N. Korea-Russia relationship

By Andrei Lankov

One of the most frequently encountered assumptions about North Korea's past is the idea that the Soviet Union was an ally and patron of this country.

Indeed patron it certainly was. Without generous direct and indirect Soviet aid, the North Korean economy would probably have collapsed in the early 1970s. However, this does not mean that relations between Moscow and Pyongyang were cordial or close, let alone based on mutual trust and respect. From Moscow's vantage point, North Korea could hardly be considered an ally, or at best it was seen as a scheming and unreliable partner.

It is true that North Korea was created by a Soviet exercise in social engineering. In the years 1945-50, the level of Soviet control over North Korea was great, and the then common description of the North as a Soviet puppet was close to the truth.

However, Kim Il-sung and his entourage ― even though they took power thanks to persistent Soviet support ― were not inclined to remain Soviet puppets for good. As early as 1951, Kim Il-sung began to remove from important positions those officials who had suspiciously close ties to Moscow.

However the real break between Moscow and Pyongyang took place after 1956, being prompted by a dramatic liberalization of Soviet political life after Stalin's death. The Soviet Union's new policies were decisively unpopular with Kim Il-sung who wholeheartedly emulated Stalin's system and in many cases strove to make it even more Stalinist than Stalin himself originally had in mind.

It did not help that a group of top North Korean officials with close links to the Soviet Union challenged Kim Il-sung and his policies in 1956. These people were promptly purged, soon to be followed by pretty much everyone who was suspected of harboring pro-Soviet sympathies.

From the early 1960s, Soviet policies began to be described as revisionism. North Korean students were recalled from the Soviet Union and other pro-Soviet communist countries of Eastern Europe. From around 1962-3, even letter exchanges with the USSR were almost completely halted. From around that time, North Koreans needed a security clearance to read Soviet publications since Pravda, the official Soviet Communist Party daily was seen as dangerously liberal.

Some North Korean overseas students and officials – including the then North Korean ambassador to the USSR – refused to come back, and applied for asylum in Moscow. To the great annoyance of Kim Il-sung, asylums were granted. North Korea's intelligence agencies responded by attempting (and in some cases succeeding) to abduct those asylum seekers.

Until 1965-6, North Korea sided with China in the then ongoing Sino-Soviet quarrel. Things changed soon after though because Kim Il-sung found Mao's Cultural Revolution to be almost as dangerous as Krushchev's liberalism. It did not help that Beijing could not match Moscow's generosity either.

As a result, a certain compromise was reached between Moscow and Pyongyang in 1966. Relations though remained frosty until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Academic exchanges resumed in the late 1970s, but remained very limited in scale. Soviet diplomats and general visitors were always closely watched while in the North, and were prevented from freely moving and interacting with North Koreans. The harangues directed at Soviet revisionism largely disappeared from the North Korean press, but remained a staple of indoctrination sessions for party cadres.

At the same time, the Soviet Union resumed aid to North Korea, which had all but disappeared between 1961 and 1965. The aid was provided principally because of geopolitical concerns.

First and foremost, the Soviet leadership expected North Korea to remain neutral in the ongoing Sino-Soviet quarrel. Of course they wanted Pyongyang to join the Soviet side, but they knew that this was unrealistic and merely sought to maintain North Korea's neutrality.

North Korea also served as a useful strategic buffer, keeping US forces a few hundred extra miles away from Vladivostok and other vital parts of the Soviet Far East. In the days of intense US-Soviet rivalry, this was important.

However, the Soviet attitude to the North was almost as frosty as that of Pyongyang to Moscow. Many, including diplomats and party officials were seriously annoyed by the craziness of Kim Il-sung's personality cult. Korean nationalism was also an issue, not least because the Soviet people, then as now very proud about their great contribution to the world war two victory, feel deeply offended when the North Korean media remains silent about the Soviet role in Korea's liberation. North Korea's penchant for creating international crises was also not welcomed in Moscow.

So relations were not simple or easy, even in the days when newspapers (occasionally) ran editorials about the "unbreakable Soviet-Korean friendship."

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.