Korean narrative always plays down the Great Leader’s foreign connections, so it remains silent on his decade-long membership in the Chinese Communist Party and his actual position as a junior officer in the essentially Chinese guerrilla force. Instead, the official narrative insists that the Dear Leader created a Korean guerrilla army at the age of 20 (we should not be surprised: if this narrative is to be believed, he became the supreme leader of all Korean Communists at the tender age of 14). Actually, until 1945 Kim Il Sung’s military career was spent entirely under Chinese and/or Soviet command, albeit usually in ethnic Korean units. 4
What made young Kim S ǒ ng-ju choose the arduous and harsh life of a guerrilla, and what kept him in this dangerous pastime for over a decade? Obviously, he was an idealist, a fighter for (and believer in) a Great Cause—in his case, it was the cause of Communism. However, one should keep in mind how the ideology of Communism was understood in East Asia. While in Europe aspiring Communists were motivated, above all, by the desire to ameliorate social injustices, the East Asian version of Communism had both social and nationalist dimensions. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the era when Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh were young idealists, Communism in East Asia was widely seen as a shortcut to the national revival and modernity, a way not only to solve social problems but also to leapfrog past stages of backwardness and colonial dependency.In the last years of his life, Kim Il Sung would confess that he was both a Communist and a Nationalist. Frankly, the same could be said about a majority of East Asian Communists of his generation.
Even though initially installed in power by the Soviet military, Kim Il Sung had no desire to be Moscow’s puppet—or, for that matter, anybody’s puppet. In the 1940s the young ex-guerrilla probably still sincerely believed in the cause of international Communism but he, as well as a majority of his supporters, did not want to sacrifice Korea’s national interests in the name of other countries, however progressive or revolutionary these countries said they were. If judged from the Soviet perspective, the Soviet officers in 1945–1946 made a poor choice: they decided to promote a shrewd man who was probably more Nationalist than Communist in his worldview. In due time this made him a serious thorn in the side for the Moscow (and, for that matter, Beijing) diplomats. However, taking into account the situation of late 1940s Korea, had the Soviet officials chosen someone else the eventual outcome would have probably been quite similar. Subsequent events demonstrated that Korean Communist leaders (and, for that matter, other Communist leaders of East Asian countries) made bad puppets—not least because of their deeply ingrained Nationalist convictions. Surprisingly, the leaders’ stubborn adherence to the spirit of national independence was not always good news for their subjects: the post-Stalin version of the Soviet Communism that the East Asian strongmen so decisively refused to emulate in the late 1950s was remarkably softer on the common people than locally grown varieties of this revolutionary doctrine.
However, all these complexities became obvious only later. Whatever were Kim Il Sung’s secret thoughts, between 1945 and 1948 the nascent North Korean regime operated under the complete control of the Soviet supervisors. The Soviet advisers drafted the above-mentioned land reform law and Stalin himself edited the draft of the 1948 North Korean Constitution. The Soviet military police arrested all the major opponents of the emerging Communist regime, who were then sent to prison camps in Siberia—no North Korean penitentiary system existed as yet.
Even the relatively mundane actions of the North Korean government on that stage needed approval from Moscow. The most important speeches to be delivered by the North Korean leaders had to be
What made young Kim S ǒ ng-ju choose the arduous and harsh life of a guerrilla, and what kept him in this dangerous pastime for over a decade? Obviously, he was an idealist, a fighter for (and believer in) a Great Cause—in his case, it was the cause of Communism. However, one should keep in mind how the ideology of Communism was understood in East Asia. While in Europe aspiring Communists were motivated, above all, by the desire to ameliorate social injustices, the East Asian version of Communism had both social and nationalist dimensions. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the era when Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh were young idealists, Communism in East Asia was widely seen as a shortcut to the national revival and modernity, a way not only to solve social problems but also to leapfrog past stages of backwardness and colonial dependency.In the last years of his life, Kim Il Sung would confess that he was both a Communist and a Nationalist. Frankly, the same could be said about a majority of East Asian Communists of his generation.
Even though initially installed in power by the Soviet military, Kim Il Sung had no desire to be Moscow’s puppet—or, for that matter, anybody’s puppet. In the 1940s the young ex-guerrilla probably still sincerely believed in the cause of international Communism but he, as well as a majority of his supporters, did not want to sacrifice Korea’s national interests in the name of other countries, however progressive or revolutionary these countries said they were. If judged from the Soviet perspective, the Soviet officers in 1945–1946 made a poor choice: they decided to promote a shrewd man who was probably more Nationalist than Communist in his worldview. In due time this made him a serious thorn in the side for the Moscow (and, for that matter, Beijing) diplomats. However, taking into account the situation of late 1940s Korea, had the Soviet officials chosen someone else the eventual outcome would have probably been quite similar. Subsequent events demonstrated that Korean Communist leaders (and, for that matter, other Communist leaders of East Asian countries) made bad puppets—not least because of their deeply ingrained Nationalist convictions. Surprisingly, the leaders’ stubborn adherence to the spirit of national independence was not always good news for their subjects: the post-Stalin version of the Soviet Communism that the East Asian strongmen so decisively refused to emulate in the late 1950s was remarkably softer on the common people than locally grown varieties of this revolutionary doctrine.
However, all these complexities became obvious only later. Whatever were Kim Il Sung’s secret thoughts, between 1945 and 1948 the nascent North Korean regime operated under the complete control of the Soviet supervisors. The Soviet advisers drafted the above-mentioned land reform law and Stalin himself edited the draft of the 1948 North Korean Constitution. The Soviet military police arrested all the major opponents of the emerging Communist regime, who were then sent to prison camps in Siberia—no North Korean penitentiary system existed as yet.
Even the relatively mundane actions of the North Korean government on that stage needed approval from Moscow. The most important speeches to be delivered by the North Korean leaders had to be