Stalin: A Biography полностью

Stalin was playing the geopolitical game for all it was worth. Communist political prospects in Europe had vanished. For Stalin, an inveterate opportunist, this was no problem. While not ceasing to believe in the superiority of communism over capitalism, he waited for the next chance to promote his kind of dictatorship abroad. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not the only places he had in his sights as lying within the zone of the USSR’s special interest. Stalin and his representatives persistently specified Romania and Bulgaria in this way. Nor did he fail to argue that Turkey fell within the Soviet zone of hegemony. And Stalin, while delivering abundant quotas of grain and oil to a Germany at war with France and the United Kingdom, demanded German technology in exchange. Berlin had to sanction the sale of Messerschmitt fighters, a Panzer-III tank and the cruiser Lutzow; it also showed the construction plans for the battleship Bismarck to Soviet specialists.¹² Stalin has the reputation of having been gulled by Hitler. This was not how things appeared to Berlin in 1939–40. Stalin had driven a hard bargain and insisted on its complete fulfilment. As he pushed his case at the risk of raising tension between Moscow and Berlin, Hitler described him as a ‘cold-blooded blackmailer’.¹³

What changed Stalin’s attitude was nothing that happened in eastern Europe or the Far East. France’s collapse in summer 1940 transformed everything. Soviet military planning had been based on the assumption that Hitler would encounter more effective resistance from the French armed forces than had been met in Poland. Geopolitics in Europe were turned upside down. Few observers gave the United Kingdom much chance of survival in the following months. For Stalin, the implications were dire. The Wehrmacht looked as if it was close to completing its tasks in the West. It would no longer face a two-front war if it turned its power against the USSR. Stalin’s relations with Hitler immediately reflected the consequences of France’s collapse. Truculent since August 1939, he began to appease. War with Germany had to be averted at any cost.¹⁴

Appeasement was practised without any express declaration of a change in stance. But Stalin’s statements behind the scenes, recently made available, reveal his worries. At the October Revolution anniversary dinner in the Kremlin on 7 November 1940 he indicated his shock at the military developments. He did not limit himself to the French débâcle. The Soviet–Japanese War had indicated weaknesses in the country’s air force if not in its tanks. The Winter War with Finland had gone much worse for the USSR, revealing gross defects in organisation and planning. Then Germany had overwhelmed France in the summer campaign and driven the British back over the Channel. Stalin was blunt: ‘We’re not ready for war of the kind being fought between Germany and England.’¹⁵ Molotov was to recall him concluding around that time that ‘we would be able to confront the Germans on an equal basis only by 1943’.¹⁶ The diplomatic ramifications were enormous. Hitler had to be reassured that Soviet military intentions were entirely peaceful. His requests for raw materials had to be met even if German technology was not immediately available in exchange: late delivery, once complained about, was now forgivable.

As the diplomatic world darkened in the first half of 1941, Stalin revised several of his political judgements. Already he had added to the Russian national ingredients in Marxism–Leninism. Steadily, as he looked out on the countries of Europe under the Nazi jackboot, he reached the conclusion that the Comintern’s usefulness had come to an end. If communism was going to appeal to broad popular opinion, it had to be regarded as a movement showing sensitivity to local national feelings. Perhaps Stalin also urgently wanted to reassure Hitler that Soviet expansionism was a defunct aspiration. He mentioned this to Dimitrov in April 1941; communist parties, he asserted,¹⁷