The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

Moscow versus Tokyo Ë 129

nent role. Although Moscow was not averse to recovering the territory the Russian

Empire had lost to Japan in the war of 1904–05, it was keen to avoid any confronta-

tion with Japan, at least one coordinated with a clash (most likely with Poland) in the

West. Indeed, Stalin admitted, according to Karl Radek, that he feared a simultaneous

Japanese-Polish attack at the time.²

Stalin’s reaction to the Manchurian invasion is noteworthy. Even before the Muk-

den Incident of 18 September, Stalin was cautious. On 14 September, for example, he

wrote to Lazar’ Kaganovich (who, during Stalin’s holidays away from Moscow, repre-

sented the Politburo’s discussion of stronger measures against Japan’s economic in-

terests in the Far East) that it “is necessary to be more careful with Japan” and that,

taking a principled position, the Politburo should be more exible.³Five days after

the Mukden Incident, Stalin wrote: “Most likely, Japan’s intervention is undertaken in

agreement with all or some great powers on the basis of expanding and strengthen-

ing the spheres of inuence in China.” He even suspected that some of the Chinese

war lords supported Japan. Excluding Soviet military intervention and even regard-

ing diplomatic intervention as undesirable, Stalin instructed the Soviet press to ex-

press opposition to any foreign military intervention in general, and the party news-

paperPravdato condemn severly the Japanese occupants, and to portray the League

of Nations as a weapon of war (and not peace) and the United States as supporting

the division of China. In addition, Stalin suggested thatPravdadenounce loudly “the

imperialist pacists of Europe, America, and Asia” who were dismembering and en-

slaving China, and that the government newspaperIzvestiiado the same, but more

moderately, which was “absolutely necessary.”⁴

Stalin’s remarkable restraint toward Japan’s aggression did not satisfy everyone

in Moscow. Stalin suspected that Commissar of Foreign Aairs Maksim M. Litvinov

supported a much tougher stand. A few weeks after the Mukden Incident, when

the Kremlin’s “court poet” Dem’ian Bednyi published a poem inIzvestiiacritical of

Moscow’s apparent inaction against Japan, Stalin attacked both men.⁵In 1932, when

Moscow was alarmed by the increasing incursion of Japanese airplanes into Soviet

airspace, Kliment E. Voroshilov, the head of the Soviet military forces, ordered they

be shot down. Stalin immediately reprimanded Voroshilov on the grounds that the

Soviet Union might be provoked into armed conict with Japan. Stalin “categorically”

prohibited shooting “without Moscow’s permission.”⁶Likewise, in the summer of

1932, Stalin was angered by the subversive work in Manchuria by the Soviet secret

police and Soviet military intelligence that resulted in the arrest by Manchukuo-

2 Louis Fischer,Russia’s Road from Peace to War: Soviet Foreign Relations 1917–1941(New York:
Harper & Row, 1969), 222.
3 Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931–1936 gg.(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001), 103.
4 Stalin i Kaganovich., 116.
5 Stalin i Kaganovich., 32, 119–20, 122.
6 Stalin i Kaganovich., 135, 141.