Stalin полностью

Other Soviet actions belied this pro-German bluster. That same July of 1940, Shaposhnikov, in his last days as chief of the general staff, signed off on a detailed assessment of what a German attack on the USSR would look like.¹⁰² He never acted without Stalin’s approval.¹⁰³ Red Army force dislocation also spoke volumes: of its 188 divisions, just 18 were in the Soviet Far East, and 10 in Eastern Siberia. The main concentrations were on the western frontier: the Kiev special military district (27), Western special military district (25), Odessa military district (11), Baltic special military district (18), and Leningrad military district (15).¹⁰⁴ After August 1940, by which time Meretskov had replaced Shaposhnikov, Germany (supported by Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Finland) was being explicitly named as the likely enemy in the Soviet strategic deployment plan; Britain was no longer mentioned. What is more, the Soviet military districts on the frontier had fleshed out detailed contingencies for war against Germany.¹⁰⁵

At the same time, the economic benefits of the relationship with Germany were still flowing to Moscow. In the second quarter of 1940, the Škoda Works in German-annexed Bohemia would ship orders to the USSR for 393 devices to manufacture machine tools worth billions of rubles.¹⁰⁶ Equally crucial, Ogonyok printed dramatic photographs of European war devastation, including the urban bombing, vivid reminders of how the Soviets had remained outside the conflict.¹⁰⁷ Maisky, according to the British foreign office, said that whereas, according to conventional accounting, in the air war between Britain and Germany, Royal Air Force losses were placed on one side and Luftwaffe losses on another, “he was in the habit of adding them together in one column.”¹⁰⁸ Stalin, furthermore, was absolutely convinced that Churchill wanted not to fight Hitler together with him but to deflect the Wehrmacht eastward and conclude a separate peace with Germany.¹⁰⁹

But Stalin’s views on Britain and geopolitics bordered on incoherence. Steeped in Marxism-Leninism, he was given to dismissing the British—the world’s number-one arms exporters—as a supposed “nation of shopkeepers” (among the ultimate Marxist insults), yet he was also inclined to regard Britain as the arch-imperialist manipulating all world affairs.¹¹⁰ Germany, dominating nearly the entire continent, somehow still remained the victim of the Versailles order.

Soviet propaganda banged on about how the British empire constituted the world’s principal bloodsucker and threat.¹¹¹ The regime called on the full force of its astonishing ideological arsenal: nearly 9,000 newspapers, with a combined daily circulation of 38.4 million, and almost 6 million “radio points” delivering radio by wire (as well as 1 million radio receivers with dials), not to mention countless cinemas showing newsreels, live theater, posters, and publicly displayed slogans. Even if the Soviet masses remained skeptical about this or that regime pronouncement, the population was marinated day and night in Stalin’s worldview.

Inside the Little Corner, in the narrow circle that had regular access to the despot, there were no Anglophiles—like Göring, the counterweight to Ribbentrop in the Nazi regime—who could counter Stalin’s Germanophilia or the Germanophile influence of Molotov, whose signature was on the Pact and who combined the functions of a Göring (overseeing the economy) and a Ribbentrop (foreign affairs).¹¹² As for Voroshilov, even had he admired Britain—he did not—he lacked Molotov’s strength of character to stand up for any view that contravened Stalin’s. Mikoyan, a skilled operative, was too clever to advocate for or against specific policies, knowing Stalin’s personality as well as anyone (and having had some clashes with him in the 1920s). The policy views of Beria could best be described as “Yes, comrade Stalin. It shall be done, comrade Stalin.” Anyway, it is not even clear whether Stalin informed his minions, besides Molotov, about the details of the new British ambassador’s approaches.