Stalin полностью

In China, the renewed “united front” was coming undone. Under Japan’s savage array of air power, artillery, and armored forces, China was losing every engagement on the battlefield, but not the war. First the Nationalist government had abandoned north China, trading space for time, then, after being evicted from ever more territories along the coast, had retreated to the western interior, whence it conducted sabotage and flanking operations designed to outlast Japan and its shoestring logistics.²¹³ Finally, Chiang Kai-shek launched a multifront counteroffensive. Once again, he confided in his private diary that the threat of the Chinese Communist party to the country, whom he saw as collaborating with Japan, exceeded the threat of the latter.²¹⁴ Zhou Enlai, in a long report, claimed a party membership of nearly half a million, and an Eighth Route Army of more than a quarter million (additionally, a New Fourth Army was said to number 30,000). At the same time, the Communists’ budget was in severe deficit: about $358,000 per month, a tidy sum Zhou requested from Moscow. His request amounted to more than 40 percent of the Chinese Communists’ total military and civilian expenditures. On February 23, Dimitrov sent Stalin a draft letter intended as a response, and two days later he managed to speak with Stalin on the phone. “Cannot see me about Chinese affairs,” Dimitrov noted in his diary for that day. “Very busy. Has not read the material he was sent. ‘There is a lot of paperwork I am not finding time to read. Decide for yourself.’”²¹⁵

Dimitrov concluded his diary entry: “We shall give the assistance.”²¹⁶ Zhou Enlai, who had been in Moscow for treatment of a broken arm (he had fallen from a horse), set out for Yan’an, the Red capital, carrying with him a Comintern resolution that afforded the Chinese Communists great leeway in making decisions based upon fluid local circumstances. Mao took advantage by tightening his grip. Dimitrov telegrammed Mao (March 17, 1940) that Zhou “will personally inform you about everything we discussed and agreed upon regarding Chinese affairs. You need to seriously consider everything and take decisive measures completely on your own. In case of disagreement with us on some questions, please inform us promptly and tell us your reasons.”²¹⁷ Such deference from Moscow to foreign Communists was unheard of. Mao seized upon the Comintern document to appoint his own loyalists and lay plans to set up new Communist bases in China.²¹⁸

Also against the background of Finnish events, in early March 1940, Beria had reported to Stalin that “a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence services, members of Polish nationalist counterrevolutionary parties, participants in uncovered counterrevolutionary uprising organizations, refugees, and so forth are held in NKVD USSR camps for POWs and in the prisons of the western provinces of Ukraine and Belorussia.” He added, on the basis of informants, that they were “sworn enemies of Soviet authority full of hatred for the Soviet system,” and that each was “waiting only for his release in order to enter actively into the struggle against Soviet power.” Some had had the temerity to write petitions pointing out that if, according to Soviet propaganda, the USSR was not at war with Poland, then they could not be held as POWs. To expedite their sentencing, Beria recommended that a troika be formed, made up of himself, Merkulov, and the head of the NKVD’s first special department. Stalin, using blue pencil, crossed out Beria’s name, underlined Merkulov’s, and wrote in “Kobulov.”²¹⁹ On March 5, in the name of the politburo, Stalin approved a troika and a “special procedure” for executing the 21,857 captured or arrested Polish officers, civil servants, and intellectuals. Voroshilov, who had had to surrender jurisdiction over POWs in the Polish campaign to Beria, also signed the execution order, along with the redoubtable Molotov and Mikoyan. The officers of the Polish army—some of whom were ethnic Ukrainian and Jewish—were murdered at several sites, including near Smolensk, in the Katyn Forest.²²⁰