Stalin: “We shall drive the Turks into Asia”
I have addressed this subject several times before.
Regular readers of this blog will recall that I have sought to counter Stalinist claims that the Stalin regime’s demands for Turkish territory and bases in the Straits were a “Cold War myth” by presenting testimony and documentary evidence from a variety of sources. A list of the relevant articles can be found below.
This time, I would like to return to the subject through Dimitrov’s diary. Several entries in the second volume of the Turkish translation add important details to the picture I outlined in my earlier articles. Stalin’s remarks of 25 November 1940, in particular, deserve close attention.
Moreover, this entry goes beyond the question of bases in
the Straits. It also records support for Bulgaria’s territorial claims against
Turkey and Greece, calculations concerning the composition of Turkey’s
population, and statements about driving the Turks into Asia.
Without further ado, let us turn to the source itself.
Dimitrov’s record of the meeting
I briefly mentioned Dimitrov’s diary in the third instalmentof my mini-series on Bill Bland. First published in Bulgarian in 1997, the
diary appeared in an abridged English edition edited by Ivo Banac in 2003.
Rüstem Aziz’s Turkish translation was published by TÜSTAV in three volumes in
2004-2005.[1]
The diary is an important source that allows us to trace
Dimitrov’s meetings with Stalin, the instructions he received from him, and the
way the Comintern’s political line was shaped. Here we are reading
contemporaneous records rather than a retrospective account of events recalled
years later.
Dimitrov begins his entry for 25 November 1940 as follows:
Just returned from the Comintern, when I was summoned to see Stalin. I found Molotov (and Dekanozov) there.[2]
A substantial part of the discussion concerns the mutual
assistance agreement that the Soviet Union is proposing to Bulgaria. Stalin
says that both countries face threats to their security from the direction of
the Black Sea and the Straits, and explains that the Soviet Union is prepared
to provide Bulgaria with economic and military assistance.
He then turns to Turkey:
As regards Turkey, we demand a base to ensure that the straits cannot be used against us.[3]
It could hardly be clearer.
According to Dimitrov’s record, Stalin states, at a meeting also attended by Molotov, that the Soviet Union demands a base in the Straits from Turkey.
Testimony alongside the diplomatic record
In my earlier article, “A demand predating 1945: Bases inthe Straits”, I pointed out that this objective had not first emerged after the
war.
One of the documents I examined in that article was a telegram sent on 26 November 1940 by Schulenburg, Germany’s ambassador in Moscow. The telegram recorded the Soviet conditions that Molotov had communicated to him. These included the establishment, under a long-term lease, of a base for Soviet land and naval forces near the Straits.
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| Stalin and Dimitrov |
Dimitrov’s diary adds testimony from a different source to this diplomatic record: Stalin’s remarks to his inner circle the previous day.
One source records the conditions the Soviet government
presented to Germany; the other records a meeting at which Stalin expressed the
same objective. The two sources complement one another.
The aim of acquiring bases in the Straits therefore cannot
be explained solely in terms of Turkey’s wartime stance or the talks over the
renewal of the Soviet-Turkish Treaty of Friendship in 1945. Stalin was already
openly expressing this aim within his inner circle in November 1940.
Support for Bulgaria’s territorial claims
Another striking aspect of the discussion is a statement I
had not encountered in the sources I examined in my earlier articles on this
subject.
Stalin says that the Soviet Union supports Bulgaria’s
territorial claims:
We support Bulgaria’s territorial claims—the Midye [Midiya]-Enez [Enos] line (the Edirne [Adrianople] region of Western Thrace, Dedeağaç [Alexandroupolis], Drama, and Kavalla).[2]
The territories mentioned here include land belonging to
both Turkey and Greece. The reference to the province of Edirne, extending as
far as the Midye–Enos line, concerns Turkey, while Western Thrace, Dedeağaç,
Drama and Kavala concern Greece.
Moreover, Stalin does not stop at declaring Soviet support
for these territorial claims. He also explains how a Soviet–Bulgarian agreement
would alter the balance of power:
If such an agreement is signed, Turkey will not dare to go to war against Bulgaria, and the situation in the Balkans will be entirely different.[3]
These two statements need to be read together. On the one
hand, Bulgaria’s territorial claims against its neighbours are being endorsed;
on the other, the calculation is that an agreement with the Soviet Union could
deter Turkey from responding militarily to those claims.
The discussion, therefore, is not confined to maintaining
security within existing borders. It also concerns redrawing borders in the
region and neutralising states that might oppose such changes.
“What is Turkey?”
Stalin’s remarks on Turkey do not end with his statement
about bases in the Straits. The following passage comes immediately afterwards
in Dimitrov’s record:
We shall drive the Turks into Asia. What is Turkey? There are two million Georgians there, one and a half million Armenians, a million Kurds, and so forth. The Turks amount to only six or seven million.[3]
Clearly, these population figures should not be treated as
reliable data on Turkey’s demographic composition. What matters here is what
Stalin is trying to achieve by citing them.
He lists the various peoples living in Turkey, downplays the
number of Turks, and links all this to his declaration, “We shall drive the
Turks into Asia.” Another country’s population and territory are treated as
things that great powers can dispose of as they see fit.
We cannot infer a detailed plan for border changes or a
military operation from this brief entry. But we do not need such a plan to
understand how Stalin viewed Turkey’s existing borders and sovereignty.
Moreover, when these remarks are read alongside sources
showing that territorial demands were made on Turkey in 1945, the picture
becomes even clearer. This entry alone does not, of course, prove that Kars and
Ardahan were being claimed; it does, however, help us understand the political
mindset behind those demands. It is hardly surprising that a dictator who had
concentrated power in his own hands, insisted on having his own way, and spoke
about Turkey in such terms should demand territory and bases from Turkey a few
years later.
The evidence against denial
Molotov’s interviews, Khrushchev’s memoirs, the official
Soviet historical account acknowledging that the demands were abandoned, and
the diplomatic documents of the period differ in nature. Each must be assessed
in its own context. Yet the fact that these different sources corroborate the
same objectives and initiatives certainly cannot be ignored.
To these we can now add Stalin’s statement, “we demand a
base”, made during an internal discussion at the highest level of the Stalinist
bureaucracy and recorded in Dimitrov’s diary. Moreover, the same entry records
support for Bulgaria’s territorial claims against Turkey and the declaration,
“We shall drive the Turks into Asia.” Those who deny that these demands were
ever made must account for this record as well as the other sources.
[1] Georgi Dimitrov, Günlük, trans. Rüstem Aziz,
TÜSTAV, Istanbul; vol. 1: 9 March 1933-31 August 1939 (2004); vol. 2: 1
September 1939-5 May 1945 (2004); vol. 3: 6 May 1945-6 February 1949 (2005).
Abridged English edition: The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949,
edited and introduced by Ivo Banac, Yale University Press, New Haven and
London, 2003.
[2] Georgi Dimitrov, Günlük, vol. 2: 1 September
1939-5 May 1945, trans. Rüstem Aziz, TÜSTAV, Istanbul, 2004, entry for 25
November 1940, p. 36.
[3] Ibid., p. 37.
Previous articles on the subject:
Crashing into the hard truth while trying to turn history on its head
Molotov Speaks: territorial and Straits base demands on Turkey in 1945
What do Khrushchev’s memoirs tell us?
The Kremlin’s mid-1970s “diplomatic” manoeuvre
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