Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 полностью

A banquet followed in the St. George’s Hall, with overflow in the Palace of Facets, the St. Vladimir Octagon, and other spaces (where the toasts, broadcast over loudspeakers, were barely audible).²⁰² Timoshenko triumphantly entered the white-columned St. George’s; then, a bit later, came Stalin, followed by his entourage, provoking thunderous hurrahs. Vodka, champagne, fish, game, and myriad delicacies were laid out. The despot assumed his customary place at the Presidium table. Timoshenko proposed a toast to him; everyone downed their glasses standing.²⁰³ Stalin, Dimitrov noted, “was in an exceptionally good mood.”²⁰⁴ The despot offered an extended toast to the graduates and their teachers, again enjoining them to teach the new technology. Those in the St. George’s Hall stepped forward to clink glasses with the inner circle and marshals at the Presidium table.²⁰⁵ Some fifteen minutes later, Timoshenko announced that Stalin would make a second toast. This one turned out to be for those in artillery, which he called “the main force in war. That’s how it was earlier, that’s how it is today. . . . Artillery is the god of war.”²⁰⁶ Stalin continued, toasting tank drivers, aviators, cavalry, communications specialists, and infantry, whom he called “the lord of the battlefield.”

The evening’s concert commenced. Some twenty minutes later, Sivkov, evidently hoping to make amends, proposed a toast “to the Stalinist foreign policy of peace.” The despot waved his arms; the guard detail blocked Sivkin from moving forward. Then Stalin rose. As recently as the reception for the May Day parade (May 2), Timoshenko, in Stalin’s presence, had referred to the Soviet “peace policy,” a reference included in the newspaper account.²⁰⁷ But now, in his third comment of the evening, an agitated Stalin, his Georgian accent more pronounced, interjected, “Allow me to introduce a correction. A peace policy secured peace for our country. A peace policy is a good thing. For a while we conducted a defensive approach—until we rearmed our army, gave it modern means of fighting. But now that we have restructured the army, saturated it with the equipment for modern combat, now that we have become strong, now it is time to go from defense to offense. . . . We need to reconstruct our education, our propaganda, agitation, our press in an offensive spirit. The Red Army is a modern army, and a modern army is an army of offense.”²⁰⁸ Having that night accused Germany (rather than Britain and France) of starting the war, and having declared that Germany’s war of conquest would fail, Stalin, according to some witnesses, also stated—in a phrase excised from the informal transcript—that “there’s going to be war, and the enemy will be Germany.”²⁰⁹

EXCHANGE OF LETTERS?

Stalin’s last major speech on foreign policy, at the 18th Party Congress (March 1939), had been published in an enormous print run, but this time Pravda reported only that he had stressed “the profound changes in the Red Army in the past few years,” especially its rearming and reorganization “on the basis of modern war.” The brief account fanned rumors. (The German embassy failed to obtain the contents, until fed them by Soviet counterintelligence.)²¹⁰ Immediately after the evening, Zhdanov, Malenkov, and Shcherbakov oversaw meetings to introduce slogans of “offensive war” in propaganda. Red Star, the army newspaper, was to undermine the myth of German invincibility by publishing articles about German tactical and strategic shortcomings, and French weakness and mistakes.²¹¹ Stalin complemented these continued efforts to deter Nazi Germany, while also boosting Red Army morale, with an even bigger gesture: Soviet newspapers also announced his appointment as head of government.

The despot had recently sent the inner circle an angry note, complaining about a decision that Molotov had signed off on in relation to an oil pipeline for Sakhalin. Suddenly, the long-standing method of approving decisions by polling became “chancellery red tape and bungling.” Stalin complained about the absence of meetings in economic decision making, Molotov’s bailiwick (previously the despot had complained about an excess of meetings). “I think it is no longer possible to carry on ‘running things’ like this,” he wrote. “I suggest we discuss the matter at the politburo.”²¹² At the next politburo session, on May 4, Stalin had been unanimously voted to replace Molotov as head of the Council of People’s Commissars. He also remained general secretary of the party, with Zhdanov as his formal party deputy, and Molotov remained foreign affairs commissar.²¹³ But Voznesensky, the Zhdanov protégé, continued as first deputy of the government and, as a result, outranked Molotov (a mere deputy).²¹⁴ Beyond his frustrations, Stalin had signaled, in the words of Sudoplatov, that he was “ready for negotiations and that this time he would lead them directly.”²¹⁵