Status Updates From The Cold War and Soviet Ins...

none of this shit abt asia is making sense

the
Soviet Union under Stalin was not a normal state but one run by a
criminal syndicate at the service of a bloody tyrant hungry for power
and ready to abuse it whenever he could do so without paying too
high a price.

There were more problems
than someone of more systematic working habits than Stalin
could effectively handle in one day—and his preferred nighttime schedule
was anything but normal nor was his reliance on superior memory
rather than on paperwork a guarantee of efficiency

During Stalin's lifetime,
Soviet policy was his policy, on the
whole conforming to Khrushchev's description of the despot as someone
behaving "like Almighty God with a host of angels and archangels.
He might listen to us, but the main thing was that he spoke and we
listened. He did not explain his reasoning, but passed down the word
to lesser mortals. They did what they were told when he wanted it
done.

A spoiled product of a rotten
system, Beriia was manifestly unfit to be a champion of its radical
transformation. Having spent a lifetime as a despot's administrator of
terror, he lacked the prerequisites of a politician, much less of a
statesman. He was one of history's more unsuitable persons ever given
an opportunity to shape it.

Although officials in Washington and London had been impatiently
awaiting Stalin's exit from the scene, they were utterly unprepared
when it came.35 Having set their minds at its long-term
consequences—the inevitable terminal crisis of the system no one else
could effectively run—they were at a loss about what to do in the
meantime

Less than an hour before Stalin expired at 9:50 P.M., the assembly
effectively deposed him by leaving him no other function than an ordinary
membership in the party presidium

Menon and Kitchlew were the last foreigners known to
have seen Stalin alive

A month later, French ambassador Louis Joxe, astonished to have
been invited to the Kremlin after the increasingly reclusive dictator had
all but ceased to see any foreigners, found Stalin looking "old and tired
. . . , sickly."57 Offering no clue as to why he had wanted to meet in the
first place, he was "beating around the bush," complaining about
German rearmament but not making any proposals

The Soviet totalitarian model came the closest to perfection precisely
during Stalin's sickly last years. After all conceivable opposition
had been crushed or cowed into submission, even the ruling politburo—
a mere semblance of an oligarchy—was formally convened only four
times in 1952—the lowest number of meetings in any year

According to Molotov, Stalin
was no longer in full control of himself.31 Khrushchev noticed lapses of
mind and losses of memory, which drove the despot crazy

In the summer of 1951, Khrushchev overheard the autocrat as fretting
that he was "finished. I trust no one, not even myself."97 Stalin's
daughter, Svetlana, later recalled having been shocked by her father's
saying that he no longer trusted his security man, BerIla, either

Khrushchev later wondered whether it was Stalin's vanity or pride
that made him leave his Japanese territories in limbo by refusing to
cooperate with Washington while their confirmation was still on offer

A report prepared in
December 1950 for the U.S. high commissioner in Germany envisaged
luring away important officials from East Germany to undermine its
economy and political system while using RIAS, the widely popular
U.S.-run radio station in Berlin, to keep up the people's spirit of resistance

The initial Soviet response to the North Korean attack on June 25 was
dilatory and noncommittal. For thirty-six hours, Moscow offered no
public support to the announcement on the Pyongyang radio that had
tried to justify the aggression by accusing the victim of starting the
war.1

Created by a minority coup rather than by exertion of popular will, the
Soviet state was always intrinsically insecure