A. J. P. Taylor, “The European Revolution,” Broadcast from BBC London, The Listener, November 22, 1945, HIA, Lerner Collection, box 38, folder 8.
1. Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (London: Penguin, 2013), 28.
2. William I. Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (New York: Free Press, 2008), 270–272.
3. Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 30–80.
4. Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 108–139.
5. See, for example, Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 243–253.
6. Norman M. Naimark, “The Persistence of ‘the Postwar’: Germany and Poland,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War In Europe, ed. Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 13–29; István Deák, “The Crime of the Century,” New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 2002; also in István Deák, Essays on Hitler’s Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
7. Marcin Zaremba, Wielka trwoga: Polska 1944–1947: Ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków-Warsaw: Znak, 2012). See Giovanni de Luna, La Repubblica inquieta: L’Italia della Costituzione, 1946–1948 (Milan: Feltrenelli, 2017), 19–32.
8. Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans and Allies: Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 187–235.
9. Zaremba, Wielka trwoga, 15.
10. Frank Biess, “Feelings in the Aftermath: Toward a History of Post-war Emotions,” in Histories of the Aftermath, 37–38.
11. Konrad Jarausch, Out of the Ashes: A New History of Europe in the 20th Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 403.
12. Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949 (New York: Penguin, 2015), 471.
13. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: The History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 69–140.
14. Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 294–295; Jeffrey M. Diefendorf, In the Wake of the War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
15. Jan Gross, “War as Revolution,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 21–23.
16. See Tony Judt’s epilogue to The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath, ed. István Deák, Jan Tomasz Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 293–325.
17. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 3, 10.
18. István Deák, Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution During World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), 217.
19. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 95–125. For an assessment of the numbers, see Boris Sokolov, Poteri Sovetskogo Soiuza i Germanii vo Vtoroi Mirovoi Voine (Moscow: Airo-XX, 2011), 24–26.
20. Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 44–45; Michael Neiberg, Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 243–244; David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1996), 117–118.
21. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 129–130.
22. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 131–133.
23. Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 62.
24. See Marc Trachtenberg, “The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 94–132.
25. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 19. See also his “The Emerging Post-Revisionist Thesis on the Origins of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 7 (Summer 1983): 171–190. For a useful rejoinder, see Melvyn Leffler, “The Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know?’ ” The American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (Apr. 1999): 501–524.
26. See Mark Kramer, “Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Establishment of a Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe,” in Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination 1928–1953, ed. Timothy Snyder and Ray Brandon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 270–272.
27. Jonathan Haslam, “Russian Archival Revelations and Our Understanding of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 21 (1997): 219. Geoffrey Roberts, Molotov: Stalin’s Cold Warrior (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2002), 2–4.
28. Norman M. Naimark, “Cold War Studies and New Archival Materials on Stalin,” The Russian Review 61 (Jan. 2002): 11–14. This is also the conclusion of the most up-to-date biographies of Stalin: Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2005); Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017); and Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, vol. 2, Waiting for Hitler (New York: Penguin, 2017).
29. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, trans. and ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 357.
30. Sto sorok besed s Molotovym: Iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow: Terra, 1991), 99.
31. RGASPI, fond (f.) 558, opis’ (op.) 11, delo (d.) 99, listy (ll.) 80–95. See the articles by V. O. Pechatnov in Istochnik, no. 2 (1999): 70–85; and Istochnik, no. 3 (1999): 92–104, that deal with this incident. See also Naimark, “Cold War Studies,” 7–11, which covers several aspects of the relationship between Stalin and Molotov at this time.
32. For a recent discussion of Stalin’s papers, see Kotkin, Stalin, 2:xvi.
33. “Zapiska […] po voprosam budushchego mira i poslevoennogo ustroistva,” Jan. 10, 1944, in Sovetskii faktor v vostochnoi evrope 1944–1953, vol. 1, 1944–1948, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 23–48.
34. See Litvinov to Molotov and Vyshinskii, Jan. 11, 1945, in SSSR i Germanskii Vopros 1941–1949, vol. 1, 22 iiunia 1941g.—8 maia 1945g., ed. G. P. Kynin and I. Laufer (Moscow: Mezhdunar. Otnosheniia, 1996), 595–596.
35. I have explored some of these problems in several essays: “Revolution and Counterrevolution in Eastern Europe,” in The Crisis of Socialism in Europe, ed. Christiane Lemke and Gary Marks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 61–84; “The Soviets, the German Left, and Problems of ‘Sectarianism’ in the Eastern Zone, 1945–1949,” in Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990, ed. David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz (New York: Berghahn, 1998), 421–443; and “The Soviets and the Christian Democrats: The Challenge of a ‘Bourgeois’ Party in Eastern Germany, 1945–1949,” in The Soviet Union and Europe in Cold War, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (London: Macmillan, 1996), 37–47.
36. Notes of a conversation between Stalin and Hebrang, Jan. 9, 1945, in Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1953, vol. 1, 1944–1948, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow-Novosibiirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 1997), 132–133. My emphasis.
37. See Alfred J. Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 3–8. Rieber argues that Stalin’s origins in the borderlands of the Caucasus increased these sensitivities.
38. Sergey Radchenko, “Did Hiroshima Save Japan from Soviet Occupation?,” Foreign Policy, Aug. 5, 2015; see also Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 268–269, 272–274.
39. “Record of Conversation of Comrade I. V. Stalin with … Comrade Thorez,” November 19, 1944, trans. Vladislav Zubok, Wilson Center Digital Archive, International History Declassified, 5.
40. “Record of Conversation of Comrade I. V. Stalin with … Comrade Thorez,” November 18, 1947, trans. Vladislav Zubok, Wilson Center Digital Archives, International History Declassified, 2–3.
41. See Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 9–11, 351–352. Norman Naimark, “Stalin and the Austria Question,” in Austrian Foreign Policy in Historical Context, Contemporary Austrian Studies, vol. 14, ed. Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Michael Gehler (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 353–361.
42. Vojtech Mastny, “NATO in the Beholder’s Eye: Soviet Perspectives and Policies, 1949–1956,” Cold War International History Project Working Papers 35 (2002): 3–5.
43. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 413–414.
44. Stalin and British Labor Leaders, July 8, 1946, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 286.
45. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 413–414.
46. Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary 1944–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 27–29.
47. T. V. Volokitina et.al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa: Stanovlenie politicheskikh regimov sovetskogo tipa, 1949–1953: Ocherki istorii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 35–36. See also Stalin’s discussion with the American priest and Polish-American activist Stanislaus Orlemanski (Apr. 28, 1944) in Vostochnaia Evropa, 1:36–42.
48. Vostochnaia Evropa, 1:457–458. I. I. Orlik, “Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1945 gg.,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 5 (1999): 192.
49. See Norman M. Naimark, “People’s Democracy,” in A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism, ed. Silvio Pons and Robert Service (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 609–610.
50. Gibianskii, “Forsirovanie,” 144.
51. Cited in Dietrich Staritz, “Die SED, Stalin und die Gründung der DDR,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament B5 / 91 (Jan. 25, 1991): 7n20. Wilhelm Pieck’s cryptic notes from the meeting state, “The struggle too open … careful politics necessary (Comparison Teutons).…” Stalin and the SED leadership, Dec.. 14, 1948, Wilhelm Pieck—Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpolitik 1945–1953, ed. Rolf Badstübner and Wilfried Loth (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991), 259.
52. See Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, trans. C. M. Woodhouse (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1958), 303.
53. See Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986), 76–77.
54. Anna Mazurkiewicz, Uchodźcy polityczni z Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w amerykańskiej polityce zimnowojennej (Warsaw-Gdańsk: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2016), 148–150.
55. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (New York: Viking, 2018), 895.
56. See Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (New York: Oxford, 2011), 34–49. For a different view, see Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (New York: Doubleday, 2012), 193–198.
57. Text of a Speech Delivered by J. V. Stalin at an Election Rally in Stalin Electoral Area, Moscow, February 9, 1946 (Washington, DC: Information Bulletin Embassy USSR, 1946), 4.
58. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 29–36.
59. These kinds of questions are particularly important to German and Austrian historians of the early Cold War. See, among others, the work of Gerhard Wettig, Hannes Adomeit, Rolf Steininger, Wolfgang Mueller, and Jochen Laufer.
60. Books by Melvyn P. Leffler stand out in this context: A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), and For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007).
61. See Federico Romero, “Cold War Historiography at the Crossroads,” Cold War History 14, no. 4 (2014): 685–703. See also the Journal of Cold War Studies, edited by Mark Kramer.
62. See, for example, Wolfgang Mueller, Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich 1945–1955 und ihre politische Mission (Vienna, Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2005); Alfred Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland (Pittsburgh, PA: Carl Beck Papers, 1995); Elena Agarossi and Victor Zaslavsky, Stalin and Togliatti: Italy and the Origins of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2011).
63. There are a number of useful exceptions. See, among others, Gerhard Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East-West Conflict, 1939–1953 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); and Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
64. Soveshchaniia Kominforma 1947, 1948, 1949: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 297–303. The English translation of the Cominform documents is available in The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences 1947 / 1948/1949, ed. Giuliano Procacci (Milan: Feltrenelli, 1994.) For Zhdanov’s speech, see 216–251.
65. Cited in Bruce Lockhardt, My Europe (London: Putnam, 1952), 125.
66. Radomír Luža, “Czechoslovakia between Democracy and Communism,” The Cold War in Europe: Era of a Divided Continent, ed. Charles S. Maier (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 97–100.
1. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962), 114.
2. See L. Ia. Gibianskii, “Problemy vostochnoi Evropy i nachalo formirovaniia sovetskogo bloka,” in Kholodnaia voina 1945–1963 gg.: istoricheskaia retrospektiva, ed. N. I. Egorova and A. O. Chubar’ian (Moscow: Inst. Vseobshchei Istorii RAN 2003), 124–125.
3. Scholars will argue differently on this question. See Jonathan Søborg Agger and Trine Engholm Michelsen, “How Strong Was the ‘Weakest Link’: Danish Security Policy Reconsidered,” in War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat perceptions in the East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark, and Andreas Wenger (London: Routledge, 2006), 240–266.
4. See Clemens Meier, “Making Memories: The Politics of Remembrance in Postwar Norway and Denmark,” Ph.D. dissertation, European University Institute, 2007, 125–127.
5. István Deák, Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution During World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2015), 132–133.
6. Bent Jensen, “Soviet Remote Control; the Island of Bornholm as a Relay Station in Soviet-Danish Relations,” in Mechanisms of Power in the Soviet Union, ed. N. E. Rosenfeldt, B. Jensen, and E. Kulavig (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 193.
7. S. G. Holtsmark, “The Limits to Soviet Influence: Soviet Diplomats and the Pursuit of Strategic Interests in Norway and Denmark, 1944–47,” in The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–1953, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 106–112.
8. Memorandum (to Admiral Leahy) by the Assistant to the President’s Naval Aide (Elsey), July 1, 1946, FRUS, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), vol. 1, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 322.
9. Natalia I. Yegorova, “Stalin’s Conception of Maritime Power: Revelations from the Russian Archives,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 2, 159.
10. Yegorova, “Stalin’s Conception of Maritime Power,” 163–164.
11. Aide-Memoire, The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Bevin) to the Secretary of State, Jan. 14, 1946. FRUS, 1945, vol. 5:389.
12. TNA, JIC (46) 1(0) Supplementary T. of R., Tab 1, Jan.–Apr. 1946, “Russia’s Strategic Interests and Intentions,” 19.
13. Bent Jensen, Den lange befrielse: Bornholm besat og befriet, 1945–1946 (Odense: Udgivelsesår, 1996). I use here the Russian translation, B. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie ostrova Bornkhol’m 1945–1946, trans. Boris and Liudmila Vail’ (Moscow: RGGU, 2001), 51–52. Running through Jensen’s study like a red thread is his highly critical stance toward the Danish government for its handling of the Bornholm “affair.” For him, the Danish leaders were too “timid,” “passive,” and “frightened” in their dealings with the Soviets. I disagree with his analysis. Nevertheless, this is a richly researched and extraordinarily detailed book about the Soviet occupation and Danish compliance. It would have been more difficult to write this chapter without his essential contribution to the scholarship.
14. “Maiskii to Molotov (11 January 1944), Zapiska po voprosam budushchego mira i poslevoennogo ustroistva,” AVPRF, f. 6, op. 6, papka 14, d. 145, l. 17.
15. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhenie, 22.
16. See the discussion in Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 22–23.
17. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 23–40.
18. M. Litvinov, “K voprosu o blokakh i sferakh vliiania (January 11, 1945),” and M. Litvinov, “Ob obrashchenii s Germaniei,” in SSSR i germanskii vopros 1941–1949, ed. G. P. Kynin and I. Laufer (Moscow: “Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia,” 1996), vol. 1, 595–598.
19. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 55.
20. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 48.
21. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 166.
22. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 45–55.
23. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 62.
24. Orme Sargent, Foreign Office, to General Ismay, War Office, May 4, 1945. In Bornholm mellem Øst og Vest: En udenrigspolitisk dokumentation krig, ed. Jacob Hornemann (Bornholm: Bornholms Tidende, 2006), 87. I thank Prof. Hornemann for giving me a copy of his essential book of documents and for his advice.
25. C. H. M. Waldeck, Admiralty (minutes), May 8, 1945, 23–24, in Bornholm mellem, 103.
26. Poul Grooss, The Naval War in the Baltic, 1939–1945 (Barnsworth: Seaforth Publishing, 2017), 327.
27. Danish foreign minister Christmas Møller’s summary of conversation with British charge d’affaires, Rodney Gallop, May 21, 1945.; see also telegram May 21, 1945 from charge d’affaires, Rodney Gallop, May 21, 1945, Copenhagen, to Foreign Office. In Bornholm mellem, 169.
28. See articles by Børge Outze, Information, May 5, 1970, Bornholm mellem, 408, and P. C. Florian-Larsen in Politiker, Dec. 8, 1953, Bornholm mellem, 407.
29. Arne Sørensen in B. T. Iørdag, Sept. 10, 1946, in Bornholm mellem, 405.
30. C. H. M. Waldeck, Admiralty, minutes (A. Haigh), May 8, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 103. Planning Office of the 21st Army Group, Plan Directives for Denmark, May 4, 1945, in Bornholm mellem, 83. In this latter document it is clear that SHAEF had the intention of liberating all of Denmark, including Bornholm, but the plans were unspecific.
31. Orme Sargent (Foreign Office) to Winston Churchill, May 9, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 109.
32. Interview with General Dewing, May 5, 1965, Berlingska Tidenda, May 6, 1945, in Bornholm mellem, 400–401. In comments on Dewing’s interview, former governor von Stemann expressed considerable doubts about the veracity of Dewing’s memory given the thorough reports he had forwarded to both the Danish resistance and the Danish foreign ministry.
33. Arne Sørensen in B. T. Iørdag, Sept. 10, 1966, Bornholm mellem, 405.
34. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), fifth series, vol. 411, sixth vol. of Session 1944–45, House of Commons Official Report (London 1945), 191.
35. “Desant posle Pobedy,” Kniga Pamiati Kaliningradskoi oblasti, 1, http://
36. General of the Army, S. M. Shtemenko, who was responsible for supply issues, stated that both the Germans and locals faced starvation, which was no doubt true, but he added that the Soviet general staff decided to seize the island in a humanitarian gesture to save the locals from this fate. S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, kn. 2 (Moscow: Voennoe izd., 1981), 404. Sovinformburo sources stated that there were 12,000 German soldiers on the island, http://
37. Poul Grooss states that “the British could easily have flown to Bornholm and received the German surrender.” Grooss, The Naval War in the Baltic, 330.
38. K. K. Rokossovski, Soldatskii dolg (Moscow: Voennoe izd., 1985), 359.
39. I. F. Orlenko, “Krylatye torpedonostsy: Arkhiv 51-go Minno-torpednogo aviapolka,” http:www
40. Rokossovkii, Soldatskii dolg, 359.
41. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 101, 127.
42. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 125.
43. Stemann to Danish Foreign Ministry, May 14, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 135.
44. Orlenko, “Krylatye torpedonostsy,” 1.
45. A. Basov, “Desant na ostrov Bornkhol’m,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal 8, no. 5 (1966): 34.
46. Boris Vail’, “Ob odnom zabytom epizode voiny na Baltike: Datskii istorik o sovetskii okkupatsii Bornkhol’ma,” Zvezda, no. 8 (1999), reprinted in Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 353. For a similar account of the occupation of Bornholm, see Grooss, The Naval War in the Baltic, 328–331.
47. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 106. One can pretty much dismiss Rokossovskii’s standard mantra: “The residents of Bornholm enthusiastically welcomed their liberators.” Rokossovskii, Soldatskii dolg, 360.
48. Boris Grigor’ev, “Skandinaviia s chernogo khoda, zapiski razvedchika: ot ser’eznogo do kur’eznogo,” erLib.com (2006–2010), 7.
49. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 73. Vail’, “Ob odnom zabytom epizode,” 350.
50. M. Litvinov, “K voprosu o Baltiiskikh Prolivakh i Kil’skom Kanale, (December 18, 1945)” AVPRF, f. 06, op. 7, papka 17, d. 175, l. 164.
51. See the March 1946 discussions between the British and the United States about the Belts and Sound in FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, 393–397.
52. The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State, February 22, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. 6, 699, 702.
53. “11 Maia 1945: Ot Sovetskogo Informbiuro,” Nasha pobeda, http://
54. Governor Stemann to Foreign Ministry, May 23, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 175.
55. Report of Bornholm Office of Intelligence to General Commando (Resistance), Office of Intelligence, May 14, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 133–134.
56. Grooss, The Naval War in the Baltic, 337.
57. One Danish source writes that “Governor von Stemann got along exceptionally well with Colonel Strebkov, who was an esteemed officer of the older school.” Bent Jensen, Bjørnen og haren: Sovjetunionen og Danmark, 1945–1965 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1999), 102.
58. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 132.
59. Telegram from General Dewing to General Eisenhower, SHAEF, May 15, 1947, Bornholm mellem, 139.
60. It was frequently noted that the Bornholmers would have easily voted to join Sweden rather than stay in Denmark at this time. The resentment of the Danish government was extremely high.
61. Stemann to Foreign Ministry, May 14, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 135.
62. FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, 579–580.
63. Notes of Director Nils Svenningsen on the telephone. Conversation with Stemann, May 15, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 137.
64. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 146.
65. See Ensen’s discussion of Danish politics in Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 148–155.
66. Report of Bornholm Office of Intelligence May 14, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 134.
67. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 155.
68. Press attaché Helge Wamberg on meeting with Mikhail Kosov, May 17, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 148, fn 197, which states that the Foreign Ministry asked that all newspapers have stories about Bornholm approved by them before publication.
69. See Århus Stiftstidende, May 8–June 2, 1945, and Inllands-Posten, May 2, 5, 7, 17, 18, and 25, 1945, in HIA, Finn A. Nielsen Collection, box 1.
70. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 238.
71. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 238.
72. Press attaché Helge Wamberg on meeting with Mikhail Kosov, May 17, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 148.
73. Meeting of ministers with Stemann, May 18, 1945. Bornholm mellem, 236.
74. Telegram from Swedish envoy to Moscow (Söderblom), May 17, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 148.
75. Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Northern European Affairs (Cumming) with Danish Minister Henrik de Kauffmann, Oct. 22, 1945, FRUS, vol. 4, 579–580.
76. Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Northern European Affairs (Cumming), Washington DC, Oct. 26, 1945. FRUS, 1945, vol. 4, 580–581.
77. “Sovetskii desant na datskom ostrove Bornkhol’m (Dokladnaia zapiska starshevo leitenanta F. G. Khromushinoi), June 1945 g.,” Istoricheskii arkhiv: nauchno-publikatorskii zhurnal, no. 3 (1996): 128–129.
78. Bo Lidegaard, A Short History of Denmark in the 20th Century (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2009), 199.
79. See telegram December 21, 1945 from the Foreign Office to Ambassador Randall, Bornholm mellem, 287.
80. Bo Lidegaard, Short History of Denmark, 199–200.
81. Land og Folk, May 26, 1945. Bornholm mellem, 280.
82. Stemann to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 26, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 208–209. Stemann to Foreign Ministry, August 27, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 235–236.
83. Stemann to Foreign Minister, Dec. 5, 1945, Bornholm mellem, 278. Vail’, “Od odnom zabytom episode,” 350.
84. Report of Major Streeter’s visit to Bornholm (U.S. Army and Chief of Public Relations, SHAEF, in Denmark), who accompanied Ambassador Døssing. Reported by Ambassador Randall, Copenhagen, to Prime Minister Churchill, June 25, 1945, Bornholm melem, 206. Grigor’ev, “Skandinaviia,” 6–7.
85. Press attaché Helge Wamberg on meeting with Mikhail Kosov, May 17, 1945, Bornholm mellem 148.
86. Stemann to Foreign Ministry, July 19, 1945, Bornholm melem, 223.
87. Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs Note, June 27, 1945, from T. Zhdanova to Section Head M. S. Vetrov, Bornholm mellem, 210.
88. See Hornemann note, Bornholm mellem, 218. Also see Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 208–212.
89. Ambassador Døssing to Foreign Minister, Gustav Rasmussen, Jan. 7, 1946. Notes of conversation with Dekanozov, Jan. 5, 1946. Bornholm mellem, 306.
90. Lidegaard, Short History of Denmark, 200.
91. Summary of meeting of the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, May 11, 1945. Bornholm mellem, 125.
92. G. Lundestad, America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War, 1945–1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 46.
93. Mastny, “Stalin as Warlord,” 6. See also Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford, 1996), 19.
94. In discussions with the Norwegians (July 5, 1945), Molotov put forward “an outright claim” to Bear Island and insisted that Spitsbergen be ruled by a joint Russo-Norwegian condominium to protect Russian communication lines. FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, 91.
95. TNA, JIC (46) 85 (0). Final. Feb. 14, 1947. Chief of Staffs Committee, “Russia’s Strategic Interests and Intentions in Europe,” 31.
96. A report from the British ambassador in Copenhagen describes Danish diplomacy as sometimes irritating, but also as “shrewd” and “clever,” as befits a small country faced by overwhelming power. Ambassador Randall, Copenhagen, to R. M. A. Hankey, Foreign Office, Apr. 15, 1946. Bornholm mellem, 393.
97. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 13.
98. Jensen, “Soviet Remote Control,” 198.
99. TNA, CAB 81 134, Chiefs of Staff, Joint Intelligence sub-committee, “Attitude of Certain Powers in the Event of a Future War,” Aug. 15, 1946, 2. Here the British write: “Fear of Russia amongst the Danes is so great that it is considered most unlikely that the Danes would enter into any military alliance with the Anglo-American powers, at least during the early stage of the conflict.”
100. Denmark: Evacuation of Bornholm, Mar. 15, 1946, 25, CREST, https://
101. V. M. Molotov Diary. Summary of V. M. Molotov’s conversation with Danish ambassador Døssing, March 5, 1946. Bornholm mellem, 337.
102. “The Chargé in Denmark (Ackerson) to the Secretary of State, March 20, 1946,” FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, Denmark, 393.
103. Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 321.
104. Bornholm Tidende, Apr. 5, 1946, Bornholm mellem, 391.
105. As a consequence of growing Cold War tensions, the Danes finally agreed in 1951 to the building of U.S. bases on Greenland.
106. Holtsmark, “The Limits to Soviet Influence,” 120. See Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know?,’ ” The American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999): 514–515.
107. Agger and Michelsen, “How Strong Was the ‘Weakest Link’?,” 248.
108. Mikkel Runge Olesen, “To Balance or Not to Balance: How Denmark Almost Stayed out of NATO 1948–1949,” Journal of Cold War Studies 20, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 63–98.
109. Agger and Michelson, “How Strong Was the ‘Weakest Link’?,” 249–250.
110. See Ensen, Dolgoe osvobozhdenie, 291, on these talks.
111. “Zapis’ Besedy tov. I. V. Stalina s Min. In. Del Danii Rasmussen i Glavoi Torg. Deleg. Danii Printsem Akselem (6 June 1946),” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 305, ll. 1–9.
112. Aleksei Chichkin, Aleksandr Rublev, “Ekho voiny: Bornkhol’m i Khiiumaa,” Nochnoi dozor, June 2, 2008, http:www
113. See the discussion in Vail’, “Ob odnom zabytom episode,” 352–353.
114. Agger and Michelson, “How Strong Was the ‘Weakest Link’?,” 250.
1. Although the Yugoslav party had not formally authorized the mission of Popović and Mugoša, the influence of these two figures was profound, even to the point of participating in the selection of CPA Central Committee members. General CIA Records CREST, “Socialism and Communism in Albania,” Quatreme Internationale 6 (1948): 10–11. CIA-RDP8000809A000600250862-7.
2. On Apr. 1, 1944, Tito wrote to Dimitrov, “We have ties with Greek and Albanian comrades. These ties are still rather weak, but [they] are improving, and we help as much as possible with advice and materials, especially with the Albanian comrades.… [In Macedonia] a delegate of our TsK and a member of our General Staff … coordinate operations of the Albanian, Greek, Yugoslav, and now also Bulgarian partisans.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 6, l. 2.
3. See Greta Delcheva, “Vneshniaia Politika Albanii 1944–1948, “Études Balkaniques (Sophia), no. 4 (1984): 20. The Albanian resistance leadership hoped during the war that this might lead to the formation of a greater Albania. See R. Craig Nation, “A Balkan Union? Southeastern Europe in Soviet Security Policy, 1944–8,” in The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War 1943–53, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 127.
4. Enver Hoxha, The Titoites: Historical Notes (Tirana: “8 Nëntori” Publishing House, 1982), 14.
5. Aleksandar Životić, “Albaniia i iugoslavskoe videnie Balkanskoi federatsii posle Vtoroi mirovoi voiny,” in Balkany v evropeiskikh politicheskikh proektakh xix–xxi vv (Moscow: Institut slavianovedeniia RAN, 2014), 333. The Albanians came to power, wrote one British observer, “by the enthusiasm of youth.” Cited in Elidor Mëhilli, Albania and the Socialist World from Stalin to Mao (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 32.
6. Discussions between I. V. Stalin and E. Hoxha, Mar. 23, 1949, in Sovetskii faktor v vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953, vol. 2, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 70.
7. The Artful Albanian: Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, ed. by Jon Halliday (London: Chatto & Windus, 1986), 96.
8. Litvinov to Molotov, “Al’banskaia Problema,” Feb. 8, 1945, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 7, papka, 17, d. 173, ll. 110–111. The Americans were also convinced that the British were thinking about the partition of Albania, with “the southern part [being] added to Greece.” “Summary of Findings and Recommendations with Respect to the Recognition of ‘The Democratic Government of Albania,’ ” Aug. 15, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 50.
9. “Verbal Note,” Italian embassy in Moscow to Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Jan. 21, 1946 (Russian translation), AVPRF, f. 98, op. 29, papka 33, d. 3, ll. 28–29. Here the Italians asked the Soviets to intervene with the Albanians, who had decided not to allow the mission to come. Leonid Gibianskii suggests that complicated Soviet interests in Italy were determined in part by Moscow’s hope to use Italy (and the Italian communists) to counter British and American influence in the Mediterranean. See Leonid Gibianskii, “The Trieste Issue and the Soviet Union in the 1940s,” Vojna in mir na Primorskem: Od kapitulacije Italije leta 1943 do Londonskega memoranduma leta 1954, ed. Jože Pirjevec et. al. (Koper: Založba Annales, 2005), 365.
10. Hoxha, Titoites, 503.
11. L. Ia. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta: Balkanskii uzel,” part 1, Rabochii klass i sovremennyi mir, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1990): 172–173.
12. Hoxha wrote to UNRRA that “the Nazi occupiers had burned and ravaged entire regions” “pitilessly killing cattle” and “destroying the economy of our country.” See TNA, WO 204 / 9515. Reports from Bari and Albania, Mar. and Apr. 1945. Translation (from French) of Col. Gen Hoxha’s message to UNRRA, Mar. 11, 1945. See also TNA, WO 204 / 9514. Jan. 12, 1945 report of a meeting with Hoxha and Col. D. B. W. Warner about the severe deprivation in the country.
13. Životić, “Albaniia,” 334. Gale Group, U.S. Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State, Apr. 15, 1948. “East European Political Treaties,” U.S. Declassified Documents Online. Tinyurl.galegroup.com/tmyurl/4KNnPX.
14. Leonid Ia. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav conflict and the Soviet Bloc,” in The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 226.
15. Greta Delcheva, “Vneshniaia politika Albanii 1944–1948,” Études Balkaniques 4, no. 20 (1984):18.
16. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict,” 226.
17. D. S. Chuvakhin Diary, Hoxha’s Visit to Belgrade, July 3, 1946, Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, vol. 1, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 472.
18. Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 41.
19. Paskal Milo, “Albania in East-West Relations 1944–1945,” Academy of Sciences Conference paper, Moscow, Mar. 29–31, 1994, 10.
20. The Representative in Albania (Jacobs) to the Secretary of State, Feb. 4, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. 6, 5–6.
21. The Representative in Albania (Jacobs) to the Secretary of State, Feb. 28, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. 6, Albania, 14. Generally, however, the Americans overestimated the Soviet influence vis-à-vis that of the Yugoslavs.
22. Hoyt S. Vandenberg (CIA) to the President, Jan. 16, 1947. U.S. Declassified Documents Online. Gale Group. tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/4KHRo3. See also TNA, CAB, 81 / 130. Chiefs of Staff: J.I. Subcommittee Memorandum, July–Sept. 1945, “Situation in Yugoslavia.” Here the British correctly assess that the Yugoslavs would not want to risk a “collision” with the Anglo-Saxon powers and instead incorporate Albania by peaceful means.
23. Hoxha, Titoites, 15.
24. D. S. Chuvakhin Diary. Hoxha’s visit to Belgrade, July 3, 1946, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 475.
25. Delcheva, “Vneshniaia politika Albanii 1944–1948,” 22.
26. Suslov to Zhdanov, June 13, 1946, “O polozhenii v rukovodstve komm. partii Albanii,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 96, ll. 17–18.
27. Report of American representative Jacobs to Secretary of State, Jan. 29, 1946. FRUS, 1946, vol. 6, 2.
28. Nijaz Dizdarević, Albanski Dnevnik (Zagreb: Globus, 1988), 20–21, 201. Thanks to Leonid Gibianskii for alerting me to this important source.
29. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 175–176.
30. In a Washington, DC, meeting between British Foreign Minister Bevin and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a State Department official noted: “it would be right to seize any opportunity of bringing down the Hoxha regime.” TNA, CRA 28/3/49, Alb 49 / 8. The biographers of the American diplomat, Llewellyn Thompson, write similarly that Bevin sought American commitment “to bring down Hoxha” and wondered if there might be some “kings around that could be put in” to replace him. Eventually, in 1950 and again in 1952, British and American intelligence infiltrated Albanian émigrés into the country to organize uprisings against Hoxha that failed miserably. Jenny Thompson and Sherry Thompson, The Kremlinologist: Llewellyn E. Thompson: America’s Man in Cold War Moscow (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2018), 71.
31. L. Ia. Gibianskii, “Proekty federatsii na Balkanakh v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny i v nachale kholodnoi voiny,” in Balkany v evropeiskikh politicheskikh proektakh XIX–XX vv., ed. R. P. Grishin (Moscow: Institut Slavianovedeniia RAN, 2014), 302. Halliday, ed., Artful Albanian, 92.
32. FRUS, 1945, vol. 4, 51.
33. Delcheva, “Vneshniaia politika Albanii,” 22–23n47.
34. Molotov’s Diary, Sept. 16, 1946, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 8, papka 2, ll. 9–13.
35. Notes of Conversation with Enver Hoxha, Sept. 21, 1946, Diary of D. S. Chuvakhin, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 96, ll. 89–91.
36. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict,” 226.
37. The transcript is cited in Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 176.
38. Molotov Diary, July 15, 1947. Talks with Enver Hoxha, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 9, papka 2, d. 11, ll. 70–79.
39. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict,” 226. Hoxha, Titoites, 348.
40. In one such meeting with the Albanian envoy, M. Prifti, Molotov indicated that the Albanians were on the same path as the peoples of the Soviet Union, who had also been deprived of the ability to develop their own culture before the Revolution. From Molotov’s Diary, Apr. 26, 1947, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 8, papka 21, d. 1, l. 34.
41. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 176.
42. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 175–176.
43. Halliday, ed., Artful Albanian, 102.
44. See discussions between Gagarinov and Spiru, Nov. 19, 1947, in Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 737, fn. 3, where the editors state, based on a foreign ministry document, that Spiru shot himself in front of his coworkers on Nov. 21.
45. Halliday, ed., Artful Albanian, 104. Gagarinov and Spiru, Nov. 19, 1947, in Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 735–737.
46. Blendi Fevziu, Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania, ed. and intro. Robert Elsie, trans. Majlinda Nishku (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 138.
47. Gagarinov and Spiru, Nov. 19, 1947, in Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 736.
48. Daniel Isaac Perez, “Between Tito and Stalin: Enver Hoxha, Albanian communists, and the assertion of Albanian national sovereignty, 1941–1948,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University 2017, 220.
49. Discussions between Hoxha and Molotov, June 24, 1948, in Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 905.
50. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 177–179. Gibianskii has done an effective job of reconstructing the exchanges during the Popović mission from the Serbian archives.
51. Ibid.
52. R. Craig Nation thinks that the Yugoslavs were anxious to proceed with the incorporation of Albania into their federation because they worried about the Soviet interest in Albania. Nation, “A Balkan Union?,” 134.
53. Daniel Perez, “Albanian-Yugoslav Relations, 1945–1949,” unpublished manuscript, 2010, 17–18.
54. T. Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa: Stanovlenie politicheskikh rezhimov sovetskogo tipa (1949–1953). Ocherk istorii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008), 502.
55. Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 38.
56. See Delcheva, “Vneshniaia politika Albanii,” 22.
57. See Pukhlov and Manchkha on the KPA, May 15, 1948, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 871.
58. Halliday, ed., Artful Albanian, 106.
59. Fevziu, Enver Hoxha, 139.
60. Leonid Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 295.
61. Ivo Banac, With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 40.
62. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 143.
63. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 146.
64. Leonid Gibianskii has reproduced and analyzed these documents in “U nachala konflikta,” 180–181.
65. Perez, “Between Stalin and Tito: Albanian Communists and the Yugoslav-Cominform Split,” Dec. 1947–June 1948,” Workshop Paper, Stanford University, Apr. 2010, 6.
66. Životić, “Albaniia,” 344.
67. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict and the Cominform,” 296. Zapisnici sa sednica politbiroa Centralnog komiteta KPJ (1945–1948), ed. Branko Petranović (Belgrade: Arhiv Jugoslavije, 1995), 234.
68. Životić, “Albaniia,” 347.
69. The account of the Feb. 10 meeting is taken from the Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 10 (1998): 128–134. This includes the original translation of the report of Milovan Djilas from the Yugoslav archives, as well as substantial citations from the Bulgarian and Soviet versions of the same meeting. A translation of the Bulgarian account is available in The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) Feb. 10, 1948, 436–444. The fullest documentation of the Feb. 10 meeting is in L. Ia. Gibianskii with V. K. Volkov, ed., “Na poroge pervogo raskola v ‘sotsialisticheskom lagere’: Peregovory rukovodiashchikh deiatelei SSSR, Bolgarii i Iugoslavii. 1948 g.” Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 4 (1997): 92–123. In the following discussion, where I quote some of these documents, I reproduce the original underlining that is preserved in the published versions, but not the brackets in the published version, which indicate where words are abbreviated in the original.
70. Hoxha, Titoites, 445; Halliday, ed., Artful Albanian, 107. Here Hoxha claimed that this was the first time he had contacted Stalin to get his backing in a confrontation with Yugoslavia. He was especially unsettled by Kuprešanin’s announcement of taking over the military effort on the Greek border. The Soviets learned about Tito’s move from their Ambassador Lavrent’ev in Belgrade. See also Perez, “Between Stalin and Tito,” 20.
71. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 99.
72. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,”105. Djilas notes.
73. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 93.
74. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 180–182.
75. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 183.
76. Dimitrov Diary, Feb. 10, 1948, 440.
77. Notes of Vasil Kolarov on Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting with Stalin, Feb. 10, 1948. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 96. Emphasis in the original.
78. Notes of Vasil Kolarov on Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting with Stalin, Feb. 10, 1948. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 97.
79. Notes of Vasil Kolarov on Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting with Stalin, Feb. 10, 1948. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 98. Emphasis in the original.
80. Notes of Vasil Kolarov on Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting with Stalin, Feb. 10, 1948. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 100.
81. Kolarov notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 100.
82. Gibianskii, “U nachala konflikta,” 184.
83. TNA, JIC (46) 104(0). Annex: Foreign Assistance to the Greek Communists,” Dec. 4, 1946, 3–4.
84. See Basiles Kontes and Spyridon Sfetas, Empylios polemos: engrapha apo ta Giounkoslavika kai Voulgarika archeia (Thessalonike: Parateretes, 2000), 62–65.
85. Russian translation of a handwritten report by Greek communist “Ilia,” Oct. 1948, in RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 479, ll. 7–8. Since this was written after the Tito-Stalin split, one might doubt the author’s judgment.
86. Dimitrov Diary, Feb. 10, 1948, 442. Kolarov notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 101.
87. Early on, the Greek communists in the national front had supported Athens’ claim to Northern Epirus, though they assured Hoxha that this was only a tactical maneuver.
88. Dimitrov Diary, Feb. 10, 1948, 441.
89. Djilas notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 106.
90. Djilas notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 107.
91. Djilas notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 109.
92. Djilas notes, “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 103.
93. Životić, “Albaniia,” 349. “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 109.
94. Molotov’s diary, Reception for Kardelj, Feb. 11, 1948, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 10, papka 1, d. 2, l. 41.
95. Tito to Djilas and Kardelj, Feb. 13, 1948 in “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 113.
96. Tito to Djilas and Kardelj, Feb. 13, 1948 in “Na poroge pervogo raskola,” 113.
97. Minutes of politburo, Feb. 19, 1948, in Zapisnici sa sednica politbiroa, 234. Djilas notes.
98. Minutes of politburo, Feb. 19, 1948, in Zapisnici sa sednica politbiroa, 234–235. Djilas notes.
99. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” 298.
100. Zapisnici sa sednica politbiroa, 236–241.
101. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” 299. At the Central Committee plenum of the Yugoslav party, Apr. 12–13, 1948, Žujović attacked the leadership for its anti-Soviet stance but found no supporters. He was expelled from the Central Committee and the party and arrested on May 7.
102. Molotov’s diary, Mar. 24, 1948, Reception of Yugoslav Ambassador Popovich, AVPRF, f. 06, op. 10, papka 1, d. 3, ll. 98–103.
103. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” 300.
104. Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” 300–301.
105. Letter of Tito and Kardelj to Stalin and Molotov, Apr. 13, 1948, “Sekretnaia sovetsko-iugoslavskaia perepiska 1948 goda,” Voprosy istorii, no. 4 (1992): 158.
106. Perez, “Between Tito and Stalin,” 38–40.
107. Cited in Daniel Perez, “Albanian-Yugoslav Relations, 1945–1958,” manuscript, 33.
108. Perez, “Between Tito and Stalin,” 44.
109. Cited in Životić, “Albaniia,” 350, 353.
110. Perez, “Between Tito and Stalin,” 50–52.
111. Životić writes that Hoxha was “constantly” talking to Chuvakhin about Yugoslav “ideas, mistakes, and demands.” Životić, “Albaniia,” 348.
112. Hoxha, Titoites, 480.
113. Hoxha, Titoites, 492–495.
114. Cited in Perez, “Albanian-Yugoslav Relations,” 35. According to Perez, the original document (though not the published version) was also signed by Xoxe. Perez, “Between Tito and Stalin,” 288.
115. The Secretary of State to the Embassy in Greece, June 9, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 4, The Greek Frontier Question, 249.
116. The Chargé in Yugoslavia (Reams) to Secretary of State, July 7, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 4, 1090. Životić, “Albaniia,” 356.
117. CIA Research Reports, The Soviet Union, 1946–1976, Reel 1, Central Intelligence Agency, Memorandum for the President, June 30, 1948, 1. This perception was also widespread among European communists. Later critics of the Yugoslavs blamed them for having a colonialist attitude toward the Albanians. Group of Spanish Communists on the Political Situation in Yugoslavia, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 494, l. 29.
118. Molotov’s diary, discussion with Hoxha, June 24, 1948, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 1, 905.
119. Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao, 44.
120. CREST, General CIA Records, CIA Information Report, “Consequence of Albania’s Rift with Yugoslavia,” May 16, 1949.
121. Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao, 45–46.
122. Mehmet Shehu on the occasion of the 69th Birthday of Stalin, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 656.
123. Životić, “Albaniia,” 356–358.
124. CREST, General CIA Records, “Information Report Albania / Yugoslavia,” Nov. 5, 1948.
125. Quote in “Report of Milovan Djilas about Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav meeting, Feb. 10, 1948,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 10 (1997), 131.
126. Halliday, ed., The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, 122.
127. Discussion between Stalin and E. Hoxha, Sovetskii faktor, vol. 2, 70.
128. “Ob okazanii pomoshchi albanskomu pravitel’stvu v organizatsii raboty organov Ministerstva vnutrennikh del Albanii,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 40, l. 146.
129. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 40, l. 216.
130. Shifrovka Malenkov to Stalin, Sept. 16, 1948, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 112. l. 3.
131. Chuvakhin’s Diary. Meeting with Hoxha, Apr. 25, 1949, in Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 2, 83. According to the agreement, only individual members of the Greek Central Committee and heavily wounded fighters of the “Democratic Army” would be allowed to cross the border. Everyone else would be arrested by the Albanians. There continued, however, to be serious problems between the Albanian and Greek parties over the tactics of the Greek partisans. The Albanians repeatedly appealed to Moscow for help in this connection. See Hoxha and Chuvakhin, Aug. 2, 1949, and Hoxha to Stalin, Nov. 16, 1949, in Sovetskii faktor, vol. 2, 151, 210. The Americans spotted an opening with Albania in early May 1948, as the Albanians expressed to them their “desire to end tensions on the Greek-Albanian border.” Secretary of State to the Embassy in Greece, FRUS, 1948, vol. 4, 249.
132. “ ‘Liudiam svoistvenno oshibat’sia’: Iz vospominanii M. Rakosi” Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 3 (1997): 126.
133. Nikos Zahariadis, “Tito Clique’s Stab in the Back to People’s Democratic Greece,” For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy, Aug. 1, 1949, 6. Given the desire of the Greek communists to please Stalin, one should read with a grain of salt these Greek accusations against the Yugoslavs after the split.
134. Stavros Dagios, E diethnes diastase tes rexes E. Hohxa—J. B Tito kai e lexe toy Ellenikoy Emphyloioy Polemoy (1945–1949) (Thessalonike: Parateretes, 2004), 247.
135. Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2, 1945–1964, ed. Sergei Khrushchev, trans. George Shriver and Stephen Shenfield (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 2008), 158–159.
136. Banac, With Stalin against Tito, 247. For a comprehensive history of Goli Otok, see Martin Previši0, Povijest Golog otoka (Zagreb: Fraktura, 2019).
137. See Mark Kramer, “Stalin, the Split with Yugoslavia, and Soviet-East European Efforts to Reassert Control, 1948–1953,” Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination 1928–1953, ed. Timothy Snyder and Ray Brandon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 298.
138. Stalin’s discussion with Chervenkov, Damianov, and Iugov, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 2, 201. On the Slavic struggle against German fascism, see RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1011, l. 1.
139. See Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 10 (Mar. 1998): 1.
140. See Fevziu, Enver Hoxha, 50–54. Fevziu paints a portrait of Hoxha as an extremely devious and violent politician who systematically eliminated all of his major opponents. On Hoxha’s brutality, see also Arshi Pipa, Albanian Stalinism: Ideo-Political Aspects (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1990), 10.
141. Central Intelligence Group, “Albanian Political Situation,” Aug. 18, 1947, 3, https://
1. Kimmo Rentola, “Great Britain and the Soviet Threat in Finland, 1944–1951,” Scandinavian Journal of History 37, no. 2 (May 2012): 172–174.
2. Mikko Majander, “Post-Cold War Historiography of Finland,” in The Cold War and the Nordic Countries: Historiography at a Crossroads, ed. Thorsten B. Olesen (Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2004), 60.
3. Kees Boterbloem, The Life and Times of Andrei Zhdanov, 1896–1948 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 200–205.
4. Fred Singleton, A Short History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 137.
5. James H. Billington, “Finland,” in Communism and Revolution: The Strategic Uses of Political Violence, ed. Cyril E. Black and Thomas P. Thornton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 128–130. See also John H. Hodgson, Communism in Finland: A History and Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 225–231.
6. Kimmo Rentola, “Generations of Finnish Communists,” in Twentieth Century Communism, vol. 4 (2012), 148. Tuomas Tepora, “Changing Perceptions of 1918: World War II and the Postwar Rise of the Left,” in Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy, ed. Tuomas Tepora and Aapo Roselius (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 382.
7. S. Diullen, “Gde prokhodit granitsa? Mesto Finliandii v zone bezopasnosti SSSR, 1944–1956 gg.,” M. M. Narinskii, ed., SSSR, Frantsiia i ob’edinenie Evropy, 1945–1957: Sbornik nauchnykh statei (Moscow: MGIMO, 2008), 123. See also Istochnik, no. 4 (1995), 114–115.
8. Litvinov to Molotov and Vyshinskii, Jan. 11, 1945, in SSSR i germanskii vopros 1941–1949, vol. 1, 22 iiunia 1941g.–8 maia 1945g., ed. G. P. Kynin and I. Laufer (Moscow: Mezhdunar. Otnosheniia, 1996), 595–596.
9. Zapiska I. Maiskogo, “O zhelatel’nykh osnovakh budushchevo mira,” Jan. 11, 1944, Istochnik 4, no 17 (1995):125–126.
10. Cited in Jukka Nevakivi, “The Soviet Union and Finland after the War, 1944–53,” The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (London: Macmillan, 1996), 90.
11. Tripartite Luncheon Meeting, Dec. 1, 1943, in FRUS: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, vol. 3, The Tehran Conference (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), 590–592. Roosevelt and especially Churchill tried to ameliorate Stalin’s demands for reparations from the Finns.
12. Tripartite Luncheon Meeting, The Tehran Conference, 590.
13. Washington DC to Foreign Office, Oct. 1, 1944, cited in “Directive for British Section of Allied Control Commission in Finland, 115B,” in TNA, WO/06/433.
14. Cited in Tuomo Polvinen, Between East and West: Finland in International Politics, ed. and trans. D. G. Kirby and Peter Henning (Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1986), 283.
15. “Directive for British Section of Allied Control Commission.” TNA, WO/O6/433.
16. See Diullen, “Gde prokhodit granitsa?,” 125–127, on the Swedish factor in Soviet thinking about Finland.
17. Juka Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice 1944–1947: Why Was Finland Not Sovietized,” Scandinavian Journal of History 19, no. 2 (1994): 95.
18. TNA, JIC (46) 85 (0) Chiefs of Staff Committee, “Russia’s Strategic Interests and Intentions in Europe,” Feb. 14, 1947, 28.
19. Discussions of Zhdanov with Leino, Kuusinen, and Pessi, May 10, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 63, l. 33.
20. Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice,” 95.
21. “Interview between Marshal Stalin and Molotov and Finnish Cultural Delegation on 10th Oct. [1945], Report by Mme. Hertta Kuusinen,” Enclosure from Shepherd to Bevin, Oct. 19, 1945, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office, Confidential Print, Part III. From 1940–1945, vol. 6, series A, Soviet Union and Finland, ed. Anita Prazmowska (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1999), 195. Diullen, “Gde prokhodit granitsa?,” 117–118. Polvinen, Between East and West, 166.
22. Alfred J. Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland (Pittsburgh, PA: Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, 1995), 18.
23. Zhdanov to Stalin and Molotov about visit with Mannerheim, Jan. 18, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 54, ll. 2–3.
24. Molotov to Zhdanov, Jan. 20, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 54, l. 5.
25. Polvinen, Between East and West: Finland in International Politics 1944–1947, 61. See George Maude, Aspects of the Governing of the Finns (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 162.
26. Marvin Rintala, Four Finns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 94.
27. See Efraim Karsh, “Finland: adaptation and conflict,” International Affairs 62, no. 2 (1986): 267.
28. Cited in Risto E. J. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security through Defence, 1944–89 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 12.
29. Maude, Aspects of the Governing of the Finns, 168.
30. That policy—sometimes called the “Paasikivi-Kekkonen line” was continued by Urho Kekkonen, the leader of the Agrarian Party and long-time president of Finland from 1956–1982. Kekkonen moderated his anti-Soviet stance by the end of the war, and in Stockholm in Dec. 1943, spoke out in favor of a policy of “good neighborliness” toward the Soviet Union. Singleton, Short History, 137.
31. Thorsten V. Kalijarvi, “Finland since 1939,” The Review of Politics 10, no. 2 (1948): 219.
32. Sir Clark Kerr, Moscow to Foreign Office, Sept. 8, 1944. Finnish Armistice Terms.… TNA, WO/06/4333.
33. Kerr, Moscow to Foreign Office, TNA, WO/06/4333.
34. Diullin, “Gde prokhodit granitsa?,” 111. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 8.
35. Sir V. Mallett, Stockholm to Foreign Office, Sept. 18, 1944. TNA, WO/06/4333.
36. Osmo Jussila, Seppo Hentilä, Jukka Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy to a Modern State: A Political History of Finland since 1809, trans. David and Eva-Kaia Arter (London: Hurst and Company), 219.
37. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 5, 14.
38. “Finland: Political Review, 1945,” in Shepherd to Bevin, Mar. 12, 1946, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 1, Northern Affairs, January 1946–June 1946, 234. Karsh, “Finland: Adaptation and Conflict,” 174.
39. Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland, 18.
40. Shepherd to Bevin, Oct. 10, 1945, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 6, series A, Soviet Union and Finland, 182.
41. Sir A. Clark Kerr, Moscow to Foreign Office, Sept. 18, 1944. TNA, WO/0614333, “Finnish Armistice terms, Mar. 44–Dec. 44.” This phrase describes Molotov’s attitude.
42. Rintala, Four Finns, 97–105.
43. Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy to a Modern State, 225.
44. Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland, 15. Polvinen, Between East and West, 29.
45. Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice 1944–1947,” 19.
46. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. Michael Petrovich (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962), 155.
47. Rieber writes that Zhdanov “arrived in Finland determined to efface the impression of him as a hard, ruthless, uncompromising, ideological fanatic.” Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland, 14.
48. The U.S. Representative in Finland (Hamilton), to the Secretary of State, Apr. 28, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 613–614.
49. RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 975, l. 124.
50. Zhdanov on “The International Situation,” Soveshchaniia Kominforma 1947, 1948, 1949: Dokumenty i materialy, ed. G. M. Adibekov, A. Di B’iadzho, et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 158.
51. James Ford Cooper, On the Finland Watch: An American Diplomat in Finland During the Cold War (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 2000), 38.
52. Shepherd to Eden, Feb. 6, 1945, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office, vol. 6, Soviet Union and Finland, 24.
53. Cited in Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice,” 104.
54. Zhdanov speech at election campaign in Leningrad, Feb. 6, 1946,” RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 975, l. 123.
55. Cited in: The Minister in Finland (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State, Mar. 15, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 4, 608.
56. Rintala, Four Finns, 97, 106.
57. Talks between Zhdanov and Pessi, Aptonen, and Kuusinen, Jan. 23, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, dd. 53–58, l. 11.
58. Talks between Zhdanov and Leino, Kuusinen, and Pessi, Mar. 28, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 63, ll. 1–2.
59. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 168.
60. See Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice 1944–1947,” 101–102.
61. The Secretary of Mission in Finland (Higgs) to the Secretary of State, Jan. 25, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 600.
62. Rentola, “The Finnish Communists and the Winter War,” 600.
63. Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice,” 105.
64. Rentola, “Great Britain and the Soviet Threat in Finland,” 176.
65. RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 74, l. 1.
66. RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, dd. 53–58, l. 9.
67. RGASPI, f. 77 op. 3, dd. 53–58, l. 13.
68. Cited in Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland, 24.
69. There was some modest aid from the British Labor Party to the Finnish Social Democratic party, but the British in general were careful not to encourage the Finns to oppose Soviet wishes because there was no way they were going to bail the Finns out of potential trouble. Rentola, “Great Britain and the Soviet Threat in Finland,” 174.
70. The U.S. Representative in Finland (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State, Mar. 23, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 611.
71. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 18.
72. Karsh, Finland: adaptation and conflict, 174.
73. Shepherd to Eden, July 4, 1945, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 6, Soviet Union and Finland Jan. 1945–Dec. 1945, 21.
74. “Finland: Political Review, 1945,” in Shepherd to Bevin, Mar. 12, 1946, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 1, Northern Affairs, Jan. 1946–June 1946, 234–235.
75. Iu. Komissarov, ‘Liniia Paasikivi—Kekkonena’: istoriia, sovremennost’, perspektivy (Moscow: Mezhdunar. Otnosheniia, 1985), 19. Pentillä, Finland’s Search for Security, 19.
76. ACC Helsinki to War Office, June 30, 1945. TNA, WO 106 / 4334B.
77. Secretary of Mission in Finland (Higgs) to the Secretary of State, Jan. 25, 1945. FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 599.
78. Shepherd to Bevin, Nov. 22, 1945, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 6, 196.
79. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 183–185.
80. Zhdanov to Stalin and Molotov, Oct. 10, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 56, l. 58.
81. Karsh, Finland: adaptation and conflict, 181–182.
82. Zhdanov to Molotov, Jan. 29, 1946, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 73, l. 36. Zhdanov told Mannerheim that he personally guaranteed that the Marshal would not be tried after he signed the armistice.
83. The United States Representative in Finland (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State, Apr. 25, 1945. FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 612.
84. Discussions of Zhdanov with Leino and Kuusinen, Aug. 21, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 70, l. 3.
85. Zhdanov to Stalin and Molotov, Oct. 10, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 56, l. 61. On Oct. 16, 1945, Molotov answered Zhdanov that it should not be surprising that the Finns resisted trying their war criminals, and that Zhdanov should make a firm recommendation in this matter, since he was the one on the ground in Finland (l. 101). Zhdanov then recommended calling in the members of the court to the ACC and reminding them of Finland’s obligations to try war criminals. Molotov answered in the negative, stating that the Soviets then could be accused of interfering in the independence of the judiciary. Zhdanov to Stalin and Molotov, Nov. 20, 1945, and Molotov to Zhdanov, Nov. 24, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 78, ll. 47, 50.
86. Zhdanov and Paasikivi, Dec. 12, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 77, ll. 40–44.
87. Zhdanov to Stalin and Molotov, Nov. 20, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 78, l. 48.
88. Zhdanov with Leino and Kuusinen, Dec. 11, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77. op. 3, d. 80, l. 140.
89. See Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi, From a Grand Duchy to a Modern State, 227. Zhdanov noted about the possibility of not trying Tanner: “A judicial process against the war criminals without Tanner: this would absolutely be without the person who sat in the driver’s seat [bez shofera].” Zhdanov and Kekkonen, Oct. 15, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 73, l. 26.
90. Chargé in Finland (Hulley) to Secretary of State, Dec. 14, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 6, 623.
91. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 185.
92. Cited in Anatole G. Mazour, Finland Between East and West (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1956), 175. For a fuller history, see Mikko Majander, “The Limits of Sovereignty: Finland and the Question of the Marshall Plan in 1947,” Scandinavian Journal of History 19, no. 4 (1994): 309–326.
93. Zhdanov with Pessi, Kuusinen, Leino, Mal’berg, and Miakinen, Feb. 7, 1947, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 84, l. 82.
94. Zhdanov and representatives of Seim factions, Feb. 8, 1947, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 86, ll. 1–2.
95. Majander, “Post-Cold War Historiography,” 47.
96. Rentola, “Great Britain and the Soviet Threat in Finland,” 176.
97. Zhdanov and Leino, Sept. 29, 1945, RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 73, l. 2.
98. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 204n184.
99. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 203.
100. New York Times, Feb. 14, 1947. Cited in Karsh, “Finland: adaptation and conflict,” 268.
101. Singleton, Short History, 144.
102. See Karsh, “Finland: Adaptation and Conflict,” 269.
103. Cited in Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 30.
104. Penttillä, Finland’s Search for Security, 31.
105. Cited in Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 155.
106. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 200.
107. J. A. S. Grenville and Bernard Wasserstein, eds. The Major International Treaties, 1914–1973: A History and Guide with Texts (London: Methuen, 1974), 146–147.
108. Cited in T. V. Androsova, “Finliandiia v planakh SSSR kontsa 1940-kh—serediny 1950-kh godov: Politiko-ekonomicheskii aspekt,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1999): 51. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 31.
109. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 205.
110. Singleton, Short History, 145.
111. Cited in Maude, Aspects of Governing, 208.
112. Cited in Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi, From a Grand Duchy to a Modern State, 248.
113. Cited in Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi, From a Grand Duchy to a Modern State, 248.
114. Penttilä, Finland’s Search for Security, 34.
115. Androsova, “Finliandiia v planakh SSSR,” 50.
116. Nevakivi, “A Decisive Armistice,” 113.
117. Maude, Aspects of Governing, 196.
118. Allan A. Kuusisto “The Paasikivi Line in Finland’s Foreign Policy,” The Western Political Quarterly 12, no. 1, part 1 (Mar. 1959): 43n25.
119. Rieber, Zhdanov in Finland, 16.
1. William C. Bullitt, “The World from Rome,” Life, Sept. 4, 1944, 100.
2. Memorandum of Deputy Foreign Minister I. M. Maiskii to Molotov, Jan. 11, 1944, SSSR i Germanskii Vopros, 22 iiunia 1941 g.–8 maia 1945 g., vol. 1, ed. G. P. Kynin and I. Laufer (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 1996), 340.
3. Salvatore Sechi, “Die neutralistische Versuchung: Italien und die Sowjetunion 1943–1948,” Italien und die Großmächte 1943–1949, ed. Hans Woller (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988), 95.
4. Silvio Pons, “Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe,” Journal of Cold War Studies 3 (2001): 4. Dagli Archivi di Mosca: L’URSS, il Cominform e il PCI (1943–1951), ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (Rome: Carocci editore, 1998), 31–32.
5. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1939, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), Mar. 5, 1994, 304. Emphasis in the original.
6. Silvio Pons, “A Challenge Let Drop: Soviet Foreign Policy, the Cominform and the Italian Communist Party,” The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 255.
7. Elena Aga-Rossi and Victor Zaslavsky, “The Soviet Union and the Italian Communist Party, 1944–8,” The Soviet Union and Europe, ed. Gori and Pons, 164.
8. Robert Service, Comrades: A History of World Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 265–266; Aga-Rossi and Zaslavsky, “The Soviet Union and the Italian Communist Party,” 164.
9. New York Times, Sept. 8, 1947, 5. There is some question whether this was actually the case.
10. For example, Aleksandr Bogomolov, who was Soviet representative in the Allied Advisory Council in Italy, attacked Togliatti’s moderate policies and his lack of preparation for what he believed was the inevitable social revolution. Pons, “Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War,” 10.
11. Remo Roncati, Verso la giustizia sociale: le ragioni di Alcide De Gasperi (Chieti: Solfanelli, 2015), 179.
12. Piero Craveri, De Gasperi (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 2006), 152–153.
13. Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949 (New York: Penguin, 2015), 495.
14. “The Tasks of the Party in the Current Situation: Speech at Florence,” Oct. 3, 1944, Palmiro Togliatti, On Gramsci, and Other Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), 86.
15. De Gasperi to Togliatti, Sept. 12, 1944, in De Gasperi scrive: Corrispondenza con capi di Stato, cardinali, uomini politici, giornalisti, diplomacy, vol. 2 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1974), 207–209.
16. See Giovanni De Luna, La Repubblica inquieta: L’Italia della Costituzione, 1946–1948 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2017), 185.
17. Cited in Craveri, De Gasperi, 269.
18. Speech to the Cadres of the Communist Organization of Naples, Apr. 11, 1944,” (trans. Derek Boothman), in Palmiro Togliatti, On Gramsci, 42.
19. Fond Instituto Gramsci (hereafter FIG), Direzione Verbale (1944–1958), Fonda Mosca, Section 12, Meetings of the Party Directorate, PCI, Jan. 21, 1948, Feb. 11, 1948, Togliatti to Regional Secretaries, Feb. 23, 1946.
20. See De Luna, La Repubblica inquieta, 228–229.
21. Michael Straight, “Italy: Talks of Peace and Civil War,” New Republic, Nov. 24, 1947, 9.
22. Sechi, “Die neutralistische Versuchung,” 107–108.
23. For De Gasperi’s trip to the United States, see Craveri, De Gasperi, 271–277.
24. Cited in Robert A. Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Elections of 1948 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 139.
25. Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy, 75.
26. Craveri, De Gasperi, 157.
27. Craveri, De Gasperi, 322.
28. Craveri, De Gasperi, 267.
29. Donald Sassoon, Contemporary Italy: Politics, Economy and Society since 1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 61, 71n3.
30. Pons, “Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War,” 16.
31. Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, Aug. 8, 1947, 422.
32. Cited in Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War 1936–1941, 219–220.
33. On Stalin’s role in the establishment of the Cominform and in the meeting itself, which he closely followed from Moscow, see the analytical articles in: The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences 1947/1948/1949, ed. G. Procacci (Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1994): Grant Adibekov, “How the First Conference of the Cominform Came About,” 3–11; Anna Di Biagio, “The Establishment of the Cominform,” 11–35. Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 31–32.
34. Eugenio Reale, Nascita del Cominform (Milan: Mondadori, 1958), 17. Translation from HIA, Eugenio Reale Collection, box 1. Eugenio Reale, “The Whole Truth,” 2.
35. The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences 1947/1948/1949, 37–423. Zhdanov, for example, responded to Longo’s speech by asking “Has the party a plan of attack, or does it intend to go on keeping to the defensive, waiting for the reaction to bar the Party and force it underground.” He states, additionally: “You want to be greater parliamentarians than the parliamentarians.” 195, 197.
36. Longo in “Summary Report” on the Cominform meeting, in FIG, Directorate of PCI, Oct. 7–10, 1947, 1.
37. On Terracini’s statement, see New York Times, Oct. 23, 1947, on Longo’s criticism of Terracini’s interview see L’Unità, Oct. 24, 1947.
38. Claire Neikind, “The Communist Show of Strength,” New Republic, Dec. 1, 1947, 8.
39. Craveri, De Gasperi, 323.
40. Report on the discussion between Secchia and Stalin, Dec. 14, 1947, Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 289.
41. Cited in Sechi, “Die neutralistische Versuchung,” 127.
42. I. V. Stalin i Moris Torez: Zapis’ besedy v Kremle, 1947g.,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1996): 14.
43. Zhdanov and Secchia, Dec. 12, 1947, in Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 279. See also Sassoon, Contemporary Italy, 279.
44. Zhdanov and Secchia, Dec. 12, 1947, in Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 277. Robert Conquest writes that these funds were delivered to Secchia just two days later on Dec. 14. Robert Conquest, Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 98.
45. Dunn to Secretary of State, Mar. 1, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 837.
46. See Valerio Riva, Oro da Mosca: I Finanziamenti Sovietici al PCI dalla Rivoluzione d’Ottobre al Crollo dell’URSS (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1999). See also Aga-Rossi and Zaslavsky, “The Soviet Union and the Italian Communist Party,” 122–124.
47. Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 289.
48. Silvio Pons, “A Challenge Let Drop: Soviet Foreign Policy, the Cominform, and the Italian Communist Party,” in The Soviet Union and Europe, 259.
49. Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani, Newsletter on the first national conference of the P.S.L.I., Sept. 18, 1947, in HIA, Jay Lovestone Papers, box 244, folder 244.5.
50. Cited in Claire Neikind, “Italy’s Dark April,” New Republic, Mar. 29, 1948, 12.
51. Dunn to Secretary of State, Mar. 10, 1948, FRUS, vol. 3, 846.
52. Alfredo Canavero, Pier Luigi Ballini, Francesco Malgeri, Alcide De Gasperi, vol. 3 (Rome: Fondazione De Gasperi, 2009), 13.
53. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 208.
54. The Director of Policy Planning Staff (Kennan) to the Secretary of State, Mar. 15, 1948, FRUS (1948), vol. 3, 849.
55. Dunn to Secretary of State, Jan. 29, 1948. FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 824.
56. “Consequences of Communist Accession to Power in Italy by Legal Means,” Mar. 5, 1948, CIA, FOA, CREST, 4.
57. Cited in Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 49.
58. NSA, NSC 1 / 1, Nov. 14, 1947.
59. NSC 1 / 2, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 767.
60. “The Position of the United States with Respect to Italy,” Feb. 10, 1948, NSA, NSC 1 / 2, 2, 7.
61. NSC 1 / 3, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 775.
62. H. Woller, “Amerikanische Intervention oder kommunistischen Umsturz: Die Entscheidungswahlen von April 1948,” Italien und die Großmächte 1943–1949, ed. Hans Woller (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988), 79.
63. Dunn to Sec. of State, Jan. 12, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 818.
64. Campaign Funding sources.… NSA, Interview with Mark Wyatt, Feb. 15, 1996, 44. Wyatt, who served with the CIA in Italy, considers the four months of activity leading up to the Italian elections in April 1948 as marking the first serious CIA covert operation in its young history, setting precedents for decades to come. See also Dunn to Secretary of State, Feb. 21, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 833.
65. Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy, 79.
66. “Position of the U.S. in Respect to Italy,” NSA, NSC 1 / 3, Mar. 8, 1948, 7.
67. Cited in De Luna, La Repubblica inquieta, 192.
68. Dunn to Secretary of State, Apr. 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 881.
69. The United States even went so far as to support the writing of circular letters to approximately five thousand U.S. Veterans Administration beneficiaries in Italy warning that they could lose their remittances if a communist government were elected. Dunn to Secretary of State, June 16, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 881. See “Communists Worried,” New York Times, Apr. 11, 1948, E2, and, “Millions in Italy at Party Rallies,” New York Times, Apr. 12, 1948, 4. See C. Edda Martinez and Edward A. Suchman, “Letters from America and the 1948 Elections in Italy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 14, no. 1, 111–125.
70. CIA, “Evaluation of Psychological Effect of U.S. Effort in Italy,” Jan. 6, 1953, CIA, FOIA, CREST, 5.
71. See “Twenty-nine ships restituted to Italy from the U.S.,” Corriere della Sera, Mar. 17, 1948.
72. See J. A. Miller, “Taking Off the Gloves: The United States and the Italian Elections of 1948,” Diplomatic History, no. 7 (1983): 49–55, and H. Woller, “Amerikanische Intervention oder kommunistischer Umsturz,” Italien und die Großmächte 1943–1949), 86–94.
73. Dunn to Secretary of State, Mar. 20, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 857. “Mr. Marshall’s Call for U.S. Leadership,” The Times of London, Mar. 20, 1948.
74. Corriere della Sera, Mar. 20, 1948.
75. Corriere della Sera, Apr. 17, 1948.
76. Secchia and Stalin, Dec. 14, 1947, in Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 292.
77. Secchia and Zhdanov, Dec. 16, 1947, in Dagli Archivi di Mosca, 309.
78. “Stenographic Record of a speech by Comrade J. V. Stalin at a Special Section of the Politburo, Mar. 14, 1948,” Woodrow Wilson Center Digital Archive, doc. 117823, 2.
79. Mario Einaudi, “The Italian Election of 1948,” The Review of Politics, no. 3 (vol. 10):351.
80. Corriere della Sera, Apr. 4, 1948.
81. Stalin withdrew his support for giving Italy the colonies when it became clear that the Christian Democrats might win the election and turn over use of the colonies to the Americans for military bases. See Manlio Brosio, Diari di Mosca 1947 / 1951, ed. Fausto Bacchetti (Bologna: Società Editrice Il Mulino, 1986), 220–221. See also “L’URSS vuole lasciarci Libia, Eritrea e Somalia,” L’Unità, Feb. 17, 1948.
82. On the foibe killings and their contemporary meaning, see Arnold Suppan, Hitler-Beneš-Tito: Konflikt, Krieg und Völkermord, part 2 (Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW, 2014), 1343–1347, 1691–1698. See also Glenda Sluga, “The Risiera di San Sabbe: Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italian Nationalism,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, no. 1 (1996): 401–412.
83. “Italian Red Defeat Seen in Soviet Act,” New York Times, Apr. 15, 1948, 8. “Western Powers’ Proposals for Trieste,” The Times of London, Mar. 22, 1948, 4.
84. CIA, “An Evaluation of Psychological effect of U.S. Effort in Italy,” Jan. 6, 1953, NSA, CIA, FOIA, CREST, 10, 22. Norman Kogan also thinks that the Trieste issue was a huge setback for the communists and was “the one foreign policy issue really felt by large numbers of Italians, even those in small villages and remote rural areas.” Norman Kogan, A Political History of Italy: The Postwar Years (New York: Praeger, 1983), 5–6.
85. Brosio, Diari di Mosca, 251.
86. Notes from Secchia’s manuscript on the Cominform meeting (June 21, 1948) (PCI representatives Togliatti and Secchia), 2–5. FIG, Perro 2, 14 (MF 1010). For the minutes of the Second Conference of the Cominform, June 19–23, 1948, see Cominform 1947/1948/1949, 507–605. Togliatti played an active role in the deliberations; Secchia did not.
87. See, for example, the comments from party members, Arturo Columbi and Fedeli, FIG, Meeting of Apr. 26, 1948, 8–9, 18.
88. Eugenio Reale writes of Togliatti’s critique of the Marshall Plan: it was “only because of his supine acquiescence to his master’s orders.” HIA, Eugenio Reale Papers, “The Whole Truth and the Cominform,” transl. of first part of Nascita del Cominform (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1958).
89. “Pope, U.S envoy, Study Elections,” New York Times, Apr. 14, 1948, 3. See E. Di Nolfo, “Von der Konfrontation zur Partnerschaft: Italien und der Vatikan 1943–1948,” in Italien und die Großmächte, 194–200.
90. “An Archbishop’s Letter,” The Times of London, Feb. 24, 1948.
91. See FIG, Direzione Verbale (1944–1958), Fond Mosca, (MF 199) I, Meeting of the Party Directorate, Apr. 26, 1948, Pellegrini from Venice, 1–2.
92. Woller, “Amerikanische Intervention,” 93.
93. “An Archbishop’s Letter,” The Times of London, Feb. 24, 1948.
94. De Luna, La Repubblica inquieta, 191.
95. Donald Sassoon, The Strategy of the Italian Communist Party: From the Resistance to the Historic Compromise (London: Francis Pinter, 1981) 64.
96. Einaudi, “The Italian Elections of 1948,” 347.
97. NSA, CIA, “Diminished Communist Capabilities in Italy,” Apr. 9, 1948, 1.
98. See, for example, “Violent clashes in Florence between demonstrators and public forces,” Corriere della Sera, Jan. 23, 1948, or “Bloody Conflict in San Ferdinando di Puglia,” Corriera della Sera, Feb. 10, 1948.
99. Craveri, De Gasperi, 326–327, 330.
100. There is some disagreement about whether an actual uprising was planned or whether armed communist groups simply increased their activities and secret military exercises in the winter of 1947–48 in order to put pressure on the Italian government and society. (There has been a similar argument about the larger purposes of the communist inspired strike movement in France in Nov. and Dec. 1947.) A Dec. 1947 report from the Italian Ministry of the Interior stated: “It has become clear that the PCI has strengthened its paramilitary organizations and pays ever more attention to them.” Woller, “Amerikanische Intervention,” 81. Silvio Pons suggests that the communists “prepared themselves for a post-election uprising in the case of a coup d’état by the conservative forces, supported by the U.S.,” as a way to counter the predicted Popular Front victory in the elections. Silvio Pons, private communication, Sept. 2018. This is consistent with Moscow’s general thinking about the use of communist uprisings in western Europe to protect the respective parties and their institutions from the counter-revolution.
101. Pons, “A Challenge Let Drop,” 259. Aga-Rossi and Zaslavsky, “The Soviet Union and the Italian Communist Party,” 75–82.
102. Dunn to Secretary of State, Dec. 7, 1947, in FRUS, vol. 3, 1948, 736–737.
103. Pier Luigi Ballini, Alcide de Gasperi, vol. 3, 7.
104. Woller, “Amerikanische Intervention,” 82–83.
105. On weapons, see Dunn to Secretary of State, Mar. 12, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, 784–785. See also Dunn’s further communiques of Mar. 18 and Apr. 16 on the same issue. Washington found a way to siphon off supplies and weapons from their forces in Germany to be distributed to the Italian government.
106. New York Times, Sept. 8, 1947. The American embassy came up with similar estimates, stating that in June 1947 there were some 10,000 armed communist partisan “elements” in the north, which, in the case of a PCI-led insurrection, could be supplemented by 40,000 men who had been organized in the Garibaldi partisan brigades during the war. Dunn to Secretary of State, June 18, 1947, FRUS, vol. 3, 923–924. See intelligence estimates of the relative strength of the government and communists, NSA, CIA, “Diminished Communist Capabilities in Italy,” 2.
107. “Kominform: vzgliad iz Parizha,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1996): 138–139. This is a French counter-espionage document, dated Jan. 1948, that draws on Cominform sources in Switzerland.
108. FIG, Directive of the C.C., May 4, 5, 6, 1948, 1–3.
109. FIG, Meeting of Party Directorate, Apr. 26, 1948, 25–26.
110. Craveri, De Gasperi, 325.
111. Giorgio Bocca, Togliatti (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2014), 432–433. L’Unità (Milan, Special Edition), “Vile attentato a Togliatti,” July 14, 1948.
112. New York Times, July 15, 1948, 18.
113. “Togliatti Shot,” The Times of London, July 15, 1948.
114. Sassoon, Strategy of the Italian Communist Party, 65.
115. FIG, Meeting of the Directorate of the PCI, Aug. 1948, 22.
116. Alcide de Gasperi, scrivi, vol. 2, 218.
117. “L’Appello della Direzione del partito Comunista Italiano,” July 14, 1948, in Pietro Secchia, Lo sciopero del 14 luglio (Roma: Educazione comunista, 1948), 53.
118. On the meeting between Di Vittorio and De Gasperi in the account of the Republican Party member and CGIL leader, Enrico Parri, see Craveri, De Gasperi, 361.
119. There is a remarkably well-informed CIA report on the general strike, which emphasizes the tension between Secchia, who was in favor, and PCI member Ruggero Grieco, who was against. According to the document, both took their cases to the Soviet embassy. “Soviet Disapproval of Communist Action Following the Attempted Assassination Attempt of Togliatti,” August 18, 1948, CREST, CIA FOIA, 1–3. Silvio Pons writes: “Secchia told the Soviet ambassador that according to the PCI leadership, as well as recent assessments by friends of the Italian Communists [meaning in Moscow], it was not yet time for an armed uprising.” Pons, “Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War,” 22.
120. See Craveri, De Gasperi, 325, 347–348n65.
121. Times of London, July 17, 1948. De Luna states that eleven strikers and six policemen were killed and altogether two hundred people injured. De Luna, La Repubblica inquieta, 203, 216.
122. Craveri, De Gasperi, 361.
123. Cited in Service, Comrades, 265.
124. FIG, Stalin to Gottwald and Togliatti, July 4, 1948 (in original Russian). Iudin to Luigi Longo, Aug. 3, 1948.
125. Wilson Center, Digital Archive, Collection “Stalin and the Cold War,” “Soviet Plan to Assassinate Tito,” Jan. 1, 1953. Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schechter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1994, 335–339. Dimitri Volkogonov also published material from the archives about the assassination plans. Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1993.
126. Bocca, Togliatti, 461–462. Sassoon, Strategy of the Italian Communist Party, 84.
127. Dagli Archivi di Mosca, Togliatti to Stalin, Jan. 4, 1951, 417–420.
128. NSA, National Security Council 67 / 2 (Dec. 29, 1950) and 67 / 3 (Jan. 5, 1951), both entitled “The Position of the United States with Respect to the Communist Threat to Italy.”
129. Allen W. Dulles, Deputy Director to the Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman of the Psychological Strategy Board, Sept. 15, 1951, CIA, FOI, CREST.
1. The operation’s name originated with General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith. “Hell’s Fire,” he supposed declared. “We’re hauling grub. Call it Operation Vittles.” The British called it Operation Plainfare. Thomas Parrish, Berlin in the Balance 1945–1949: The Blockade, the Airlift, The First Major Battle of the Cold War (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998), 202–203. The famous candy dropping was called “Operation Little Vittles,” first using small parachutes and then just emptying candy over western Berlin from the cargo doors. Barry Turner, The Berlin Airlift: The Relief Operation That Defined the Cold War (London: Icon Books, 2017), 198.
2. General Curtis E. LeMay (with MacKinlay Kantor), Mission LeMay: My Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1965), 401–402.
3. Memo Policy Planning Staff, no. 23. George Kennan, Feb. 28, 1948. FRUS, vol. 1, 1948, 516.
4. The OMGUS Surveys, Report no. 105 (Mar. 27, 1948), 218.
5. Cited in Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949 (New York: Penguin, 2016), 481.
6. On Stalin’s goals in Germany in general, see Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 465–466.
7. V. M. Gobarev, “Soviet Military Plans and Activities during the Berlin Crisis, 1948–1949,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 10, no. 3 (1997): 6.
8. David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 61. In response to Truman’s decision to base “nuclear-capable” U.S. bombers in Britain as part of the U.S. build-up in response to the blockade, the Soviets did boost their anti-aircraft defenses. Matthew A. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised,” International Security 7, no. 3 (1982–83): 132–133.
9. Vojtech Mastny, “NATO in the Beholder’s Eye: Soviet Perceptions and Policies, 1949–56,” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center, Working Paper no. 35, 17, 27–29.
10. On the desire for peace on both sides, see Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 86–91.
11. A. M. Filitov, Germanskii vopros: ot raskola k obedineniiu (Moscow: Mezhd. Otnosheniia, 1993), 104. Hannes Adomeit makes a similar argument, noting that there was “little evidence indeed to show that Stalin was aware of the dynamism which the first East-West crisis would unleash, or that he had a clearly mapped-out plan for the future of Germany.” Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998), 67.
12. This view is generally accepted by post-Soviet Russian historians, as well as Western ones. See E. P. Timoshenkova, The German Issue in Soviet Foreign Policy (1945–1955), Reports of the Institute of Europe, no. 217 (Moscow: Izd. “Russkii suvernir”), 28. See Melvyn Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, The Soviet Union and the Cold War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 77–79.
13. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 167–168; Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 67.
14. See, for example, Jochen Laufer, Pax Sovietica: Stalin, die Westmächte und die deutsche Frage 1941–1945 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2009), 559–562.
15. On the issue of “socialism,” see Aleksej M. Filitov, “Die sowjetische Deutschlandpolitik 1948–1949: Einführung zu den Dokumenten,” in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage 1941–1949: 18. Juni 1948 bis 5. November 1949: Dokumente aus russischen Archiven, vol. 4, ed. Jochen P. Laufer and Georgij P. Kynin (Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, 2012), 88–89. The Laufer and Kynin documents, which are cited throughout this chapter, are also available in Russian in: SSSR i germanskoi vopros: Dokumenty iz arkhivov Rossiiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow: Ist.-dok. depart. MID, Inst. vseob. ist. RAN, Tsentr izuch. noveish. ist. v Potsdame, 2012).
16. Cited in Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Struggle for Germany and the Origins of the Cold War,” The Alois Mertes Memorial Lecture, German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., Occasional Papers no. 16 (1996), 64–65.
17. Molotov to Stalin, June 18, 1948,” in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 5.
18. M. M. Narinskii, “Berlinskii krizis 1948–1949 gg.: Novye Dokumenty iz rossiskikh Arkhivov,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (1995): 18. See also the English version of Narinskii’s important article, “The Soviet Union and Berlin Crisis, 1948–49,” in The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53, ed. Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 57–76.
19. Laufer, “ ‘Reingeschlittert?’, Die UdSSR und die Ursprünge der Berliner Blockade 1944–1948,” Sterben für Berlin? Die Berliner Krisen 1948: 1958, ed. Burghard Ciesla, Michael Lemke, and Thomas Lindenberger (Berlin: Metropol, 2000), 44.
20. Leffler, “The Struggle for Germany,” 51.
21. Dratvin and Semenov to Molotov and Bulganin (Apr. 17, 1948), cited in Narinskii, “Berlinskii krizis,” 20.
22. Elke Scherstjanoi, “Die Berlin-Blockade 1948 / 49 im sowjetischen Kalkül,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 46 (1996): 497.
23. Clay to Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin, Director of Intelligence, Army General Staff, in Jean Edward Smith, The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, Germany 1945–1949 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), 568.
24. Wilson D. Miscamble, “Harry S. Truman, the Berlin Blockade and the 1948 Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10, no. 3 (Summer 1980): 307–308.
25. Scherstjanoi, “Die Berlin-Blockade,” 499.
26. Gobarev, “Soviet Military Plans,” 11, estimates the number of troops in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany as wavering between 500,000 and one million in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. He tallies the total Allied strength at the time of the blockade at 398,000. NSA, C.I.A, “Soviet Control Mechanism in Germany,” ORE 51–49, May 26, 1949, 3, estimates that there were only 350,000 Soviet troops in the Soviet zone.
27. Murphy to Secretary of State, Mar. 1, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 155. By the summer, Murphy was much more supportive of Clay’s policies.
28. Cited in Miscamble, “Harry S. Truman,” 312.
29. NSA, James V. Forrestal, Memorandum for the National Security Council, July 26, 1948, “U.S. Military Courses of Action with respect to the Situation in Berlin,” Record Number 83–80.
30. NSA, CIA, “Consequences of a Breakdown in Four-Power Negotiations on Germany,” ORE 57–48, 2.
31. According to a draft State Department analysis from the Foreign Policy Studies Branch, “The Berlin Crisis,” Research Project no. 171, these informal agreements formed the basis for the American right of access “by land, air and water to Berlin,” Truman Library, Documents, 2, 6. The State Department Legal Advisor concluded that any action which interfered with such free access was “a direct violation of an international agreement.” The Soviets argued in response that since the three Western powers “by their separate actions in the western zones of Germany destroyed the system of the four-power administration of Germany,” they abrogated the legal basis for the Berlin occupation. Robert Murphy worked from different premises. Unlike the land access routes to Berlin, the three air corridors to the city were agreed upon in writing by the Four Powers in the Allied Control Council (Nov. 30, 1945), and updated by a convention of Oct. 22, 1946. He writes in his memoirs that the legal availability of air corridors was “down in black and white,” while the agreements about access to Berlin by ground were “less certain.” Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors: The Unique World of a Foreign Service Expert (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 315–316. See also, Peter Auer, Ihr Völker der Welt: Ernst Reuter und die Blockade von Berlin (Berlin: Jaron Verlag, 1998), 217.
32. Telegram from Clay to Army Security Agency, Mar. 1948. HIA, Albert C. Wedemeyer Papers, box 106, folder 1.
33. In response to a Mar. 31, 1948 teleconference between Clay and Generals Bradley and Wedemeyer, in The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, Germany 1945–1949, ed. Jean Edward Smith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), 604–606; Omar Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 478.
34. Clay to Bradley, Apr. 1, 1948, in The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2:607. My emphasis.
35. Wedemeyer writes that Clay’s idea of taking on the Soviets would not work given Soviet military supremacy on the ground and that he recommended to William Draper, the Under Secretary of the Army, that an airlift, as in China, be employed. Wedemeyer convinced the British that it was a good idea and Clay agreed, even though he still wanted to send in an armed convoy. Later, Wedemeyer wrote that the Joint Chiefs made the recommendation of an airlift to President Truman, who gave the final approval. He also recommended that Air Force General William H. Tunner, who had overseen his air operations in China, be appointed head of the airlift, as he eventually was, replacing General Curtis Le May. See Wedemeyer to William Tunner, Nov. 23, 1960; Wedemeyer to Mr. Arnold Foster, Jan. 30, 1978. HIA, Albert C. Wedemeyer Papers, box 106, folder 1.
36. Avi Shlaim calls it a “mini-blockade.” Avi Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 43.
37. Clay to the Department of the Army, Mar. 17, 1948, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2:349.
38. Clay to Brig. Gen. Charles K. Bailey, June 13, 1948, in The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2:677.
39. Teleconference Bradley and Clay, Apr. 10, 1948, in The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2:622.
40. (Pro Quest) U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Reaction of the West German Political Parties of the decisions of the Tripartite London conference 1948,” Aug. 5, 1948, ORE 37–48.
41. Cited in V. K. Volkov, “Germanskii vopros glazami Stalina (1947–1952),” in Uzlovye problemy noveishei istorii stran tsentral’noi i iugo-vostochnoi Evropy (Moscow: “Indik,” 2000), 129–131.
42. General Clay noted “the immediate benefits of currency reform have been unbelievable.” Clay to Byrnes, Sept. 18, 1948, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, 858. One contemporary scholar wrote: “the immediate effect of the reform was startling. On June 19th, a Saturday, not a single article could be seen or had in retail shops, on June 21st the shops were full of goods.” The currency reform, the Marshall Plan, and the free market “did wonders for the West German economy.” F. A. Lutz, “The German Currency Reform and the Revival of the German Economy,” Economica, n.s., 16, no. 62 (1949): 131–132.
43. Cited in Laufer, “ ‘Reingeschlittert’?,” 44.
44. Murphy to Secretary of State, June 23, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 914.
45. Shlaim, United States and the Berlin Blockade, 178–179. The British and the Americans, Washington and London, worked exceptionally well together during the Berlin crisis. State Department Summary of Telegrams, June 28, 1948, Truman Library (online), Truman Papers. Naval Aide Files, May–Aug. 1948.
46. Michael W. Wolff, Die Währungsreform in Berlin 1948 / 1949 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 2.
47. George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1967), 421.
48. Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 41–44.
49. See especially Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 211. Steege argues that the Soviet intention behind the blockade was not to reverse the decisions of the London Conference by starving Berliners but to bring order to stabilize the economy of the Soviet zone. See also William Stivers, “The Incomplete Blockade: Soviet Zone Supply of West Berlin, 1948–49,” Diplomatic History 21, no. 4 (1997): 569–572.
50. Steege, Black Market, Cold War, 210–211.
51. Heinrich Rau, SAPMO-BARCH, DY 30 IV 2 / 1 48 “11(25) Tagung des Parteivorstands der SED, June 29–30, 1948, p. 66. See also Steege, Black Market, 249.
52. Cited in Narinskii, “Berlinskii krizis,” 23.
53. Cited in Laufer, “ ‘Reingeschlittert,’ ” 41. See also Murphy, et al., Battleground Berlin: 57.
54. Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950), 368.
55. Clay to Bradley, Sept. 6, 1948, in The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, 828.
56. See Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 258.
57. Frank Howley, Berlin Command (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949), 174.
58. The meetings of the commandants had already been very testy in the summer and fall of 1947. See minutes in HIA, GTUAO, Box 32. Murphy notes that from the end of Jan. 1948, the Soviets contested every statement by the Western delegations “no matter how simple, how friendly or innocent, to launch violent propaganda attacks.…” Murphy to Sec. of State, Mar. 3, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 878. See also Sec. of State to Sov. Ambassador Paniushkin, July 6, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 951–952.
59. Kennan, Memoirs, 427–428.
60. Report on Negotiations with Soviets (circa July / Aug. 1948), Truman Library (online), Truman Papers, PSF.
61. For the Russian transcriptions of the talks, which occurred episodically from Aug. 2 until Aug. 30, 1948, and the resulting communiqués, see Sovetsko-Amerikanskie otnosheniia 1945–1948, ed. G. N. Sevost’ianov (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond “Demokratiia”, 2004), 600–674.
62. The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State, Aug. 3, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1006. Smith himself worried that the Soviets held the better poker hand; he was not convinced that the airlift could supply Berlin or that “the mood of the German people would stand the strain.” Walter Bedell Smith, Moscow Mission, 1946–1949 (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1950), 233. FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1007–1008.
63. FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1003.
64. FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1004.
65. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 55–59.
66. Parrish, Berlin in the Balance, 165; FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1004.
67. FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1004.
68. The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State, Aug. 5, 1948, and Aug. 24, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1017, 1066.
69. Truman Library (online), State Department, Foreign Policy Studies Branch, “Berlin Crisis,” 16–17.
70. Smith, Moscow Mission, 243.
71. Sokolovskii and Semenov to Molotov, Aug. 30, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 112–113.
72. Molotov to Sokolovskii, Aug.31, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 113.
73. Marshall to Smith, Aug. 3, 1948, in FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1008–09. Also quoted in Shlaim, United States and the Berlin Blockade, 316.
74. Hannes Adomeit writes that Sokolovskii was on a “very tight leash” in Germany, especially when it came to the Berlin question. Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch, 152.
75. Murphy to Secretary of State, Sept. 7, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1134.
76. An O.S.S. report of Sept. 1945 describes the ease of movement between the eastern zone and the western sectors, especially in the largely rural and forested area surrounding the American sector. NACP, RG 226, O.S.S. Miss. for Germany (Sept. 1, 1945), L-722, box, 60, folder 117.
77. HIA, Margarita Gaertner, “The Siege of Berlin,” folder XX514-10.V, 11.
78. Soviet Measures to Further Tighten the Sector Blockade in Berlin, Central Intelligence Agency Information Report, Dec. 30, 1948 (facsimile), in Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 60.
79. HIA, Elizabeth S. Selden Papers, Blockade 1948, box 2, folder 3 (to Elizabeth Selden from a museum worker in Berlin-Friedenau, Jan. 16, 1949).
80. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Battleground Berlin: Diaries 1945–1948, trans. Anna Boerresen (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 240–241.
81. Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 662.
82. Curtis E. LeMay, MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 417.
83. Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, “Zur Lage in Berlin,” Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 129.
84. Howley, Berlin Command, 212.
85. “Polozhenie v Berline,” Krasnaia zvezda, Aug.14, 1948.
86. Interview with Sokolovskii in Krasnaia zvezda, Oct. 3, 1948. See also Sovetskoe slovo, the occupation newspaper for Soviet soldiers in Germany, Aug. 23, 1948, Mar. 3, 1949.
87. Shlaim, United States and the Berlin Blockade, 211n38.
88. Tägliche Rundschau, July 20, 1948.
89. See V. Semenov and A. Russkikh to Sokolovskii, Program for Berlin, Aug. 13, 1948, in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage 1941–1949, vol. 4, 85–86.
90. Volker Koop, Kein Kampf um Berlin? Deutsche Politik zur Zeit der Berlin-Blockade 1948 / 1949 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1998), 174–175.
91. Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol 4, 129–130. Murphy et al. Battleground Berlin, 63. Steege, Black Market, 212–213.
92. Public Opinion: OMGUS Surveys, Report no. 132 (Aug. 10, 1948), 251.
93. Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 130.
94. Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 566–569n113.
95. Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 129.
96. Russkikh to Ponomarev and Shikin, Dec. 13, 1948, in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 207–208.
97. Russkikh to Tereshkin and Kuznetsov, Mar. 16, 1949, in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, “Zur Lage in Berlin,” 271.
98. Willy Brandt and Richard Löwenthal, Ernst Reuter: Ein Leben für die Freiheit. Eine politische Biographie (Munich: Kindler, 1957) 459.
99. Beschluss des ZK der VKP(b), Nov. 12, 1948, with Anlage, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 179–182.
100. Semenov to the MID of the UdSSR, Nov. 14, 1948, in Beschluss des ZK der VKP(b), Nov. 12, 1948, with Anlage, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 183–185.
101. See Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 543n51.
102. The Western commanders, though unhappy about dividing the city, supported the West Berlin politicians’ case for setting up a separate provisional government in the West. TNA, CAB 129 / 31.27: “Currency Situation in Berlin,” Dec. 7, 1948.
103. These observations did not change much between the fall of 1948 and the spring of 1949. Russkikh to Tereshkin and Kuznetsov, Mar. 16, 1949, 276–277, Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, 128–129. Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 130–131.
104. Discussion between Kotikov and Matern, July 30, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 49–50.
105. SAPMO-BArch, NY 4076, Matern, 16.
106. SAPMO-BArch, NY 4076, Matern, Matern Draft Speech, Bilanz der Bankrotts,” 58.
107. SAPMO-BArch, NY 4090, Grotewohl, 304, Oct. 1948.
108. David E. Barclay, Schaut auf diese Stadt: Der unbekannte Ernst Reuter (Munich: Siedler, 2000), 212–213.
109. HIA, Ernst Reuter Papers, 1917–1953. Copy of Ernst Reuter in Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunk, Aug.12, 1948, 312 / 2.
110. See Shlaim, United States and the Berlin Blockade, 203n19.
111. Auer, Ihr Völker der Welt, 218.
112. Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 671.
113. Auer, Ihr Völker der Welt, 7–8.
114. The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, Clay to Col. Gerhardt, May 5, 1949, Teleconference, 936. See also 1169.
115. Cited in Brandt and Löwenthal, Ernst Reuter, 426.
116. Public Opinion, Occupied Germany, The OMGUS Surveys, Report no. 130 (July 23, 1948), 248–240.
117. The army newspaper, Krasnaia zvezda, (Sept. 21, 1948, Sept. 26, 1948) was predictably incensed by the events (“fascist disorders”), attacking Reuter by name for his “fascist-militarist” propaganda.
118. Howley, Berlin Command, 217–218.
119. Russkikh to Suslov and Shatilov, Sept. 20, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 132.
120. Clay to Draper, Sept. 11, 1948, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, 857.
121. Teleconference, Clay, Secretary of the Army Royall, and General J. W. Collins, June 25, 1948, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, 700. For ongoing pessimism about militarily defending Berlin, see NSA, The Secretary of Defense, “A Report to the National Security Council,” Possible U.S. Courses of Action in the Event the USSR reimposes the Berlin Blockade, June 1, 1949, 5.
122. Molotov to Stalin, Nov. 30, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 195. On the CFM, see Truman Archives (online), State Department Report, Foreign Policy Studies Branch, “Berlin Crisis,” 29.
123. See question 3 about Berlin and Stalin’s answer in, “Editorial Notes,” FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 666.
124. Malik’s long telegrams to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) about his talks with Jessup are in Malik to MID, Feb. 16, 1949, 261–262. Malik to MID, Mar. 16, 1949, 280–282; Malik to MID, Mar. 22, 1949, 283–285; Malik to MID, Apr. 6, 1949, 291–295; Malik to MID, Apr. 11, 1949, 297–301; Malik to MID, Apr. 27, 1949, 306–312; Malik to MID, Apr. 30, 1949, 314–319; Malik to MID, May 4, 1949; 321–322; Malik to MID, May 5, 1949, 328–332, in Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4. Page numbers as indicated.
125. Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York: Oxford, 2004), 76–77.
126. Memorandum of Conversation (Jessup), FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 695.
127. Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 623n268.
128. Wolff, Die Währungsreform in Berlin 1948 / 49, 3.
129. In addition, the CIA was deeply concerned about losing its intelligence networks due to Soviet countermeasures associated with the blockade. NACP, CIA. “Effect of Soviet Restrictions on the U.S. position in Berlin,” ORE 41–48, June 14, 1948.
130. HIA, Robert Daniel Murphy Papers, box 59, folder 50–19, letter of Mar. 10, 1949. British foreign minister Ernest Bevin similarly worried about subjecting the formation of the West German state to negotiations about currency and blockade. TNA, CAB 195/7/27) Notebook (of conversations), May 2, 1949.
131. Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 637, n. 299. Gorbaev, “Soviet Military Plans,” 21.
132. NSA, The Secretary of Defense, A Report to the National Security Council, “Phase-out of the Berlin Blockade,” July 25, 1949.
133. NSA, The Secretary of Defense, A Report to the National Security Council, “Possible U.S. Courses of Action in the Event the USSR reimposes the Berlin Blockade,” June 1, 1949. TNA, CAB 129/36/4, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, July 15, 1949.
134. Gorbaev, “Soviet Military Plans,” 21.
135. Turner, Berlin Airlift, 266.
136. HIA, Murphy, box 68-2, OMGUS to USMA Paris, June 3, 1949.
137. Dean Acheson, The Pattern of Responsibility, ed. by McGeorge Bundy, (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1951), 111.
138. NSA, CIA Report: “The Soviet Position in Approaching the CFM,” May 18, 1949, 9. The report concludes that the Soviets would most likely turn to a “conciliatory” policy on Germany seeking unification, the withdrawal of occupation forces, and detente in Europe. The Intelligence Organization of the State Department submitted its “dissent”, suggesting instead that the Soviets would not be willing to sacrifice its controlling position in the eastern zone.
139. Brandt and Löwenthal, Ernst Reuter, 431.
140. Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 72.
141. General Clay noted that except for sometimes important issues having to do with “the difference in economic ideologies,” the British and Americans had a relatively harmonious relationship. Clay to Draper, Oct. 4, 1948, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, vol. 2, 889.
142. Gerhard Wettig writes that “as a result of the blockade a feeling of threat from the East and a resultant awareness of the need for joint resistance were spreading.… The perception that Moscow as a source of mortal danger to ‘freedom’ extended [even] to the neutral countries of Europe.” Gerhard Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East-West Conflict, 1939–1953 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 173–174.
143. Discussion between Stalin, Pieck, Grotewohl and Ulbricht, Dec. 18, 1948, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, vol. 4, 209–231.
144. Otto Grotewohl, “Entschliessung des Landesvorstandes der SED Gross-Berlin zur Lage in Berlin und zu den Aufgaben der Partei,” Special Enclosure of Vorwärts, Oct. 19, 1948, SAPMO-BArch, NY 4090, 304. Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the Founding of the German Democratic Republic: 50 Years Later—A Review Article,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 6 (1999): 1100. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 308–312. On Soviet ideas of the “new democracy,” see E. Varga, “Demokratiia novogo tipa,” Mirovoe khoziaistvo i mirovaia politika, no. 3 (1947): 3.
145. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 57–60.
146. Cited in Brandt and Löwenthal, Ernst Reuter, 514.
147. NSA, CIA, “The Soviet Position in Approaching the CFM, ORE 48–49, May 18, 1949, 4.
148. Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope: Memoirs, vol. 2 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956), 130.
149. See NSA, CIA, “Effect of Soviet Restrictions on the U.S. Position in Berlin,” June 14, 1948. ORE 41–48.
1. “Report of Comrade V. M. Molotov … at Sitting of Supreme Soviet of USSR, Oct. 31, 1939,” Moscow News, Nov. 6, 1939.
2. These included the priest and prominent Polish-American Catholic leader Stanisław Orlemański, whose discussions with Stalin on Apr. 28 and May 4, 1944, are in Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1953, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: “Sibirskii khronograf,” 1997), vol. 1, 36–42 and in Sovetskii faktor v vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), vol. 1, 58–62, as well as Oskar Lange, a Polish leftist and distinguished academic economist, who returned to Poland from the United States after the war and became Warsaw’s first ambassador to the United States. Lange’s conversation with Stalin on May 17, 1944 is in: “Stalin i Pol’sha, 1943–1944 gody,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 3 (2008): 123–137. He told Lange, for example, that the London Polish government-in-exile’s concerns about “Sovietization” were a “stupidity,” and that a hybrid government including politicians from London would be highly desirable. Ibid., 126–131.
3. TNA, JIC (46) 1 (0), Chief of Staff Committee, Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee, “Russia’s Strategic Interests and Intentions,” Jan.–Apr. 1946, 19.
4. See, for example, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, vol. 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 102.
5. Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, Poland’s Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder Neisse Line, 1939–1943 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 108–120.
6. There is some controversy about the relative responsibility of the government versus the AK in starting the uprising. The reasons for the uprising are described by AK General Leopold Okulicki in his Apr. 1945 deposition to the NKVD. Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (New York: Viking, 2003), appendix 31, 680–681; see also 210–211; Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 2009), 400.
7. The Soviet war plans did not call for the crossing of the Vistula and liberation of Warsaw at this time. Many historians will also argue that the London government should not have called for an uprising at this time, especially without any coordination with the Soviet forces. Stalin nevertheless contributed to the tragic outcome by refusing to come to the aid of the insurrection.
8. Kochanski, Eagle Unbowed, 424–425.
9. Ivan Serov, Zapiski iz chemodana: Tainye dnevniki predsedatelia KGB, naidennye cherez 25 let posle ego smerti (Proekt Aleksandra Khinshteina) (Moscow: “Prosveshchenie,” 2017), 229, 233.
10. Beria to Stalin, June 17, 1945, NKVD i Pol’skoe Podpol’e 1944–1945 (Po “Osobym papkam” I. V. Stalina), ed. A. F. Noskina (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk; Institut Slavianovedeniia i Balkanistiki, 1994), 199.
11. Serov to Beria, Mar. 23, 1945, NKVD i Pol’skoe Podpol’e, 105–106.
12. Serov, Zapiski, 250.
13. Robert Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom: poszukiwanie wroga wewnętrznego w kierownictwie partii komunistycznej w Polsce w latach 1948–1956 (Warsaw, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2014), 597.
14. See Norman M. Naimark, “Revolution and Counterrevolution in Eastern Europe,” in The Crisis of Socialism in Europe, ed. Gary Marks and Christiane Lemke (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 70. Zygmunt Berling, the commander of the Polish First Army formed in the Soviet Union, complained about these unpatriotic Poles, as he did about the communist leaders Berman, Minc, and Zambrowski, whom he did not distinguish from Gomułka. Zygmunt Berling, Wspomnienia. Przeciw siedemnastej republice, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Polski Dom Wydawniczy, 1991), 26–27, 313.
15. Inessa Iazhborovskaia, “The Gomułka Alternative: The Untravelled Road,” trans. Anna M. Cienciala), in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, ed. Norman M. Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 125–126. Pol’sha v XX veke: Ocherkii politicheskoi istorii, ed. A. F. Noskova (Moscow: “Indrik,” 2012), 344.
16. Władysław Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, ed. Andrzej Werblan (Warsaw: Polska Oficyna Wydawnictwa, 1994), 360–363. The entries to Dimitrov’s diary on Jan. 7 and Jan. 9, 1943, which describe the murder of Nowotko and the ascension of Finder and Fornalska, however, mention Gomułka, along with the others as “unquestionably honest and devoted comrades.” The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, ed., Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 253.
17. Serov, Zapiski, 250. Except for attending a year-long course in a KPP school in Kraskov near Moscow, Gomulka was completely self-taught. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948, trans. John Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 12.
18. Ryszard Strzelecki-Gomułka, with Eleonora Salwa-Syzdek, Między realizmem a utopią: Władysław Gomułka we wspomnieniach syna (Warsaw: Studio Emka, 2003), 27.
19. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 422–423.
20. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 475.
21. Piotr Skwieciński, “Ta narodowa zaściankowość … Stalin do Gomułki: ‘Dlaczego patrzycie na mnie tak, jakbyście chcieli mnie zabić?’ ” wSieci Historii, Feb. 17, 2015, https://
22. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 609–610, 609n53.
23. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 397.
24. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 465–66, 515. See also Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopią, 32.
25. In the Kremlin’s visitors’ book, Gomułka was listed nineteen times between 1944 and 1948, which does not include the many visits to Stalin at his dacha in Kuntsevo. Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopiaą, 123.
26. For Gomułka’s rendition of this meeting, see Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 476–477; 515–517.
27. Stanisław Mikołajczyk later complained, incorrectly, “that no one from the new Polish government had intervened on behalf of the ‘sixteen.’ ” Stanisław Mikołajczyk, “Poland in Chains: My Experiences in the Post-war Government,” Soundings (Aug. 1948), 42. HIA, Stanisław Mikołajczyk Collection, box 20.
28. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 515.
29. Andrzej Werblan, “Gomułka i Stalin,” Polityka, no. 10 (Mar. 6, 2010), 78. NKVD i pol’skie podpol’e, 21.
30. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 517. Serov states in his diary that once Poland was cleared of the Wehrmacht, he was ready to move on with the troops to Berlin. Serov, Zapiski, 249. Following this version, historian Andrzej Paczkowski thinks that Serov’s move to Germany should not be understood as a response to Gomułka’s complaint. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 779n648.
31. Andrei Ivanov, “Narodnaia demokratiia: cherez koalitsionnye formy vlasti k sotsialisticheskim preobrazovaniiam (iz opyta Narodnoi Pol’shi),” Sovetskoe slavianovedenie 2 (1989): 10.
32. Stalin made this statement at the founding meeting of the Government of National Unity in Moscow (June 23, 1945). “Szkic pamięciowy z przemówienia Stalina 23 czerwca 1945 roku,” HIA, Władysław Gomułka, folder 3 / 4.
33. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 479.
34. Cited in Pol’sha v XX veke, 508.
35. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 173–176.
36. This well-known story is told in Stanisław Mikołajczyk, The Rape of Poland: Pattern of Soviet Aggression (New York: Whittlesey House, 1948) and in Arthur Bliss Lane, I Saw Poland Betrayed (Belmont, MA: American Opinion, 1961).
37. The Ambassador to Poland (Lane) to the Secretary of State, Jan. 18, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 6, 409n3; Ambassador to State Department, Feb. 25, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. 6, 418.
38. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 108–138.
39. Cited in Antony Polonsky and Bolesław Drukier, eds., The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1990), 425.
40. Iazhborovskaia, “The Gomułka Alternative,” 135.
41. Andrzej Garlicki, Z tajnych archiwów (Warsaw: Polska oficyna Wydawnicza “BGW”, 1993), 34.
42. “III kw. 45 (adnotacja na rękopisie): Wypowiedź Stalina,” quoted in Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopią,” 139.
43. Praƶmowska, Wladyslaw Gomulka, 147–148. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 777n638.
44. Andrzej Werblan, “Dlaczego Gomułka przegrał ze Stalinem,” Feb. 13, 2005, http://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/dlaczego-Gomułka-przegral-ze-Stalinem/.
45. Gomułka, Pamiętniki, vol. 2, 476.
46. Cited in Pol’sha v XX veke, 434, 448.
47. L. Ia. Gibianskii, “Dolgii put’ k tainam: istoriografiia Kominforma,” in Soveshchaniia Kominforma 1947, 1948, 1949: Dokumenty i Materialy (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 39–40.
48. HIA, Berman, box 1, folder 20. “Wstępne Rozmowy w sprawie zwołania Narody Europejskich Partii Komunistycznych w 1947 r.,” 3.
49. Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopią, 33.
50. See Gibianskii, “Dolgii put’,” 40.
51. See Zhdanov’s speech “On the international situation” in Soveshchaniia Kominforma, 297–302.
52. See Peter Raina, Gomułka. Politische Biographie (Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1970), 70. Raina notes here that the Yugoslav representative, Milovan Djilas, stated that Gomułka “spoke carefully but unmistakably about the Polish road to socialism.” Kersten writes that Gomułka thought about resigning as a demonstration against the Cominform meeting, but that his comrades did not support his idea. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 407.
53. Cited in Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopią, 34.
54. Pol’sha v XX veke, 546.
55. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 618.
56. See Ivo Banac, With Stalin Against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 117ff.
57. T. V. Volokitina, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskova, T. A. Pokivailova, Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa. Stanovlenie politicheskikh rezhimov sovetskogo tipa: 1949–1953: Ocherki istorii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 499.
58. Werblan, “Dlaczego Gomułka przegrał ze Stalinem,” 79.
59. Leonid Gibianskii, “The Beginning of the Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict and the Cominform,” The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949 (Milan: Feltrenelli, 1994), 480; see also Leonid Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 302.
60. Pol’sha v XX veke, 556.
61. Berman in Teresa Torańska, “Them”: Stalin’s Polish Puppets (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 281–284.
62. For the involvement of Polish Jews in the communist movement, see Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). For an earlier version of this section, see Norman M. Naimark, “The Anti-Semitic Factor in Postwar Polish Politics,” in Murray Baumgarten et al., eds., Varieties of Anti-Semitism: History, Ideology, Discourse (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), 237–251.
63. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 338.
64. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 289–290.
65. Lebedev to Molotov, Mar. 10, 1948, in Sovetskii faktor, vol. 1, 561.
66. See Andrzej Albert [Wojciech Roszkowski], Najnowsza historia Polski 1914–1993, vol. 2 (London: Puls, 1993), 133. Pol’sha v XX veke, 555.
67. Krzysztof Persak, “Stalin and the Polish Leaders; The Soviet Dictator’s Mediation between the Polish Communist and Socialist Parties, 1946,” unpublished manuscript, Sept. 1999.
68. John Coutouvidis and Jaime Reynolds, Poland 1939–1947 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986), 309.
69. The PPR politburo’s reaction to the June 3 speech is contained in Paczkowski, ed., Dokumenty do dziejów PRL, 224–228, and Jakub Andrzejewski, ed., Gomułka i inni: dokumenty z archiwum KC 1948–1982(London: Aneks, 1987), 13–16.
70. Berman speech, July 21, 1948, Soveshchaniia Kominforma, 420–421.
71. HIA, Berman, box 2, folder 11, “Stenogram przemówienia z Plenarnego Posiedzenia KC PZPR,” Aug. 31–Sept. 3, 1948, 7, 9, 10. See also Gomułka i inni, 13–16.
72. Gomułka i inni, 36. (July 28, 1948).
73. Cited in Pol’sha v XX veke, 554.
74. HIA, Bierut, “Oświadczenia t. W. [Gomułka],” Aug. 18, 1948. See also Iazhborovskaia, “The Gomułka Alternative,” 135.
75. Cited in Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 510.
76. Gomułka letter, July 4, 1948, to KC PPR, Gomułka i inni, 28–29.
77. See Iazhborovskaia, “The Gomułka Alternative,” 135.
78. Norman Davies, “Poland,” in Communist Power in Europe 1944–1949, ed. Martin McCauley (London: Macmillian Press Ltd. 1977), 51–52. Davies rightly notes here that divisions in the Polish party were much more complicated than simply between the “home” communists of Gomułka and the “Muscovites.”
79. HIA, Bierut, “Tomasz [Bierut] to Dimitrov, June 10, 1944. See Pol’sha v XX veke, 557.
80. Raina, Gomułka, 83. “American Embassy Warsaw to Secretary of State, 1181, Sept. 6, 1948. Summary of Resolution of Aug.–Sept. Plenum.” Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files. Poland, 1945–1949 [microform], internal affairs decimal number 86c and foreign affairs decimal numbers 760c and 711.60.c.
81. HIA, Bierut, Suslov (?) to Bierut (n.d.).
82. For documents on the attack on Gomułka, see Dokumenty do dziejów PRL. For descriptions of Gomułka’s struggle in this period, see Paweł Machcewicz, Władysław Gomułka (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1995), 24–33. See also Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, “Warsaw to Secretary of State, 1192, Sept. 7, 1948.
83. Józef Światło, “Behind the Scene of the Party and Bezpieka,” 5. “Literal” translation of Światło’s Za kulisami bezpieki i partii (Warsaw: BIS, 1990).
84. Raina, Gomułka, 75. Bierut, for example, was known to have lived in luxurious circumstances.
85. Yosef Litwak, “Polish Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union at the End of the Second World War and Afterwards,” in Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–46, ed. Norman Davies and Anthony Polonsky (New York, St. Martin’s, 1991), 229; Bożena Szaynok, “Komuniści w Polsce (PPR / PZPR) wobec ludności żydowskiej (1945–1953),” Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość 3 / 2, no. 6, 193.
86. See Berman’s reflections on this issue in Torańska, “Them,” 51–52.
87. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 662.
88. Roman Werfel, “Ostatni spór Gomulki ze Stalinem: Nieznana korespondencja z 1948 r.,” Dziś: Przegląd Społeczny, no. 6 (33) (1993): 103.
89. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 663.
90. Gomułka to Stalin, Dec. 14, 1948, in SSSR—Pol’sha: Mekhanizmy Podchineniia, 1944–1949 gg.: Sbornik Dokumentov, ed. Gennadii Bordiugov et al. (Moscow: “Airo—XX,” 1995), 274–275.
91. Gomułka to Stalin, Dec. 14, 1948, in SSSR—Pol’sha, 275.
92. August Grabski, cited in Szaynok, “Komuniści w Polsce,” 193.
93. Dariusz Stola writes that Gomułka should not be considered an anti-Semite because of the lack of an ongoing and consistent prejudicial attitude against the Jews. Private communication, Jan. 2019.
94. See Berman’s description of the Gomułka issue in Torańska, “Them,” 281–284.
95. See Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 510.
96. Spałek, Komuniści przeciwko komunistom, 782.
97. Pol’sha v XX veke, 561. See also the Trybuna Ludu report of Gomułka’s speech at the Congress, translated in “Warsaw to Secretary of State, Dec. 17, 1948.”
98. According to Spałek, by the spring of 1949 Lebedev’s position as plenipotentiary in Warsaw was so strong that his reports went directly to Stalin. Spałek, Komuniści, 672.
99. Lebedev to Vyshinskii, July 10, 1949, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 2, 173.
100. Spałek, Komuniści, 676–677.
101. Wolski was particularly critical of Zambrowski, because as a member of the “Jewish Triumvirate” he was in charge of cadre policy. At the fourth plenum of the PZPR in 1950, he charged that Zambrowski only drew from experienced cadres, many of whom had Trotskyite backgrounds (a shorthand for Jews), and that he demonstrated a “lack of confidence in new people from the working class,” which resembled Gomułka’s criticism. Cited in Andrzej Werblan, Stalinizm w Polsce (Warsaw, Wydawnictwo FAKT, 1991), 47.
102. Lebedev to Vyshinskii, July 10, 1949, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 2, 176.
103. Lebedev to Vyshinskii, Vostochnaia Evropa, 176. This charge was also leveled—apparently with some justification—at Ana Pauker, a leading Romanian communist, whose brother lived in Israel and returned periodically to Romania to meet with her on behalf of potential Jewish emigrants. See Robert Levy, Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 167–183.
104. Lebedev to Vyshinskii, July 10, 1949, Vostochnaia Evropa, vol. 2, 177.
105. Torańska, “Them,” 235.
106. HIA, Bierut 1944–1950. Bierut to Stalin, May 1950.
107. HIA, Bierut 1944–1950, Stalin to Bierut, May 22, 1950.
108. Torańska, “Them,” 265.
109. Ogol’tsov to Molotov, May 13, 1950, with a telegram from the MGB advisor Bezborodov about the expulsion of W. Wolski from the PZPR, Sovetskii faktor, vol. 2, 322.
110. Volokitina et al. believe that Lebedev’s removal on Mar. 16, 1951, had nothing to do with the Wolski affair. This seems unlikely to me. Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 551.
111. Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 549.
112. [Władysław Gomułka], “Przygotowania do procesu o odchylenie prawicowo-nacjonalistyczne,” “Fragmenty notatek Władysława Gomułki,” in Strzelecki-Gomułka, Między realizmem a utopią, 180. In the “Generals Trial,” which took place between July 31 and Aug. 13, 1952, General Stanisław Tatar and eight other high-ranking officers were accused and convicted of various crimes associated with undermining the socialist state. At the trial, Spychalski, who was not a defendant but still under arrest and investigation at that time, was forced to testify against them. See Andrew Michta, Red Eagle: The Army in Polish Politics, 1944–1988 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990): 45–49. Bierut linked the alleged military conspiracy, at work since 1945, to the “Spychalski-Gomułka group” in a letter to Stalin. HIA, Boleslaw Bierut, 1944–1950, Bierut to Stalin, 1950, 5.
113. V. I. Ovcharov (a Cominform official) on the Polish party, Dec. 15, 1949, in Sovetskii faktor, vol. 2, 233–234n2, 235. The American architect Hermann Field, in search of his missing brother Noel Field, the alleged CIA agent and organizer at the center of various East European anti-communist conspiracies, was arrested in Poland in Aug. 1949 and interrogated in the hopes of constructing a case against Gomułka. Meanwhile, Noel was imprisoned and tortured by the Hungarian secret police in conjunction with the László Rajk trial in Hungary. Hermann Field and Kate Field, Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
114. Col. Zaitsev on the Polish military-judicial system, Jan. 8, 1951, in Sovetskii faktor, vol. 2, 434–435.
115. Some of the letters are in HIA, Władysław Gomułka, folder 3:2: Gomułka to Bierut, (July 24, 1950); Bierut to Gomułka (July 27, 1950); Gomułka to Berman (July 28, 1950); Gomułka to Bierut (Aug. 14, 1950).
116. Spałek, Komuniści, 724–725.
117. Andrzej Paczkowski, Trzy twarze Józefa Światły (Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka, 2009), 113.
118. HIA, Władysław Gomułka, box, 3, folder 1. Gomułka to Central Committee, June 28, 1952, 7.
119. The Hoover Institution Archives hold copies of the originals of many of the interrogation protocols. HIA, Władysław Gomułka, box 3, folder 1.
120. “Notes from the interrogation of GOMUŁKA, May 4, 1953,” in HIA, Władysław Gomułka, box 3.
121. Protocol of Interrogation, Oct. 6, 1953, HIA, Władysław Gomułka, box 3, folder 1. This was a repeated theme in his responses. See Protocol of Interrogation, Feb. 19, 1953, HIA, Władysław Gomułka, box 3, folder 1.
122. Andrzej Werblan, ed. “The Conversation between Władysław Gomułka and Josef Stalin on 14 November 1945,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 11 (Winter 1998): 138.
123. L. W. Głuchowski, “The Defection of Józef Światło and the Search for Jewish Scapegoats in the Polish United Workers’ Party, 1953–1954,” https://www.marxiso.org/subject/jewish.Głuchowski.pdf., 14.
124. Paczkowski, Trzy twarze, 147.
125. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Poland, the ‘Enemy Nation’,” in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, ed. Stephane Courtois et al., trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 381–382. See Andrzej Werblan, Stalinizm w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo FAKT, 1991), 21.
126. R. T. Davies, “Comrade Gomułka in Coventry,” July 19, 1948, 4, in Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files. Warsaw to Secretary of State, July 23, 1948.
127. Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 527.
128. Józef Światło, Za kulisami bezpieki i partii (Warsaw: BIS, 1990), 16–22.
129. Spałek, Komuniści, 711. Machcewicz agrees with this argument in Władysław Gomułka, 32. See also Bolesław Szydek in his edited collection, Władysław Gomułka we wspomnieniach (Lublin: Wydawnictwa Lubelskie, 1989), 25. Prazmowska, Wladyslaw Gomulka, 174.
130. “ ‘Moje czternaście lat’ … ‘Zwierzenia Władysława Gomułki’ ” opracował Leo Dan, from Israeli daily “Nowiny Kurier,” June–July 1973, HIA, Ryszard Gontarz, box 1.
131. Torańska, “Them,” 327.
132. One of Gomułka’s earliest biographers, Peter Raina, suggests that Bierut had a conscience, knew that Gomułka was not guilty, and therefore resisted pressure to put him on trial. Raina, Gomułka, 88. Andrzej Werblan notes that Bierut did “prolong the process,” but whether he did this to save Gomułka, says Werblan, is hard to determine. “Maybe he did it out of pedantry, for which he was known.” Paweł Dybicz, “Naród nie może zginąć—rozmowa z prof. Andrzejem Werblanem,” Oct. 2014, http://
133. “Moje czternaście lat …,” 1. HIA, Ryszard Gontarz, box 1, 2.
134. See G. P. Murashko, ed., “Delo Slanskogo,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1997), 8.
135. Cited in Volokitina et al., Moskva i vostochnaia Evropa, 551.
136. Anat Plocker, “Homelands: Poles and Jews under Communism,” manuscript, 2019, chapter 3, 36–37.
137. HIA, Władysław Gomułka, folder 3 / 6. Interviews after Gomułka’s death. Stanisław Trepczyński (Dec. 1983).
138. Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967–1968 (Warsaw: ISP PAN, 2000), 213.
1. “Moskovskaia Deklaratsiia,” Oct. 30, 1943, in Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945–1955 / Krasnaia Armiia v Avstrii: Sovetskaia okkupatsiia 1945–1955, ed. Stefan Karner, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, and Alexander Tschubarjan (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2005), 38 (hereafter RAÖ / KAA.) The collection includes both German and Russian translations. I use the page numbers for the original language of the document. See Guenter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945–55 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 25–26. Gerald Stourzh and Wolfgang Mueller, A Cold War over Austria: The Struggle for the State Treaty, Neutrality, and the End of East-West Occupation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 1–10.
2. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 365.
3. Deputy Foreign Minister Solomon Lozovskii to Stalin, Jan. 23, 1945, AVPRF, “Ob Avstrii,” no. 3797-g., ll. 6–7.
4. “K Avstriiskomu Narodu!” in AVPRF, “Ob Avstrii,” no. 3797-g.
5. Understanding Austria: The Political Reports and Analysis of Martin F. Herz, Political Officer of the U.S. Legation in Vienna 1945–1948 (Vienna: Neugebauer, 1984), 132.
6. Wolfgang Mueller, Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich 1945–1955 und ihre politische Mission (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), 140–141.
7. Ukrainian Front, Military Council, “On the provision of products for the people of the city of Vienna,” Apr. 21, 1945, in SSSR i Avstrii na puti k gosudarstvennomu dogovoru: Stranitsy dokumental’noi istorii 1945–1955, ed. V. I. Iakunin (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2015), 40.
8. Understanding Austria, “Compendium of Austrian Politics,” Dec. 2, 1948, 559. Mueller, in Die sowjetische Besatzung, 112, writes that contemporary estimates of the incidence of rape ranged between 70,000 and 100,000 in Vienna and Lower Austria, and between 5,000 to 10,000 in the Steiermark.
9. Stenogram of a report on the domestic situation in Austria, ZK VKP(b), Aug. 7 (probably Aug. 18), 1945, in Sowjetische Politik in Österreich 1945–1955: Dokumente aus russischen Archiven. Sovetskaia politika v Avstrii 1945–1955gg. Dokumenty iz Rossiiskikh arkhivov, ed. Wolfgang Mueller, Arnold Suppan, Norman M. Naimark, Gennadii Bordiugov (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 2005), 190. (Hereafter SPÖ / SPA). The documents are in Russian and German on facing pages. I cite the original language version of the document.
10. Smirnov to Kiselev, Sept. 7, 1945, in RAÖ / KAA, 418.
11. HIA, Austria: Territory under Allied Occupation, 1945–1955, box 6. “Military Government in Austria,” July 31, 1946, 1–3.
12. The many problems with the “Four in a Jeep” patrols in Vienna are explored in Ralph W. Brown III, “Making the Third Man Look Pale: American-Soviet Conflict in Vienna during the Early Cold War in Austria, 1945–1950,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 14, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 87–88.
13. ÖS, NL Renner E 1731: 307.
14. For Renner and the Soviets, see Robert Knight, “The Renner State Government and Austrian Sovereignty,” in Austria 1945–95: Fifty Years of the Second Republic, ed. Kurt Richard Luther and Peter Pulzer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 30–36; and Wilfried Aichinger, “Die Sowjetunion und Österreich 1945–1949,” in Die bevormundete Nation: Österreich und die Allierten 1945–1949, ed. Günther Bischof and Josef Leidenfrost (Innsbruck: Haymon, 1988), 275–279. The Renner-Stalin documents are also published in SSSR i Avstriia, 33–39, 43–51.
15. David J. Dallin, “Stalin, Renner und Tito: Österreich zwischen drohender Sowjetisierung und den jugoslawischen Gebietsansprüchen im Frühjahr 1945,” Europa-Archiv, July–Dec., 1958, 11.030. S. M. Shtemenko, Generalnyi shtab v gody voiny, kn. 2 (Moscow, 1973) 356–358. Renner’s recent biographer, Siegfried Nasko, reviews the evidence at some length. Siegfried Nasko, Karl Renner: Zu Unrecht umstritten? Eine Wahrheitssuche (Salzburg, Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 2016), 358–366. Nasko cites a newspaper interview with Andrei Sorokin, Director of RGASPI in Moscow: “We have no documents that Stalin sought out Renner.… In my view, he reacted operationally to Renner’s offer and used the opportunity.” Nasko, Karl Renner, 362. See Mueller, Die sowjetische Besatzung, 75–77.
16. Tolbukhin and Zheltov to Stalin about Renner, Apr. 4, 1945, SPÖ / SPA, 110.
17. Dallin, “Stalin, Renner and Tito,” 11.031. Like the issue of Stalin seeking out Renner, this too may be conjecture.
18. General Staff (Stalin and Antonov) to Third Ukrainian Front (Tolbukhin) on Renner, Apr. 4, 1945, in SPÖ / SPA, 112. See Dallin, “Stalin, Renner und Tito,” 11.031.
19. Report of M. Koptelov, Political Advisor of the Third Ukrainian Front. Meeting of Renner, Marshal Tolbukhin, and Col.-General Zheltov, June 6, 1945, in AVPRF, no. 3797-g. “Ob Avstrii,” ll. 27–28.
20. Protokolle des Kabinettsrates der provisorischen Regierung Karl Renner 1945, Band I, ed. Gertrude Enderle-Burcel et al. (Vienna: Verlag Berger, 1995), 37 (May 10, 1945).
21. AVPRF, f. 060, op. 25, papka 119, d. 10, ll. 3–4.
22. Renner wrote to Stalin (Apr. 15, 1945): “With Trotsky, I had ongoing contacts in the year he spent in Vienna.” AVPRF, f. 066, op. 25, papka 119, d. 10, l. 2. Dallin, “Stalin, Renner und Tito,” 11.031–11.032. RAÖ / KAA, Letter of K. Renner to Stalin, Apr. 15, 1945, 103. Some historians doubt that Renner was as naïve as it seems by employing this reference to Trotsky. See Nasko, Karl Renner, 372.
23. Tolbukhin on the formation of the Austrian Provisional Government, Apr. 17, 1945, SPÖ / SPA, 126–128.
24. Cited in Ol’ga Pavlenko, “Österreich im Kraftfeld der sowjetischen Diplomatie,” Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Beiträge, ed. Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2005), 572.
25. Protokolle des Kabinettsrates, vol. 2 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), Aug. 7, 1947, Aug. 22, 1947, 211, 217, 292–293.
26. Nasko, Karl Renner, 378.
27. ÖS, NL Renner E / 1731, 306–309, box 51. See also AVPRF, f. 066, op. 25, papka 118a, d. 7. l. 64.
28. Nasko, Karl Renner, 380.
29. Politburo decision of October 19, 1945, in SPÖ / SPA, 220.
30. Richard Saage, Der erste Präsident: Karl Renner—eine politische Biografie (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay Verlage, 2006), 310–311.
31. Cited in Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 51.
32. Protokolle des Kabinettsrates, vol. 1, 55 (May 10, 1945).
33. Koptelov to Dekanozov on his discussion with Renner, Apr. 19, 1945, RAÖ / KAA, 110.
34. HIA, ZZ146, “Karl Renner interview transcript,” With Herr Dalauney (“Quotidiens provinciaux”), Feb. 12, 1947, 2.
35. ÖS, NL Renner, E/173/:309. Zheltov-Renner Conference Aug. 28, 1945.
36. Vyshinskii diary, Aug. 3, 1946, AVPRF, f. 066, op. 25, d. 9, papka 119, l. 30.
37. Hexmann, “Einschätzung der Wahlergebnisse in Österreich,” Dec. 8 1945, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 781, l. 264.
38. Cited in James J. Carafano, Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2002), 91.
39. Fürnberg at Sitzung of the Wiener Landesausschuß, Sept. 27, 1946. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 108, l. 35.
40. ÖS, NL Renner, Renner Oct. 22, 1945, E / 1731, 313–321 box 53.
41. Anthony Eden later wrote to the Prime Minister about Figl: “I know Dr Figl well. He is a courageous man who spent many years in a German concentration camp where he was brutally treated. He is nonetheless a cheerful soul who likes his glass of wine.” TNA, FO 800 / 7511, Secretary of State’s File, Private Papers of Anthony Eden, 16.
42. Helmut Wohnout, Leopold Figl und das Jahr 1945: von der Todeszelle auf den Ballhausplatz (St. Pölten, Salzburg, Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 2015), 145.
43. General I. V. Shikin to G. F. Aleksandrov in the Central Committee, Jan. 15, 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 244.
44. On the initial promises to close down the Allied Council, see Wolfgang Mueller, “Stalin and Austria: New Evidence on Soviet Policy in a Secondary Theatre of the Cold War, 1938–53 / 55,” Cold War History 6, no. 1 (Feb. 2006): 68–69.
45. See Pavlenko, “Österreich im Kraftfeld,” 586.
46. FRUS, vol. 5, 1946, 364.
47. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 909, ll. 11, 22.
48. Understanding Austria (Dec. 2, 1948), 591.
49. SPÖ / SPA, Dimitrov to Stalin, Apr. 3, 1945, 108.
50. See Oliver Rathkolb, “Historische Fragmente und die ‘unendliche Geschichte’ von den sowjetischen Absichten in Österreich 1945,” in Österreich unter alliierter Besatzung 1945–1955, ed. Alfred Ableitinger, Siegfried Beer, and Eduard G. Staudinger (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), 147.
51. Franz Marek, Beruf und Berufung Kommunist: Lebenserinnerungen und Schlüsseltexte, ed. Maximilian Graf and Sarah Knoll (Vienna: Mandelbaum Kritik & Utopie, 2017), 172–173, 184. Thanks to Maximilian Graf for pointing out this source.
52. Marek, Beruf und Berufung Kommunist, 170.
53. See Minutes from the meeting between General Kurasov and the leaders of the Central Committee of the KPÖ where Fürnberg told Kurasov that the party had “insignificant” influence in the countryside and was simply “too weak” to carry out work there. SPÖ / SPA, 318.
54. Report of the Foreign Affairs Section of the Central Committee, Oct. 23, 1946, and “Report of G. F. Aleksandrov and M. A. Suslov to the Secretary of the Central Committee, A. A. Zhdanov, on the Situation of Soviet Propaganda in Austria,” Feb. 1947, SPÖ / SPA, 1945–1955, 334, 360. The latter document contains particularly critical views of the propaganda section of the Soviet element in the Allied Commission.
55. See the stenogram of the discussion in the Central Committee on the work of the Sovinformburo, June 28, 1946, and, B. Sapozhnikov, “Report of the Foreign Policy Section of the Central Committee,” Oct. 23, 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 272–276, 334–340.
56. HIA, Allied Commission for Austria, box 1, Annex A, Minutes (July 10, 1947), Statement by Col. Gen Kurasov, 1.
57. Rolf Steininger, Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938–1955 (New York: Berghahn, 2008), 52.
58. Minutes of the discussions between G. Korotkevich and the leaders of the KPÖ, Apr. 16, 1947, SPÖ / SPA, 378.
59. Minutes of the discussions between G. Korotkevich and the leaders of the KPÖ, Apr. 16, 1947, SPÖ / SPA, 378.
60. Korotkevich to Suslov, Nov. 19, 1946, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 910, l. 234.
61. Report of the Propaganda Section of the Soviet Element of the Control Commission about the Elections of Oct. 27, 1949, 622, and, From the Diary of the Soviet Political Representative in Austria, M. E. Koptelov about a Discussion with F. Fürnberg, Aug. 17, 1950, SPÖ / SPA, 680.
62. In response to Fürnberg’s statement that the Yugoslavs had suggested partition as a solution to the Austrian question, Zhdanov responded: “this is fundamentally incorrect advice.” Protocol of the Discussion between Zhdanov and Koplenig and Fürnberg, Feb. 13, 1948, SPÖ / SPA, 462 (Zhdanov’s emphasis). From his reading of foreign ministry documents, Oliver Rathkolb concludes: “The division of the country or an occupation ad infinitum seemed—as far as the documents that we now have show—never to have been taken very seriously.” Rathkolb, “Historische Fragmente,” 157.
63. See Wolfgang Mueller, “Stalin and Austria: New Evidence on Soviet Policy in a Secondary Theater in the Cold War, 1938–53 / 55,” Journal of Cold War History 6, no. 1 (2006): 70–71.
64. Suslov to Molotov and Zhdanov, June 11, 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 1945–1955, 268.
65. Marek, Beruf und Berufung, 168.
66. From the political report of the Propaganda Section of the Soviet Element in Austria, Aug. 6, 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 292. See also Rathkolb, “Historische Fragmente,” 149–150.
67. Letter from Koplenig and Fürnberg to Stalin on the economic and political situation in Austria, Mar. 31, 1947, SPÖ / SPA, 362–368.
68. Korotkevich to Suslov, Nov. 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 340.
69. According to the Americans, some 286 Austrians were seized in 1948 alone; 152 of these were not released. Erhardt to Sec. of State, Nov. 2, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1442. See also Stalins letzte Opfer: Verschleppte und erschossene Österreicher in Moskau, 1950–1953, ed. Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx (Vienna: Böhlau / Oldenbourg, 2009).
70. HIA, Allied Commission for Austria, Allied Council, June 25, 1948, Statement by British Member.
71. Giles MacDonough, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic, 2007), 514.
72. Stenogram of Central Committee meeting on Sovinformburo, June 28, 1946, SPÖ / SPA, 274.
73. Report of the Central Committee Commission on Soviet Propaganda in Austria, to Suslov, June 12, 1948, SPÖ / SPA, 504. On Zheltov’s failings, see 502. For a similar purge of Jews from the propaganda organs of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, see Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 338, 416.
74. Report of the Central Committee Commission on Soviet Propaganda in Austria to Suslov, SPÖ / SPA, June 12, 1948, 502.
75. On financial support, see Korotkevich to Suslov, Nov. 19, 1946, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 910, l. 234. Mueller, Die sowjetische Besatzung, 171–173.
76. Report of the Soviet Element of the Allied Council in Austria on the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the KPÖ, Aug. 19, 1949, SPÖ / SPA, 592–598.
77. From the Report of the Section on Internal Affairs of the Soviet Element of the Allied Council in August for the year 1949, Jan. 26, 1950, in Report of the Soviet Element of the Allied Council in Austria on the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the KPÖ, Aug. 19, 1949, SPÖ / SPA, 640.
78. From the Diary of the Political Representative of the USSR in Austria, M. E. Koptelov, about a Discussion of F. Fürnberg, Aug. 1950, in Report of the Soviet Element of the Allied Council in Austria on the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the KPÖ, 680–681. See Heinz Gärtner, Zwischen Moskau und Österreich: Analyse einer sowjetabhängigen KP (Wien: Braumiller, 1977), 116.
79. See Bevin’s observations in TNA FO 800 / 439. Secretary of State (Ernest Bevin), Telegram, Sept. 17, 1949.
80. Understanding Austria (Feb. 10, 1947), 330.
81. FRUS, 1947, vol 2, 1169.
82. Protokolle des Kabinettsrates, vol. 2, Aug. 24 1945, 353.
83. ÖS, NL Renner, E / 1731: 332. Sten. Protokol, Erste Länderkonferenz, Wien, Sept. 24–26, 1945, 2. Emphasis in the original.
84. Renner to Stalin, Oct. 17, 1945, AVPRF, f. 066, op. 25, papka 119, d. 10, l. 132. RAÖ / KAA, Renner to Stalin, Oct. 17, 1945, 243.
85. The agreement was initially concluded on May 24 for approval of the respective governments. SSSR i Avstriia, 96–97.
86. AVPRF, no. 3797-g. “Ob Avstrii,” l. 25.
87. AVPRF, f. 06, op. 8, papka 22, d. 311. Molotov to Stalin, June 12, 1946. See Wolfgang Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance’? Die sowjetische Haltung zum Staatsvertrag 1946–1952,” Der Österreichische Staatsvertrag: Internationale Strategie, rechtliche Relevanz, nationale Identität, ed. Arnold Suppan, Gerald Stourzh, and Wolfgang Mueller (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), 93.
88. For Yugoslav claims, see Arnold Suppan, Hitler-Beneš-Tito: Konflikt, Krieg, und Völkermord in Ostmittel- und Sudösteuropa, part 2 (Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW, 2014), 1625–1631.
89. See Stourzh and Mueller, Cold War over Austria, 75.
90. TNA FO 800 / 439, UK Delegation to CFM to Foreign Office, Apr. 23, 1947.
91. Barulin to Smirnov, Final Report of the Soviet Element of the Allied Commission for the 1947, Apr. 1948, RAÖ / KAA, 344.
92. TNA FO 800 / 439, Statement of Secretary of State at CFM, Dec. 4, 1947.
93. Keyes to Secretary of State, Mar. 4, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1384.
94. In its reporting on the possibility of a “Czech coup” scenario in Austria, the CIA noted that the Austrian communists “will remain no more than a nuisance factor” and “only physical force” on the part of the USSR could integrate Austria into the eastern bloc. CREST, CIA FOIA, “Intelligence Memorandum no. 219 (Revised), “Soviet Intentions in Austria,” Sept. 22, 1949, 1–4. Still, the State Department worried about serious Soviet political influence even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Dept. of State Policy Statement on Austria, Sept. 20, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 2, 1350.
95. HIA, Allied Commission for Austria, box 1, Statement by French High Commissioner, Jan. 28, 1949.
96. NSA, Secret Intelligence Estimate, “The Current Situation in Austria,” Apr. 28, 1948, ORE 13–48, 2.
97. Already in Nov. 1947 General Keyes worried about an Allied withdrawal from Austria without “reasonable assurance that [the] south flank of our occupation forces in Germany is not being exposed by creation of another potential Soviet satellite.” Keyes also argued—like those who opposed withdrawal from Berlin—that leaving Austria would deprive the United States of “valuable facilities for gaining intelligence relative to [the] USSR and Balkan States.” Keyes to European Command, Nov. 10, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 2, 1201.
98. CREST, CIA FOIA, Department of the Army, General Staff Memorandum to the Assistant Director, R&E, CIA, Jan. 18, 1949, “Possible Developments in Soviet Policy Towards Austria.”
99. See Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance,’?” 96.
100. See Audrey Cronin, Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria, 1945–1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 68–94. See also Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance,’ ” 100–103.
101. TNA FO 800 / 439, Record of meeting of Bevin and Schumann in Paris, Oct. 2, 1948.
102. Vyshinskii’s Diary, May 4, 1949, in AVPRF, f. 066, op. 29, papki 136, d. 10, l. 8. Reprinted in SSSR i Avstriia, 159–160.
103. Vyshinskii’s Diary, June 9, 1949, in AVPRF, f. 066, op. 29, papki 136, d. 10, l. 11. Reprinted in SSSR i Avstriia, 161–165.
104. See Reber (U.S. Deputy for Austria at the CFM) to the Secretary of State, Apr. 16, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1088.
105. AVPRF, f. 023, Molotov to Stalin, Feb. 9, 1949, ll. 1, 5.
106. CREST, CIA FOIA, Partial Agreement on Austrian Treaty,” June 17, 1949. Bevin notes, however, that Gruber had private doubts about a treaty, though he was prepared to take the risk “so long as they could get the Russians out of the country.” TNA FO 800 / 439, Secretary of State telegram, Sept. 16, 1949. See also Bevin’s rendition of Gruber’s concerns at the Paris meeting of U.S., French, and British Foreign Ministers, Oct. 4, 1948 in TNA FO 800 / 439.
107. See Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance,’? ” 102.
108. Michael Gehler, Österreichs Aussenpolitik der Zweiten Republic: Von der alliierter Besatzung zum Europa des 21.Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Innsbruck, Vienna: StudienVerlag, 2005), 65.
109. Coburn Kidd to Williamson, July 29, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1111.
110. Reber to Sec. of State, July 14, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1106.
111. The Department of State Bulletin, July 4, 1949, 86–861.
112. TNA FO 800 / 439, Secretary of State to Prime Minister, Sept. 29, 1949.
113. TNA FO 800 / 439, Record of a Conversation between Bevin and Vyshinskii at Lake Success, Sept. 30, 1949.
114. Cited in Cronin, Great Power Politics, 87. Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance,’ ” 105.
115. Extract from telegram from Mr. Bevin, Aug. 26, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1126. The French were also ready to sign the treaty. Reber to Acting Secretary of State, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1159.
116. TNA FO 800 / 439. Extract from letter, Secretary of State to Prime Minister, Sept. 29, 1949.
117. It should be noted that even the State Department was not completely convinced about signing the treaty. Acheson himself wavered, while his acting Secretary of State, James E. Webb, warned that the Soviet Union would only agree to a treaty “that would subsequently permit Soviet penetration and repossession of all of Austria.” Webb also noted that signing a treaty after the dropping of the Soviet atom bomb, announced by President Truman on Sept. 23, might give Moscow “the mistaken impression” that this affected U.S. concessions in connection with Austria. On Acheson’s concerns (and his dismissal of Gruber’s), see Secretary of State to U.S. Deputy (Reber), Aug. 23, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1123. See also Secretary of State to U.S. Deputy (Reber), Aug. 20, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1130. James. E Webb to Acheson, Sept. 28, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3 1161.
118. Gale Group. U.S. Declassified Documents Online, NSC 38 / 3, Nov. 8, 1949, Report to the National Security Council, “Future Courses of U.S. Action with Respect to Austria,” 1, 10. To assuage the Pentagon’s concerns, the NSC report confirmed that the Western powers were training and equipping a gendarmerie regiment in the western zones and engaging in covert military planning with the Austrian government.
119. Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 67.
120. Gale Group. U.S. Declassified Documents Online. Harry S. Truman Library (online), Papers of Harry S. Truman, President’s Secretary’s Files. Bradley to Secretary of Defense, “Future Course of U.S. Action with Respect to Austria,” Nov. 14, 1949, 1–2.
121. Jenny Thompson and Sherry Thompson, The Kremlinologist: Llewellyn E. Thompson, America’s Man in Cold War Moscow (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), 99.
122. CREST, CIA FOIA, Europe / Austria, Nov. 30, 1949. BA FO 800 / 751. “Use of Austrian Manpower in the Event of War.” Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and War. NSA, CIA, Secret Intelligence Estimate, Aug. 31, 1949, “The Current Situation in Austria,” ORE 56–49.
123. Secretary of State to U.S. Deputy (Reber), Aug. 23, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3. 1123.
124. Gribanov to Vyshinskii, Dec. 17, 1949, AVPRF, f. 066, op. 30, papka 141, ll. 176–177.
125. Gromyko to Stalin, Oct. 22, 1949, in RAÖ / KAA, 740.
126. Politburo Rescript, Oct. 24, 1949, in RAÖ / KAA, 744. See Mueller, “Stalin and Austria,” 75.
127. Gerald Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit, 177. Mueller, “Gab es eine ‘verpasste Chance,’?” 110.
128. Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 72. See the somewhat fuller Russian version of the Austrian story, “Memuary Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” Voprosy istorii, 8 (1993): 73–88.
129. Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes, 72. There were fundamental differences between the Yugoslavs and the Soviets on the Austrian issue. Tito urged the Austrian communists to seek a division of Austria.
130. See Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Eine verpasste Chance? Die Grossmächte und die Verhandlungen über den Staatsvertrag im Jahre 1949,” Die Bevormundete Nation: Österreich und die Alliierten, 1945–1949, ed. Günter Bischof and Josef Leidenfrost (Innsbruck: Hayman, 1988), 347.
131. Discussion between Zhdanov and Koplenig and Fürnberg, Feb. 13, 1948, in RGASPI, fond 77, op. 3s, d. 100, ll. 9–16. See also RAÖ / KAA, 726–732.
132. Understanding Austria (June 4, 1948), 403.
133. Gehler, Österreichs Aussenpolitik, vol. 1, 69–70. A weakened and ailing Ottilinger was released in 1955 after the state treaty was signed.
134. Tsinev to Smirnov, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 137, d. 108, ll. 7–68.
135. Stourzh and Mueller, Cold War over Austria, 173.
136. On the Stalin note and its effects on the Austrian negotiations, see Stourzh and Mueller, Cold War over Austria, 174–175; Rolf Steininger, Austria, Germany and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938–1955 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 98–100. Michael Gehler, “Österreichs aussenpolitische Emanzipation und die deutsche Frage,” Österreich unter alliierter Besatzung 1945–1955, ed. Alfred Ableitinger, Siegfried Beer, and Eduard Staudinger (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), 257 ff.
137. Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 82–83. Mark Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 129–130. The EDC was signed on May 27, 1952, but failed to be ratified by the French parliament. Western Germany was then admitted to the Western European Union (WEU), as well as to NATO.
138. U.S. High Commissioner for Austria (Keyes) to Dept. of Army, Nov. 10, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 3, 1289.
139. See Carafano, Waltzing into the Cold War, 172–192.
140. For the complicated relationship between the German question and the final phases of concluding the Austrian State Treaty, see Michael Gehler, “Österreich, die Bundesrepublik und die deutsche Frage, 1945 / 49–1955: Zur Geschichte der gegenseitige Wahrnehmungen zwischen Abhängigkeit und gemeinsamen Interessen,” Ungleiche Partner? Österreich und Deutschland in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmungen, ed. Michael Gehler et al. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996), 531–581.
141. Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 156–159. Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit, 524–525.
142. Mueller, “Stalin and the Austrians,” 75.
143. Oliver Rathkolb, “Österreich als Teil der U.S.-Geopolitik, 1950–1970,” Mit anderen Augen gesehen: Internationale Perzeptionen Österreichs 1955–1990, ed. Oliver Rathkolb, Otto M. Maschke, and Stefan August Lütgenau (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002), 25–26. Gerald Stourzh, Geschichte des Staatsvertrages 1945–1955: Österreichs Weg zur Neutralität (Graz: Styria, 1985), 99.