Soviet Involvement in the Korean War: A New View from the Soviet-era Archives

Abstract

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 participa tion in the Korean War. Before scholars gained access to previously top secret Soviet-era archives in the early 1990s, they could only guess at the extent of Joseph Stalin's direct involvement (1). That the Soviets trained and equipped Kim II 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 recendy, kept secret. U.S. Air Force pilots often reported hearing Russian spoken over the radio and sighting distincdy non Chinese 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).