style="mso-special-character: footnote">[34] This favorable international context might be used as an explanation for Stalin’s shift in Korea policy to support Kim’s plans.

Interpreting Stalin’s attitude toward Korea as a response to the open statements made by two U.S. leaders would mean underestimating the complexity of the Soviet dictator’s inner world. In fact, evidence suggests that his motives were farm more complicated. In his 30 January 1950 telegram to Shtykov, Stalin only suggested that he was “ready to help [Kim Il Sung] in this matter,” without specifying how he would help the North Korean Communists. Then, during Kim Il Sung’s visit to Moscow in April, Stalin again made it very clear that he would not back Kim’s invasion plan unless the North Korean leader first secured China’s support. In other words, unless Stalin made certain that China would also be brought into the game, otherwise he would not to play the game at all.

Stalin had complicated motives for insisting on China’s involvement in the Korean conflict. Recently available Chinese and Soviet documents hint that Stalin may have shifted his policy toward Korea in January 1950 because of his subtle reading of the significance of the Chinese Communist revolution. Indeed, these new materials indicate that Stalin was not entirely pleased with the victory of the Chinese Communists, and he was reluctant to embrace a new strategic alliance with the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Scholars have often argued that the birth of the PRC and the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance positively affected Stalin’s assessment of the balance of power in Asia and gave him the confidence to confront the United States in Asia. But it is also possible to argue that Stalin perceived the rise of the CCP as a potential threat to Soviet dominance of the international Communist movement.  For Stalin, the success of the CCP was a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it enlarged the Soviet Union’s buffer zone and preserved Communist influence in Asia.  On the other hand, once it gained military strength, China had the potential to become a rival power in the East. Similarly, the Sino-Soviet Treaty could create an important strategic bulwark for the Soviet Union in East Asia, but it meant that Stalin had to abandon most of the privileges he had obtained from Jiang Jieshi in the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance.  Stalin crafted a new Korea policy with these considerations in mind.   

       After World War II, Stalin established two major strategic goals for the Soviet Union in East Asia: to separate Mongolia from China and build a broader buffer zone and to restore the pre-1917 Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria with its access to a warm-water port.  Moscow was able to achieve these goals by controlling China Eastern Railroad, Lushun (Port Arthur), and Dalian, as well as through the Yalta Agreement and the Sino-Soviet treaty in 1945.  Stalin, in return, supported the Guomindang (The Nationalist Party or GMD) Government, tried to persuade the CCP to limit its revolutionary activities in China, and  encouraged peace talks between the GMD and the CCP.[35] During the Chinese civil war, Stalin’s China policy began to reflect the growing tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, making Soviet actions in China inconsistent and sometimes self-contradictory. As the GMD government increasingly became a U.S. ally, Stalin delayed the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Manchuria and supported the entry of CCP forces in the Northeast. But Stalin wished to avoid open U.S.—Soviet confrontation over China, so he adhered to a policy of disengagement during the Chinese civil war. On the eve of the CCP’s final victory, he hoped to play a role in the CCP-GMD peace negotiations in early 1949.[36]  These seemingly inconsistent actions served the consistent purpose of maintaining Soviet privileges in East Asia obtained from the Yalta Conference in 1945.  When the Chinese Communists came to power, Stalin was unsure whether they would defer to Soviet interests in the same manner as the European Communist countries.

       The major conflicts between the Soviet Union and China took place over Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Manchuria.  China was realistic on the Mongolian question.  In early 1949, Mao asked Anastas Mikoyan, who was visiting the CCP headquarters at Xipaipo, whether Inne