The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ at War

      Heavy Burden of Responsibility

      The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the almost immediate threat to the capital placed on Stalin’s shoulders an enormous weight of anxiety and responsibility. From the outset, the supreme direction of the war effort and defence organization became vested in the State Defence Committee consisting of five members – Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria, and Malenkov, with Stalin as chairman, though it was not till March, 1943, that he assumed the rank of marshal, and later of generalissimo. During the war his customary public speeches on May 1 and on the eve of November 7 took the form of large-scale reviews of military operations and war policy. He was also active in a diplomatic role. Before the war Stalin had been almost entirely inaccessible to foreigners. Now, apart from regular conversations with the allied Ambassadors, he received a constant flow of distinguished visitors. Lord Beaverbrook and Mr Harriman were in Moscow in August, 1941, to organize supplies from the west; Mr Churchill came in August, 1942, and again, with Mr Eden, in October, 1944. In December, 1943, Stalin met President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill at Teheran, and in February, 1945, at Yalta. The last meeting of the Big Three, with Mr Truman succeeding Roosevelt and Mr Attlee replacing Mr Churchill in the middle of the proceedings, took place at Potsdam in July, 1945.

      Among his diplomatic activities Stalin was particularly concerned with the perennial problem of Soviet-Polish relations. By dint of much patience he eventually secured the recognition of the new Polish Government by his allies, and the acceptance by them as the frontier, between the Soviet Union and Poland, of the so-called ‘Curzon line’ originally drawn by the Allied and Associated Powers at the Paris peace conference of 1919. He worked untiringly to secure for his country that place of undisputed equality with the other Great Powers to which its achievements and sacrifices in the war entitled it.

      Domestic Policy

      Comintern and Church

      Two striking decisions of domestic policy during the war – the disbandment of Comintern and the renewed recognition of the Orthodox Church – were undoubtedly taken by Stalin out of deference for allied opinion; but they were in line with this long-standing inclination, accentuated by the war, to give precedence to national over ideological considerations. The reforms of 1944 which accorded separate armies and separate rights of diplomatic representation abroad to the major constituent republics of the Soviet Union were perhaps partly designed to secure to the Ukraine and White Russia independent membership and voting power in the United Nations. When the war ended Stalin was in his sixty-sixth year. A holiday of two-and-a-half months in the autumn of 1945 at Sochi on the Black Sea produced the usual crop of rumours, but was no more than a merited and necessary respite from the burden of public affairs. In December he was back in Moscow for the visit of Mr Bevin and Mr Byrnes. Thenceforward there were few personal contacts between Stalin and representatives of the western Powers. In February, 1946, he took part in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, making the principal campaign speech, in which he forecast an early end of bread rationing – a hope which was defeated by the bad harvest. He also declared that it was the intention of the Soviet Communist Party to organize a new effort in the economic field, the aim of which would be to treble pre-war production figures. Although advanced in years, Stalin still continued to hold the reins of power and in March, 1946, he was again confirmed as Secretary of the central committee of the party. In the same year the State Publishing House began publication of a collected edition of his works.

      Growing Mistrust

      The unparalleled popularity in the non-Communist world with which the Russian people in general, and Marshal Stalin in particular, had emerged from the war thus early gave place to mistrust. It had been hoped that the pre-war doctrine which was associated with Stalin’s name, of ‘socialism in one country’, would provide the basis for peaceful coexistence in the post-war period. Stalin’s own comments on international affairs sometimes tended to confirm, and sometimes to deny, this prospect. Thus in answer to questions put to him by the Moscow correspondent of the Sunday Times in September, 1946, Stalin declared that, in spite of ideological differences, he believed in the possibility of lasting cooperation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies, and that Communism in one country was perfectly possible. This provoked worldwide interest and was regarded as a welcome statement, contributing much to the easing of growing international tension. A month later, however, in reply to questions sent to him by the United Press of America, he asserted that in his opinion ‘the incendiaries of a new war’, naming several prominent British and American statesmen, constituted the most serious threat to world peace, and thus destroyed the earlier good impression.

      Russia’s post-war policy towards her neighbours did nothing to confirm Stalin’s peaceful protestations. The independent Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, had already been incorporated in Russia in 1940. Finland and Bulgaria were compelled to surrender territory to Russia as the price of defeat, and Poland suffered even greater amputations as the reward of victory. In the Far East Russia claimed North Sakhalin and the Kurilles Islands as her price for taking part in the war against Japan. In all the countries which had been overrun by the Red Army it was only a question of time before a Communist regime had been set up and its opponents liquidated. By the middle of 1948 the borders of Communism stretched from the Elbe to the Adriatic. A year later Communism had triumphed in China. Stalin controlled the destinies of an empire far larger than any Tsar had ever dreamed of.

      It was the coup d’état in Prague in February, 1948, which finally forced western Europe and North America into action for their common defence. The North-Atlantic Treaty was signed in April, 1949. But even before then the west had successfully met another outward thrust by Russia. It was in June, 1948, that the air-lift began which nullified the effects of the blockade of Berlin. Stalin remained, as always, in the background during this period of dynamic Russian expansion. It was only rarely that he received a foreign diplomat, though leaders of the satellite States naturally had readier access to him. From time to time the suggestion was made for a new conference between Stalin, the American President and the British Prime Minister, but none of them came to anything. It was in 1946 that President Truman disclosed that he had invited Stalin to Washington for a social visit, but that Stalin had found it necessary to decline for reasons of health. In the last interview which he gave to a foreign correspondent (to the representative of the New York Times in December last year) he indicated that he held a favourable view of proposals for talks between himself and the head of the new American Administration, President Eisenhower, and that he was interested in any new diplomatic move to end hostilities in Korea. President Eisenhower declared his willingness last month to hold a meeting with Stalin in certain circumstances, and Mr Churchill subsequently told the House of Commons that he did not rule out the possibility of three-cornered discussions.

      Stalin’s New Role: Economic Theorist

      It was in the last year of his life that Stalin appeared in a role which would have surprised former colleagues, such as Lenin and Trotsky, but which therefore may well have given him most pride – as an economic theorist in the tradition of (and not less important than) Marx, Engels and Lenin. Shortly before the nineteenth congress of the Russian Communist Party, which was held in Moscow in October, 1952 – the first congress since 1939 – Stalin published his Economic Problems of Socialism in the ussr, which has since become the definitive text-book for Communists in all countries. In this work he warned his readers that, for all Russia’s successes in building a new society, it was wrong to think that the natural economic laws did not apply as much in Russia as elsewhere. He also forecast a deepening crisis of capitalism, that west European countries would dissociate themselves from the United States, and that war between these capitalist countries was inevitable. He also outlined a programme of basic preliminary conditions necessary for the transition to Communism in the Soviet Union. At the Congress there was a reorganization of party organs – the Politburo and the Orgburo being brought together in a single body, the Praesidium of the Central Committee, of which Stalin became chairman.

      On the occasion of СКАЧАТЬ