President Kim Il Sung had a talk with Zhdanov, member of the Politbureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union, after a meeting on the anti-Japanese operations in Moscow on the eve of Korea’s liberation.
At the time Zhdanov asked the President how many years he thought the Korean people would take to build an independent state after the country’s liberation.
The President said that they would do it in 2 to 3 years at the latest, referring to the fact that the Korean people had prepared a hard core of reliable leading members and broad sections of patriotic forces, gained rich fighting experience and developed inexhaustible creativity, proficient organizing ability and strong sense of mobilization to build their state by their own efforts through the protracted anti-Japanese armed struggle and national liberation movement.
Zhdanov then asked what kind of assistance he thought the USSR would render to the struggle of the Korean people for nation building after liberation.
The President answered that the USSR had already fought a war against Germany for four years and had to fight another big war against Japan, so he thought it had no strength to help the Korean people. Of course it would be thankful if it helped them, but they wanted to build the country by their own efforts if possible, he said. Flunkeyism had been the root cause of national ruin in the history of Korea and it was his decision to build a new country completely free from the negative consequences of flunkeyism, he noted.
Zhdanov admired him as he listened attentively to what the President told him.
His independent stand on nation building was in stark contrast to what he heard from an East European state leader not long ago. He had asked Zhdanov for help as a big country because his country was faced with a multitude of difficulties as it had been economically backward and suffered severely from the war.
