War: The Cat in the Kremlin

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Where is the Korean war leading the world? Will the fierce forest fire in the mountainous land below the 38th parallel be confined to the Korean peninsula? Will it spread around the globe, to sear the capitals of the world with atomic fire? Or is 1950 the beginning of a series of slow, limited wars that will keep the U.S. and its allies committed in battle for generations?

The apprehensive world asked these questions at bars and council tables, at workbench and at hearthside, followed them with a hundred more. The answer was buried in the mind of a grey, catlike old man behind the walls of the Kremlin. Would the cat in the Kremlin jump again? If he did, where and how would he strike? Or could he again be made to purr benignly in the role that had persuaded a lot of Americans (who would now like to bite their tongues off) to call him, fondly, Uncle Joe?

Ascot’s Third to a Discussion. Anthony Eden, in the anecdotal way that Britons have, put the question very clearly last week. He leaned on the black leather dispatch box in the House of Commons and discussed the chances of civilization’s survival in as casual a tone as if he were assessing the third race at Ascot. Said Eden:

“I recall a conversation that came to my mind today which I had with Marshal Stalin at a very grim period of the war in December 1941. One night, after our discussions about the immediate situation were over and we were conversing more discursively, we spoke of Hitler. After all, the German armies were then about 40 miles from Moscow. We discussed his character and I remember that Marshal Stalin made this comment: ‘We should not underrate Hitler. He is a very able man, but he made one mistake. He did not know when to stop.’

“I suppose I smiled. At any rate, Marshal Stalin turned to me and observed: ‘You are smiling and I know why you are smiling. You think that if we are victorious, I shall not know when to stop. You are wrong. I shall know.’

“Tonight,” mused Eden, “I am wondering whether the time has not come when he might recall these words and when perhaps he might consider that the time has come when it would be well to stop.”

A British official, whose full-time business it is to try to read Stalin’s catlike mind, commented tellingly on Eden’s story: “Stalin may know when to stop. But he also knows when to start again.”

That comment cut deeply toward the root of the question. Stalin and the force which he controlled could stop, start again, turn, twist, dissemble and maneuver. Stalin & Co. were as far as men could be from the compulsive Wagnerian frenzies that had launched Hitler upon the world and swept him to his doom. Stalin & Co.’s evil and their power were of the mind, not of the emotions. Their calculations were as cold as the Volga in February, as dry as a page of Marx. Stalin & Co. might, in a sense, be mad; but they played excellent chess.

They belonged to a new profession, the careerists of absolute power. They had the pursuit of power worked out like a textbook on surgery, and they followed it with a surgeon’s icy concentration. This did not mean that they were infallible; they often blundered. But they never panicked, they never acted on impulse, and they never relented.

That much, first of all, had to be understood by the world which wondered so desperately which way the Kremlin cat would jump.

The Bloody Professors. The keenest political observer alive in the 20th Century, in a typically Churchillian phrase, once privately called the men in the Kremlin “those ruthless and bloody-minded professors.” No Westerner knew much about what went on inside their grisly university, where last week the faculty was doubtless researching the pros & cons of the next possible moves. The West did, however, know what the campus looked like.

Along the narrow footwalk behind the high red wall of the Kremlin, mauve-capped sentries pace slowly. From each of the 19 towers which space the mile-long encircling wall, the blue muzzles of machine guns point out over the huge (pop. 4,000,000), busy city of Moscow. Inside the Kremlin’s walls, the tiny wooden church of Our Saviour of the Pine Forest, long since shorn of its bonds to God, nestles beneath the great golden domes and onion-topped towers of the Uspensky and Arkhangelsky Cathedrals, which are now museums.

Separated by broad cobbled squares and courtyards are the ornate buildings of the Czars, executed, like the history of Russia itself, in a variety of styles: Byzantine, Gothic, Romanesque, Neoclassic. On the tops of the tallest spires are the newest accretions: huge five-pointed crystal stars which catch the sun’s rays. The tall Spasski clock overlooking Red Square strikes the hour, and chimes. From cupolas, cornices, eaves and ledges a flock of ravens rises in a black cloud, filling the air with cawing, then settles.

On many evenings, when the Spasski clock strikes 7, Stalin & Co., the members of the Politburo, drive up to the Kremlin in their big black cars and settle down for an all-night discussion of the lands where they will strike next.

Gobbledygook for Hopeless. How does the world look to the Kremlin in this summer of 1950? Last week TIME correspondents in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo asked the question of the West’s students of the Soviet mind. None of the experts really thought he could pinpoint the Kremlin’s thoughts with any certainty, but there was a notable agreement on some main points of Russian thinking—past, present and future. A composite view of the West’s experts ran:

The Kremlin has known for months that its stooges in North Korea could beat the South Koreans—provided the U.S. stayed out of the fight. Stalin & Co. calculated that the U.S. would stay out. The U.S. State Department and Defense

Department considered Korea “strategically unrewarding”—which is Washington gobbledygook for “hopeless.” This attitude was reported in the U.S. press and believed by the Kremlin.

Looking at the whole chessboard, Stalin & Co. saw that the anti-Communist strength of Western Europe was building up dramatically, thanks to EGA and MAP (Military Assistance Program). The efforts of the European and U.S. Communist Parties to sabotage this buildup had failed. It was the Kremlin’s turn to move, and the move was obvious and long-prepared—Formosa.

The U.S. State Department and Defense Department, long blind to the changes in Asia, and unwilling in any case to worry about them, had decided that Formosa, too, was “strategically unrewarding.” And the U.S. had obligingly made public this decision, thus undermining the Chinese Nationalist government in its back-to-the-wall stand on Formosa (see “The U.S. Tragedy in Formosa”). To take Formosa, the Chinese servants of the Kremlin had assembled a million tons of wooden shipping around the mainland port of Amoy. They were ready to attack the island. Target date for the invasion: June 15.

Wrong Time of Day. But the Kremlin (so many of the Western experts think) just could not believe that the U.S. could be so stupid as to let Formosa fall. They believed the Washington statements on Korea, but they suspected a trap in the bland way the U.S. had informed the world that it would not help Chiang Kai-shek defend Formosa.

In mid-June, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Omar Bradley, Defense Secretary

Louis Johnson and Republican Foreign Affairs Advisor John Foster Dulles visited Tokyo. Douglas MacArthur, who had never wavered in the opinion that Formosa must be defended, armed them with eloquent and specific facts to be taken back to Washington. The Kremlin, which knew MacArthur’s position and his ability to make compelling sense of it, correctly divined that Formosa policy was going to be reconsidered in Washington; better be careful.

In such a situation, Korea seemed the safer move. If the U.S. let Korea gowithout a fight, Formosa, and anything else in the East, would be easier. So the Kremlin, at the last minute, held up the expedition at Amoy and gave the green light to the North Korean Communists.

There is plenty of evidence that the bloody-minded professors under the Spasski clock miscalculated the time of day in the U.S. For 36 hours after President Truman’s announcement that the U.S. would defend Korea, the Soviet press and officials were mum. Had they expected the U.S. move, they would have instructed Jacob Malik, their U.N. delegate, to take his seat at the Security Council and veto any U.N. action. When the Council convened, Malik was not there, and the U.S. gained the immense advantage of U.N. backing.

This was the Kremlin’s worst blunder in years, and last week Western diplomats were wondering which of their old acquaintances in the Soviet Foreign Ministry had been shot as a result. If any did go to the basement at Lubianka prison, they were unjustly punished. The inscrutable American is a hard man to guess, as Wilhelm and Tojo and Hitler found out. The Kremlin knows a lot about the U.S., but even if it had had a spy in the Cabinet of the Joint Chiefs, it could not have predicted the U.S. reaction. Even American observers were amazed at the unanimity with which the U.S. President and people responded to the Korea invasion.

So the Kremlin lost Formosa; and it had an unexpected fight on its hands in Korea. While serious, the Kremlin’s mistake was not vital. The U.S.S.R.’s stooges might still overrun South Korea, in which case the U.S. would lose much new-found face in Asia. And if the North Koreans were beaten, what? The main elements of Communist power would still be intact, ready to fight another day.

The Five Mice. But what day, and where? The West’s experts on the Communist mind try to imagine themselves in the Kremlin and look around the world from there, trying to see the world through Stalin’s cat’s eyes. The main mice in sight: Indo-China, Iran, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Germany.

As part of the Korean decision, the U.S. has decided to strengthen its help to the anti-Communist forces in Indo-China. If the U.S. moves fast, Indo-China can be saved—unless a Chinese Communist army crosses the border. But that would be a costly move for the Kremlin to make. Indo-Chinese do not like the Chinese, and Asians would be horrified at such “imperialism” by one Asiatic country against another.

Iran is a more tempting mouse. It has a lot of oil (which Russia needs), and it is militarily helpless. The trouble is, however, that Iran’s Communist-led Tudeh Party is too weak to win a civil war. If the

Kremlin pounces on Iran, it will have to pounce with Russian troops. That means risking all-out war with the U.S. and the U.N., which (the experts believe) Russia definitely does not want—yet.

Turkey is a tough mouse and an assault on it could be made only with Russian troops. By many standards Turkey is a backward country, but the Turks these days have a very simple and clear foreign policy: they are determined to fight on every goat path in the Taurus Mountains and to make the Russians pay & pay for every melon patch in Adana and every back alley in Erzurum. The Kremlin calculators will think twice or more before they take on a people whom they may well regard as Finns with mountains—and a people who would probably get all-out U.S.-U.N. help.

As for Yugoslavia, there would certainly be more joy in the Kremlin if this sinner were bumped off than if 99 other states threw themselves under the Soviet paws. But Tito grew up in a tough school; he is more cat than mouse himself, and it will take the Red army itself, not the Balkan satellites, to catch him. (Currently, the Bulgarian army is mobilized and stamping its feet on Tito’s border. If Russian forces move in the same direction, the U.S. may have another Korea decision to make.)

Germany is the most toothsome mouse of all. On paper, there are enough Communists in Eastern Germany to start a Korea-style civil war. The West’s experts believe, however, that the West Germans could knock the Marx out of the East Germans. And if Russia had to intervene —well, that would be another invitation for all-out atomic war.

The Russians can take Berlin any time they so decide, but there is a good deal of evidence that they now believe the U.S. will go to war over Berlin.

Beyond these specific trouble spots, Communism has scores of opportunities, including the great opportunity of waiting for disunion or economic depression in the free world.

Poems to the Moon. The man who will decide between these risks and opportunities is the Head Calculator, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, known affectionately to his mother as “Soso” and less affectionately to his contemporaries as Stalin. They say that he was born at Gori in Georgia on Dec. 21, 1879; that his father was a drunken cobbler who beat him; that Soso spied for the police on his fellow students at the Orthodox seminary where he studied to be a priest; and that he wrote a lot of poems to the moon when he was young.*

All of this is probably true, but probably irrelevant. What is relevant is the development of Stalin’s political thought. Better than any other Bolshevik he got hold of the essential principle of Leninism. The principle: anything for the sake of absolute power over men.

Stalin is the No. 1 Communist not merely because he has the top job but because he himself is in a notably advanced stage of Communism; in the language of the syphilologist, he might be called a tertiary Communist. It is not true, as the Trotskyists and Socialists say, that he sneaked into power. He got it because he deserved it—by the standards deeply imbedded in Communist philosophy. To stay in power, Stalin has killed millions of men—literally millions—including most of his oldest and closest revolutionary colleagues.

Social Notes. A lot of people in Russia who should know believe that he also killed his second wife. His first wife was a not very bright home-town Georgian girl whom he divorced after four years. The second was Nadezhda Alliluyeva, bright and attractive. The story goes that on Nov. 7, 1932, the Stalins gave a party at the Kremlin. Alliluyeva was all keyed up because she was about to take her final law-school examinations. She was talking happily about a new hat and dress she had ordered. During the evening, Alliluyeva got a bit tight and started needling Stalin about a political decision he had been postponing. Stalin tried to shut her up and she threw an inkstand at him.

Even in Moscow, few parties ever ended so quickly. Next night Stalin called

Vyacheslav Molotov’s wife (she was at a party with the Klementy Voroshilovs). When Mrs. Molotov got to the Stalin apartment, Mrs. Stalin was dead on the floor—shot. A pistol was on Stalin’s desk. He said that she had killed herself: worry over the examination, no doubt.

The story is told not to hang another murder on Stalin; one more would hardly affect the balance. The point is that Stalin’s country is the kind of place where a lot of people can believe that the ruler killed his own wife, yet nobody can do anything about it.

Since the late ’30s, Stalin has lived with a sister of Lazar Kaganovich, an old Bolshevik and member of the Politburo. The present Mrs. Stalin keeps very quiet—and presumably minds her manners.

Over the Czars. Stalin has had heart trouble for years, but so far as the West knows, he is otherwise in good health for a man of 70. The last outsiders to see him were members of the Finnish trade delegation which signed a treaty with the U.S.S.R. last month. Stalin, dressed in the grey uniform of a Soviet marshal, offered the Finns cigars, expressing regret that they were of Russian make and therefore no good, Russia having made cigars such a short while. Minister of Trade and Industry Sakari S. Tuomioja replied that they were not the best, but quite good nevertheless. A longish argument on the subject of cigars ensued, into which Premier Urho K. Kekkonen entered, saying, “Tuomioja defends his opinions faithfully.” Said Stalin, eyes twinkling, “Like all Finns.”

Finland knows Stalin too well to be deceived by the twinkling Uncle Joe act. Before World War II, the Finns, with a stubbornness built on great faith, ably defended their tiny democracy alone against the Communist legions. They may have to do so again, and so may many another nation that now shivers uncomfortably in the cold peace.

Stalin’s Russia can move forward, sideways or backwards. One smart Russian move might be an offer of a “general” settlement in which the Communists would move back of the 38th parallel in Korea, and the U.S. would recognize Communist China and accept Mao Tse-tung’s nominee for the United Nations. That would be tantamount to handing Asia over to Communism.

Last week there were some signs that the Russians were about to show their conciliatory, or Uncle Joe, side. In some capitals, Russian diplomats turned out in force for the first time in several years for U.S. Embassy Fourth of July parties. They drank American toasts, acted as though they wanted to be friends, much as they had done during World War II.

Hearing of this, a French observer remarked that if the Communists become conciliatory, it would only be reader pour mieux sauter, which might be very freely translated as: “When the cat purrs, it’s about to pounce.”

*Sample: And know—who fell like dust on earth’s soil, Whoever was fettered long ago, Will rise again past highest summits, Uplifted by bright wings of hope.