As horrible and unwarranted as the terror was for millions, as many people and more, including prominent figures among the intellectual elite, backed Stalin and participated as the ever-watchful eyes of the system. They denounced friends and neighbors, colleagues at work, or strangers they met by chance. The net effect of the bloodletting was the thorough Stalinization of the country, with fateful long-term consequences. “New men” in their thirties took over from those in their fifties and sixties. These die-hard Stalinists in the bureaucracy and the party would go on to dominate the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe long after the dictator was gone.49
Although the radicalization of the terror, which had been sparked by Kirov’s assassination, led to the elimination of opposition inside the ruling elite and to the establishment of Stalin’s dictatorship, the man at the top was still something of a “team player.” Since the late 1920s and all the way through the 1930s, he continued to meet with the paladins and to coax them along with reasoned arguments. Although the image of his running a one-man show needs to be adjusted, during these gatherings his voice undoubtedly came, in time, to count most. It remains, however, that not only Stalin but his whole team was responsible for what happened, including the terror.50
The dictator and his close comrades used the terror not simply to preempt opposition in circumstances of a growing threat of war, as they and some historians later claimed, but far more because the Kremlin thought such action was necessary in order to fulfill the big idea, the dream of a Communist society. That was how Bukharin also looked at it, even after the NKVD was at his door. The last time he saw his wife, he pleaded with her not to be vengeful. His great wish was for her to raise their son “a Bolshevik without fail!” Bukharin could not know that she would end up in a concentration camp or that their thirteen-month-old child, Yuri, would be sent to an orphanage.51
As the disgraced Bukharin awaited execution, he sought mercy and wrote to the man in the Kremlin, who was once a close friend. Perhaps the terror would indeed provide a “full guarantee” for Stalin’s leadership. “For God’s sake,” he implored the all-powerful Master, “I wasn’t born yesterday. I know all too well that great plans, great ideas, and great interests take precedence over everything, and I know that it would be petty of me to place the question of my own person on a par with the universal-historical tasks resting, first and foremost, on your shoulders.” But if the good Stalin believed that Bukharin was simply in the way and had to be killed, “so what! If it must be so, then so be it.”52
CHAPTER 3
War and Illusions
Soviet leaders since Lenin had held that wars among capitalist powers were inevitable. Stalin said that when the next war came among the capitalists, the Red Army would be the “last man in the fight” and reap the advantage by “tipping the scales.”1 In October 1938 he even mentioned the possibility of leading a “crusade” against the reactionary powers in order “to assist the proletariat of those countries to liberate themselves from the bourgeoisie.”2
By March 1939 Stalin speculated about the capitalists and their hopes and aspirations. In his sketch of what the British and Americans wanted, Japan would take on China, while Germany and Italy would attack the Soviet Union. The Western powers, he fantasized, would watch these rivalries play out and see their enemies weakened, then “arrive on the scene” claiming to act in the interests of peace but “dictating conditions to the weakened belligerents.”3 Stalin was determined not to sit back passively waiting for the West to play out their rivalries or to fall in their trap.
IMPERIALIST WAR, COMMUNIST VICTORY
By every indication, the Soviet dictator saw the looming conflict and wanted to be in on the action, to help direct it to where he thought it would inevitably go. On May 3, 1939, he made Molotov his new commissar for foreign affairs, replacing the respected Maxim Litvinov, who was Jewish. This move signaled, at the very least, a readiness to open talks with Hitler. At the end of the month, the new commissar spoke on the record about resuming trade negotiations with Germany.4 Talks were already under way with Britain and France, and until June 26 they focused mainly on economic issues. Then Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov published a short article about how efforts to reach a nonaggression treaty with Britain and France were deadlocked.5 The Germans were right to see an opportunity and began courting the Soviet Union, all the more urgently in July and August, in view of Hitler’s decision to attack Poland in early September.6
Stalin thought he understood Nazism and could manipulate Hitler, who was the most anti-Communist politician in the world. Indeed, as soon as Moscow dangled the bait, Berlin responded. On August 14, Hitler conveyed his desire “for serious improvement in the political relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.”7 The Kremlin’s lone precondition was to bring the trade negotiations to a successful conclusion, and a large deal was signed in a matter of days.8
What happened next has been wrapped in controversy, but Stalin indisputably saw the coming war in more than defensive terms, for it would open political opportunities to advance the cause in the West.9 He stated more than once that the Red Army did not exist just to protect Soviet security and that it was an instrument in the world revolution.10
For his part, Hitler wanted to avoid a two-front war and soon yielded to Soviet demands for a “Secret Additional Protocol,” granting the USSR a sphere of influence in the Baltic states, Poland, and Bessarabia. The existence of this document has also been disputed by Russian historians and goes unmentioned even in some noteworthy Western accounts.11 In any case, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow on August 23 and signed the Non-Aggression Treaty. The two sides also agreed to work out an even more comprehensive trade agreement.12
Stalin’s radical reversal in embracing the Nazi enemy shocked the party faithful around the globe.13 Later on they would try to justify the treaty with Germany in strictly defense terms. It gave them time to arm and prepare, they said.14 No doubt, mere defense of the motherland was by no means all that Stalin was mulling over. He boasted to his inner circle on September 7, 1939, that they would play off the capitalist countries against one another. “Hitler, without understanding or desiring it,” he said with satisfaction, was playing a revolutionary role in “shaking and undermining the capitalist system.” Stalin wanted them to fight as long and as fiercely as possible. “Under the conditions of an imperialist war,” or so he wagered, “the prospect of the annihilation of slavery arises!” In order to bring that day closer, he instructed Communists around the world to foment dissent inside the warring countries.15 Already on September 28, Moscow coerced Estonia into a treaty of mutual assistance that allowed a limited number of Soviet troops to set up army, navy, and air force bases. Similar concessions were quickly wrested from Latvia and Lithuania.