It is more common now to seek the answer deep within the Soviet population, which found reserves of simple patriotism and endurance sufficient to transcend the horrors at home and at the front and to fight. This may well have been a necessary condition for final victory, but it takes little account of the millions who fought or worked under duress, or who could not find it within themselves to share the collective mania for vengeance and self-sacrifice. Nor, in the end, can a righteous enthusiasm alone explain victory in an epic war against a well-armed and disciplined enemy.
At least part of the answer must lie with Stalin and, below him, the political system which ran the Soviet war effort. Stalin supplied more than a capricious despotism. His willingness to bow to the military experts, hard though it must have been to do, showed in the end a sensible awareness of the limits of despotism. The image of Stalin supplied to the public – of a leader who was brave, all-seeing, steadfast – was a necessary one, however distant it was from reality. The contrast between his intervention in the war effort and that of the Tsar thirty years earlier is illuminating: Stalin became a necessary part of the machinery of reconquest; Nicholas remained superfluous to it.
Below Stalin stood the major institutions of state and the Party itself. The post-war Soviet inflation of the Party's role in achieving victory should not blind us to the unpalatable conclusion that the organization of the home front owed its successes, as well as its failures, to the Communist apparatus and the cadres of Communist enthusiasts who spurred on workers, peasants and soldiers with an often raw fanaticism. The mere presence of the NKVD was not enough to explain the modern competence displayed by a system condemned as primitive. Indeed, where the NKVD did intervene the effect was to wound the war effort, not to invigorate it. Soviet planning displayed a flexibility and organizational power which belied its bureaucratic image. It demonstrated, almost accidentally, the qualities needed to mobilize a vast population for a single common purpose. After the war old habits returned. Neither Party nor bureaucracy was able to plan the socialist paradise.
This apparent paradox has at least one explanation. During the war the emergency freed many Soviet officials, managers and soldiers from an atmosphere of passivity and fear of responsibility. After 1941, recalled one veteran army doctor, came a period of ‘spontaneous de-Stalinization’, when people were forced time after time to ‘make their own decisions, to take responsibility for themselves’.13 In the army that sense of personal responsibility was enhanced when at last, in the autumn of 1942, the political apparatchiks at the front were demoted and officers could act knowing that they were not being checked every hour for political correctness. The novelist and veteran Vyacheslav Kondratyev recalled on Victory Day, 1990, that the war put a great responsibility on every soldier: ‘You felt as though you alone held the fate of Russia in your hands.’ After the war that heady obligation no longer mattered. ‘Whether I exist,’ Kondratyev continued, ‘whether I do not exist, everything will flow on as usual.’14 Even on the home front there existed a sense of emancipation brought on by the war. In besieged Leningrad, wrote the poet and survivor Olga Berggolts, there was to be found ‘such a tempestuous freedom’. The very immanence of death exalted that freedom, summoned forth a spontaneous resourcefulness, an intensity of living, a baleful stoicism.
Even before the war ended the opportunity to take responsibility, to act on initiative and not wait for orders, began to subside as the apparatus of scrutiny was reimposed. Nevertheless, a greater sense of personal responsibility clearly assisted the fighting power of the Red Army, because it freed so many commanders from the dead weight of political control and allowed them actually to command. It also gave the ordinary soldier much greater confidence in the ability of those he followed, and finally removed the mentality, which could be dated back to 1917 and the notorious Order Number I from the Petrograd Soviet, that those in positions of command could be called to account by those they commanded. It can scarcely be coincidental that the great improvement in Soviet fighting power from the late autumn of 1942 followed the demotion of the military commissar.
Soviet success owed something to all these factors: popular patriotism and native endurance; the role of Stalin; the political environment of planning and mobilization; and the temporary flowering of a spirit of initiative and endeavour just powerful enough to transcend the grim climate of fatalistic conformism with which post-purge society had been afflicted. The war effort was not sustained just by the efforts of the people in defiance of the system they inhabited; but neither was it just the product of the Soviet state, its leader and the Party. The two elements operated in an uneasy symbiosis, neither entirely trusting the other, yet bound together by mutual necessity imposed by German aggression. No one doubts that victory could have been bought at a lower price, with less oppression and more humanity, without the countless dead. But that was the tragedy of the Soviet war. The sacrifices of a tormented people brought victory but not emancipation, a moment of bitter-sweet triumph in a long history of loss.
References
Introduction
1. W. J. Spahr, Zhukov: The Rise and Fall of a Great Captain (Novato, CA, 1993), pp. xi–xii, 56, 261–3.
2. See the introduction to J. L. Schecter and V. V. Luchkov, eds., Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (New York, 1990).
3. Spahr, Zhukov, pp. 103–5.
4. Details in D. Glantz, ‘From the Soviet Secret Archives: Newly Published Soviet Works on the Red Army 1918–1991: A Review Essay’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 8 (1995), pp. 319–32.
5. See the discussion of figures in B. V. Sokolov, ‘The Cost of War: Human Losses of the USSR and Germany, 1939–1945’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 9 (1996), pp. 156–71; V. E. Korol, ‘The Price of Victory: Myths and Realities’, idem., pp. 417–24.
6. Cited in M. P. Gallagher, The Soviet History of World War II: Myths, Memories, and Realities (New York, 1963), p. 151.
7. J. Lucas, War on the Eastern Front: The German Soldier in Russia 1941–1945 (London, 1991), p. 28.
8.1. Ehrenburg, Men – Years – Life, Volume 5: The War 1941–1945 (London, 1964), p. 16.
9. A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (London, 1974), p. 605.
10. N. Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York, 1994), p. 81. The quotation is from Aleksandr Tvardovsky's ‘A Book about a Soldier’.
11. D. Dallin and B. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labour in Soviet Russia (London, 1947), pp. xiii–xiv.
12. Ibid., pp. 300–3.
13. J. Garrard and C. Garrard, eds., World War 2 and the Soviet People (London, 1993), p. 17.
Chapter 1
1. For this and other details on the civil war, see O. Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London, 1996), pp. 662–74; I. Deutscher, Stalin (London, 1966), pp. 191–202; D. Volkogonov, Stalin (New York, 1991), pp. 38–45. The best recent history of the Russian Civil War is E. Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (London, 1987).
2. M. von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 334–5.
3. On Hitler's views see E. Jäckel, Hitler's Weltanschauung (Middletown, Connecticut, 1972); J. P. Stern, Hitler, the Führer and the People (London 1976). On the prevailing cultural pessimism see F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (London, 1974).
4. T. J. Uldricks, ‘Russia and Europe: Diplomacy, Revolution and Economic Development in the 1920s’, International History Review 1 (1979), p. 73.
5. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow, 1947), p. 160.
6. E. R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State (New York, 1960), pp. 30–32.
7. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp. 157–9, from the pamphlet ‘On the Problems of Leninism’, January 25, 1926.
8. von Hagen, Soldiers in the Dictatorship, pp. 204–5.
9. Ibid., pp. 158–60.
10. Ibid., p. 213, n. 19. See too E.
O'Ballance, The Red Army (London, 1964), pp. 96–7.
11. von Hagen, Soldiers in the Dictatorship, pp. 212–19.
12. Volkogonov, Stalin, pp. 64–5.
13. W. A. Harriman and E. Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (London, 1976), p. 266.
14. L. Samuelson, ‘Mikhail Tukhachevsky and War-Economic Planning: Reconsiderations on the Pre-War Soviet Military Build-up’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 9 (1996), pp. 805–9.
15. Y. Dyakov and T. Bushuyeva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht: How the Soviets Militarized Germany, 1922–33 (New York, 1995), pp. 17–18.
16. E. R. Hooton, Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe (London, 1994), pp. 44–9; Dyakov and Bushuyeva, Red Army, pp. 20–3.
17. Ibid., p. 25.
18. C. A. Roberts, ‘Planning for War: the Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941’, Europe–Asia Studies 47 (1995), pp. 1302–4. For the best general history of Soviet operational thinking see D. Glantz, Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (London, 1991).
19. Samuelson, ‘Tukhachevsky’, pp. 816–21.
20. Roberts, ‘Planning’, pp. 1304–7; R. R. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army 1925–1941 (Lawrence, Kans., 1996), pp. 52–61.
21. R. Schiness, ‘The Conservative Party and Anglo-Soviet Relations 1925–27’, European Studies Review 7 (1977), pp. 385–8.
22. G. Gorodetsky, The Precious Truce: Anglo–Soviet Relations 1924–27 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 222–34; Uldricks, ‘Russia and Europe’, p. 75.
23. Cited in Deutscher, Stalin, p. 276. For Lenin's view see D. Shub, Lenin (London, 1966), p. 435.
24. Deutscher, Stalin, pp. 22–3.
25. The best evidence we have of Stalin's administrative methods can be gleaned from a recent edition of his political correspondence with Molotov. See L. Lih, O. Naumov and O. Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin's Letters to Molotov 1925–1936 (New Haven, 1995).
26. Shub, Lenin, p. 435. Lenin urged his comrades in his so-called testament, dictated on 25–26 December 1922, to choose a General Secretary who was ‘more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc.’.
27. J. Stalin, Works (Moscow, 1955), xiii, p. 108, ‘Talk with the German author Emil Ludwig, December 13, 1931’.
28. Quoted from interview with D. Volkogonov, Episode 1, ‘Russia's War’.
29. A. Amba, I Was Stalin's Bodyguard (London, 1952), p. 69.
30. M. Harrison, Soviet Planning in Peace and War 1938–1945 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 46–51, 250–53; S. Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies and J. M. Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser. 39 (1986).
31. Details in L. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 69–76, 307.
32. Figures from R. W. Davies, ‘Soviet Military Expenditure and the Armaments Industry 1929–1933: A Reconsideration’, Europe–Asia Studies, 45 (1993), pp. 585–601; J. Sapir, ‘The Economics of War in the Soviet Union during World War II’, in I. Kershaw and M. Lewin, eds., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge, 1997), p. 213. See too W. S. Dunn, The Soviet Economy and the Red Army 1930–1945 (London, 1995), Chapters 1–2.
33. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 356: speech to the First All-Union Conference of Managers, 4 February 1931.
34. Samuelson, ‘Tukhachevsky’, pp. 831–9; on the development of Soviet tanks see G. F. Hofmann, ‘Doctrine, Tank Technology, and Execution: I. A. Khalepskii and the Red Army's Fulfillment of Deep Offensive Operations’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 9 (1996), pp. 283 ff.
35. O'Ballance, Red Army, pp. 116–18.
36. For vivid descriptions of OGPU interrogation see V. Brunovsky, Methods of the OGPU (London, 1931). On the background of the camp system see E. Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives (London, 1994), pp. 43–7.
37. von Hagen, Soldiers in the Dictatorship, pp. 327–8; O'Ballance, Red Army, pp. 118–20.
38. Figures can be found in S. Rosefielde, ‘Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced Labor and Economic Growth in the 1930, Europe–Asia Studies 48 (1996), pp. 962–3,975; S. Wheatcroft, ‘More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s’, in J. A. Getty and R. T. Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 277–90; A. Nove, ‘Victims of Stalinism: How Many?’ in Getty and Manning, pp. 270–71; R. J. Rummell, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (New Brunswick, 1990), pp. 115–16. Rosefielde suggests a range of estimates for famine deaths from 0.7 million to 11.8 million. The demographic evidence, on which the new estimates are based, suggests a death toll on the scale 2.8 to 4.5 million.
39. Nove, ‘Victims’, pp. 265–7.
40. A. Nove, ed., The Stalin Phenomenon (London, 1993), pp. 30–31; Nove, ‘Victims’, p. 269; R. Thurston, ‘The Stakhanovite Movement: Background to the Great Terror in the Factories 1935–38’, in Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, p. 155, who also points out that in 1938 only 18.6 per cent of those in custody had been charged with counter-revolutionary crimes. Many of the remaining camp inmates were ordinary criminals.
41. Details in J. A. Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered (Cambridge, 1985).
42. Volkogonov, Stalin, pp. 208–10. See also R. Conquest, Stalin and the Kirov Murder (London, 1989).
43. See the assessment of Stalin's style of military leadership in B. Bonwetsch, ‘Stalin, the Red Army and the “Great Patriotic War”’, in Kershaw and Lewin, Stalinism and Nazism, pp. 202–3.
44. On Vyshinsky see A. Vaksberg, The Prosecutor and the Prey: Vyshinsky and the 1930s Moscow Show Trials (London, 1990), Chapters 3–4; on the executions see Nove, ‘Victims’, pp. 270–71; Rosefielde suggests a figure for the 1930s of 722,000 for all prison executions (‘Stalinism’, p. 975). The official NKVD figure for all executions from 1930 to 1950 is given as 786,098, with 3,778,234 condemned at tribunals to death or imprisonment. See R. C. Nation, Black Earth, Red Star (Ithaca, 1992), p. 98.
45. C. Andrew and O. Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (London, 1990), p. 106; A. C. Brown and C. B. Macdonald, The Communist International and the Coming of World War II (New York, 1981), pp. 437–9.
46. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 319.
47. Ibid., pp. 319, 324.
48. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 106; see also the testimony of W. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent (Cambridge, 1992: first published London, 1939), pp. 239–44. Shpigelglaz, who was liquidated himself in 1938, told Krivitsky that the NKVD had been collecting material on Tukhachevsky and others with former contacts with Germany ‘for several years. We've got plenty,’ he continued, ‘not only on the military but on many others.’
49. A. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London, 1991), pp. 545–6.
50. Volkogonov, Stalin, pp. 323–4; E. Radzinsky, Stalin (London, 1996), p. 407.
51. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 319.
52. A. Antonov-Ovseyenko, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny (New York, 1981), pp. 184–5; Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 361.
53. Vaksberg, Vyshinsky, pp. 104–5.
54. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 324; Antonov-Ovseyenko, Time of Stalin, p. 186, who writes that Yakir's last words as he was executed were ‘Long live Comrade Stalin!’
55. Ibid., pp. 188–9; Volkogonov, Stalin, pp. 327–8. There are several versions of Blyukher's death. Others suggest that he died of the wounds inflicted during interrogation in his cell, or that he was executed after torture. Further details in B. Bonwetsch, ‘The Purge of the Military and the Red Army's Operational Capability during the “Great Patriotic War”’, in B. Wegner, ed., From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939–1941 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 396–8; R. E. Tarleton, ‘What Really Happened to the Stalin Line?’ Journal of Slavic Military History 6 (1993), pp. 37–8.
56. R. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers, pp. 134–46.
57. Antonov-Ovseyenko, Time of Stalin, p. 186.
58. See Sapir, ‘Economics of War‘, pp. 213–16.
59. Dyakov and Bushuyeva, Red Army and Wehrmacht, pp. 287,290: Report from German military attaché in Moscow, 27 March 1933; German Intelligence Report on the Red Army, 19 February 1933
60. O'Ballance, Red Army, p. 118; Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers, pp. 140–9. According to S. Bialer, Stalin and his Generals (New York, 1969), p. 63, around one-fifth of unit and sub-unit positions were vacant.
61. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers, pp. 148–9. In addition 78,000 junior officers were given short training courses in 1938 and 1939 to prepare them to command small units in the expanding army.
62. Tarleton, ‘Stalin Line’, p. 38; Antonov-Ovseyenko, Time of Stalin, pp. 118–19; H. Moldenhauer, ‘Die Reorganisation der Roten Armee vor der “Grossen Sauberung” bis zum deutschen Angriff auf die UdSSR (1938–1941)’, Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 55 (1996), p. 137.
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