16 4 Chapter 7Party. While this may be the case, Stalin’s actions were not free of mistakes
that could have been turned against him, especially during the Terror. One
was particularly incriminating. After the death of Lenin (January 1924), as
General Secretary Stalin had signed permits for many of the Soviet elites
and nomenklatura to undergo medical treatment in Germany. ( These treat-
ments began in 1922 and lasted until approximately 1932–1933.) An exam-
ple is the approval form Stalin signed for his wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, to
undergo one month of German medical treatment in 1930.^72 During the
Great Terror, this surely could have been used by one of Stalin’s rivals to
link him with the very same anti- Soviet counterrevolutionary centers that
necessitated the removal of the Soviet Germans, Finns, Poles, Koreans, and
Old Bolshevik leaders— that is, to accuse and prosecute Stalin for espionage
(for Germany).^73 In fact, Stalin’s signature on these releases would have
linked him with anti- Soviet treason had it not been for the fact that he con-
trolled the primary lever of Soviet repression— namely, the OGPU/NKVD.
Through exerting that control Stalin was able to defeat all of his po liti cal
opponents using techniques of vio lence and intimidation that antedated
those of the Terror by over ten years.^74 It is this fact that best explains Sta-
lin’s stunning victories over all his rivals, which is not to deny his individual
talents, memory, and tireless energy when faced with opposition or daunt-
ing tasks.
A further explanation for Stalin’s modus operandi and why he chose to
repress the Koreans despite their history of loyalty is the paradigm of the
“counterintelligence state.”^75 Stalin believed that the Soviet Union could not
survive without his absolute control of all its facets and mea sures. Therefore,
he conducted his regime like a counterintelligence operation that assumed
anti- Soviet espionage had already been established behind the Soviet rear
guard, that is, within Soviet borders.^76 Stalin’s primary goal was to flush out
all espionage ele ments at any cost. Human and population losses were sim-
ply considered operational expenditures. The “counterintelligence state”
required an extensive network of secret police and informers, which the
Soviet Union possessed and had fully empowered. It was estimated that the
USSR had an in for mant network of 13 million in 1942. This network dou-
bled in size by late 1944.^77 At the time of the Terror, beginning in 1936, I
would conservatively estimate that the Soviet in for mant network main-
tained by the NKVD and MVD was somewhere around four million.^78 The
in for mant network maintained pressure and repression upon the general
populace and upon itself. The repression of false positives— that is, citizens
who were innocent but still repressed— was part of the calculus of opera-
tional costs.^79 Elizaveta Li, a Korean deportee, stated, “Without the in for-
mants inside our community, there would not have been the Korean depor-