slave labour, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Slesarev, Aleksandr, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Slesareva, Mariya (Masha), 1, 2, 3, 4
Slutsky, Boris, 1
small-group loyalty, 1
SMERSh, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Smolensk, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
battle of, 1
demobilization in, 1
evacuees from, 1
recaptured (September 1943), 1
Smolensk region, 1, 2, 3, 4
sniper training, 1, 2
Sokolniki district, Moscow, 1
soldiers’ choirs, 1
Somme, Battle of the, 1
songs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
‘sons of the regiment’, adoption of, 1
South-Western Front, 1, 2
Southern Front, 1
Soviet air force, 1, 2, 3
Soviet armed forces: total number mobilized since 1939, 1
Soviet communism
claims credit for spirit that emerged at Stalingrad, 1
collapse of, 1, 2, 3
confidence in, 1
and the Museum of the Revolution, 1
the party features as guide and teacher of the masses, 1
secret resolution on soldiers’ families, 1
sense of duty to the party, 1
the sole political outlook, 1
Soviets speak only of success, 1
Soviet Mongolia, 1
Soviet propaganda, 1
Soviet Union
attitudes to women, 1
barter economy, 1
collapse of, 1, 2
economic growth, 1, 2
five-year plans, 1, 2, 3
as Hitler’s ally in, 1939, 1
Katyn Massacre, 1, 2, 3, 4
largest engineering industry in Europe, 1
and monetary cost of the war, 1
revival of manufacturing, 1
secures a pre-eminent place in world affairs, 1
Soviet members of minority ethnic groups deported, 1
statistics of Soviet lives lost, 1
victory over fascism, 1
and Warsaw Uprising, 1
Sovinformburo, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Sozh river, 1
Spanish civil war (1936), 1, 2
Spassky Gates, Moscow, 1
Special Forces’ radio headquarters, Moscow, 1
Special Section, 1, 2, 3, 4
SS, 1
‘Adolf Hitler Guards’, 1
advance on Moscow, 1, 2
at Maidanek, 1
in Berlin, 1
‘Death’s Head’ units, 1
and German offensive on Kursk, 1, 2
German soldiers attitude to, 1
Stalin, Joseph, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
attitude to Poland, 1
authorizes camps for special prisoners, 1
and Belarus, 1
in Baku, as ‘Koba’, 1
carrot and stick of the dictatorship, 1
congratulates the troops, 1
ethnic cleansing, 1, 2
and German offensive at Kursk, 1
god-like status, 1, 2
ignorance about, 1
ignores warning of German invasion, 1
important speech after German attacks (3 July 1941), 1
Khrushchev’s denunciation of him, 1
in Lvov, 1
mass reproduction of his image, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Order no. 1, 2, 3
Order no. 1, 2
policy on unity and brotherhood, 1
at Potsdam conference, 1
presents from comrades worldwide, 1
purge of political and military élite, 1
and purge trials, 1
on the Red Army, 1, 2
reluctant to share credit for the victory, 1
reparations issue, 1
revises his rhetoric regarding the motherland, 1
role assumes greater prominence, 1
in secret revolutionary group at Baku, 1
sixtieth birthday (1939), 1, 2
speech of 1 May 1944, 1
speech of 6 November 1943, 1, 2
speech of 7 November 1942, 1
‘Stalin’s order’ demands restraint in Berlin, 1
as a totem, 1
tries to secure the Soviet Far East, 1
victims of, 1
vigilance warning, 1
western empire, 1
Stalin, Vasily, 1
Stalingrad, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
carpet-bombing, 1
casualties, 1, 2, 3
conditions in, 1, 2, 3
delight at Russian victory, 1
described, 1
enemy not permanently broken by the victory, 1
German rout at, 1, 2, 3, 4
low military discipline, 1
militia gangs, 1
mythical significance, 1
oath, 1
Red Army’s endurance at, 1
refugees from, 1
ruins as the icon of Red Army stoicism, 1
shooting of deserters and cowards, 1
a victory for Moscow and its allies, 1
Stalingrad Front, 1
Stalinism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Starobel’sk, 1
starvation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
State Defence Committee, 1
Steinbeck, John, 1
Steppe Front, 1
stress, 1, 2, 3, 4
Sunday Times, 1
Supreme Soviet, 1
Suvorov, Alexander, 1
syphilis, 1, 2
taboo subjects, 1, 2
Tallinn, Estonia, 1, 2, 3, 4
Taman peninsula, 1
Tamurlane, 1
‘tank fright’, 1, 2
Tank Men, The (film), 1
tanks, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Taranichev, Kolya, 1, 2
Taranichev, Vitaly, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Taranicheva, Natalya (Natasha), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Tarnopol, 1
Tatars, 1, 2, 3
Taylorism, 1
Teltow Canal, 1
Temkin, Gabriel, 1, 2, 3, 4
Texel island, 1
‘Thieving Army, The’ (Red Army theatrical review), 1
Third Reich
collapse of, 1
reparations issue, 1
slave labour in, 1, 2
Tiergarten, Berlin, 1, 2
Timoshenko, Commissar Semen Konstantinovich, 1, 2
tobacco, 1, 2
Todleben, Eduard Ivanovich, 1
Tolstoy, Count Leo, 1
War and Peace, 1
torture, 1, 2
training camps
craze for, 1
Osoaviakhim, 1
trauma, 1
trophies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Truman, Harry, 1
Tsarist armies, 1
Tsaritsa river, 1
tuberculosis, 1, 2, 3, 4
Tukhachevsky, Mikhail Nikolaevich, 1, 2
Tula, 1, 2
Tulebaev, Ibrai, 1
Tunisia, 1
Turkestan, 1, 2
Turkestan legion, 1
Turks, 1
Tvardovsky, Aleksandr, 1
‘Vasily Tyorkin’, 1
Tver, 1
typhus, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Ukraine, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
almost entirely in Soviet hands by end of 1943, 1
American planes based in, 1
attitude to the Jews, 1
citizens barred from membership of new tank crews, 1
collectives in, 1
deaths under Nazi occupation, 1, 2
described, 1
equipment shortages, 1
evacuees from, 1
guerrilla warfare, 1
June in, 1
‘Liberation Armies’, 1
most in German hands, 1
nationalism, 1
nemesis of Stalinist regim
e in, 1
Orange Revolution (January 2005), 1
prison camps, 1
recruitment from, 1
Russian retreat in, 1
starvation in, 1
Ukrainian captives, 1
Ukrainian Front, first, 1
Ukrainian Front, second, 1
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), 1
‘Ukrainian legion’, 1
Ukrainians, 1, 2
blamed for defeats, 1
and memorials at Kiev and Sapun ridge, 1
second largest nationality in Soviet armed forces, 1
Uman, 1
United States
American troops friendly with Red Army men in Germany, 1
bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1
economic depression, 1
lend-lease, 1, 2
Unter den Linden, Berlin, 1
Upper Inkerman lighthouse, Sevastopol, 1
Urals, 1, 2
US Department of the Army: ‘Russian Combat Methods in World War II’, 1
US intelligence service, 1
Uzbeks, 1
Valuiki, 1
Vasilevich, Ivan, 1
Vasilevsky, Aleksandr, 1
Vatutin, Nikolai Fyodorovich, 1
venereal disease, 1, 2, 3
Verdun, Battle of, 1
Vietnam War, 1
Viipuri (now Vyborg), Finland, 1
Viktorov, Anatoly, 1
Vilnius, Lithuania, 1, 2
violence, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Vistula river, 1
Vitebsk, Belorussia, 1, 2
Vladikavkaz, 1
Vlasov, General Andrei, 1, 2
Vlasovites, 1, 2, 3, 4
vodka ration, 1, 2
Vodopyanov, Mikhail Vasilievich, 1
Volga Germans, 1
Volga river, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Volga steppe, 1
Volkhov Front, near Leningrad, 1, 2, 3, 4
Volkov, Misha, 1, 2, 3, 4
Voronezh, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Voronezh Front, 1, 2, 3
Voroshilov, Commissar Kliment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Voroshilovgrad, 1
Vyaz’ma, 1
wall newspapers, 1
war loans, 1
Warsaw, 1
Warsaw Uprising, 1
Wedding at Malinovka, The (a play), 1
Weidling, General, 1
Werth, Alexander, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Western Front, 1, 2
Whites, 1
Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA), 1, 2, 3, 4
Yakuts, 1
Yalta, 1, 2
Yegorov, Sergeant Mikhail, 1
Yeremenko, Marshal, 1
zagradotryady (troops detailed to shoot would-be deserters), 1, 2
Zaitsev, Vasili, 1
zemlyanki (earth dugouts), 1, 2, 3, 4
Zhigalov, Comrade, 1
Zhlobin, 1, 2
Zhukov, Georgy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Zionism, 1
Zlatoust, Siberia, 1
‘Zemlyanka’, 1
ZVK military stores, 1
About the Author
Catherine Merridale is the author of Night of Stone, described by Misha Glenny as ‘an epic and moving history’, and Ivan’s War, which Anthony Beevor called ‘a most fascinating and important work’. She is Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London.
Notes
1 Marching with Revolutionary Step
1 The music was composed by Dmitry and Daniil Pokrass, but it was Lebedev-Kumach whose name people remembered.
2 There is an account of just such a screening in O. V. Druzhba’s Velikaya otechestvennaya voina v soznanii sovetskogo i postsovetskogo obshchestva: dinamika predstavlenii ob istoricheskom proshlom (Rostov on Don, 2000), p. 22.
3 John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad (London, 1975), pp. 27–8.
4 Druzhba, pp. 22–3.
5 In round figures, roughly 1,700,000 Russian soldiers died, compared with 1,686,000 Germans, although Germany fought for ten months longer and was waging war on two fronts for most of the time. Troops of the British Empire lost about 767,000 killed, and those of the United States about 81,000.
6 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants (Oxford, 1994), pp. 80–1.
7 The children of former kulaks were permitted to join the front line from April 1942. See Chapter 5, p. 144.
8 Lev Kopelev, No Jail for Thought (London, 1977), p. 13.
9 Cited in Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow (Oxford, 1986), p. 233.
10 Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 43.
11 A. Werth, Russia at War (London, 1964), pp. 112 and 136.
12 Stephen J. Zaloga and Leland S. Ness, Red Army Handbook, 1939–1945 (Stroud, 2003), p. 157. The number of armoured vehicles in the Soviet tank pool was just over 23,000.
13 See also Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1995), p. 238.
14 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford, 1999), p. 18.
15 Ibid., pp. 90–1.
16 See Kotkin, p. 246.
17 Vyacheslav Kondrat’ev, ‘Oplacheno krov’yu,’ Rodina, 1991, nos. 6–7, p. 6.
18 The details are taken from the excellent biographical summaries in Harold Shukman (Ed.), Stalin’s Generals (London, 1993 and 1997).
19 They were, in fact, more likely to have been Dornier 17s or Heinkel 111s. Kirill’s memory suggests that ‘Messer’ was a generic term for German planes before people began to know them all too intimately.
20 Werth, p. 200.
21 In his classic history of the years leading up to Stalingrad, Antony Beevor suggests that Soviet Jews did not suspect the fascists’ genocidal plans (Stalingrad, p. 56). In reality, while there was little reference to German anti-Semitism after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, and while no one suspected the full extent of the Final Solution, Soviet citizens had been bombarded with evidence of German racism, including anti-Semitism, before 1939, and many Polish and Austrian Jews fleeing Nazi rule confirmed their Soviet cousins’ fears.
22 Detwiler (Ed.), World War II German Military Studies, vol. 19, D-036, pp. 3–4.
23 This claim involved downgrading the achievements of late tsarism. See Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, NJ, 1985).
24 Druzhba, pp. 9–10.
25 Ibid., p. 29.
26 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 69.
27 On the quality of the training, see William E. Odom, The Soviet Volunteers: Modernization and Bureaucracy in a Public Mass Organization (Princeton, NJ, 1973). See also Reina Pennington, Wings, Women and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (Lawrence, KA, 2001).
28 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 75.
29 Zaloga and Ness, p. 147.
30 This one was from May 1941. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), 17/125/44, 57.
31 Angelica Balabanoff, cited in Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 148. The same perception has been voiced by citizens of other ideological dictatorships, including the Iranian author Azar Nafizi.
32 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii kurskoi oblasti (GAOPIKO), 1⁄1⁄2807, 14.
33 The NKVD’s own figure for 1939 is 1,672,438. For a discussion of numbers, see Anne Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 515–22.
34 Kopelev, p. 92.
35 V. M. Sidelnikov, compiler, Krasnoarmeiskii fol’klor (Moscow, 1938), pp. 142–3.
36 On irony in war narratives, see Samuel Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London, 1998), especially p. 151.
37 Druzhba, p. 29.
38 Ibid.
39 E. S. Senyavskaya, ‘Zhenskie sud’by skvoz’ prizmu voennoi tsenzury’, Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv, 7:22, 2001, p. 82.
2 A Fire
Through All the World
1 Reports of atrocities are frequent through the war. See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA), 9/31/292, 315 (December 1939). On the unburied dead, see RGVA 9/36/3821, 56. As the reporter comments, the sight ‘influenced the political-moral condition of soldiers on their way into attack’.
2 Krivosheev, p. 78. The figure he gives is 126,875 for ‘irrecoverable losses’, a category which includes those who died in action or of wounds and disease as well as those who were reported missing in action.
3 Ibid., p. 79.
4 Ibid., p. 78.
5 Ibid., p. 64.
6 Carl van Dyke, ‘The Timoshenko Reforms: March–July 1940’, in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies (hereafter JSMS), 9:1, March 1996, p. 71.
7 The interview was for a documentary shown on Russian television in 2002.
8 RGVA 9/31/292, 257 (December 1939); 9/36/3821, 7 (December 1939).
9 RGVA 9/31/292, 318.
10 Ibid.
11 Donald S. Detwiler et al. (Eds), World War II German Military Studies (London and New York, 1979), vol. 19, p. 5.
12 Ibid.
13 See Roger R. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925–1941 (Lawrence, KA, 1996), pp. 2–3.
14 See Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY, 1990), pp. 21–50.
15 Erickson, ‘The System and the Soldier’, in Paul Addison and Angus Calder (Eds), Time to Kill (London, 1997), p. 234.
16 RGVA 9/31/292, 137.
17 RGVA 9/36/3818 (information from the training camp at Chita), 292–3, 309.
18 O. S. Porshneva, Mentalitet i sotsial’noe povedenie rabochikh, krest’yan i soldat v period pervoi mirovoi voiny (Ekaterinburg, 2000), p. 221.
19 Von Hagen, p. 273.
20 The research was collected for I. N. Shpil’rein, Yazyk krasnoarmeitsa (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928). I am grateful to Dr V. A. Kol’tsova of the Moscow Psychological Institute for introducing me to this material.
21 See Mark von Hagen, ‘Soviet soldiers and officers on the eve of the German invasion: Towards a description of social psychology and political attitudes’, Soviet Union/Union Sovietique, 18, 1–3 (1991), pp. 79–101.
22 Victor Kravchenko, cited in Reese, p. 13.
23 Porshneva, p. 110.
24 Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War, trans. John Crowfoot (London, 2001), p. 44.
25 Reese, p. 51.
26 Gabriel Temkin, My Just War (Novato, CA, 1998), p. 104.
27 Reese, p. 4.
28 Ibid., p. 42.
29 RGVA 9/31/292, 2.
30 Ibid., 9.
31 The Belgorod military district housing crisis, which was typical, is described in KPA 1/1/2114, 13.
32 For examples of all these problems, see GAOPIKO, 1/1/2772, 16–17.
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