211. In Nov. 1939, thanks to Gerhard Kegel, the Soviet agent, the NKVD managed to photograph a long document on the German negotiating strategy in the talks, including the maximum prices the Germans would pay for various Soviet goods. “The negotiations were difficult and lengthy,” the German trade negotiator Karl Schnurre wrote in an internal memorandum, adding that, because “the Soviet Union does not import any consumer goods whatsoever, their wishes concerned exclusively manufactured goods and war materiel. Thus, in numerous cases, Soviet bottlenecks coincide with German bottlenecks, such as machine tools for the manufacture of artillery ammunition.” On top of that, “psychologically the ever-present distrust of the Russians was of importance as well as the fear of any responsibility. And people’s commissar Mikoyan had to refer numerous questions to Stalin personally, since his authority was not sufficient.” DGFP, series D, VIII: 752–9 (economic agreement), 814–7 (Schnurre memorandum); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 131–4; Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 97–106; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 439.
212. Pravda did not crow in its announcement. Pravda, Feb. 18, 1940. See also Werth, Russia at War, 62–71.
213. After his Dec. 1939 offensive quickly petered out, Chiang, in Feb. 1940, had convened a military conference in Liuzhou (Guangxi). He attributed Japan’s strength to its surprise attacks (on poorly defended places), stout defense of occupied positions, and disguise of movements. He saw its weakness in a failure to deploy sufficient forces, sustain its operations for sufficient time, and prepare sufficient reserves. Ryōichi, “Japanese Eleventh Army,” 227–8, citing Dai Tōa Sensō (Tokyo: Sankei Shuppan, 1977), in the series Shō Kaiseki Hiroku, XIII: 47–8.
214. Taylor, Generalissimo, 171 (citing Chiang Diaries, Hoover Institution archives, box 40, folder 15: Dec. 30, 1939).
215. The Chinese Communists were receiving $110,000 to support their armed forces from the Nationalist government and themselves collected some $200,000 in local currency via local governments under Communist control in northern regions, likely through traditional land taxes. Party dues amounted to another $40,000. But they were spending around $700,000 per month. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 123–5 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 317. l. 53–5).
216. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 126 (Feb. 23 and 25, 1940). On Feb. 25, 1940, Yan Xishan, the warlord ruler of small, poor, remote Shanxi region, who had an off-again, on-again collaboration with the Communists against the Japanese, halted his offensive against the Communists. The Eighth Route Army was based there.
217. A memo from the Comintern’s personnel department to Dimitrov denigrated Wang Ming, Mao’s rival, as possessing “no authority among the old cadres of the party,” and recommended that he not be given “leading positions,” while proposing promotion of a long list of Mao loyalists (including a young military leader in the Eighth Route Army named Deng Xiaoping). “Mao Zedong is certainly the most important political figure in the Chinese Communist party. He knows China better than the other CCP leaders, knows the people, understands politics and generally frames issues correctly.” Pantsov and Levine, Mao, 333–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 225, d. 71, t. 3: l. 186–9).
218. Taylor, Generalissimo, 172; Suyin, Eldest Son, 170.
219. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 384–90 (APRF, f. 3, zakrytyi paket no. 1, with facsimile). Between late Sept. 1939 and March 1940, the Soviets and the Nazis had held a series of meetings (apparently four in total) to discuss anticipated Polish resistance, coordination of the respective occupations, POWs, and refugees. Contrary to some claims, the Feb. 20, 1940, meeting (at the Pan Tadeusz villa of the Zakopane spa, in the Tatra Mountains) did not coordinate or precipitate the Soviet Katyn massacre. Vishlёv, Nakanune, 119–23; Bór-Komorowski, Secret Army. Beria’s March 1940 report and recommendation to Stalin is in Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 476–8.
220. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 390–2 (APRF, f. 3, zakrytyi paket no. 1); Cienciala et al., Katyn, 118–20; Ubyty v Katyni; Kozlov et al., Katyn’ mart 1940–sentiabr’2000 g. The total includes approximately 14,500 POWs held in NKVD camps in Kozelsky, Ostaskhovsky, and Starobelsky, and more than 7,300 in remand prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics. The execution sites included Smolensk city, Kalinin, Kharkov, and other places, as well as Katyn forest. Documents establishing the fact of Soviet culpability survived, but the full story will never be known because the files were purged. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 42n21.
221. Pikhoia and Gieysztor, Katyn’: plenniki, 16. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 276–7, 295.
222. Osborn, Operation Pike, 92–6. Overflowing camps and prisons placed a strain on NKVD resources in the western regions. Of course, the inmates could have been deported eastward to labor camps rather than executed without trial.
223. In Nov. 1939, Mekhlis, as head of the army’s political administration, had told a gathering of Soviet writers that Polish officers held as prisoners of war could form the leadership of Polish legions of up to 100,000 men, which were being constituted in France, and therefore that they should not be released. Jasiewicz, Zagłada polskich Kresów, 175 (Vishnevsky diary, Nov. 11, 1939). This passage was not included in Vishnevskii, Stat’i, dnevniki, pis’ma, 372.
224. Boiadzhiev, Maretskaia, 100; Kalashnikov, Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, II: 169–84.
225. Izvestiia, March 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1940; Pravda, March 9, 1940. That month, a “short biography” of Molotov, barely ten pages, went to press in a print run of half a million. It recounted his days in the underground, the 1917 revolution, and the civil war, and stressed his orthodox Leninism, organizing prowess, and close association with “the Supreme Leader of peoples comrade Stalin.” Tikhomirov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, 15.
226. Shvarts, “Zhizn’ i smert’ Mikhaila Bulgakova,” 126. Pasternak, having learned Bulgakov was terminally ill, had paid a last visit.
227. Upton, Finland, 140 (citing J. K. Paasikivi, Toimintani Moskovassa ja Suomessa 1939–1941 [Porvoo: Werner Söderström, 1959], I: 187, 191); Tanner, Winter War, 235. For brief excerpts of the Finnish record of the March 12 discussions, in Russian translation, see Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 497–503.
228. For a Finnish police summary (March 15, 1940) of the domestic shock from the peace terms, see Khristoforov et al., Zimniaia voina, 519–22.
229. Dallin, Soviet Russia’s Foreign Policy, 190.
230. Vakar, “Milukov v izgnan’e’,” 377.
231. “The USSR, to be sure, received strategic gains in the northwest, but at what price?” Trotsky wrote in March 1940. “The prestige of the Red Army is undermined. The trust of the toiling masses and exploited peoples of the whole world has been lost. As a result the international position of the USSR has not been strengthened but weakened.” He added that Stalin “personally has emerged from this operation completely smashed.” Trotskii, “Stalin posle finliandskogo opyta [March 13, 1940],” in Portrety revoliutsionerov, 162–66 (at 166). Trotsky later clarified that “it does not follow from this that the USSR must be surrendered to the imperialists but only that the USSR must be torn out of the hands of the bureaucracy.” Trotsky, “Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events.” See also Trotsky, “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party” (Dec. 15, 1939), published posthumously in In Defense of Marxism, 44–62 (at 56–9).