Like any totalitarian regime, the Stalinist dictatorship needed to keep society mobilized. This goal was achieved both by provoking anxiety about external threats and by using domestic groups as scapegoats, thereby channeling dissatisfaction away from the country’s leaders. The spread of anti-Semitism shows that Jews were the most convenient target for social stigmatization. In the immediate aftermath of the war, however, Stalin was not able to exploit popular anti-Semitism. The complicated games being played in the international arena and the fact that there were advantages still to be derived from his alliance with the West forced him to be circumspect. The ideological campaigns of the first postwar years, designed to combat the rather amorphous idea of “kowtowing to the West,” were intended as “ideological education” for the intelligentsia and probably had little resonance among the general population.
The situation changed as tensions spiked with the West, as embodied by the United States with its strong Jewish community. As relations with the new Jewish state of Israel broke down and Israel became allied with the United States, Soviet Jews became more suitable targets. As Yuri Slezkine put it, “The Jews as a Soviet nationality were now an ethnic diaspora potentially loyal to a hostile foreign state.”73 The new ideological paradigm that took shape in 1948–1949 brought Stalin’s campaign against kowtowing into line with his exploitation of anti-Semitism. The two coalesced in the campaign against “cosmopolitans,” appropriately understood by the Soviet masses as targeting Soviet Jews and their foreign patrons. A 1949 letter selected to be shown to Stalin captures the essence of this campaign: “Just as the entire German people bear responsibility for Hitler’s aggression, so too the Jewish people must bear responsibility for the actions of the bourgeois cosmopolitans.”74 State anti-Semitism was transformed into a tool of social manipulation.
Stalin’s personal prejudice undoubtedly played an important role in this new twist in the political line. There are many signs that during the final years of his life, he viewed Jews as a “counterrevolutionary” nation, much as he had viewed Poles, Germans, and the peoples of the North Caucasus before and during the war. The repression of the 1930s, the Stalinist regime’s failure to protect its citizens from the Holocaust, and postwar anti-Semitism had all dampened the revolutionary fervor many Soviet Jews felt during and after the revolution. Now, Stalin assumed, Jews had turned their gaze westward, toward the United States, and were prepared to serve the West with the enthusiasm they had once shown for the revolution. “Any Jew-nationalist is an agent of American intelligence,” Stalin told a meeting of the party’s top leadership in late 1952. “Jew-nationalists believe that their nation was saved by the U.S.A. (there you can become rich, a bourgeois, etc.). They feel they have an obligation to the Americans.”75 These suspicions were only intensified by the Jewish wives of some of his closest associates and by his own daughter’s Jewish husband. Stalin’s political anti-Semitism, taking deep root during his final years, became a key factor in both domestic and foreign policy.
The setbacks Stalin faced in Europe were partly compensated by the advance of communism in Asia. On 1 October 1949, a Communist victory in the protracted Chinese civil war resulted in the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The Soviet leadership immediately established diplomatic relations with the new government and severed all ties with the defeated Kuomintang.
The Communist victory in China no doubt strengthened the Soviet Union’s position in the Cold War, but it brought with it a new set of problems associated with the building of Sino-Soviet relations. Despite its dependence on the USSR, Communist China was too imposing a force to remain just another satellite. Stalin had reason to suspect that Mao might confront him with the same assertive intractability he had encountered in Yugoslavia. Considering China’s size and its importance within the Third World, such recalcitrance could have much more serious consequences. A major source of friction was economic problems. The need to provide aid to a war-torn friendly power was a heavy burden for the financially strained Soviet Union.
Even before the Chinese Communists had come to power, Stalin had retained personal control over contacts with them. Through Soviet military intelligence he had set up radio communication with Mao, whose army was based in northeastern China. This line of communication was maintained through special Soviet emissaries, who also served as Mao’s physicians. Although Mao and Stalin kept up a continuous written correspondence, this was not enough for the Chinese revolutionary leader, who repeatedly expressed a desire to visit the Soviet Union. Probably he saw such a visit in symbolic as well as practical terms: he needed to confirm his status as the leader of the Chinese people and a partner (albeit junior) of Stalin. But Stalin kept finding ways to forestall a visit. At first he felt it inadvisable to demonstrate close ties with the Chinese Communists when they were not the country’s official government. The situation in China was extremely fluid, and a Communist victory seemed far from certain.
After several postponements by Moscow, Mao began to lose patience. On 4 July 1948 he informed Stalin that he intended to set out for Harbin and fly from there to Moscow. Ten days later he received the following response: “In view of the commenced grain harvest work, the leading comrades will leave for the provinces in August, where they will remain until November. Therefore the party’s Central Committee is asking Com. Mao Zedong to time his visit to Moscow for the end of November so as to have an opportunity to see all the leading comrades.”76 Mao had no choice but to comply, but he made his annoyance plain. Stalin’s excuse sounded ridiculous, and the Chinese leader did not try to pretend otherwise. The Soviet communications officer attached to Mao even felt compelled to inform Stalin of Mao’s reaction:
I have known Mao Zedong for more than 6 years and could tell that his smile and the words “hao, hao—good, good,” spoken as he was listening to the translation, did not mean that he was happy with the telegram. … He was sure that he would be going immediately. Probably the trip became necessary for him. He waited for a reply with great eagerness.… Mao Zedong’s suitcases were being packed, and even leather shoes were bought (like everybody here, he wears cloth slippers), and a thick wool coat was tailored.… So now he is outwardly calm, polite and attentive, courteous in a purely Chinese manner. But it is hard to see his true soul.
This visit was becoming a serious headache. From August through December 1948, as the Communists achieved a string of decisive victories, Mao continued to insist on coming. In a telegram dated 28 September 1948 he wrote, “On a series of questions it is necessary to report personally to the Central Committee and to the glavny khoziain [the boss or chief].” In early January 1949 he again expressed his desire to come to Moscow to report to the “glavny khoziain.” Stalin stood firm. In January 1949 the Soviet side again canceled a scheduled visit. Anastas Mikoyan was sent to the Chinese instead. As Mikoyan later recalled, in discussing this matter Stalin had justified the refusal to receive Mao by saying that it would “be interpreted in the West as a visit to Moscow to receive instructions.… This would lead to a loss of prestige for the Chinese Communist Party and would be used by the imperialists and the Chiang Kai-shek clique against the Chinese Communists.”77 This explanation fit nicely with Stalin’s policy of caution and demonstrative neutrality.
During Mikoyan’s visit in February 1949, the Communist march to victory entered a decisive phase. Negotiations were begun on the terms of military and economic assistance from the USSR and what to do about treaties between the Soviets and the Kuomintang. A friendship and cooperation treaty, along with associated accords, had been signed with the Chiang Kai-shek government in August 1945. These documents stemmed from agreements reached with the Allies in Yalta: in exchange for Stalin’s promise to enter the war against Japan, the United States and Britain had agreed to give to the USSR lands that the Russian Empire had lost in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. The Kuomintang government had recognized the independence of the Outer Mongolian Soviet satellite, the People’s Republic of Mongolia; the Soviet Union’s rights to build a military base in Port Arthur; and its long-term lease of the port of Dalny. The Chinese-Changchun Railway, which connected Port Arthur and Dalny with the USSR proper, had been brought under Soviet administration. There was lingering dissatisfaction over these forced concessions in China. With time, the Soviet presence inside the country began to look increasingly like a politically dangerous anachronism. Both Moscow and the Chinese Communist leadership understood this. Mutual concessions were expected; it was only a question of degree.