The Soviets and World Communism:
Sources of the Sino-Soviet Dispute

Vladimir Petrov

In their international relations governments deal with other governments: heads of state with heads of state, foreign ministers with foreign ministers, central bankers with central bankers, etc. In alliances, such as NATO, there are direct communications between defense ministers, intelligence chiefs, and the military. The nature and the closeness of relations are determined by national interests and by perceptions of common threat. Among democratic societies there is also a degree of mutuality, based on historical factors and economic interdependence. These affinities, however, do not preclude conflicts, sometimes bitter, with mutual grievances aired freely in speeches of politicians and in the national press.

Relations among states ruled by Communist parties are conducted on an entirely different basis. National interests are superseded by imperatives of ideological unity, both against the perceived common enemy, “imperialism,” and as reinsurance against attempts to dislodge Communist leadership from within. Day-by-day affairs of state are also conducted on a government-to-government level. But all major policy decisions are made by party leaders who maintain continuous liaison through separate party channels. It is through these channels that Communist states coordinate their common foreign policy positions, their trade policies, and even their educational systems, which stress Communist values based on Marxist-Leninist teachings. A party-controlled press may on occasion offer original interpretations of national and international events but only rarely can one discern actual contradictions with interpretations of similar events in other Communist countries. In addition, Communists make an effort to cultivate people-to-people relations. They exchange motion pictures, scholars, and stage performers; all sorts of delegations go in every direction; and, partially because of hard-currency shortage, tourist traffic among Communist countries is much more extensive than between Communist and non-Communist countries.

Theoretical foundations for Communist (socialist) unity had been developed in the Soviet Union long before other socialist states came into being at the end of the Second World War. The primacy of the Soviet Union, as the only power able to withstand the pressures emanating from the hostile “imperialist” environment, was recognized by all Communist parties, whose sacred duty was to protect and advance Soviet interests, assumed to be in the interest of all, a sine qua non for survival and success of the Communist cause. This basic assumption has been and remains at the very core of Soviet foreign policy, if not always shared to the same extent by leaders of other socialist states.

Seen from Moscow’s perspective, the world as it has evolved since the Second World War consists of two categories of states: socialist, comprising those ruled by Communist parties, and nonsocialist, which encompasses the rest. The principal characteristic of the former is that they had all undergone a socialist revolution in which the old capitalist ruling classes lost power to Communists, who then transformed their respective societies politically and economically according to Marxist-Leninist principles. Having formed a “socialist camp” by the mid-1950s, these states in their foreign policies have one common denominator: they oppose “imperialism” and favor national liberation movements struggling against it. Ideally, in Soviet theory—and for a while in actual practice—it is the Central Committee of the CPSU that is called upon to provide members of the socialist camp, as they conduct their relations with the outside world, with general guidelines and day-by-day coordination.

Socialist unity was first broken in 1948 as Tito resisted Stalin’s attempts to direct Yugoslav internal affairs. In the post-Stalin years, Moscow’s declining authority in the socialist camp was on occasion challenged by others, but only the People’s Republic of China and Albania openly defied the Soviet Union, proclaiming their unalterable opposition to Soviet leadership. This opposition does not mean that they had forfeited their membership in the socialist camp.¹ At least in doctrinal terms, the quarrel has been seen as temporary not only in Belgrade, Peking, and Tirana, but also in Moscow. The conflicts are ascribed not to clashing national interests but to erroneous views and policies of the leaders currently in power. Socialist unity in confronting imperialism remains everybody’s professed objective.

Maintaining this unity has been a major preoccupation of Stalin’s heirs, absorbing a great deal of their time and energies and, since the late 1950s, calling increasingly for outlays of resources to prop up the sometimes shaky economies of fraternal states. While some of this effort has been dictated by ideological considerations, socialist unity has had its primary value to Moscow in proving to “imperialist” adversaries that the Soviet Union commands a consistently loyal international following representing a major factor in international relations and that the “socialist camp” must be reckoned with more than ever.

According to the Soviet concept, relations among socialist states are qualitatively different from their relations with the outside world. Structurally, in the CC CPSU, they are supervised by a separate department, that of Liaison with Communist and Workers’ Parties, as distinct from the International Department watching relations with other states. In their studies of foreign policies of their government, Soviet scholars maintain the same distinction: relations among socialist states are implicitly assumed to be nonconflicting while their relations with nonsocialist states are seen as inherently conflicting, reflecting the international “class struggle.” This otherwise convenient and neatly arranged approach has developed—at least so it seems to outsiders—one major flaw: the lasting and bitter Soviet-Chinese conflict, challenging not only practitioners but also theoreticians of Soviet foreign policy. In order to appreciate the full significance of this challenge, it ought to be put into a broader context of Soviet Weltanschauung and the peculiar Soviet ways of interrelating ideological and pragmatic (or “strategic” and “tactical”) aspects in their policies toward the outside world. These, in turn, need to be analyzed by taking into account the Soviets’ perceptions of their own and their adversaries’ strengths and weaknesses, by no means an easy task. The intricate interplay between the evolving doctrine and the impact of developments outside Soviet control, and between Moscow’s “strategy” and specific “tactics,” has always been so obscured from public view as to defy the skills of Sovietologists. Even well-informed Soviet insiders are often unable to judge, except in retrospect, whether or not the cumulative effect of certain “tactics” suggested a qualitative change in policy amounting to a new strategy.

Soviet relations with socialist states presumably rest on solid ideological foundations. Yet understanding them is impossible without retracing Soviet relations with foreign Communist parties in the prewar years, and certainly without considering the general context of Soviet foreign policy during and after the war. Such an analysis is admittedly complex, particularly given the paucity of documentation. In this, Soviet historians are of little help. They are adamant in separating the history of the Comintern from that of Soviet foreign policy, perpetuating the fiction of Stalin’s era that the Soviet leadership had little to do with the former and implicitly denying the fact that foreign Communist parties served Soviet interests. Perhaps because of overspecialization, Western historians of Soviet foreign policy pay scant attention to this Comintern function while students of Communism only perfunctorily relate Communist activities to Soviet external objectives.

We know, however, that at higher levels of the Soviet party hierarchy no distinction has been made between “state” and “party” international affairs and that since Lenin’s time the interests of the Soviet state have always taken precedence over particular aspirations of foreign Communist parties. For this reason, Soviet perceptions of the hostile outside world provide a logical framework for Moscow’s relations with the Communist movement.

Soviet foreign policy itself is not an easy subject to study. In tracking down its convolutions one cannot rely on contemporary official statements, which are themselves acts of policy rather than explanatory documents. Various recorded conversations between Soviet leaders and foreign dignitaries and diplomatic correspondence are of limited utility because candor and diplomacy tend to be mutually exclusive. Soviet historical studies are nearly worthless for this purpose since their authors— including those few who may have had a genuine insight into the workings of the top policy-making circles—do not have the privilege of critically examining their party’s and government’s policies. The very nature of Soviet policy-making is such that short of detailed minutes of Politburo meetings there is nothing that can document the leaders’ hopes and fears, intentions and calculations upon which policy is founded. Thus a Western historian is reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle with many facets missing, the quality of his reconstruction depending heavily on his own calculations.

Evolution of Soviet Foreign Policy in the Second World War

Soviet foreign policy doctrine provides adequately for conflict situations under the conditions of capitalist encirclement; it provides for exploitation of contradictions among capitalist states; and it leaves room for “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviet Union and its imperialist adversaries. It does not, however, provide for alliances with one imperialist power against another. Alliances imply a degree of mutual trust and understanding which the Soviets cannot tolerate in dealing with the “class enemy.” This peculiarity of the doctrine largely accounted for the fact that the Nazi-Soviet Pact, concluded in August 1939, never evolved into a base for a viable alliance. To the protagonists the arrangement appeared advantageous in the specific circumstances of the time. It created no lasting bonds, and once the circumstances had changed, the arrangement dissolved in the ferocity of the German onslaught. This painful lesson Stalin kept in mind as Russia entered into a new relationship with Great Britain and the United States.

To Stalin, the crucial test of his partners’ intentions was the issue of the second front. Because they failed to undertake a landing in France at a time when the German armies were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad and rolling toward the Volga and Caucasus, crushing one Soviet army after another, he concluded that Russia’s value to the allies was limited to deflecting the Nazi forces which otherwise would have been directed against England. He regarded Lend-Lease as a minimal contribution by the United States in order to prevent the collapse of the Soviet front and avert the possibility of a separate Soviet-German peace. The utter devastation of most of European Russia, the colossal dislocations of population and the economy, the millions of casualties sustained by the Soviet armies may have evoked the sympathy of the Englishspeaking peoples. This sympathy, however, was insufficient to induce the allies to risk the blood of their own people in order to relieve Russia’s plight. As Stalin saw it, they were resolved to wage war with the least possible sacrifice and content—if not actually anxious—to see Russia bled white. This looked like a callous and fundamentally hostile policy which certainly absolved him of any need to be grateful for whatever assistance they rendered.

Given Stalin’s Weltanschauung, this was fair enough: imperialists were merely true to themselves, leaving the Soviets no choice but to assume by far the greatest burden in fighting the common enemy. There was, however, a way to capitalize on this role since Russia’s heroic struggle could be presented as its great contribution to the allied cause, the claim widely accepted in the United States and even in England. Under the pressure of public opinion, Roosevelt and Churchill were forced to constantly apologize for not doing enough and to promise efforts which they knew they could not or would not make.

Stalin was determined to translate this psychological advantage over his partners into tangible gains. He barely bothered to conceal his suspiciousness, repeatedly and forcefully accusing them of reneging on their solemn promises to open the second front. At the same time, Stalin realized the need to find some kind of modus vivendi with Roosevelt and Churchill, for upon their good will depended the terms of the postwar settlement and the future Soviet role in world affairs.

Stalin sometimes touched upon the issue of “war aims” in conversations with British and American emissaries, but usually avoided the appearance of being anxious. He temporized for a full year after the tide of the war had turned at Stalingrad, and only when he was sure he had some high cards to play did he consent to meet his partners at Teheran.

The conference opened late in November of 1943. The issue of the second front was still high on Stalin’s agenda. Although the German armies were in retreat and large areas of Russia had been liberated, massive Soviet attacks were carried out with enormous human losses; the ability of the enemy to resume the offensive could not be discounted. The terms of the peace settlement, however, were uppermost in Stalin’s mind. After two years of disastrous war, his objective had crystallized: to make Russia and his regime so strong and powerful as to discourage future enemies from following Hitler’s example. As the costs of waging war mounted, craving for total security had become his obsession. With the demise of Germany and Japan, only the United States and Great Britain loomed as potential enemies, and Stalin could very well interpret Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s reluctance to discuss the postwar settlement as a perfidious stratagem: to defer crucial decisions until after victory, when they would not need Russia—and then short-change Soviet interests.

He played his hand cautiously at Teheran. He did not downgrade Soviet difficulties at the front and was firm in his demand for Operation Overlord. But he appeared confident in ultimate victory. He reaffirmed his promise to take part in the war against Japan, presenting it as yet another sacrifice by Russia to the common cause. Only then he came to the subject that concerned him most, wanting to learn whether his allies, who were so reluctant to come to Russia’s rescue in the moment of its greatest peril, would now quibble in rewarding it after the war at the expense of the Axis and the nations not in the forefront of the gigantic struggle.

Stalin’s first impression was favorable. Roosevelt stressed Russia’s “right” to have access to warm seas. Churchill proposed to consign to the Soviet Union nearly one-half of prewar Poland. Roosevelt made no formal commitment, pleading that he did not want to alienate Polish-American voters in an election year, but privately told Stalin he would go along with this alteration of the map. Both partners accepted Stalin’s claim to Koenigsberg, the Kurile Islands, and southern Sakhalin; Roosevelt also felt certain he could persuade Chiang Kai-shek to grant the Soviet Union special rights in Manchuria. Finally, although neither Stalin nor Churchill appeared very enthusiastic about it, the three partners agreed in principle to consider partitioning of Germany, Roosevelt’s pet idea.

It all looked like a good beginning. The atmosphere was friendly and Stalin clearly enjoyed being host to the leaders of the foremost imperialist nations. As all three discussed transfer of territories and other issues affecting the destinies of millions of people, Stalin felt equal, if not superior, to his partners. In this exciting imperialist game, there was no need for rhetoric; everything was businesslike. The future peace settlement looked more and more like another repartitioning of the world among the victors, much as the Versailles settlement was after the First World War. Stalin could reasonably expect that the Soviet share of the spoils would be commensurate with Russia’s contribution to the war effort.

Teheran marked the beginning of a brief period of ambivalence in Stalin’s attitude toward the Western powers. The cautious optimism and the degree of trust born at that meeting, however, never fully displaced Stalin’s suspicion that the affability and cooperativeness of his partners were merely a passing phase. The now proven might of Russia, and its ability to roll back the German tide singlehanded, was one factor the allies had to reckon with. Another was the presence of a strongly pro-Russian sentiment in their countries; yet we may safely assume that looking forward, Stalin realized that in recarving the world and filling the vacuum left after the defeat of the Axis, the Soviet Union would eventually collide with its erstwhile allies. Stalin was not looking forward to clashing with the United States and Great Britain, but he was determined to secure, by Soviet power and Soviet power alone, the gains made and legitimized in agreement with them.

It has often been suggested that at some point Stalin ceased to be a good Communist and turned into an old-fashioned nationalist, bent on the restoration and expansion of his empire. This was true but only insofar as imperial expansionism could be judged to be incompatible with the Communist doctrine, which stresses that Communism must come as a result of an internal social revolution, carried out by a native proletariat. Stalin’s preoccupation with the expansion of Soviet influence by force and through secret agreements with imperialists was contrary to this basic principle.

Stalin probably could justify—even in Communist terms—some outright annexations, either presenting Soviet Russia of 1917–1920 as a victim of hostile powers which took undue advantage of its temporary weakness, or by regarding the territories to be annexed as a reward due the Soviet Union for its great sacrifices in the war against the Axis. Roosevelt and Churchill essentially accepted this rationalization as they sanctioned Soviet acquisition of parts of Finland, Poland, East Prussia, and Romania, and acquiesced in the absorption of the Baltic states. They regarded Soviet claims to the Kurile Islands and Southern Sakhalin as a just payment for Stalin’s willingness to enter the war against Japan, historical enemy of Russia and currently at war with the United States and China. Soviet demands for special rights and bases in Manchuria which Imperial Russia once possessed presented some problems, since they infringed upon China’s sovereignty, but Roosevelt felt he could pressure Chiang Kai-shek to grant these demands. And neither he nor Churchill noticed that one country, Tannu Tuva, quietly changed its independent status to that of a Soviet province.

But if Roosevelt and Churchill—or their successors after 1945— thought that direct territorial acquisitions ought to have adequately compensated the Soviet Union for its war effort, they displayed rank ignorance of Stalin’s ideas about the Soviet role in the postwar world. To him, an enlarged Russia would remain in danger of hostile capitalist encirclement until it had secured additional power positions. It was in the struggle for these positions that, from Teheran on, he relentlessly pressed and tested his partners, trying to extract as many concessions as possible, probing their resistance to his demands. And it was in the process of this struggle that the image of the United States as the principal enemy of the Soviet Union eventually emerged, firming as the Cold War swept away the wartime affinities.

The allies succeeded in frustrating Soviet attempts to annex the Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan and, later, Iranian Azerbaijan. They did not give Stalin either a military base in the Dardanelles or the trusteeship of Tripolitania, former Italian colony, which he demanded. At Potsdam, Stalin probably did not envision the eventual emergence of the Soviet zone of occupation as a separate German state. But the disappearance of East Prussia and the de facto transfer of the Oder-Neisse territories to Poland meant that future Germany would be a much smaller nation.

Unhappy as Stalin might have been in having some of his territorial claims unsatisfied, he probably accepted the outcome. His partners had to draw the line somewhere, now that the war was over and they didn’t need the Soviet Union. But he looked quite differently at their reaction to Soviet political claims.

From Stalin’s point of view, the Soviet Union could not become a truly great power without a number of lesser countries in its orbit. Eastern Europe, which fell under Soviet control as Soviet armies advanced into Germany, was a natural part of the Soviet sphere. Stalin knew that traditional nationalistic elites of these countries had been bitterly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet before the war and, if permitted to regain power, would inevitably take a hostile position toward the Soviet Union. Since almost all East Europeans claimed to be outposts of Western civilization, granting them genuine independence meant that they would gravitate toward the imperialist West. In the end, as Stalin saw it, a new cordon sanitaire, a hotbed of anti-Soviet intrigue, and an eventual springboard for a new imperialist attack on Russia would form. In order to forestall this development, Stalin proceeded to implement a violent revolutionary transformation of their societies under the aegis of, and with unlimited assistance from, Soviet occupation authorities. Thanks to Tito’s Communist regime, there was no need for Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia. Communization of the others was completed by 1948. Former Axis satellites—Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary—and the erstwhile victims of the Nazis, Poland and Czechoslovakia, found themselves in the same predicament: all became Soviet satellites.

The doctrinal announcement of the emergence of “two hostile camps”—the “imperialist” headed by the United States and the “peace-loving” headed by the Soviet Union—was officially made at the launching of the Cominform in September 1947. There is no doubt, however, that this vision of the division of the world had firmed in Stalin’s mind much earlier. It has been suggested by many students of Soviet affairs abroad, and by Khrushchev in his secret speech at the 20th CPSU Congress, that in his later years Stalin was a victim of paranoia and that this personal misfortune somehow explained the general paranoid direction of Soviet policies.

Needless to say, this explanation is much too primitive to be convincing. Political paranoia, if this is what it was, had characterized the Soviet elite since the Revolution. The experiences of the Civil War; foreign intervention and blockade of the Soviet state; the all-too-real international isolation of Soviet Russia in the twenties and thirties; and finally the tragic sequence of events following Munich and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, ending in the catastrophe of the German invasion—all this experience had enormous cumulative impact on the formation of Soviet attitudes toward the outside world. Ingrained suspiciousness; an inferiority complex resulting from painful awareness of their own weaknesses; verbal aggressiveness; irritatingly stubborn haggling over minor issues in international negotiations and rejection of compromise, so common in relations among Western states; all these features have become part and parcel of Soviet foreign policy. The ultimate brilliant victory over Germany and Japan did not result in self-confidence or magnanimity. It could not erase from Soviet memory the utter devastation of the war, colossal human and material losses, and the near-defeat from the German onslaught in 1941–1942.

True, the war was over. The Soviet Union had been recognized as a great power. Its huge military machine commanded awe and respect. But there was no return to normality in dealing with the outside world. Eastern Europe seethed under the iron rule of Soviet occupation, and there was no certainty that it could be held subdued indefinitely. And Stalin perceived the erstwhile partners in common struggle against the Axis, the United States and Great Britain, as already plotting against the Soviet Union.

The greatest impact upon the formation of the “two hostile camps” doctrine was probably made by the change in the political climate in East-West relations. As the violence of the East European revolution became public knowledge in the West, and as the European Communist parties went into opposition (the process was completed by the summer of 1946), agitating against the unstable governments and plunging their ruined and starving countries into chaos in a series of political strikes, “Communism” again became a dirty word. At first, the conservative and right-wing politicians, and eventually liberal statesmen of the former anti-Axis coalition, began openly to subscribe to the view that Communists, guided and aided by the Soviet Union, were on the move to seize power and to destroy democracy and other values of the Western world.

Stalin may have disapproved some of the tactics of West European Communists who were attempting to strengthen their power positions within their respective countries: the degree of actual Soviet control over them is a subject of legitimate debate. But Stalin could not divorce the Soviet Union from their activities because the image of the Communist monolith was too important for him to maintain in his conflict with the West. Yet it was this very image which largely accounted for the wave of anti-Sovietism which started swelling in the United States and Western Europe.

Stalin’s primary concern was Germany, the nation which came dangerously close to defeating Russia a few years earlier. He noted that rather than withdraw from Germany—as Roosevelt had suggested as inevitable within a year or two after the war—the United States was getting more involved there. Instead of consistently implementing the Morgenthau Plan, General Lucius Clay seemed to be protecting German interests at the expense of the Soviets: in May 1946 he discontinued the shipments of dismantled industrial equipment from the American zone to Russia. In September, Secretary of States James C. Byrnes indicated in his Stuttgart speech a shift in United States policy toward granting the Germans a greater role in managing their own affairs.

A specter of Germany allied with the United States and the American-dominated Western European countries began to arise in the minds of Soviet leaders. Added to this was a constant Western, particularly American, meddling in the affairs of Eastern Europe, which encouraged resistance of nationalistic elements to the Soviet-sponsored Communization. Before long, the Greek civil war (in which the Communists received support and encouragement from Tito’s Yugoslavia) introduced American presence in the Balkans. The militantly anti-Communist Truman Doctrine proclaimed in May 1947, and the subsequent “Mr. X” policy statement in Foreign Affairs calling for containment of Communism on a global scale, signaled to Stalin that a new “imperialist offensive” had been launched. Grossly overrating the danger of another crusade against the Soviet Union, Stalin accelerated consolidation of his domain. The ferocity with which this operation was executed greatly contributed to the intensification of the Cold War. It may be argued that this ruthlessness was necessary for quick Communization of Eastern Europe and the establishment of firm Soviet control. There is no question, however, that it eroded much of the foundation upon which international Communist solidarity rested. Naked force brought forth enough obedient collaborators to carry out Moscow orders but it was ruinous to the spirit of voluntary cooperation, the only long-term guarantee of cohesiveness of the Soviet bloc.

Stalin and the International Communist Movement

Stalin’s early biographers usually depicted him as the man who betrayed the revolution. He bureaucratized the party; he replaced its collective leadership by his own rule, mercilessly crushing all opposition; he submerged Russia’s revolutionary spirit in the sea of reaction. There have been differences in emphasis on some particulars among the biographers, but they have essentially agreed that Stalin was, or at some point in history became, a “bad” Communist.

It also has to be remembered that Stalin’s critics, from Trotsky to Khrushchev, did not condemn him—or the party under his leadership— for the destruction of religious institutions; for expropriation of even modest private property; for persecution of nationalistic groups and organizations; for the collectivization of farming carried out at the cost of perpetually crippling Russia’s agriculture; or for the enormous dislocations caused by industrialization. Discussing the bloody purges of the 1930s, critics lamented the liquidation of the Communist elite but gave scant attention to the fate of untold millions who perished in Siberian exile and concentration camps in the same period.

Such selectivity in compiling Stalin’s indictment points out the critics’ terms of reference: their commitment to the cause of the left, to “good” Communism, “good” Marxism. Believing in the essential goodness of the Russian revolution, they implicitly assumed that in such a backward country as Russia, with its heritage of autocracy and misrule, excesses were all but inevitable.

If we turn to studies of international Communism of Stalin’s era, we find that these also were an exclusive preserve of either socialists or ex-Communists. Idealistic internationalists themselves, they accused Stalin of excessive centralization of management of Communist affairs, of arbitrary and capricious administration of the Comintern, of purging his opposition on a global scale, and of subordinating the cause of the world revolution to the needs of Soviet foreign policy.

It is easy to see how those scholars who would want to study international Communism as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy would find the utility of the traditional studies of international Communism of limited value. To pursue this subject fruitfully, they would have to disregard evil qualities of Stalin’s political personality or his “subversion” of Communism. Instead they would have to shift their perspective and look at the subject in its totality from the vantage point of the Man in the Kremlin as he tried to utilize all means available to him in order to protect and advance the interests of the Soviet state. Whatever others might have thought of him, he considered himself a good Communist, a true disciple and creative interpreter of Lenin. For our purposes, it is his judgment as to what constituted the right course for the movement as a whole and for its individual components, major Communist parties, that truly counts. And the appraisal of his judgment, his accomplishments and miscalculations, ought to be made within the framework of the Soviet foreign policy needs, as Stalin himself perceived them.

Unlike Trotsky and other Bolshevik internationalists, Stalin was convinced that building the might of the Soviet Union was a sine qua non for the eventual triumph of the world revolution. He deeply mistrusted excitable revolutionary romantics, particularly intellectuals, who failed to appreciate this basic task, who were unable to appraise properly the “objective conditions” and “revolutionary situation” and were inept in selecting proper tactics in their struggle. This type of revolutionary was common among Stalin’s enemies in the CPSU in fights following Lenin’s death. It was even more common among the leaderships of the other Communist parties which were still struggling for power or even for their very existence. While tirelessly praising Stalin’s wisdom, they were naturally preoccupied with their own affairs; for this reason they expected more understanding and assistance from Moscow than the Soviets deemed prudent to give.

These expectations posed a difficult dilemma for Stalin. On the one hand, the international Communist movement was the only active force in the world on whose support the weak, encircled, and isolated Soviet Union could count. Quite aside from a very genuine fraternal spirit which probably even Stalin felt on occasion, it was absolutely imperative for the Soviets to back it up politically (and sometimes materially) in many battles Communists waged in the 1920s and 1930s. This unconditional Soviet support added immensely to the Communists’ image of strength, to their revolutionary optimism. It also assured their unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, as the Soviets began to establish diplomatic and trade relations with European countries, this remarkable Communist unity frequently emerged as an objective liability to Soviet foreign policy. Fear of revolution within each country cast the Communists in the role of social enemy: following Lenin’s teachings they left no doubt that revolution was their objective. On top of it, heavy representation of minority groups in many Communist parties combined with their all-too-visible ties to Moscow enhanced their image of traitors to the national cause. These factors accounted heavily for the anti-Soviet orientation of nationalistic governments which dominated European politics in the interwar period.

The Soviets tried to resolve this dilemma by disclaiming responsibility for Comintern activities, insisting that the “real” Soviet foreign policy was conducted by the Narkomindel, in conventional above-board fashion. In part because of the low status which the formal foreign policy establishment occupied in the Soviet hierarchy—while Communist affairs were at the core of the party attention—these disclaimers were universally rejected. Stalin was not permitted to eat his cake and have it too.

Having usurped the supreme right to judge the best road for the Communists to follow, Stalin sought to bring the movement under his complete control. In this he was only partially successful. It was relatively easy to dominate the central apparat of the Comintern and the Moscow colony of Communist exiles. It was much more difficult to manipulate the affairs of individual parties, but in the end this was accomplished by bureaucratizing the administrations of the principal parties and by wholesale purges of anti-Stalinist elements. Bilateralism established in Soviet relations with other parties made them directly and separately dependent on Moscow’s good will. The role of the Comintern’s Executive Committee (filled with Stalin’s stooges) declined correspondingly. It issued whatever directives Stalin wanted and served as a secondary channel through which foreign Communist leaders communicated their requests and grievances for Soviet consideration.

A great master of bureaucratic management, Stalin concentrated operational functions of the Comintern in the International Department of the CC CPSU, where each party was closely watched and personal dossiers on its prominent leaders were kept. The physical links with individual parties were maintained through the network of the Foreign Department of the GPU-NKVD-MVD, which could be relied upon to keep these links secret and which actually employed a number of important foreign Communists as its agents. The expertise developed in these two departments allowed Stalin to follow closely developments in each party, create and cultivate rivalries, and by manipulating factional struggles, by playing on the fears and ambitions of key individuals, assure their obedience. Once the principle that what’s good for the Soviet Union is good for the world Communist movement was firmly established and accepted, Stalin could utilize each party’s resources for Soviet needs, be it recruitment of spies, saboteurs, and killers, or launching political strikes at a time of Moscow’s choosing.

The streamlining of management of foreign Communist affairs, however, did not and could not convert the movement, responsive as it was to Soviet wishes, into a perfect instrument of Soviet foreign policy. For one thing, there is plenty of evidence that although Soviet intelligencegathering was quite extensive and information available to Stalin and his associates was plentiful, Soviet comprehension of social and political processes in foreign countries often was defective, not indicating what action by a local Communist party would be most effective. For another, there were natural limits to what Communists could do short of committing political suicide. The parties had to remain revolutionary, combatting the “establishments” of their respective countries. They had to take strong positions favoring national minorities because these were their natural constituencies in many countries. They had to attack social democrats, at whose expense they expanded their popular base: this tactic was predetermined by the very raison d’être of the Comintern since its inception. Finally, because conditions varied widely from country to country, the Comintern could never adequately reconcile the contradiction between national interests of the parties and their internationalism. The principle of international solidarity called for unity and strict following of common policy embodied in Comintern resolutions reflecting Soviet foreign policy needs. Aside from this, parties had little in common and their specific interests, subordinated to those of the Soviet Union, frequently suffered from inability to be flexible.

Even the growth of Fascism in Europe did not provide an alternate common denominator. German Communists continued to regard social democrats as their chief enemy until Hitler became Chancellor and turned against both. Good Soviet relations with Mussolini’s Italy precluded any substantial activity of Italian Communists. In Romania, Communists were for a while de facto allies of the Iron Guard, and in Bulgaria of IMRO. And in some countries Fascistic groups were too insignificant for the Communists to fight against, resolutions of the Comintern’s 7th Congress notwithstanding.

As Nazi Germany emerged as the main menace to the Soviet Union, the Comintern called for Popular Fronts against Fascism, to include social democrats and other groups of the left. But the social democrats, vividly remembering past Communist hostility and savage attempts to destroy their power, mistrusted the motives and patriotism of the Communists and cooperated with them only half-heartedly. There was also a practical reason for it: even this limited cooperation cost the social democrats heavily in public support. In France in the late 1930s, the popular slogan “Better Hitler than Léon Blum” manifested the breakdown of national unity in the face of the external threat.

The Spanish Civil War became a sacred cause for the Communists, in part because many of them were by then secretly disenchanted with Stalinism. Stalin, who understood this and who, besides, did not approve any sacred causes other than upholding Soviet interests, was finally compelled to give the Spanish loyalists limited material and military assistance. He probably valued the improvement of the Soviet image among European and American liberals, tarnished by the purges in Russia; he also wanted to draw the attention of Western democracies to the Fascist peril and hoped to isolate Germany and Italy, the “bad guys” of the Spanish tragedy. But his real attitude toward the sacred cause itself was better manifested by the activities of the NKVD mission in Spain, which liquidated a number of members of the International Brigade, especially Trotskyites, Mensheviks, and anarchists. Most of the Soviet veterans of Spain were shot shortly after they had returned to Russia. The Spanish Communist Party itself was, of course, decimated after Franco’s victory.

Stalin had to conclude that Popular Fronts were a failure. All they did was to polarize politics in a number of countries to Soviet disadvantage. In this polarization, the right gained because Hitler and Mussolini posed as defenders of Western civilization against the Red menace. One outcome of Spain was Munich, which again raised the specter of a European imperialist crusade against the Soviet Union.

We can surmise that in the late 1930s Stalin did not regard European Communists any longer as a valuable arm of Soviet foreign policy. The savagery of the last phase of purge in Russia, in which many foreign Communist leaders who had escaped to the Moscow heaven perished, seems to confirm this conclusion. We may also guess, for instance, that the mysterious dissolution of the Polish Communist Party some time in 1938 was Stalin’s belated attempt to reach an understanding with Poland in order to prevent its slipping into the German sphere.

After its last congress in 1935, the Comintern rarely made the news. As European developments accelerated after Munich and Stalin made up his mind to make a compact with Hitler, this symbol of international Communist unity became a liability. Although its Executive Committee still functioned as a liaison with foreign Communist leaders, Stalin probably considered dissolving the Comintern even before Ribbentrop’s momentous visit to Moscow in August 1939.

The purges of the 1930s brought about a virtual extinction of whatever had remained of indigenous revolutionary internationalism in Communist parties. With the advent of the Nazi-Soviet collaboration, Communists finally committed political suicide as they were forced to acquiesce in this new twist of Soviet foreign policy. During the two years of collaboration, 1939–1941, Moscow never interceded with Berlin on behalf of hapless Communists who were hounded by Fascist and quasi-Fascist regimes in Nazi-dominated Europe; as if to demonstrate his utter indifference to their lot, in November 1940, in exchange for some minor but tangible concessions, Stalin offered to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, an offer which Hitler did not have enough humor to accept.

After the German invasion of Russia, the surviving Communists resumed their anti-Fascist activities, but this time it was a qualitatively different phenomenon. There was little direction and even less aid from Moscow, and they operated—where they did—within the national contexts of resistance. Their principal objective was not so much to help the Soviet Union in the moment of deadly peril, and sometimes not even to combat the Axis occupiers, but to prepare for the seizure of power in their respective countries at the end of the war. Their principal enemy in Eastern Europe and the Balkans was the nationalist resistance groups connected with governments-in-exile in Cairo and London. All the same, they could pose as bona fide anti-Fascists and patriots, thereby laying the foundation for resurrection of their parties.

The expansion of these parties, when it came, brought into the ranks thousands of people who had only a vague notion about Marxism-Leninism or international solidarity; postwar Communism was vastly different from that conceived by Lenin. The aim of the parties was to seize power in their respective countries, and the Soviets alone could help them to attain power and to hold it against internal and external enemies. Communists universally held the Soviet Union in awe and regarded Stalin as a demigod: he demonstrated in Eastern Europe that Soviet might was absolutely indispensable in overturning old ruling classes and giving Communist parties the muscle they needed to carry out revolutionary transformation of their nations.

Stalin was fully aware of this dependence. He resented the handful of surviving old leaders who still clung to the outdated principles of international solidarity. He assisted in the revolutionary transformation of East European states, not out of idealistic notions but because this transformation advanced Soviet interests; in this new setting he saw no room for fraternal reciprocity. All he expected was submissiveness and obedience. But what he apparently had lost sight of was that the links with foreign Communist parties had greatly weakened during the war and so did Moscow’s capacity for manipulating them from within, especially in countries where there was no physical Soviet presence.

After the glorious victory over Germany and Japan, Stalin attached even less importance to the Communist movement as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. This victory secured Eastern Europe for Communism and gave respectability and influence to Communist parties elsewhere. Stalin’s old contention that Soviet might was the key to the success of the Communist cause seemed to be justified. The appearance of ideological unity was maintained; no party dared to take a political stand deviating from that of Moscow; in the Cold War years Communists were useful in launching all sorts of peace campaigns, and that appeared sufficient. Stalin made no effort to resurrect the Comintern, dissolved in 1943, to provide an alternate focal point of loyalty for international Communism. Communist solidarity meant only one thing: unswerving devotion to the Soviet Union, which Stalin had every reason to take for granted. But in dealing with “imperialists” he chose to rely on the newly acquired power and prestige of the Soviet Union, reinforced by the image of the monolithic Soviet bloc of nations which Communists ruled by 1948.

Tito’s “rebellion” jolted Stalin. Belatedly he discovered that his inability to manipulate the Yugoslav Communist Party from within, to rid it of heretics, made “imperialists” question his power to control the movement, made them talk about “cracks in the Kremlin Wall.” Determined to make sure that the challenge would not be repeated elsewhere, he resorted to the old tested tool of intimidation. In the wave of purges unleashed after Tito’s defection, most of the old-line leaders, still given to idealistic notions of Communist solidarity, perished. By the time of Stalin’s death, Soviet unchallengeable authority seemed re-established. It took his successors three years to conclude that foreign Communists could no longer be taken for granted and to reappraise the nature of Soviet relations with international Communism. The new policy was inaugurated at the 20th CPSU Congress in 1956 and at the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957. “Socialist internationalism” and the abandonment of the Soviet model as mandatory for other Communist states opened a new page in the history of the movement.

Stalin and the Chinese Communists

During two decades following the Revolution, nowhere was the conflict between Soviet commitment to international Communism on the one hand and Soviet state interests on the other as pronounced as in China. The Soviet Far East, underpopulated and underdeveloped, linked with the rest of Russia by thousands of miles of one-track railroad, was the most exposed and vulnerable region of the country. In addition, the Soviets had inherited from the Tsarist period important economic assets in northern Manchuria in the form of the strategic Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) and its many enterprises, which they wanted to preserve. But southern Manchuria was dominated by Japan, a traditional enemy which had defeated Russia in the war of 1904–1905 and attempted to seize the Far East during the Russian civil war. Indigenous Chinese authorities in Manchuria were anti-Communist and pro-Japanese, among other things offering protection to thousands of White Russians who had fought the Reds in the civil war and were bent on causing difficulties to the Soviets.

Fully aware of the precariousness of their position in dealing with the Chinese, the Soviets placed their bets on Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist and anti-imperialist party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and very materially helped Sun’s successor, Chiang Kai-shek, in his bid for unification of China under KMT rule. But in assisting the KMT, Moscow inevitably had to sacrifice interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which regarded the KMT, especially after Chiang’s violent onslaught against it in April 1927, in which thousands of Communists were slaughtered, as its most hateful enemy.

Stalin’s personal involvement in Chinese Communist affairs began in 1924–1925 when he fought Trotsky over the issue of revolution in China. Together with romantic intellectuals, then prevailing in the CCP leadership, Trotsky wanted to concentrate on struggle against the native bourgeoisie—including the KMT—in order to seize power in China. Stalin, already skeptical in his appraisal of revolutionary potential in foreign lands and reflecting pragmatic interests of the Soviet state, won in this debate. The Comintern directed the CCP to cooperate loyally with the KMT while retaining its autonomy and identity. This line did not materially change after the 1927 massacre. The Soviet Union maintained active diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek’s government until July 1929, when it broke them because of the increased harassment of Soviet CER personnel in Manchuria by local KMT authorities. Following this diplomatic gesture the Soviets applied military pressure and actually deployed force in Manchuria, and by the end of the year the status quo ante on the railroad was restored. Formal diplomatic relations with Chiang’s government in Nanking, however, were resumed only in 1932, after Japan had occupied Manchuria and posed a clear and present danger to both China and the Soviet Union.²

The Japanese threat to the Soviet Union determined Stalin’s (and, conversely, Comintern) attitudes toward Chinese Communists until the end of the Second World War. The Soviet goal was to diminish this threat by diplomatic compromises, avoiding anything which could aggravate the situation, while gradually building up industrial and military strength in the Khabarovsk region bordering on Manchuria. Another goal was to encourage Chiang Kai-shek to resist the Japanese and strengthen his government, constantly challenged by ambitious warlords heading unruly KMT factions. In these circumstances, it was only natural that the Comintern, through its Executive Committee (ECC), consistently tried to dampen CCP revolutionary spirit. The ECC repeatedly rejected CCP appeals to permit it to launch uprisings against the KMT, appeals stemming from the unrealistic assumption, common among foreign Communists, that the Soviet Union would be bound to come to their assistance in any armed struggle against the “class enemy.” One CCP “plan” was to start an uprising in Manchuria so as to provoke war between Japan and the Soviet Union in which both the Japanese and the local KMT warlord’s forces would presumably be defeated. The Comintern not only condemned this “plan” as dangerous adventurism but also removed its author, Li Li-san, from CCP leadership. It also ordered the CCP not to nurture such plans in the future, concentrating instead on a gradual accumulation of strength in the areas controlled by it.

This line was stressed time and again during the 7th Comintern Congress in August 1935. Although it convened at a time when the ranks of the CCP armies, then moving north in the Long March and constantly attacked by KMT forces, had dwindled to a mere 25–30,000, the Comintern unequivocally placed the “sacred struggle against Japan and for salvation of the Chinese Motherland” ahead of the revolutionary goals.³ CCP leaders were split over the question as to whom to regard as the principal enemy but dutifully, if grudgingly, approved the Comintern line. In actuality, CCP enmity for the KMT remained unshaken, if only because Chiang was determined to exterminate Communist forces, viewing them as a main obstacle to consolidation of KMT rule in China.

Japan’s attack on North China in July 1937 changed the situation substantially and an uneasy alliance between the antagonists was established. Chiang recognized CCP autonomy in the Special Border Area Region, with its capital in Yenan; the CCP, by then led by Mao Tsetung, renamed its Red Army the 8th National-Revolutionary Army of China, and dropped all the slogans calling for the overthrow of the Kuomintang. This united KMT-CCP front against Japanese aggression was established despite private objections of the “leftist” elements in the CCP. Still anxious to carry out revolutionary struggle against the KMT, Mao himself was known to disagree with the Comintern line, which, to him, amounted to betrayal of revolutionary principles. The watchful Comintern, although recognizing psychological difficulties confronting the Communists in accepting the hated Chiang Kai-shek as an ally in a common struggle, repeatedly condemned “leftist” tendencies. Since questioning Stalin’s wisdom was something no Communist could do with impunity, Mao acquiesced. He also accepted Moscow’s decision to channel all its aid to China—amounting to $250 million in 1938–1939 alone—through Chiang’s government, which, in turn, until 1940 subsidized the 8th (and later the 4th) National-Revolutionary Army operating out of the Special Border Area Region.

The KMT-CCP united front formally lasted until the end of the war but came under increased strain after 1938, as the Japanese progressed in their conquest of China. The KMT leadership felt that the Communists weren’t doing enough against the aggressor, that in spite of their numerical growth and expansion of territory they controlled, CCP forces tended to limit themselves to guerrilla activities, leaving it to the KMT armies to combat the enemy in open warfare. Recent Soviet studies indicate that Stalin essentially shared Chiang’s view, suspecting—as Chiang did—that the CCP remained relatively passive in the war against Japan in order to conserve and build up its own strength for future battles for the seizure of power in China. It is easy to deduce that the latter task did not rate high among Stalin’s priorities.

The significance of Soviet historical writings on relations with the Chinese Communists cannot be overrated because they shed unique light on inner workings of the international Communist system, traditionally veiled in utmost secrecy. Their appearance has been dictated by the imperatives arising from the Sino-Soviet conflict, by the recognized need to explain its antecedents to the Soviet public. While the Maoists, in their attacks on Soviet leadership, have abstained from criticizing Stalin’s policies, ascribing Soviet “deviations” to the errors and political degeneration of his successors, the Soviets feel compelled to go further back into history, to expose Maoist perfidy, because China’s turnaround had challenged the most fundamental premises of Communist ideology and Soviet statecraft.

One of the most revealing recent documents is a volume of diaries of P. L. Vladimirov, who, disguised as a TASS military correspondent, was de facto Soviet representative (initially the “Comintern liaison officer”) at Mao Tse-tung’s headquarters in Yenan in 1942–1945. His diaries were prepared for publication by his son, Yu. P. Vlasov, no doubt on instructions from the Central Committee of the CPSU.⁴

One cannot assume, of course, that Vladimirov’s judgments were identical with those of Stalin and other Soviet leaders. But being, in effect, Moscow’s envoy in Yenan for such a long time (he had been to China on sensitive assignments twice before), he can be assumed to reflect rather closely the contemporary views of the Soviet leadership. The importance of his role is further underscored by the fact that although Mao had his own channel of communications to the Comintern, in important matters he preferred to deal through Vladimirov. Regarding him as “Moscow’s Eye,” Mao spent endless hours in intimate conversations with him, explaining (or “covering up”) his actions and policies, almost as if he were explaining them to Stalin himself. The diaries are obviously incomplete—sensitive details of the chain of command allowing Vladimirov to reach the top of the Soviet hierarchy in a few hours, for instance, are omitted—and some entries may have been slightly “doctored” to reflect the Soviet-Chinese clash in the 1960s. Nevertheless, their authenticity seems unquestionable; a good part of what he says has been corroborated by other Soviet authors who had access to secret Comintern and CC CPSU archives,⁵ and they deserve most attentive analysis by students of Communist affairs.

There are several major themes in Vladimirov’s diaries. First and foremost, there is a deep-seated suspicion of Mao’s loyalty to the Soviet Union, which was supposed to be taken for granted in those days. There is great bitterness and indignation at the CCP’s failure to do its best in the struggle against the Japanese, who, in Moscow’s view, represented an imminent threat to Russia, at least until the tide of the war against Germany had turned after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. Not only did Mao fail his “sacred internationalist duty” to do everything to weaken this dangerous enemy of the Soviet Union; Vladimirov reports that during the spectacular German offensive in the first years of the war Mao lost faith in the Soviet Union, expected Germany to win the war, and resolved to attend to CCP particular interests independently of the destiny of world Communism.

Second in importance in Vladimirov’s indictment was the prolonged purge which was conducted from the beginning of 1942 in the CCP, the so-called rectification campaign, or the Cheng Feng movement. It was aimed at consolidation of Mao’s own power in the party and, remembering Stalin’s own purges in the 1930s, Vladimirov would not have attached excessive importance to it had it not been for the fact that among those who came under attack were prominent trusted friends of the Soviet Union, the “true internationalists.” Given this circumstance, Vladimirov could not fail to interpret the rectification campaign as an unfriendly, if not altogether hostile act. Almost equally significant appeared to him the systematic efforts of K’ang Sheng, Mao’s chief of secret police and a known enemy of the Soviet Union, to isolate him in Yenan and restrict his ability to gather information independently for transmission to Moscow.

Thirdly, there is a peculiar ambivalence in Vladimirov’s attitude toward the CCP-KMT conflict, vividly illustrated by one episode. In July 1943, rumors swept Yenan, causing near-panic among CCP leaders, that Kuomintang armies were about to attack the Special Border Area Region. Mao came to see Vladimirov, to request Moscow to discourage Chiang from this action. Vladimirov immediately transmitted the request and appropriate pressure was brought upon Chiang, who then called off the offensive. Yet although Communist solidarity took precedence, one can almost sense that Vladimirov secretly wished that the KMT would teach the CCP a good lesson. Doubtless a good Communist, Stalin’s envoy was also a Russian patriot. As such he was more sympathetic to the KMT government of China, which bore the burden of the struggle against the common enemy, than to the CCP; this sympathy did not diminish even during the great Japanese offensive in the summer and fall of 1944, when Chinese resistance virtually collapsed.

Vladimirov records with considerable sarcasm fluctuations of Mao’s attitudes toward the Soviet Union. As the Soviet counteroffensive against the Germans progressed, Mao became more and more solicitous in conversations with Vladimirov; manifestations of anti-Sovietism in Yenan, so pronounced earlier, disappeared as if by magic. By late 1944 there was a tantalizing guessing game going on in the CCP headquarters: whether the Soviet Union would or wouldn’t, after defeating Germany; turn against Japan. Since such an attack would mean employment of a large Soviet military force in Manchuria and perhaps in North China, Mao’s strategy against the KMT, and CCP prospects for gaining power in China, would heavily depend on Moscow. Understanding that, Vladimirov watched with unconcealed disgust the scheming and calculating Maoists, concerned exclusively with their own fortunes and totally indifferent to what, to him, was of paramount importance: Russia’s gigantic struggle against German and Japanese imperialism.

With equal mistrust and concern, he recorded how earlier in the year (in July), the arrival of the U.S. Observers’ Group in Yenan raised Mao’s hopes for establishing direct links with the United States. Mao counted on obtaining American military supplies, to enable the CCP to fight Japan—and if need be, use them later in civil war against the KMT. Aware of American disenchantment with Chiang’s government, Mao also counted on U.S. political support, which could assure the CCP power and influence, quite out of proportion to its actual strength, in some future coalition government. These hopes were soon dashed but, needless to say, Vladimirov regarded them as bordering on treason. His conviction that the CCP Chairman was a hypocritical, cunning opportunist, not to be trusted under any circumstances, had firmed.

This conviction probably accounted for Vladimirov’s decline upon his return to Moscow late in 1945. Even if Stalin felt the same way about Mao, broad political and strategic considerations required utilization of the CCP in Manchuria, then already occupied by Soviet troops. Stalin didn’t feel he had to trust Mao: the very presence of an unchallengeable Soviet power in Manchuria would, in his view, greatly restrict Maoist capacity for mischief and strengthen the pro-Soviet, “internationalist” wing of the CCP.

Stalin may have also shared Vladimirov’s relatively benign view of the KMT government; in expectation that it would rule China after the war, he concluded with it, in August 1945, the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, which granted the Soviet Union special rights in Manchuria. But Stalin did not regard Chiang Kai-shek as a free agent, capable of carrying out independent policies. Having assumed that the United States had become the principal enemy of the Soviet Union, Stalin expected it to manipulate Chinese politics to Soviet disadvantage. Sitting in remote Yenan, Vladimirov did not display this awareness; he was too absorbed in local developments to be able to appraise properly a broader picture and the emerging configuration of forces in the world at large.

In the end, however, Vladimirov’s unshakable anti-Maoist convictions were appreciated. In 1948, shortly after CCP armies launched their first major offensive against the KMT, he reappeared in China as Soviet consul-general in Shanghai. He stayed there through the rest of the civil war, returning to Moscow only in 1951. In the following year he was sent to Burma as Soviet ambassador. He died, apparently of cancer, in September 1953.

A careful reader of recent Soviet studies dealing with the immediate postwar years gets an impression of considerable uncertainty in Moscow as to how to conduct external affairs in a manner corresponding to the new role of the Soviet Union as a major world power. This uncertainty stemmed, in part, from a shortage of knowledge and experience, but primarily from painful awareness of the enormous inner weakness of the country, only beginning to recover from the consequences of a devastating war and already confronting the hostility of the West, suggesting a possibility of another armed conflict in a not-too-distant future. In the areas physically controlled by Soviet military power, as in Eastern Europe, the Soviets could resort to force and use familiar police methods in attaining their political and security objectives. The situation was quite different in the Far East.

The treaty of August 1945, which left Manchuria under seemingly effective Soviet control, recognized the sovereignty of the KMT government over all of China. The major Manchurian railroads and the naval base in Port Arthur were supposed to be in joint Soviet-Chinese ownership, but were in fact in Soviet hands. The Soviets took possession of all former Japanese property, from the Kwantung army arsenals to plants and factories which they immediately proceeded to dismantle, shipping machinery and equipment to Russia. For a while there was no challenge to Soviet supremacy but KMT armies were moving northward, reclaiming one province after another, and Chiang Kai-shek appeared determined to extend his government to Manchuria.

In order to limit KMT capacity for challenging their dominance, the Soviets resolved to create a political infrastructure favorable to Soviet interests. To that end, they encouraged the Chinese Communists to form local administrations throughout the occupied region. Since there were few native Manchurian Communists, the Soviets had to rely on a few hundred trusted Chinese brought from Russia at the end of the war but primarily on CCP forces, led by Lin Piao and Kao Kan and numbering about 150,000, which penetrated Manchuria from North China before KMT armies had reached it. They were well-trained and disciplined and consisted of dedicated Communists but were poorly armed: two-thirds of the soldiers had no arms whatsoever; each rifle had only 30 rounds of ammunition; there was one machine-gun for every 100 soldiers. Except for a few pieces of artillery captured from the surrendering Japanese, CCP troops had no means for fighting a serious battle.⁶ Soviet authorities supplied them with adequate amounts of ammunition and side arms but, for the time being, with little else, assigning them primarily political and police functions. All Communist units and organizations were subordinated to the CCP Northeastern Bureau headed by elements friendly to the Soviet Union and responsive to the needs of the Soviet command in Manchuria. It can be surmised that during the first two postwar years, when Communist forces everywhere were under relentless pressure from the KMT, the CCP leadership from Mao Tsetung down (Mao remained in far-away Yenan until it was captured, in March 1947, by KMT armies and he had to flee to other remote areas of North China) fully realized their dependence on the Soviets and cooperated with them loyally.

“Loyally,” of course, did not mean happily. There were doubtless plenty of reservations among CCP leaders about the Soviets’ decision to make a compact with Chiang Kai-shek, whose government, now the war was over, the CCP could legitimately claim to be its prime enemy. But the Communists’ position was in fact weak, and the areas they had controlled were under attack by vastly superior KMT forces. In these circumstances it was painfully evident that the Soviet Union alone— acting in its own interest rather than out of the ideological motive of Communist solidarity—could help assure the CCP’s survival by supplying it with weapons and other essentials and, it was hoped, by trying to restrain Chiang Kai-shek from carrying his anti-Communist campaign to its logical bloody end. Military assistance was in fact given, although, outside Manchuria, it isn’t clear how generously. Chiang, however, was more confident than ever that he could unify China under KMT rule and was determined to seek a military, rather than political, solution to the conflict with the CCP. The KMT offensive through 1945 and early in 1946 against CCP-held regions progressed successfully everywhere except in Manchuria, which was still “controlled” by the Soviets.

So long as the Soviet occupation continued, KMT and CCP elements coexisted in southern Manchuria rather peacefully. But in March 1946 the Soviets began withdrawal of their troops, completing it by early May. The six KMT armies, with more following, advanced on their heels, crushing CCP attempts to retain possession of key cities and towns. Suspecting that the KMT operations were conducted with the knowledge and encouragement of the United States and determined to prevent American influence, however indirect, from spreading to the proximity of Russia, Stalin invited Chiang Kai-shek, early in May, to come to Moscow for discussions. Chiang declined.⁷ Although he simultaneously rejected United States insistence on formation of a coalition government with the CCP, viewing it as an attempt to “neutralize China,” Stalin, who had never trusted the sincerity of the American mediation effort, drew his own conclusions.

The KMT offensive stopped at Mukden. Under pressure of the United States to reach a compromise with the CCP (in July 1946 a U. S. embargo on shipments of military material to China went into effect), and not daring to challenge Soviet authority in northern Manchuria, Chiang abandoned his cherished goal of liquidating CCP military power. Communist forces withdrew behind the Sungari River, where they could regroup and reorganize in safety. The Soviets supplied them with large quantities of Japanese heavy weapons and Lin Piao’s army, reinforced by some 100,000 North Korean troops, gradually developed into a formidable force. In the fall of 1947 the Communists launched a counteroffensive on several fronts in Manchuria and North China; all of Manchuria was in their hands by November. Peking fell in January 1949; and by the end of the year the People’s Republic of China was an established fact.

An equally established fact is that Stalin derived little satisfaction from the CCP victory and even less from Mao Tse-tung’s personal triumph. As Milovan Djilas, the only high-ranking Communist who has candidly relayed his observations of Stalin, remarked, it was not correct to assume that Stalin “was generally against revolutions” only because he abstained, “always in decisive moments, from supporting the Chinese, Spanish, and in many ways even the Yugoslav revolutions.” But, Djilas points out, Stalin opposed revolutions

conditionally, that is to the degree to which the revolution went beyond interests of the Soviet state. He felt instinctively that the creation of revolutionary centers outside of Moscow could endanger its supremacy in world communism. . . That is why he helped revolutions only up to a certain point—up to where he could control them—but he was always ready to leave them in the lurch whenever they slipped out of his grasp.⁸

In January 1948, discussing with Djilas and others the prospects for a Communist victory in the civil war in Greece, Stalin insisted that “the uprising in Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible,” because Great Britain and the United States would not permit it to succeed. When someone mentioned the recent successes of the Chinese Communists, Stalin remarked :

Yes, the Chinese comrades have succeeded [but] China is a different case, relations in the Far East are different. True, we, too, can make a mistake! Here, when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek might be found. They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it in their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck. It has been shown that they were right, and not we.⁹

Djilas proceeds to comment that Stalin probably anticipated “future danger to his own work and to his own empire from the new communist great power, especially since there were no prospects of subordinating it internally.” And he adds that Stalin “knew that every revolution, simply by virtue of being new, also becomes a separate epicenter and shapes its own government and state.”¹⁰

These were doubtless valid observations. Djilas, however, did not know what Stalin did: that Mao, far from being a good internationalist, had a long record of anti-Soviet tendencies, which included making overtures to the Americans in 1944–1945 and possibly even in 1946, during CCP negotiations with General George C. Marshall. In fact, it can be assumed that until the outbreak of the Korean War Stalin couldn’t be certain that Mao would not attempt to collude with the United States against the Soviet Union; he doubtless took nofice of suspicious noises in the United States, where important figures spoke in 1949 and 1950 of the desirability of “turning Mao Tse-tung into another Tito.”¹¹ Although many prominent CCP leaders were considered to be friendly to the Soviet Union at that time, Stalin had no means for organizing a plot in order to dislodge Chairman Mao: manipulating CCP politics from within was well beyond Soviet power.

Yet Stalin held a few trump cards up his sleeve even before Korea. The CCP as a whole was firmly committed to the concept of international Communist unity; his own and the Soviet Union’s authority in the Communist movement were at their zenith; the People’s Republic of China was virtually isolated, in part because of the intense xenophobia widespread among the Chinese; China’s economy was in ruins; and the Communists could not be sure that KMT forces in Taiwan, perhaps backed by the United States, would not be able to stage a comeback. These impressive “objective factors” tied the PRC to the Soviet Union, the only power capable of offering it economic assistance and military protection.

Making no attempt to win Mao’s affection, Stalin deliberately made the leader of China cool his heels for ten weeks in Moscow (December 1949-February 1950) before the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance between the two Communist states was signed.¹² The terms of the treaty were much less generous than Mao, in his then chronic overrating of Soviet might, had anticipated, but having nowhere else to go, he praised Stalin’s wisdom and magnanimity.

Mao’s freedom of international maneuver was greatly reduced with the Korean War; the appearance of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Formosa Straits made “liberation” of Taiwan impossible and the anti-American posture of the PRC inevitable. At the end of 1950 Mao yielded to Soviet pressure, sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese “volunteers” to fight in Korea, thereby dooming the PRC to nearly two decades of international isolation and continuing dependence on the Soviet Union.

NOTES

1. A comprehensive ideological discussion of the foundations of socialist unity is contained in The World Socialist System and Anti-Communism, Moscow, 1972 (in English).

2. For political developments of that period and their latest Soviet interpretation, see Komintern i Vostok (“Comintern and the East”), Moscow, 1969; particularly the entries by Glunin, Grigoriev, Kukushkin, and Levinson. See also Richard C. Thornton, The Comintern and Chinese Communists, 1928–1931, University of Washington Press, 1969, and Robert C. North, Moscow and Chinese Communists, Stanford University Press, 1953.

3. See North, p. 183 note.

4. Osobyi rayon Kitaya: 1942–1945 (“Special Border Area Region: 19421945”), Moscow: Novosti, 1973.

5. Cf., for example, M. I. Sladkovsky, ed., Noveyshaya istoriya Kitaya (“Modern History of China”), Moscow, 1972, or O. Vladimirov and V. Ryazantsev, Stranitsy politicheskoi biografii Mao Tze-duna (“Pages from Political Biography of Mao Tse-tung”), Moscow, 1969.

6. Noveyshaya istoriya Kitaya, p. 210.

7. See Richard C. Thornton, China: The Struggle for Power, 1917—1972, Indiana University Press, 1973, pp. 193–195.

8. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962, p. 132.

9. Ibid., p. 182. Stalin apparently refers to a visit in Moscow in 1945 of a Chinese delegation headed by Kao Kan and Liu Shao-ch’i.

10. Ibid., p. 183.

11. See U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, “The United States and Communist China in 1949 and 1950: The Question of Rapprochement and Recognition,” GPO, 1973.

12. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, Little, Brown & Co., 1974, pp. 239–244.