So far, the expansion of communism was still confined to the countries which had by common Allied agreement been allotted to the Soviet sphere of influence —
Yugoslavia being the only exception. The terms of the Teheran-Yalta-Potsdam pacts had been so ill-defined and vague that Stalin could still maintain that he was acting within his rights and that it was the Western powers who illegitimately tried to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet zone. Once again he tried to go back to self-containment, self-containment, that is, within an area expanded in agreement with the Western Allies. He was still confident that beyond that area no revolutionary development would upset or disturb the balance of power which had resulted from the war. He cold-shouldered the embattled Greek communists; and he bluntly urged Tito to withdraw support from them. He believed that he still wielded the magic wand, cracked and split though it was, which would enable him to control the tides of revolution.
Then, in 1948-9, the magic wand finally broke in his hands. The Chinese revolution overtook him; and at a stroke it threw his calculations out of balance and upset the whole international s tatus quo.
In February 1948 Stalin confided to Kardelj, Tito's Foreign Minister, that after the war he ‘bluntly’ told Mao Tse-tung that the Chinese revolution ‘had no prospects’, that Mao should ‘seek a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek… join the Chiang Kai-shek government, and dissolve the [communist] army’. With an Oriental slyness which matched Stalin's own, Mao listened reverently, nodded approvingly, and, disregarding Stalin's counsel of wisdom and caution, kept his armies in being, raised new ones, and led Chinese communism to its triumph.
Yet Stalin's part in the Chinese revolution was somewhat more complex than his own confidences to Kardelj might suggest.
After Japan's capitulation the Russian armies in Man-churia and Northern China handed over Japanese Stores of munitions to Mao's partisans. Without these supplies Mao might not have been able to hold his ground against Chiang Kai-shek, whose troops were equipped and supported by the United States. Thus Stalinist Russia made a direct material contribution to the victory of Chinese communism.
There remains the strange fact that having helped to equip Mao's armies Stalin then urged Mao to disband them. How is this paradox to be accounted for?
Psychologically and morally it was almost impossible for the Soviet troops in Manchuria and Northern China to debar Mao's partisans from the Japanese army stores. The partisans were taking possession of those stores on their own initiative and interference might have led to clashes. Once again Stalin had to surrender to the revolutionary dynamics of the Soviet State and to his own communist reputation.
And once again he was still confident that he was arming merely his pawn, not a force that would make its own revolution. A fairly strong communist army in North China might be a useful instrument of pressure against Chiang Kai-shek and the United States — an expendable bargaining counter. When Stalin thought the moment had come to expend it, he told Mao to lay down arms and to submit to Chiang Kai-shek. But once again the ‘pawn’ played its own game.
In February 1948, Stalin admitted to Kardelj his ‘mistake’ over the Chinese revolution. Yet six months later, just before the last phase of the civil war, he repeated the ‘mistake’ and made a last attempt to hold Mao back.