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In order to begin to understand the military, political, and diplomatic forces that shaped the Cold War, it is useful to start with what we now know of the Soviet Union's military participation in the Korean War. Before scholars gained access to previously top secret Soviet-era archives in the early 1990x, they could only guess at the extent of Joseph Stalin's direct involvement (1).
That the Soviets trained and equipped Kim Il Sung's Korean People's Army (KPA, the North Korean Army) and supplied weapons to Mao Zedong's Chinese People's Volunteer Army (CPVA) has never been in doubt. However, the wartime activities of Soviet MiG-15 fighter pilots, radar operators, and anti-aircraft gunners were, until recently, kept secret. U.S. Air Force pilots often reported hearing Russian spoken over the radio and sighting distinctly nonChinese pilots while fighting in the northwest corner of Korea known as "MiG Alley," but the extent of this involvement was unknown. Recent research in the Soviet-era archives in Russia not only verifies the direct involvement of Soviet units, but also provides an inside view of Stalin's high-level diplomacy and the military deployments that implemented these policies. This evidence indicates that the Soviet dictator pursued a policy designed to ensure Chinese troops would shoulder most of the burden of defending East Asia (2).
Historical Context
The superpower confrontation in the Korean War was as much the result of historical accident, bad timing, and diplomatic blundering as it was calculation. The fate of Korea was of such minor consequence that Stalin readily agreed with the U.S. request that the Red Army limit its post-World War II occupation of Korea at the 38th parallel.
As the alliance between the Western powers and the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of World War II, the Soviets began arming and training Kim Il Sung's forces in North Korea, while the United States did the same, albeit less lavishly, with the forces of Syngman Rhee in South Korea. For the better part of the late 1940s, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union had any interest in promoting a conflict on the Korean peninsula. By 1949, however, the situation had changed dramatically.
In the Cold War confrontation in Europe, Stalin had suffered a series of embarrassing, and potentially dangerous,...