World fascism is a hydra, a monster with several heads. By cutting off the head of German fascism, the world rid itself only of Hitler. But on one-sixth of the Earth, in the USSR, an even more cruel, even more misanthropic fascism survived and won a triumphant victory over its rival—Stalinist, communist fascism.
Georgy Zhzhonov, stage and film actor, A Life Lived (Prozhitoye)
In the Soviet Union, the traces of the ruling party’s stormy activity were always carefully swept away, and documents ruthlessly destroyed—just as in George Orwell’s great novel 1984.
Even so, the system sometimes slipped. Minor fragments escaped the vigilant authorities and did not end up in the fire. Then, thanks to the negligence of editors and censors, they surfaced in the open press.
That is exactly how, in 2005, the journal Historical Archive, issues 2 and 3, published the transcript of a report by Lev Mekhlis at a closed meeting of the leadership of the Kyiv Special Military District on April 4, 1939.
At that moment, the situation in Europe was changing rapidly. For almost three years—from July 16, 1936 to April 1, 1939—Spain was in the grip of a bloody civil war. Mekhlis delivered his report almost immediately after the Spanish generals’ victory over the hordes of communists and anarchists.
The journal that ran this sensational material was not intended for a broad audience. The publication went unnoticed. And small wonder: some fellow named Mekhlis spoke somewhere long ago. Who wants to revisit his speeches in the third millennium?
Well then, gentlemen: the speech was delivered not by some obscure figure, but by Stalin’s closest aide—one of his most trusted confidants.
Stalin noticed Lev Mekhlis in 1921, before becoming General Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee. At the time Stalin was People’s Commissar—in effect, minister—for Workers’ and Peasants’ Control.
Stalin adored control. Control over the Red Army. Over the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). Over ideology. Over art and science. Over the country’s borders. Over the entire population. Over the ruling party. Over its Central Committee. Over every communist party in the world. Over the whole world.
And so Comrade Stalin, head of the nation’s control apparatus, turned Mekhlis into his shadow.
Mekhlis met Stalin’s requirements in every respect, so he rose high—and never fell. Mekhlis didn’t make mistakes.
Stalin knew how to keep silent. He spoke only in small circles and very little. Publicly he spoke not merely rarely but exceedingly rarely. He chose his words with care. That is why he was always right.
But Stalin not only had to issue orders; he sometimes had to explain them. He entrusted that job to his aide and secretary, Lev Mekhlis. In other words, Stalin spoke through Mekhlis.
So it was in the spring of 1939. The war in Spain was burning out. It had not spread to neighboring countries. The attempt to set Europe ablaze from Spain had failed.
Four days after the Spanish Republic’s defeat, on April 4, 1939, Lev Mekhlis spoke not in some backwater but at the headquarters of the Kyiv Special Military District, the headquarters of the most powerful military grouping on planet Earth.
His report was not stamped “Secret.” It was stamped “Top Secret.”
Here is part of what Mekhlis told the senior command of the most powerful military grouping in Europe and the world. These are excerpts from that fiery speech:
“If we try, briefly and clearly—so that the broad masses understand—to formulate the essence of Stalin’s theory of the socialist state, we must say that it is a theory of eliminating the capitalist encirclement, a theory of the victory of the world proletarian revolution.”
“Stalin’s theory of the socialist state raises the signal for revolution and calls the world proletariat to the final, decisive battle.”
“The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, international in spirit by virtue of its prevailing ideology, will help the workers of the aggressor countries free themselves from the yoke of fascism, from the wage slavery of capitalism, and will eliminate the capitalist encirclement.
There is only one way to remove the danger of capitalist intervention: destroy the capitalist encirclement. Only then will we be able to say that the banner of the World Commune has triumphed across the globe!
On steel bayonets, on the mighty wings of the Soviets, we will bring liberation to the working class of the capitalist countries and raise the banner of communism over the remaining five-sixths of the earth!” (Thunderous applause).
Mekhlis did what Stalin required, promptly and precisely. That is why, a year and a half later, on September 6, 1940, he became People’s Commissar of State Control—the very post Stalin himself had held eighteen years earlier. At the same time, Mekhlis was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, i.e., a deputy head of the Soviet government.
At that time the government was headed by Comrade Molotov. Eight months later, Stalin himself took over as head of government. From May 5, 1941, Mekhlis served as Stalin’s deputy in the Soviet government.
Lev Mekhlis stayed close to Stalin throughout his bloody career, until illness felled him. The master and his loyal servant even died almost together: Mekhlis (February 13, 1953) preceded Stalin by three weeks.
Mekhlis remained beside the tyrant for one reason only: he said and did only what Stalin wanted. He didn’t utter a single unnecessary word or write a single wrong letter. Everything he declared in that fully secret speech was a direct, accurate reflection of Stalin’s own thoughts and intentions.
We have long been taught to believe that Hitler and his gang alone were responsible for unleashing World War II. It was Hitler who attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. Seventeen days later, Comrade Stalin merely sent troops into the undefended lands of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.
There seems little to dispute there. But remember that Stalin “possessed the gift of silence to the highest degree.” He did not send messages to officials of every rank himself; he sent them through his closest, most loyal aide, Mekhlis.
One of Mekhlis’s duties was to alert the most important people to coming cataclysms—to tell them what outsiders should not know, what Stalin himself left unsaid.
On April 4, 1939, speaking through Mekhlis, Stalin told the Red Army’s senior commanders that their main task was not to defend the sacred borders of the Soviet Union. Their task was to “liberate” neighboring countries and peoples.
And liberate they did. First, Poland. With savage terror in the occupied territories. With prisoners treated like animals.
On October 14, 1939, the head of the Special Department of the NKVD’s Main Directorate of State Security, Senior Major of State Security Bochkov, sent a report to Lavretiy Beria on his visit to two camps of the Department for Prisoners of War and Internees. Classified “Top Secret,” the document was declassified after the Soviet Union collapsed and published in 1999 in Katyn: Prisoners of an Undeclared War (pp. 148–151, 172).
Here are some excerpts.
The Ostashkov camp: “From September 28 to October 1, the camp received 9,193 prisoners of war.
Meals are served in a single dining hall with a capacity of 300. During distribution a queue of a thousand forms; everything is done chaotically and without control, and the established standards are not fully observed: instead of 800 grams of bread, 400 are given, sometimes even less. Drinking water supply is not organized.
Despite the overcrowding, the floor is not washed—not even swept. As of October 1, only 1,000 men in the entire camp had been allowed to the bathhouse.
Prisoners’ clothing is not disinfected; shaving and haircuts are not provided.”
The Oranki camp: “There are 5,313 prisoners of war. They sleep on the floor and on bunks in two or three tiers. There is no bedding. They sleep on bare boards.
Water is the worst problem. It has to be hauled from three kilometers away. Delivery is not organized. Three to five barrels are brought, nowhere near enough for the camp. This has created long queues.
The kitchen’s capacity is low. Lunch takes eight to ten hours. Instead of the required 800 g of bread, no more than 400 g is given.
There is no bathhouse. No sanitary treatment was provided on arrival. Lice are spreading. The premises and the yard are filthy. There are no toilets.”
Close your eyes and try to picture it: five thousand people in a confined space—and no toilets.
If that picture is hard to imagine, or you’d rather not, then turn to something bright and cheerful. Open the Soviet Military Encyclopedia (Moscow, 1976, vol. 2, p. 246), read the truth about POW camps, and soothe your soul, heart and conscience: “The USSR strictly adhered to the regime of military captivity established by international conventions and did not allow any deviations from it.”
The document bore the signatures of Politburo member and Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrei Grechko; Army General and future Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ogarkov; and a whole phalanx of very, very important officials. Surely they wouldn’t lie.
After Poland came the Red Army’s attack on Finland, then the seizure of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, and the annexation of vast territories from Romania. In the north, Stalin’s forces drew up to the sources of nickel, iron ore and other strategic materials delivered to Germany. In the south, they approached the regions supplying Germany with oil. In the center, Stalin’s troops concentrated in areas from which it would be most convenient to strike at Germany’s heart the moment Hitler launched a strategic offensive against the United Kingdom—when virtually all of Germany’s combat aircraft, almost all tanks and artillery, the entire fleet and its best divisions and commanders were shifted west.
But something went wrong. Hitler and his generals grasped Stalin’s intent and struck first.
That is why the results of World War II were so disappointing for Stalin. He got Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, part of Germany and part of Finland—but he had expected more. And the whole Soviet population had expected more.
Marshal of Aviation and three-time Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryshkin summed up the depth of the nation’s disappointment in Soviet Warrior (1985, no. 9, p. 32):
“Everyone agreed on one thing. The war in Europe was over, but the capitalist encirclement remained.”
Could Comrade Stalin calm down?
He could not—and he did not. The outcome of World War II could not satisfy him. Which is why, immediately after it ended, Stalin began preparing for World War III.
This page of history has been little studied. It was brought to light by the outstanding contemporary military historian Aleksandr Gogun. The book is titled The Deliberate Doomsday: How Stalin Prepared for World War III. Thoroughly recommended.