Earticle

필자는 본 논문에서 근현대 시기 극동에서 비극적인 삶을 살아가야 했던 소비에트 붉 은군대 최초의 한인 해군장교였던 최 파벨 페트로비치(Choi Pavel Petrovich, 최선학, 1900∼1938)와 그 가족구성원들의 가족사에 대해서 살펴보았다. 필자는 연구과정에서, 첫째는 최 파벨의 1917년 러시아혁명 이후 내전기(1918∼1922) 동안의 항일 빨치산투쟁과 1920∼30년대 스탈린 시기 해군장교로서의 활동 과정을 살펴 보았다. 둘째는 최 파벨의 부모와 10형제들의 행적 역시 살펴보았다. 필자는 이를 위해 주로 최 파벨의 생존가족들이 작성한 다량의 가족사 회상수기(回想手記)와 러시아국립 해 군기록보존소에 있는 해군당국의 최 파벨 복무관련 원자료들을 일부 활용했다. 최 파벨은 내전기에 한인빨치산 투쟁을 전개해 나가며 극동 항일운동의 대부였던 아 버지 최재형의 항일정신을 계승해 나갔다. 이후 그는 1926년 레닌그라드 푸룬제(Frunze) 해군군사학교 졸업 후 소비에트 군대 최초의 한인 해군장교가 되어 소련전역의 바다를 누비며 활동했다. 하지만 내전기 전투에서 큰형이 전사하고, 1920년에는 아버지 최재형 이 비명횡사하며 가족의 비극이 시작되었다. 최 파벨 또한 해군장교로서 스탈린 정권의 탄압으로 1938년 10월 17일에 카자흐스탄에서 죽음을 당했다. 비슷한 시기에 그의 10명 의 형제들과 매제, 자형들도 스탈린 정권의 탄압으로 대부분 죽거나 일부만이 겨우 목숨을 건졌다. 최 파벨의 비극적인 가족사는 ‘항일의병-빨치산투쟁-스탈린 탄압’으로 이어지는 20세기초 극동한인의 삶의 한 단면을 상징적으로 보여주었다. 또한 증언과 회상기록 자료를 활용한 미시사적인 연구를 통해서 스탈린 정권의 전형적인 소수민족 탄압정책의 일면들 (잔악성, 부당성, 불법성)을 생생히 살펴보는 기회가 되었다.

This study looked into the tragic life of the first Korean Naval Officer in the Soviet Union, Choi Pavel Petrovich(Seon-Hak Choi, 1900-1938), and his family history living in modern and contemporary period in the Far East. The research looked through Choi Pavel’s partisan struggle against Japan during the civil war(1918-1922) after the Russian Revolution and his activities as a naval officer in the Stalin government(1920-1930) as well as Choi Pavel’s family members including his parents and ten brothers. To conduct this research, it referred the family memoirs written by living family members and some data from the Russian State Naval Archive. Choi Pavel inherited the resistance spirit to Japan from his father, Jae-Hyung Choi, who was the leader of anti-Japanese movement. After graduating from the Leningrad Navy Academy named Frunze in 1926, he became the first Korean naval officer in the Soviet Union and played active parts throughout seas of Russia. However, the tragedy comes to his family with his eldest brother’s death at the battle during the Russian civil war followed by his father’s sudden death in 1920. Moreover, in October 17, 1938, Choi Pavel died by Stalin’s terror at Kazakhstan. And in the same period, his brothers, elder and younger brothers-in-law also died and only some of his family members survived from Stalin’s terror. Choi Pavel’s tragic family history provides a look at the face of the life of Koreans who lived in the Far East in the early 20th century, which is characterized by resistance to Japan, partisan struggles and Stalin’s terror. And through the research using testimony and recorded reminiscences, we could see vivid examples of Stalin government’s repressive measure(cruelty, iniquity, and illegality) to minorities.

This paper attempts to resurrect the political and social circumstances of Stalin’s regime through the examination of political humors circulated among the people in the 1930s of Russia. Political humors were very effective means to express indirectly people’s reaction to the repressive power like Stalin’s. People in the 1930s of Russia contrived to develop their own ways of evaluating the policies and propaganda of the government. The political humors in the Stalin’s time first conveyed the images of the leader. Contrary to the official images like Lenin’s true heir and a great contributor to the foundation of the socialist economy, Stalin in the political humors was portrayed as a betrayer to the ideals of Leninism. Furthermore, the political humors had implicitly the critical understandings on the policies and propaganda of Stalin’s government. We can find through the contents of the political humor that the peasants tried to employ various menas of escape to the campaign of collectivization of agriculture. Also workers in the factory did not fully accept the industrializing plan of the Soviet Russia, the result of which led to the struggle against the goals of production plan imposed from above. And lastly, the political humors had provided some clues to the apprehension of Stalin’s terror. From the perspectives of the government, the terror was said to be targeted against “the enemy of people,” but the humors at the time pointedly grasped the mechanism of creating arbitrarily the enemy. The political humors in Stalin’s Russia were one of means of discharging the people’s emotion and attitudes to the government which did not allow the dynamic exchange of opinions between the two.

본 논고에서는 ‘마르크스’와 ‘마르크스주의’ 사이에서 발생하는 ‘신(新)마르크스주의’의 논리와 일본에서 번역된 ‘스탈린 민족’ 개념의 서사구조의 특징을 규명해보고자 한다. 역사적 발전단계를 활용하는 카우츠키, 레너, 바우어의 ‘민족’ 이론은 정통과 이단의 경계에서 세계적 민족론을 구성하고 있었다. 특히 종족에서 민족으로 발전하는 프로세스 속에서 ‘중간체’를 거치게 되는데, 여기에는 ‘민족되기’에서 탈락되는 ‘민족’이 생기는 논리를 구조화하게 되는 역설이 존재한다. 기존 자본주의사회의 발전과정에서 중심이 된 부르주아 민족론의 한계를 지적한 카우츠키의 논리에는 프롤레타리아가 주도하는 새로운 ‘민’ 개념의 형성과, 이 과정에서 언어=민족공동체 개념이 활용되었다. 이를 추종하면서도 비판적 입장에 있는 레너와 바우어는 언어=민족공동체의 한계성을 극복하고자 문화공동체로서의 민족 개념을 재구성했다. 그러나 그들은 카우츠키와 마찬가지로 종족에서 민족으로 발전한다는 발전단계를 설정하고 그 역사적 프로세스를 설명하지만 유대인을 민족으로 간주하지 않게 된다. 특히 민족 개념에 언어와 지역 개념을 중시했기 때문이다. 이러한 상황 속에서 스탈린은 언어가 지배와 피지배, 영토와 지역의 문제를 메파타로 설정하고, 부르주아 민족이 중심이 된 민족 개념에서 벗어나 프롤레타리아도 민족으로 등극해야만 한다는 것과, 그 프롤레타리아 민족들이 인터내셔널하게 연대하는 동시에 세계어의 공통화를 만들어낼 것을 주창한다. 그러나 그것은 카우츠키가 제시한 소수민족의 민족 개념이나 지역적 주변에 있는 민족들이 통합되는 민족주의까지도 내셔널리즘으로 연결될 수 있다는 ‘양가성’을 망각하면서 구축한 논리였다. 특히 본 글을 통해 프롤레타리아 중에서 선진 민족이 후진 프롤레타리아 민족을 계몽시키거나 수준 높은 문화로 원조해야 한다는 스탈린의 논리를 발전단계론 이데올로기의 자장 속에서 스탈린의 내셔널리즘 조정(措定)에 있었음이 규명되었다.

This article tries to examine the logic of ‘new Marxism’ that occurs between Marx and Marx’s ‘ism’ through the concept of Stalin’s nationalism translated from Japan. Kautsky, Renner, and Bauer’s theory of ‘nation’ utilizing historical development stages constituted a global ethnology at the boundary between orthodoxy and heresy. In particular, in the process of developing from a tribe to a nation, it goes through an ‘intermediate’, and there was a paradox that structured the logic that a ‘nation’ that was eliminated from ‘becoming a nation’ was created. Karutsky, who points out the limitations of the bourgeois national theory, which has been central to the development of the existing capitalist society, formed a new concept of the people led by the proletariat, and in this process, the logic of using the concept of language=national community arises. Following this, from a critical standpoint, Renner and Bauer reconstruct the concept of nation as a cultural community to overcome the limitation of language=national community. However, it, like Kautsky, explains the historical processes formed at the stage of development from tribe to nation, while neglecting the Jewish question. In particular, they take a stand against internationalism through the argument of the theory of nationalism. In this situation, Stalin established that language as a metaphor for domination and subjugation, territorial and regional issues, and that the proletariat should rise as a nation beyond the national concept centered on the bourgeois nation, and that proletariat It advocates for the peoples of the world to unite internationally and at the same time create a common language of the world. However, this was a logic built while forgetting the ambivalence that Kautsky’s concept of ethnic minority and nationalism in which ethnic groups were integrated around a region could be linked to nationalism. In particular, it was found that Stalin’s argument for the logic that an advanced nation among the proletariat should enlighten the backward proletarian nation or provide aid to a high-level culture showed that it was in the adjustment of Stalin’s nationalism in the ideology of the development stage theory.

この論文は、‘マルクス’と‘マルクス主義’の間で発生する「新マルクス主義」の論理と日本で翻訳されるスターリンの＜民族概念＞の敍事構造を明らかいにしたい。歴史的発展段階論を基礎に、民族概念を考えだしたカウツキー、レーナー、バウアーの「民族」の理論は、正統と異端の境界で、世界民族論を打ち立てていた。特に種族から民族へ変容するプロセスを重視し、民族誕生論理を理論化したにもかかわらず、もう一方では、「民族化」に至らなかった「民族」が生じることを構造化してしまった。言語と地域(領土)を結び付けて想定されるる「文化共同体」概念へ拡大されていった。逆説的にこのような文化概念によってしか民族は定義されえなかったのである。それは、もう一方で、資本主義社会の発展の過程でブルジョアが民族の代表になったことの限界を指摘し、カウツキは、プロレタリアが主導する新しい民族概念の形成を主張した。これに追従しながらも批判的な立場をとるレーナーとバウアーは、それぞれ、民族共同体の立場と国際主義のせめぎあいから民族概念を再構築した。しかし、これらは、歴史なき民族としてユダヤ人問題を作り出し、民族になれなかった民族は、歴史を持って、言語と領土を備えている民族に同化することを主張するようになった。このような状況の中で、スターリンは、言語が、支配と被支配または領土と地域の関係を総括するメタパーとして設定し、ブルジョア民族が中心となって形成した民族概念を脱し、プロレタリアによる民族をつくり直すことを期待した。民族になることは国家の新しい主役になることでありながら、その抑圧されている民族がインターナショナルに連携しながら、世界語の共通化を作り出していくことを提唱した。これはカウツキーが提示した少数民族の民族概念や被植民地の民族つまり、＜権利の持たない民族＞たちが、統合される民族主義を肯定したが、それには、少数民族のナショナリズムをどう解釈刷るべきなのかを提示したカウツキの理論を忘却しながら構築した論理であった。特にスターリンがプロレタリアの先進国が後進プロレタリア民族を啓発したり、後者を高い文化に引き上げるための援助を惜しんではいけないという＜ブルジョア的＞立場煮立つことで可能であったのである。これは、結局、マルクスの発展段階論的イデオロギーの磁場中でスターリンナショナリズムの調整にいたことを示したものであろう。

이 논문은 문화도 개념을 통해 스탈린 체제 일상의 역동성을 해명하려고 한다. 문화도는 1930년대 스탈린 체제가 정립하고자 했던 구체적 삶의 양식을 규정하는 하나의 척도였다. 사회주의 체제를 완성해가는 과정의 인민으로서 누려야 할 생활수준, 의식정도, 교육의 수준 등이 문화도를 통해 표현되어야 했다. 그렇지만 체제 인민의 구체적 삶의 양식은 체제가 기대했던 문화도의 수준과 비교할 때 미흡한 부분이 많았다. 이상을 구현하기위한 정책과 이에 대한 아래로부터의 다양한 대응이 있었다. 문화도는 이런 면에서 체제의 공고함을 유지하기 위한 다양한 전략을 포괄하며 이에 대한 인민의 구체적 대응을 파악할 수 있게 하는 유용한 개념이다. 스탈린 체제는 문화도의 향상을 위해 교육체제의 정립, 체제의 가치를 확인할 수 있는집단의식의 개최, 체제의 공고화에 기여하는 선도집단에 대한 물질적 특혜 등을 부여했다. 위로부터의 문화도 향상을 위한 정책적 수단과 더불어 체제가치를 수용하기 위한 인민의 자발적 노력도 있었다. 그렇지만 스탈린 체제 인민의 일상에서는 문화도의 향상을저해하는 양상들도 적지 않게 존재했다. 인민 모두가 소비수준의 차별이 없어야 했지만정치권력과의 관계에 따라 소비수준은 상이했다. 또한 여행, 휴양지의 이용에 있어서도인민 모두가 평등한 기회를 누리지는 못했다. 스탈린 체제는 이렇게 문화도 향상을 통해체제의 공고화를 달성하려는 노력과 인민의 일상생활에서 이를 저해하는 구체적 모습들이 공존하는 체제였다. 일상생활의 측면에서 문화도의 향상을 위한 체제의 노력과 이에 대한 인민의 구체적 대응은 스탈린 체제의 역동성을 드러내는 또 하나의 단서인 것이다.

This paper attempts to explore everyday lives in Stalin’s times borrowing from the concept of kul’turnost’. Kul’turnost’ can be defined as the term pointing to the level of a person’s or a group’s culture and education that the Soviet power wanted to consolidate in the society. Kul’turnost’ can be utilized as a way to look at the dynamic relationship between power and ordinary people. State power in Stalin's times had relatively more possibilities to intervene in everyday lives of the people, which did not mean that the ordinary people were merely subjected to the compulsory will of the state. As they struggled to maintain their ordinary everyday lives in extraordinary times, the condition of which could be defined by the deficit of everyday necessities and the malfunction of official supply system, they employed everyday forms of resistance in order to maintain their lives. They actively utilized their personal networks that made it possible to acquire more material abundances and enjoy more comfortable leisure time, the meaning of which their kul’turnost’ was far from behind the expected level. Their strategies in short were kinds of distraction from the official ideology emphasizing the value of collective consciousness and the principle of class priority. Stalin’s government in return employed various means to improve the retarded level of kul’turnost’. The state power tried to instill the loyal contribution of the people by holding mass celebration and granting material benefits to the exemplary achieving great productivities. Besides the attempt to consolidate the system from the above, there were some people actively internalize the Stalinist value and ideology. These people were “speaking Bolsheviks” as a way of expression to appraise the achievements and progress made by the Stalinist state system. As such, these two aspects of everyday lives of ordinary people give us insights to appreciate the cultural dynamics of Stalin’s times, which were deeply related to the political power and social position of the people. Examination on everyday lives of people in Stalin’s times give us chances to comprehend the complex and multi-layer relationships in everyday lives of ordinary people.

Postage stamps are not only signs of payment method for sending mail, produced by the postal authorities, but also called “The smallest graphic design”, “Small poster”, “A little jewel” and “A small and a large window that keeps the world”. Postage stamp is an unique expressive language that shows a small image, containing figures and texts. Stamps reflect the very political, propagative and agitational images in that they want to show the political leaders of the government. In 2013 will be the 60th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin. And in the same year will mark the 155th anniversary of the creation of the first Russian postage stamps. It is therefore interesting to explore the relationship between the stamps and the power of Stalin. Stalin specifically used postage stamps to show his economic strategies and the positive results of Soviet five-year plan and uncaged workers and successful exploitation of the Great October Revolution and the victory of the Second World War. At the first time portraits of Stalin were with a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, or next to Lenin, for showing that Stalin himself is a direct heir of Lenin and Leninism. Stalin wanted to make Homosovieticus through propaganda and agitation, which depicted his power. But after N.Khrushchev, his portraits had disappeared forever on the postage stamps of the USSR. Even in 2013, which will be the 60th anniversary of Stalin's death, stamps with his image will not be issued. We wonder whether the postage stamps of the Stalinist theme ‘ever sleep in albums’ or ‘will be issued ever again’. And someday if stamps of Stalin will be re-published in Russia, it will mean that the political and cultural situation will be different compared to the present time.

This paper attempts to delineate the tradition of Russian political culture in the course of history. The three elements that I picked up for dissolving the entangled Russian history are the presence of the ruler so powerful in the execution of government policies, the existence of auxiliary government institutions greatly helpful to enhancing the power of the ruler, and finally, the alienation of the people from the government. The powerful ruler was the one of the vital elements for the consolidation of Russian state from the beginning of the Russian history. The Muscovite state needed the powerful ruler who could not only subject the hereditary nobility but also expel the Tatar yoke from Russia. Peter the Great also exercised the great power in carrying out the policies of the westernization. The tsars of Romanov dynasty were also energetic in developing the ideology for making the legitimacy of the autocratic rule, which was inherited to Stalin's socialist Russia. Throughout the Russian history, we can witness the peculiar government institutions that greatly contributed to consolidating the power of the ruler. These institutions were not in the realm of official executions of the government policies, but in the extraordinary realm only serving to the will of the ruler and playing the role of state police. Ivan the Terrible's Oprichiniki, Nikolai the First's the Third Section, cheka, NKVD and KGB in the socialist Russia are all these examples of state polices that continued to function even in Putin's Russia by the disguised form as FSB. The third, but not the least tradition of political culture in Russia was the wide discrepancy between the people and the power, the result of which was the emergence of the group called intelligentsia hostile to the autocratic regime. The Russian people regarded the autocratic rule as the natural order compatible with their nature. But beginning from the time of Peter the Great, the Russian tsars tried to implement the western ideas and customs not applicable to Russian soils. In the concept of relationship that regarded the tsars as their fathers, the Russian people could not rebel against their rulers, but adopted a strategy of distancing themselves from the government. The intelligentsia could develop a revolutionary strategy by using the discrepancy between the power and the people, the circumstance of which was inherited to the socialist Russia.

Soviet cinema in Stalin's era actively carried out political-aesthetic project, corresponding most fully with the very nature of Stalinist arts. In the 1930s Stalin turned cinema into the most effective medium of ideological and historical representation. Moreover, from the late 1930s Stalin himself personally corrected and censored each screenplay and film, wielding control over both reality and its representation. Fridrikh Ermler's film The Great Citizen (1937, 1939) could be regarded as first film of ‘National order’, which concretely reflected Stalin's intention and consequentially justified Stalin's Great Purges and mass terror. Great Purges, the most terrible and traumatic incident in the whole modern history of Russia, was triggered by assassination of Sergei Kirov, to whom dedicated The Great Citizen. Film depicts not only how real soviet hero Shakhov/Kirov struggled to build socialism in a single country but obvious figures of rebellious hidden enemy inside the party whose imagery directly connected with Trotsky and Bukharin. Playing a considerable role in the intensification of public need to root out ideological enemy, The Great Citizen is abundant in speech and dialogues main aim of which are to define Trotskyte-Zinovievite camp as a enemy of Bolshevic party. The Great citizen is characterized as a 'conversational cinema' by Ermler, however, film vividly describes negative portrait of the enemies not only through linguistic narrative but through the cinematic images-objet and aesthetical forms such as deep focus, mise-en-scène, long take, plan-sequence, angle and lighting. All of these cinematic instruments and image-signs solidify the signification that connotes real hero of Soviet society, Stalin, who ousted ideological enemies and the saboteurs inside the party and who played a leading role in implementation of Soviet cinema politica.

이 글은 6⋅25전쟁 개전 결정과 휴전협상 과정에서 드러난 북방 공산 3국의 공조를 비교, 연구하는 데 그 목적이 있다. 우선 이 글은 남침결정 과정에서 김일성, 마오쩌둥, 스탈린이 공조체제를 구축해 나가는 과 정을 공개된 공산권 문서들을 통하여 재구성해나갈 것이다. 이 과정에서 이들 지도자들은 각각 어떤 상황 인식 하에서 어떤 목적들을 달성하고자 했는지를 분석할 것이다. 다음으로 이 글은 공산 3국이 어떤 과정을 거쳐서 휴전협상을 시작하기로 결정했는지를 살펴볼 것이다. 휴전협상이 진행되면서 세 지도자들 사이에 는 구체적 사안들을 두고 의견의 차이가 더욱 분명하게 드러나기 시작했다. 미소 냉전 대결이라는 세계적 차원에서 남침과 휴전협상을 바라보았던 스탈린은 한반도와 아시아라는 지역적 차원에서 각각 이 문제들 을 인식했던 김일성과 마오쩌둥의 인식과 현격한 인식의 차이를 보여주었다. 그 결과 휴전협상은 스탈린이 죽을 때가지 마무리되지 못하다가 스탈린 사망 직후 극적이 타결을 보게 되었다. 결론적으로 이 글은 6⋅25 전쟁 개전과 휴전협상 과정에서 드러난 북방 공산 3국 사이의 공조체제 미소 냉전 대결과 미중 관계 발전에 어떠한 영향을 미쳤는지를 분석할 것이다.

This article is designed to conduct a comparative study on the Soviet-Chinese-North Korean trilateral cooperation in the decision to start the Korean War and in the process of armistice negotiations. It will explain the process of forming the cooperative system in the decision to attack South Korea through declassified documents of the Soviet Union and China in the post-Cold War period. It seeks to explore what kind of objectives the leaders of three countries tried to achieve in the coordinated efforts. The article will also explain when the decision to initiate armistice negotiations began among Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung. Their opinions began to diverge on the specific issues such as the demarcation line and the method of POW repatriations as the armistice negotiations move on. Stalin perceived the negotiation process from the perspective of the global Cold War struggle with the United States. Mao and Kim Il sung approached the issues from the regional and local levels. The armistice agreement cannot be reached until Stalin died. After his death a dramatic agreement was achieved. This article will conclude by analysing the impact of the trilateral cooperative system on the development of the Soviet-American Cold War struggle and Sino-Amerian relationship.

This paper attempts to explain the reasons of conflicting physical culture images produced in Stalin’s regime. As to the policy of physical culture, Stalin’s regime was more tolerable to competitive sports, the result of which was to emphasize the role of sports heroes contributing greatly to the win of games. The physical culture images produced in this period depicted in various ways the importance of sports heroes as well as their attempts to transfer to other teams that provided them with more salary and privileges. Based on these kinds of images, the physical culture in Stalin’s time could be superficially interpreted as the complete rejection on the principle of physical culture, that was to cultivate the collective spirits through sports and leisure activities. Stalin’s regime, on the contrary, produced different kinds of physical culture images that promoted massive number of participants in sports and big parades helpful to raise the discipline and collective consciousness. By juxtaposing these images, Stalin’s regime did not surrender basic ideology of socialism, according to which the individual could fulfill dreams only in the context of collective will. Stalin’s regime needed another physical culture images that could reconcile the individual and collective. It was the image of leader Stalin, through whom the individual and collective both could achieve objects thanks to his leadership. Stalin’s image in the physical culture was a mediator that absolved the conflicting physical culture images in the 1930s

Through the overview on the historiography of everyday life in Stalin's regime, this paper attempts to find some clues to the development of new methodology for researching the Soviet society and other ones as well. The study on various aspects of everyday life in Stalin's Russia has contributed to deepening our understanding about the mechanism of Stalin's Russia. But it has also revealed some issues that we have to consider. The first issue that we can detect in the historiography on people's way of life in the Stalin's Russia is about the problem of resistance vs accommodation of people to the regime. It is very difficult to ascertain the clear demarcation between accommodation and resistance in the everyday life of people. If we accept the idea that people in Stalin's Russia had managed to cooperate or oppose to the policy of the state, the assumption that the Stalin's regime was a totalitarian state should be discarded. The second issue is on the problem of continuity vs discontinuity. Though the socialist government had tried to transform rapidly the mode of everyday life by indoctrinating the socialist value, people in their everyday lives still maintained the old habits and customs which did not comply with doctrine of the socialist system. But this did not mean that people in the Stalin's Russia did not change internally at all, which raises the third issue in the historiography. We can find the existence of people with the deep conviction that the Stalinist value system had already established in the Russian society. These people had also tried hard to internalize voluntarily those values. In sum, the study on the everyday lives in the Stalin's regime has revealed the dynamics of the socialist Russia in the 1930s. Furthermore, there is a new attempt to enhance our understanding on the Stalin's Russia by applying the methodology of oral history. If we sincerely have tried to apply these achievements to the study of North Korea, the portrait of North Korea with a monolithic society still dominant in our society might be greatly renewed.

In a heuristic search to identify the origin of the Soviet nationality policy, this study traces the ideological genealogy of Marxist engagement with nationalism in the work of key Marxist thinkers, including Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Otto Bauer, V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin. I argue that the original Marxist engagement with nation and nationalism was a “turning upside down” of Hegelian nation, which features a discriminative distinction between “historic” and “non-historic” nations according to the level of development. I argue that this distinction was inverted by the ensuing “national turn” of Marxism in the early twentieth century, a problematic process which was initiated by Otto Bauer, whose vindication of “non-historic” nations radically redesigned the old Marxist view on the national question. I finally argue that this national turn of Marxism culminated in the Bolshevik nationality policy with two ironic results: a privileged status of “non-historic” nations in the name of “oppressed” nations, and a creation of titular nationalities in the name of national liberation. Thus, I conclude that the Soviet nationality policy, by “nationally” turning upside down orthodox Marxism, achieved what the original Marxism purported “to dialectically aufheben”: a reincarnation of Hegelian nation.

This article aims to give a progress report of the academic studies about Stalin’s Great Terror in 1936-38, particularly its causes, by doing a critical review on The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin, edited by James Harris in 2013. Although many Western historians have written a lot of serious books and articles about Stalin’s Great Terror since 1960s, there is still no consensus among them on why Stalin killed almost seven hundred thousand Soviet elites and ordinary people in only two years. Fifteen authors in The Anatomy of Terror also present various explanations about this question. We can divide their sixteen contributions into three categories according to types of the terror’s causes which they emphasize. Firstly, some scholars stress ‘excisionary violence’, ‘Chekist mentalite’ and intelligence and threat ‘misperception’ as long-term preconditions of the Great Terror. The second group of authors proposes Kirov murder, historical origins of mass repressions and conflicts among political police, civil police and judiciary as mid-term causes. The last group considers fear and anxiety of the provincial party leaders about the impending Soviet elections, participation of the masses in the process of purges and Stalin’s personal mental illness as immediate short-term evens or situations which triggered off the terror. However, in my view, all contributors failed to offer a comprehensive explanation about reasons for Stalin’s Great Terror. In order to explain the terror’s causes more plausibly, we have to consider additionally Khlevniuk and Kuromiya’s consistent arguments that the international political and military crisis in mid-1930s in Europe and Asia brought about within Stalin’s leadership the need for prior elimination of ‘the fifth-column’ as a preventive war.

In this paper, I argue that Stalin maintained a maximum gain/minimum risk security strategy during the Korean War. For the first time, I challenge a common misconception that the Korean People’s Army of North Korea copied and followed the Soviet Army’s operational strategy during the war. I question why the KPA did not follow the Soviet Army’s operational concept in guranteeing a quick victory, and why the Kremlin and Soviet military advisors kept silent during the initial stage of the war. Because the KPA did not follow the Soviet Army’s operational strategy initially, the United Nations forces were able to arrive in Pusan, extending the war. Why didn’t Stalin want a quick victory? Did Stalin want bigger benefits than a quick victory on the Korean Peninsula by delaying the war and distracting the enemy? By examining the KPA’s performance according to the Soviet Army’s operational concept, I argue that Stalin wanted to use the Korean War as a useful card in his global struggle against the United States. He wanted to lower the risk of war in the European theater because Europe was more strategically significant than Northeast Asia. The memory of Nazi Germany’s invasion was still fresh in Stalin’s mind at the outbreak of the Korean War. Throughout the war, Stalin’s top priority was the national interests of the Soviet Union, and he did not take into account the costs to allies China and North Korea.

If there had been no division of the peninsula, then there would have been no war. The division of the Korean peninsula, as was in the case of the Korean War, was decided in accordance with the strategic interests and the geopolitical calculations of the Great Powers that surrounded Korea with no consideration of the opinions of the Koreans themselves. It will therefore be difficult to approach the fundamental issues surrounding the division of the Korean peninsula without understanding the Korea strategy of these Great Powers, as it is also the case with the Korean War. Why did Stalin accept the 38th parallel proposal? Stalin may have assumed that he would be able to control the north of the 38th parallel by himself. The proposal, if it meant that the Soviets would control the north while the United States, Britain and China would share control of the south, would have been very attractive to Stalin. Another reason for explaining Stalin’s acceptance of the 38th parallel is American nuclear weapons. The period in which General Order No. 1 was sent to Stalin was just after the deployment of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recent research has revealed that Soviet intelligence activities concerning American military affairs from 1943 to 1953 was very successful. Even though Stalin had feigned ignorance of American military capabilities during the Potsdam and London conferences in order to prevent the Americans from using its state of military superiority to attain an advantageous result for the US, Stalin felt that it would be dangerous to reject America’s 38th parallel proposal when there was a serious imbalance of power owing to American nuclear dominance. Stalin had actually attached a condition for his agreement to the 38th parallel ? the occupation of all Kuril Islands and the northern part of Hokkaido. However, Truman was not ready to accept the Soviet’s intervention in Japan. After the dropping of the atomic bomb, the US administration’s foreign policy on the Soviet Union became more rigid and forced Stalin to concede southern Korea. It would take another five years to resolve this issue.