the world when the USSR and Germany sealed a ten-year non-aggression pact. The ceremony took place in Molotov’s office in the Kremlin with Stalin in attendance,1 and the two foreign ministers — Molotov and Ribbentrop — appended their signatures. Six years of mutual vilification between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich ended. Pravda ceased to excoriate Hitler and Nazism in its editorials and Hitler stopped criticism of ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’. Anti-German films were withdrawn from Soviet cinemas; anti-Soviet pamphlets and books were taken down from the shelves of German bookshops. Two dictatorships which had supported opposite sides in the Spanish Civil War embraced each other.

  Stalin in his dog-eared tunic looked over Molotov’s left shoulder as he signed the document. Like Lenin with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he kept back in case things turned out badly. Stalin was delighted with the way things had turned out since Ribbentrop’s arrival at the Central Aerodrome on the previous day. Ribbentrop had come to the Kremlin in mid-afternoon, where Stalin and Molotov met him. For Ribbentrop, this was a sign that the Soviet leadership really had a serious interest in a deal with the Third Reich. Diplomatic notes had passed between Berlin and Moscow for three weeks. Ribbentrop had come to propose an agreement to settle the Soviet–German relationship from the Baltic Sea down to the Black Sea. Hitler’s immediate objective was an invasion of Poland, but the enterprise would be perilous without the USSR’s collusion. The Führer authorised Ribbentrop to arrange a non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The proposed treaty anticipated the division of the northern regions of eastern Europe into two zones of Soviet and German influence; it also laid down a scheme to increase mutually beneficial trade. Ribbentrop had flown to Moscow to stress that Hitler, despite being the author of Mein Kampf, was in earnest.

  The willingness of Stalin to enter such an arrangement with Nazi Germany had been strengthened by the half-heartedness of diplomatic efforts by alternative powerful partners. By mid-August the
prospect of alliance with Britain and France had disappeared, and each day made any German offer more tempting. Molotov on Stalin’s instructions sent a confidential note agreeing to diplomatic talks. Germany’s impatience was growing. Hitler needed to invade and subjugate Poland before winter set in. On 19 August Stalin intimated that Moscow was ready to receive Ribbentrop. Such was the haste of the rapprochement that Hitler had no time to attend — or perhaps he would not have gone to Moscow in any case.

  Stalin, though, was pleased. Three hours of quiet negotiation in the afternoon of 23 August left just one divisive matter. This involved the fate of Latvia. Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to keep Latvia, with its influential German minority, in Germany’s zone of influence. But Stalin and Molotov were intransigent. The old Imperial frontiers were something of a preoccupation for Stalin. There was also the factor of strategic security. If Hitler were to overrun Latvia, he would have a territorial wedge cutting into the USSR’s borderlands. Talks were adjourned at 6.30 p.m. for Ribbentrop to withdraw to consult his Führer. Hitler quickly conceded, and Ribbentrop went back to the Kremlin to tell Stalin the news. Stalin, who was normally as impassive as stone when he wanted to be, could not stop shaking. But he got a grip on himself and as the two groups finalised the text of a treaty, Stalin brought out the bottles and proposed a toast ‘to the Führer’s health’. Ribbentrop reciprocated on the Führer’s behalf.2 Deep in the night the formal ceremony took place with Stalin grinning at Molotov’s shoulder. Teetotaller Hitler was told at his Eagle’s Nest retreat above Berchtesgaden and allowed himself a small glass of champagne.3

  Hitler had need of the assurance that the USSR would not oppose his conquest of most of Poland. This was a temporary compromise: he had not dropped his objective of an eventual invasion of the USSR. But what about Stalin himself? In the light of what happened in 1941, when Hitler ordered Operation Barbarossa, was he prudent to do what he did in 1939?

  This raises the question of whether Stalin had a realistic alternative. Evidently the reconciliation with Germany was his personal decision after consultation with Molotov. Staff in the People’s Commissariat of External Affairs were given no advance warning and were not asked to prepare background briefings.4 There had been no hint in the central daily newspapers. Apart from Molotov, the foreign-policy group in the Politburo which included Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan was left in the dark about the matter.5 If ever there was proof that Stalin was willing to take immense risks, the Nazi–Soviet agreement provided it. Having reached the decision, moreover, he did not deign to explain his calculations to others. In truth there were at the time only two basic options for Soviet foreign policy: an agreement with Hitler or an agreement with France and the United Kingdom. Peace with Hitler would give Stalin a period of respite to go on building up Soviet military strength. By contrast it was not clear that the French and British were seriously interested in a deal. The fact that the British had sent only a middle-ranking Foreign Office official to conduct talks in Moscow in summer 1939 was deeply discouraging to the Kremlin.

  Stalin, fearing dangerous isolation, believed a deal with Germany was the only option on the table. He had to surmount ideological inhibition: the Nazis were the greatest enemy of world communism. Yet Stalin did not let doctrine impede him. Marxism–Leninism anyway made no fundamental distinction between types of capitalist states. For Stalin, all such states — whether liberal-democratic or fascist — were fundamentally deplorable. When he moved towards the policy of the popular front in 1934, he was merely making the practical calculation that the Third Reich posed an immediate threat to the USSR in Europe. This had not ruled out the ultimate possibility of a treaty with Hitler any more than Lenin had excluded the possibility of temporary armed collusion with German proto-Nazis in mid-1920.6 Furthermore, Lenin too had wanted the Soviet state to avoid entanglement in a world war among capitalist states. The basis of the USSR’s policy should be for the great powers to fight any future world war among themselves and for the Red Army to exploit whatever situation might result. If it took a non-aggression treaty to keep Hitler’s hands off the USSR and to induce Germany to move its armed forces against France and the United Kingdom, Stalin was willing to take the step.

  He did not believe that a mere treaty would secure peace for the Soviet Union. He also knew that Hitler was a formidable potential enemy. Molotov was to recall:7

  It would be wrong to say that he underestimated him. He saw that Hitler had somehow managed to take only a short time to organise the German people. There had been a large communist party and yet it had disappeared — it was wiped out! And Hitler took the people with him and the Germans fought during the war in such a way that this was palpable. So Stalin with his dispassionate approach to the consideration of grand strategy took all this very seriously.

  This has the ring of truth. In public it was necessary for a Marxist to stress that Nazism was supported mainly by the middle class. Yet Stalin knew that he was up against a Führer whose people were behind him. He also had no reason to believe that Hitler would quickly crush the armies of the French after defeating Poland. Like most observers, Soviet leaders assumed that the Third Reich would be enmired in difficulties in the West and that this would enable the USSR to go on preparing for war rather than having to fight one against the Wehrmacht.

  There were two sections to the Treaty of Non-Aggression: one was public, the other secret. The public section stipulated that the USSR and the German Reich agreed not to make war on each other either individually or in concert with other powers. Disputes between them were to be settled by negotiations or, if this proved ineffective, by an arbitration commission. The treaty entailed that, if either party became engaged in war with another power, no support should be forthcoming to that other power. The treaty was to remain valid for ten years with provision to extend it for five years. The USSR and Germany were to increase their trade on a mutually advantageous basis. Yet the treaty’s secret section was still more significant. Its clauses demarcated ‘spheres of interest’ for the Soviet and German regimes in eastern Europe. Germany was recognised as having freedom of action from its existing eastern frontier across to Lithuania. Influence in Poland was to be divided between the USSR and the Third Reich. Without expressly saying so, Hitler and Stalin intended to occupy their ‘spheres’ and reduce them to direct political subservience.

  Hitler quickly realised his geopolitical objective. On 1 September 1939 a Blitzkrieg was started against Poland. Within days the Polish military resistance had been crushed. Warsaw fell on 27 September. The British and French governments, somewhat to Hitler’s surprise, delivered an ultimatum to Berlin on the first day of the war. Hitler ignored it. To German dismay, Stalin at first refused to sanction the movement of the Red Army into the territory agreed as falling within the Soviet sphere of interest. The reason was that the USSR and Japan remained at war in the Far East, and the military risk of deploying forces in eastern Poland was too great until the two countries agreed to make peace on 15 September. The Red Army moved into Polish territory two days later. A second agreement — the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Demarcation — was agreed on 28 September. Stalin demanded not only Estonia and Latvia but now also Lithuania as part of the Soviet sphere. He aimed both to recover the land of the Russian Empire and to secure a compact area of defence for the USSR. Hitler, who already was thinking about attacking France, quickly acceded.

  Stalin’s established procedures for dealing with ‘enemies of the people’ came into effect. Political, economic and cultural leaders were rounded up. Army officers too were arrested. Some were shot, others were sent to labour camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan. The NKVD, learning lessons from the Great Terror, had prepared itself carefully with lists of people to be seized. Stalin wanted to be sure that police action hit exactly those groups which he had identified as hostile to Soviet interests. He and Beria did not confine themselves to persecuting individuals. Whole families were arrested and deported. Poland was the first country to s
uffer.8 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were next on the agenda as Stalin and Molotov ordered their governments to sign pacts of mutual assistance. A similar command was conveyed to Finland. The consolidation of the entire region under Soviet hegemony was pursued. The problem was that Finland, which was diplomatically close to Germany, was unwilling to lie down. Negotiations ceased. Stalin set up a government-in-waiting with Moscow-based Finnish communists and, on 30 November, the Red Army attacked confident that it would soon reach Helsinki.

  The Finns, however, held steadfast. The Reds, racked by the effects of the Great Terror, fought hard but incompetently. The Winter War turned into a bloody stalemate in the northern snows. The Finnish government was aware that the total defeat of the Red Army was beyond it. Discussions were resumed and a peace treaty was signed in March 1940. The realistic Finns gave up much territory and several military bases. The Soviet frontier with Finland was moved hundreds of miles to the north of Leningrad. Stalin had achieved his ends but at a terrible price. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand Red Army soldiers perished.9 More importantly for Stalin (who cared nothing for the number of deaths), the military might of the USSR had been exposed as weaker than the world had thought. If the Soviet armed forces could not crush Finland, what would they be able to do against the Third Reich if ever war broke out with Hitler?

  The shock was general in the Kremlin. With so large a force, the Red Army had been expected to thrust back the Finns without difficulty and enable the establishment of a Finnish Soviet Republic which would apply for incorporation in the USSR. Stalin was beside himself with fury. He rebuked Voroshilov. Drink and old friendship loosened Voroshilov’s tongue. Despite the Great Terror, he kept a sense of personal honour and was unwilling to accept criticism from the Leader who had supervised every large decision about security and defence in recent years. Voroshilov had had enough: he picked up a plate of suckling pig and crashed it down on the table.10 This sort of outburst would have condemned most men to the Gulag. (They would usually have gone to the Gulag long before they got round to shouting at the Leader.) The war, though, gave Stalin reason to take stock strategically and necessitated a reorganisation of the Red Army. Stalin dismissed the inadequate Voroshilov and appointed Semën Timoshenko, a professional commander, to lead the People’s Commissariat of Defence.