该论文来自于 Working Papers published by the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
该文章的题目是SOVIET AIMS IN KOREA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE KOREAN WAR,1945-1950: NEW EVIDENCE FROM RUSSIAN ARCHIVES
作者：KATHRYN WEATHERSBY
单位：Florida State University
由于该文章较长，故只在此处贴出与本文主题相关的内容，也就是文章后半部分的内容，感兴趣的可以上google搜索该文章，本人也无意将其翻译成中文，谢谢！
It is clear, therefore, that Stalin’s support of the North Korean plan to reunify the country through a rapid military assault on the South was not given in order to test American resolve. Just the opposite was true; it was only given after Stalin was persuaded that the action would not risk conflict with the United States. The question then remains, why did Stalin take this risk, which was such a sharp departure from his earlier cautious policy in Northeast Asia?
We see, first of all, that Soviet officials were well aware that conflict was likely to break out at any moment between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea. The Foreign Ministry received a steady stream of reports of South Korean officials’ frequent declarations of their readiness and determination to reunify their country through military force. Moscow also received reports of troop movements and fighting along the 38th parallel. Stalin’s support of Kim’s plan to initiate this war could thus be seen as a preemptive strike, an attempt to make use of a temporary advantage in “the correlation of forces” to resolve an inevitable conflict in a favorable way. June 1950 was a propitious time for an attack on South Korea because earlier that year the military capability of the DPRK had been significantly enhanced by the return to North Korea of 14,000 Korean communists who had fought with the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese civil war. The example of the CCP’s victory in its struggle against another unpopular, reactionary regime supported by the United States also strengthened morale among North Korean communists,encouraging them to believe that they would be similarly victorious.
However, the factors stated above were not strong enough to overcome Stalin’s fear of directly confronting the United States. We know from the example of the Greek civil war, among others, that at this time Stalin was quite willing to allow a foreign communist party to lose its bid for power if he concluded that Soviet interests would be harmed by direct involvement in the conflict. Stalin’s decision to support the risky venture in Korea must therefore have been motivated by significant strategic concerns. The documents that will provide conclusive evidence of Stalin’s motives have not yet been declassified, but from information gained from recently published memoirs, it appears that Stalin’s insecurity about his relations with Mao Zedong and
about Soviet relations with the PRC led him to approve Kim Il Sung’s reunification plan.
As is well known, since the mid 1920s Stalin’s policies toward the Chinese Communist Party had done more to hinder CCP victory than to aid it. In June 1949 Stalin admitted as much to the CCP delegation in Moscow.87 That Mao achieved victory on his own, combined with the size and importance of China, gave him a much stronger position vis-a-vis Moscow than that of any European communist leader. Speaking to Liu’s delegation in Moscow in 1949, Stalin spoke of “the fact that the Soviet people and the peoples of Europe should learn from your experience. ... Owing to the arrogance of the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe, the social democratic movement in the West began to fall behind in its development following the death of Marx and Engels. The center of the revolution moved from West to East, and now it is moving to China and East Asia. . . . It is possible that in comprehending general problems of Marxist theory, we, the Soviet people, are somewhat stronger than you. However, with regard to
the application of Marxist principles in practice, we can learn from the great amounts ofexperience you possess.”
Stalin even went so far as to state that the CCP should not subordinate itself to the CPSU and should not join the Cominform, but instead should form an alliance of East Asian communist parties. According to the memoir of Mao’s interpreter, Stalin told Liu Shaoqi that “he hoped to see the Chinese and the Soviets divide their spheres of responsibilities within the international communist movement. . . . As the Chinese had greater influence upon colonial and semi-colonial countries in the East, it would be easier for China to help promote Eastern revolution than for the Soviet Union.”
These statements should not be taken at face value, of course, but they do indicate that in 1949-50 Stalin was involved in a delicate power game with Mao. As Stalin’s representative in China, I.V. Kovalev, put it, “at the end of 1948, when the prospects of a military victory of the CPC [Communist Party of China] finally became clear, both leaders in all likelihood understood completely that they would have to meet in order to work out a mutual agreement regarding their relations. From this moment on there began a process of mutually active shifting and probing of each other's positions on key questions.” Stalin’s humiliation of Mao upon the latter’s arrival inMoscow in December 1949, leaving him in isolation and refusing to see him for the first month of his visit, also testifies to this power play. This was classic “strong man” posturing toward a potential rival; its purpose was to leave no doubt as to who was in charge.
Stalin’s relationship with Mao affected his decision regarding Korea because if Stalin were to refuse to support Kim Il Sung’s perfectly reasonable goal of reunifying his country, which was comparable to what Mao had just accomplished in China, then Stalin would again be open to the charge of hindering the cause of revolution in the East. His position as the leader of the communist camp would be weakened while the authority and prestige of Mao, to whom Kim would obviously turn and who had a blood debt to support the Korean communists, would rise.
More important than the above concern, however, was apparently Stalin’s fear that the PRC would not long ally itself with the Soviet Union. A Russian scholar who has seen the relevant documents has recounted to me that Stalin calculated that even though the United States might not defend the ROK, once it lost South Korea it would not then allow itself to suffer the additional loss of Taiwan. The United States would move in to protect Chiang Kai-shek, thereby preventing a rapprochement between the US and the PRC. Mao would thus be forced to continue to turn to the Soviet Union for economic and military aid. We can test this explanation of Stalin’s motives only after the 1950 documents have been declassified, but from what is now known, it appears quite plausible. Stalin knew the Soviet Union could never match American terms for aid; Soviet negotiations with the PRC over the agreements signed in February 1950 had been as much a matter of haggling over every penny as had been the negotiations with the DPRK, and the pact ultimately concluded was on terms economically unfavorable to the PRC. Stalin knew that Mao had both political and economic reasons for turning away from an alliance with the Soviet Union, and preventing the huge communist state in East Asia from becoming independent of Moscow would have been a sufficiently strong motive for the Soviet leader to risk approving military action in Korea.
In conclusion, although many questions about Soviet policy toward Korea from 1945-
1950 remain unanswered, the evidence now available indicates that the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 was not the result of Soviet determination to expand the territory under its control, and it was certainly not the opening salvo in a broader Soviet attack on the American sphere of influence. From 1945 to early 1950, Moscow’s aim was not to gain control over the Korean peninsula. Instead, the Soviet Union sought to protect its strategic and economic interests through the traditional Tsarist approach of maintaining a balance of power in Korea. However, in the context of the postwar Soviet-American involvement on the peninsula, such a balance could only be maintained by prolonging the division of the country, retaining effective control over the northern half.
The North Korean attempt to reunify the country through a military campaign clearly
represented a sharp departure from the basic Soviet policy toward Korea. The initiative for this departure came from Pyongyang, not Moscow. In the spring of 1950 Stalin approved Kim’s reunification plan and provided the necessary military support, but only after repeated appeals from Kim and only after having been persuaded that the United States would not intervene in the conflict. Conclusive evidence of Stalin’s reasons for finally supporting the North Korean reunification plan has not yet been released, but it appears that Stalin’s motive may well have been to tie the Chinese communists more firmly to the USSR, to prevent a rapprochement between the PRC and the United States. If this interpretation is correct, it means that it was Soviet weakness that drove Stalin to support the attack on South Korea, not the unrestrained expansionism imagined by the authors of NSC-68.
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