130 Ë The Caucasus Group and Japan
Japanese authorities of underground Korean operatives. Stating that such activities
might provoke war with Japan, Stalin ordered that “draconian” measures be taken
against the criminals in the secret police who were “agents of our enemies.”⁷Even in
May 1933, Stalin angrily denounced the party organization in Chita, across the bor-
der from Manchuria, for propagating slogans in Chinese directed against “Japanese
imperialists and Manchukuo representatives.”⁸
Needless to say, Stalin did not remain passive. His strategy was two-fold. At the
same time he he was working to secure the western frontiers of the Soviet Union and
embarking on a massive military buildup in the Far East, he was also making every
eort to use the United States against Japan.
In the West, the Soviet Union courted Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland and
signed non-aggression pacts with each of them between January and August of 1932.
But Moscow’s oers of a nonaggression pact with Japan were rejected repeatedly. Fur-
ther, Moscow concluded a non-aggression pact with France in November 1932 (rati ed
the following year) and even with Fascist Italy in September 1933. Although relations
with Germany began to deteriorate even before Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933,
Moscow’s security in the west was signi cantly enhanced by these treaties. Simulta-
neously, in view of Japan’s aggression in the Far East, Moscow sharply increased mili-
tary expenditure and expanded the armament industry.⁹The true scale of the military
buildup was, however, carefully hidden from the world. In 1933, for instance, the Peo-
ple’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Aairs claimed to have spent 1,421 million
rubles, when in fact it spent 4,299 millions.¹⁰In February 1932, German diplomats in
Siberia reported to Berlin that Soviet military forces with heavy artillery, armored cars,
and air squadrons were being dispatched to the Far East at night under strictest se-
crecy.¹¹At the same time, Japan estimated that within a year of the Mukden Incident,
the number of Soviet infantry divisions in the Far East increased by three or four to
eight or nine. In addition, in April 1932, Moscow ordered the formation of naval forces
in the Far East. In Vladivostok, a naval port was resurrected and naval facilities were
rapidly strengthened.¹²By 1933, Moscow had decided to replace its defensive position
by an aggressive political oensive in the Far East.¹³
7 Stalin i Kaganovich., 208.
8 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 45, l. 135.
9 R. W. Davies, “Soviet Military Expenditure and the Armaments Industry, 1929–33: A Reconsidera-
tion.”Europe-Asia Studies, 45, no. 4 (1993), 577–608.
10 Mark Harrison and R. W. Davies, “The Soviet Military-Economic Eort during the Second Five-Year
Plan.”Europe-Asia Studies, 49, no. 3 (1997), 369.
11 Intercepted cable in RGVA, f. 4, op. 19, d. 13, l. 131.
12 Sabur ̄o Hayashi,Kantogun to kyokut ̄ ̄o sorengun(Tokyo: Fuyo shob ̄ o, 1974), 53–54. ̄
13 See recollections by Ivan Gronskii, editor ofIzvestiia: Ivan Gronskii,Iz proshlogo. Vospominaniia
(Moscow: Izvestiia, 1991), 147.