By 1947, Greece was in the midst of a civil war that appeared to Washington to be a Communist-led revolution, which, if successful, would threaten Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, and all of Europe. When the British notified Washington that they could no longer guarantee stability in the eastern Mediterranean, President Truman asked the U.S. Congress for military and economic aid for both Greece and Turkey. With strong bipartisan support, Congress approved the funds and implemented the Truman Doctrine, which declared the U.S. determination to pursue a policy of containment by aiding nations attempting to resist Communist pressure. In the following address, given to Congress on March 12, 1947, President Truman outlined the nature of the crisis in Greece and Turkey as well as U.S. responsibilities in the postwar era.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
I . Why did President Truman believe that the governments of Greece and Turkey were unable to resolve their internal problems and needed assistance? Why did he recommend that the United States, rather than the United Nations, provide economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey? What were the "broad implications" of extending that aid?
2. Why did President Truman believe that the national security of the United States was at stake in Greece and Turkey?
3. Are there similarities between President Truman's ideals and goals and those expressed by Woodrow Wilson in his "Fourteen Points" address to Congress and the Atlantic?
4. Although the Truman Doctrine was directed at problems in Greece and Turkey, President Truman asserted that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." What were the cold war implications of this assertion?
The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress.
The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved.
One aspect of the present situation, which I wish to present to you at this time for your consideration and decision, concerns Greece and Turkey....
The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the Government's authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A commission appointed by the United Nations Security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia on the other.
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek Army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the Government throughout Greek territory.
Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply this assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate.
There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek Government.
The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further financial or economic aid after March 3 1. Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.
We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action, and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required.
It is important to note that the Greek Government has asked for our aid in utilizing effectively the financial and other assistance we may give to Greece, and in improving its public administration. It is of the utmost importance that we supervise the use of any funds made available to Greece, in such a manner that each dollar spent will count toward making Greece self-supporting, and will help to build an economy in which a healthy democracy can flourish.
No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. The Government of Greece is not perfect. Nevertheless it represents 85 percent of the members of the Greek Parliament who were chosen in an election last year. Foreign observers, including 692 Americans, considered this election to be a fair expression of the views of the Greek people.
The Greek Government has been operating in an atmosphere of chaos and extremism. It has made mistakes. The extension of aid by this country does not mean that the United States condones everything that the Greek Government has done or will do. We have condemned in the past, and we condemn now, extremist measures of the right or the left. We have in the past advised tolerance, and we advise tolerance now.
Greece's neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.
The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound state is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid.
Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.
Since the war, Turkey has sought financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.
That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.
The British Government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties, it can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey.
As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.
I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To insure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guaranties of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid, which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.
The world is not static and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.
Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence....
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world. Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.
We must take immediate and resolute action.
I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, I have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.
In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such financial and material assistance as may be furnished. I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel.
Finally, I ask that the Congress provide authority which will permit the speediest and most effective use, in terms of needed commodities, supplies, and equipment, of such funds as may be authorized.
If further funds, or further authority, should be needed for purposes indicated in this message, I shall not hesitate to bring the situation before the Congress. On this subject the executive and legislative branches of the Government must work together.
This is a serious course upon which we embark.
I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious.
The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace.
The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than one-tenth of I percent of this investment. It is only commonsense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people [dies].
We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world-and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own Nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.
I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.
From U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 80th Congress, 1st Session, 1947, XCITI, 1980-1981.
Until his death in 1976, Mao Tse-tung was the supreme figure, reminiscent of the old Chinese emperor, in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He was one of the dozen who gave birth to the Communist Party of China in Shanghai in 1921. He emerged as the sole "survivor" among the original members of the party. The rest left the party for one reason or another, including purges, defections, resignations, or deaths. His rise to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, which was dominated in its early years by the Moscow-trained and urban-oriented Chinese Communists, was through rather unorthodox means. He carefully built his power base in the countryside, believing that the peasants, rather than the urban proletariat, were the mainstay of the Communist revolution. He spent more than twenty years in rural China organizing and leading peasants and the peasant army, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army. He presided over the Communist insurgent government (known as the Chinese Soviet Republic) in a mountainous region of south-central China from 1931 to 1934. After the collapse of this "Red Republic" in 1935, during the six-thousand-mile Long March, harassed by pursuing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Mao emerged as the undisputed leader in the Communist Party by eclipsing the Moscow-oriented party leadership, which had lost its urban base to Chiang Kai-shek. His leadership of the party was formalized in 1 943 when he was elected chairman of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Communist Party of China. In Yenan (Yan'an), the new hinterland base of operations of the Communists from 1936 to 1947, Mao enjoyed not only unchallenged leadership in the Chinese Communist movement, but he also emerged as a Communist theoretician by adapting Marxism-Leninism to the unique socioeconomic and political conditions within China. He produced a number of theoretical works, including 'On Practice," "On Contradiction," and "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War."
Following Japan's defeat in World War 11 in August 1945 and the subsequent Communist victory over Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces in the bitterly fought four-year civil war, on October 1, 1949, twenty-eight years after the formation of the Communist Party of China, Mao Tse-tung stood on the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing (Peking) to proclaim the birth of the People's Republic of China. Mao, now as the leader of the world's most populous Communist state, gave the following speech on June 30, 1949, in commemoration of the Chinese Communist Party's twenty-eighth anniversary.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. What meaning does Mao give to the term "democratic"? How does he make this term consistent with the term "dictatorship"?
2. What is Mao's attitude toward the Soviet Union? Did he remain constant in this attitude?
Communists the world over are wiser than the bourgeoisie, they understand the laws governing the existence and development of things, they understand dialectics and they can see farther. The bourgeoisie does not welcome this truth because it does not want to be overthrown.
As everyone knows, our Party passed through these twenty-eight years not in peace but amid hardships, for we had to fight enemies, both foreign and domestic, both inside and outside the Party. We thank Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for giving us a weapon. This weapon is not a machine-gun, but Marxism-Leninism....
The Russians made the October Revolution and created the world's first socialist state. Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, the revolutionary energy of the great proletariat and labouring people of Russia, hitherto latent and unseen by foreigners, suddenly erupted like a volcano, and the Chinese and all mankind began to see the Russians in a new light. Then, and only then, did the Chinese enter an entirely new era in their thinking and their life. They found Marxism-Leninism, the universally applicable truth, and the face of China began to change....
There are bourgeois republics in foreign lands, but China cannot have a bourgeois republic because she is a country suffering under imperialist oppression. The only way is through a people's republic led by the working class....
Twenty-four years have passed since Sun Yat-sen's death, and the Chinese revolution, led by the Communist Party of China, has made tremendous advances both in theory and practice and has radically changed the face of China. Up to now the principal and fundamental experience the Chinese people have gained is twofold:
1 . Internally, arouse the masses of the people. That is, unite the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, form a domestic united front under the leadership of the working class, and advance from this to the establishment of a state which is a people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
2. Externally, unite in a common struggle with those nations of the world which treat us as equals and unite with the peoples of all countries. That is, ally ourselves with the Soviet Union, with the People's Democracies and with the proletariat and the broad masses of the people in all other countries, and form an international united front.
"You are leaning to one side." Exactly. The forty years' experience of Sun Yat-sen and the twenty-eight years' experience of the Communist Party have taught us to lean to one side, and we are firmly convinced that in order to win victory and consolidate it we must lean to one side. In the light of the experiences accumulated in these forty years and these twenty-eight years, all Chinese without exception must lean either to the side of imperialism or to the side of socialism. Sitting on the fence will not do, nor is there a third road. We oppose the Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries who lean to the side of imperialism, and we also oppose the illusions about a third road.
"You are too irritating." We are talking about how to deal with domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs, not about how to deal with anyone else. With regard to such reactionaries, the question of irritating them or not does not arise. Irritated or not irritated, they will remain the same because they are reactionaries. Only if we draw a clear line between reactionaries and revolutionaries, expose the intrigues and plots of the reactionaries, arouse the vigilance and attention of the revolutionary ranks, heighten our will to fight and crush the enemy's arrogance can we isolate the reactionaries, vanquish them or supersede them. We must not show the slightest timidity before a wild beast.
"Victory is possible even without international help." This is a mistaken idea. In the epoch in which imperialism exists, it is impossible for a genuine people's revolution to win victory in any country without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces, and even if victory were won, it could not be consolidated. This was the case with the victory and consolidation of the great October Revolution, as Lenin and Stalin told us long ago.
"We need help from the British and U.S. governments." This, too, is a naive idea in these times. Would the present rulers of Britain and the United States, who are imperialists, help a people's state? Why do these countries do business with us and, supposing they might be willing to lend us money on terms of mutual benefit in the future, why would they do so? Because their capitalists want to make money and their bankers want to earn interest to extricate themselves from their own crisis-it is not a matter of helping the Chinese people.
"You are dictatorial." My dear sirs, you are right, that is just what we are. All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that fight.
"Who are the people?" At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism-the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices-suppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship.
"Why must things be done this way?" The reason is quite clear to everybody. If things were not done this way, the revolution would fail, the people would suffer, the country would be conquered.
"Don't you want to abolish state power?" Yes, we do, but not right now; we cannot do it yet. Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist in our country. Our present task is to strengthen the people's state apparatus-mainly the people's army, the people's police and the people's courts-in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people's interests. Given this condition, China can develop steadily, under the leadership of the working class and the Communist Party, from an agricultural into an industrial country and from a new-democratic into a socialist and communist society, can abolish classes and realize the Great Harmony. The state apparatus, including the army, the police and the courts, is the instrument by which one class oppresses another. It is an instrument for the oppression of antagonistic classes; it is violence and not "benevolence ... You are not benevolent!" Quite so. We definitely do not apply a policy of benevolence to the reactionaries and towards the reactionary activities of the reactionary classes. Our policy of benevolence is applied only within the ranks of the people, not beyond them to the reactionaries or to the reactionary activities of reactionary classes....
Here, the method we employ is democratic, the method of persuasion, not of compulsion. When anyone among the people breaks the law, he too should be punished, imprisoned or even sentenced to death; but this is a matter of a few individual cases, and it differs in principle from the dictatorship exercised over the reactionaries as a class.
As for the members of the reactionary classes and individual reactionaries, so long as they do not rebel, sabotage or create trouble after their political power has been overthrown, land and work will be given to them as well in order to allow them to live and remould themselves through labour into new people. If they are not willing to work, the people's state will compel them to work....
Such remoulding of members of the reactionary classes can be accomplished only by a state of the people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the Communist Party. When it is well done, China's major exploiting classes, the landlord class and the bureaucrat-bourgeoisie (the monopoly capitalist class), will be eliminated for good. There remain the national bourgeoisie; at the present stage, we can already do a good deal of suitable educational work with many of them. When the time comes to realize socialism, that is, to nationalize private enterprise, we shall carry the work of educating and remoulding them a step further. The people have a powerful state apparatus in their hands-there is no need to fear rebellion by the national bourgeoisie....
The people's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to 90 per cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance.
The people's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most farsighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class revolution fails. In the epoch of imperialism, in no country can any other class lead any genuine revolution to victory. This is clearly proved by the fact that the many revolutions led by China's petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie all failed....
To sum up our experience and concentrate it into one point, it is: the people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class (through the Communist Party) and based upon the alliance of workers and peasants. This dictatorship must unite as one with the international revolutionary forces. This is our formula, our principal experience, our main programme....
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is our best teacher and we must learn from it. The situation both at home and abroad is in our favour, we can rely fully on the weapon of the people's democratic dictatorship, unite the people throughout the country, the reactionaries excepted, and advance steadily to our goal.
From Mao Tse-tung, Speech "In Commemoration of the 28th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China, June 30, 1949," in Selected Workv, Vol. 5 (New York: Intemational Publishers, n.d.), pp. 411-23.
On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and soon afterwards the Soviet Red Army crossed info Manchuria and Korea. The United States, whose armed forces were hundreds of miles away from Korea, had to draw up a military demarcation line across the Korean peninsula to prevent the Russians from overrunning the entire region. On August I 1, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee ordered two former Rhodes scholars, Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel III, to determine a line within thirty minutes. They recommended the thirty-eighth parallel as a division between U.S. and Soviet occupation zones. By the time American troops entered Korea on September 8, the Russians were already entrenched along the thirty-eighth parallel. This line had been intended merely as a temporary military line to expedite the disarming of the Japanese troops in Korea. On August 14, Japan surrendered and Japanese rule in Korea ended; however, Korea found itself bisected and a focal point of intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The following excerpt provides a detailed account of who actually drew the line and why.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. How do you assess the behind-the-scenes decision for the containing of the Soviet advance in the Korean peninsula? Was the decision to divide Korea at the thirtyeighth parallel a wise one? Would another approach have been feasible?
2. How did the decision to divide Korea shape the course of Korean history and influence the cold war?
At Potsdam, the chief of the Russian General Staff told General Marshall that Russia would attack Korea after declaring war on Japan. He asked whether the Americans could operate against Korean shores in co-ordination with this offensive. General Marshall told him that the United States planned no amphibious operation against Korea until Japan had been brought under control and Japanese strength in South Korea was destroyed. Although the Chiefs of Staff developed ideas concerning the partition of Korea, Manchuria, and the Sea of Japan into U.S. and USSR zones, these had no connection with the later decisions that partitioned Korea into northern and southern areas.
Russian entry into the war against Japan on 9 August, and signs of imminent Japanese collapse on IO August 1945 changed U.S. Army planning from defeating Japan to accepting its surrender. Military planners in the War Department Operations Division began to outline surrender procedures in General Order No. 1, which General MacArthur would transmit to the Japanese Government after its surrender. The first paragraph of the order specified the nations and commands that were to accept the surrender of Japanese forces throughout the Far East.
The Policy Section of the Strategy and Policy Group in the Operations Division drafted the initial version of the order.
Under pressure to produce a paper as quickly as possible, members of the Policy Section began work late at night on IO August. They discussed possible surrender zones, the allocation of American, British, Chinese, and Russian occupation troops to accept the surrender in the zones most convenient to them, the means of actually taking the surrender of the widely scattered Japanese military forces, and the position of Russia in the Far East.
They quickly decided to include both provisions for splitting up the entire Far East for surrender and definitions of the geographical limits of those zones.
The Chief of the Policy Section, Col. Charles H. Bonesteel, had thirty minutes in which to dictate Paragraph I to a secretary, for the Joint Staff Planners and the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee were impatiently awaiting the result of his work. Colonel Bonesteel [along with Colonel Dean Rusk] thus somewhat hastily decided who would accept the Japanese surrender. His thoughts, with very slight revision, we incorporated into the final directive.
Bonesteel's prime consideration was to establish a surrender line as far north as he thought the Soviets would accept. He knew that Russian troops could reach the southern tip of Korea before American troops could arrive. He knew also that the Russians were on the verge of moving into Korea, or were already there. The nearest American troops to Korea were on Okinawa, 600 miles away. His problem therefore was to compose a surrender arrangement which, while acceptable to the Russians, would at the same time prevent them from seizing all of Korea. If they refused to confine their advance to North Korea, the United States would be unable to stop them.
At first Bonesteel had thought of surrender zones conforming to the provincial boundary lines. But the only map he had in his office, which was a small National Geographic map, a 1942 Gilbert Grosvenor Edition of "Asia and Adjacent Areas," was hardly adequate for this sort of distinction. The 38th Parallel, he noted, cut Korea approximately through the middle. If this line was agreeable to President Truman and to Generalissimo Stalin, it would place Seoul and a nearby prisoner of war camp in American hands. It would also leave enough land to be apportioned to the Chinese and British if some sort of quadripartite administration became necessary. Thus he decided to use the 38th Parallel as a hypothetical line dividing the zones within which Japanese forces in Korea would surrender to appointed American and Russian authorities....
When Bonesteel's draft paper reached the Joint Planners in the predawn hours of 11 August, Admiral M.B. Gardner suggested moving the surrender line north to the 39th Parallel, a recommendation that the planners believed the Navy Secretary, James C. Forrestal, favored. Gardner pointed out that the 39th Parallel would place Dairen in the military zone to be occupied by the Americans. General Lincoln, however, felt that the Russians would hardly accept a surrender line that barred them from Dairen and other parts of the Liaotung Peninsula; besides, American units would have great difficulty reaching the Manchurian port ahead of the Russians. Calling Assistant Secretary of State James Dunn, Lincoln ascertained that his opinion was shared. Mr. Dunn believed that Korea was more important politically to the United States than Dairen, and he felt this to be the view of Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. As a result, the 38th Parallel remained in the draft when the Joint Planners handed the general order to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee.
While General Lincoln was shepherding the document through the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee on 11 and 12 August, the Russians invaded Korea, landing on the northeast coast near Rashin. Russian troops then poured out of the maritime provinces of Siberia, down the Korean peninsula, and into the Kaesong-Ch'unch'on area above Seoul, where they looted much equipment, including locomotives and rolling stock. Reports of the Russian troop movements reaching Washington underscored the need for concurrence in the proposed general order. Otherwise, the Russian advance would render academic the American acceptance of the Japanese surrender in southern Korea. At the same time, swift Russian troop movements into key areas of southern Manchuria eliminated the possibility of including Dairen in the American surrender zone.
Between 11 and 14 August, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the wording of the surrender instrument. Meanwhile, General MacArthur informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he would adhere to three priorities for the use of the forces under his command. After the Japanese surrender, the occupation of Japan would come first, Korea second, China third.
In Washington, the War Department Operations Division rephrased General Order No. 1 to the satisfaction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of the State, War, and Navy Departments. On 15 August 1945, clean copies of the draft order were sent to Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy's White House office. Within a few hours President Truman gave his approval, directing at the same time that General Order No. I be sent also to the capitals of Great Britain and the USSR with requests for concurrence by the heads of those states....
Among the items it specified, General Order No. I stated that Japanese forces north of the 38th Parallel in Korea would surrender to the Russian commander, while those south of the parallel would surrender to the commanding general of the U.S. expeditionary forces. As Washington waited for the Moscow reaction to President Truman's message, there was a short period of suspense. Russian troops had entered Korea three days before the President accepted the draft of General Order No. 1. If the Russians failed to accept the proposal, and if Russian troops occupied Seoul, General Lincoln suggested that American occupation forces move into Pusan.
Stalin replied to President Truman on 16 August 1945. He said nothing specifically about the 38th Parallel but offered no objection to the substance of the President's message.
From James F. Schnabel, Utiited States: Articles in the Korean War. Political and Diplomatic 7'lie First Year (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, 1972), pp. 811.
On February 28, 1 956, in an address to the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev provided a long list of the crimes of the late Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev's rough, earthy humor did not mask the fact that Stalin had perpetrated an immense reign of terror against the Russian people. The detailed indictment confirmed long-held Western views that between 1928 and 1953 Stalin imprisoned, deported, and killed millions of Russians. Khrushchev's address to the Party Congress inadvertently raised the hope of reform in Eastern Europe.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. What steps did Khrushchev propose to eradicate the "cult of the individual" in the Soviet Union?
2. How did Khrushchev employ the legacy of Lenin to attack his predecessor?
3. Are there any connections between Khrushchev's attacks on Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Perestroika
When we analyze the practice of Stalin in regard to the direction of the party and of the country, when we pause to consider everything which Stalin perpetrated, we must be convinced that Lenin's fears were justified. The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin's time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our party.
We have to consider seriously and analyze correctly this matter in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts.
Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position-was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th party congress, when many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim to Stalin's despotism....
Lenin's traits-patient work with people; stubborn and painstaking education of them; the ability to induce people to follow him without using compulsion, but rather through the ideological influence on them of the whole collective-were entirely foreign to Stalin. He (Stalin) discarded the Leninist method of convincing and educating; he abandoned the method of ideological struggle for that of administrative violence, mass repressions, and terror. He acted on an increasingly larger scale and more stubbornly through punitive organs, at the same time often violating all existing norms of morality and of Soviet laws....
During Lenin's life party congresses were convened regularly; always when a radical turn in the development of the party and the country took place Lenin considered it absolutely necessary that the party discuss at length all the basic matters pertaining to internal and foreign policy and to questions bearing on the development of party and government....
Were our party's holy Leninist principles observed after the death of Vladimir Ilyich?
Whereas during the first few years after Lenin's death party congresses and central committee plenums took place more or less regularly; later, when Stalin began increasingly to abuse his power, these principles were brutally violated. This was especially evident during the last 15 years of his life. Was it a normal situation when 13 years elapsed between the 18th and 19th party congresses, years during which our party and our country had experienced so many important events? These events demanded categorically that the party should have passed resolutions pertaining to the country's defense during the patriotic war and to peacetime construction after the war. Even after the end of the war a congress was not convened for over 7 years.
Central committee plenums were hardly ever called. It should be sufficient to mention that during all the years of the patriotic war not a single central committee plenum took place....
In practice Stalin ignored the norms of party life and trampled on the Leninist principle of collective party leadership....
Facts prove that many abuses were made on Stalin's orders without reckoning with any norms of party and Soviet legality. Stalin was a very distrustful man.... He could look at a man and say: "Why are your eyes so shifty today," or "Why are you turning so much today and avoiding to look me directly in the eyes?" The sickly suspicion created in him a general distrust even toward eminent party workers whom he had known for years. Everywhere and in everything he saw enemies, "two-facers" and spies.
Possessing unlimited power he indulged in great willfulness and choked a person morally and physically. A situation was created where one could not express one's own will....
The willfulness of Stalin showed itself not only in decisions concerning the internal life of the country but also in the international relations of the Soviet Union.
The July plenum of the Central Committee studied in detail the reasons for the development of conflict with Yugoslavia. It was a shameful role which Stalin played here. The "Yugoslav affair" contained no problems which could not have been solved through party discussions among comrades. There was no significant basis for the development of this 11 affair"; it was completely possible to have prevented the rupture of relations with that country. This does not mean, however, that the Yugoslav leaders did not make mistakes or did not have shortcomings. But these mistakes and shortcomings were magnified in a monstrous manner by Stalin, which resulted in a break of relations with a friendly country.
I recall the first days when the conflict between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia began artificially to be blown up. Once, when I came from Kiev to Moscow, I was invited to
visit Stalin who, pointing to the copy of a letter lately sent to Tito, asked me, "Have you read this?"
Not waiting for my reply he answered, "I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito. He will fall."
We have dearly paid for this "shaking of the little finger." This statement reflected Stalin's mania for greatness, but he acted just that way: "I shall shake my little finger and there will be no Kossior"; "I will shake my little finger once more and Postyshev and Chubar will be no more"; "I will shake my little finger again and Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and many others will disappear."
But this did not happen to Tito. No matter how much or how little Stalin shook, not only his little finger but everything else that he could shake, Tito did not fall. Why'? The reason was that, in this case of disagreement with the Yugoslav comrades, Tito had behind him a state and a people who had gone through a severe school of fighting for liberty and independence, a people which gave support to its leaders.
You see to what Stalin's mania for greatness led. He had completely lost consciousness of reality; he demonstrated his suspicion and haughtiness not only in relation to individuals in the U.S.S.R., but in relation to whole parties and nations.
We have carefully examined the case of Yugoslavia and have found a proper solution which is approved by the peoples of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia as well as by the working masses of all the people's democracies and by all progressive humanity. The liquidation of the abnormal relationship with Yugoslavia was done in the interest of the whole camp of socialism, in the interest of strengthening peace in the whole world....
If we are to consider this matter as Marxists and as Leninists, then we have to state unequivocably that the leadership practice which came into being during the last years of Stalin's life became a serious obstacle in the path of Soviet social development.
Stalin often failed for months to take up some unusually important problems concerning the life of the party and of the state whose solution could not be postponed. During Stalin’s leadership our peaceful relations with other nations were often threatened, because one-man decisions could cause and often did cause great complications.
In the last years, when we managed to free ourselves of the harmful practice of the cult of the individual and took several proper steps in the sphere of internal and external policies, everyone saw how activity grew before their very eyes, how the creative activity of the broad working masses developed, how favorably all this acted upon the development of economy and of culture. [Applause.]
Some comrades may ask us: Where were the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee? Why did they not assert themselves against the cult of the individual in time? And why is this being done only now?
First of all we have to consider the fact that the members of the Political Bureau viewed these matters in a different way at different times. Initially, many of them backed Stalin actively because Stalin was one of the strongest Marxists and his logic, his strength, and his will greatly influenced the cadres and party work....
Later, however, abusing his power more and more, [Stalin] began to fight eminent party and government leaders and to use terroristic methods against honest Soviet people.…
It is clear that such conditions put every member of the Political Bureau in a very difficult situation. And when we also consider the fact that in the last years the Central Committee plenary sessions were not convened, and that the sessions of the Political Bureau occurred only occasionally, from time to time, then we will understand how difficult it was for any member of the Political Bureau to take a stand against one or another unjust or improper procedure, against serious errors and shortcomings in the practices of leadership....
Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all; we must draw the proper conclusions concerning both ideological-theoretical and practical work.
It is necessary for this purpose:
First, in a Bolshevik manner to condemn and to eradicate the cult of the individual as alien to Marxism-Leninism and not consonant with the principles of party leadership and the norms of party life, and to fight inexorably all attempts at bringing back this practice....
Secondly, to continue systematically and consistently the work done by the party's central committee during the last years, a work characterized by minute observation in all party organizations, from the bottom to the top, of the Leninist principles of party leadership, characterized, above all, by the main principle of collective leadership, characterized by the observation of the norms of party life described in the statutes of our party, and, finally, characterized by the wide practice of criticism and self-criticism.
Thirdly, to restore completely the Leninist principles of Soviet Socialist democracy, expressed in the constitution of the Soviet Union, to fight willfulness of individuals abusing their power. The evil caused by acts violating revolutionary Socialist legality which have accumulated during a long time as a result of the negative influence of the cult of the individual has to be completely corrected....
We are absolutely certain that our party, armed with the historical resolutions of the 20th Congress, will lead the Soviet people along the Leninist path to new successes, to new victories. [Tumultuous, prolonged applause.]
Long live the victorious banner of our party-Leninism. [Tumultuous, prolonged applause ending in ovation. All rise.]
From U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 84th Congress, 2nd Session, 1956, CIT, pp. 9389-403, passim.