Stalin: A Biography

Arriving back in Moscow, Stalin kept pestering Vasilevski in Stavka. The response from Vasilevski was that Soviet forces would be ready to attack the Japanese no later than 9 August. But even this was too late. Truman had taken his decision to instruct American bombers to undertake their first military operation with nuclear weapons. On 6 August a B-29 took off from Tinian island to drop a bomb on Hiroshima. A fresh stage in human destructiveness had been reached as an entire city was reduced to rubble by a single military overflight. Still Stalin hoped to include himself in the victory. On 7 August he signed the order for Soviet forces to invade Manchuria two days later. But again he was preempted. The failure of the Japanese to sue for peace led Truman to sanction a further bombing raid by B-29s on 8 August. This time the target was Nagasaki. The result was the same: the city became an instant ruin and the population was annihilated. The Japanese government, at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, surrendered on 2 September 1945. Stalin had lost the race for Tokyo. The Manchurian campaign still went ahead as planned in Moscow and the Kwantung Army was attacked. But really Japan’s fate lay in the hands of President Truman.¹³

The only lever left to Stalin in diplomacy was his impassivity. At a reception for Averell Harriman and the diplomat George Kennan on 8 August he made a point of seeming unconcerned about the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also displayed knowledge about the German and British attempts to build A-bombs. Evidently he wished to let Truman know that Soviet spies were briefing the Kremlin about the development of military nuclear technology worldwide. He deliberately let slip that the Soviet Union had its own atomic-bomb project.¹⁴ Stalin acted his chosen role to perfection. American diplomats knew very well that the Soviet political elite had been depressed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USSR’s pre-eminence with the USA and the United Kingdom as a victorious power had been put into question, and the immense sacrifices offered across the Soviet Union in 1941–5 could soon prove to have brought little benefit to its citizens. Stalin had won many hands without having the aces to finish the game.

44. VICTORY!

In the early hours of 9 May 1945 radio announcer Isaak Levitan read out the news everyone had been greedy for. The war with Germany was over. Popular excitement had been growing for days. When the moment came, the celebrations were tumultuous; they occurred across the USSR and in all the countries which had fought Hitler’s New Order. The Soviet government had arranged a fireworks display for the evening in Moscow, but people had started their festivities hours earlier. Millions thronged the central districts. Everywhere there was dancing and singing. Any man in the green uniform of the Red Army stood a fair chance of being hugged and kissed. A crowd gathered outside the US embassy as the chant went up: ‘Hurrah for Roosevelt!’ The American President was so much identified with the Grand Alliance that few remembered he had died in April. Behaviour was unrestrained. Prodigious drinking occurred; the police overlooked young men urinating against the walls of the Moskva Hotel. Restaurants and cafeterias were packed with customers where food was scarce but vodka plentiful.¹ There was joy that Nazism had been crushed under the tank tracks of the Red Army.

Stalin’s daughter Svetlana phoned him after the radio broadcast: ‘Papa, congratulations to you: victory!’ ‘Yes, victory,’ he replied. ‘Thanks. Congratulations to you too. How are you?’ The estrangement of father and daughter melted in the warmth of the moment.² Khrushchëv was less lucky. When he made a similar phone call, Stalin rebuked him. ‘He made it known,’ Khrushchëv suggested, ‘that I was taking up his valuable time. Well, I simply froze to the spot. What was this about? Why? I took it all badly and cursed myself thoroughly: why had I phoned him? After all, I knew his character and could have expected no good whatever to come of it. I knew he would want to show me that the past was already a stage we had gone through and that he was now thinking about great new matters.’³

Stalin delivered an ‘address to the people’ starting: ‘Comrades! Men and women compatriots!’⁴ Gone were the gentler vocatives of his radio broadcast at the start of Operation Barbarossa. The USSR had been saved and the ‘great banner of freedom of peoples and peace between peoples’ could at last be waved. The Great Patriotic War was over.⁵ But, if his style was solemn, it was also gracious at least for his Russian listeners. At a banquet for Red Army commanders on 24 May he declared:⁶