8. Kuznetsov signed off on the new plan on July 27, 1940. Kuznetsov, “Voenno-Morskoi flot nakanune Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny”; Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet, 71–106 (citing RGA VMF, f. 2, d. 39526, l. 1–33). Of the 25 billion rubles that would be earmarked for weapons systems in 1940, almost one quarter would go to the navy. The Soviets never completed the colossal battleships, but by the middle of 1941 they would have 267 submarines, more than any other country.
9. Stalin dispatched deputy commissar Admiral Ivan Isakov in May 1939 to the United States, but he proved unable to achieve a breakthrough in the negotiations (asking for the moon), and the attack on Finland ended them. FRUS, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, 457–91, 670–707, 869–903; Davies, Mission to Moscow, 208. See also Maddux, Years of Estrangement, 86–8, 96–8. Stalin had unexpectedly appeared at negotiations with then U.S. Ambassador Davies in 1938, offering to settle repudiated tsarist-era debts in return for access to naval technology. The disadvantage of the Komsomolsk shipyard was the Amur’s lack of depth, forcing larger ships to be towed downstream after launch to be fitted out at Pacific Coast shipyards.
10. On Oct. 26, 1939, a sixty-person Soviet delegation led by shipbuilding commissar Ivan Tevosyan arrived in Berlin with a breathtaking wish list: complete materials for building four light cruisers; two hulls of heavy cruisers (Admiral Hipper class); ship and coastal guns (all calibers); torpedoes and mines; optical range finders, fire control directors, and hydro-acoustical devices; and entire blueprints for the battleship Bismarck, the Hipper-class heavy cruisers, Scharnhorst-class battle cruiser, and aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Hauner, “Stalin’s Big-Fleet Program.” Bezymensky, “Sovetsko-Germanskie dogovory.” Thanks to Göring’s intercession, Tevosyan managed to inspect the Krupp plants in Essen twice in Nov. 1939. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 167 (citing HA Krupp, WA 7, F 1044, Sept. 7 and Nov., 1114–5, 1939).
11. See Stalin’s self-justifying remarks on April 17, 1940, analyzing the Finnish campaign, in Chubarian and Shukman, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 263–75 (at 263). Stalin repeated this point a year later: Naumov, 1941 god, II: 599–608 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 77, l. 178–211).
12. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 85–112 (at 85–6: July 13, 1939). In 1932, Helsinki signed a nonaggression pact with Moscow, initially for just three years at Finnish insistence, but reaffirmed in 1934 for ten years. After the Nazis came to power, moreover, German-Finnish relations cooled for a time. But anti-Soviet agitation persisted on the part of Finnish nationalist pressure groups, whose activists the NKVD assessed as mere cover for the Finnish government. Stover, “Finnish Military Politics”; Rintala, Three Generations; Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 17–55 (1934), 58–82 (April 12, 1936); Backlund, “Nazi Germany and Finland.” The treaty and its subsequent modifications can be found in Development of Finnish-Soviet Relations, 23–37.
13. It was led by Major General von der Golz. Jakobson, Diplomacy of the Winter War, 27. Jakobson based his account on unpublished Finnish foreign ministry sources, but did not cite them. He was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in Helsinki when the war broke out.
14. Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 147 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 6, d. 18, l. 32: June 19, 1939).
15. Bernev and Rupasov, Zimniaia voina, 97; Manninen and Baryshnikov, “Peregovory osen’iu 1939 goda,” I: 114 (citing Bundesarchiv-Miliätrarchiv, N 220/19; AVP RF, f. 0135, op. 22, d. 7, l. 8–9, 12–4); Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 221 (citing Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, doc. 352: Derevyansky, June 28, 1939; and FO 371/23648: Snow to Halifax, July 3, 1939).
16. Before the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Finnish military attaché in Moscow had managed to obtain information about the secret consultations from the wife of a high-level Soviet figure, an indication of Finland’s obvious concern for its security, but, for Stalin, of something more sinister. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 47 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 172, l. 2). One of the Soviet sources in Finland was the former Kronstadt rebel leader Stepan Petrichenko, who had escaped into exile. V. P. Naumov and A. A. Kosakovskii (eds.), Kronshtadt, 1921 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond Demokratiia, 1997), 402; APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 283, l. 27, Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 27 (Yagodato Stalin).
17. Volkovskii, Tainy i uroki, 4.
