vii Stalin's Cold War; 1945-1949

!!!" !#$%&'$Stalin’s SSSR

session vii-Cold War; 1945-1949

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

!!!" !#$%&'$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


the Bomb6 August 1945

(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

1996Tuesday, March 30, 2010

falling apartGromyko

ByrnesMolotov


...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


Mikoyan

KhrushchevMalenkov Beria

Molotov

Vlasic


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 commemoratinga 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 1946Winston 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

• 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

Democratic forces training with US aid


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.

the Truman Doctrine

Harry S. Trumanspeech to a joint session of

Congress12 March 1947


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.

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

Secretary of State George C. Marshallspeech 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” appearsGeorge F. Kennan

1947


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 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:

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


[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

1943-dissolution of the Comintern


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 Czechoslovakia, 1948-1953 President of Czechoslovakia

as a young man

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


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language

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 governmentJan 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

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

Andrei Zhdanov1898-1948


Tito--”no stooge”

Josip Broz1892-1980


SLOVENIA

CROATIA

Kumrovec



• 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 journey home to newly created Yugoslavia

Josip Broz1892-1980



• 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 Broz1892-1980


Milovan Djilas

Tito

Edvard Kardelj

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


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Yugoslavia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Yugoslavia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_(island)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_(island)

...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


...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)

postscript


Internal issues

MikoyanBeria


Internal issues

The exhausted Stalin gloomily leads Beria, 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 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

MikoyanBeriaMalenkov


[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


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

September 1947


The rivals gatherat Kalinin’s funeral, 1946

Voznesensky Kaganovich

Zhdanov

Molotov

MalenkovBeria

Kuznetsov


PoskrebyshevMolotovKuznetsov

Mikoyan

Summertime chez Stalin


Stalin and the Enemies


Stalin and the EnemiesShlomye Mikhoels reads a s p e e c h a t t h e J e w i s h 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


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.


for another view


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

• 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

Mikhoels as King Lear


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 coffinunleashes the vengeance of Beria and Malenkov against his faction.


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

was Zhdanov murdered?


Cold or Hot!


Cold or Hot!

Berliners watch a C-54 landing at Tempelhof


German occupation

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

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


German occupation



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

BERLIN


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 themCheckpoint 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


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force

U S A i r F o r c e p i l o t G a i l Halvorsen, who pioneered the idea of dropping candy bars and bubble gum with handmade miniature parachutes, which l a t e r b e c a m e k n o w n a s "Operation Little Vittles".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Halvorsen




• 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



• 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?”


Kurchatovthe Soviet museum at Semipalatinsk (now called Astana)


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


")!-1 (RDS-1)

There are several explanations for the USSR code-name of

RDS-1, usually an arbitrary designation: a backronym

"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).Tuesday, March 30, 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

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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Transcript of vii Stalin's Cold War; 1945-1949