Japan was busy confirming Stalin’s prescience about its vaulting ambitions.224 In Manchukuo, it had gone on to create a vast autonomous province for ethnic Mongols and fostered preservation of traditional lifestyles, the opposite of Soviet social engineering in its Mongolian satellite.225 Chiang Kai-shek had conceded territory to the Japanese occupiers, planning to take them on decisively after he had annihilated the Communists, but the Communist escape to the interior had put off that reckoning. Surviving Communists had united in a new sanctuary in impoverished Shaanxi province, where Mao, carried on a palanquin during the Long March, emerged as the paramount leader.226 Chiang approached the Soviet envoy Dimitri Bogomolov asking for weapons, as if the Nationalists were finally going to launch a war to evict the Japanese. “From all my conversations, I am left with the impression that they would like to precipitate a possible conflict between ourselves and Japan,” Bogomolov informed Moscow (December 9, 1935).Stalin agreed to ship the arms (via Xinjiang), worried that Chiang might otherwise cut a side deal with Japan. On December 9, the Comintern’s “united front” policy was stretched to include cooperation with Chiang—unbeknownst to Mao in the remote interior, who would erupt when apprised.227
A Soviet official “close to the Kremlin” told U.S. embassy personnel that any moves by Japan against Mongolia would be regarded as a threat to Soviet territorial integrity, but a week later Japanese-Manchukuo forces burned down a Mongolian frontier post, killing or kidnapping several Mongolian border guards, and this drew only a protest.228 In the meantime, on December 12, a Mongolian delegation arrived in Moscow, again led by Prime Minister Genden, who was dragging his feet over Stalin’s orders to extirpate lama influence and enlarge the penurious country’s military budget.229 Genden was quick-tempered, and known to indulge in wine, women, and indiscreet song. Before his departure from Ulan Bator, he had supposedly boasted, “I’ll deal with that Georgian with the knife-tipped nose. . . . I’ll enjoy a quarrel with him.”230
The Mongols in Moscow had to cool their heels. On Stalin’s official fifty-sixth birthday (December 21, 1935) at the Near Dacha, the Alliluyevs and Svanidzes discovered that they were now outnumbered by politburo officials. “Zhdanov played the accordion beautifully, but it broke down on him a few times,” Maria Svanidze recorded in her diary. “They sang graceful Abkhaz and Ukrainian songs, old student songs, and some plain silly ones. Postyshev was in high spirits. He was jokingly dancing the Russian national dance with Molotov, spoke to him in Kazakh, and this pair entertained I[osif] and all the guests. After supper, everyone went through to the study (the large room). I[osif] wound up the gramophone and people danced the Russian dance, Anastas Ivanovich [Mikoyan] danced the lezginka, wildly, and sometimes lost the rhythm. As usual, we danced the foxtrot. . . . We asked I[osif] to join in, but he said that since the death of Nadya he no longer danced.”231
The regime held a Central Committee plenum from December 21 to 25, and on the final day Yezhov reported on the ongoing party card verification campaign: of the 2.34 million members and candidate members, 1.915 million had gone through the process, and of those, 175,166 had been expelled. Two thirds of the expulsions were for “passivity,” that is, failing to attend meetings, pay dues, or study. Some 20 percent were dropped as White Guards or kulaks, 8.5 percent as swindlers and scoundrels, and some 1 percent as foreign spies. Around 3 percent, 5,500 party members, were expelled as “Trotskyites and Zinovievites.”232 About 15,000 of those expelled would also be arrested. The process, still not complete, was now to be followed by a physical exchange of party cards, old for new. Yezhov congratulated himself.233 On the plenum’s eve, resistance to Stakhanovism had been designated as terrorism.234 At a heavy industry conference the day after the plenum, Orjonikidze conspicuously mentioned nothing of sabotage.235
Stalin had decided to allow, for the first time, the genuine number for projected Soviet military spending for the coming year to be released—a staggering, meant-to-impress 14.8 billion rubles, 16 percent of the state budget.236