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OCI No. 5321/59 |
SINO-SOVIET BLOC AREA |
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE STAFF STUDY
The Soviet History of World War II
This is a working paper, the second to be
published by the Sino-Soviet Studies Group, a merger of the CAESAR, POLO and ESAU
projects. The group would welcome either written or oral comment on this paper,
addressed to Matthew Gallagher, who wrote the paper, or to W.P. Southard, the
acting coordinator of the group.
This paper seeks to answer questions posed by
the recent increased attention to the history of the war in the Soviet Union.
Why is the regime now encouraging historical writing on the war? What
interpretations are being promoted? What are the political and military
implications?
This is essentially a fact-finding study.
Despite the importance of the war in Soviet history, and the politically
sensitive nature of this topic in the Soviet Union, Soviet writing on the war
has not been systematically examined in the West, and in general it has not
been of such immediate political significance as to attract the continuing
attention of intelligence. This gap defines the scope of the present study.
The paper identifies the issues which postwar
propaganda created in this field and traces the evolution of Soviet views on
these issues from the immediate postwar period to the present.
--1--
Until recent years, the Soviet
leadership was consistent in regarding the history of the war as an instrument for
influencing social attitudes rather than as a subject deserving truthful
evaluation in its own right. Before and after Stalin, the Soviet official
interpretation of the war reflected the current policies of the regime.
The Stalinist
interpretation of the war was devised to conceal the traces of the wartime
drift of the Soviet Union from its historical course of development, and to
convince the Soviet people that nothing had intervened which would justify a
change in past policies. Thus the history of the war became a paean to Stalin's
political and military genius, a testament to the wisdom of party policies, an
indictment of the perfidy of the capitalist world, a proof of the soundness of
the Soviet system. The Stalinist version of the War distorted the historical
facts in at least four major respects:
It presented the
catastrophic defeats of the first year of the war as a preplanned and
skillfully executed maneuver designed to set the conditions for a successful
counteroffensive.
It magnified the roles of
Stalin and the party in the achievement of victory, and diminished the roles of
the military leaders and the ordinary people.
It depreciated the
contributions of the Allies, and sought to transform their image in the public
mind from partners in the anti-Hitler coalition into crypto-enemies of the
Soviet Union and virtual allies of Hitler.
It claimed that the
Soviet declaration of war and the defeat of the Kwantung army, rather than
American military successes, had played the decisive role in bringing about the
defeat of Japan.
Varying degrees of
resistance to the imposition of this version of the war were manifested by
those elements of the Soviet population most directly affected by it--the
military, the historians, and the writers. Military officers indicated disdain
for the concepts developed to idealize the military events of the war.
Historians demonstrated inertial resistance to the postwar propaganda assault
on the West and its attendant distortions of the Allied role in the war, and
before succumbing
--2--
to official pressure indicated their
distaste for the political considerations which motivated it. The writers
demonstrated outspoken opposition to the official line.
The reactions of all
three groups were based not on political opposition to the regime, but on the
inherent conflict between propaganda demands and their own professional
standards. A marked tendency of the professional military was a preference for
facts over theory, an attitude which seemed to reflect a concern that the
excessive idealization of military events would prevent a proper evaluation and
application of the lessons inherent in them. The historians appeared to feel
that historical questions ought to be settled by historical rather than
political criteria, and by the historians themselves. Writers who remained true
to their art were unwilling, and in any case unable, to present what they
conceived to be the epic of the war in the shallow terms of a political tract.
After Stalinís death,
the official interpretation of the war underwent important changes. These
changes reflected the Soviet leaders apprehension that the Soviet people and
the Soviet military establishment were being poorly prepared, by the
unrealistic portrayal of the last war, for the kind of war, which they now
foresaw as possible. The Stalinist line, they felt, encouraged the dangerous
illusion that war was easy, and it conditioned military officers to feel that
retreats and slow attritional methods were normal means of conducting war. The
main content of the new version of the war which emerged from these
considerations in 1955 was that the early period of the war had been a defeat
for the Soviet army, rather than a prelude to victory.
As the Twentieth Party
Congress approached, new tendencies toward a break with the past appeared,
giving fresh impetus to this reconsideration of the history of the war. The
central feature of the new movement was the break with Stalin which was
dramatized at the Congress. Khrushchevís secret speech, which portrayed Stalin
as ignorant of military matters and as criminally responsible for the initial
unpreparedness of the Soviet Union, cleared the way for removing the many
distortions of history which derived from exaggeration of Stalinís role in the
war. The early defeats of the Soviet army were interpreted now as due not only
to the surprise of the German attack, as had been emphasized in 1955, but to
the negligence of Stalin in failing to take the precautionary measures which
elementary prudence and ample intelligence warnings had indicated were
necessary. A more generous appraisal
--3--
of the role of the Allies in the war
was also fostered at this time.
After the Twentieth
Party Congress, the need to halt the deterioration of political authority
resulting from the anti-Stalin campaign threatened to halt also the progress,
toward honest military history. In the latter part of 1956, and in 1957, the
party faced the choice of curtailing the revisionary historiography of the war
to protect its immediate political interests, or of sustaining this
historiography to encourage the professionalism and realism of military thought
which it expressed and nourished.
Over the past year or
more, Soviet policy in this sphere has been carefully calculated. It has sought
to retain the gains in historical objectivity achieved in 1955 and 1956, but
not at the cost of reflecting unfavorably on the party itself. The formula has
been: to admit Soviet reverses in the early days of the war, but to emphasize
Soviet achievements--and the partyís leading role--in recovering from those
reverses. The formula has also minimized the contribution of the USSRís allies
to the victory.
The evolution of the
historiography of the war toward a more accurate appraisal of military
realities is of some importance, as in this area the regime has gradually
accepted the concept of the utility of truth. This victory for the truth is a
limited one, as the truth is surrounded by political propaganda with which the
party justifies itself and its policies. Nevertheless, this development
illustrates a tendency which has appeared in other areas of Soviet activity as
well, and this tendency is likely to grow.
--4--
The most critical issue
in the Soviet historiography of the war was the interpretation of the great
defeats suffered by the Soviet army during the first period of the war. The
immense material losses and incalculable human sufferings which the collapse of
Soviet defenses entailed would have been embarrassing for any government to
explain, but for a regime which staked its authority on its claim to foresee
the future they were catastrophic in their implications. Soviet postwar
propaganda sought to smother these implications by denying that any real
defeats had taken place.
The first problem for
Soviet propaganda was to explain the Soviet failure to anticipate and prepare
for the initial German assault. There is ample evidence that the Soviet
government was fully informed of the German intention to attack well before the
invasion took place. Churchill has described the careful personal efforts he
made to bring the seriousness of the situation to Stalinís attention. He has
also told of other warnings conveyed to the Soviet government by subordinate
British officials and the American government. Investigations of Soviet spy
networks in Austria and Japan after the war revealed that Soviet intelligence
had also uncovered advance information on the German invasion plans. Finally,
Khrushchev in his secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress cited many
additional indications that had been made available to the Soviet government
through its own diplomatic and military sources.
Soviet postwar
propaganda made no acknowledgment of these advance warnings of the German
intention to attack. Instead, it sought to turn to advantage the blunder which
the Soviet government had committed in discounting these warnings. It depicted
the Soviet Union as the victim of German "perfidy," it stressed the
"suddenness" of the German attack. The initial defeats were presented
as flowing from the natural disadvantage suffered by a peace-loving state in
the face of a ruthless aggressor. At the same time, the prewar policies of the
Soviet Union, its industrialization programs, and its diplomatic and military
encroachments in eastern Europe, were presented as calculated against an
eventual German attack, and thus as responsible for the countryís ability to
withstand the shock when the attack came.
--5--
Secondly, Soviet propaganda had to
explain the continuous defeats of the Soviet army during 1941, and the
abandonment of huge territories. and much of the population of the Baltic
republics, Leningrad province, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine. In the light of
these results, it was obvious that the Soviet army had not shown to advantage
during the first months of the war. The operational command, which at that time
was in the hands of the political marshals, Voroshilov, Timoshenko, and
Budennyy, on the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern fronts respectively,
showed little capacity to cope with the mobile conditions of warfare operated
by deep German penetrations of prepared defense positions. Deprived of large
mobile reserves and air support and bound by the Supreme Command strategy of
defending "each inch of native soil," the army repeatedly permitted
large forces to be encircled where a more flexible strategy might have saved
them. To mention only the largest operations, approximately a half-million men,
according to German figures, were lost in each of the huge encirclements around
Kiev and Vyazma.
In explaining these
disasters, Soviet propaganda sought to have it both ways--to enhance the
dimensions of the final Soviet achievement in stopping the German offensive,
while minimizing the mistakes which made great achievements necessary. It was
acknowledged that a "difficult situation" had been created, that a
"mortal danger hung over the Soviet country," and yet a picture was
presented of the Soviet Supreme Command as being in masterly control of the
situation at all times, and as influencing the course of events toward its
final successful consummation. The strategy of the Supreme Command, it was
said, was to give space for time, and by "exhausting and bleeding white
the enemy," to prepare the grounds for a counteroffensive.
There were two formulas
in Soviet postwar propaganda which were very important in the official account
of this period, and which express the whole tenor of this account. The first
was the so-called strategy of "active defense," which was represented
as a Supreme Command plan embracing not only the tactical methods of aggressive
counteraction in defense, but the whole strategic conception of the early
--6--
period of Soviet operations.* The
second and more important formula was the so-called strategic
"counteroffensive," which also was said to embrace, as parts of a
preconceived plan, the whole complex of defensive actions conducted by the
Soviet army preliminary to the launching of the actual counteroffensive.* The
effect of both formulas, of course, was to embellish the reputation of the
Soviet leadership by presenting the early defeats as necessary preliminary
stages to the ultimate victory.
Finally, Soviet
propaganda had to interpret the ultimate stopping of the German advance and the
saving of Moscow. The facts concerning these events were as follows. The German
armies on the central front, after rapid initial progress, reached the vicinity
of Smolensk by mid-July, 1941. Here the advance on Moscow paused, not only
because of Russian resistance, but because of cross purposes in the German High
Command. Hitler wished to divert the tank armies from the Moscow
* The term "active
defense" had two meanings. Its first meaning, which it generally carried
in the writings of the wartime period, expressed the idea that the defensive
actions of the Soviet troops were designed not only to stop the enemy, but to
keep up the morale of the Soviet troops themselves, to "temper their regiments"
for a subsequent transition to offensive action. This meaning derived from
Stalinís Order of the Day No. 308, of September 18, 1941, which created the
first guards units. Its second meaning, which it assumed in postwar propaganda,
expressed the idea that the defensive actions of the Soviet troops were
preplanned to hold back the progress of the enemy until the permanently
operating factors of war could be brought into play. The direct source of the
postwar flourishing of this concept was Stalinís electoral speech of February
9, 1946.
** The doctrine of the
"counteroffensive" was first publicized in Stalinís letter to Colonel
Razin of February, 1947. Stalin derived the ideas expressed in this letter from
an article entitled "The Strategic Counteroffensive," by Major
General N. Talenskiy, which was published in Military Thought, No. 6,
1946.
--7--
direction to assist: in the flank
attacks on Leningrad and. Kiev, while. the German generals wished to continue
the advance on the central front. While the generals vainly temporized, and in
the end acquiesced to Hitlerís decision, many weeks of the best campaigning
weather were allowed to fritter away. Finally, on 2 October, the advance on
Moscow was resumed, but by the time the first successes around Vyazma had been
consolidated the fall slush had set in. Slowed to a crawl by the weather and
the stiffening Russian resistance, the advance finally petered out a few miles
from Moscow, and was then mauled back by the Soviet counteroffensive which
began on 6 December.
The reasons for the
failure of the German offensive are many, and in large part of German origin.
An important factor has been mentioned, the conflict between Hitler and the
generals, which in turn reflected the excessiveness of the demands which Hitler
had imposed upon his forces. By the time of the final German advance on Moscow,
German forces were overextended, both in terms of logistic communications and
in the ratio of operational reserves to committed forces. Men and machines were
exhausted from the long summer campaigns and the shifting of armies from one
front to another over a great territorial expanse; German divisions had been
thinned out before the beginning of the Russian campaign to spread the
available manpower and armor among the 146 divisions which participated in the
invasion. While they may have enjoyed a brief relative superiority during the
early period of the war after the initial surrenders of Soviet troops, this was
certainly lost by the end of the year. Finally, the cold weather which came on
early and rapidly in 1941 caught the Germans unprepared, since in anticipation
of a lightning victory they had not provided winter clothing for the troops.
Soviet postwar
propaganda discounted all these accidental factors as having played any effective
role in the final outcome. German logistic problems and leadership conflicts,
while mentioned occasionally in general disparagements of German strategy and
military science, were never admitted as decisive factors. The weather was
mentioned in Soviet accounts, but only as interfering with Soviet operations.
The manpower relationship was always claimed to be in the German favor, and the
number of 170 German and 38 satellite divisions attributed to the German
invasion force by the Russians during the war was retained in subsequent
accounts. In short, any factor which tended to reduce the credit due the Soviet
leadership and armed forces for stopping the German invasion was ignored in
Soviet postwar propaganda.
--8--
The broadest issue
raised by the Soviet historiography of the war was the explanation of the final
victory. In its most important aspect, this involved the question of which the
four pillars of Soviet wartime society--the army, the party, the people, or Stalin
alone--deserved the laurels of victory, and hence the rewards and prerogatives
which they symbolized. It will be seen that this question cut across all
others, and became the principal political issue of the Soviet interpretation
of the war.
In considering the
merits of the claims that could be advanced for the several aspirants, and the
way in which the credits were in fact allotted, it will be logical to start
with Stalin, since his figure loomed largest in Soviet postwar accounts.
Just what Stalinís role
was in the strategic direction of the Soviet army is not entirely clear.
Khrushchevs account in his secret speech of the telephone calls he had made to
Vasilevskiy and Malenkov at the time of the Kharkov battle suggests that Stalin
exercised at least a general supervision over military operations. It is
probable that his dictatorial habits and affectations of military competence
led him to interfere more directly in military matters than the other Allied
leaders commonly permitted themselves to do. But in the actual conception and
direction of military operations he was probably cautious enough to limit his
interference to the confirmation or veto of plans presented by General
Headquarters. Even within these limits, and judging by the bits of evidence
available, his record as a war leader was far from consistently good. His gross
error in discounting the numerous intelligence indications of the German
preparations for attack has been mentioned above. His strategy of "no
retreat" during the first period of the war played into the hands of the
German encirclement tactics, and his stubborn insistence on continuing the
Kharkov offensive in 1942 after the Soviet position had become hopeless was, to
say the least, militarily unjustified. His competence for command was
apparently also negatively affected by his moodiness of character. Khrushchev
charged that Stalin became panic-stricken in 1941, and Churchillís account of
Stalinís desperate appeal for a British expeditionary corps at that time lends
corroboration to this charges.
--9--
In postwar propaganda, however,
Stalin was transformed into the "greatest commander of all the ages."
All military operations were said to have been carried out according to his
plans and under his immediate direction. He was said to have "worked out
anew" and, for the first time in history, applied with full effect the
"strategic counteroffensive" which constituted the greatest
contribution in the annals of military science.
The army suffered most
directly from the postwar inflation of the Stalin image. The record of the
professional military leaders during the war was good. Whatever their merits
when compared with their opposite numbers in the West, and there are
differences of opinion on this score, they were the men who stood at the head
of the troops when victory was achieved. Moreover, their contribution was
dramatic. It was after Zhukov took over from the old Bolshevik Timoshenko, as
Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front, that Moscow was saved and the first
Soviet counteroffensive successfully carried out. It was also after Zhukov took
over as overall commander of the southern fronts, and after the commissar
system had been abolished in the army, that Stalingrad was saved, and the
series of operations launched that led to ultimate victory. The figure of
Zhukov in these key events of the war was symbolic of the professional
militaryís role in rescuing the regime from the consequences of its own
incompetence.
In postwar propaganda,
the marshals rapidly faded into the background. Zhukovís fall from honor has
often been noted. It was so swift and complete that the Soviet press observed
the first anniversary of the fall of Berlin without mentioning his name. No
other military figure was named in Pravda on that day either, nor on the
other major anniversaries of the next few years. The articles published on the
occasion of Stalinís seventieth birthday, in 1949, performed the equally
remarkable feat of reviewing the whole course of the war without naming a
single Soviet general officer.
The partyís role in the
war is perhaps the most difficult to evaluate because it was so closely woven
into the fabric of Soviet society that it is hard now to distinguish, through
the smokescreen of propaganda raised on its behalf, where party inspiration
left off, and public initiative began in the great social and military
achievements of the war. Unquestionably, the partyís traditional role as the
leader and coordinator of national energies was diminished during the war as
increasing reliance came to be placed on nonparty channels of public control,
and as extraordinary
--10--
governmental and military bodies
arose to take over direction of the war effort. To name merely the activity
which the party later most vigorously claimed for its own credit, the partisan
movement, the facts seem to be that the party had little to do with organizing
the movement, and established control later only partially and with difficulty.
In general, the conclusion seems safe that among the instruments available to
the Soviet leadership for conducting, the war effort the party apparatus
performed an auxiliary function.
Thus it is
understandable why, when the leadership decided after the war to return to the
course of development that the war had interrupted, an important element in
that reaction was the reassertion of the partyís traditional place in Soviet
life. This necessarily involved a recasting of, the history of the war to show
the partyís role in a more befitting light. A very important feature of the
postwar history was the claim that the party had "always and
everywhere" inspired and led the peoples resistance to the Germans. This
claim was advanced particularly, but by no means exclusively, with respect to
the civilian aspects of the wartime achievements--the evacuation of industry,
to the east, the feats of labor heroism performed at the rear, the partisan war
carried on behind enemy lines. As Pravda put it, in criticizing
Fadeyevís The Young Guard, in 1947: "The party everywhere and
always introduced an organizing basis. Communists did not for a minute lose the
leading role."
Finally, it is necessary
to mention the role of the people in the war. Their contribution had been so
massive, and so clearly affirmed by the regime during the war, that it stood in
the way of any other claimant for exclusive honors. If this record were allowed
to stand, the regimes own claims to indispensability, based on the supposed
political immaturity of the masses, might well be open to question. Thus, a
fact which would be taken for granted under any other regime--that the war had
been won by the sacrifices and achievements of the people--in Soviet conditions
became inadmissible. In Soviet postwar propaganda, the record of the peopleís
role in the war was not openly contested, it was simply displaced.
The role of the Allies
in the war posed a particularly embarrassing problem for Soviet postwar
propaganda, since any acknowledgment of the real contributions the Allies had
made would tend to invalidate the image of a corrupt and hostile West which it
was seeking to create. The task of Soviet
--11--
propaganda, thus, was to blot out as
far as possible the friendly memories of the wartime alliance, by besmirching
the motives for which the allied states fought, and by disparaging their
achievements.
The response of the
Western Allies to Russiaís plight in 1941 was prompt and generous, and the
material and military contribution which the West made to the final victory was
very great. Allied material aid was extended at a time, and under conditions,
which imposed a very real sacrifice on the Alliesí own war effort. In addition,
as the war progressed, the Allies brought to bear a military pressure on
Germany which contributed materially to speeding the collapse of the German war
machine.
According to American
sources, the value of American Lend-Lease shipments to Russia during the war
totaled over $11,000,000,000. British shipments and American private relief
added considerably to this total. Walter Kerr, in his book The Russian Army,
presents additional figures which bring out in a graphic way the significance
of this aid to the Soviet army. During the first year of deliveries alone, he
says, Washington and London shipped to Russia 3,052 planes, 4,084 tanks, 30,031
vehicles, and 831,000 tons of miscellaneous supplies, of which the major part
got through. As Kerr points out, the relative value of these figures can be
grasped if they are compared with the numbers of 1,136 planes and 2,091 tanks
which, according to Russian claims, the Germans lost during 52 days of the
heaviest fighting in the first year of the war. There are many indications from
Russian sources, too, of the value they placed on this aid during the war.
Stalinís anger at delays in the arrival of American equipment was indicative in
this connection. The impress which Allied aid made on the Soviet population,
indications of which are scattered throughout Soviet literature, is another
sigh of its scope and significance. Even the language has recorded the dimensions
of American wartime aid in its transformation of the name "Willys"
into a Russian household word.
As for the rest, the
Allied military role in the war, the story is familiar enough to need no detail
here. Beginning in Africa, in 1942, the Allies began to build up a steadily
mounting pressure on Germany which engaged and wasted the dwindling resources
which were desperately needed on the eastern front. Soviet propaganda made much
of the claim later that no German units were withdrawn from the eastern front
as a result of Allied operations (in fact, at least two SS divisions were
withdrawn to meet the Normandy invasion), but this is
--12--
beside the point. The real
contribution of the Allies was measured not in the juggling of German divisions
which it produced, but in the German energies absorbed by a series of Allied
second fronts, in Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France.
Soviet postwar
propaganda was not content merely to minimize the Allied role in the war, but
sought actively to transform the image of the Allies from partners in the
anti-Hitler coalition into crypto-enemies of the Soviet Union, and virtual
allies of Hitler. The principal device used to achieve this end was to hammer
home the accusation that the real aim of Western policy before the war had been
to isolate the USSR, and, in the final account, to embroil it in war with
Germany.
In its broadest
application this charge affected the Soviet official interpretation of the
whole prewar period. Beginning with the Paris Peace Conference, at which it was
asserted the "Russian question" occupied the primary place, almost
every major event of European diplomacy affecting the USSR was made to fit into
this framework. The Dawes Plan which loosed a "golden rain of American
dollars" into German war industry, the Four Power Pact which signified
Anglo-French willingness to come to terms with fascism, the Polish-German
nonaggression pact of 1934 which set a precedent for replacing the principle of
collective security by a system of bilateral pacts, the Anglo-German naval
agreement of 1935 which proclaimed Britainís disavowal of the principle of
restricting German remilitarization--were all seen in the Soviet account as
stages in the consistent Western policy of isolating the USSR and encouraging
German aggression.
The major event affected
by this line of interpretation was, of course, the Munich agreement. The facts
surrounding this episode were such as to lend themselves to almost any
indictment of the strategy and morality of Western policy that the Soviet Union
would wish to make. The agreement was in fact strategically defective in that
it excluded the Soviet Union from the joint action of the directing nations,
and morally defective in that it legalized violence. But these indictments,
recognized as valid in Western literature, were not broad enough for the
purposes of Soviet postwar propaganda. Instead, Stalinís phrase of 1939, that
the Munich agreement was the "price of an undertaking (by Germany) to launch
war on the Soviet Union" was resurrected as the basis of the Soviet
historical interpretation. The Western leaders were portrayed as active
plotters with Hitler for war. In
--13--
Soviet postwar historiography the
word "deal" (sgovor) became the official cachet of Munich, and
historians who had seen in the Western behavior at Munich simply a concession
or capitulation to Nazi threats were made to see their error.
A second issue for
Soviet postwar propaganda on the Allied role in the war was the matter of
Allied material aid. For Soviet postwar propaganda, any acknowledgment of the
magnitude and usefulness of this aid could serve no political purpose, as it
would document the indebtedness of the Soviet Union to a foreign state, which
the Soviet Union would be loath to admit in any event, and least of all to the
"bulwark of world capitalism." Moreover, it would diminish to some
degree the luster of the Soviet Unions own industrial achievements, which were
claimed to rest on the far-sighted industrialization programs carried out by
the regime during the first five year plans. Thus, the matter of Allied
supplies was mentioned very sparingly in Soviet postwar accounts of the war,
and where mentioned was always presented as an exchange for Soviet raw materials,
or as a paltry recompense for the Russian contributions of blood and time.
The most publicized of
the issues affecting the Allied role in the war was the question of the second
front. The Soviet attitude toward this question assumed approximately its permanent
form during 1942, when it must have seemed to the Soviet leaders that nothing
but the crumbling defenses of Stalingrad stood between them and final disaster.
It is understandable that in these desperate hours they were little disposed to
appreciate Allied logistic problems and were bitter about the failure of the
needed military relief to materialize. But even after the passions of the
moment cooled, the second front issue apparently appeared to the Soviet leaders
as too useful a device to abandon. During the war it contributed a certain
psychological leverage to the Soviet Union in dealings with the Allies, and
probably went a long way toward cancelling out whatever sense of indebtedness
the Allied supplies may have carried with them. After the war, it served as a
prop for the claim that the Soviet Union had borne the brunt of the struggle
against Hitler.
The basis of the Soviet
postwar charge that the Allies had shown bad faith in this matter was the joint
communiquÈ published in London and Washington after the Molotov visit in the
spring of 1942. The communiquÈ said in part that "in the course of the
conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent task of
creating a second front in Europe in 1942." Churchill has explained that
the purpose of
--14--
the communiquÈ was to make the
Germans apprehensive and hold as many of their troops in the west as possible.
So as not to mislead the Russians, he took care to give Molotov an aide
memoire, stating that he could "give no promise in the matter."
In postwar comment on the subject, Soviet propaganda ignored the aide
memoire. Instead, it bent every effort to show that the Allies had gone
back on their word, and had done so, moreover, with the deliberate aim of
dragging out the war and exhausting the Russians.
A fourth issue was the
Normandy invasion. Soviet postwar propaganda interpreted this event in such a
way as to place Allied political motives and military capabilities in the worst
possible light. It was stated that the Allies undertook the Normandy invasion
only to forestall the inevitable single-handed triumph of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, it was charged that the Allies deliberately delayed their breakout
from the Normandy beachhead for two and a half months, while watching developments
on the Soviet-German front, and playing with the possibility of a compromise
peace. In all of this, Soviet postwar propaganda placed great stress on the
alleged inconsequential resistance put up by the Germans to the Allied
invasion. It was claimed that the German divisions in Europe were not of first
combat quality. During the whole period of the Normandy invasion, according to
the Soviet postwar propaganda account, not a single German division was
transferred from the Soviet front. Consequently, no significance could be
attached to the Normandy invasion as easing the situation in any substantial
degree on the eastern front.
A highly derogatory
appraisal of Allied military capabilities was also given in connection with the
Ardennes battle and the final advance through Germany. The former was presented
as a major collapse of the Allied military position which would have been fatal
had not Stalin, in response to Churchillís urgent plea, advanced the date of
the Soviet winter offensive, and thus forced the Germans to abandon their
attack and withdraw their forces to the eastern front. The final Allied advance
through Germany was also explained as the result of the German political
decision to concentrate all forces against the Russians and to leave the way
open for the Allies to reach Berlin first.
The principal issue
raised by the Soviet account of the Pacific War was the interpretation of the
Japanese surrender. The Soviet Union from the beginning maintained that it was
the
--15--
Soviet declaration of war and the
defeat of the Kwantung army, rather than the atomic bomb, which forced the
Japanese to capitulate. The Soviet argument was based principally on three
assertions: (1) that the Allies had achieved no significant military successes
against the Japanese during the course of the Pacific War, (2) that the main
military strength of Japan remained throughout the war untouched in Manchuria,
and (3) that in 1945 Japan was still capable of continuing the war for another
two years at least. This latter assertion was based on American military
estimates, made in 1944, and 1945, of the requirements for the invasion of the
Japanese home islands.
The role of the atomic
bomb was usually ignored, or summarily dismissed, in Soviet accounts of the Japanese
surrender. The most circumstantial Soviet argument on this point was offered by
V. Avarin in his second book on the Pacific war, published in 1952. It was
based on the data presented in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey
regarding the deliberations in the Japanese Government during the last days
before the decision to surrender was taken. Part of Avarinís argument was based
on the timing of these events. The atomic bomb, he observed, was dropped on 6
August, and resulted in no particular reaction in Japanese official circles.
The Soviet declaration of war reached Tokyo on the morning of 9 August, and was
followed by a frantic series of official meetings, concluding with the Imperial
Conference in the night of 9-10 August. Part of his argument was based also on
the substance of the discussions. The key element here was the statement of the
emperor announcing his decision to accept surrender. In it, he did not mention
the atomic bomb, but said in part (according to Avarinís translation): "To
continue the war in the international situation which has arisen, and given the
situation within Japan, would mean the destruction of the whole nation."*
This, according to Avarin, proved that the point at issue was "not the
atomic bomb or strategic bombing, but the international situation which had
arisen, i.e., the entrance of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan. . .
."
* The emperors words as given in the
Strategic Bombing Survey are as follows: "Thinking about the world situation
and the internal Japanese situation, to continue the war means nothing but the
destruction of the whole nation;" Avarin obviously shaded his translation
to support his argument.
--16--
Unlike many of the other issues
discussed in this chapter, there was very little development or change in the
Soviet interpretation of the Japanese surrender during the postwar period.
According to Max Beloff, in his book Soviet Policy in the Far East,
1944-1951, the attribution of the Japanese collapse exclusively to Soviet
victories in Manchuria remained a constant of Soviet comment on this subject
from the end of the war on. All the major elements of this account were present
in the earliest analyses of this event noted. Colonel M. Tolchenov, a prominent
military writer, set out the main lines of this argument in 1945, although in
somewhat less categorical terms than later became customary. He cited Allied
military estimates as proof that Japan was still capable of resistance at the
end, and claimed that most foreign newspapers recognized that Soviet
intervention was "one of the decisive factors" compelling the enemy
to lay down his arms. An accompanying article assessed the significance of the
atomic bomb, expressing some cautious optimism as to its future peacetime
implications, but concluding that it was irrelevant to the final outcome of the
Pacific War and invoking the authority of Generals Arnold and Chennault in
support of this conclusion.
--17--
During its development
in the postwar period, the Soviet, official interpretation of the war evoked
varying degrees of resistance from elements of the population most directly
affected--the professional military, the historians, and the writers.
Although military
writers played a key role in developing the official version of the war, they
did not abdicate their professional integrity entirely to propaganda criteria,
and, in their wartime writings at least, provided snatches of direct testimony
on the real nature of wartime events. Some faint signs of dissatisfaction with
elements of the official line also appeared among military writers during the
postwar period. This expressed itself not in any open opposition to the
official line, but in indications that the professional military officers were
experiencing tension between their direct experience of the military events of
the war and the theoretical formulas in which they were required to express
them.
In the summer of 1945, a
small unsigned article in Military Thought, the theoretical organ of the
General Staff, first drew attention to this latter phenomenon. It took to task
a number of specialized military journals for exaggerating the roles of their
own services in the war, and for neglecting the Soviet doctrine on the
coordinated action of all arms. These journals, said the article, "raise
the basic question of the military employment of their own forces in combined
arms battle poorly or not at all, and sometimes, in interpreting the experience
of the military operations of their forces, attribute to them an independent
significance." The Air Forces journal came in for particular criticism in
this regard.
A more interesting case
was a crusty article by Major General A. Penchevskiy, "Concerning
Operations for Encirclement and Operational Terminology," in Military
Thought, No. 6/7, 1945, which disputed the concept of "internal and
external fronts" in an encirclement operation. This concept
--18--
was already becoming part of the
legend of the Stalingrad operation, where, it was claimed, an "external
front" had been formed on the encircling ring to prevent a breakin by
Mansteinís relief column, as well as an "internal front" to prevent a
breakout by von Paulusí army. The use of this concept to buttress the claim
that Stalin always beat the enemy "for sure," foreseeing on a large
scale all the countermeasures that the enemy might possibly undertake, gave it
a political significance. "In the planning of an operation," said
Penchevskiy, "the forces and means of an army and front (fronts) are never
under any circumstances divided between internal and external fronts (lines).
They are divided according to operational objectives, and tasks are established
by defined lines." He concluded with a blunt dismisal of the theory.
"Our staffs never used such concepts as ëinternal and external frontsí;
they are useless since they do not explain the essence of the operational
maneuver."
A still more interesting
case was an article by General of the Army Eremenko, entitled
"Counterblows in a Contemporary Defensive Operation," which appeared
in Military Thought, No. 3, 1949. This was a notable article if for no
other reason than that, at the height of the Stalin apotheosis, it mentioned
Stalin only once, in the opening paragraph, and the adjective
"Stalinist" once, in the last. Moreover, it dealt with the question
of the counteroffensive in such a way as to obscure the role of the Supreme
Commander in the direction of this operation and to enhance the role of army and
front commanders. This resulted from the fact that Eremenko attributed to the
counterblow (i.e., an operation of an army or front, larger than a
counterattack, but smaller than a counteroffensive) the crucial role in
triggering the counteroffensive, specifically with reference to Moscow and
Kursk. He spoke of the counterblows in these two battles as "turning
into" counteroffensives. This phraseology was, in itself, not unorthodox,
but Eremenko made it appear that the army or front commander who made the
decision for a counterblow was, in effect, the agent responsible for the
counteroffensive. This, in the atmosphere of 1949, was perilously close to lese
majesty.
There is evidence that
the unorthodoxy of this article was the result not of careless writing but of
blunt military honesty. Time and again, Eremenko missed the obvious
opportunities to throw in a sop to Stalinís vanity. Repeatedly,
--19--
he spoke of the counteroffensive as
"growing out of," or "developing from," the counterblows
launched by "our troops," without mentioning that it was
"organized" by Stalin, as good propaganda practice required. In one
place he went even further, and implicitly credited Zhukov with preparing the
counteroffensive under Moscow.
The ideological lapses of
this article were thrown into stronger relief by a vigorously orthodox article
on the counteroffensive which Eremenko published two years later. It provided a
whole catalogue of the standard formulas praising Stalin as the genius exponent
of this strategy.
The spirit of this
article contrasted so sharply with the earlier one that the conclusion seems
inescapable that considerations of political discretion had prompted it.
The professional
historians were blocked off from the military history of the war by political
decisions taken at wars end, and thenceforth restricted themselves to the
diplomatic history of the wartime period. In this field, a significant number
of them displayed a relatively objective attitude toward the West up through 1947,
and some beyond that date.
One work of considerable
interest was the first volume of a series, Works on Modern and Contemporary
History, which was brought out by the History Institute in 1948. This
volume was severely criticized later for many departures from ideological
orthodoxy. One article in it, "The German-Fascist Drang nach Osten
after Munich," by F.I. Notovich, is illustrative of the general
scholarships and political detachment of the volume. The main criticism later
directed against this article was that it described the Munich agreement as a
"capitulation," rather than as a "deal" or
"bargain." The very first words of the article were "The Munich
capitulation," and this phrase was used regularly throughout. It was,
moreover, devoid of the usual references to Marxist authorities. Although it
carried a heavy scholarly apparatus, in a close text of fifty pages, only two
or three purely factual references to Soviet sources appeared.
--20--
Another example of postwar
unorthodoxy in Soviet historiography was a book published in 1947, by Professor
G. Deborin, entitled "International Relations and the Foreign Policy of
the USSR, 1917-1945," IV: The Years of the Great Patriotic War.
This book was apparently withdrawn from circulation sometime in 1949, and is
not now available. According to the Soviet press, the book was published by the
Higher Diplomatic School as an informal student manual and enjoyed circulation
in educational institutions in this capacity. Official attention was drawn to
the book, apparently, when the contemporary history sector of the History
Institute attempted to republish it under the seal of the Academy of Sciences.
The substantive
criticism of the book was focused on its alleged pro-American bias. It was said
that the book presented US foreign policy during the Second World War
"just as American imperialists themselves attempt to portray it."
This interpretation, it was said, conveyed the impression that the US
government was opposed to the anti-Soviet policies of Churchill and the
American imperialists, that it was a staunch friend of the Soviet Union
throughout the struggle. Thus the book concealed the "struggle within the
anti-Hitler coalition" during the war, and ignored the "fundamental
opposition between the foreign policy of the USSR, on the one hand, and of the
USA and Great Britain, on the other." On a more specific issue, the second
front, the book also was said to have given a distorted interpretation. The
Western delay in opening a second front was attributed to the inability of US
and British leaders to evaluate the developing situation in 1942 correctly, to
their overestimation of the Hitler forces. Thus, the prolonged delay in opening
the second front was ascribed to "shortsighted" US and British
leaders. Finally, the official critics hinted darkly at improper motives in the
publication of the book.
As the critics were
clear to point out, historians were held responsible not only for what they
published, but also for what they said. A statement made in a classroom lecture
will serve as a last illustration of the laggardness of the Soviet historical
community in accepting the postwar official line on the war. The case in point
was that of Professor Zvavich, a specialist on British history. The most
startling of the words he was alleged to have uttered were described as
follows:
--21--
In the lecture course
given at the Higher Diplomatic School, Zvavich committed a direct falsification
of history, asserting that a turning point in the course of the war took place
as a result of the landing of the Americans in Italy. (Voprosy Istorii
No. 2, 1949, 156)
The full fury of the
ideological reaction fell on the historical community during the years 1948 and
1949, when, under the goad of the party press, a series of meetings was held to
place one historian after another on the rack of public criticism for the
edification of his fellows. The climax of this campaign came in the spring of
1949, when the second issue of Questions of History for that year was
held up for five months, while a reorganization of the editorial board was
effected. The resistance which the historians displayed was evoked not by
clashes over particular issues, but by professional disdain for the political
criteria which defined the partyís demands. The most striking feature of their
performance was the indisputable evidence it provided that the historians
understood the nature of the capitulations they were forced to make.
There were signs, first
of all, that the historians attempted to deflect, or blunt, or even to shield
each other from the sharp edge of party criticism. The behavior of the
editorial board of Questions of History itself was remarkable in this
respect. It displayed tact and forebearance in the case of N. Rubinshteyn, for
example, the author of a book on Russian historiography, and the first victim
of the ideological reaction, by allowing him to initiate the discussion of his
criticized book, rather than subjecting him to immediate attack by others. Its
action in the case of I.I. Mints, a specialist in the early Soviet period, was
even bolder. At a time when Mints had become the main target of the party
attack, the editorial board allowed him to publish a lead article, in the first
issue of 1949, which in effect constituted an apologia for the historical
community. This article listed all the names of the leading Soviet historians,
proclaimed their contributions to Soviet historical science, and (perhaps by a
slip of the pen, because his article was otherwise very dutiful in this
respect) attributed to his own colleagues, rather than to Stalin, the credit
for laying the "basis for the study of the Soviet period of the history of
our country."
--22--
In addition to Questions of
History itself, individual historians also made efforts to stem the course
of party reaction. At the beginning of the critical campaign, for example,
there was at least one historian (K. Vazilevich) who stood openly against the
basic chauvinist tendency of the official line. "We are not inclined to
grovel before the West," he said. "We carry our culture with
dignity. . . . But to tear off the history of Russia from the
history of other countries--this would mean to return to a past which has been
condemned, and it would hardly be right to start off on such a path." In
the first discussion of Mints book on the first years of the Soviet regime, it
was reported that one speaker (A.I. Gukovskiy) attempted to impugn Mints
loyalty. The subsequent speakers, it was noted, "unanimously
rejected" this insinuation. Again, in the discussion of Works on Modern
and Contemporary History it was reported: "Attempts to soften the
sharpness of the criticism appeared, for example, in the speech of A.Z.
Manfred, who accompanied his acknowledgment of the mistaken character of Eggerts
article with ambiguous compliments regarding the authors "great skill,
ability to master the material, etc."
Individual authors, not
infrequently, showed considerable stubbornness in refusing to bow meekly to
official criticism. I.M. Lemin, for example, the author of The Foreign
Policy of Great Britain from Versailles to Locarno, was reported sticking
to his guns at the end of the critical session on his book.
It is necessary to note,
at the same time, the unserious and irresponsible attitude which the author of
the book himself displayed toward the discussion. Admitting, in general terms,
that certainly "there are many shortcomings in the book," that
"there are certain bad sounding words," and that "the tone is
inappropriate in a number of cases," I. M. Lemin at the same time
attempted, without any proof, to deny all the concrete and argued complaints
and observations about the book made by the speakers. As a result of the false
position taken by him, I. M. Lemin in fact rejected the critical review of his
book, in the light of the criticism to which it was subjected at the
discussion, and his concluding words failed completely to satisfy those
present. (Voprosy Istorii, No. 6, 1948, 139)
--23--
The occasional cynical remarks which
some historians made during these critical sessions revealed, more eloquently
than any disquistion, their full awareness of the purely political
considerations which motivated the official reaction. Professor Lutskiy, for
example, in attempting to ward off attacks on his sector of the History
Institute, referred to the opinion which, he said, was commonly held in
historical circles, "that the history of Soviet society is not history,
but current politics." A similar theme in the defensive remarks of the
criticized historians was the complaint that they had been victimized by the
swift change in the official line after the war.
F.I. Notovich, for
example, the author of the article on German post-Munich policy, considered
above, used this defense.
Still more unsatisfactory
was the speech of F. I. Notovich, who at first refused to recognize any
substantial mistakes at all in his understanding or evaluation of the Munich
policy in his article. Only in his second speech, which followed the decisive
criticism of his first, did Comrade Notovich acknowledge that he had permitted
"false notes" in it, and that his article did not correspond to the
demands of militant party historical science. However, even in his second
speech, F.I. Notovich insinuated false notes. He explained the errors of his
article not as arising from a misunderstanding of the essence of the Munich
agreement, but as a result of the fact that he had "printed in 1948 an
article written in 1945. . . ." (Voprosy Istorii No.
12, 1948, 177)
Perhaps more significant
than these displays of individual courage or stubbornness were the signs
(naturally heavily veiled in Soviet sources) of something like an organized
resistance by the historical community to the partyís ideological campaign.
This appeared most clearly in the virtual boycott of the discussion of
Rubinshteynís text book held by the Ministry of Higher Education, in March,
1948. Of the speakers reported at the meeting, only three appeared to be
historians of importance (S.A. Pokrovskiy, A.L. Sidorov, and Ye.N.
Gorodetskiy), the others being mainly docents, or professors from outside
Moscow. The abstention of the first-rate historical figures from the meeting
was
--24--
all the more striking in view of the
high sponsorship of the affair, and the importance which the authorities
obviously attached to it. Both Sidorov and Gorodetskiy, at the meeting,
referred to the absence of the major professors in terms which suggested that a
"feat of silence" was being performed, complaining that the initiative
for the criticism had come from outside the historical community, Sidorov
stated: "Even now, at this present conference, the majority of the members
of the department (of Moscow State University) are absent. . . .
A certain, inwardness on the part of these institutions (the History Institute,
and the Academy of Social Sciences), and the absence of prominent historians at
the present meeting, characterizes, to a significant degree, the general
position on the historical front. . . ." Gorodetskiy
referred sarcastically to the "absence of the so-called pillars of
historical science from the discussion. . . ." Later, on
several occasions, it was implied that this abstention of the Moscow historical
community from the meeting had been a deliberate act.
Later criticism revealed
other cases of group opposition to the partyís ideological campaign. A lead
article in Questions of History, at the end of 1948, for example,
asserted: "There were cases when the criticism of mistakes (recently made
in the press, etc.) were met with hostility in the Institute." Also:
"The Institute did not organize work on the exposure of foreign bourgeois
historiography, and did not conduct an attack on foreign falsifiers of history.
This work, until recently, has been considered in the Institute as outside and
plan, and the workers of the Institute shunned it."
The writers community,
as a whole, demonstrated a chronic indiscipline after the war which was
unmatched by any other segment of Soviet society. The sources of this indiscipline
were no doubt various, but there were two common factors--the nature of
literature itself, and the regimes imperfect control of it.
Writers had to deal with
human beings and their relationships, in terms comprehensible to themselves and
acceptable to their readers. This meant that the subject of the writers work
was man--man, not Soviet man--and human values which the shallow political
philosophy he was required to serve failed to explain or even to acknowledge.
--25--
Secondly, the qualified
editorial independence enjoyed by literary journals encouraged writers to probe
for the outer limits of official tolerance. This helped to keep alive the sense
of a shared problem, and contributed to a feeling of group identity among the
writers.
The most dramatic
episode in the postwar collision between propaganda policy on the
interpretation of the war and the testimony of the writers was the article
"Crocks and Potsherds," which appeared in the literary journal Oktyabr,
in 1946, from the pen of its editor, F. Panferov. This article was a plaintive
denunciation of the literary bureaucracy (and inescapably, though implicitly,
of the political powers which supported it) for promoting a false, prettified
version of the sufferings, terrors, and majestic achievements of the war.
The substance of
Panferovís article was the complaint that the critics opposed any portrayal of
the war which conveyed a true measure of the enormous sacrifices it had cost.
In his article he described how he had questioned the generals during the last
days of the war, and asked them to explain to him the nature of the victory
that had been won. They could not answer, he said. Even they, the generals who
had won the victory, were forced to admit that they did not fully understand
the moral forces that had moved their armies. They stood before a puzzle, the
sphynx of victories. Only the critics, sneered Panferov, the "crocks and
potsherds," as he called them, were able to understand this great
imponderable.
For the "crocks and
potsherds" all this is clear. "Retreat? There was no retreat. This
was a planned withdrawal which exhausted the enemy."
"But,"
responds the writer, "what kind of a planned withdrawal was this, when the
fate of our country at one time hung by a hair. Indeed, Comrade Stalin and his
fellow workers spoke to us about this."
"Forget it! It is
necessary to forget this," answer the "crocks and potsherds."
"How forget?
Perhaps it is possible to forget that the Germans were at Stalingrad, at
Mozdok, at Moscow? How is it possible to forget the burdens which our people
shouldered during the war? Indeed, sometimes out shoulders cracked from these
burdens.
--26--
Panferov then recalled
the terrible hardships suffered by the working people in setting up the
evacuated industries in the rear. He described the hard living conditions, the
rigors of winter work in the Urals, the cold which froze the palms of the
workers hands to the steel. "But here come the crocks and potsherds",
he wrote, "and insistently declare: 'Nonsense, nothing like this happened
in our country.í The writer spreads his hands in perplexity."
Returning to the
military aspect of the war, Panferov concluded his article with a discussion of
the character of the enemy, and of the proper way of portraying the enemy in
literature. He disputed the official tendency to deprecate the military
qualities of the Germans. This, he argued, did no credit to the Soviet army,
and in fact minimized the significance of the victory it had achieved. The
"crocks and potsherds," he said, insist that the enemy should be
portrayed as stupid, cowardly, ignorant of military matters--as a "wooden
head with eyes."
But, if you will, why
minimize the strength of the enemy, his resourcefulness, his rapaciousness, his
cunning, his military skill, his steadiness in battle, his ability to defend
himself, to attack, and finally, to fight? Indeed, in depicting the enemy as a
wooden head with eyes, we minimize the heroism of the Red Army. What kind of
heroism is it to have beaten a wooden head with eyes? No, the enemy was strong,
in his own way, able, cunning, and steady in battle. Indeed, no wooden head
with eyes could have seized, if only temporarily, the whole of Europe, and
moved into our country hundreds of divisions armed from head to toe. No. And
how explain the power of the enemy, his psychology--why millions went over to
the fascists, if only for a time? To solve this is an extraordinarily
complicated and necessary matter. . . .
There can be no doubt
that Panferov passionately believed in the position he defended. Moreover, he
seemed to feel that his viewpoint might prevail over the opposing view of the
literary critics. He reminded his readers of the wartime words of Stalin and
the party leaders; he invoked the authority of the party which "never
concealed." At the time he published the article, Panferov seemed to
--27--
regard the interpretation of the war
as not yet a completely closed issue. The objective of his article, apparently,
was to bully the critics, and influence the political authorities behind them,
into accepting his interpretation of the role and responsibility of literature
in portraying the history of the war. No doubt, active debates on this subject
had been stimulated throughout the literary community by Stalinís electoral
speech earlier in the year.
The lasting significance
of Panferovs article rests in the testament it gave of Russiaís wartime
experience. On the eve of the postwar campaign of falsifications and
half-truths, which the regime hoped would blot out the unhappy memories of the
war, one clear voice bore witness to the sufferings and sacrifices it had cost.
It spoke not only for Panferov but for many of his colleagues as well, and
indeed for the Russian people.
Echoes of this testimony
to the truth about the war were to be heard again in the postwar period. In the
last two issues of the literary journal Znamya, in 1947, there appeared
a work entitled "Motherland and Foreignland: Pages from a Notebook,"
by A. Tvardovskiy, in which the poet attempted to recreate impressions from a
lost wartime diary. It was a collection of vignettes of his wartime
experiences. As the personal record of a sensitive observer, which was intended
originally for his own use rather than for publication, it presented a
remarkably clear view of the human features of the Soviet people in the war.
Tvardovskiy was
particularly attracted by the hardiness, the sheer survival ability, of
individuals in war, and he returned to this theme repeatedly. This naturally
caused him to deal with characters and motivations which official propaganda
pretended not to see, and laid him open to the charge that he had generalized
the untypical rather than the typical features of Soviet reality. In a striking
passage, he described a scene of refugee disaster during the early days:
On the first page of the
notebook, I remember, I wrote down a picture which struck me at the beginning
of the war, in my first encounter with those on whom a heavy burden fell in the
first days. The Moscow-Kiev train stopped at a station, apparently Khutor
Mikhailovskiy. Looking out the window, I saw something so strange and
--28--
frightening that, to this day, I
cannot get rid of the impression. I saw a field, a huge field, but whether it
was a meadow, a fallow field, a field sown to winter or spring crops, it was
impossible to tell: the field was covered with people, lying sitting, swarming,
people with bundles, knapsacks, suitcases, hand carts, little children. I never
saw so many suitcases, bundles, all kinds of village household goods, hurriedly
taken by people for a journey. On this field there were perhaps five, perhaps
ten thousand people. . . . The field buzzed. And in this drone one could hear
the agitation, the excitement caused by the recent shock, and, at the same
time, the deep, sad weariness, the numbness, the half-sleep, that one observes
in a crowded waiting room at night in a large railway junction. The field rose,
began to stir, pushed toward the right of the way, to the train, began to rap
on the windows and doors of the cars, and, it seemed, had the power to knock
the cars from the rails. The train moved. We, people in war, breaking the
strict and necessary order, pulled into the car one woman, loaded down with
bundles, holding in her hands her two children, aged three and five years. She
was from Minsk, the wife of a commander, and coming into the car hastened to
confirm this with documents. She was small, haggard, not at all beautiful,
except perhaps her eyes, shining with the joy of unexpected success. She had to
go somewhere in Belaya Tserkov, to the family of her husband. She could hardly
have gotten there--a few days later I saw that Belaya Tserkov was abandoned by
us.
Tvardovskiyís honesty
extended also to self-analysis, and produced an unusually picturesque and
unflattering account of the function of the writers in the war. Feeling the
fatigue of his long tour of service, he asked himself why his mind faltered at
the task of writing once again the story of seemingly endless battles. He compared
himself and his fellow writers to a man who helped another to chop wood by
grunting for each blow of the axe. "We grunt, and the people work. We have
taken on ourselves the function...of giving out those exclamations, ohs and
ahs, etc., which are those of the man who fights."
--29--
For the soldier, each
new battle summons up his mental and physical forces with original freshness.
"But for us, grunting, all this is just more of the same thing; we have
grunted for a thousand such occasions." Tvardovskiy conceded, however,
that it was necessary to go on writing, because of the magnificent victories
that the soldiers were winning.
The critical reaction to
Tvardovskiyís notebook was swift and caustic. An article in Literary Gazette,
in December, presented a biting review of the work. "The attempt to
poeticize that which is foreign to the life, of the people, and foreign to
poetry, has led to a false and crude ideological mistake." A week later,
an editorial in the same newspaper reiterated the official anger: "The
whole work is impregnated with a feeling of tiredness, pacifism, a
contemplative attitude toward life." In February, 1948, Literary
Gazette carried a brief report of a discussion which had been held on
Tvardovskiyís notebook, containing hints that opposition to the official
criticism had manifested itself among the writers. The report stated that the
scheduled discussion had been put off three times, and that on the fourth
occasion, when the discussion was finally held, the editorial board of Znamya
had absented itself from the meeting. In addition, the claim that the official
evaluation of the work had been supported by the meeting was qualified:
"The opinion of the majority of the speakers in large part
coincided with. . . . (Italics added.) Finally, the open
opposition of one speaker, a student from Moscow University, was acknowledged.
Regarding the latter, the report stated:
General agitation was
called forth by the speech of a graduate student of Moscow University, V.
Arkhipov. In an oily tone, he undertook to prove that there were no mistakes in
"Motherland and Foreignland." Attempting by all means to protect A.
Tvardovskiy from justified criticism, he ended up with openly reactionary
declarations in defense of kulaks and speculators. The harmful expressions of
the uninvited advocate were given a well deserved reply, . . .
While Tvardovskiyís work
was being discussed, another wartime memoir was being published which was to
set off an even more dramatic demonstration of opposition to the official line
on the war. This was the diary of Olga Dzhigurda, a military doctor, which
appeared in the first two
--30--
issues of Znamya
in 1948, under the title "The Motorship 'Kakhetia'". In the ensuing
discussion of this book, in which marked discontent with the official critical
evaluation was recorded, the famous partisan leader and author of the Stalin
prize winning book, Men With a Clear Conscience, Petro Vershigora,
published a strong attack on the critics for encouraging a hypocritical
portrayal of the war. In the vigor and directness of its attack, Vershigoras
article came close to matching the ardor of Panferovís polemic of two years
before.
The diary of Dzhigurda,
which precipitated the dispute, was itself a patently honest portrayal of the thoughts,
feelings, and behavior of people exposed to war. It recorded the authors
experiences as a military doctor on a supply-hospital ship, in 1941-42, serving
the besieged city of Sevastopol and other military bases. In simple,
straightforward language, the author described the people around her, neither
embellishing their virtues nor concealing their faults. At the very beginning,
she described the reluctance with which she and her companions approached their
assignment to the ship. "In vain, Belokon and Vetrova entreated the duty
officer to send us to some land unit, in vain Vetrova tried to frighten the
duty officer with big names from the Air Forces, in vain I complained of my
seasickness. . . ."
Dzhigurdas reportorial
accuracy led her to record events which were highly "untypical" by
Soviet official standards. The captain of the ship, for example, suffered a
nervous breakdown and committed suicide. Two soldiers evacuated from Sevastopol
turned out to be malingerers. "What will become of them?" asked Dzhigurda
as they were being led away. "They will be shot . . . (or)
. . . sent to a penal battalion . . ." she
was told. Once her roommates sobbing woke her in the night.
"Whatís the matter?
Whatís the matter with you?" I asked anxiously.
"I cannot be alone!
Itís boring to be alone!" Vetrova wailed through her tears.
I was upset
"Listen, Marya
Afanasyevna, arenít you ashamed? Just a few days before the trip, and all you
think about is foolishness. We have to fight with pure thoughts and a pure
spirit, and all you think about is men!" "Iím pregnant,"
suddenly groaned Vetrova, and fell on the pillow and cried.
--31--
These
"untypical" features of the book, needless to say, scandalized
official opinion. Dzhigurda was accused of having failed to bring out the real
spirit of the Soviet people, and of having lost her way in details. "It is
not necessary to minimize the personal shortcomings of our people," said
E. Knipovich, writing in Literary Gazette. "But if one is to see
the main, socialist thing above all, then the petty, personal shortcomings are
not blown up disproportionately. . . ."
A discussion of the book
was held early in May, 1948. The animation of the proceedings, the enthusiastic
support for Dzhigurda which they demonstrated, came through even in the cryptic
report of the affair which was published in Literary Gazette. A
remarkable feature of the meeting was that it appeared to be organized by, and
certainly provided a forum for, "people of experience," that is,
those who like Dzhigurda herself had actually participated in the war. The
number of military figures present, and speaking on Dzhugurdas behalf, was
perhaps the most notable feature of the meeting.
In the following month,
Vershigora published his formal attack on the critics. He described their
reception of Dzhigurdas work as flowing from the consistently negative attitude
they had always shown toward eyewitness accounts of the war. The object of his
attack was to refute not simply the official evaluation of one work, but the
whole system of official attitudes which had determined this evaluation. His
indictment exposed the nature of the campaign the critics had waged to
substitute platitudinous formulas for honest accounts of the war.
Pseudo-classical
conceptions regarding Soviet people at war, the motives for their actions and
encounters, have apparently nurtured sanctimonious ideals in the critics
themselves. And the critics (according to the laws of a certain reverse
diffusion, perhaps) react sharply to any departure from these lacquered norms.
Pharisaical critics give battle surreptiously, without undue noise, to the
genre of "experience" they avoid raising the question to the level of
principle, so to speak, ignore the early diaries of front-line people, or note
superficially their weaknesses, and, above all, disparage their significance.
--32--
Vershigora cited the
poverty of literature on the siege of Leningrad as an example of the deadly
influence which had been exercised by the critics. He said that since 1944 an
honest portrayal of this great event had been impossible. He spoke of one
"highly placed conference" devoted to literature on the war, at which
one writer justifiably complained that he had not been able to write the truth
about the feat of Leningrad ìsince the literary and critical channels had
filled up with people who never had a taste of blockade."
Every attempt to
describe the blockade is taken by them, as slander against the Leningrad
people. The almost complete absence of great literature on the worthy and
necessary theme of the heroic defense of Leningrad convinces me that the
aforementioned comrade is right. Crude facts (and they are always crude,
particularly for those who have not had a whiff of them) cannot be written, and
people are apparently still ashamed to write the prettified "little
truths" which are always worse than open lies. And the result? The needed
book about the great feat of Leningrad has not, and does not, come!.
Finally, Vershigora
asserted the bold claim that "defenders of the Fatherland" had the moral
right to share their experiences of the war with their contemporaries. He
predicted, moreover, that such first-hand accounts would not be forgotten when
the history of the war was finally written.
Our contemporaries, who
shoulder to shoulder have forged the victory, as well as future generations
studying the past, will look into them. They will have to look into them!
Surely, the many novels, stories and poems, and books, which are less finished
in literary style, but more convincing, not only by virtue of the facts they
contain, but also by their faithfulness to the human feelings they
portray, will not be thrown into the backyard of history.
--33--
The flurry of opposition
to the official history of the war was snuffed out by 1949, and for several
years thereafter a deep freeze of. Stalinist orthodoxy settled over this issue.
Occasional criticisms of individual authors during this period were indicative
more of the insatiability of critical appetites than of any real indiscipline
on the part of the individuals concerned. The increasing attention devoted to
the history of the war by the press and publishing houses registered the
propagandists conviction that the subject had become stable and safe. But
history in. the Soviet Union was no more stable than the political forces which
projected it, and with Stalinís death the image of his power reflected in
history began to fade.
The natural tendency of
the Stalinist historical myths to disintegrade was accelerated by the problems
which the new government faced. First, there was the succession itself; the new
system of collective leadership had to be legitimized; the state
administration, pulverized by Stalin, had to be reconstituted; long suppressed
consumer demands had to be satisfied; a way out of the foreign policy impasse
had to be found. Secondly, there were problems arising from the military-strategic
situation created by the maturing of nuclear developments within the Soviet
Union, and the continuing improvement of delivery capabilities in both world
power blocs. Both sets of problems required a break with Stalinist tradition.
The effects of the new
policy toward the first set of problems were apparent almost immediately. In
propaganda, the "cult of personality" was disparaged, and the
"creativity of the masses" was extolled. To be sure, the effect was
less marked, and less consistent, in historical writing on the war, but there
were unmistakable shifts in emphasis. Stalinís name appeared less frequently in
the places where one had become accustomed to expect it, and the party was put
forward as the supreme architect of victory. The role of the people in the war
was also accorded a recognition which befitted their newly acknowledged status
as the "creators of history."
--34--
More important, and
longer lasting, implications for the history of the war emerged from the second
set of problems mentioned above, the reassessment of Soviet military-strategic
policies. As men who had been close to the summit of Soviet power for many
years, the new leaders were certainly not unacquainted with the strategic
problems posed by the increasing destructiveness of world armaments. But the
responsibilities of supreme authority, the removal of Stalinís inhibiting
influence, and the new evidence which piled up during 1953, as a result of the
Soviet Unionís first hydrogen bomb explosion, and also, probably, the beginning
of the study of tactics for a nuclear war in the military maneuvers of that
year, cast these problems in a new light. In any event, clear signs of a more
realistic attitude toward the military implications of the nuclear age were
manifested. The seven year ban on the discussion of nuclear weapons was broken
in 1954, when Red Star began a series of articles on the tactical uses
of the new weapons, and defense against them. During the same period, a broad
discussion of military science, reflecting strong tendencies toward a
rejuvenation of military thought, was carried on in the General Staff journal, Military
Thought.
On the political level,
the impact of the new strategic situation was reflected in Malenkovís efforts
to damp down the sparks which might set off an international
conflagration--which, in his words of 1954, would mean the "destruction of
world civilization." The circumstances surrounding this declaration
strongly suggest that Malenkov meant it as a powerful argument in defense of
his policies. It was made just four days after the first open opposition to his
regime had been signalized in the Soviet press.* It was a carefully calculated
statement, since it revised a long held, and often repeated Soviet doctrine,
which Malenkov himself had helped to formulate, that a new war would mean the
destruction of world capitalism alone. The indications are strong that it
expressed not only his own belief in the unacceptibility of nuclear war, but
his hope that others within the Soviet
* Trud, March 8, 1954. A
commerative article on Stalin contained the first of the revised "war
records," of which there would be various others in the next two years,
listing only Khrushchev and Bulganin, of the then collective leaders, as among
the party leaders sent to the front during the war.
--35--
Union, the lesser party leaders and inte