What Stalin said about Hiroshima

The text below is taken from the record of the meeting of Stalin and W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR. Full declassified document is available here. The text was published in Russian by Sergey Oboguev in his blog. Thanks to Sergey for the interesting find.

Conversation. 8:20, Moscow, August 8, 1945.

TOP SECRET

Present: W. A. Harriman, American Ambassador

        George F. Kennan, Minister Counselor

        Generalissimus Stalin

        V. M. Molotov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs

        Mr. Pavlov, Soviet interpreter

...

The Ambassador asked what he thought of the effects of the news of the atomic bomb would have on the Japanese.

The Generalissimus replied that he thought the Japanese were at present looking for a pretext to replace the present government with one which would be qualified to undertake a surrender. The atomic bomb might give them this pretext.

The Ambassador observed that it was a good thing we had invented this and not the Germans. For long, he said, no one had dared think it would be a success. It was only a few days before the President had told Stalin about it in Berlin that we had learned definitely that it would work succesfully.

The Generalissimus replied that Soviet scientists said that it was a very difficult problem to work out.

The Ambassador said that if the Allies could keep it and apply it for peaceful purposes it would be a great thing.

The Generalissimus agreed and said that would mean the end of the war and aggressors. But the secret would have to be well kept.

The Ambassador said that it could have great importance for peaceful purposes.

The Generalissimus replied, "unquestionably". He added that Soviet scientists had also tried to do it but had not succeeded. They had found one laboratory in Germany where the Germans had evidently been working on the same problem but Russians could not find that they had come to any results. If they had found it, Hitler would never have surrendered. England, too, had gotten nowhere with these researches although they had excellent physicists.

The Ambassador explained that the English had pooled their knowledge with us since 1941. But it had taken enormous installations to conduct the experiments and to achieve final results.

The Generalissimus remarked that this had been very expensive.

...

April 5 in Russian history

1242: Battle of the Ice. With the stupidity that deserves a better use, the law of the Russian Federation "On the days of the glory" orders to celebrate this date on April 18. In the autumn of 1240, the knights of the Teutonic order, assuming that Russians were weakened by Swedish and Tatar raids, attacked the Republic of Novgorod. Poor guys who miserably failed in the Holy Land thought that the northern savages would be an easier prey than the southern ones. After the initial successes against Prussians, Poles, Livonians and Estonians, they decided to christianize the Russian christians. They succeeded in occupying Russian cities of Pskov, Izborsk and Koporye and moved towards Novgorod. In 1241, knyaz Alexander Yaroslavich (who had already earned his name Alexander Nevsky after defeating the Swedes in 1240) drove them off and took Pskov and Koporye. Alexander led his army to Izborsk, but during the march one of the reconnaissance detachments was defeated by the knights. This allowed Alexander to determine the position and number of the Teutonic forces, which were moving towards a narrow straight between Chudskoye and Pskovskoye lakes (the lakes are known in English as one lake Peipus, from the Estonian name Peipsi). Alexander retreated in order to start the battle on a position that would be favorable for the Russian forces. The troops of the Teutonic Order included around 1,000-2,000 people, of whom about 500-700 were mounted knights. The number of Russians was about 4,000-5,000 people, including Alexander's druzhina, professional soldiers of the Novgorod garrison, militia from the "ends" of Novgorod and its prigorods and members of private militarized forces of boyars and merchants. About 800 of them were cavalry. The mounted knights followed by foot soldiers attacked the centre of the Novgorod army in their typical wedge-shaped "boar's head" formation and caused severe damages, but could not disrupt the order or get through the rows of the soldiers. Some time later, when the Teutonic troops began to grow tired, Alexander ordered the left and right wings to flank the enemy. The Novgorod archers killed many foot soldiers and forced the knights to flee. Heavy mounted knights stepped onto the ice, hoping to make to the opposite coast, but ice collapsed and many of them drowned. Russian chronicles reported of 500 killed knights, but the whole Order was smaller than that. A more reasonable estimation is that about 400 Germans (including 20 knights) were killed and 90 (including 6 "brothers") were captured. The losses of Novgorodians are unclear. Some historians, for example I.Danilevsky, assume that the importance of the battle was overestimated, but, after all, the Order never attempted serious attacks on Russian lands any more.

1797: Emperor Pavel I prohibits the land-lords to force the serfs to work on Sundays.

1941: Yugoslavia and USSR sign the friendship and non-aggression treaty. Only some days earlier, on March 25, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact joining the Axis. The decision was not easy and resulted into resignment of four members of the cabinet of ministers. What is more important is that the Yugoslavians did not support the alliance. Immediately after the pact was signed, mass demonstrations began in Belgrade and the Yugoslavians overthrew the pro-fascist government and regent prince Paul. Peter II became the king of Yugoslavia and signed the friendship treaty with the USSR. On the very next day, on April 6, the Nazi Luftwaffe began furious attacks on Belgrade. What amazes me most is the reaction of the Yugoslavians. A lot of European countries either happily elected fascist governments or inclined to support nationalist dictatorships of a rather fascist-like type. For example, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy, who invaded Yugoslavia after the German bombardments, or Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Greece, etc. The reaction of the Yugoslavians to the alliance with the Axis was so strongly negative that it seems that they had some kind of immunity to fascism. This reaction was not limited to certain groups of population, but was rather universal: army, trade-unions, peasants and even clerics opposed any relationships with the Nazis. Of course, they had their own fascist-like movements, but the general rejection of the ideology is remarkable, IMHO.

1943: The first aerial battle of the fighter squadron Normandie-Niemen. The squadron comprised French pilots who came to the USSR to fight against the Nazi Germany. The idea of such a detachment belonged to Charle de Gaulle. The squadron was formed in September 1942 and departed to the front after some months of training on March 22, 1943, under commandment of Jean Tulasne (died on July 17, 1943). On April 5, the first German Fw 190 was shot down by Albert Préziosi (died on July 28, 1943 near Orel) and the second one by Albert Durand (died on September 1, 1943 near Yelna). The squadron was so successful that Wilhelm Keitel issued an order to execute all captured French pilots. During the war, the pilots of Normandie-Niemen shot down 273 German planes and damaged more than 80. 42 members of the squadron were killed during the war. In 1956, a memorial was built in Moscow with the names of all killed pilots. There are two squadrons named Normandie-Niemen in the Air Forces of France and Russia

1945: About 800 Georgian members of the Georgian Legion, ex-Soviet army soldiers, who were captured during the war and agreed to serve the Nazis, begin a rebellion on the Dutch island Texel. They expected the Allies to land on the island, but the Allies had other priorities. The Georgians failed to capture the artillery batteries on the coasts and Germans managed to land on the island and forced the Georgians to split into small groups and begin a guerilla-style war. The fighting did not stop after the capitulation of Germany and continued till May 20. Probably, neither Germans, nor Georgians would stop the battle because of hatred and fear of immediate execution. During the battle, about 800 German occupants were killed. 565 members of the Georgian battalion and 120 Dutch civilians were killed, too. For the natives of Texel, used to the comfort of the German occupation, the events were absolutely unexpected and frightening. However, they assisted the Georgians and after the war built a monument in the memory of this rebellion. 228 survivors returned to the USSR and, like many other POWs, were sent to the Gulag camps.

April 3 in Russian history

1933: The first kidney tranplantation was performed by Yuri Voronoy. Some sources give different dates, some even speak of the tranplantation being done in 1934 or 1936. His experiments started in 1929 and in 1930 he managed to transplant a kidney to a dog's neck. As the Ukrainian National museum of medicine reports:

Yu.Yu. Voronoy renounced the thought to take an organ from an alive man, since he thought that “one cannot make a healthy man invalid removing a necessary organ for the problematic saving of a patient”. He decided to use the kidney from a dead body. As we succeeded to establish, on April, 1933 (not in 1934, as it was informed in some sources, 1934 — is the year of publication of Yu. Yu. Voronoy’s work) the surgeon Yu. Yu. Voronoy made the transplantation of the kidney taken from a dead body. The recipient was a woman of 26 years, whose own kidneys did not function for 4 days because of acute poisoning with mercury biochloride. The donor’s kidney belonged to a man of 60 who died as a result of craniocerebral trauma, and was taken 6 hours after his death. ... She [the recipient] lived with the transplanted kidney more than 48 hours. Voronoy had every reason to think that the short-term transplant grafting (only during two days) does not compromise the kidney transplantation as the method of treatment under some forms of mercury biochloride poisonings. And what is more, he supposed that in case of dying off of the first implanted kidney, it is recommended to substitute it by a new, fresh kidney, i. e., he proposed the repeated transplantation. ... Yu. Yu. Voronoy outstripped for a long time the development of transplantology. Suffice it to say that clinical transplantations of the corpse kidney in most countries all over the world were made only in the 50–60’s of the 20th century. Professor Voronoy took part in development of other urgent trends of experimental and clinical surgery. He studied in detail the extremely important problem of the shock. But the problems of transplantology continued to remain the main ones in scientific activity of Voronoy. In 1950 he informed about 5 operations of the corpse kidney transplantation under severe nephrologic diseases.

1945: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God, emperor of Ethiopia, transfers 10,000 pounds to the population of the USSR, suffering from the consequences of the Nazi occupation.

1945: The government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic decides to build a monument in Babiy Yar, a gully in Kiev, used by the Nazis as the place of mass executions. On September 27, 1941, 752 patients of a mental hospital were killed. On September 29-30, 33,771 Jews, almost whole Jewish population of Kiev, were executed. In October, 17,000 more Jews were killed there. Later, 621 member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN were also killed. The executions were continuing till autumn of 1943, when the Soviet troops liberated Kiev. The total number of victims is not clear, various sources estimate it between 70,000 and 200,000 people. It is not clear why, but the monument was not built. Moreover, the authorities of Kiev preferred to make a dump in Babiy yar. In 1950, a wall was built and the gully was turned into a collector for liquid waste of nearby brick plant. In 1961, the wall fell and the mudflow destroyed a district of Kiev known as Kurenyovka. About 3,000 people died in this tragedy. In 1965 a granite stele was built. Only in 1976, on July 2, a monument was erected with the inscription: "To the Soviet citizens, soldiers and officers of the Soviet army, killed by fascists in Babiy Yar". Later, in 1990s, more monuments were built commemorating not all victims, but only certain groups of them: Jews, members of OUN, patients of the mental hospital, etc. There's also a cross erected in the memory of German prisoners of war.

1966: Soviet spacecraft Luna-10 becomes the first man-made object ever to orbit another celestial body. It enters the Lunar orbit and begins to collect scientific data using a spectrometer, a magnetometer and a number of other tools. Among other things, Luna 10 discovers a strange objects under the surface of the Moon, called 'mascons' (mass concentrations). On May 29, 1966, Luna 10 fell onto the Moon. On April 3, during the XXIII CPSU congress (BTW, it was the first congress where L.Brezhnev was the general secretary of the Communist Party), Luna 10 transmitted back to the Earth a sound record of L'Internationale.

March 29 in Russian history

1814: In the early morning, Russian troops begin the battle of Paris. After the first assault, they are stopped by the artillery gunfire, but the assistance of the Prussian and Austrian allies allows them to throw away the French Imperial Guard. Russian troops enter the Montmartre hills. For the first time since 1437 a foreign army enters the French capital. One of the commanders of the glorious French army, Joseph Bonapart, fled, while the other, Auguste Marmont, sent truce envoys to the allied forces and agreed to capitulate. A year and a half later, the winning countries sign the treaty of the so called Holy Alliance. This Alliance was extremely interesting and deserves a separate article, but for now the most interesting thing for us is that the main idea behind the alliance was to establish the European peacekeeping forces. Unfortunately, Russian emperor Alexander I, who was the main proponent of this document, had a very special view of "peacekeeping". In his opinion, it was the alliance of god-blessed monarchies against liberal conspiracies.

1856: The end of the Crimean war. The war started in 1853, when the political landscape of Europe had significantly changed since the birth of the Holy Alliance. Revolutions in Belgium, France and interference of the alliance in the internal affairs of European countries led to the negative attitude towards Russia. There were other reasons, of course. Britain competed with Russia in Persia and sought to weaken the opponent. France attempted to increase influence in the Holy Land, controlled by Turkey. The Austrian position was, probably, influenced by other countres, because her anti-Russian position was inexplicable: only four years earlier Russia helped to suppress the rebellion in Hungary and saved the Austrian empire from dissipation. Anyway, the war had started. Russia successfully defeated the Turkish fleet near Sinop and the Turkish army in Bayazet, Kuruk Dar and Kars. Then the European countries interfered and landed in Crimea. After 11 months of siege, Russian troops abandoned the southern part of Sevastopol. Some more months later, Russia agreed to sign the peace treaty. According to the Second peace treaty of Paris, Russia lost the right to keep fleet and fortresses on the Black Sea. Russia returned Kars, settled by Georgians and Armenians, to Turkey and received back Sevastopol. Russia was also prohibited from protecting the Christian nations subjugated by the Ottoman empire. Russia lost much of the influence in Romania and Serbia.

1867: The Crimean war had shown that Russia was weaker than the European countries. Russia began to understand that it will be very difficult to keep the overseas territories, especially Alaska, where only 600-800 Russians lived at that time. In 1859, USA had already attempted to buy Alaska for $5,000,000, but the Russian government was too busy with the forthcoming abolition of serfdom and refused. By 1867, the Russian government became more interested in Middle Asia and the Far East, so it was decided to sell the Russian America to the United States. The US payed $7,200,000 and renamed Russian America to Alaska. For the USA, the importance of Alaska was lying in the political, rather than in the economical sphere. Had it not been for the Gold Rush of the 1896, Alaska could have remained the barren land for many more years.

That's it. So the victory in the war with Napoleon finally led to the loss of Alaska.

1945: Soviet troops liberate Gdansk (Danzig) and raise the Polish national flag over the city. The 2nd Ukrainian front crossed the borders of Austria, so ungrateful 100 years ago.

1969: Soviet ice hockey squad becomes the world champion for the seventh time in a row.

March 29 in Russian history

1847: 19 years old Leo Tolstoy begins a diary which he will continue for all his life. In the complete set of his works the diaries occupy 13 volumes.

1933: The Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper published an article by G.Munblit "The book about a shallow world". It was a positive review of a new book written by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, "The Golden Calf". The real names of Ilf and Petrov were Ilya Faynzilberg and Yevgeny Kataev. "The Golden Calf" was a sequel of their earlier book, "The Twelve Chairs". Both books are the adventures of a swindler Ostap Bender, somehow similar to the stories about Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker by O'Henry. Unlike O'Henry, though, Ilf and Petrov wrote satyre. They ridiculed everyone and everything, from the aristocrats of the times before the revolution, to Soviet bureaucracy, to the flourishing bourgeois habits of the people pretending to be communists. Though a negative character, Ostap Bender was loved by generations of Soviet readers. I tried to find "The Golden Calf" online, but unfortunately, only some first chapters are available here. The full text of "The Twelve Chairs" is here. Just try some first chapters and, I hope, you'll like it. It's not just incredibly funny, but it might also give some impressions about the life in the early Soviet Union.

BTW, while searching for the text of the books, I found an interesting web-site which I had no time to explore, but which seems promising: SovLit.com.

1945: The troops of the 3rd Belorussian front finished the liquidation of the surrounded Eastern Prussian group of the fascist army to the south-west of Koenigsberg. The troops of the 2nd Belorussian front continued the liquidation of the fascist troops in the eastern part of Gdansk (Danzig) and to the north from Gdynia.

January 27-28 in Russian history

January 27

1756: I cannot start this post with any other date than this: the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

1871: Alexander II issues a decree allowing women to work in public and state institutions

1944: The siege of Leningrad is totally lifted.

1945: In the course of liberation of Poland, Soviet troops enter the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The majority of prisoners were relocated to Germany and the Soviet soldiers only find about 3,000 people, who were considered 'useless' by the Nazis.

January 28

1725: (Feb 8 New style) Emperor Peter I died. Probably, the most influential ruler in the Russian history. The author of the "westernization" policy. Creator of the Russian Empire. Builder of the Russian fleet. Victor in many wars, including the war with Carl XII, king of Sweden. Architect of St. Petersburg, Russian "window into Europe". On the other hand, it was he who turned the life of Russian serfs into what became the distinguishing quality of Russian history in the eyes of all foreigners. It was he who killed thousands of people by sending them to forced labor. The people remembered him as the Tsar-Antichrist.

1765: Catherine II issues a decree giving the landowners (pomeshchiki) the right to condemn their serfs to penal servitude.

1783: The same empress, Catherine II, allows private book-printing. 13 years later, in 1796, private publishing houses are prohibited again.

1820: Two Russian ships, Vostok and Mirnyi, captained by Faddey Bellinsgauzen and Mikhail Lazarev, discover Antarctica.