The mass of Soviet inhabitants remained very distant from these machinations, but that was also true of almost all party and state functionaries. They, too, knew little to nothing. Valentin Berezhkov, who was working at the Soviet embassy in Germany, helping to oversee procurement related to the Nazi-Soviet trade agreement, was summoned to Moscow. Previously, he had worked in the tourist bureau in Kiev, where he held the belief that all the foreigners whom he hosted were rich, while “in the Soviet Union we were building a system that would be fair for all.” But upon arriving in capitalist Riga in 1940, on his way to Berlin, he had been shocked at the abundance and affordability of food. Berezhkov’s father had been arrested in the terror but released, so Berezhkov “came to believe that if a person was truly innocent, no one was going to harm him.” Still, having now been recalled to Moscow, he fretted about his own possible arrest. Upon reaching the Soviet Union’s side of the border, he experienced a rush of patriotic feeling, but he was subjected to a humiliating search, as if he were a foreign agent. Berezhkov was promoted, becoming one of Molotov’s two German interpreters, and instructed to prepare for a state visit to Berlin. Thus, a mere two years after having graduated with a degree in engineering, Berezhkov was set to meet Hitler. “The young people of my generation did not know about Stalin’s atrocities,” Berezhkov would recall. “We thought he was like a wise, just, and caring, if strict father of the peoples of our country.”229
Molotov, in response to Ribbentrop’s long written tutorial and invitation, had bombarded Schulenburg with accusations that Germany had violated the terms of the 1939 Pact, and with Soviet demands: immediate withdrawal of German forces from Finland; long-term Soviet military bases on the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, promised to tsarist Russia in the Great War by Britain and France); a Soviet security treaty with Bulgaria, another key to controlling the Straits; Japan’s revocation of concession rights on Sakhalin; and recognition of a Soviet sphere south of Batum and Baku, in the direction of the Persian Gulf.230 In other words, relations with Hitler had gravely deteriorated, and Stalin’s ambitions from the relationship had soared.
The Soviet despot was following the same script as he had in August 1939: seeking an advantageous deal. But before Molotov’s arrival in Berlin, Hitler did not bother to respond to the soaring demands. NKVD intelligence reported that “in Germany preparations for improved relations with Russia were proceeding apace” and were aimed at showing the whole world, especially Britain, that nothing could come between Berlin and Moscow. The Germans were saying that Britain stood on the verge of total defeat. NKVD intelligence further reported that Germany was ready to propose a Polish-style partition of Turkey with the Soviets, awarding Stalin the Straits, and possibly a partition of the entire Near East, Britain’s colonial realm. At the same time, there were warnings of consequences if the Soviets failed to support the “Nazi New Order
There were many signals of trouble: Stalin learned from NKVD counterintelligence that Germany was trying to stop Denmark and Sweden from selling machines and equipment to the USSR.233 Stalin even sent Gorsky back to London, with a handful of young, inexperienced operatives, to restore the USSR’s intelligence station. Gorsky arrived in November 1940, and his team set about reestablishing contact with the expansive network of agents who had been abandoned, such as Kim Philby in MI6, Anthony Blunt, nominally an officer of the British general staff but actually in British counterintelligence, and others in the foreign office. They were tasked with digging into British efforts to cut a deal with Germany.
