The third is from John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 319. General Deane was in charge of the $11 billion U.S. program of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. Oddly, earlier in his book (pp. 17-18) he opines that Stalin had abandoned the program of world revolution for an exclusively “nationalistic” policy. However, by the end of his book Deane concludes that Stalin had never neglected a policy of communist expansionism and fidelity to Marxism-Leninism in this respect. The book seems to have been written serially so that by the end of the general’s several-year experience with Stalin and his associates, such as Molotov and Vyshinsky, he had drawn new conclusions of the type reflected in the above quotation.
The fourth is from Aleksandr Yakovlev, Omut Pamyati (Swarm of Memories) (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), p. 108.
1
V. A. Nevezhin, Sindrom nastupatel’noi voiny (Moscow: Airo-XX, 1997), pp. 252–53.
2
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 221.
3
Weeks, Soviet and Communist Quotations, pp. 246–47.
4
For instance, in author David Glantz’s two excellent studies of Soviet prosecution of the Great Fatherland War—referencing its weapons and also its tactics and strategy—not a word is devoted to Marxist-Leninist ideology (Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War [Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998] and, with Jonathan House, When Titans Clash [Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995]). Yet concerted indoctrination of Red Army servicemen in those principles was aimed at making them better soldiers. It would seem that commanders, up to and including the commander-in-chief, Stalin, likewise were guided by the principles of the official doctrine. That ideology and instilling morale and a sense of purpose in soldiers are one and the same was first proposed by Napoleon. Yet even in ancient times parallels may be found (e.g., Pericles’ propagandistic Funeral Oration extolling Athens). The point about the perennial uses of ideology in preparation for and waging war is strongly asserted in all editions of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia, including one article titled “Mythology.”
5
Jiri Hochman, The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934–1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 176–77.
6
M. A. Gareyev, M. V. Frunze—Voyennyi teoretik (M. V. Frunze—Military Theoretician) (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1986), p. 381.
7
Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 316–17.
8
Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 82. The last sentence in the above quotation admittedly is puzzling. It is by no means clear how sovietization would be “subordinated” to strategic security. One would think they would work together. In any case expansion of the Soviet Empire is perfectly consonant with the world-revolutionary aims repeatedly asserted by Stalin as by Lenin before him. Compare NKVD foreign intelligence officer Sudoplatov’s observation concerning the dovetailing of Soviet Grand Strategy and revolutionary ideology.
9
Among the several books of this type published after 1945 in America is Blueprint for World Conquest (Washington, D.C.: Human Events, 1946), edited by William Henry Chamberlin. Chamberlin describes the excerpts from Comintern theses and programs reproduced in the book as follows: “These [are] authoritative blueprints of the communist scheme for world conquest.” He suggests that they are no less authentic and sincere than, say, Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
10
Richard W. Harrison, The Russian Way of War: Operational Art, 1904–1940 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), p. 272.
11
Yuri N. Afanas’iev, ed., Drugaya Voina (Moscow: Rossiisky Gosudarstvenny Universitet, 1996), pp. 60–75. The full text of Stalin’s speech is reproduced in this chapter.
12
Afanas’iev, Drugaya Voina, pp. 95, 97. Yet, in his book Upushchennyi Shans Stalina (Moscow: Veche, 2000), Mel’tyukhov is ready to admit that ideology can be all but irrelevant: “It is easy to see that attributing all sorts of sins to ideology as V. Suvorov does that such a notion has little substance. Take famous figures of world history like Tutmose III, Ramses II, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila, Charlemagne, Ghengis Khan, Napoleon, et al., none of them was a member of the Communist Party . . . yet this did not stop them from building an empire” (pp. 11–12). One might question the author’s examples. Some of these empire builders—especially Napoleon and Alexander the Great—surely did exploit ideology in making their conquests.
13
M. I. Semiryaga, “Sovetskyi Soyuz I vneshnyaya politika SSSR,” Voprosy istorii, no. 9 (1990), p. 61. Semiryaga is a respected doctor of historical sciences, State Prize laureate (USSR), and today a scholar in the Russian Academy of Sciences. A prolific researcher and writer, Dr. Semiryaga inclines toward the “offensist” school in interpreting Stalin’s policies and actions before June 1941. He is one of the contributors to the Afanas’iev book cited above.
14
Quoted in Ernst Topitsch, Stalin’s War: A Radical New Theory on the Origins of the Second World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 7.
15
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1994), p. 102.
2 Prewar Diplomacy and the Comintern
For [the Bolsheviks], diplomacy was part of the capitalist superstructure.... Soviet diplomats had the impossible task of serving two causes, two professions, two masters: One of [world] revolution, the other of diplomacy. Essentially, [Soviet diplomats] had to bridge the enormous gap between a revolutionary Soviet regime . . . and capitalist governments to which they were accredited whose values, indeed existence, they were committed ideologically to destroy.
—Zinoviev, later chairman of the Comintern
Words must have no relation to actions, otherwise what kind of diplomacy is it? Words are one thing, actions another. Nice words are a mask for concealment of bad deeds. Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water of wooden iron.
—Josef Stalin
Round us are small countries which dream of great adventures or allow great adventurers to manipulate their territory. We are not afraid of these little countries, but if they do not mind their own business, we shall be compelled to use the Red Army on them.
—Andrei Zhdanov, close aide to Stalin
Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army has power to do so. It cannot be otherwise.
—Josef Stalin
When Lenin strode triumphantly down the center aisle of the Tavrida Palace in Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg) to open the first, post–November 7 Second Congress of Soviets, he announced that, in his words, a “New Order” had been established by the Bolshevik revolution. This was not ideological posturing. Lenin had explicitly set out profoundly to change his country root and branch and, with it, as he said, the world. The Russian and, in fact, pan-European ancien regime, as French revolutionaries called the departing system in France, was to be buried and with it many customary “bourgeois” institutions composing the capitalist “superstructure.” Among these institutions were diplomacy and the “old way” of doing things in world politics.