The newly created socialist states wanted to be independent. Some of their leaders attempted to escape from subjection to Moscow and the necessity always to act in accordance with Soviet interests. This happened in the case of Tito, who had seemed likely to be Stalin's strongest ally.26 Tito was secretly supported by Georgy Dimitrov, the former Comintern general secretary.27
Stalin threatened to destroy Tito,28 and he excommunicated the heretic by expelling the Yugoslav Communist party from the Cominform, the new international Communist organization that was founded in 1946,29 replacing the Comintern, which had been dissolved in 1943. These measures did not break the Yugoslavs. The disintegration of the socialist system started at the same time it was born: a fact of major historical importance. It proved that the so-called socialist camp was not in fact a voluntary association of states sharing a uniform social system and ideology, but a forced agglomeration of totalitarian states with socialist characteristics.
Lenin's dictum, "We seek a voluntary union of nations, a union which does not admit any coercion by one nation against another, a union based on total trust, the clear understanding of fraternal unity, a perfectly voluntary pact,"30 twenty-five years later sounded exceedingly cynical.
• • •
On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a speech at Fulton, Missouri, with President Harry S. Truman in attendance. Churchill noted with alarm an indisputable fact: an iron curtain had been lowered from the Baltic to the Adriatic.31 A furious arms race began, and the danger of atomic war became a central fact of life in the modern world. Since then each side has sought to maintain military superiority, so that attempts at arms limitation or a ban on nuclear weapons have constantly been forced into dead ends or been blocked by insurmountable technical and political difficulties.
The Soviet Union mobilized its enormous resources to develop first the atomic bomb and then the hydrogen bomb. It soon caught up with the United States as far as nuclear weapons were concerned.
The arms race, the divergence of opinion over virtually all major questions of international relations, the "anticosmopolitan" campaign in the USSR and anticommunist hysteria in the United States, poisoned the international atmosphere, creating tense and dangerous situations and setting the stage for armed confrontation.
In April 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was born. This military bloc consisted of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Luxembourg. Later, in 1952, Greece and Turkey joined, and in 1955 the Federal Republic of Germany.
The creation of NATO was in large part the result of the threat of Soviet military action against Turkey and Iran. After the war the Soviet Union launched a campaign against Turkey, demanded a renegotiation of the Montreux pact on the Straits and the return to Soviet Georgia and Armenia of lands annexed by Turkey following World War I.32 Military hysteria was on the rise in Armenia and Georgia.
In Iran, the Soviet Union refused to withdraw the troops it had sent there in 1941, under an agreement with Britain against the German threat. It also supported Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran, who had rebelled against the central government.33
In Europe, the Soviet government started a crisis over Berlin when, in violation of international agreements, it attempted to block access to the city by the Western powers.34 The United States, however, successfully carried out the Berlin airlift, breaking the blockade and forcing the Soviet Union to back down.
Nevertheless, in all the cases just mentioned, the USSR and the United
States had enough sense to keep the conflict from becoming a "hot war," although at times it seemed as if peace hung only by a thread. The danger of another world war was especially great during the Berlin crisis, and again during the Korean war.
One of the consequences of the Japanese defeat was the liberation of Korea, which had been occupied by Japan since 1910. Korea was about to become a free nation, but instead an agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States established the thirty-eighth parallel as a temporary dividing line for military operations by the two powers in the Far East, and as a result Korea was cut in half. In 1945 the Soviets withdrew their troops from North Korea, after having installed a loyal Communist government headed by Kim II Sung. The Korean Democratic People's Republic was founded in the north. In the south, a pro-American government was formed under Syngman Rhee, the Republic of Korea. Each government claimed to represent the entire Korean people.
On the thirty-eighth parallel, violent clashes started by North Korea on June 25, 1950, led to a war between the two Koreas. Soviet historiography claims to this day that it was South Korea which started the war.35 Nevertheless, Khrushchev's memoirs provide testimony that confirms the facts generally known before then. His account is essentially as follows.
The war was started at the initiative of Kim II Sung, with the support of Mao and Stalin. Kim arrived in Moscow at the end of 1949 and suggested launching a military attack against the South, so that the people would rise up and establish a people's government (Communist). Stalin hesitated, fearing American intervention. In the end, he offered Kim II Sung the opportunity to give more consideration to the situation and return with a concrete plan. "Naturally," wrote Khrushchev,
Stalin couldn't oppose this idea. It appealed to his convictions as a Communist all the more because the struggle would be an internal matter which the Koreans would be settling among themselves. The North Koreans wanted to give a helping hand to their brethren who were under the heel of Syngman Rhee. . . . Stalin, of course, didn't try to dissuade him.
What Khrushchev wrote further is extremely revealing of the ways of thinking of Soviet leaders, who always claim to defend world peace. "In my opinion, no real Communist would have tried to dissuade Kim II Sung from his compelling desire to liberate South Korea from Syngman Rhee and from reactionary American influence. To have done so would have contradicted the Communist view of the world. I don't condemn Stalin for encouraging Kim. On the contrary, I would have made the same decision"36 [emphasis added—A. N.].
Stalin solicited Mao's advice. The Chinese leader approved Kim's proposal. Soviet leaders and Kim И Sung celebrated the beginning of the undertaking at Stalin's dacha. Shipments of Soviet arms to Korea began. Soviet airforce units were put into place near Pyen Yan. This is how Khrushchev described the ensuing events:
The attack was launched successfully. The North Koreans swept south swiftly. But what Kim II Sung had predicted—an internal uprising... unfortunately failed to materialize. ... [There] weren't enough internal forces for a Communist insurrection in South Korea. Apparently the Party's preparatory organizational work had been inadequate. Kim had believed that South Korea was blanketed with Party organizations and that the people would rise up in revolt when the Party gave the signal. But this never happened.37
For Khrushchev, the North Korean offensive was justified because this was not a conflict between two peoples, but a war between classes.38
On June 27, 1950, the UN Security Council met to discuss the situation resulting from the North Korean invasion of South Korea. On the agenda was the condemnation of aggression and a proposal to aid the Korean Republic. Curiously, the Soviet delegate was absent from the meeting. He said he was protesting the fact that China was represented by a delegate from Formosa. The Soviet Union abstained from using its veto power in the Security Council and allowed the body to recommend that all members provide South Korea with assistance, "which is necessary to repel international aggression and bring peace and security to the region."39 Later, the USSR called the resolution illegal. Stalin was convinced that the North Korean offensive together with the Communist resurrection in the South would bring total victory to the North before any foreign military intervention took place. But his hopes proved false. The United Nations asked for troops to restore Korean peace and the United States sent troops stationed in Japan. A bloody war began which lasted three years.