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selection of translated documents from the 1, 14-18, quotation on p. 16.) tary of State Dean G. Acheson s famous
Russian archives on Soviet foreign policy The following two documents shed fur- National Press Club speech in which he
during the Cold War, and here the series ther light on the interplay between Stalin and excluded Korea, and other mainland loca-
continues. Several documents were pro- Mao as Kim sought Beijing s approval. They tions, from the American  defensive perim-
vided by the Storage Center for Contempo- were among more than 200 documents total- eter in Asia. Though Acheson s speech
rary Documentation (SCCD, or TsKhSD, ling over 600 pages from the Russian Presi- was primarily devoted to the subject of China,
its Russian acronym), the archive contain- dential Archives concerning the Korean War and though he was merely echoing state-
ing the post-1952 records of the CPSU that were given by Russian President Boris ments by U.S. military leaders in his defini-
Central Committee, in connection with the Yeltsin to South Korean President Kim tion of American military strategy in the
January 1993 conference in Moscow orga- Young-Sam during the latter s visit to Mos- Pacific, his statement may have been seen in
nized by CWIHP in cooperation with cow in June 1994, and were made available Moscow as lending credence to the argu-
TsKhSD and the Institute of Universal His- to the CWIHP Bulletin by the South Korean ment that Washington would not intervene
tory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Embassy in Washington. The first document militarily to rescue South Korea from being
Scholars working with CWIHP provided is a coded telegram sent to Moscow on the overrun. But of course, Stalin may also have
others, including several from a special night of 13 May 1950 from the Soviet Em- been alluding to other, far more momentous
TsKhSD collection known as Fond 89, which bassy in Beijing. It relayed a request from developments on the international scene,
contains Soviet documents declassified for Mao, conveyed via Chinese Foreign Minis- especially the Chinese Communists con-
the 1992 Constitutional Court trial of the ter Chou En-lai, seeking Stalin s  personal solidation of power after militarily routing
CPSU and other special occasions. The clarifications of his stand on a potential their Guomindang opponents, and the Sovi-
CWIHP Bulletin hopes to publish more North Korean action to reunify the country. ets own success the previous autumn in
translated documents from the archives of Mao sought the information after hearing a ending the four-year U.S. nuclear monopoly.
the USSR/CPSU and other former commu- report from Kim, who had arrived that day in As for Mao, the sequence of events
nist states in forthcoming issues, and wel- the Chinese capital for a secret two-day visit (perhaps by Stalin s design) clearly put him
comes submissions of documents (and short and clearly claimed that he had received on the spot. Though exhausted by the dec-
introductions) from scholars conducting Stalin s blessing. The second document, a ades-long civil war, and still gearing up for
research in East-bloc archives. coded telegram from Moscow to Beijing, an assault on the Nationalist redoubt on
contained Stalin s personal response. Using Taiwan, Mao and his comrades in Beijing
I. Stalin, Mao, and the Korean the code-name  Filippov, Stalin confirmed may well have felt compelled to endorse
War, 1950  Clarifications his agreement with the North Korean pro- Pyongyang s action in order to demonstrate
posal to  move toward reunficiation, con- to Stalin their revolutionary mettle, zeal,
In the spring of 1950, the most tightly tingent on Beijing s assent. and worthiness to spearhead the communist
held secret in the world was that prepara- Particularly noteworthy is Stalin s sug- movement in Asia especially given the
tions were going forward for North Korea gestive yet cryptic statement that the Soviet rather cool and skeptical welcome Mao had
to launch a massive military assault on leaders (i.e., Stalin himself) had altered their received when he had visited Moscow the
South Korea in a concerted drive to unify stance, after long resisting Kim s appeals, previous December. Perhaps, as some schol-
the peninsula, divided since the end of World due to the  changed international situa- ars contend (most prominently Bruce
War II, under communist rule. For decades, tion. Exactly what had changed? Cummings in his two-volume study), fullscale
scholars could only guess at the dynamics of  Filippov doesn t say, but the apparent war between North and South Korea was
the mystery-shrouded exchanges among the timing of his conversion certainly engenders bound to erupt at some point in any case,
leaders of North Korea, the USSR, and the speculation. According to previously dis- since both sides leaders were eager to
newly-established People s Republic of closed Soviet documents, Stalin had indi- achieve reunification. Yet it appears that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]