Conversations with Stalin Read online

  Though nobody, not even the Yugoslav Communists, spoke of revolution, it was long since obvious that it was going on. In the West they were already writing a great deal about it. In Moscow, however, they obdurately refused to recognize it—even those who had, so to speak, every reason to do so. Everyone stubbornly talked only about the struggle against the German invaders and even more stubbornly stressed exclusively the patriotic character of that struggle, all the while conspicuously emphasizing the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the whole matter. Of course, nothing could have been further from my mind than the thought of denying the decisive role of the Soviet Party in world Communism, or of the Red Army in the war against Hitler. But on the soil of my land, and under conditions of their own, the Yugoslav Communists were obviously waging a war independent of the momentary successes and defeats of the Red Army, a war, moreover, that was at the same time converting the political and social structure of the country. Both externally and internally the Yugoslav revolution had transcended the needs and accommodations of Soviet foreign policy, and this is how I explained the obstacles and lack of understanding which I was meeting.

  Strangest of all was the fact that those who should have understood this best of all submissively kept still and pretended not to understand. I had yet to learn that in Moscow the discussion and especially the determination of political positions had to wait until Stalin, or at least Molotov, had spoken. This applied even to such distinguished persons as the former secretaries of the Comintern, Manuilsky and Dimitrov.

  Tito and Kardelj, as well as other Yugoslav Communists who had been to Moscow, had reported that Manuilsky was particularly well disposed toward the Yugoslavs. This may have been held against him during the purges of 1936–1937, in which almost the entire group of Yugoslav Communists had perished in the Party purge, but now, after the Yugoslav uprising against the Nazis, this could be taken for farsightedness. In any case, he injected into his enthusiasm for the Yugoslavs’ struggle a certain dose of personal pride, though he knew none of the new Yugoslav leaders except, perhaps, Tito, and him only very slightly. Our meeting with him took place in the evening. Also present was G. F. Aleksandrov, the noted Soviet philosopher and, much more important, chief of the section for agitation and propaganda of the Central Committee.

  Aleksandrov left no definite impression with me: Indefiniteness, or, rather, colorlessness, was his basic characteristic. He was a short, pudgy baldpate whose pallor and corpulence proclaimed that he never set foot outside his office. Except for a few conventional observations and benign smiles, he spoke not a word about the character and scope of the Yugoslav Communist uprising, though in my conversation, supposedly without design, I touched on these very points. Obviously the Central Committee had not yet determined its stand; thus, as far as Soviet propaganda was concerned, it remained simply a struggle against invaders without any real repercussions for the internal Yugoslav state or for international relations.

  Nor did Manuilsky take any definite stand. Yet he exhibited a lively, emotional interest. I had already heard of his oratorical gift. One could detect this gift even in his articles, and he fairly scintillated through the polish and vividness of his expression. He was a slight and already hunched old-timer, dark-haired, with a clipped mustache. He spoke with a lisp, almost gently and—what astonished me at the time—without much energy. He was also this way in other things—considerate, affable to the point of joviality, and obviously worldly in culture.

  In describing the development of the uprising in Yugoslavia, I pointed out that there was being formed in a new way a government which was in essence identical with the Soviet. I made a special point of stressing the new revolutionary role of the peasantry; I practically reduced the uprising in Yugoslavia to a tie between a peasant rebellion and the Communist avant-garde. Yet though neither he nor Aleksandrov opposed what I was saying, neither did they indicate in any way that they approved of my views. Even if I regarded it natural that Stalin’s role was decisive in everything, still I expected from Manuilsky a greater independence and initiative in word and deed. I went away from my meeting with him impressed by the vitality of his personality and moved by his enthusiasm for the struggle in Yugoslavia, but also convinced that Manuilsky played no real role in the determination of Moscow’s policies, not even concerning Yugoslavia.

  When speaking of Stalin he attempted to camouflage extreme flattery in “scientific” and “Marxist” formulas. This manner of expression about Stalin went approximately like this: “You know, it is simply incomprehensible that a single person could have played such a decisive role in a crucial moment of the war. And that so many talents should be combined in one person—statesman, thinker, and soldier!”

  My observations regarding Manuilsky’s insignificance were later cruelly confirmed. He was made Foreign Minister of the Ukraine (he was a Ukrainian Jew by birth), which meant his final isolation from all substantial political activity. True, as Secretary of the Comintern he was Stalin’s obedient tool, all the more because his past had not been completely Bolshevik; he had belonged to a group of so-called mezhraiontsy, led by Trotsky, which had joined the Bolsheviks only on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. I saw him in 1949 at the United Nations. There he came out in the name of the Ukraine against the “imperialists” and “Tito’s fascist clique.” Of his oratory there remained only turbulence, and of his penetrating thought only phrase-making. He was already a lost, senile little old man of whom almost every trace was lost as he slid down the steep ladder of the Soviet hierarchy.

  This was not the case with Dimitrov. I met him three times during my stay—twice in the hospital of the Soviet Government, and the third time in his villa near Moscow. Each time he struck me as being a sick man. His breathing was asthmatic, the color of his skin an unhealthy red and pale, and spots around his ears were dried up as if from eczema. His hair was so sparse that it left exposed his withered yellow scalp. But his thoughts were quick and fresh, quite in contrast to his slow and tired movements. This prematurely old, almost crushed man still radiated a powerful conscious energy and vigor. His features bespoke this too, especially the strained look of his bulging bluish eyes and the convulsive protrusion of his nose and jaw. Though he did not voice his every thought, his conversation was frank and firm. It could not be said that he did not understand the situation in Yugoslavia, though he, too, regarded as premature—in view of relations between the USSR and the West—the affirmation of its factually Communist character. Of course I, too, felt that our primary propaganda effort should stress the struggle against the invader, and accordingly this meant not to accentuate the Communist character of that struggle. But it was of the utmost importance to me that the Soviet leaders, and Dimitrov too, realize—at least regarding Yugoslavia—the senselessness of insisting on a coalition between the Communist and bourgeois parties, inasmuch as the war and the civil war had already shown the Communist Party to be the only real political force. This view of mine meant nonrecognition of the Yugoslav Royal Government-in-exile, and, in fact, of the monarchy itself.

  During our first meeting I described for Dimitrov the developments and the situation in Yugoslavia. He generously admitted that he had not expected that the Yugoslav Party would prove to be the most militant and most resourceful; he had placed greater hopes in the French Party. He recalled how Tito, on leaving Moscow at the end of 1939, swore that the Yugoslav Party would wash away the stain with which various fractionalists had besmirched it and that it would prove itself worthy of the name which it bore, whereupon Dimitrov advised him not to swear, but to act wisely and resolutely. He recounted further: “You know, when the subject came up of whom to appoint Secretary of the Yugoslav Party, there was some wavering, but I was for Walter [this was Josip Broz’s Party pseudonym at the time; later he adopted the name Tito]. He was a worker, and he seemed solid and serious to me. I am glad that I was not mistaken.”

  Dimitrov remarked, almost apologetically, that the Soviet Government had not been in a position t
o help the Yugoslav Partisans in their greatest hour of need. He himself had personally gotten Stalin interested in this. That was true: as early as 1941–1942 Soviet pilots had tried to get through to Yugoslav Partisan bases, and some homeward-bound Yugoslav émigrés who had flown with them froze.

  Dimitrov also mentioned our negotiations with the Germans over the exchange of prisoners: “We were afraid for you, but luckily everything turned out well.”

  I did not react to this, nor would I have said any more than he had confirmed, not even had he insisted on the details. But there was no danger that he would say or ask something he shouldn’t; in politics all that ends well is soon forgotten.

  As a matter of feet, Dimitrov did not insist on anything; the Comintern had really been dissolved, and his only job now was to gather information about Communist parties and to give advice to the Soviet Government and Party.

  He told me how the idea first arose to dissolve the Comintern. It was at the time the Baltic states were annexed by the Soviet Union. It was apparent even then that the main power in the spread of Communism was the Soviet Union, and that therefore all forces had to gather directly around it. The dissolution itself had been postponed because of the international situation, to avoid giving the impression that it was being done under pressure from the Germans, with whom relations were not bad at the time.

  Dimitrov was a person who enjoyed Stalin’s rare regard, and, what is perhaps less important, he was the undisputed leader of the Bulgarian Communist movement. Two later meetings with Dimitrov confirmed this. At the first I described conditions in Yugoslavia to the members of the Bulgarian Central Committee, and at the second there was talk of eventual Bulgarian-Yugoslav cooperation and of the struggle in Bulgaria.

  Besides Dimitrov, the meeting with the Bulgarian Central Committee was attended by Kolarov, Čhervenkov, and others. Čhervenkov had greeted me on the occasion of my first visit, though he did not remain, and I took him to be Dimitrov’s private secretary. He remained in the background at this second meeting as well—silent and unobtrusive, though I was later to gain a different impression of him. I had already learned from Vlahović and others that Čhervenkov was the husband of Dimitrov’s sister, that he was to have been arrested at the time of the purges—the “exposé” of the political school where he was an instructor had already been published—but he took refuge with Dimitrov. Dimitrov intervened with the NKVD and made everything in order.

  The purges were especially hard on the Communist émigrés, those members of illegal parties who had no one to turn to except the Soviet. The Bulgarian émigrés were lucky that Dimitrov was Secretary of the Comintern and a person with such authority. He saved many of them. There was no one to stand behind the Yugoslavs; rather, they dug graves for one another in their race for power in the Party and in their zeal to prove their devotion to Stalin and to Leninism.

  Kolarov’s old age was already apparent; he was past seventy and, moreover, had been politically inactive for many years. He was a kind of relic of the violent beginnings of the Bulgarian Party. He belonged to the “tesni” (literally, “narrow”), the left wing of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, out of which later developed the Communist Party. In 1923 the Bulgarian Communists had given armed opposition to the military clique of General Tsankov which had just previously carried out a coup and killed the peasant leader Alexander Stambuliski. Kolarov had a massive head, more Turkish than Slavic, with chiseled features, strong nose, sensuous lips, but his thoughts were of times gone by and, I say it without rancor, of inconsequential matters. My description to Kolarov of the struggle in Yugoslavia could not be a mere analysis, but was also a horrible picture of ruins and massacres. Of some ten thousand prewar Party members, hardly two thousand were still alive, while I estimated our current losses of troops and population at around one million two hundred thousand. Yet after this recital of mine all Kolarov found it appropriate to ask me was the single question: “In your opinion, is the language spoken in Macedonia closer to Bulgarian or to Serbian?”

  The Yugoslav Communist leadership had already had serious altercations with the Central Committee in Bulgaria, which held that, by virtue of the Bulgarian occupation of Yugoslav Macedonia, the organization of the Yugoslav Communist Party in Macedonia should fall to it. The dispute was finally broken off by the Comintern, which approved the Yugoslav view, but only after Germany’s attack on the USSR. Nevertheless, friction over Macedonia, as well as over questions concerning the Partisan uprising against the Bulgarian occupiers, continued and got worse as the inevitable hour of the defeat of Germany, and with it of Bulgaria, approached. Vlahović, too, had observed in Moscow the pretensions of the Bulgarian Communists regarding Yugoslav Macedonia. To tell the truth, it must be added that Dimitrov was rather different in this respect: for him the matter of prime concern was the question of Bulgarian-Yugoslav rapprochement. But I do not believe that even he adhered to the viewpoint that the Macedonians were a separate nationality, despite the fact that his mother was a Macedonian and that his attitude toward the Macedonians showed a marked sentimentality.

  Perhaps I discharged too much bitterness when I replied to Kolarov, “I do not know whether the Macedonian language is closer to Bulgarian or Serbian, but the Macedonians are not Bulgars, nor is Macedonia Bulgarian.” Dimitrov found this unpleasant. He reddened and waved his hand: “It is of no importance!” And he passed on to another question.

  My memory of who attended the third meeting with Dimitrov is gone with the wind, but certainly Čhervenkov could not have been absent. The meeting took place on the eve of my return to Yugoslavia, at the beginning of June 1944. It was to be devoted to co-operation between the Yugoslav and Bulgarian Communists. But it was hardly worthwhile to discuss that, for the Bulgars in fact had no Partisan units at the time.

  I insisted that military operations and the creation of Partisan units in Bulgaria should be begun, and characterized as illusions the expectation that an upheaval would take place in the Bulgarian Royal Army. I based myself on the Yugoslav experience in this: from the old Yugoslav Army the Partisans got only individual officers, while the Communist Party had to create an army of small units in the course of a very stubborn struggle. It was evident that Dimitrov, too, shared these illusions, though he did agree that the creation of Partisan units should be actively undertaken.

  It was obvious that he knew something I did not know. When I stressed that even in Yugoslavia, in which the occupation had destroyed the old state apparatus, a rather long time was needed to come to terms with its remnants, he interjected, “In three or four months there will be a revolution in Bulgaria anyway; the Red Army will soon be on its borders!”

  Though Bulgaria was not in a state of war with the Soviet Union, it was clear to me that Dimitrov was oriented toward the Red Army as the decisive factor. To be sure, he did not categorically declare that the Red Army would enter Bulgaria, but it was obvious that he knew even then that this would happen, and he was giving me a hint. Given Dimitrov’s view and expectation, my insistence on Partisan operations and units lost any importance and meaning. The conversation came down to an exchange of opinions and brotherly greetings to Tito and the Yugoslav fighters.

  It is worth recording Dimitrov’s attitude toward Stalin. He, too, spoke of him with admiration and respect, but without any conspicuous flattery or reverence. His relationship to Stalin was palpably that of a revolutionary who gave disciplined submission to the leader, but a revolutionary who did his own thinking. He particularly stressed Stalin’s role in the war.

  He recounted; “When the Germans were outside Moscow, a general uncertainty and confusion ensued. The Soviet Government had withdrawn to Kuibyshev. But Stalin remained in Moscow. I was with him at the time, in the Kremlin. They were taking out archives from the Kremlin. I proposed to Stalin that the Comintern direct a proclamation to the German soldiers. He agreed, though he felt no good would come of it. Soon after, I too had to leave Moscow. Stalin did not leave; he was determined to defend i
t. And at that most dramatic moment he held a parade in Red Square on the anniversary of the October Revolution. The divisions before him were leaving for the front. One cannot express how great a moral significance was exerted when people learned that Stalin was sitting in Moscow and when they heard his words. It restored their faith and raised their confidence, and it was worth more than a good-sized army.”

  On that occasion I became acquainted with Dimitrov’s wife. She was a Sudeten German. This was hushed up because of the general rage against Germans to which the ordinary Russian spontaneously lent himself and which he understood more easily than antifascist propaganda.

  Dimitrov’s villa was tastefully luxurious. It had everything—except joy. Dimitrov’s only son was dead; a portrait of the wan lad hung in the father’s study. The warrior could once endure defeats and take pleasure in victories, but as an old man already at the end of his powers, Dimitrov could no longer be happy or extricate himself from the silent encircling pity that met him at every step.

  4

  Several months before our arrival Moscow had announced that a Yugoslav Brigade had been formed in the Soviet Union. Somewhat prior to this, Polish and then Czech units had been formed. We in Yugoslavia could not imagine how such a great number of Yugoslavs came to be in the Soviet Union when even those few political émigrés who found themselves there had largely vanished in the purges.

  Now, in Moscow, everything became clear to me. The bulk of the manpower in the Yugoslav Brigade was made up of the personnel of a regiment that the Croatian quisling Pavelić had sent to the Germans at the Soviet front as a token of solidarity. But Pavelić’s army had no luck there; the regiment was shattered, taken prisoner at Stalingrad, and, after the usual purification, transformed, with Commander Mesić at its head, into the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Brigade. A few Yugoslav political émigrés were collected from hither and yon and given political posts in the Brigade, while Soviet officers—both military specialists and those from Security—took over the outfitting and checking of the men.