Stalin

4 TERROR AND IMPENDING WAR

Throughout 1937, the wave of repressions against members of the nomenklatura and former oppositionists continued to grow. In August, this wave turned into a tsunami when the ranks of the repressed were expanded from a few tens of thousands of officials to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Soviet citizens. It was at this point that the repression of 1937–1938 earned the name given it by Robert Conquest: “the Great Terror.”¹

After the archives were opened, we learned that the Great Terror was actually a series of operations approved by the Politburo and aimed at different groups. The most far-ranging of these operations—the one against “anti-Soviet elements”—was carried out in fulfillment of NKVD Order No. 00447, approved by the Politburo on 30 July 1937 and planned for August through December. Each region and republic was assigned specific numerical targets for executions and imprisonments in camps. The quotas for the destruction of human lives were very much like those for the production of grain or metal. During the first stage, approximately two hundred thousand people were to be sent to the camps and more than seventy thousand were to be shot. Yet Order No. 00447 allowed for flexibility: local officials had the right to ask Moscow to increase the permitted number of arrests and executions. It was clear to everyone involved that this right was actually a duty. After expeditiously reaching initial targets, local authorities sent Moscow new “increased obligations,” which were almost always approved. With Moscow’s encouragement, the initial plan for destroying “enemies” was fulfilled several times over.

The first “anti-Soviet elements” affected by the operation were the kulaks, who, according to Order No. 00447, had continued their “anti-Soviet subversive activities” after returning from camps and exile. Order No. 00447 placed so much emphasis on kulaks that it has often been called “the kulak order.” This is a misnomer, however, since it provided for the arrest and execution of many other population groups: former members of parties that opposed the Bolsheviks, former members of the White Guard, surviving tsarist officials, “enemies” who had completed their sentences and been released, and political prisoners still in the camps. Toward the end of the list came common criminals.

This list of targets suggests that the operation’s purpose was the extermination or imprisonment of anyone the Stalinist leadership considered a current or potential threat. This goal was even more clear-cut in the “nationalities” operations that were conducted alongside the “anti-Soviet elements” operation. The “nationalities” operations were also planned in Moscow and governed by special NKVD orders approved by the Politburo. They had a catastrophic impact on the Soviet Union’s ethnic Poles, Germans, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. The Soviet leadership viewed all these groups as ripe for recruitment by hostile foreign powers. A special operation was also conducted against Soviet employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway, who had returned to the USSR from Harbin after the railway was sold to Japan in 1935.

The two campaigns, the “anti-Soviet elements” and the “nationalities” operations, comprised the Great Terror. It was a highly centralized effort begun in the summer of 1937 and concluded in November 1938. Based on the most recent knowledge, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, and 700,000 of them were shot.² An unknown number perished in NKVD torture chambers. Over the roughly year-and-a-half duration of the Great Terror, approximately 1,500 “enemies” were killed every day. None of Stalin’s other crimes against the Soviet population matched the Great Terror in either scale or savagery, and human history offers few episodes that compare.

These figures explain why the Great Terror has come to symbolize Stalin’s dictatorship and personal cruelty. That Stalin himself was the inspiration behind the Terror has never been disputed by serious scholars, and further evidence of his involvement was found after the opening of the archives, which revealed how closely Moscow directed the operations. Having put to rest any lingering doubts that Stalin was the instigator and organizer of the Great Terror, historians have now turned to the task of reconstructing his plans and calculations during these bloody months. Scholars have debated Stalin’s motives for years. The horrific nature of his deeds has led some to think he might have been insane. Clinical proof of such a possibility is undoubtedly beyond reach at this point, but we do have extensive evidence of Stalin’s mental state during this period. For the first time in many years he did not take his usual summer vacation in the south, remaining in Moscow to oversee the roundup. More telling are the many notations and instructions he left on interrogation protocols and the vast body of correspondence between him and the NKVD during this period.

Com. Yezhov: Very important. You have to go through the Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash, and Mordov republics; go through them with a broom.³

Beat Unshlikht for not naming the Polish agents for each region.⁴

Comrade Yezhov: Very good! Keep on digging and cleaning out this Polish spy filth.⁵

You don’t need to “check,” you need to arrest.⁶

Valter (a German). Beat Valter.⁷

One important source for understanding the fury Stalin unleashed in 1937–1938 is the complete transcripts of his speeches and remarks from this period; these have recently become available. Unusually convoluted and incoherent, they are filled with references to conspiracies and omnipresent enemies. In remarks to a meeting of the defense commissar’s council on 2 June 1937, Stalin asserted, “Every party member, honest non-member, and citizen of the USSR has not only the right but also the duty to report any failings that he notices. Even if only 5 percent are true, it will still be worthwhile.”⁸ In another example, the top-performing workers in the metallurgical and coal industries, while being honored with a special reception at the Kremlin on 29 October 1937, were told by Stalin that he was not certain he could trust even them: “I’m not even sure that everyone present, I truly apologize to you, is for the people. I’m not sure whether even among you, I again apologize, there might be people who are working for the Soviet government but at the same time have set themselves up with some intelligence agency in the West—Japanese, German, or Polish—for insurance.” These words, which must surely have surprised those present, were expunged from the official record of the reception.⁹

These examples, of which there are many, are consistent with a statement made by the commissar for foreign trade, Arkady Rozengolts, and contained in his NKVD case file. Rozengolts, who knew Stalin well, described him as “suspicious to the point of insanity” and felt that by 1937 he had changed. In the past, Rozengolts noted, whenever he had reported to Stalin, the vozhd had calmly signed whatever papers needed his signature. Now he would fall into “a fit, a mad fit of rage.”¹⁰ This rage was undoubtedly an important factor in the huge scope and brutality of the Great Terror. By the same token, Stalin’s agitated state does not fully explain the decisions he made throughout this period. Pivotal questions remain unanswered. With whom was Stalin so furious, and why did this fury emerge specifically then?

To understand the nature of Stalin and his regime it is important to keep in mind that the Soviet Union was born out of war. The country came into being as a result of World War I, established itself through victory in the Civil War—a victory that involved overcoming foreign intervention—and was perpetually preparing for the next war. Having come to power solely through war, Bolshevik leaders always believed their power could be taken away by the coordinated efforts of a foreign enemy and domestic counterrevolutionary forces. War readiness, for them, had two aspects: a strong military economy and a secure homeland. The latter required destroying internal enemies.

The gradual move toward terror during the second half of the 1930s coincided with growing international tensions and a growing threat of war. In addition to Japanese aggression along the Soviet Union’s Far Eastern borders, events in Europe were increasingly alarming: Hitler had come to power, and Poland, which lay between the USSR and Germany, seemed in Stalin’s eyes to favor relations with Germany over the USSR. Western powers were pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Nazis, and the Rhineland had been remilitarized in 1936. Another factor influencing Stalin’s foreign policy was the civil war in Spain, which convinced him that England and France were incapable of standing up to Germany. He had little faith in the Western democracies in any case. A policy of non-intervention no longer made sense for the Soviet leadership, and it decided to enter the war in support of Spain’s Republicans, who were fighting Hitler’s ally, General Francisco Franco. Stalin, observing the situation in Spain, became further convinced of the need to purge the homeland in the interests of military readiness. The Spanish Civil War was bringing to the fore a familiar assortment of ills, including anarchy, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, a drifting and ambiguous line dividing the front from the rear, and all manner of treachery. This was the war that gave us the concept of the fifth column. In October 1936, at a critical moment when four columns of Francoist forces were approaching Madrid, the Nationalist general Emilio Mola claimed to have a “fifth column” within the Republican-held city that would rise up and help his forces take it. This term quickly became embedded in the Soviet leaders’ political lexicon.

War in Spain and repression in the USSR escalated in parallel. When the conflict broke out in Spain, on 18 July 1936, the Stalinist leaders initially reacted with caution. But catastrophic defeats suffered by the Republican army led them to intervene. On 29 September 1936, the Politburo adopted a plan of action.¹¹ (It may be significant that this decision coincided with Yezhov’s appointment as head of the NKVD.) The Spanish defeats were taking place alongside setbacks in Europe and the Far East. On 25 October 1936, Italy signed a treaty with Germany, followed on 25 November by the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan. All of these developments seemed to heighten the danger of war.

Newly available archives confirm that Stalin was heavily involved in Spanish affairs. The evidence clearly shows that he believed Republican defeats were caused by saboteurs in the ranks. He demanded that the internal enemy be dealt with decisively. On 9 February 1937 Soviet representatives in Valencia and Madrid were sent a telegram asserting that a series of failures at the front had been directly caused by treachery at headquarters: “Make use of these facts, discuss them, observing caution, with the best of the Republican commanders … so that they may demand … an immediate investigation of the surrender of Malaga, a purge of Franco agents and saboteurs from army headquarters.… If these demands by front-line commanders do not produce immediately the necessary results, put it … that our advisers may find it impossible to continue working under such conditions.”¹² A few days later, he repeated these demands: “We tell you what our firmly established opinion is: that the General Staff and other headquarters must be purged thoroughly of their complement of old specialists who are unable to understand the conditions of civil war and, in addition, are politically unreliable.… Headquarters must be reinforced with fresh people, staunch and full of fighting spirit.… Without this radical measure the Republicans will unquestionably lose the war. This is our belief.”¹³

At the same time that Stalin was dispatching telegrams to Spain, the notorious February–March 1937 Central Committee plenum, which signaled an intensification of repression, was taking place in Moscow. Stalin, reading a draft of the speech Molotov planned to make to the plenum, made some comments in the margins. He underlined the parts where Molotov talked about Trotsky ordering his followers in the USSR “to save their strength for the most important moment—for the start of war—and at that moment to strike with total decisiveness at the most sensitive points in our economy.”¹⁴ Near the words “those incapable of fighting the bourgeoisie, who prefer to cast their lot with the bourgeoisie rather than the working class, have abandoned [the party],” Stalin made a notation: “This is good. It would be worse if they abandoned us in time of war.”¹⁵ The theme of the special danger posed by wreckers and spies in wartime ran through the speeches delivered at the plenum, including Stalin’s: “Winning a battle in time of war takes several corps of Red Army soldiers. But reversing that victory at the front requires just a few spies somewhere in army headquarters or even division headquarters, able to steal the battle plans and give them to the enemy. To build a major railway bridge would take thousands of people. But to blow it up, just a few people would be enough. There are dozens, hundreds of such examples.”¹⁶

Stalin took an active hand in preparing an article for the 4 May 1937 issue of Pravda, titled “Certain Insidious Recruitment Techniques Used by Foreign Intelligence.” This lengthy piece, taking up the bottom halves of three pages, was an important element of the Great Terror’s ideological underpinning. It was reprinted in various publications, actively used in propaganda, and discussed at party study groups. We can see from the initial draft, which Stalin filed in his personal archive, that he modified its headline, which originally read “Certain Methods and Techniques Used by Foreign Intelligence,” to give it a more sinister tone.

This article, unlike others that Stalin helped produce, was not at all theoretical. It described specific (most likely fictitious) instances in which Soviet citizens, especially those sent overseas on state business, had been recruited by foreign intelligence agencies. These examples made the article credible and persuasive. Stalin contributed almost an entire page of text describing an instance in which a Soviet official working in Japan met regularly with an “aristocratic lady” in a restaurant. During one such meeting, a Japanese man in a military uniform appeared, claimed to be the woman’s husband, and made a scene. Another Japanese man appeared and offered to help resolve the matter, but only after the Soviet citizen agreed in writing to keep him informed of what was happening in the USSR. This “helpful intermediary” turned out to be an agent of Japanese intelligence, and the Soviet citizen became a spy.¹⁷

In the months that followed, Stalin’s suspicions were translated into massive police operations. During the spring and summer of 1937, the urgent call to expose spies and forestall potential treason became the basis for a case against a counterrevolutionary organization within the Red Army. On 2 June 1937, Stalin explained the goal of the plot to members of the defense commissar’s Military Council: “They wanted to turn the USSR into another Spain.”¹⁸ Reports of treachery and anarchy in Spain were an important component of the propaganda campaign to “intensify vigilance” and fight against “enemies” within the USSR. In June and July 1937, when the government was preparing to launch large-scale operations against domestic anti-Soviet elements, Soviet newspapers were filled with articles about arrests of German spies in Madrid and of Trotskyites in Barcelona and the fall of the Basque capital Bilbao brought about by a treacherous commander in the Basque army. Also during that summer, the Spanish Republican government created a special state security agency to counteract espionage and combat the “fifth column”—the Servicio de Investigacion Militar (SIM), which sent tentacles into all parts of Republican Spain and brutally suppressed any opposition. The methods used by this new structure prompted sharp criticism even by sympathetic leftists in Western countries. Intensified repression in the Soviet Union was being mirrored in Spain (including by Soviet agents operating there).¹⁹ The Spanish Republican police and the Soviet secret police each worked to crush their own “fifth columns.”

In July the situation in the Far East became even more tense after Japan invaded China. Two important events occurred on 21 August 1937. First, the USSR and China, both with eyes on Japan, signed a non-aggression pact. Second, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee to “Expel the Korean Population from Border Regions of the Far Eastern Territory.” In the fall of 1937 a massive operation was undertaken to arrest and deport Koreans from this vast region. More than 170,000 people were expelled. The expressed goal was to “prevent the penetration of Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Territory.”²⁰

The idea that the country had to be purged of a potential fifth column, a recurring theme throughout the 1930s in the USSR, was an article of faith among Stalin’s close associates. Even many decades later, they referred to it:

Nineteen thirty-seven was necessary. If you consider that after the revolution we were slashing left and right, and we were victorious, but enemies of different sorts remained, and in the face of the impending danger of fascist aggression they might unite. We owe the fact that we did not have a fifth column during the war to ’37.²¹

This was a struggle against a fifth column of Hitlerite fascism that had come to power in Germany and was preparing war against the country of the Soviets.²²

There is little doubt that Stalin encouraged these ideas among his fellow Politburo members. From their narrow perspective, he had a logical and convincing argument. The Soviet government had many internal enemies who might be keeping a low profile at the moment but were ready to leap into action as soon as the USSR was challenged by a foreign power. The relatively independent old party nomenklatura, which still had ties to the military and the NKVD, might seek to take charge. Former oppositionists were surely eager to take revenge after long years of humiliation and persecution. The kulaks and the perpetually starving peasants might band together with former members of the nobility, White Guard, and the clergy to follow the example of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and turn war with a foreign enemy into a civil war against a despised regime. Then there were the Soviet Union’s many ethnic minorities with ties to neighboring countries—Germans and Poles especially—who Stalin suspected would collaborate with an enemy based on ties of blood. The way to eliminate these dangers was to destroy as many potential enemies and collaborationists as possible. Such was the logic of Stalin’s fearful and ruthless mind as the threat of war grew. In the fevered imaginations of his inner circle, such a fifth column loomed orders of magnitude larger than it could possibly have been in reality. Phantom threats overshadowed the very real dangers confronting the Soviet Union.

 WAS IT ALL YEZHOV’S FAULT?

Stalin claimed to have had no part in his own atrocities. He told the renowned Soviet aeronautical engineer Aleksandr Yakovlev that it was all Yezhov’s fault: “Yezhov was a beast! A degenerate. You’d call him at the commissariat, and they’d tell you, ‘He went to the Central Committee.’ You’d call the Central Committee, and they’d tell you, ‘He went to his office.’ You’d send someone to his house, and it turns out that he’s lying on his bed dead drunk. Many innocent lives were lost. That’s why we shot him.”²³

The winding down of the Great Terror in late 1938 and early 1939 was accompanied by a campaign to deflect suspicion away from its true perpetrators. This effort was helped by Yezhov’s removal and the very public unmasking of “slanderers” who had submitted denunciations against honest people—supposedly a major cause of the repression. Even today some are willing to argue Stalin’s innocence, proposing pseudo-scholarly theories that the Great Terror erupted spontaneously on the initiative of local officials. Of course, once Moscow issued its orders, the momentum generated was bound to look elemental. In the bureaucratic language of the Stalin era, the behavior of zealous officials was labeled peregiby (excesses). But it was not excesses that determined the scale and ferocity of the Terror. The documentary evidence shows that large-scale operations rarely deviated from Stalin’s orders.

After Moscow’s arrest and execution quotas were received by the NKVD headquarters of each oblast (province) and krai (a territory similar to a province but containing semi-autonomous administrative units), the regional NKVD chief would gather the heads of local (municipal and district) NKVD offices for a meeting, at which the regional quota would be parceled out among the administrative entities (districts, towns, villages, settlements). The first source used in compiling a list of enemies was the card files that the political police kept on various suspected “anti-Soviet elements,” as well as any other compromising materials that came to hand. After a victim was arrested, an investigation was conducted to expose his or her “counterrevolutionary ties” or uncover the existence of “counterrevolutionary organizations.”²⁴ The necessary “evidence” was obtained using a variety of methods, most often torture, which was officially sanctioned by the country’s top leadership. The forms of torture were brutal and sometimes caused an arrestee’s death. One major goal of interrogation was to obtain testimony implicating others, thus generating a second wave of arrestees, who in turn provided more names. These police operations could, in theory, continue indefinitely, or until the potential pool of victims had been thoroughly drained. Such operations did not continue only because Stalin had full control of the state security system and party apparat and could close the spigot whenever he wanted. Every decision to sentence a presumed enemy to a labor camp or to be shot was approved in Moscow.

At first it was assumed that these large-scale operations would conclude at the end of 1937. Gradually, the date was moved back to November 1938. On 17 January 1938, Stalin sent NKVD chief Yezhov new orders:

The SR [Socialist Revolutionary Party] line (both left and right) has not been fully uncovered.… It is important to keep in mind that there are still many SRs in our army and outside the army. Can the NKVD account for the (“former”) SRs in the army? I would like to see a report promptly. Can the NKVD account for “former” SRs outside the army (in civil institutions)? I also would like a report in two–three weeks.… What has been done to expose and arrest all Iranians in Baku and Azerbaijan? For your information, at one time the SRs were very strong in Saratov, Tambov, and the Ukraine, in the army (officers), in Tashkent and Central Asia in general, and at the Baku electrical power stations, where they became entrenched and sabotaged the oil industry. We must act more swiftly and intelligently.²⁵

This document is one of many pieces of evidence that Stalin played the decisive role in organizing the Great Terror and that Yezhov was following his orders. Archival records clearly show Stalin to be the initiator of all key decisions having to do with purges of party and government institutions and the mass operations that swept up ordinary citizens. He not only ordered the arrest and execution of hundreds of thousands of people, but he also took a strong interest in the details. He sent telegrams about the need to make particular arrests, threatened dire consequences for insufficient vigilance, and signed lists of members of the nomenklatura to be executed and imprisoned. In many cases he personally decided whether someone would be shot or sent to a labor camp.²⁶ Overseeing the large-scale operations to wipe out enemies took up a significant portion of the dictator’s time in 1937–1938. Over a twenty-month period from January 1937 to August 1938, he received fifteen thousand spetssoobshchenii (special communications) reporting on arrests and the conduct of various secret police operations or requesting approval for a particular act of repression, usually accompanied by interrogation protocols (transcripts). On a typical day, he received twenty-five documents from Yezhov, some running to many pages.²⁷ Furthermore, the record of visitors to Stalin’s office shows that during 1937 and 1938, Yezhov visited him almost 290 times and spent a total of 850 hours with him. The only person who visited more often was Molotov.²⁸

Yezhov was a capable and motivated pupil. He organized the trials of former oppositionists and conducted day-to-day oversight of the giant machine of repression. He personally participated in interrogations and issued orders to apply torture. To please Stalin, who always demanded greater efforts in the fight against enemies and constantly pointed to new threats, Yezhov encouraged his subordinates to exceed the Politburo’s targets for mass arrests and executions and to fabricate new conspiracies. To encourage them, the NKVD and Yezhov personally were lavished with praise throughout 1937 and most of 1938. Yezhov was given every conceivable award and title and simultaneously held several key party and government posts. Cities, factories, and kolkhozes were named after him.

Despite these signs that Stalin was pleased with his people’s commissar for internal affairs, there is evidence that the vozhd was maintaining a certain distance, even as Yezhov and his organization were lavished with praise for their excellent work in exposing enemies. Inevitably, Stalin eventually brought the mass extermination to a halt and blamed the “excesses” and “violations of law” on Yezhov and his subordinates. Stalin laid the groundwork for Yezhov’s removal gradually and systematically. In August 1938, he appointed Lavrenty Beria, first party secretary for Georgia, to serve as Yezhov’s deputy. On the surface, nothing had changed. Yezhov still seemed to enjoy power and favor. But now, by his side was a man he would never have chosen. Several months later Yezhov even alluded to Beria’s appointment in a letter to Stalin, describing it as showing “an element of mistrust toward me” and admitting that he saw “[Beria’s] appointment as preparation for my being relieved.”²⁹ He was right. Unable to cope with the stress of the situation, he descended into alcoholism and lost control of both the NKVD and himself.

Two months after Beria’s appointment, Stalin took further steps toward Yezhov’s removal. On 8 October 1938 the Politburo established a commission to draft a resolution concerning the NKVD. Yezhov’s subordinates began to be arrested. Beria’s henchmen set to work beating testimony against Yezhov out of them, just as Yezhov’s henchmen had done when he was building a case against his precedessor, Genrikh Yagoda. On 17 November the Politburo adopted a transparently hypocritical and mendacious resolution remarking on NKVD successes in destroying “enemies of the people and foreign intelligence agencies’ espionage-sabotage networks” but also condemning “shortcomings and perversions” in the NKVD’s work.³⁰ While repeatedly demanding an intensified struggle against enemies, Stalin had never questioned the mission of mass terror that he himself had conceived and promoted. Yezhov and the NKVD now stood accused of doing what Stalin had ordered them to do. If Yezhov had been allowed to make a serious case for himself, he would have had no trouble doing so. But as he knew better than anyone, that was not how the Stalinist system worked. All he could do was hope and repent.

Having done his job, the faithful Yezhov was no longer needed. He was arrested and shot as the head of a (nonexistent) counterrevolutionary organization within the NKVD. Stalin apparently did not feel the need to goad excessive public outrage, and Yezhov’s downfall was arranged without fanfare. The cautious tidiness with which he was removed shows that Stalin was reluctant to draw public attention to the activities of the NKVD and the mechanics of the Great Terror. Yezhov was Stalin’s senior scapegoat. He paid the ultimate price so that his vozhd could remain above suspicion. For the Soviet people, the Terror became the “Yezhovshchina”—a term using a Russian suffix suggesting some rampant evil.

The final stage of the Great Terror—its unwinding, which Stalin carefully controlled—mainly targeted Yezhov’s top lieutenants at the NKVD. A miniscule number of ordinary citizens swept up by the large-scale operations—primarily those who had fallen into NKVD clutches during the second half of 1938—were released. The machinery of terror remained in place with only minor adjustments, and ruthless repression continued until Stalin’s death. The vozhd never stopped believing that enemies were all around or demanding that they be unmasked, arrested, and tortured. But he never again resorted to repression on the scale seen during 1937–1938.

Stalin must have been aware of the Terror’s devastating consequences, yet he never, either in public or even within his inner circle, questioned its necessity. But the consequences could not have escaped his attention. A huge number of those responsible for running the Soviet economy had been arrested. Workplace discipline suffered, and engineers were afraid to propose any changes or innovations that might later subject them to unscrupulous accusations of “wrecking.” The Terror led to a sizable decline in the rate of growth in industrial production.³¹ The military too suffered from a shrinking pool of experienced and competent commanders and a decline in discipline and responsibility. The Red Army was so heavily affected by repression that the Soviet leadership was forced to return many previously arrested or discharged commanders to service, at least those the NKVD had not yet had time to execute.³²

The Great Terror of 1937–1938 put huge stresses on Soviet society and caused widespread misery. Millions of people were directly affected. Many who escaped being shot, confined to labor camps, or subjected to internal deportation lost their jobs or were evicted from their apartments or even towns for the sole crime of having ties to “enemies of the people.” Such abuses and upheavals could not be forgiven and passively accepted. Although fear was a fairly effective means of keeping the population from expressing its displeasure, grievances were lodged. In 1937–1938, these grievances mainly took the form of the millions of complaints that came pouring into government and party offices. In January 1937 alone, 13,000 complaints were filed with the procuracy, and in February–March 1938 the number reached 120,000.³³ It has not yet been established how many letters and petitions were sent to Stalin himself during the Great Terror or how many actually reached his desk. The records are either inaccessible or were not preserved. We can only assume that Stalin’s office was inundated with such petitions. The vozhd could not have been entirely shielded from his subjects’ desperation, grief, and disillusionment.

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

 THE SEARCH FOR ALLIES

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

To some extent the Western observers were right. Signs of the Terror’s devastating impact on Soviet military might soon became apparent. In June 1938, the NKVD general in charge of the Far East, Genrikh Liushkov, crossed the Soviet border into Manchuria and offered his services to the Japanese. This was of course a traitorous act, but Liushkov was pushed in that direction by Stalin. After faithfully serving the regime and spilling rivers of other people’s blood, he realized it would soon be his own turn to bleed. When a summons came to report to Moscow, Liushkov decided that his best option was to defect. Given his years as a top NKVD official in Moscow, his experience working face-to-face with Stalin, and his role as secret police chief of the militarily critical Far Eastern region, he had a great deal to offer. He was well informed about military readiness in the Far East and the makeup and placement of Soviet troops—and he shared all this information with the enemy. Stalin further undermined military preparedness in the Far East by ordering another wave of arrests within the army. Meanwhile, in July and August 1938, the Red Army clashed with Japanese forces near Lake Khasan, an area near the borders with Korea and China. Stalin closely monitored this conflict and demanded decisive action. In a conversation with the commander of the Far Eastern front, Marshal Vasily Bliukher (who had expressed his reluctance to use aviation), Stalin issued the following order: “I don’t understand your fear that bombing might hurt the Korean population or your fear that aviation won’t be able to fulfill its mission because of fog. Who forbade you to hurt the Korean population in time of war with Japan? Why would you care about Koreans when the Japanese are striking at lots of our people? What do a few clouds matter to Bolshevik aviation when it wants to truly defend the honor of its Motherland?”³⁴

While the Battle of Lake Khasan ended favorably for the Soviet side, the clash exposed significant shortcomings in the combat readiness of Red Army troops and command structures. As usual, Stalin assumed that the army’s poor performance was the result of treachery. Marshal Bliukher was arrested and died in prison after being brutally tortured.

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

Stalin undoubtedly took such marginalization as a personal insult. Munich only intensified his fear that the democracies and fascists were conspiring against the USSR and planning to channel Nazi aggression eastward. He could not respond from a position of strength. In addition to expressing his outrage, in late September Stalin ordered a Red Army troop buildup along the USSR’s western border, a purely demonstrative move that is unlikely to have worried the Germans. In any event, just days later, in mid-October, the Politburo decided to disband the reserve units that had been mobilized in response to the events in Czechoslovakia. A total of 330,000 troops, 27,500 horses, and 5,000 vehicles and tractors were released from active duty.³⁵

In practical terms, Stalin could do little about the Munich Agreement beyond trying to drive a wedge between the Western democracies and Hitler. To this end, he made a series of statements condemning Great Britain and France, while opening the door to improved bilateral relations with Germany. The most significant overture to Germany came during a speech at the Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, in which Stalin warned the English and French that he had no intention of “pulling the chestnuts out of the fire” for them (a line that earned this address the nickname “the chestnut speech” in the West) and accused them of attempting to provoke conflict between the USSR and Germany. He told Germany that the Western powers had not succeeded in “enraging the Soviet Union against Germany, poisoning the atmosphere, and provoking conflict with Germany on no apparent grounds.”³⁶ These pronouncements took on special significance several days later when Europe’s fragile peace was broken. Hitler, confident that no one would stop him, seized the entire territory of Czechoslovakia. Even the most optimistic observers now realized that Munich had made world war all but inevitable. As a third party to the growing conflict, Stalin and the Soviet Union were in a position to choose sides.

The spring and summer of 1939 were a time of urgent diplomatic maneuvering and negotiation. Understanding the nature of these efforts and the actual intentions of the parties involved was difficult enough for their direct participants, to say nothing of historians today. Nobody trusted anybody, and all were trying to outsmart their adversaries and partners alike. Such confusion was surely true of the talks between the Soviet Union and the Western powers of England and France. Progress was painfully slow, despite the efforts of Soviet foreign affairs commissar Maksim Litvinov, who staked his reputation on building cohesion among anti-Hitler forces.³⁷ In early May 1939, Stalin relieved Litvinov of his duties and put Molotov in charge of foreign affairs. This change was undoubtedly intended as a gesture of friendship toward Germany, but it also radically reshaped foreign policy decision making. The new arrangement allowed Stalin to take full control of foreign affairs, not only in terms of their guiding principles (as he had always done), but also their day-to-day operations. Molotov, with whom Stalin was in almost constant conversation, was a more convenient foreign-policy right hand than Litvinov, who rarely visited Stalin’s office. Such practical details were important to the vozhd. At the top tier of Soviet power, government was adapted to Stalin’s habits and rhythms, and the choice of Molotov to oversee foreign affairs at this critical time is a prime example of this adaptation.

What was uppermost in Stalin’s mind during this period—putting pressure on his Western partners or exploring the possibility of an alliance with the Nazis? It is tempting to assume that he had decided to align himself with Hitler long before the fateful events of 1939. Arguments in favor of this view include the general idea of an affinity between totalitarian regimes and Stalin’s mistrust of the changeable Western democracies, which seemed inclined to retreat in the face of brute force. But the foundation for a Nazi-Soviet alliance was actually flimsy. The available evidence offering insights into Stalin’s thinking is open to interpretation. On one hand, Mikoyan reported that Stalin spoke approvingly of Hitler’s 1934 purges.³⁸ We also know that the Soviet leader initiated overtures aimed at establishing direct contact with Hitler.³⁹ Most damning of all was the result: an impressive demonstration of Soviet-German “friendship” in the fall of 1939. But on the other hand, there is convincing evidence that Stalin had little faith in Hitler as a potential ally. If he trusted the German leader, there likely would not have been a powerful anti-Nazi propaganda campaign waged in the USSR or mass repression against Soviet Germans—both of which were carried out over the strong objections of the Nazi government. Stalin’s attitude toward the Germans seemed to alternate between approval and annoyance. Responding to a September 1938 NKVD memorandum about the destruction of a cemetery dating to World War I for German soldiers and officers in Leningrad Oblast, rather than replying with his usual laconic “in favor,” Stalin wrote, “Correct (tear it down and fill it in).”⁴⁰ The German interpreter present at negotiations with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Moscow also offers some insight into the Soviet leader’s mindset. Stalin apparently rejected a draft of an upbeat press communiqué with the words: “Don’t you think that we should give more consideration to public opinion in both our countries? We’ve been slinging mud at one another for years now.”⁴¹

Whatever Stalin’s true inclinations were, it was Hitler who took the initiative in bringing about a Soviet-German non-aggression pact. As soon as the German chancellor decided that his invasion of Poland, scheduled for 1 September, would require Soviet cooperation, he took steps to promote a rapprochement between the two countries. On 21 August Stalin received a personal correspondence from Hitler hinting rather transparently at his plans for Poland and expressing the urgent desire to conclude a non-aggression pact within a few days. Hitler asked that Stalin receive von Ribbentrop in Moscow the very next day or at least on 23 August. On 21 August Molotov handed Stalin’s response to the German ambassador in Moscow. Von Ribbentrop could come to Moscow on the later date.⁴²

Stalin and Molotov were both there to receive the German foreign minister. The meeting was cordial, even amicable. Each side got what it wanted. In addition to the non-aggression pact, Stalin insisted that a secret protocol be drawn up stipulating that Germany and the Soviet Union would divide up Eastern Europe. The eastern portion of Poland, which then included the western parts of both Ukraine and Belarus; Latvia; Estonia; and Finland were recognized as belonging within the Soviet sphere. Germany also supported Soviet pretensions to Bessarabia. Western Poland and Lithuania would go to Germany. Subsequent negotiations gave Lithuania to the Soviets. The protocol wound up being a sort of Brest-Litovsk in reverse. Hitler needed a worry-free border with the USSR, and he would pay for it with territorial concessions.

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

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

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

It is difficult to say how prominently emotional and moral considerations figured in Stalin’s thinking. Surely they were far outweighed by the immediate risk of war. There is a broad spectrum of opinion on the geo-strategic reasons for the agreement with Germany. At one end are those who point to the speech Stalin allegedly gave to the Politburo on 19 August 1939, just before the pact was signed. One version of this speech, published in France in late 1939, caused a sensation as a supposed exposé of Stalin’s expectations of what war would mean for the USSR. The French publication quotes him giving the following justification for the pact with Hitler: “We are absolutely convinced that if we conclude an agreement to ally with France and Great Britain, Germany would be forced to give up on Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western powers. War would be averted and the subsequent course of events would prove dangerous for us.”⁴³

This alleged speech made it seem as if Stalin believed war was needed to weaken the West, expand the USSR’s boundaries, and help spread communism in Europe. These supposed remarks compromised Stalin in Hitler’s eyes and made the French Communist Party look like an agent of hostile forces. Publication of this “top secret” document clearly served somebody’s interest.

Most historians have never assigned much significance to this forgery. Neither the Politburo archive nor Stalin’s own files contain even circumstantial evidence of such a speech—or even that the Politburo met on 19 August. This is not surprising. Based on what is known about Stalin’s dictatorship in the late 1930s, it is hard to believe he would speak so openly to his Politburo comrades, for whose opinions—and even existence—he felt no need whatsoever. The “transcript of Stalin’s speech,” like many other well-known forgeries, promotes a particular viewpoint in regard to Stalin and his actions. According to this extreme view, Stalin concluded a pact with Hitler because he wanted war in Europe as a means of carrying out his plans.

The views reflected in the forgery differ sharply from statements by Stalin for which we do have a reliable source. Georgy Dimitrov, the head of the Comintern at the time, recorded in his diary the following remarks by Stalin, made at a meeting on 7 September: “We would rather have reached agreement with the so-called democratic countries, so we conducted negotiations. But the English and French wanted to use us as field hands and without paying us anything! We, of course, would not go work as field hands, especially if we weren’t getting paid.”⁴⁴ Nobody should feel compelled to take Stalin’s words at face value. But the possibility that he was driven toward his pact with Hitler by his country’s isolation and a sense that he was undervalued by his Western allies deserves serious consideration.

The diversity of opinions concerning Stalin’s motives in August 1939 reflects the complexity of events and abundance of international intrigues during the lead-up to World War II. In recent times, however, pieces of historical evidence have become available that clarify the situation. The negotiations among the Soviet Union, England, and France were fraught with problems, and both the Soviet and the Western sides were to blame for their lack of progress. Stalin saw in the Western nations’ obstinacy further confirmation of their intent to appease Hitler at the expense of the USSR. Most likely, he thought war between Germany and Poland was inevitable however the other powers were aligned, and he was probably right. It was difficult to predict how such a war would affect his country. The Nazis would be right on Soviet borders. Hitler was prepared to pay a fair price for a pact that would grant Soviet blessing to this arrangement. For Stalin, the pact offered nearly risk-free expansion of Soviet territory and a chance to create a buffer between his country and the war about to be unleashed on Europe.

Then there were the Japanese. In the spring of 1939, clashes were already erupting between Soviet and Japanese troops in Mongolia. The first engagements did not end well for the Red Army, but by the time of the von Ribbentrop negotiations, the Soviet side was achieving significant victories. These strengthened Stalin’s position in his dialogue with Germany. The signing of the pact was a diplomatic blow to Japan. At least for the near term, it could not count on its German ally in its confrontation with the USSR. There is no serious argument against assuming that Stalin was guided by all these considerations.

In August 1939, Stalin had every reason to consider himself ascendant. He had concluded an agreement with the world’s strongest military power and averted a war with it, at least for the time being and possibly for a long time to come. He had won back much of the territory lost by Russia two decades earlier. He could anticipate reaping third-party benefits as the warring European countries created a new balance of power on the continent. The pact with Germany and secret protocol were morally distasteful and they diminished the Soviet Union’s reputation with progressives around the world, but these were relatively minor concerns. Was Stalin looking into the distant future and plotting the creation of a Communist empire extending over a large part of Europe? Such a prospect must have been hard to envision in 1939. Did he conclude the pact in order to provoke war in Europe? Given Nazi aggression, such a provocation seems hardly necessary. It is another matter that we will never know how the war would have played out had Stalin not signed the agreement with Hitler and continued to try to make common cause with England and France.

We will also never know how the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and secret protocol would look today had Stalin used these documents simply to restrain Germany and expand the Soviet sphere of influence. In that case, posterity would have seen the Soviet-German understanding as an unsavory but understandable and pragmatic maneuver by a savvy politician. But Stalin was the iron-fisted ruler of a totalitarian system. He used the agreement not simply to keep the Nazis out of the small countries along the USSR’s border, but also to assimilate new territories. And assimilation, in Stalin’s world, meant aggression and the brutal purging of society.

 AS WAR RAGED

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Poland’s allies, Great Britain and France, responded with a declaration of war, and World War II was under way. The Nazis swept through Poland almost unopposed. The British and French forces that came to Poland’s defense assembled too slowly and seemed in no great hurry to fight. The Red Army’s entry into Poland, and the line dividing this country between Germany and the USSR, had been determined during the von Ribbentrop negotiations in Moscow the previous month, but Stalin was also in no hurry to begin military actions. The Soviet invasion began only on 17 September, after the outcome of Germany’s Polish campaign was fully evident. Clearly, Stalin preferred to wait until the risk of an invasion was minimal and Soviet aggression would not look like it had been coordinated with Germany’s. The Red Army primarily occupied the parts of western Ukraine and western Belarus that Poland had seized in 1921. The official propaganda claimed that Soviet actions were being taken on behalf of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples and described the invasion as an act of “liberation.” This interpretation suited Western politicians, who still hoped to win Stalin to their side.

The reality bore little resemblance to the image promoted by Soviet propaganda. The Soviet absorption of western Ukraine and western Belarus was not a joyous reunion of divided nations. For the first year and a half of their sovietization, the new territories underwent the same violent social engineering that the USSR had been experiencing for decades. The goal was to force them into the Soviet mold: do away with the capitalist economic system, inculcate a new ideology, and destroy any real or imagined hotbeds of dissent against the regime. The traditional methods were used. “Suspicious” people were shot, sent to labor camps, or exiled to the Soviet interior; private property was expropriated; and farming was brought into the kolkhoz system. The Stalinist regime was trying to eliminate, in just months, any potential for anti-Soviet collaboration. An important component of this bloody effort was the notorious Katyn massacre. On 5 March 1940 the Politburo adopted a decision to put to death many thousands of Poles held in prisoner-of-war camps or regular prisons in the western provinces of Ukraine and Belarus. The victims were largely members of the Polish elite: military and police officers, former government officials, landowners, industrialists, and members of the Polish intelligentsia. A total of 21,857 people were shot in April and May 1940.⁴⁵ In exterminating these people, Stalin was clearly attempting to head off any movement to restore the prewar Polish leadership.

Stalin proceeded more cautiously and gradually in the Baltic states, which the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had recognized as falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. Immediately after the partition of Poland and the settlement of various issues with Germany, in late September and October 1939 the Soviet leadership forced Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to permit Soviet military bases on their territory, including in the Baltic Sea ports. Molotov and Stalin personally took on the task of intimidating their Baltic neighbors during negotiations at the Kremlin. These meetings were tense. When the representatives of the Baltic governments insisted on preserving their sovereignty and neutrality, Molotov threatened them with war and refused to make the slightest concession. Stalin applied a softer touch and offered a few insignificant compromises, reducing, for example, the number of troops to be stationed in the Baltic countries. The intransigence of the Baltic representatives evidently irritated him, but he kept his temper. According to the Latvian foreign minister, Stalin wrote, doodled, strolled around the room, and picked up books and newspapers while others were speaking. At critical points he interrupted and went off on tangents, expounding at length on abstruse ethnographic or historical topics.⁴⁶

The Soviet side obviously had the advantage. Red Army units were already positioned along the Baltic nations’ borders. Germany—the only possible counterweight to the Soviet Union—was acting in concert with the USSR. Stalin, nevertheless, did not hurry to overwhelm his victims, instead taking what he wanted a little at a time. Until Soviet troops entered Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Stalin applied a tactic he shared with Comintern head Dimitrov: “It’s not good to rush ahead! … Slogans should be advanced that suit the particular stage of the war.… We think we’ve found in mutual assistance pacts (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) a form that permits us to bring a number of countries into the Soviet Union’s orbit of influence. But for this, we need to hold back—to strictly respect their internal regimes and independence. We won’t try to sovietize them. The time will come when they’ll do it themselves!”⁴⁷

The prediction Stalin makes in the last sentence of this explanation betrays his ultimate goal: to sovietize and absorb the countries and territories added to his country’s sphere of influence under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. From a historical standpoint, he could justify this goal as the reconstitution of the Russian Empire. As military strategy, it surely made sense to establish strong control over areas through which an attack might come. But the future—the who, what, when, and where of the impending war—was shrouded in uncertainty, and Stalin was forced to wait. For now, he preferred to play a balancing game and went out of his way to avoid unnecessarily irritating either Great Britain and France or, especially, the Führer. There were many small signs of Stalin’s caution during this period. We see it, for example, in his reaction to a report from Belarus on a speech given to the republic’s parliament by army group commander Vasily Chuikov. Intoxicated by his easy victory in Poland, Chuikov told his audience in this speech, which went out over the radio, “If the party says the word, we’ll march to that tune—first Warsaw, then Berlin!” Furious, Stalin wrote Chuikov’s boss, Voroshilov: “Com. Voroshilov. Chuikov is evidently at least a fool, if not an enemy element. I say he should be given a spanking. At the very least.”⁴⁸ While Chuikov apparently survived, many other Soviet citizens who expressed anti-Nazi sentiments were not so lucky. Between August 1939 and the beginning of war between Germany and the USSR, expressions of anti-Hitlerism were treated as a crime in the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s stealthy approach to expansion was bound to hit a stumbling block eventually, and that stumbling block was Finland. In October 1939, having won the concessions he wanted from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, the Soviet dictator turned his attention to his Nordic neighbor, which the Nazis had recognized as part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Finland was presented with much harsher demands than the Baltic countries. In addition to the placement of Soviet military bases in Finland, the USSR demanded a large portion of Finnish territory near Leningrad in exchange for land in less populated border regions. On the surface, these demands appeared perfectly reasonable. The USSR wanted to be able to defend Leningrad—the country’s second capital and a major center of defense production—and its approaches from the Baltic Sea. But Finland, a former province of the Russian Empire that had received its independence in 1917, suspected the USSR of imperial ambitions. The Finns remembered the horrors of the 1918 civil war, which had largely been provoked by their Communist neighbor. They also noted the recent example of Czechoslovakia, which had given up the Sudetenland only to be entirely taken over by Hitler. Finland categorically refused the Soviet demands. Stalin decided to use force.

The Red Army invaded Finland in late November, having every reason to believe that its campaign would be short and successful. Finland was a tiny country with no more than 4 million inhabitants—forty times smaller than the Soviet population. The territory, economic resources, and military might of the two countries were not comparable. The 26 tanks with which Finland began the war would have to fend off 1,500 Soviet ones. Furthermore, the USSR would be able to throw significant additional troops and resources into the battle, and it did so as the conflict—known as the Winter War—unexpectedly continued. Staking success on overwhelming force, Stalin decided to make Finland the site of his first experiment applying a different takeover model from the one used in the Baltic states. The Red Army brought with it the “people’s government of Finland,” consisting of Communists hand-picked in Moscow. This was the government that would be installed to rule a defeated Finland.

But the people’s government of Finland never took office. The Finns showed the Red Army fierce and capable resistance. As the war dragged on, a strongly anti-Soviet mood spread throughout the rest of the world. The USSR was expelled from the League of Nations, and France and England prepared to intervene on the Finnish side. Stalin decided not to tempt fate. Despite a series of victories made possible by a major buildup of forces, in March 1940 he signed a peace treaty with Finland. Plans to sovietize the USSR’s northern neighbor were set aside. The Finns wound up losing a significant portion of their territory and economy, but they maintained their independence. The Red Army lost approximately 130,000 troops, either killed in combat, dying from wounds or disease, or missing in action. More than 200,000 were wounded or frostbitten. The Finnish losses were significantly lower: 23,000 killed or missing in action and 44,000 wounded.⁴⁹ The war, a major symbolic defeat for the USSR and Stalin personally, exposed weaknesses in every component of the Soviet military machine. Historians have proposed that it was this conflict that prompted Hitler to push forward his timetable for invading the Soviet Union.

Soviet failure in Finland contrasted ominously with Hitler’s triumphant advance. Soon after the Winter War, in April–June 1940, Germany occupied a number of West European countries, forcing France to capitulate in just weeks. British troops were evacuated from the continent, and Italy entered the war on Germany’s side. France’s quick and inglorious fall radically changed the situation in the world. Khrushchev later described how upset and worried Stalin was about the French defeat, lamenting the country’s inability to put up a fight.⁵⁰ Even if Khrushchev’s account is tainted by hindsight, there is no reason to doubt Stalin’s general sense of alarm. The Soviet leader had lost his former maneuvering room between the warring sides. A strategy that had looked rock solid had suddenly turned to dust. Now there would be no easy way out through a mutually convenient treaty. A huge threat hung over the Soviet Union. The nation that had been its sole if unreliable ally began to look like a mortally dangerous enemy.

Stalin reacted feverishly. As Germany solidified its control over Western Europe in the summer of 1940, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were incorporated into the USSR, as were Bessarabia and part of Bukovina, both of which had been taken from Romania. A top priority for the Stalinist leadership was the rapid sovietization of these new possessions. A large-scale expropriation of private property was accompanied by a massive purge of the population. Repression now fell on the newly integrated western regions. As usual, in addition to the arrest and execution of “unreliable” citizens, many were exiled to remote areas of the Soviet interior. In four relocation campaigns in 1940 and the first half of 1941, some 370,000 people were moved from western Ukraine, western Belarus, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia into the Soviet interior. This was a huge number given the small populations of these regions.⁵¹

Busy as he was dealing with hundreds of thousands of “suspect” people in the newly sovietized areas, Stalin did not forget about faraway enemies. In August 1940 Lev Trotsky was killed in Mexico on his orders. An NKVD agent who had penetrated Trotsky’s inner circle killed the former opposition leader with an ice pick. Stalin had long stalked his most implacable, energetic, and eloquent foe. Was he driven by a personal thirst for revenge or concern that Trotskyites within the USSR might rally in time of war? Most likely both factors played a role.

Having subdued the territories stipulated for Soviet control under his agreements with Hitler, Stalin faced the question: What now? On one hand, the success of the German war machine made friendship with Hitler more important than ever. On the other, the growing threat that Nazi aggression posed to the USSR made such friendship increasingly dangerous. Soviet and German interests were clashing in Finland, where Germany, having occupied Norway, was making inroads as a result of the outcome of the Winter War. The two powers were also clashing in the Balkans due to Hitler’s desperate need for Romanian oil. Stalin also hoped to gain a share of Romania and Bulgaria and achieve a long-standing Russian imperial goal: control over the Turkish Straits.

For Stalin, the signing of the Tripartite Pact among Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27 September 1940 was bad news. The three aggressor countries were agreeing to help each other divide up the rest of the world. Germany and Italy were recognized as dominant in Europe, and Japan in Asia. In theory, this agreement was aimed at Great Britain and the United States. But Stalin had every reason to worry.

Believing it necessary at this stage to avoid exacerbating tensions with the Soviet Union, in November 1940 Hitler made a conciliatory gesture by inviting Molotov to Berlin. During negotiations with Hitler and von Ribbentrop, the Soviet foreign minister insisted that his country’s interests be recognized in Finland, the Balkans, and the Turkish Straits. Hitler was equally firm, especially when it came to Soviet claims in Finland and Romania. While avoiding making specific promises, Hitler suggested that the USSR become a fourth partner in the Tripartite Pact, take part in dividing up the British Empire, and determine exact Soviet spheres of influence through further negotiations.⁵² Both sides apparently were probing to see what such an arrangement might offer. Was this four-way alliance ever a real possibility? On one hand, we know that while these negotiations were going on, Hitler was already hatching plans to invade the USSR. We also know that Stalin was entirely aware of the threat posed by Germany. On the other hand, in August 1939, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was being concluded, the Soviet Union and Germany were just as fundamentally hostile toward one another. Everything had changed in an instant once Stalin and Hitler found a point of common interest.

On 25 November 1940, shortly after his return from Berlin, Molotov gave the German ambassador in Moscow the Soviet conditions for a four-way pact. Here, Stalin was again resorting to the tactic that had yielded success in August 1939. In exchange for the support of his partners (and with an understanding that significant amounts of Soviet raw materials would be supplied to Germany), he issued four specific demands. First, German troops must pull out of Finland. In exchange he would guarantee that Finland would remain friendly toward Germany and supply it with timber and nickel, a point on which Hitler had particularly insisted during his talks with Molotov. Second, Stalin laid claim to Soviet influence in Bulgaria, including the conclusion of a mutual assistance treaty and the establishment of Soviet military bases near the Turkish Straits. Third, the three partners must recognize the Soviet Union’s right to expand southward through Iran and Turkey to the Persian Gulf. Fourth, Japan must give up claims to coal and oil concessions in North Sakhalin in exchange for “fair compensation.”⁵³ This program, which closely mirrored the aspirations of the Russian Empire, probably included everything Stalin wanted, and he was undoubtedly prepared to bargain. The submission of these conditions to Berlin indicated, presumably, his readiness to cast his lot with the aggressor countries.

It has been asserted, however, that Stalin never seriously considered Hitler’s proposal to form a four-way pact and that the demands sent to Berlin on 25 November were a delaying tactic, intentionally designed to be unacceptable to Germany. The most significant evidence cited by proponents of this view is an account of a Politburo meeting on 14 November 1940, during which Molotov supposedly reported on his negotiations in Berlin. The account has Stalin stating that Hitler could not be trusted and that the time had come to prepare for war against Germany. But there is no record of any such Politburo meeting or of Stalin making this remark. The only source of this information is Yakov Chadaev, chief of administration for the Sovnarkom (Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov; the Council of People’s Commissars—the Soviet cabinet), who claimed to have been present and to have taken notes at the meeting.⁵⁴

There are several reasons to doubt Chadaev’s account. First, Molotov could not have been in Moscow on 14 November since that is the day he boarded the train home from Berlin. Furthermore, it is hard to understand why Stalin would have wanted to hold such a meeting, especially one including people who were not Politburo members.⁵⁵ Most other major foreign policy decisions during the prewar years (including the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939) were not voted on by the Politburo. Stalin kept his foreign policy cards close to the vest, at most consulting with Molotov. The talks exploring joining the Tripartite Pact were a closely held state secret.

Another piece of evidence casting doubt on the meeting is the log of visitors to Stalin’s office, which shows no activity between 6 and 14 November. It is nearly certain, therefore, that Stalin spent these days at his dacha.⁵⁶ Finally, there is no evidence of any Politburo meetings in November, and even if there had been, Chadaev is unlikely to have been allowed to attend, to say nothing of his taking notes. As chief of administration for the Sovnarkom, he gained easy access to Stalin only after the vozhd became chairman of that body in May 1941. The fact remains that on 25 November 1940, Stalin responded quickly and substantively to Hitler’s proposal for an enhanced alliance. Berlin did not react to Stalin’s conditions, despite being prodded by Moscow. Soon after Molotov left Berlin, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia—three countries entirely dependent on Hitler’s will—joined the pact, followed in March 1941 by Bulgaria, which Stalin had so insistently claimed for his sphere of influence. In April Germany took over Greece and Yugoslavia.

In December 1940, Hitler approved plans to invade the USSR in May 1941. The only allies Stalin had left were his own people. The vozhd spent the final months before Hitler marched into the Soviet Union consolidating his power and making extraordinary efforts to bolster the country’s military strength.

 THE CONSOLIDATION OF SUPREME POWER

One important result of the Great Terror was the dramatic shift in the balance of power within the Politburo. Remnants of collective leadership survived into the mid-1930s, but by late 1937 the Politburo was entirely subject to Stalin’s will. The Terror brought his power to new heights. He was now a full-fledged dictator in whose hands rested the lives not only of ordinary citizens, but also those of his most esteemed fellow leaders. Five Politburo members (Stanislav Kosior, Vlas Chubar, Robert Eikhe, Pavel Postyshev, and Yan Rudzutak) were shot, and one (Grigory Petrovsky) was expelled from the upper echelons and survived only because Stalin chose to show him clemency. Another name on the list of Stalin’s high-ranking victims was Grigory Ordzhonikidze, driven to suicide by Stalin’s ruthlessness. But even the top leaders who held onto their posts found themselves in an impotent and demeaning position, forced to carefully walk the line between power and death and unable to protect their most valued subordinates or even close friends and relatives. The names of top leaders inevitably came up in the countless confessions the NKVD extracted under torture. It was up to Stalin to decide what denunciations and incriminations should be taken seriously. Anyone could suddenly be labeled an enemy.

As Stalin’s longtime comrades disappeared from the top leadership, younger faces took their place. As noted, these replacements were an important element of his consolidation of power. Lacking the revolutionary credentials of the older generation, these young leaders owed their standing directly to Stalin and were entirely dependent on him. In March 1939 Andrei Zhdanov and Nikita Khrushchev, members of this second generation, were granted full membership in the Politburo. At the same time, a member of the third generation, Lavrenty Beria, was made a candidate member. In February 1941 three other members of the third generation were added: Nikolai Voznesensky, Georgy Malenkov, and Aleksandr Shcherbakov.⁵⁷ These appointments did not simply represent the normal advance of competent leaders up the career ladder. Stalin made a point of placing young officials in important posts, often as counterweights to his older, more deserving colleagues.

Changes to the composition of the Politburo were just one manifestation of processes taking place under the surface that ultimately destroyed the formal aspects of the collective leadership and substituted new unofficial or quasi-official institutions adapted to the administrative and political needs of Stalin’s dictatorship and lifestyle. The deterioration of the Politburo’s meaningful role was brought to its logical conclusion when it essentially ceased to function as a formal institution. During the years of the Great Terror, it was replaced by a narrower group within the leadership, always chaired by Stalin. In early 1938 the “Secret Five” took shape, consisting of Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, and Kaganovich. This group, though not an official body, largely took the place of the Politburo. The only vote that mattered was Stalin’s. In addition to his deliberations during meetings of the Five, Stalin settled many questions with individual members of the leadership. These ad hoc decision-making mechanisms bore little resemblance to constitutional structures or procedures and depended purely on the will of the vozhd. The meetings, following Stalin’s habits and nocturnal lifestyle, took the most varied forms. Matters of state could be decided day or night, in Stalin’s Kremlin office or at his dacha, in the movie theater or during long hours at the dinner table.

The next level of the pyramid of power consisted of governmental bodies to which Stalin delegated particular authority while retaining overall control. This system first took shape within the party’s Central Committee apparat, which had the mission of promulgating ideology and selecting and assigning senior party and state officials. These key areas were overseen personally by Stalin’s protégés, Zhdanov and Malenkov, who could make relatively trivial decisions on their own but had to bring more consequential ones to Stalin for approval. In January 1941, Stalin explained the Central Committee’s new modus operandi: “It’s been four or five months since we in the Central Committee have convened the Politburo. All questions are prepared by Zhdanov, Malenkov, and others in separate meetings with comrades who have the necessary expertise, and the job of governing is only going more smoothly as a result.”⁵⁸

On the government side, accommodating the commissariats, departments, and committees of the Sovnarkom to the dictator’s needs was more difficult. The Sovnarkom oversaw the entire Soviet economy, which was then laboring under the strain of urgent preparations for war. Stalin sought to make the bureaucracy into something he could steer at will, but the sluggishness and unmanageability of its agencies sent him into fits of irritation and temper. His frustration led to numerous attempts to reorganize how the system was managed by the country’s top leadership. Finally, in March 1941, a new governmental body was created: the Bureau of the USSR Sovnarkom, consisting of Sovnarkom chairman Molotov and his deputies. This bureau was created as a governing group within the Sovnarkom, much like the leading group within the Politburo.

As part of the political intrigue around the reorganization, the relatively young Nikolai Voznesensky became first deputy to the government’s chairman, Molotov. His appointment to such an important post, over the heads of more senior members of the Politburo such as Mikoyan and Kaganovich, heightened tensions within Stalin’s inner circle. Even in memoirs written decades later, Mikoyan could not hide his hurt feelings: “But what struck us most of all about the composition of the Bureau leadership was that Voznesensky became first deputy chairman of the Sovnarkom.… Stalin’s motives in this whole leapfrog were still not clear. And Voznesensky, being naive, was very pleased with his appointment.”⁵⁹ In giving this important job to Voznesensky, Stalin may have been intentionally pitting him against Molotov, hinting that the Sovnarkom chairman was not able to handle all his duties and needed a younger and more energetic deputy. In any event, the entire government reorganization came with a chorus of reprimands and accusations directed against Molotov’s Sovnarkom leadership. This was a clear sign that Stalin had something up his sleeve.

His plans became evident a month after the Sovnarkom Bureau was established. On 28 April 1941 Stalin sent a memorandum to Bureau members explaining that it had been created for the purpose of straightening out government operations and bringing an end to “chaos” within the economic leadership, which continued to decide “important questions related to the building of the economy through so-called ‘polling.’” As an example of the inappropriate use of polling (having members of a committee vote on a circulated document individually rather than meeting to discuss it in person), Stalin pointed to a draft resolution concerning the construction of an oil pipeline in the Sakhalin area. Molotov had signed the document, he wrote indignantly, even though it had not been discussed by the Sovnarkom Bureau. After labeling this practice “paper-pushing and scribbling,” he issued an ultimatum: “I think ‘management’ of this sort can’t go on. I propose discussing this question in the Central Committee’s Politburo. And for now, I feel compelled to say that I refuse to participate in voting through polling on any draft resolution whatsoever concerning economic questions of any consequence whatsoever if I don’t see the signatures of the Sovnarkom Bureau indicating that the draft has been discussed and approved by the Bureau of the USSR Sovnarkom.”⁶⁰

This outburst must have taken Molotov by surprise. Polling was standard practice in Soviet decision making. As recently as January 1941, Stalin himself had criticized the Sovnarkom for “parliamentarianism,” by which he meant that its members were having too many meetings. As everyone involved surely noticed, Stalin offered only one example of “incorrect” polling—and not a particularly compelling one, as the question of the Sakhalin pipeline probably did not require detailed discussion at a bureau meeting. The charges leveled in the April memorandum sounded frivolous, and Molotov and the other Politburo members must have realized that they were a pretext. The discussion of Stalin’s memorandum led to a Politburo decision, dated 4 May 1941. It read in part as follows:

I. In the interests of full coordination between Soviet and party organizations and the unconditional assurance of unity in their work as leaders, as well as to further enhance the authority of Soviet bodies given the current tense international situation, which demands every possible effort by Soviet agencies in the defense of the country, the Politburo unanimously resolves:

1. To appoint Com. I. V. Stalin Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars [Sovnarkom] of the USSR.

2. To appoint Com. V. M. Molotov Deputy Chairman of the USSR Sovnarkom and to place him in charge of the foreign policy of the USSR, leaving him in the post of People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

3. Inasmuch as Com. Stalin, who, on the insistence of the Central Committee’s Politburo, retains the position of first secretary of the TsK VKP(b) [Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)], will not be able to allot sufficient time to work in the TsK Secretariat, to appoint Com. A. A. Zhdanov Com. Stalin’s deputy in the TsK Secretariat, relieving him of his duties overseeing the TsK VKP(b) Directorate for Propaganda and Agitation.⁶¹

No documents or memoirs have been located that shed light on the discussions leading up to this resolution, but some clues are offered by its wording, which equates the reorganizations with a return to the Leninist revolutionary model of leadership. The leader of the party and the country, it states, should head the government, especially at a time of looming war. If Stalin had fully bought into the logic that it was important to adhere to the original Soviet model, he would have had to renounce the post of Central Committee secretary since Lenin was the founder and leader of the party but did not hold that post. But he chose to take both the top party and government posts for himself.

At last the dictatorial system of government was complete. At the top of the hierarchy stood the dictator himself. With the title of general secretary of the party added to that of chairman of the government, the supreme power he had been exercising for some time was made official. The Politburo’s leading group—a subset of its membership hand-picked by Stalin—would serve as his consultative body. One step down the hierarchy were two governing bodies: the secretariat of the party’s Central Committee, headed by Zhdanov, and the Sovnarkom Bureau, headed by Voznesensky. These two bodies served as the dictator’s arms. They took care of the routine running of the country and brought consequential matters to Stalin for approval.

This reorganization was undoubtedly motivated by more than a desire for efficiency. Stalin’s decision to give himself, the leader of the party, the added title of chairman of the government told the country and the world that at a time of international instability, the Soviet Union had consolidated its leadership. Again, Stalin’s personality—his hunger to possess not only real power, but also all of its accouterments and his tendency to regard even his closest comrades with suspicion—also has to be taken into consideration. The latter quality was surely a factor in his decision to accelerate the advance of the younger generation and put Zhdanov and Malenkov in charge of the Central Committee apparat. Voznesensky—not Molotov, the logical choice—was appointed to serve as Stalin’s first deputy in his role as government chairman. Beria, another member of the new generation, oversaw the network of security agencies. Stalin’s old comrades, even those who remained at the upper echelons of power, suffered significantly diminished standing as they made way for their younger colleagues.

Molotov was a particular target of Stalin’s displeasure. After long years of devoted service and exceptional closeness with the vozhd, Molotov was deprived of the Sovnarkom chairmanship and was not even appointed Stalin’s first deputy. Stalin took every opportunity to demonstrate his disdain for Molotov. One of the last recorded manifestations of his irritation toward his longtime comrade occurred not long before the outbreak of war. In May 1941, at a meeting of the newly constituted Sovnarkom Bureau, Stalin took Molotov to task. Yakov Chadaev, the Sovnarkom’s chief of administration, who was taking minutes at the meeting, recalls:

Stalin did not conceal his disapproval of Molotov. He very impatiently listened to Molotov’s rather prolix responses to comments from members of the Bureau.… It seemed as if Stalin was attacking Molotov as an adversary and that he was doing so from a position of strength.… Molotov’s breathing began to quicken, and at times he would let out a deep sigh. He fidgeted on his stool and murmured something to himself. By the end he could take it no longer:

“Easier said than done,” Molotov pronounced in a low but cutting voice. Stalin picked up [Molotov’s] words.

“It has long been well-known,” said Stalin, “that the person who is afraid of criticism is a coward.”

Molotov winced, but kept quiet—the other members of the Politburo sat silently, burying their noses in the papers.… At this meeting I was again convinced of the power and greatness of Stalin. Stalin’s companions feared him like the devil. They would agree with him on practically anything.⁶²

What was behind this abusive treatment of a faithful colleague? Perhaps Stalin was taking out his frustrations over the state of Soviet foreign relations. Or perhaps, in the lead-up to war, he was making an example of his old comrade to keep the rest of the leadership in line. In any event, the result was a further centralization of power and a top leadership afraid to voice dissent. Critical questions of war and peace, concerning the fates of millions, rested solely in the dictator’s hands.

 A PREEMPTIVE STRIKE?

On 5 May 1941, the day after his appointment as chairman of the government, Stalin went to meet with members of the Soviet military at a traditional Kremlin reception for graduates of military academies. At a similar event six years earlier, on 4 May 1935, Stalin had come out with the slogan, “Cadres solve everything!” This time the watchword the vozhd shared with his military guests was classified and did not appear in the press. In May 1941, just six weeks before the outbreak of war with Germany, he called for a switch from a defensive to an offensive posture enabled by a powerful Red Army.⁶³

While these remarks have attracted the particular interest of scholars, it is important to note that he had made similar comments in the past. In October 1938, for example, he told a gathering the following:

Bolsheviks are not just pacifists who long for peace and reach for arms only if they’re attacked. That’s not true. There will be times when Bolsheviks are the invaders; if the war is just, if the situation is right, and if the conditions are favorable, they will go on the offensive themselves. They are by no means against invading, against any war. The fact that we’re now shouting about defense—that’s a veil, a veil. All countries mask their true selves: “If you live with wolves, you have to howl like a wolf.” [Laughter.] It would be stupid to spill your guts and lay them on the table.⁶⁴

In April 1940, when speaking to the military council in the aftermath of the Winter War, Stalin continued to address this topic. He spent a long time explaining to the officers that “an army that has been cultivated not for attacking but for passive defense” cannot be called modern.⁶⁵

Obviously when Stalin made these statements, in 1938 and early 1940, he had no intention of invading Germany. But as certain historians and commentators have pointed out, by 1941 the situation was very different. The German Army massed along the Soviet border and ready to pounce on the USSR might very well have convinced Stalin of the advisability of a preventive strike. A variety of arguments and pieces of evidence (albeit circumstantial) have been used to defend this viewpoint.⁶⁶ For a biographer of Stalin, this question is far from secondary. Are we seeing, in 1941, a “different Stalin”—not the cautious incrementalist who could be drawn into a fight only when he felt himself in a position of strength but a daring leader who believed the Red Army was prepared to challenge the Wehrmacht? Such an assumption is in fundamental conflict with the traditional view of the prewar Stalin, which is based on the reminiscences of Soviet marshals and evidence of his vacillating inconsistency in the months leading up to the war. Convincing evidence that Stalin was firmly resolved to go on the offensive has yet to surface. There is no serious basis for revising the traditional view that Stalin was fatally indecisive and even befuddled in the face of the growing Nazi threat.

It is, however, true that during 1940 and 1941 Stalin worked hard to strengthen the Red Army and prepare the country for the upheaval of war. In 1940, for the fourth year in a row, he did not take a vacation in the south. His primary concern was the army and the munitions industry. The accelerated buildup of heavy industry and its defense branches had been a priority since the late 1920s. The Stalinist approach to industrialization made this buildup especially costly, but in the end, the sacrifice of millions of ruined peasants and Gulag slaves and the expenditure of the vast country’s significant resources did have a military and economic effect. By the time war with Germany broke out, the Soviet Union had more than twenty-five thousand tanks and eighteen thousand fighter planes, three to four times more than Germany.⁶⁷ Such figures have inspired proponents of the theory of a “preventive war” to claim that the USSR was ready to take on Germany. But statistics often lie. In the Soviet case, the true story was often one of poor quality weaponry and padded figures, made worse by a shortage of well-trained military personnel. In any event, Stalin and the military leadership did not believe all this military hardware was sufficient. Having a military threat right at their doorstep demanded special measures. Ominous rumors of the might of the German Army and the quality of its weaponry were reaching the USSR from vanquished Europe. During the prewar period, the Soviet Union made a desperate attempt to increase output and modernize at the same time. By 1940, military production was two and a half times what it had been in 1937.⁶⁸ This was an extraordinary increase. Special emphasis was placed on the production of new types of weapons, modern tanks and planes especially. Key to this modernization effort were purchases of military hardware from Germany, enabled under the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Despite the energy put into this buildup, progress was slow. There are well-known examples from the tank and aviation industry. Of the 25,000 tanks in the Soviet arsenal as of June 1941, only 1,500 were of modern design, and only a quarter of Soviet military aircraft was new.⁶⁹ This is not to say that the remaining tanks and planes were useless. It does, however, show that the job of modernizing the Soviet military was far from complete. The leadership knew this.

Stalin had a much better understanding of the problems plaguing the Soviet military economy than do today’s proponents of the preventive war theory, who focus exclusively on munitions-industry production statistics. The army and munitions industry were part of a huge socioeconomic machine with myriad interdependent parts. There was a limit to how much could be spent on the military buildup, especially as the prewar years coincided with yet another slowdown in the Soviet economy, associated with an imbalance between investment and resources. Such crucial resources as metal and electricity were in short supply, and the diversion of so much investment toward military production meant cutting the already scant resources put toward meeting the basic needs of Soviet citizens. Prices and taxes were rising, most of the population was getting by on a meager ration, and in some rural areas there were signs of famine. In late 1939 a ban was placed on the sale of flour and bread in the countryside. Hungry peasants rushed to cities and towns to buy these items, which were in short supply there too. The leadership in Moscow was inundated with desperate pleas for help. In February 1940, a woman wrote from the Urals, “Joseph Vissarionovich, something really terrifying has begun.… I’ve so wasted away I don’t know what will become of me.” Someone in Stalingrad wrote to the Central Committee that “We don’t have time to sleep anymore. At two in the morning people begin lining up for bread, and by five or six there are already 600–700–1,000 people standing outside the stores.… You might be interested to know what they’re feeding workers in the cafeterias. What they used to give to swine they now give to us.”⁷⁰

The country’s top leadership was fully aware of the situation. The Politburo made repeated attempts to address the shortages, giving priority to major cities and industrial enterprises. The food crisis exacerbated the problems of employee turnover and absenteeism that had always plagued the Soviet economy. As the country mobilized for war, harsh measures were introduced to combat these problems. On 26 June 1940, as France was succumbing to the Nazis, the USSR enacted a new law lengthening the workday and work week and making it a crime to be late or to leave one’s place of employment without permission. Soviet peasants had lost their freedom of movement long ago. Now factory and office workers lost theirs. In the year between the enactment of this law and the start of war, it was used to convict more than three million people.⁷¹ Of them 480,000 served prison terms up to four months.⁷² The rest, though not imprisoned, were forced to perform compulsory labor for up to six months. The convicted were often allowed to remain at their jobs, but a significant share of their meager pay was deducted, condemning them and their families to hunger.

Such extreme laws and the declining standard of living took a toll on Soviet society, whose suffering only increased Stalin’s deeply ingrained fear of a fifth column. Whereas the purges of the prewar years had been targeted primarily at the western areas recently annexed by the USSR, Stalin now began to worry, and with reason, that people throughout Soviet society could prove disloyal to him in time of war. Too many had suffered at the hand of the government; too many had starved or eked out a meager existence. The propagandistic claims of monolithic unity at both the front and the rear were intended for the people, for foreign enemies, and for gullible posterity. Stalin was not among the gullible.

Soviet propaganda described the Red Army as the people’s own flesh and blood, and it was. Within the Red Army, the unique features and contradictions of the Stalinist system were manifested in concentrated form. Between January 1939 and June 1941 the Soviet armed forces more than doubled in size. This rapid increase came with the same fundamental problem that plagued Stalinist “leaps forward” in general, especially the rapid industrialization of the early 1930s. Ambitious attempts to calculate exactly what equipment—even what entire factories—had to be purchased from the West failed miserably. Young, untrained Soviet workers produced defective products, damaging factory equipment in the process. Stalin’s understanding of the complex interdependence between technical and social progress was expressed in the updating of the slogan “Cadres solve everything!” to “Technology solves everything!” The rapidly growing Red Army needed not only to be armed but also trained. It is difficult to say which was the harder task.

Between 1937 and 1940, the Soviet officer corps grew more than two and a half times. As a result, a sizable proportion of commanders lacked the requisite knowledge and experience. During the war Stalin reproached one of his generals for the quality of army officers: “You in the military in your time ruined the army by sending all sorts of junk into academies and administration.”⁷³ As usual, he was blaming others for problems that were primarily his fault. It was on his initiative that in the 1930s, tens of thousands of commanders, men who would have been capable of serving their country with distinction, were fired, sent to the camps, or shot for political reasons. But the damage to the Red Army was not measured only in numbers. Until the outbreak of war (and to a lesser extent even during it), repression had distorted the decision-making process, including promotions, making it possible for time-serving incompetents, skilled primarily in expressions of loyalty, to make successful careers. It also discouraged a commander’s most important quality—a willingness to take the initiative—and instead encouraged excessive caution. As was well known from anti-wrecking campaigns, repression subverted the authority of those in charge and undermined discipline. The problems of rule breaking and drunkenness that had always plagued the Red Army were magnified.

The Soviet leadership could see that there was trouble within the army. The clearest signal was the Winter War with Finland. The unexpected foiling of the Red Army by an incomparably weaker enemy dealt the Soviet military’s reputation a stunning blow that could not have come at a worse time. After the peace treaty was signed, Stalin conducted a review to determine what had gone wrong. Countless deficiencies in the arming and training of soldiers were discovered, along with problems in the command system. Stalin removed his old friend Kliment Voroshilov from the post of people’s commissar for defense and replaced much of the military’s leadership. These changes brought little improvement. In April 1941, approximately one year after the shake-up, the Politburo looked into accidents in military aviation. It turned out that even in peacetime, an average of two to three planes was lost in accidents every day. Furious, Stalin placed all the blame on the air force leadership.⁷⁴ On the very eve of war, a new wave of arrests roiled the military command.

Stalin did not allow his focus on the Red Army to distract him from keeping an eye on his adversary’s forces. The ruthless efficiency of the Wehrmacht was extremely alarming. Delegations of Soviet weapons experts who visited German munitions plants under a Soviet-German cooperation agreement returned home with glowing reports. Delegation members were unable to hide how impressed they were and wrote of the huge successes of the German weapons industry. In keeping with the Russian saying “Fear has big eyes,” Soviet intelligence and the military and economic leadership constantly exaggerated the enemy’s strength. In 1940 the new people’s commissar for airplane production, Aleksei Shakhurin, reported to Stalin that Germany’s aviation industry had twice the capacity of its Soviet counterpart. The reports Stalin received from his intelligence agencies significantly exaggerated both the potential of German industry and the size of its armed forces.⁷⁵ As a result of these overestimates, the enemy looked much more imposing that it actually was.

The sources of Stalin’s prewar anxiety are a huge subject that cannot be fully addressed within the scope of this book. Clearly, he had good reason to fear war with Germany. One way he may have reacted to this fear was with a desire (which many believe he felt) to delay the start of war in order to give the Soviet Union time to strengthen its military capabilities and hope that international events would take a favorable turn. He certainly had reason to hope that war would be delayed. One of the most convincing reasons was the idea that Hitler would not be so foolhardy as to mire his forces on two fronts by engaging the Soviet Union while he had Great Britain and the increasingly active United States threatening his rear. Stalin was not alone in this line of reasoning. Hitler, fully aware of how much sense this theory made, took care to exploit it. Secure in the knowledge that he was preserving the element of surprise, he did indeed take the risky plunge of engaging enemies on two fronts—largely because his enemies saw such a move as an impossibility. Nazi propaganda spread disinformation to perpetuate this mistaken idea. Stalin wound up the victim of his belief in Hitler’s instinct for self-preservation.

A few peripheral factors strengthened Stalin’s faith that Hitler would not hurry to attack the USSR. For one, Soviet-German economic cooperation was thriving. Soviet exports were feeding Germany’s appetite for raw materials. Goods imported into Germany from three different countries traveled across Soviet territory, so war with the USSR would undermine some of Germany’s important economic ties. The intelligence reports reaching Stalin’s desk were contradictory. His predisposition to believe Hitler would not attack soon influenced his intelligence agencies, who preferred to tell Stalin what he wanted to hear. Such a cause-and-effect sequence is hardly unique in world history.⁷⁶

Stalin’s reaction to a 17 June 1941 intelligence report claiming that an attack was imminent is well known. Just days before the actual invasion, he wrote to the state security commissar, “You can send your ‘source’ from German aviation headquarters back to his f**king mother. This is disinformation, not a ‘source.’”⁷⁷ Even if Stalin may have been correct in this case, clearly reactions like this frightened intelligence officials and discouraged them from speaking up, rendering them much less effective. It was safer to say what Stalin wanted to hear or be silent, and those in charge of the country’s security and military readiness increasingly opted for safety. Stalin got what he wanted. He alone had the right to an opinion. Everyone waited to see what the dictator had to say, hoping he knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, he did not.