To solve the continuing crisis in the north of Iran, a new prime minister, seventy-six-year-old Ahmad Qavam al-Salana, traveled to the Soviet capital for talks that began on February 19, 1946. Stalin and Molotov claimed to want only more self-rule for Azerbaijan and oil concessions, but in either case Moscow would be largely left to control the area. The negotiations with Qavam carried on so long that on March 2 the deadline came and went for the withdrawal of the Red Army, as promised most recently at Potsdam.
Instead of pulling out the 60,000 or so soldiers still in Iran, Stalin sent in another 15,000. The U.S. vice-consul in Tabriz reported in early March that Soviet troop movements looked more like “a full-scale combat deployment.”66 Secretary of States James F. Byrnes sent a note of inquiry to Molotov on March 8 to ask about Soviet intentions.67 At the same time there were anti-Soviet demonstrations in Tehran. Within a week Bagirov, Moscow’s intermediary in northern Iran, told Pishavari and the other leaders that the Red Army would likely be leaving soon, even though in Tehran the government half-expected the Soviets to march on the capital.68 The Americans suggested that Iran take the matter to the UN, where hearings were scheduled for March 25.
On that day the Soviet news agency TASS suddenly announced that the Red Army had begun its withdrawal on March 2 and that it would be completed within two months.69 For years there has been mention of a “Truman ultimatum” to the Soviet Union to force it out, but the most recent research has turned up no evidence.70 The reasons behind Stalin’s about-face are still debated, and no doubt a combination of factors came into play. By early 1946 international tensions had increased dramatically because in London and Washington some thought that the Soviet Union was intent on moving into northern Iran and would do so unless it met determined opposition. In March the battleship Missouri was already steaming toward the eastern Mediterranean to support Turkey’s resistance to Soviet demands. The “March crisis” in northern Iran evaporated because Stalin did not want to force the issue, particularly once the United States became more heavily involved. On March 24, Ivan Sadchikov, the new Soviet ambassador to Iran, managed to wrest an agreement from Qavam for the creation of an Iranian-Soviet oil company, in which most shares would go to Moscow. That concession, it was thought, might make it possible to exert political influence without pushing separatism in Azerbaijan and without continuing the confrontation with the West.71
Of course Stalin put a far different gloss on the exit of the Red Army. On May 8 he explained his thinking in a long letter to crestfallen Comrade Pishavari. In it he claimed that there was no revolutionary situation in the country and that if Soviet forces had stayed there, it would have “undercut the basis of our liberationist policies in Europe and Asia.” If the Red Army could have remained, or so he said, why could the West not hold on where it wanted around the globe? “So we decided to pull our troops out of Iran and China, in order to grab this weapon from the hands of the British and the Americans and unleash a movement of liberation in colonies that would render our policy of liberation more justified and efficient.” His advice to Pishavari was to moderate his stance, support Qavam, and win recognition for what he had been able to accomplish until then.72
As it happened, by December Iran’s central government asserted control over the north. Stalin expressly ordered Pishavari and his comrades to cease armed resistance, Tabriz was soon captured, and the Democrats were put down violently.73 Even the Soviet deal for oil concessions fell through in 1947, for by the end of the year the Iranian assembly (Majlis) in Tehran was confident enough to refuse its ratification. Qavam was dismissed, and the Communists (Tudeh) were forced out of the assembly.
Iran represented one of the more spectacular illustrations of what the Soviet Union apparently had in mind around its borders. Getting into northern Iran, so the thinking went, would allow the Kremlin to use it as a platform to extend influence into the rest of the country.74 All three outside powers wanted access to the oil, but what emerged from the crisis was the growing determination of the United States to stand up to the far-reaching ambitions of Stalin and his disciples.75
In spite of all the issues that loomed ahead, in the summer of 1945 President Truman very much wanted the Soviet Union in the fight against Japan, and it was to secure Stalin’s decision on that score that he and Prime Minister Churchill met with him at Potsdam. They also hoped to work out terms for a just and lasting peace. Certainly Stalin had long held doubts that it would be possible to attain anything of the kind. As we have seen, at the very moment the United States and Britain recognized the new Poland, he set out to establish facts on the ground in Turkey and Iran. Nevertheless, he would go to Potsdam and meet with those he regarded as inveterate “imperialist enemies” to see what could be achieved.
CHAPTER 9
Potsdam, the Bomb, and Asia
The Potsdam Conference dragged on from July 17 to August 2, 1945, and was the longest of the Allied wartime meetings. Although the leaders had every reason to celebrate victory, there was little personal warmth among them. The shame of it was that in spite of all the talking, the West largely conceded Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Winston Churchill was there, mostly trying to prevent the worst, and when he lost the elections back home, Labour Party leader Clement Attlee arrived to take over. President Truman was in far over his head. Stalin, however, was in his element and pressed his political agenda as far as possible. For the same reason, he agreed to join the war against Japan, and the Red Army carried the mission deep into Asia.1
EXPECTATIONS AND SURPRISES IN POTSDAM
Potsdam brought Stalin and Truman face-to-face for the first time. The president, in his down-home style, was looking forward to meeting “Mr. Russia” and “Mr. Great Britain.” He was guided by a faith that most people saw life and politics much the way he did and that such problems as arose generally came down to misunderstandings. Once people got to know one another, he reasoned, they would see that even the most complicated issues could be solved. In this way Truman’s belief in personal diplomacy was every bit as firm, and perhaps as misplaced, as Roosevelt’s had been.2 Neither of them could imagine the unbridgeable gulf in experiences and expectations that divided them from Stalin and the Communist USSR.
Churchill and Truman arrived on July 15 ready to begin the next day, but Stalin was late, on purpose to inflate his importance. Truman used the time to visit Berlin. Such was Germany’s defeat and utter collapse that he gave no thought to security, driving around the burned-out city with Secretary of State Byrnes in an open convertible. He wrote his wife that “this is a hell of a place—ruined, dirty, smelly, forlorn people, bedraggled, hangdog look about them.”3 He saw what he called a great world tragedy, with “old men, old women, young women, children from tots to teens carrying packs, pushing carts, pulling carts, evidently ejected by the conquerors and carrying what they could of their belongings to nowhere in particular.”4
Stalin still thought of himself as a revolutionary, as he had done in the 1920s and 1930s. He rode to Berlin, however, in the style of the tsars. On July 2, head of the NKVD Beria reported to him that all security preparations had been made. Travel would be by train from Moscow, over a distance calculated at no less than 1,195 miles. Beria was proud to say there would be “between six and fifteen men” posted for each and every mile. He listed in loving detail all the security steps that were taken and the elaborate provisioning that would be provided on the way to and at the Big Three conference.5