To Communists around the world, Stalin gave a rationale for this step that, he hoped, they could accept. The main reason for ending the Comintern, he said, was practical. In wartime, national parties use different tactics. Thus in Italy and Germany, he explained, there was resistance to undertake, while in Britain and the United States, comrades should support the government. Dissolving the Comintern would strengthen the national parties, which could no longer be accused of being “agents of a foreign power.” In other words, the decision was tactical only. The Kremlin waited anxiously for reactions of the faithful—though the likelihood of objections was next to nil. Stalin got the unanimous agreement he sought, then on June 8 released official word of the dissolution to the press.
The whole procedure was painstaking and reflected the care Stalin took to manipulate his allies, while at the same time nurturing the international movement. Exactly four days later and leaving nothing to chance, he gathered key members of the Politiburo and Dimitrov to create the Department of International Information. It was a branch of the Soviet party’s Central Committee and would direct antifascist committees, foster liaisons with foreign comrades, and so on—in other words, carry out more or less the same tasks done by the Comintern. They assigned a new leader to avoid all suspicion, but Dimitrov continued as before.37
When citizens heard what had happened, their opinions were mixed. Representative statements came from one man who said “it must have been a difficult decision for Stalin to take; after all, he had sworn on Lenin’s tomb never to abandon the cause of world revolution. But just like his ‘socialism in one country’ this decision was another sign of Stalin’s greatness that he could adapt himself to changed conditions.”38
The Kremlin was in fact busy on several international fronts. Moscow was already schooling former and future leaders of the Romanian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, German, and even Italian and French Communist parties.39 There was also a program (introduced back in late 1941) to train functionaries from among such groups as prisoners of war and defectors, who would remain devoted to Stalin, if and when they were repatriated.40 At the same time, steps were taken to improve the image of the USSR by relaxing religious persecution. On September 4, 1943, Stalin met with the three top leaders of the Orthodox Church, promising them, out of the blue, all kinds of material support. He suggested they call a synod to select a new patriarch; none had been allowed since the death of Patriarch Tikhon in 1925. Without questioning this newfound mercy, the religious leaders were grateful and thought their synod could meet within a month. Smiling benevolently, Stalin asked whether they might be able to adopt a more “Bolshevik tempo,” that is, gather sooner. Indeed, with the government’s help, they met within four days.41 All this activity was played up in the press. Churches were allowed to open again, especially in the western borderlands, which had been occupied by the Nazis.42 No doubt there was a patriotic appeal in returning a semblance of freedom of worship, and certainly Stalin’s short-lived toleration also aimed to please FDR, who had mentioned it earlier, and in that regard it worked.43
FIRST MEETING OF THE “BIG THREE”
Stalin agreed to meet with his allies only after his armies had more to show for their efforts and he would have a stronger hand in negotiations. Then he prepared down to the smallest detail, leaving nothing to chance, as if the meetings were an extension of the war by other means.44 He finally assented to a leaders’ conference at Tehran for November 28 to December 1, 1943, which was notably after Stalingrad. German forces were soon driven out of two-thirds of the Soviet territory they had once occupied, and in July and August 1943 at Kursk the Red Army had won the largest tank battle of the war. The massive scale of these events and sheer size of the Red Army made Stalin more willing to meet the Western leaders.
He continued worrying about the procrastination of the West in opening a front in France and did not believe the reasons for the delay. Anglo-American forces had finally landed in November 1942, not in France as he had hoped, but in distant North Africa. Although they fought ferociously there, the Germans managed to hold them back without having to pull significant numbers of troops away from the eastern front. The same was true of the Allied landings in Sicily in July 1943 and in Italy in September.
Stalin had a fear of flying, and after this flight to and from the Tehran Conference, he never flew again. He saw the event as a chance to impress Roosevelt and got off to a promising start by convincing him to stay at the Soviet mission. Perfectly in character, Stalin had all the guest rooms bugged by his secret police.
There had been a preliminary foreign ministers’ conference in October in Moscow, for which he and Molotov had position papers drawn up by top foreign policy staff. The Soviet side thoroughly thought out its strategies, even the tactics to adopt, at the conference table and was better equipped and more resolute than the Western Allies for the crucial discussions that would shape the postwar world.45 Any apparent “compromises” that resulted from the wartime meetings would be more apparent than real because Stalin had long since decided on his goals. If the West was going to stop him, it would have had to send far more troops to the battlefield, an option that FDR wished to avoid. Instead the American president preferred to let the Red Army do most of the fighting and dying, although in so doing it advanced the Soviet cause well into what would be a divided Germany.46
In Tehran on November 28, a Sunday afternoon, Stalin readied himself for an informal chat with Roosevelt prior to the main meeting at six P.M. Atypically, he was nervous and primed himself almost like an actor waiting for a scene to begin, carefully checking his appearance, the press of his pants and shine on his boots. He also changed his demeanor, for he became a deferential listener, giving no hint of his customary rudeness nor showing his blunt dictatorial self. Although he could be jovial, he decided in advance not to laugh at any of FDR’s jokes. This approach, it turned out, cagily acted by Stalin with success, put the president off his game, for he prided himself on his good humor and comic stories.47
When they met, FDR spoke first and said how glad he was to be there and how long he had worked to bring them together. Stalin accepted responsibility for the delay, while reporting that he had, of course, been occupied with military matters. Then he explained the dire situation, which was made worse by the fact that the Germans had just called up fresh divisions. The news pained the president, who then changed the subject, to say that in the postwar period the American-British merchant fleet might be made available to the Soviet Union. Stalin brought up France’s support of the Third Reich, criticized its exiled leader General Charles de Gaulle, and bluntly stated that he did not want the French to have an important role in the postwar world.48
At the first plenary session, Stalin stole the show with a description of the gargantuan scale of the fighting on the eastern front—the Red Army was throwing in 330 divisions against 260 of the enemy’s.49 He and FDR pressed Churchill to agree to an invasion through France—now called Operation Overlord. The prime minister said there would likely be sixteen British divisions and nineteen U.S. divisions.