vii Stalin's Cold War; 1945-1949

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Stalin’s SSSR

session vii-Cold War; 1945-1949

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

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Stalin’s SSSR

session vii-Cold War; 1945-1949

Image Reality


this session’s major topics

• Introduction; the Bomb

• Falling Apart

• Occupation

• Internal Issues

• Stalin and the Enemies

• Cold, or Hot!

• Conclusion; the Soviet Bomb


the Bomb


6 August 1945
the Bomb (photo taken by follow-on B-29
Necessary Evil)


Alperovitz’s thesis & its aftermath

• 1965-Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima & Potsdam:the use
of the atomic bomb and the American confrontation with
Soviet power

• Gar Alperovitz (1936-) a revisionist historian, contributor
to the NY Times, Mother Jones &c.

• beginning in the ‘60s his “blame the U.S.” interpretation
began winning undergrads’ “hearts and minds”

• 1995-The Smithsonian decides to do a 50th anniversary
Enola Gay exhibit. Veterans outraged by early reports.
Huge brou-ha-ha! Exhibit killed.

• 2007- Sir Max Hastings, Retribution

1996

falling apart
Gromyko
Byrnes
Molotov


...on 24 July, two monumental moments symbolized the imminent end of the
Grand Alliance. First Churchill attacked Stalin for closing off Eastern Europe,
citing the problems of the British mission in Bucharest: “An iron fence has
come down around them,” he said, trying out the phrase that would become
“the iron curtain.”

“Fairy tales!” snapped Stalin. The meeting ended at 7:30 p.m. Stalin headed
out of the room but Truman seemed to hurry after him...approached the
Generalissimo “as if by chance,” in Stalin’s words.

“The U.S.A.,” said Truman, “tested a new bomb of extraordinary destructive
power.”

Pavlov [Stalin’s interpreter] watched Stalin closely: “no muscle moved in his
face.” He simply said he was glad to hear of it….

Monteﬁore, p. 499


Potsdam ended with an affable but increasingly chilly impasse: Stalin
possessed Eastern Europe but Truman had the Bomb. Before he left on 2
August, he realized the Bomb would require a colossal effort and his most
dynamic manager. He removed Molotov and commissioned Beria to create
the Soviet Bomb. Sergo Beria noticed his father “making notes on a sheet of
paper...organizing the future commission and selecting its members.” Beria
included Malenkov and others on the list.

“What need have you to include these people?” Sergo asked Beria.

“I prefer that they should belong. If they stay outside they’ll put spokes in the
wheels.” It was the climax of Beria’s career.

Monteﬁore, p. 501


Vlasic

Khrushchev Molotov
Malenkov Beria
Mikoyan


The Allies lurched into the Cold War. Truman and Stalin spoke fractiously
about each other. Each felt empowered by military victory to enhance his
state’s inﬂuence in the world and to ensure that his rival--whether in
Washington or in Moscow--did not get away with anything.

Service, p. 503


the end of Lend-Lease

• 12 May 1945-the formal end of Lend-Lease
(announced 17 April)

• a “milepost” agreement continued deliveries
for the duration of the war with Japan

• 8 August-USSR becomes a belligerent with
Japan

• 20 Sept-all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union
was terminated

• Stalin demanded reparations in large part
because he knew the US was stopping aid
Monument in Fairbanks AK commemorating
a lesser-known supply route

Molotov’s Chance

• April 1946-he visited New York, Washington and San Francisco in connection
with the opening of the United Nations Organization

• in an unpleasant meeting Truman confronted him on Soviet perﬁdy in Poland

• Sept-in London for the Council of Foreign Ministers, Molotov pressed Stalin’s
request that Libya become a Soviet protectorate

• his lack of success and appearing to be “too soft” led Stalin to drop the idea of
him as a possible successor

• there would be no more “ty” or “Koba,” from now on it would be “vy” and
“Comrade Stalin”


“War-torn Europe”


War-blasted Western Europe, further scourged by the icy winter of
1946-1947, was not making the necessary economic recovery. Local
Communist groups were deliberately sabotaging progress by strikes and
other incendiary tactics. If the chaos that was so favorable to communism
should develop, the Communists would probably seize control of Italy and
France. All Western Europe would then fall into their grip, and Moscow’s
inﬂuence would sweep to the English Channel.

Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p.799


From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic an iron curtain has descended
across the Continent…
5 March 1946
Winston Churchill
Fulton Missouri


civil war in Greece; 1946-1948

• during Nazi occupation there was both a
Communist and Royalist resistance

• 1946-British influence helped the
Royalists to win the election and repress
the communist partisans

• but Britain was too financially weak to
finance the Greek government in resisting
the subsequent Communist rebellion,
aided by Tito, Albania and Bulgaria Democratic forces training with US aid

• Dec 1946-Churchill asks Truman to take Britain’s place in halting Communist aggression

• Truman develops the policy which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine


the Truman Doctrine

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressures.

Harry S. Truman
speech to a joint session of
Congress
12 March 1947


the Marshall Plan--”The most unsordid act in history”- Churchill

The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of
products is based is in danger of breaking down. . . . Aside from the
demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances
arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the
consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all.
It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist
in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can
be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed
against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Any
government that is willing to assist in recovery will ﬁnd full co-operation on
the part of the U.S.A. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy
in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in
which free institutions can exist.

Secretary of State George C. Marshall
speech to the Harvard graduates
5 June 1947


Why Stalin Rejected Marshall Aid--An Insider's Statement
In a recent interview Vladimir Yerofeyev, who served in the Soviet Foreign Ministry after the war, described
Russia's reaction to the Marshall Plan:

Of course it was taken very seriously. I should say that there were conflicting feelings. On the one hand, there was a
willingness to agree to discuss the question; that was Molotov's stance. He even wrote a note to the Central Committee
arguing that it was necessary to start negotiations; he understood that the Soviet Union needed help. In his reply he noted
that reconstruction was everyone's main aim, and the United States's offer of help should be welcomed. His reaction to the
Marshall Plan was positive.

"Stalin, with his suspicious nature, didn't like it: 'This is a ploy by Truman. It is nothing like Lend-Lease - a different
situation. They don't want to help us. What they want is to infiltrate European countries.'

"But Molotov insisted on his view, and Stalin said, go. So Molotov went to the Paris conference in 1946 [sic--must mean
1947]. He listened to all the proposals. He understood that it was not simple; the aid had strings attached.

"... Stalin became even more suspicious and moved to stop the countries friendly to us taking part. Yugoslavia and
Poland agreed. Finland too. Finland had not signed a peace treaty [with the USSR] and didn't want to risk jeopardizing
that, so it pulled back from taking part - very sharply.

"The Czechs undertook to take part in the conference, so Stalin summoned Gottwald and Masaryk, the foreign minister, to
Moscow. Very severe pressure was put on them: if by 4 AM on the twelfth - the day the conference started - they had gone
there, they would face the consequences.

"They understood what it meant. So at the last moment they were prevented. Nine countries refused to take part in the
conference. Sixteen agreed. The Soviet Union and the socialist-oriented countries stayed away. So did Finland. ..

"The US never really wanted the Soviet Union and its satellites to benefit from Marshall aid. They made no further effort
to persuade them to take part."


X article--Foreign Affairs magazine (July 1947)

• 1944-Kennan posted to the Moscow Embassy

• Feb 1946-Treasury asked him why the Reds weren’t
supporting World Bank and IMF. His answer: the
Long Telegram

• while Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, it was
highly sensitive to the logic of force.

• July 1946-Truman requests a top secret policy report
for dealing with Soviet push-back

• Jan 1947-DoD gets its version

• July 1947- the “Mr X Article” appears
George F. Kennan
1947


the policy of containment

The whole “Mr X” article, available on line, is the foundation document for our long and
ultimately successful Cold War strategy. Below is the essence, quoted from section iii:

In the light of the above, it will be clearly seen that the Soviet pressure against the free institutions
of the western world is something that can be contained [emphasis added, JBP] by the adroit and
vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political
points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or
talked out of existence. The Russians look forward to a duel of inﬁnite duration, and they see that
already they have scored great successes.

The article was greatly talked about and it soon emerged that its author was none other that
Kennan. With this, the policy of containment achieved semi-ofﬁcial status.


occupation


1943-dissolution of the Comintern
[Stalin] claimed to have concluded that it had been a mistake to try...to run the
world communist movement from a single centre….the result had been that
communist parties had been accused by their enemies of being directed by the
Kremlin. Stalin wanted them to be able to appeal to their respective parties without
this albatross round their necks.

It hardly needs to be stressed that Stalin was being disingenuous. He had not the
slightest intention of releasing his grip on foreign communist parties….

Stalin and his advisors were making plans for Europe after the war….Stalin
wanted to build up support for communist parties in eastern and east-central
Europe. The parties themselves were frail….Stalin knew that their communists
were regarded as agents of Moscow. It was vital for them and him to pretend that
they were not Moscow’s stooges.

Service, pp. 444-445


the Iron Curtain descends

• 1946-in the countries assigned at Yalta for Soviet dominance one Communist
regime was established after another. In free elections the Czech Communists
won 38%, the Hungarians 22%. In the others elections were rigged.

• 1947-the “free election” promised Poland was ﬁnally held. It yielded 90%
Communist delegates. The US ambassador reported that if it had been truly
free, the results would have been 60% anti-Communist

• US protests at the UN and in public forums were ignored or answered with
belligerent counter-charges

• 1947-the mood in Czechoslovakia was turning decidedly anti-Communist so
they faced the overthrow of their coalition government in the next year’s
election


the Czech Communist Party--Komunistická strana Československa (KSČ)

• May 1921-founded at a congress of the
Czech Social-Democratic Party (Left)

• 1928-the second largest party in the
Comintern with an estimated
membership of 138,000

• after the Nazi takeover and during WW II
the leadership took refuge in the USSR
and made plans for the post-war
takeover

• 1945-1948--the KSČ was the largest
party in a National Front coalition
government under President Eduard
Bene!

Poster for the KSČ 8th Party Congress in 1946


Klement Gottwald--leader of the KSČ (1896-14 March 1953)
• ﬁrst career, cabinetmaker

• 1921-one of the founders of the KSČ

• 1921-25-newspaper editor and party functionary in Slovakia

• 1925-member of the Central Committee

• 1929-1948-member of parliament, Secretary-General of the KSČ

as a young man


Klement Gottwald--leader of the KSČ (1896-14 March 1953)
• ﬁrst career, cabinetmaker

• 1921-one of the founders of the KSČ

• 1921-25-newspaper editor and party functionary in Slovakia

• 1925-member of the Central Committee

• 1929-1948-member of parliament, Secretary-General of the KSČ

• 1935-1943-Secretary of the Comintern

• 1939-1945-one of the leaders of the communist resistance in
Moscow, Chairman of the KSČ

• 1945-1946 Vice Premier, 1946-1948-Prime Minister of the as a young man
Czechoslovakia, 1948-1953 President of Czechoslovakia
as a Stalinist Stooge


“Victorious February” (Czech: Vítězný únor, Slovak: Víťazný február)

• early Feb 1948-Communist Minister of the Interior, Vaslav Nosek illegally
attempted to purge the national police force of non-communists

• 12 Feb-the non-Communist ministers demanded reversal and punishment

• massive demonstrations organized by the KSČ were accompanied by a
mobilization of the Red Army on the Czech border

• 25 Feb-President Bene! capitulated and appointed a Communist-dominated
government under Gottwald’s leadership. The only important portfolio held by
a non-Communist was Foreign Affairs, Jan Masaryk

• the Communists moved quickly, thousands were ﬁred, hundreds arrested, and
thousands ﬂed the country


a troubling death

• born in Prague, son of professor and founder of
Czechoslovakia, Toma! Masaryk

• 1919-1922-chargé d'affaires for CZ to the USA

• 1925-ambassador to Britain

• 1938-after Munich, he resigned in protest

• 1939-became Foreign Minister of the
government-in exile

• 1945-48-served in the Gottwald government
Jan Masaryk
1886-10 March 1948


Cominform--Szklarska Por(ba, Poland; September 1947

• called to form a common front against the Marshall Plan for the
Communist parties, both East and West

• Soviet Premier Zhdanov was its chairman

• “It was the high point of [his] career and his greatest lasting achievement if it
can be called that.”--Monteﬁore

• the speech that divided Europe into “two camps”

• ofﬁcially, only a propaganda forum, actually a full-blown
replacement for the Comintern. Stalin’s tool for coordinating
internationalist communist policy

• the initial seat of Cominform was in Belgrade

Andrei Zhdanov
1898-1948 • 1948-after the split with Tito, Cominform headquarters moved to
Bucharest Romania


Tito--”no stooge”

Josip Broz
1892-1980


SLOVENIA Kumrovec

CROATIA



• 1900-1905-primary school

• 1907-machinist apprentice, 1910-joined union and Social-
Democratic Party

• 1915-fought on the Eastern Front, youngest Sergeant-Major
in the Austro-Hungarian Army, wounded,POW in Russia

• 1917-July Days, Red Guard, fought Whites

• 1918-Yugoslav Section of the RSDLP(b)

• Jan-Sept 1920-he and Russian wife made long and difﬁcult
Josip Broz
1892-1980 journey home to newly created Yugoslavia



• 1921-CPY declared illegal, Broz and the Party go underground

• 1925-worked as a machinist in a shipyard, led a strike, ﬁred, various jobs

• 1928-Zagreb Branch Secretary of the CPY, arrested tried and jailed (1928-1933),
on release, lived incognito as “Walter” and “Tito”

• 1934-sent to Vienna where CC of the CPY took refuge, joined CC

• 1935-in Balkan section of the Comintern in Moscow. Member of Soviet CP and
NKVD!

• 1936-Comintern sent “Comrade Walter” back to Yugoslavia to purge the Party

• 1937-Stalin had the Secretary-General of the CPY murdered in Moscow. Tito
was appointed to succeed him in the still-outlawed Party
Josip Broz
1892-1980


Tito

Edvard Kardelj

Milovan Djilas

Members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CK KPJ)
on the Dalmatian island of Vis during World War II.


...Stalin now encountered his first real opposition for almost twenty years.
Marshall Tito was no vassal. His Partisans had fought valiantly against the
Germans and not depended on the Red Army to liberate them. Now the
Yugoslavs bitterly denounced Zhdanov’s dictatorial behavior at the Cominform
conference. When Stalin read this, he could not believe the impertinence of
it….

Stalin had agreed to leave Greece to the West….Tito disregarded his orders
and started to supply the Greek Communists. Stalin was determined to test
American resolve in Berlin, not in some obscure Balkan village. The final straw
was the planned Balkan federation agreed between Bulgaria’s Dimitrov and
Tito, without Stalin’s permission. As the row heated up, Tito sent his
comrades, Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kardelj, to negotiate with Stalin. At
grisly...dinners, Stalin, Zhdznov and Beria tried to overawe Yugoslavia with
Soviet supremacy. Djilas was fascinated but defiant. So, on 28 January
[1948], Pravda denounced [the] plan.

Montefiore, p. 575


On 10 February, Stalin summoned the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians to the Little
Corner to humiliate them, as if they were impudent Politburo members.
Instead of opposing the Bulgarian-Yugoslav plan, he proposed a collage of
little federations, linking countries that already hated each other, Stalin was
“glowering and doodling ceaselessly.”

“When I say no it means no!” said Stalin who instead proposed that
Yugoslavia swallow Albania, making gobbling gestures with his fingers and
gulping sounds with his lips. The scowling threesome--Stalin, Zhdanov and
Molotov-- only hardened Tito’s resistance.

Stalin and Molotov despatched an eight-paged letter implying that Tito was
guilty of that heinous sin--Trotskyism. “We think Trotsky’s political career is
sufficiently instructive,” they wrote ominously. But the Yugoslavs did not care.
On 12 April, they rejected the letter. Stalin decided to crush Tito.

“I’ll shake my little finger,” he ranted at Khrushchev, “and there’ll be no more
Tito!” But Tito proved a tougher nut than Trotsky or Bukharin.

Montefiore, pp. 575-576


postscript

...telling letters were supposedly found under a sheet of newspaper in Stalin’s
desk [after his death]….The ﬁrst was Lenin’s letter of 1923 demanding that
Stalin apologize for his rudeness to his wife, Krupskaya. The second was
Bukharin’s last plea: “Koba, why do you need me to die?” The third was from
Tito in 1950. It was said to read: “Stop sending assassins to murder me...If
this doesn’t stop, I will send a man to Moscow and there’ll be no need to
send any more.”

Monteﬁore, p. 647 (n)


Beria Mikoyan

Internal issues


The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria,
Beria Mikoyan
Malenkov Mikoyan and Malenkov through the Kremlin to
the Mausoleum for the 1946 May Day parade.
In this nest of vipers, they walked arm in arm,
but their friendships were masks: each was
ready to liquidate the others. Stalin now
loathed Beria and mocked Malenkov for being
Internal issues so fat he had lost his human appearance.
After Beria tormented the dapper Mikoyan at
Stalin’s dinners by hiding tomatoes in his well-
cut suits and squashing them, Mikoyan
started bringing a spare suit.

Monteﬁore


[Stalin] might easily have died in the ﬁrst half of October 1945 [of a serious
heart attack]. The years were catching up with him. He had had patches of ill
health since the revolution, and the Second World War had levied a heavy
toll. At the age of sixty-six he was long past his physical prime. his cardiac
problem was kept a state secret and he took a two-month vacation; but this
had been nothing unusual for him in the inter-war years. Not even the
members of his entourage were initiated into the details of his condition--they
were simply left to surmise….Apart from his physician Vladimir Vinogradov,
no one had an inkling of the medical prognosis. Politburo members knew
they had to desist from any display of inquisitiveness.

Service, p. 491


The connection between internal and external policies was intimate. Ferocity
in the USSR had ramiﬁcations abroad. Equally important was the likelihood
that any expected deterioration in relations with the Western Allies would
induce him to reinforce repressive measures at home.

Stalin had deported several Caucasian nationalities to the wilds of
Kazakhstan in 1943-44. He had arrested the various elites of Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania when he reannexed those states in 1944; the victims were
either shot, thrown into the Gulag or dumped in Siberian settlements.
Dekulakization and declericalization were bloodily imposed and 142,000
citizens of these new Soviet republics were deported in 1945-1949. Stalin
set the security agencies to work catching anyone disloyal to himself and the
state. He put Soviet POWs through ‘ﬁltration’ camps after their liberation
from German captivity. An astonishing 2,775,700 former soldiers in the Red
Army were subjected to interrogation upon repatriation, and about half of
them ended up in a labour camp.



1946

BERIA MALENKOV ABAKUMOV ZHDANOV


“...another colourful, swaggering torturer…”

Abakumov, tall with a heart-shaped, fleshy face, colourless
eyes, blue-black hair worn broussant, pouting lips and heavy
eyebrows, was another colourful, swaggering torturer, amoral
condottiere...who possessed all Beria’s sadism but less of his
intelligence. Abakumov unrolled a blood-stained carpet on his
office floor before embarking on the torture of his victims in
order not to stain his expensive Persian rugs….
Until Stalin swooped down to make him his own Chekist, Victor Abakumov
was a typical secret policeman who had won his spurs purging Rostov in 1938.
Born in 1908 to a Moscow worker, he was a bon viveur and womanizer. During the
war, he stashed his mistresses in the Moskva Hotel and imported trainloads of
plunder from Berlin. His splendid apartment had belonged to a soprano whom he
had arrested and he regularly used MGB safehouses for amorous assignations. He
loved jazz...until it was banned.

Montefiore, p. 538


“...a plump alcoholic with watery eyes…”

The reversal of fortunes of Beria and Malenkov marked the
resurrection of their enemy, Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s special
friend, that hearty, pretentious intellectual who after the stress of
Leningrad, was a plump alcoholic with watery eyes and a livid
complexion. Stalin openly talked about Zhdanov as his
successor. Meanwhile, Beria could hardly conceal his loathing for
Zhdanov’s pretensions: “He can just manage to play the piano
with two ﬁngers…”
By February, 1946, with Stalin in semi-retirement, Zhdanov seemed to have
control of the Party as well as cultural and foreign policy matters, and to have
neutralized the [security, i.e., secret police] Organs and the military. Zhdanov was
hailed as the “second man in the Party, its “greatest worker,” and his staff
whispered about “our Crown Prince.” Stalin toyed with appointing him as General
Secretary.



Zhdanovshchina--cultural terror

• 18 April 1947-attacked poet Anna Akhmatova as “half-nun, half-harlot…”

• next to be denounced,ﬁlm makers and musicians, notoriously, Shostakovich

• August 1947-Stalin ripped Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part Two

• “Your tsar is indecisive--he resembles Hamlet. Tsar Ivan was a great wise
ruler…

• “Ivan the Terrible seems a hysteric in the Eisenstein version!”--Zhdanov


September 1947
Stalin continued to seethe about the inconvenience of his people starving, Hungry
Thirty-Three all over again.* First he tried to joke about it….Then, when even
Zhdanov reported the famine, Stalin blamed Khrushchev, his Ukrainian viceroy as
he had done in 1932: “They’re deceiving you…” Yet 282,000 people died in 1946,
520,000 in 1947. Finally he turned on the Supply maestro, Mikoyan. He ordered
Mekhlis to investigate: “Don’t trust Mikoyan...because his lack of honest character
has made Supply a den of thieves!”

Mikoyan was clever enough to apologize: “I saw so many mistakes in my work
and surely you see it all clearly,” he wrote to Stalin wit submissive irony. “Of course
neither I nor the rest of us can put the issue as squarely as you can. I will do my
best to study from you how to work as necessary. I’ll do everything to learn
lessons...so it will serve me well in my subsequent work under your fatherly
leadership.” Like Molotov, Mikoyan’s old intimacy with Stalin was over.

* Not only could Stalin not feed his civilians but his correspondence with Beria and Serov (in Germany) shows that the
Soviets were anxious that they could not feed their army in Germany, let alone the East Germans.

Monteﬁore, pp.556-557


Voznesensky Kuznetsov
Kaganovich

Zhdanov

Beria Malenkov

Molotov

The rivals gather
at Kalinin’s funeral, 1946


Mikoyan
Kuznetsov Molotov
Poskrebyshev

Summertime chez Stalin


Stalin and the Enemies


Shlomye Mikhoels reads a
speech at the Jewish
Stalin and the Enemies Antifascist Committee founding
in sunnier days (1943)


Stalin’s anti-Semitism remained a mixture of old-fashioned prejudice, suspicion of
people without a land, and distrust, since his enemies were often Jewish. He was
so unabashed that he openly told Roosevelt at Yalta that the Jews were
“middlemen, profiteers and parasites.” But after 1945, there was a change: Stalin
emerged as a vicious and obsessional anti-Semite.

Always supremely political, this was partly a pragmatic judgement: it matched his
new Russian nationalism. The supremacy of America with its powerful Jewish
community made his own Jews, with their U.S. connections restored during the
war, appear a disloyal Fifth Column….he noticed the Holocaust had touched and
awakened Soviet Jewry even among the magnates [the Kremlin elites]. His new
anti-Semitism flowed from his own seething paranoia, exacerbated when Fate
entangled the Jews in his family.

Montefiore, p. 547


for another view
The aspect of Stalin’s thought that has captured the greatest attention...is his
attitude toward the Jews. No irrefutable evidence of anti-semitism is available in
his published works….indeed his People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs
gave money and facilities to groups promoting the interests of Jews. Yet...his
supporters highlighted anti-semitic themes in the struggle against Trotski,
Kamenev and Zinoviev…. Within his family he had opposed his daughter’s
dalliance with the Jewish ﬁlm-maker Alexei Kapler.

His campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ cannot be automatically
attributed to hatred of Jews as Jews….Campaigns against cosmopolitanism
started up when relations between the Soviet Union and the USA drastically
worsened in 1947….A warm reception was accorded by twenty thousand Jews to
Golda Meir at a Moscow synagogue in September 1948….This infuriated Stalin
who started to regard Jewish people as subversive elements. Yet his motives were
Realpolitik rather than visceral prejudice even though in these last years some of
his private statements and public actions were undeniably reminiscent of crude
antagonism towards Jews.


Golda Meir, Israel, & Soviet Jewry

• 1898-born Golda Mabovich in Kiev

• 1906-1921--emigrated to Milwaukee to escape the tsarist
pogroms. Became a Labor Zionist and Socialist

Golda in 1914





• 1921--Aliyah to Palestine-married, lived on a kibbutz,
moved to Tel Aviv, active in politics

• 1948-one of 24 signers (2 women) of Israel’s Declaration of
Independence

• 1948-49-Israel’s ﬁrst ambassador to Moscow, “mobbed by
thousands of Jews chanting her name” at the Moscow
synagogue. Polina Molotova: Ikh bin a yidishe tokhter





• 1921--Aliyah to Palestine-married, lived on a kibbutz,
moved to Tel Aviv, active in politics

• 1948-one of 24 signers (2 women) of Israel’s Declaration of
Independence

• 1948-49-Israel’s ﬁrst ambassador to Moscow, “mobbed by
thousands of Jews chanting her name” at the Moscow
synagogue. Polina Molotova: Ikh bin a yidishe tokhter

• 1969-1974-Prime Minister


Solomon Mikhoels-- (1890-1948)

• born Shlomye Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils,
Lithuania)

• 1918-left law school in St Petersburg to study with
the Jewish Theater Workshop

• 1920-Moscow, founder of the Jewish National
Theater


Solomon Mikhoels-- (1890-1948)

• born Shlomye Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils,
Lithuania)

• 1918-left law school in St Petersburg to study with
the Jewish Theater Workshop

• 1920-Moscow, founder of the Jewish National
Theater

• 1942-at Stalin’s request, founded the Jewish
Antifascist Committee

Mikhoels as King Lear • 1948-bludgeoned to death in Minsk on Stalin’s
personal orders. Then his body was run over by a
truck and left by the roadside to look like a hit-and-
run


Polina Molotova

• Molotov’s Jewish wife had long been part of Stalin’s
inner circle

Polina and Vyacheslav Molotov (left) on a cosy
loving Black Sea holiday with the Stalins, late
1920s (?), in happier times


Polina Molotova

• Molotov’s Jewish wife had long been part of Stalin’s
inner circle

• 1939-Commissar of Fisheries, mistress of a perfume
empire, and candidate member of the "#

• Beria delivered evidence against her. He and Stalin
considered kidnapping and murdering her--Monteﬁore’s
Chap. 29,“The Murder of the Wives”

• “[Stalin] became interested in other men’s wives for
the unusual reason that they were possible spies
rather than mistresses”--Khrushchev

• 1948-before his “road accident,” Mikhoels
approached her for advice on how to mollify Stalin


the “heir’s” decline and fall

[Szklarska Poreba, the foundation of Cominform] was the high point of Zhdanov’s
career….It was appropriate that the meeting was held in a sanatorium, because,
by the end of it, “the Pianist” was collapsing from alcoholism and heart failure. He
may have triumphed over Molotov, Malenkov and Beria but he could not control
his own strength. Zhdanov, only fifty-one but exhausted, knew “he wasn’t strong
enough to bear the responsibility of succeeding Stalin. He never wanted power,”
asserts his son. He flew back to the seaside to recover near Stalin, where the two
called on each other, but then he suffered a heart attack.

Zhdanov’s illness created a vacuum that was keenly filled by Malenkov and Beria…
Zhdanov noticed their resurgence, telling his son:”A faction has been formed.”
Resting until December [1947], he was too weak to fight this battle.



the Lysenko Affair, 1948

• 10 April-Yury Zhdanov, age 28, head of the "# Science Department attacked
Stalin’s pet geneticist, Troﬁm Lysenko

• Stalin had backed Lysenko’s Marxist Leninist version of genetics and his
purging of the genetics establishment of genuine scientists

• Lysenko enlisted Malenkov and appealed to Stalin. Stalin reacted to the other
tensions of that time by turning on the Zhdanovs, father and son

• 10 June-with Andrei taking notes, Stalin humiliated both. Yury’s apology was
printed in Pravda

• Zhdanov senior’s health worsened


a “strange” death-Montefiore

• June 1948-back from the Bucharest conference which expelled Yugoslavia, Zhdanov
suffered “a cardiac crisis and a minor stroke resulting in breathing difficulties and
paralysis of the right side”

• 1 July-Stalin replaced him as Second Secretary with his nemesis Malenkov

• Stalin sent Zhdanov to a sanatorium and assigned his own doctors to him

• 23 July-after a shouting conversation on the phone, another heart attack

• 29 August-another severe attack. Stalin’s doctor Vinogradov disregarded Cardiologist
Timashuk and prescribed walking in the park-->another attack. Timashuk, an MGB
agent, wrote to the secret police. Stalin filed the letter and did nothing. It will reappear

• 31 August-”Stalin’s fallen favorite got out of bed to visit the lavatory and died of a
massive coronary


The death of Zhdanov, Stalin’s friend and favorite, here in open cofﬁn
unleashes the vengeance of Beria and Malenkov against his faction.


was Zhdanov murdered?

Zhdanov may have been mistreated but the rumors of murder seem unlikely.
The Kremlevka was meant to be the finest Soviet hospital but was so ruled by
the fear of mistakes, scientific backwardness and political competition that
incompetent decisions were made by committees of frightened doctors….
Even in democracies, doctors try to cover up their mistakes. If Stalin had really
wanted to murder Zhdanov, it would not have taken five heart attacks but a
quick injection….

A year later, his old comrade Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Premier, died while being
treated by the same doctor. Walking in the Sochi garden with his Health
Minister, Stalin stopped admiring his roses and mused,”Isn’t it strange? One
doctor treated them and they both died.” He was already considering the
Doctor’s Plot but it would take him three years to return to Timashuk’s letters.

Montefiore, p. 580


Cold or Hot!


Berliners watch a C-54 landing at Tempelhof

Cold or Hot!


German occupation

• 1946-saddled with heavy occupation costs,
the US & UK created “Bizonia,” an economic
agreement to make their zones more self-
sufﬁcient

“The Russians got agriculture, the British,
industry, and we got the scenery” Gen’l Clay


German occupation BERLIN

sufﬁcient

• inevitably, the Soviets protested it as a
violation of the Potsdam Agreements



1948-the mounting crisis
• Jan-Apr--the Yugoslav deﬁance

• February-

• the coup in Czechoslovakia (“Victorious February”);

• Mao Zedong’s army occupies Yenan Province;

• Gandhi assassinated, British troops pull out and sectarian violence consumes the subcontinent

• Spring-Arab-Israeli civil war and Israeli independence

• 25 March-Italy demands Yugoslavia give up Trieste

• 31 March-after long debate, Congress passes the Marshall Plan


Berlin--Potential Flashpoint of the Cold War

• early 1948-at the time of the Czech crisis, a series
of London meetings were held to decide the fate
of the western occupied zones

• the Soviets responded by stopping trains to Berlin
“to check IDs”

• 7 March-US, Br, Fr, and the Benelux countries
announce plans:

• approve the Marshall Plan for West Germany

• ﬁnalized plans to merge the occupation zones

• agreed to establish a federal system of government for them
Checkpoint Charlie at the US-USSR border. Our
tanks face off with theirs


the Berlin crisis develops

• 9 Mar 1948-Stalin meets with his military advisors

• 12 Mar-secret memo to Molotov outlining a plan to force the western allies to
accept Soviet plans by “regulating” access to Berlin

• 20 Mar-the Four Power Allied Control Commission met for the last time. The
Soviet delegation walked out over the London Conference announcement

• 25 March-Soviet inspections and harassment led to the “Little Lift” of military
supplies and personnel. Soviet ﬁghters begin “buzzing” and produce crashes

• 18 June-the introduction of the Deutsche Mark by the West to improve the
German economy led to the full imposition of the Soviet blockade of Berlin


C-47s at Tempelhof


The over 4,000 tons per day required by Berlin during the airlift
totaled, for example, over ten times the volume that the
encircled German 6th Army required six years earlier at the
Battle of Stalingrad. The Royal Air Force, other Commonwealth
nations, and the recently formed United States Air Force, flew
over 200,000 flights providing 13,000 tons of food daily to Berlin
in an operation lasting almost a year. By the spring of 1949, the
effort was clearly succeeding, and by April the airlift was
delivering more cargo than had previously flowed into the city by
rail.
The success of the Airlift was claimed to be humiliating to the
Soviets, who had repeatedly claimed it could never work. The
blockade was lifted in May, 1949.

Wikipedia


US Air Force pilot Gail
Halvorsen, who pioneered the
idea of dropping candy bars and
bubble gum with handmade
miniature parachutes, which
later became known as
"Operation Little Vittles".


• 30 Sept 1949-ofﬁcial end

• total tonnage: USAF=1,783,573; RAF=541,937; RA (Australian) AF=7,968

• over 92 million miles, nearly the same as the distance from earth to the sun!

• at the height of the Airlift, one plane reached West Berlin every thirty seconds

• a total of 101 fatalities, including 40 Britons and 31 Americans, mostly due to
crashes. 17 American and 8 British aircraft crashed during the operation

• cost=approximately $224 million ($2 billion in inﬂation-adjusted 2008 dollars)


German occupation



German occupation

sufﬁcient

• inevitably, the Soviets protested it as a
violation of the Potsdam Agreements

• 8 Apr 1949-France followed into “Trizonia”

• 24 May 1949-the Federal Republic of
Germany with its capital at Bonn, the so-
called Bundesdorf



Conclusion; the Soviet Bomb


fathers of the Soviet Bomb

Drs. Andrei Sakharov and Igor Kurchatov


Beria set out in a special armoured train for a secret nuclear settlement amid
the Kazakh steppes. Beria was frantic with worry because if things went
wrong, “we would,” as one of his managers put it, “all have to give an answer
before the people.” Beria’s family would be destroyed….

Beria arrived in Semipalatinsk-21 for the test of the “article.” He moved into a
tiny cabin beside Professor Kurchatov’s command post. On the morning of
29 August [1949], Beria watched as a crane lowered the uranium tamper
into position on its carriage; the plutonium hemisphere was placed within it.

Monteﬁore, p. 599


First Lightning (Joe-1)
• 6 p.m.-they assembled in the command post 10
km away

• Kurchatov ordered detonation

• there was a bright ﬂash

• after the shock wave had passed, they hurried
outside to admire the mushroom cloud rising
majestically before them

• Beria was wildly excited and kissed Kurchatov on
the forehead:

• “Did it look like the American one? We didn’t screw
up?”


the Soviet museum at
Kurchatov Semipalatinsk (now called Astana)


on the wall behind,
a replica of “the Article” pictures of the team


There are several explanations for the USSR code-name of
RDS-1, usually an arbitrary designation: a backronym

")!-1 (RDS-1) "Special Jet Engine" (Реактивный двигатель
специальный, Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Specialnyi), or "Stalin's
Jet Engine" (Реактивный двигатель Сталина, Reaktivnyi
Dvigatel Stalina), or "Russia does it herself" (Россия
делает сама, Rossiya Delayet Sama).

In the 1990s, with the declassification of Soviet intelligence materials, which
showed the extent and the type of the information obtained by the Soviets
from US sources, a heated debate ensued in Russia and abroad as to the
relative importance of espionage, as opposed to the Soviet scientists' own
efforts, in the making of the Soviet bomb. The vast majority of scholars
agree that whereas the Soviet atomic project was first and foremost a
product of local expertise and scientific talent, it is clear that espionage
efforts contributed to the project in various ways and most certainly
shortened the time needed to develop the atomic bomb.

Wikipedia, “Soviet Atomic Bomb Project”


vii Stalin's Cold War; 1945-1949

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vii Stalin's Cold War; 1945-1949