Stalin: A Biography

to the Soviet Far East. Yet the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek refused to accept the terms which had been put by Stalin to the Western Allies. Stalin conducted further negotiations with the Chinese and made an unadorned case for concessions from China and territory from Japan. Otherwise, he asserted, the Japanese would remain a danger to its neighbours: ‘We need Dairen and Port Arthur for thirty years in case Japan restores its forces. We could strike at it from there.’¹⁰

By 16 July 1945, however, the Americans had successfully tested their A-bomb at Alamogordo. It had also become clear that the Japanese would fight for every inch of their islands, and President Truman saw nuclear weapons as a desirable means of avoiding massive loss of lives among the invading American forces. He no longer saw any reason to encourage Soviet military intervention. Having seen how Stalin had tricked Roosevelt over Berlin, he was not going to be fooled again. American policy towards the USSR was in any case getting steadily sterner. What Truman would not do, though, was retract Roosevelt’s specific promises at Yalta to Stalin about China and Japan: he did not want to set a precedent for breaking inter-Allied agreements. Stalin did not know this. He had yet to test Truman’s sincerity as a negotiating partner. He sensed that, unless the Red Army intervened fast, the Americans might well deny him the Kurile Islands after Japan’s defeat. Stalin wanted total security for the USSR: ‘We are closed up. We have no outlet. Japan should be kept vulnerable from all sides, north, west, south, east. Then she will keep quiet’¹¹ The race for Berlin gave way to the race for the Kuriles.

Stalin, Truman and Churchill came together at the Potsdam Conference from 17 July. This time there was no argy-bargy about the choice of venue; the leaders of the Big Three wanted to savour victory at the centre of the fallen Third Reich. While Stalin took his train from Moscow, Truman made the long trip across the Atlantic and joined Stalin and Churchill in Berlin. Meetings were held in the Cecilienhof. The wartime personal partnership was already over, with Roosevelt’s replacement by Truman. Perhaps Roosevelt would anyway have ceased to indulge Stalin in the light of American global ambitions after the world war. Certainly Truman already felt this way.

The other great change in the Big Three occurred in the course of the Potsdam Conference. On 26 July the British elections swept the Labour party to power. Churchill ceded his place at the negotiations to his Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The new government was no gentler on Stalin than Churchill, and the Potsdam Conference turned into a trial of strength between the USA and the USSR with the British regularly supporting the Americans. Several topics were difficult: the Japanese campaign; the peace terms in Europe; and Poland’s frontiers and government. The Americans, buoyed by their monopoly of nuclear-weapons technology, were no longer eager for Soviet military assistance in the Far East. This time it was Stalin who stressed the need for the USSR’s participation. On Europe there was agreement on the Allies’ demarcation of zones of occupation. But wrangles remained. It was decided to hand over the details for resolution by the Council of Foreign Ministers. Poland, though, could not be pushed aside. The Conference at Stalin’s insistence listened to the arguments of the USSR-sponsored Provisional Government. The Americans and British complained repeatedly about Soviet manipulation and about political repression in Warsaw. The Western Allies expected Stalin to respect Polish independence and to foster democratic reform.

Both Truman and Stalin knew that the American A-bomb was ready for use, but Truman did not know that Stalin knew. In fact Soviet espionage had reported accurately to Moscow, and on this occasion Stalin did not disbelieve his agents. When Truman informed him about the American technological advance, Stalin had prepared himself to be unperturbed — and Truman was astounded by his sangfroid. In the same period Stalin buttonholed his commanders, urging them to bring forward the Soviet offensive against Japan. But technical reasons obstructed any change in schedule, and Stalin restrained an inclination to insist on the impossible. Increasingly the Western Allies ignored him. Truman, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek issued their own ultimatum to the Japanese government from Potsdam. Nobody consulted Stalin.¹²

Arriving back in Moscow, Stalin kept pestering Vasilevski in Stavka. The response from Vasilevski was that Soviet forces would be ready to attack the Japanese no later than 9 August. But even this was too late. Truman had taken his decision to instruct American bombers to undertake their first military operation with nuclear weapons. On 6 August a B-29 took off from Tinian island to drop a bomb on Hiroshima. A fresh stage in human destructiveness had been reached as an entire city was reduced to rubble by a single military overflight. Still Stalin hoped to include himself in the victory. On 7 August he signed the order for Soviet forces to invade Manchuria two days later. But again he was preempted. The failure of the Japanese to sue for peace led Truman to sanction a further bombing raid by B-29s on 8 August. This time the target was Nagasaki. The result was the same: the city became an instant ruin and the population was annihilated. The Japanese government, at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, surrendered on 2 September 1945. Stalin had lost the race for Tokyo. The Manchurian campaign still went ahead as planned in Moscow and the Kwantung Army was attacked. But really Japan’s fate lay in the hands of President Truman.¹³

The only lever left to Stalin in diplomacy was his impassivity. At a reception for Averell Harriman and the diplomat George Kennan on 8 August he made a point of seeming unconcerned about the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also displayed knowledge about the German and British attempts to build A-bombs. Evidently he wished to let Truman know that Soviet spies were briefing the Kremlin about the development of military nuclear technology worldwide. He deliberately let slip that the Soviet Union had its own atomic-bomb project.¹⁴ Stalin acted his chosen role to perfection. American diplomats knew very well that the Soviet political elite had been depressed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USSR’s pre-eminence with the USA and the United Kingdom as a victorious power had been put into question, and the immense sacrifices offered across the Soviet Union in 1941–5 could soon prove to have brought little benefit to its citizens. Stalin had won many hands without having the aces to finish the game.

44. VICTORY!

In the early hours of 9 May 1945 radio announcer Isaak Levitan read out the news everyone had been greedy for. The war with Germany was over. Popular excitement had been growing for days. When the moment came, the celebrations were tumultuous; they occurred across the USSR and in all the countries which had fought Hitler’s New Order. The Soviet government had arranged a fireworks display for the evening in Moscow, but people had started their festivities hours earlier. Millions thronged the central districts. Everywhere there was dancing and singing. Any man in the green uniform of the Red Army stood a fair chance of being hugged and kissed. A crowd gathered outside the US embassy as the chant went up: ‘Hurrah for Roosevelt!’ The American President was so much identified with the Grand Alliance that few remembered he had died in April. Behaviour was unrestrained. Prodigious drinking occurred; the police overlooked young men urinating against the walls of the Moskva Hotel. Restaurants and cafeterias were packed with customers where food was scarce but vodka plentiful.¹ There was joy that Nazism had been crushed under the tank tracks of the Red Army.

Stalin’s daughter Svetlana phoned him after the radio broadcast: ‘Papa, congratulations to you: victory!’ ‘Yes, victory,’ he replied. ‘Thanks. Congratulations to you too. How are you?’ The estrangement of father and daughter melted in the warmth of the moment.² Khrushchev was less lucky. When he made a similar phone call, Stalin rebuked him. ‘He made it known,’ Khrushchev suggested, ‘that I was taking up his valuable time. Well, I simply froze to the spot. What was this about? Why? I took it all badly and cursed myself thoroughly: why had I phoned him? After all, I knew his character and could have expected no good whatever to come of it. I knew he would want to show me that the past was already a stage we had gone through and that he was now thinking about great new matters.’³

Stalin delivered an ‘address to the people’ starting: ‘Comrades! Men and women compatriots!’⁴ Gone were the gentler vocatives of his radio broadcast at the start of Operation Barbarossa. The USSR had been saved and the ‘great banner of freedom of peoples and peace between peoples’ could at last be waved. The Great Patriotic War was over.⁵ But, if his style was solemn, it was also gracious at least for his Russian listeners. At a banquet for Red Army commanders on 24 May he declared:⁶

Comrades, allow me to propose one last toast.

I would like to propose a toast to the health of our Soviet people and, above all, of the Russian people because it is the outstanding nation of all the nations forming part of the Soviet Union.