Burdened by different problems but still united by their common foe, the Big Three met outside the Crimean resort city of Yalta in February 1945. This stunningly beautiful corner of the Soviet Union had only recently been liberated from Nazi occupation and lay in ruins. Sparing no effort or expense, in record time the Soviet authorities created a haven amid the destruction, including residences for the three leaders and their large retinues. Particular attention was paid to security. Camouflage covering was set up to protect against enemy air raids and sturdy shelters were built. Crimea, recently roiled by mass arrests and deportations, was subjected to yet another round of purges. “Suspicious elements” were rounded up and taken into custody. A whole army of security personnel was brought to the area. Stalin alone was protected by a force of one hundred operatives and five hundred NKVD troops, plus his usual bodyguards.
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With victory around the corner, the Yalta Conference would have to address a wide range of urgent questions on which the fate of the world hung. At stake were the future of Germany, a redrawing of the map of Europe, and the worldwide balance of power. Generally speaking, the participants’ goals were simple. Although their motives and priorities differed, each of the parties wanted to leave Yalta with as many items on his diplomatic wish list as he could. But as long as the war continued, the Allies had to depend on one another and adjust their aspirations to military and political realities. They compromised on many issues. The zones of occupation in Germany were settled. The guiding principles on which a united nations organization would be founded were outlined. The idea was discussed of the Soviet Union annexing new territories at Poland’s expense (western Ukraine and Belarus), for which Poland would be compensated with German lands to its west. In exchange for a promise to enter into the war with Japan, Stalin extracted an agreement from the Allies that Soviet borders would be shifted outward to encompass new territory in the Far East and that the country’s interests in northern China would be recognized.
But as the contours of a new world took shape, so did the battle lines of the Cold War. It was not possible to reach a real compromise in regard to Poland. Stalin was determined to put this country under the control of his handpicked government, even if that involved making a few concessions on paper. Another contentious issue was the question of reparations from Germany, a point of particular interest for Stalin.
Perhaps even more indicative of the gulf dividing the Allies was the attitude of Soviet state security personnel in Crimea. The hordes of Westerners who descended on Soviet territory were treated as an enemy penetration. The ships used to bring the Allies’ supplies for the conference were surrounded by round-the-clock patrols. Their crews, when given shore leave, were kept under tight NKVD control. “The entire agent apparatus has been instructed and directed to uncover the nature of ties between foreigners and the port’s military personnel and civilians. Female agents who will come into close contact with foreigners have been given particularly careful instructions,” read one report to the NKVD leadership.
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One can only imagine what these instructions were.
With every passing week, Stalin’s mistrust of the Western Allies grew, strongly influencing Soviet military plans. Wehrmacht units clearly preferred to surrender in the West, while in the East they fought to the bitter end. Stalin had every reason to fear the possibility, if not of a separate peace, at least that the Allies might make certain separate agreements with the Germans. During the final months of the war, everyone understood what the advances of Allied armies meant for postwar Europe’s political landscape. Negotiations in March 1945 in Bern between U.S. intelligence agents and representatives of the Nazis to discuss Germany’s capitulation in Italy only heightened Stalin’s suspicion.
Had it not unfolded amid other conflicts between the Soviet leadership and the Western Allies, especially in regard to Poland, the Bern incident might not have provoked open confrontation. After lengthy wrangling, on 3 April 1945 Stalin sent Roosevelt a sharply worded letter in which he questioned whether it would be possible to “preserve and strengthen trust between our countries.” Now that the archives have been opened, we can see that this letter, unlike many others that went out over his signature, was written entirely by Stalin himself and that he revised it to achieve a sterner tone.
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Despite the growing friction, Roosevelt, who was committed to cooperating with Stalin, responded with restraint. A letter received by Stalin on 13 April 1945 sought to assure him that “minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future.”
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This letter was one of Roosevelt’s final political acts and is part of his testament in regard to relations with the Soviet Union. By the time Stalin received it, Roosevelt was already dead. Stalin appears to have been genuinely saddened by this loss. Nevertheless, he was soon distracted by new and urgent matters.
Worried about his fellow Allies’ rapid advance, Stalin decided to speed up the Soviet takeover of the German capital as much as possible. The attack on Berlin began on 16 April 1945, one month earlier than the date Stalin had given his allies.
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Despite the Soviet forces’ overwhelming advantage in manpower and hardware, this key battle was not easy. Out of more than 2 million soldiers of the Red Army and Polish Second Army who took part in the Berlin operation, more than 360,000 were killed, wounded, or went missing in action.
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German units put up a determined fight in defense of their capital.
The politically motivated decision to push forward the operation created great hurdles for the Red Army. Although delaying the offensive slightly would have made little difference to its outcome, Stalin required the front commanders to rush the advance of their forces at any cost. This accelerated pace, given the need to break through well-defended enemy positions, meant heavier casualties. The record speed of the operation and the concentration of a huge force directed against Berlin necessitated constant adjustments to the overall plan and field directives. According to the head of the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, General Sergei Shtemenko, Supreme Command Headquarters was in a state of turmoil throughout the Berlin operation. The General Staff leadership was summoned to Command Headquarters several times a day, sometimes at odd hours; many instructions were drafted under extreme time pressure; and the lightning speed of events made organized operations difficult.
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But no matter how hurriedly things were done at Headquarters, some historians believe that Stalin could not possibly “react to the changing situation in time.”
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It is unclear whether this lag in the flow of information to and from Headquarters had any real consequences. The performance of the Soviet Supreme Command and Stalin in the Berlin operation has received little scholarly scrutiny.
But no matter how many obstacles were thrown in the Red Army’s path, they were not enough to save the Nazis. On 25 April, Soviet units coming from one direction met U.S. forces coming from the other on the Elbe River. The victors’ absolute numerical superiority and high morale sealed the fate of the Third Reich. Early in the morning on 1 May, Stalin learned through an urgent telephone message from Marshal Zhukov that Hitler had committed suicide in his Berlin bunker the day before.
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On 2 May, the Berlin garrison capitulated. During the night of 8–9 May, the final surrender was formulated and signed by Germany. On 24 June, Moscow held a long-awaited and impressive victory parade. Then, on 27 June, Stalin was awarded the title of generalissimo.
Now the leader of a major world power, in July 1945 Stalin set out for a vanquished Berlin for yet another Big Three conference. No firsthand accounts of Stalin’s last trip outside the Soviet Union have been preserved. What did he see through the windows of his train? With whom did he meet or spend time during this journey? Undoubtedly he knew the upcoming meeting with his fellow leaders would not be an easy one. With victory, the disagreements among the Allies had only grown more contentious. The Soviet dictator would have his first meeting with the new American president, Harry Truman, among whose advisers advocates of a hard line toward the USSR were gaining ascendancy. The Western Allies were displeased by the sovietization of Romania and Bulgaria, to say nothing of unresolved arguments about the Polish government. Stalin did not trust the Americans and British. This mistrust was fanned when Truman privately informed him of American atom bomb tests. The principles of German demilitarization, de-Nazification, and democratization were unanimously approved, but the Allies argued bitterly about everything else. The search for compromises and mutual concessions was spurred by fears that the war-weary world could be plunged into a new confrontation, by Soviet hopes for economic cooperation with the West, and by Western hopes that the USSR would enter the war against Japan. In the end, Stalin managed to finalize an agreement allowing Poland to expand its territory at the expense of Germany and the Soviet Union to incorporate the Konigsberg area. He did not, however, get his way on reparations or on the creation of Soviet bases on the Turkish Straits and the Mediterranean.
Having achieved what he could in Europe, Stalin turned his attention to acquiring Japanese lands and gaining footholds in northern China. In Yalta he had agreed to join the war against Japan two or three months after Germany surrendered. Knowing how eager the United States was for Soviet help, he had been able to extract very advantageous terms. The “status quo” was preserved in the Mongolian People’s Republic, keeping it under de facto Soviet control. The USSR regained the southern portion of Sakhalin, which Russia had lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and a commercial port and military base in northern China, along with the railroad line leading to it. Of fundamental significance to the USSR was the Allies’ agreement to recognize Soviet sovereignty over the strategically important Kuril Islands.
These agreements all remained in force up to the Berlin Conference, but now, for the first time in history, the nuclear factor came into play. The fact that the Americans had an atom bomb gave them much greater leverage. For one thing, fear of this powerful new technology could lead Japan to surrender even before the Soviet Union entered the war. Stalin preferred not to take the risk. He applied the same strategy in the Far East that he had used in Europe, where actual military possession of territory was more meaningful than agreements at the bargaining table. After the United States used its atom bombs against Japan, Stalin ordered the Red Army to launch an urgent offensive, giving his forces a deadline of 9 August 1945 to turn the Yalta concessions into a reality on the ground. The Soviet numerical advantage coupled with high morale and a seasoned fighting force brought about a quick victory. Even after Japan’s capitulation, Soviet forces continued to advance until all territories granted to the USSR at Yalta had been occupied. Then Stalin tried to take a little extra. In the Far East this meant pretentions to jointly occupy Japan proper and share in governing the country using a model similar to the one being applied in Germany. This effort was probably more a test of the new American president’s will than an actual demand, but it was accompanied by military preparations. After being decisively rebuffed by the Americans, Stalin quickly backed off, but not without some resentment. Disputes over Japan remained an irritant in Soviet-American relations for months. Japan itself did not recognize the Soviet capture of the Kuril Islands as legitimate.
For the millions of Soviet people who survived the horrors of war, the disputes and ambitions of politicians were peripheral. The country, finally at peace, could look to the future with hope.
FAMILY
2 March 1953 at the near dacha. The arrival of the daughter.
Once the seriousness of Stalin’s condition became clear, his children, Svetlana and Vasily, were called to the dacha. This was largely a symbolic gesture. Over time, Stalin’s family had come to play less and less of a role in his life.
Stalin met his first wife when he was still a young revolutionary adventurer. Returning to Tiflis in 1905 after escaping from his first exile and traveling through Transcaucasia, he moved in with the Svanidze family. There were five members of this family: Aleksandr Svanidze, who was involved in the revolutionary movement, and his sisters—Sashiko, Kato (Yekaterina), and Masho—as well as Sashiko’s husband, whom Stalin had known in the seminary. Sashiko and Kato were well-known dressmakers in the city who had nothing to do with the revolutionary movement. So when he brought Iosif Jughashvili into the household, Aleksandr tried to keep this outsider as far away as possible from his sisters.
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Nevertheless, an infatuation developed between Iosif and Yekaterina, who were both young and attractive. Kato’s sisters could not have been happy about her involvement with an impoverished seminary dropout. Some light is shed on this period by a letter sent to Stalin forty years later, in 1946. An acquaintance of Stalin and the Svanidze family from his Tiflis days asked for help and rather artlessly implied that Stalin owed him a favor. First, Stalin had used the letter writer’s room for assignations with Yekaterina. Second, when Stalin proposed to Kato and “the relatives were opposed,” “I told her, if you like him, don’t listen to anybody, and she heeded my advice.”
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The Svanidze family was basically presented with a fait accompli, and in July 1906 the couple was married.
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This new family member inevitably entangled the Svanidzes in his world. Soon after the wedding, Yekaterina was arrested as an accomplice of revolutionaries. The matter was resolved thanks to her sister Sashiko, who used her ties to wives of police officers. Yekaterina spent about two months under arrest, but instead of being held in a jail cell, she was kept in a local police chief’s apartment—apparently at the request of the chief’s wife, who was a client of the dressmakers.
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One important argument for closing Yekaterina’s case was that she was pregnant. In March 1907 the future dictator’s first child, Yakov, was born. Family life and revolution did not mix. Iosif moved his wife and son with him to Baku, where Yekaterina fell seriously ill. In November 1907 she died. This was a heavy blow to Iosif. Unable to take adequate care of his son, he left Yakov with his wife’s family.