Mao aimed at victory in Korea and thereby to elevate China’s status in the international Communist movement. In a last meeting with Stalin on September 19, 1952, Zhou Enlai tried with no luck to broach this delicate topic. As it happened, Stalin had called the Nineteenth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party for October 5–14 in Moscow, and representatives of all the foreign parties were invited. Zhou asked if it would be appropriate for the Chinese to talk about party matters with the Indonesians who were coming. The real issue concerned the extent to which the Chinese should be admitted to the Communist inner circle in Asia. Stalin’s view was that it was “too early to tell yet.” That was as good as saying he was still thinking it over and had yet to decide whether to favor China. He did not neglect to add that the Indian comrades had arrived and asked for “help in determining the party policy.” Stalin thought he had to do so, even though he was busy. Then Zhou wondered about the Japanese and, in reply, got only the opaque remark “that older brothers cannot refuse their younger brothers.” Would Stalin discuss party matters with the Chinese? The Master replied that it would depend if they brought it up, but at that point he began to sound more like a cagey medieval prince than a modern Communist leader. For whatever reason, he was not yet ready to give Mao the recognition he craved.43
Even if Stalin might be prepared to delegate some matters to regional centers, he had no intention of yielding his leadership of the worldwide movement to anyone.44 Nor did he want another independent thinker like Tito. It was perhaps to take Mao down a peg or two that he decided to treat the visiting Liu Shaoqi, one of Mao’s potential rivals, with exaggerated respect.45 This was a characteristic Stalinist strategy of reminding even the most powerful emissaries of their proper place in the world of Communism.
THE ARMS RACE
The Korean War was not resolved in Stalin’s lifetime, and its ripple effects lasted far longer. An armistice signed on July 27, 1953, at Panmunjom left Korea divided exactly as before.
It is difficult to overestimate the psychological impact of that war on the United States, magnified by the first successful test of the Soviet atomic bomb (code-named “First Lightning”) on August 29, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk 21 site in Kazakhstan. The United States found out about it (dubbing it “Joe-1”) by tracking the winds and testing for radioactivity. President Truman announced on September 23 that there had been “an atomic explosion” but said nothing about a bomb. Molotov issued an opaque statement asserting that there had been some “blasting work” and, incidentally, that the existence of the atomic bomb had long since ceased to be a secret.46 Insofar as U.S. ambassador Kirk in Moscow could gauge Soviet public opinion, he reported in October that after the test, people felt slightly less under threat, had a greater sense of security, and took pride in the accomplishment.47
Russian historian V. L. Malkov has observed that the USSR was still far behind the United States and had no delivery system for the new weapon. By remaining silent at the time about having a bomb, he writes, Stalin meant to demonstrate that “nothing unusual had happened” and that in the game of “catch up and overtake,” Soviet science and economics had been able to shoulder the task. Moscow wanted to cure Washington of thinking that it had absolute technological superiority.48
News of the Soviet bomb came not long after the clash over Berlin and just before the October victory of the Communists in China. Together these events made the American government feel vulnerable and threatened. The Democrats, who had been keen on cutting the defense budget, suddenly reversed themselves. At a cabinet meeting on July 14, 1950, and not long after the outbreak of the war in Korea, Truman learned that the USSR was capable of military actions in several places around the globe and that the United States would have insufficient military power to do much about it. The president and Congress soon agreed to double the size of the armed forces. Spending for defense and international security went from $17.7 billion in fiscal year 1950 to a total of $140 billion for fiscal years 1951 and 1952. The new top priority was to establish an industrial base to create the tanks, aircraft, and matériel needed “to wage global war.”49
In early 1951 the president authorized a crash program to build a superweapon. The United States detonated a thermonuclear device in the South Pacific on November 1, 1952. Although the USSR had benefited from information gained from its spies to copy the A-bomb, the Soviets developed their own approach to the superbomb. Beria was again the politician in charge, and by August 12, 1953, they successfully replicated the American experiment. The United States was able to build a deliverable H-bomb by March 1, 1954, and less than a year later, on November 22, 1955, the USSR dropped its first H-bomb.50
Some historians have suggested that Truman missed an opportunity to stop the arms race when he accepted recommendations to carry on research for the superbomb. Their supposition is that Stalin might have been impressed and refrained as well. Andrei Sakharov, who helped develop the Soviet bomb and later became a dissident, did not agree with such conjectures. He believed that Stalin would more likely have considered unilateral American restraint as a trick or sign of weakness.51 Once the infernal “logic” of the arms race existed, it was difficult to reverse.
Americans were not the only ones who were worrying about Soviet intentions. In March 1948, Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands formed a defensive alliance. On April 4, 1949, at the end of the struggle over Berlin, they were joined by Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, together with the United States, to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. NATO was created as a defensive alliance to provide protection from the Soviet Union.
Russian historians balefully note that even before their country had recovered from the Second World War, Stalin dragged them into the Cold War over Berlin and Korea. Beyond that struggle, he decided as far as possible to match U.S. defense spending. Soviet outlays for that purpose doubled between 1948 and 1953.
Stalin also called a summit of the Eastern European Communist party leaders and their defense ministers for January 9–12, 1951. Although the Russian records of what was said remain closed, over the years at least a half dozen of those in attendance published their accounts. Stalin told them that the Korean War provided “favorable conditions” by tying down U.S. forces and that gave them three or four years to modernize and grow their armed forces. Underlying the “urgent need to coordinate military and organizational activities,” he said that the people’s democracies had to expand their armed forces into a three-million-strong army that was “combat ready” and backed by substantial reserves. Each nation was given target figures, which all the participants said were too great for their shaky economies to meet. Poland, for example, would have to double its military expenditures. Former Red Army marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, one of Stalin’s favorites during the war and now Polish minister of defense, was shocked at the scale of the expansion being demanded.52
The Soviet Union would not pay for this military buildup. Each country had to shift financing away from consumer goods and agriculture to defense and heavy industry. Dyed-in-the-wool Stalinists like Mátyás Rákosi agreed with Stalin and did everything possible to meet and exceed the quota of troops set for Hungary. That meant ordinary people suffered substantial declines in their already-low standard of living.53 The same was true for all the other countries, as it was for the USSR. In Stalin’s last two years, Soviet armed forces almost doubled, from 2.9 million or so, up to 5.6 million.54