The year 1941 was one of destiny for Russia. In six months of peace, followed by six months of war, the Soviet Union showed qualities of strength and tenacity that make it interesting to examine her situation, to study the spirit and the measures with which she prepared for and met her crisis.
The German Danger.
By the summer of 1940 the Nazi Power controlled the western coasts from Narvik to Bordeaux, and no longer had any military rival except the uneasy Soviet Union. Omens became numerous in the Balkans. Though the Nazis were still intent upon England, they found time to overthrow King Carol (Sept. 6) and bring Rumania into the Axis Pact (Nov. 22, 1940). Early in 1941 the Bulgarian Premier visited Vienna and Germans were seeping into Bulgaria. Then, on March 1, Bulgaria signed the Axis Pact and German troops marched openly into the little country. That Hitler would soon tire of his failures on the Channel and turn to help Mussolini molest Greece, few could doubt. In such a situation the Soviet Union was concerned to make commercial treaties with friends abroad and to devise defense measures at home.
Commercial Diplomacy.
Premier Molotov's commercial negotiations, like former loans of the French Republic, were rarely without political implications. Indeed a commercial treaty had led speedily to the Soviet-Nazi Pact of 1939. The agreements of early 1941 fall into three groups: (1) agreements with small nations of Europe; (2) a renewal of the agreement with Germany leading to renewed friction with the United States; (3) treaties with China and Japan.
(1) Balkan Agreements.
In the fall of 1940, while the Germans were busy at the Channel, the Soviet Union made advances to Hungary, eventually securing permission to set up a consulate in Budapest, a promise of a direct railroad line, and of a direct telegraph between Budapest and Moscow, for the first time since 1914. But Hungary's joining of the Axis Pact (followed by Rumania and Slovakia) led to the denial of Soviet approval. The country enjoyed another temporary satisfaction in Rumania. Late in January the Germans withdrew some 80,000 troops, i.e., about one third of the German troops stationed there. A month later Rumania signed with the Soviet Union a two-year treaty of commerce and navigation.
The Soviet Union found the remaining small nations disinclined to sign with her except for an agreement with Switzerland at Moscow, Feb. 24; for one year Swiss machine tools and machines were to be sent to Russia in exchange for grain, lumber, oil and cotton. But Switzerland, having broken off diplomatic relations with Russia in 1918 and having recently outlawed the Communist party, insisted that the commercial agreement did not imply diplomatic recognition.
(2) Germany and the United States.
Soviet trade relations with Germany depended on the seven-year trade agreement of Aug. 19, 1939. During the first year of the treaty shipments both ways had been slow so that the estimated fulfillment was only about 30 per cent of the agreement. Therefore an amendment or 'renewal' of Jan. 10, 1941, provided for 'mutual deliveries considerably exceeding the level of the first year' and, according to German officials, promised a large leak around the British blockade, through Russia. In Berlin it was reported that the Soviet Union had promised to send, in the coming year, 2,500,000 tons of grain and 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 tons of oil.
The next move came from America. Soviet trade with the United States was still under the 'moral embargo' of the early days of the Finnish war against the sale to Russia of planes, plane parts or high-test gasoline. But the Welles-Oumansky conversations which had resulted in the opening of an American Consulate in Vladivostok, Nov. 29, 1940, led to the withdrawal of the 'moral embargo' on Jan. 21, the anniversary of the death of Lenin. This move, designed to assist Stalin in opposing Hitler, was a part of the policy of the United States for multilateral appeasement.
The next move was already coming from England, where the government was uneasy about Soviet trade. During 1940 the Soviet Union had appeared as the largest purchaser of American cotton; third largest purchaser of American copper; in the autumn of 1940 the Soviet Union had contracted for 1,300,000 bbl., (roughly 260,000 metric tons) of California oil, of which 1,000,000 bbl. had already gone in American tankers by the middle of January; finally, in the second half of 1940 the Soviet Union had bought over 1,000,000 bu. (perhaps 28,000 metric tons) of American wheat. In January, therefore, the Soviet Union was importing from the United States a part of the oil and wheat she had promised to Germany for 1941, not to mention that coming from Rumania. So, according to the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, 'Some United States producers (were) helping Germany indirectly by selling Russia commodities in which Germany (was) deficient.' In that way cotton especially, oil-producing machinery, a considerable quantity of crude oil, even some grain, going into Vladivostok, simply released corresponding quantities of Russian goods needed by Germany to wage her wars. Ambassador Lord Halifax, newly arrived, complained earnestly to Secretary Hull (Jan. 28) but the latter was inclined to minimize the matter.
During the next two months the Department of State and the Department of Commerce collected information on goods moving from the Americas to Vladivostok and even discovered the building of new reloading and switching stations at nine different points on the frontier between Russia and Germany. The Government's information seemed to indicate that Russia sent Germany more than 1,000,000 tons of feed grains in 1940 — about 1 per cent of the total Russian crop. As a result few export licenses were granted to the Soviet Union during the spring.
(3) Treaties with China and Japan.
The third group of commercial negotiations concerned China and Japan. Moscow and Chungking made a commercial treaty in three parts (Dec. 11, 1940, Jan. 3 and 12, 1941) for the exchange of Chinese tea, wool and minerals in return for Soviet war materials and machinery.
During March there were reports of Soviet activities in the Far East: of Communist agents agitating in China, Burma, the Philippines for native freedom from Japanese, English, American imperialists; of Russians buying shops, controlling magazines, introducing films; of an increase in Soviet merchant ships. Even Japan made sacrifices for the Soviet Union's favor: her press ceased its customary aspersions; although for ten years the Japanese had been using the exiled White Russians in divers capacities from railway conductors to terrorist gangs, Japan dissolved or liquidated their organizations. In May, when the Soviet Union consulate was reopened in Shanghai, many White Russians applied in vain for Soviet passports and Soviet citizenship.
Matsuoka's Odyssey.
The Japanese Foreign Minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, stopped at Moscow (March 23-24), went on to confer with Hitler, Mussolini, and the Pope, and returned to Moscow April 7. He was welcomed by Molotov and Stalin and festively entertained. On April 13 the Russo-Japanese Pact of Neutrality and the joint declaration was signed. By the latter, the Soviet Union promised to respect Manchoukuo and Japan promised to respect Outer Mongolia. By the treaty each promised that should one of the parties become an object of hostilities from one or several other powers, the other party would observe neutrality throughout the duration of the conflict. The Pact was to run five years.
The German press welcomed the treaty. For Germany it was about even; the Soviet Union had more freedom to oppose her in Europe, and Japan had more freedom to help her in the Pacific. Soviet Russia ventured almost immediately to move troops toward the West and probably Japan felt free to move many of her troops southward. The Japanese government hastened the production of iron and coal and advanced the equipment and training of motorized infantry and tank corps. The press of Japan used condescending words about Britain and the United States and suggested that the Chinese might as well lay down their arms. The next day, however, Chungking revealed the fact that China had received formal assurance from Moscow that there would be no change in Soviet policy toward China. On April 24 the treaty was sanctioned by the Emperor. It was followed June 12 by a commercial agreement: Russia was to send manganese, fertilizer, platinum, petroleum products in return for such goods as silk, machinery and oil of camphor.
Although the Stalin-Molotov commercial treaties with political implications seemed to suit the delicate position of the Soviet Union and the timidity of the neutral states, yet their results were disappointing: only Japan and two hard-pressed Balkan states were willing to sign with the country that had been so ruthless to the small states from Finland to Poland. Therefore a change was needed. The April neutrality treaties with Yugoslavia and Japan marked the transition of Soviet policy from the whispering commercial treaties of the winter to the rather more direct diplomacy of the spring. Unable to collect allies around her, uncertain even about Turkey and the Straits, the Soviet Union had to take her position without them.
Defense Preparations.
While Molotov was seeking friends abroad, the people of the Union were giving much attention to war exercises. Early in February 3,000,000 Young Communists of the Moscow region took part in games, principally cross-country ski races. Travelers on the Trans-Siberian railway reported airplane practice at many places. Millions of Russian youths were getting such initial training under the guidance of the army.
The defense spirit appeared even in the tribute to Lenin on the 17th anniversary of his death (Jan. 21). There were eloquent words about 'grave eventualities of the war,' about giving any invader of their peaceful constructive life such a lesson as his grandchildren would never forget.
Naturally there were more defense speeches on Army Day (Feb. 23). But, after Commissar Semyon K. Timoshenko had made the necessary speech about the readiness of the Army, Gen. Gregory K. Zhukov, the new Chief of Staff, explained that a series of defects that had weakened the army had been remedied in 1940; that a general reorganization, guided by Marshal Timoshenko, had reduced the role of the political commissars and given the officers undisputed authority. Then Naval Commissar N. G. Kuznetsov, a protagonist of the same kind of discipline in the navy, said that Soviet shipyards were 'pouring out the most modern destroyers, cruisers and battleships' for the expansion of the Red Fleets in the various waters such as the northern Pacific, the Black Sea and the Danube.
About the same time the political history of the Soviet Union expressed itself in two large meetings, the Communist Party Conference and the Supreme Soviet.
Communist Party Conference.
After its losses in the great Purge, the Communist Party had recovered its normal numbers: 2,500,000 members plus about half that many candidates. The Party Conference was a semi-official, interim meeting, the first large Party meeting since the All-Union Congress of March 1939. This Conference of 450 delegates opened Feb. 15 in Moscow. One of the four Secretaries-General, George Malenkov, deploring the high production costs especially in timber and oil, and the lag in basic industries and railways, poured the blame on arm-chair administration. As remedies he urged careful inventories, strict labor discipline, and more authority for managers.
On a later day the Conference was addressed by Nicolai Voznesensky, a Vice Chairman of the Council of Commissars and at that time Chairman of the Gosplan. But he spoke almost in the tone of a military commissar: Soviet Russia must keep the army ready and must direct Soviet economy to supply the great needs of wartime; in this 'war of motors,' this war, to some extent, of reserves, 'let us keep our powder dry and spare no means for the production of planes, tanks, armaments, warships and ammunition.' Soviet industry was known to have increased 11 per cent in 1940 — machine industry 13.8 per cent and consumers' goods 7 per cent. But in 1941, he insisted, industrial production would have to increase 17-18 per cent — machine industry 23.5 per cent and consumers' goods 9 per cent — because the Soviet Union must achieve national independence of its capitalist environment, particularly in metallurgy and machine building.
The two most important changes discussed in the conference were the promotion of small, local industries, and the responsibilities put upon the local Party organizations. The need of more small local shops had come into discussion in the previous year and became the subject of a decree of Jan. 9, 1941, for the promotion of the local production of consumers' goods. Many small shops using scraps or by-products were turned over to the local authorities, with funds supplied or taxes reduced. Further decrees (Jan. and March) laid requirements on the collective farms that would force them to more diversified agriculture, especially to produce milk, eggs and vegetables. Railroad relief was given as the purpose of such decrees. Also it may have been the aim to make local communities as self-sufficient as possible in case of invasion. Whatever the official reasons, the change appears to the curious observer a turning back to smaller shops as more convenient and efficient than the immense factories under the last Tsars or the gigantic establishments of the early thirties. To promote small industry was to reverse the trend of the previous half century and more.
At the same conference the local Party organizations were given much wider responsibilities for local factories, small or large. Now that the grain problem was virtually solved, it was argued, the local groups must turn a share of their attention to industry. Since it was plainly impossible for the Union commissariats to keep in daily touch with their many plants, it devolved upon the local Party organs to give their attention and 'objective judgment' to their local establishments, to keep up the buildings and the machines, to insure careful inventories, to watch quality and check the daily output, to maintain wage levels and yet promote payment according to production (Stakhanovism), and, while doing all these and still other things toward the managing of the mills, nevertheless tactfully to strengthen the responsibility and the authority of directors and foremen.
Secretary-General Malenkov's attack on the 'paper leadership' of the officials, and the instructions to the Party locals to supervise industry and to strengthen the managers, combine to point to those things which, in a normally free economy, could best be done by any competent factory manager. Apparently Russian managers were weak or timid since the Purge of 1937-38. Since confidence could not be handed back to them, help was offered. The Dictatorship was using local Party initiative to support and stimulate debilitated bureaucracy, or perhaps to take industry from its tired hands and speed it forward. See also COMMUNISM.
The Supreme Soviet.
The Budget.
After the adjournment of the Party Conference, the next day, Feb. 25, brought the opening of the 8th session of the Supreme Soviet of the Union government, a body comprising some 1,400 delegates including 117 from the newly annexed borderlands. Earlier than in preceding years, the Supreme Soviet discussed the budget which was presented by Finance Commissar Arseny G. Zverev. Its total was 215,000,000,000 rubles as against the 1940 budget of 179,000,000,000. The proportion of the budget devoted to defense was only slightly increased, being still about one third of the total budget. The actual amount, however, of military expenditures was to be five-fourths the amount of 1940, or four times the amount of 1937. About another third of the 1941 budget was allotted to a thousand new enterprises of capital construction.
The assets of 1941 were to come: 57 per cent from the turnover or sales tax; 15.6 per cent from profits; 4.6 per cent from social insurance fees; 5.8 per cent from taxes on the population; 6.1 per cent from state loans; the rest from other sources.
The expenditures were in this proportion: 34 per cent to national economy, incl. 18 per cent to industry; 6 per cent to agriculture; 22 per cent social-cultural uses; 5 per cent to administration incl. 'loan service'; 33 per cent Army and Navy; the rest for other needs.
In local finances there was a new policy: the income of the local governments was to be stabilized by assigning them a larger share of the local turnover tax and larger appropriations from the Union budget, in exchange for a reduction in their share of revenues from the Tractor Stations, taxes on crops, and local loans. Months later, on June 2, the government issued a loan of 9,500,000,000 rubles for 20 years at 4 per cent, obtainable on a ten-monthly plan of installments. It was to be raised by voluntary subscription and used for economic and cultural projects in the localities where the subscribers resided. So the local principle came into loans also.
Economic Condition.
Any picture of Russia's economic strength always has on one side her vast resources in materials and man power, and on the other such liabilities as poor workmanship, incompetent management, loose organization and poor equipment. In the consideration of her capacities for any great effort there is always the question: Can her mass cover her mistakes? Under the Bolsheviks, however, there has been a general tendency for the amassed resources to grow and for the mistakes to be reduced.
Also in estimating the economic strength of the Soviet Union, it is necessary to discuss the less definite subject of morale and note the first effects of the Labor Discipline law of June 26, 1940. In the cities it was the most discussed law for many years. Job-switching, tardiness and absences were the three persistent and peculiar problems of labor in Communist Russia. Because a socialist economy tries to avoid unemployment and because the hundreds of new Russian projects called for many hands, the fear of unemployment no longer hung over the Russian workman. After a strict rule was made in 1938, the workmen who wanted a change of job merely got themselves fired for absence or tardiness. Finally the law of June 1940 made all three of these offenses punishable directly by forced labor at the place of employment, subject to cuts reaching even 25 per cent of the previous wages. Moreover the law was enforced in the labor courts, humanely but promptly. The way production was sustained in the early months of 1941 was unseasonable and was widely attributed in Russia to the new law. Abroad there were three interpretations. The radicals considered it merely one more step in the humane but necessary training of workers enjoying socialism. A different interpretation was given by Bertram D. Wolfe (in Harpers, June 1941) presenting the law against leaving jobs and the decrees on agriculture as a combination regimenting the Russians to the point of serfdom, 'the Silent Soviet Revolution.' But Walter Duranty's large pamphlet presented this law as a measure to meet the war crisis with conscripted labor, explaining that it was understood and accepted as such by the unions.
The Labor Reserve law of October 1940 was also in operation. By the calls of November and February the government had mobilized boys of 14-17 for training in shop work, lumbering, and the building material trades. On May 5, 700,000 boys and girls were called so that by that date there were in all nearly 1,500,000 enrolled in training as labor reserves for critical times.
The Russian social economy has been called everything from Communism to State Capitalism to serfdom. But whatever the régime is called or however its pros and cons are counted, the centrally planned economy has such facilities for organizing production to support army and navy that parts of it have been eagerly adopted by Japanese generals and the Nazis. In Russia capital has long been entirely under state control. The 1940 labor laws illustrate the power of the government to conscript, train, and control its workmen.
Attitude of Russia Toward Germany.
A tendency toward war between Communism and Nazism because of both their similarities and their differences was inevitable. Since each was a military dictatorship, supported in civil life by a single dominating party and by secret police, it is plain that both systems were founded on Tsarism. Each had added the planned economy. They resembled Tsarism also in that each had a sacred leader who personified an absolute, intolerant idea and doctrine. But since the political doctrines were opposed — one being militarist and racially exclusive, the other being proletarian and international, it seemed likely that they would fight each other and that the two despotisms with vigorous administrations would add efficient violence to the struggle. Both these modern, somewhat aggravated forms of Tsarism made cynical use of hate propaganda, even at home. Both were scornful of political liberty and pushed loyalty to the point of fanaticism.
Then there were great differences — always more prominent in the minds of fighting men. The Bolsheviks were certainly the more rational; in their political meetings the Bolsheviks supported their propaganda by reasoning while the Nazis drove their statements into their people's heads by shouting, the first being a long, explanatory discussion, the second being a short yelling concert. Moreover the Nazis exalted war as a noble life and could never face a long peace. The Bolsheviks boasted of their military power for self-defense but wanted as much peace as possible.
Indeed sheer political ambition seemed for decades to have been pulling Germany and Russia toward war with each other. Even the peaceful German Republic had never accepted its eastern boundaries nor its exclusion from the markets of eastern Europe. Shortly before the death of Pilsudsky there seemed a possibility that Germany and Poland would combine to detach Ukraina from the Soviet Union, or to conquer it, plus the Caucasus as far as Baku. Then Hitler decided instead to march over Poland's body and make a direct conquest similar to the Brest-Litovsk agreement in 1918 with perhaps another puppet régime in Kiev. Several million Czechs and Poles could be driven out to make room for Germans; the Russian collective farms could be taken in hand by German landlords, lawyers and clerks. 'Perhaps,' said Hitler to Hermann Rauschning in 1934, 'Perhaps I shall not be able to avoid an alliance with Russia. I shall keep that as a trump card.... But it will never stop me from as firmly retracing my steps and attacking Russia when my aims in the West have been achieved.' (The Voice of Destruction.)
War Clouds.
In order to keep Russia out of war at least temporarily, Stalin deserted the Soviet Union's stand for collective security, betrayed Poland, signed the Soviet-Nazi Pact of Aug. 24, 1939. A noncommittal neutrality would have been more honorable, just as safe for Russia, perhaps a great advantage to Europe. On the other hand Stalin had the problem of getting the chronic appeasers to take up their part of the fighting; he may have believed that only a Soviet-Nazi Pact, forcing the fight on the western nations first, could prevent the Nazis from throwing their whole weight upon the Soviet Union — with the earnest blessing of western conservatives, appeasers, and pacifists. Stalin's strategy was usually better than his sense of honor. The Soviet leaders felt the need of time to move further from the Purge and to pile up armaments. Yet the situation was not generally clear. The British and American Communists, in opposing their governments, wasted nearly two years of effort in the service of Germany. Perhaps the Comintern forgot about them. Or rather, the Kremlin itself, like other observers, seems not to have grasped the full meaning of the fall of France and seems to have tried to straddle two policies until the fall of Greece.
One rather severe test of a state is the condition of provinces newly conquered or on the border. In 1941 the state of the Baltic provinces, eastern Poland and Bessarabia under the Soviet Union was not clear. Doubtless some grim liquidations of the previous summer (annexation) were remembered. In the first days of the war there were rumors of rebellion, especially in Estonia. At least the problem of the German population ought to have been solved by the arrangements with the Reich that had 'repatriated' (Oct. 1939-Jan. 1941) about 500,000 German folk. A Polish Correspondent reported early in February that Russia's new lands were virtually absorbed. In their economy the Baltic provinces had been disturbed even less than Poland. In short, Stalin's judicious moderation was in bright contrast to Hitler's hideous brutality. Even the Poles, he said, show signs of accepting the Soviet régime. Under these circumstances the Balkans, though no longer 'turbulent,' brought to Russia, as so often before, the critical question of peace or war. Bulgaria's submission to Hitler (March 1) endangered her Balkan neighbors. Although the Soviet Union gave diplomatic support to the new Yugoslavian Government of Gen. Simovich, German divisions crossed the Danube (Apr. 6) and conquered Yugoslavia and Greece by the end of April; by the end of May the Germans had completed their incredible conquest of Crete from the sky. Then, however, in spite of control of the eastern Aegean, in spite of pro-German government in Iraq and pro-German administration in Syria, of the Grand Mufti's call to the Moslems, of German agents and Italian funds to stir up the Arabs, the Germans were not able to reach around or over the British fleet or the Turkish army to get hold of Baghdad for their purposes. British Imperial forces subdued Iraq (May 31) and Syria (July 15). (See WORLD WAR II.) Thus did the Soviet Union lose Bulgaria with apparent apathy, fumble Yugoslavia, yield to superior force in Greece, and let Britain save Iraq and Syria from the Nazi grasp.
On May 6 Stalin became President of the Council of People's Commissars, leaving V. M. Molotov as Commissar of Foreign Affairs. The change was largely technical and its propaganda value was not clear. Three days later Stalin closed the legations of Norway, Belgium and Yugoslavia, to 'clear away the wreckage,' and after that (May 16) he recognized the precarious pro-German régime of Baghdad.
Between May 1 and June 20, from Ankara or Berne or sometimes Stockholm, there came insistent reports: first, that many German troops were moving back across the Danube into Rumania, that the Russians were evacuating civilians from parts of their Polish front and strengthening their fortifications on the Estonian shore of the Gulf of Finland; later that the Germans had 30 divisions in Rumania and 5 in Finland and that Soviet Far Eastern troops were moving into Russian Poland; finally that the Germans, entrusting the southern Balkans to the Italians, had moved 120 divisions to join Rumania's 25 divisions, facing the supposed 155 divisions of Soviet troops. Unnumbered tanks and guns were gathered on each side. Commentators believed that Hitler and Stalin were maneuvering and dickering, perhaps about oil or the Dardanelles or some deal on Iran and Iraq. June 13 the Soviet News Agency, Tass, denied all those reports, saying blandly that the Soviet Union and Germany were keeping to the terms of their non-aggression pact, according to the information available to the Soviet Union. Soon after the outbreak of war it was asserted that there had been real efforts to avert it, including informal meetings in Vienna, but that Hitler either (1) wanted to win fresh laurels easily (Duranty) or (2) determined to remove the lurking, growing Russian danger (Sir Stafford Cripps, quoted by W. Duranty, 'The Kremlin and the People').
War with Germany Begins.
In spite of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, however, Hitler suddenly marched against Russia at dawn, Sunday June 22, denouncing the perfidy of the Soviet Union. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in his radio speech of the same day said that the Soviet Union had made deliveries according to the agreement until the last few days, but the denounced her for two years of subversive activities in Prague, Finland, Yugoslavia, and of having made recent unfair demands for bases in Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and, finally, of having gathered enormous menacing forces. After a day or two of war the mutual recriminations reached also the economic field. That Finland should, within a few days, take up arms against the Soviet Union, was only natural, but her close entanglement with the Nazis threw new light on the reasons the Kremlin leaders professed for their previous attack on her (Nov. 30, 1939).
The Red Army.
While observers expected a collapse, Russia's Red Army surprised the world. Yet, before the actual test, the Russian army had certain virtues that were clear enough to deserve wider recognition. In the first place, sheer numbers. The same German army that had fought the French as 2 to 1, had to fight the Russians as 1 to 2.
In the second place there were the usual fighting qualities of the Russian people, presumably hereditary qualities. Germans and English for instance, always fight well. Italians do well in every art but the art of war. The French seem to alternate. The Russians, individually, behave admirably when a war comes their way; Russian soldiers have stood and fought against great odds. Russian national military failures have usually been caused by weakness of organization.
For some years before the German attack, most observers thought the Red Army much stronger in organization and morale than any army of the later Tsars. In two different battles Russian soldiers had driven Japanese out of Mongolia. Geoffrey Cox (The Red Army Moves) wrote from the Finnish side of the frontier but was one of those who saw strength in the Red Army's final operations against the Mannerheim Line. He said the Russian soldiers fought bravely, that the staff officers were far more efficient than the managers of Russian factories; he complimented the weapons and equipment and admired the alertness of the high command to learn by its mistakes. It was no knife-through-butter theory for this English journalist. Moreover, as mentioned above, the military organization was backed by the planned economy so that it could count on every effort of industry and labor in support of the war.
In equipment for a war of engines the Russians were surprisingly well prepared. In mid-August it was reported by the Manchester Guardian that the Soviet armies were using against the Germans better tanks and planes than the Germans had ever seen before. The Russians had two excellent types of monoplane, one extremely fast and maneuverable and the other armed with a cannon; also two-engine bombers that could be driven at an altitude of 40,000 feet, according to Marshal Voroshilov. A little later Marshal Timoshenko stated that Soviet arms, except trench mortars, were better than the German, and Soviet artillery considerably better. A British aviation expert, returning from Moscow, reported that four layers of antiaircraft fire and hundreds of fighting planes made Moscow almost impregnable to air attack. Evidently the most expert of Russian machinists had been making armaments instead of consumer goods.
Again, the confidence of the Russians in the leadership of Stalin was already great, and was to increase during the ordeal.
The Russians were ready and eager to defend their country. Whereas the Russian soldiers had been bewildered about the war against little Finland, they recognized Germans as familiar and dangerous enemies. Russians always loved deeply their drab, monotonous country. By the time of Hitler's menaces not only their own land and their customs but even the collective farms were dear to them in contrast to anything they could expect from German conquerors. Hitler was the scourge of the Slavs. He had driven Poles and Czechs away from their own farms, from their land. And the Russian Jews knew what to expect from the Nazis. Thus, except for an ultimate increase in consumers' goods, the Russians could hope for nothing from the Germans except heartless and hateful interference. Nor did they have to learn a new attitude but only to slip back into the anti-Fascist attitude in which they had been trained for years before the Soviet-Nazi Pact. They had conceived of the Reich as a peculiarly militaristic and destructive form of capitalist imperialism. Its perfidious attack on the Soviet Union was added proof.
An hour or two after her troops had crossed the frontier, Germany declared war and was followed the same day by Rumania, Slovakia and Italy (Sunday, June 22). Finland and Hungary hesitated, then joined a few days later.
The Russians were absorbed in the exciting changes of the new war. Martial law was declared along the whole western frontier. There were black-outs in Moscow. Brest-Litovsk and Minsk were soon lost. Acting Patriarch Sergei, Metropolitan of Moscow, pronounced the decision of the Church to enlist its entire resources in the nation's war effort; 12,000 worshippers in his Cathedral prayed for the victory of the Russian troops. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet authorized the directors of factories to require daily one to three hours overtime at one and a half times the usual pay. Workmen lost their vacations but received compensation. On July 1 the Presidium, the Central Executive Committee of the Party, and the Council of Commissaries combined to choose as Committee for Defense of the State, Joseph Stalin, V. M. Molotov, George Malenkov, Klementi E. Voroshilov, and Lorenti Beria; and to concentrate all power in that Committee.
Nor was the Soviet Union alone. The first day of the war Prime Minister Churchill, with the promptitude born of astuteness, broadcast a speech of appreciation, of sympathy for the Russian villagers, with a promise of all possible help and assurance that the British, far from relaxing their efforts, would now fight with fortified determination in the cause of all free men. Next day a summary of the speech was broadcast in Russia, leaving out certain phrases of distrust of Communism but including the promise of help. Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps, accompanied by a military mission and followed by an economic mission, hurried to Moscow. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said Britain would not negotiate with Hitler 'at any time on any subject' and on July 19 Britain and Soviet Russia signed an alliance, each promising to fight Hitlerite Germany with utmost strength, to help each other in every way, and not to make peace separately. The alliance was the subject of news articles and mass meetings in Russia and it soon became extremely popular in both countries. Ambassador Maisky in London said the Soviet Union would fight from beyond the Urals if necessary. Missions went back and forth. Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Supply, visited Moscow early in September; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir H. Kingsley Wood, assured the Soviet Union of unlimited financial assistance. The United States promised aid the third day of the war and thereafter lagged further behind, but Harry Hopkins, Lend-Lease Administrator, conferred with Stalin in Moscow (July 30) and after the Atlantic Conference President Roosevelt joined Churchill in promise of maximum help to Soviet Russia (Aug. 15). The Soviet Union received British and American goods to the value of $60,000,000 before the middle of September, according to the London Sunday Times. The Soviet Union had lesser friends also. She assured Turkey that she had not asked Germany for Turkish bases; Britain joined in reassuring Turkey about the Dardanelles, and the Powers thus won Turkey's appreciation. Iran needed pressure. After having protested to the Iranian government about the large number of Germans in Iran, Britain and Russia jointly occupied the country and required the Iranian government to cede them control of roads and airdromes and to expel all Germans and their allies (Aug. 25-Sept. 9). In July the Soviet Union agreed with the exiled governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia to the principle of restoring those countries; arrangements were soon made for the release of Poles from Russian military prisons and the formation of a Polish brigade. At Moscow, Aug. 10, there was a conference of 13 Slavic nationalities.
Stalin's Leadership.
For public morale Vice Premier Molotov, the first day of the war, broadcast a brief speech denouncing the perfidy of the Germans and expressing his confidence in the armed forces, the Party and Comrade Stalin. Eleven days later (July 3) Stalin made a full, rational and simple explanation of the surprise attack and of the resulting great losses of Soviet Russia, but asserted that it was better to be right, to be resolute and so to win in the end. He gave explicit directions for the scorched earth policy in retreating: run off the rolling stock, hand over to the authorities all grain and non-ferrous metals, destroy everything that cannot be taken; drive off cattle; then form guerrilla bands to harass the enemy by breaking up his communications and setting 'fire to forest, stores, and transports.' 'This war with Fascist Germany * * * is not only a war between two armies, it is also a great war of the entire Soviet people against the German fascist forces.' He mentioned 'loyal allies' including the German people bowed under 'Hitlerite despots.' He spoke warmly of Prime Minister Churchill and of the aid of Britain and America. 'Comrades,' he added, 'our forces are numberless. ... All our forces for the support of our heroic Red Army and our glorious Red Navy! ... Forward to our Victory!'
Stalin's leadership was an important factor in Russia's resistance. He was greater in war than in peace. That he had betrayed Poland and broken his promises to respect the independence of the Baltic states, or even that he had killed off hundreds of his Old Bolshevik comrades who had fought with him against the Tsar, even these things were of minor importance to the common workmen and peasants of Russia. That he had helped earlier to starve 4,000,000 peasants to death was perhaps not clearly grasped and remembered! His supporters were the younger and more admiring people.
Battle and Toil.
Soon after Stalin's broadcast came the second period of the war, from the German attack on Smolensk on July 15 until the Russians recovered Rostov-on-Don on Nov. 29, a period of four and a half months for which Russians needed all their fortitude. In three weeks at Smolensk the Russians took heavy toll of Hitler's troops, much heavier than their ancestors had taken of Napoleon's army at that place. The latter part of July looked like a turn in the whole war; the stiff resistance by the Russians; the promise, for a few days, that the United States would join the British in resisting the Japanese. But in Russia it was one loss after another: Smolensk, Nicolaev, Dniepropetrovsk, Kiev and Poltava, Odessa, Kharkov, Rostov. (See WORLD WAR II.) Leningrad was in grave danger during most of the period and during the second part of it the Germans hammered also at the defenses of Moscow. Although the Germans occupied most of Crimea, Soviet warships helped to defend Sevastopol; other warships were busy about Murmansk, and others sank a goodly number of German freighters, destroyers and transports in the Baltic.
It was a period of severe fighting and heavy labor. Three marshals had recently been appointed (July 11): Voroshilov to defend Leningrad, Timoshenko to defend Moscow, and Budenny to defend Ukraina. A few days later Stalin became Commander-in-Chief (July 20). Guerrilla fighting was already spreading along the German communication lines. Open country and reckless Russian character gave scope for it. Arms and munitions were captured from the Germans. Food was sometimes brought by Russian planes. The guerrilla bands usually succeeded in keeping in touch with the main army. The political commissar, restored at the time of Tukhachevsky's execution, reduced to a shadow after the war with Finland, was again restored, presumably to inspire the guerrilla fighters; L. Z. Mekhlis was returned to his former position as Chief of the Political Section of the Army.
Defense of Moscow.
The camouflage of Moscow was begun July 20, two days before its first air raid. Gradually shop windows were protected by walls of sandbags, while works of art and superfluous people were sent eastward. The German radio boasted of the destruction of Moscow and the Russian air force. Soon afterward the Russian air forces began a series of air raids on Berlin. Moscow suffered much less damage than other city targets and repairs were begun speedily, often before the raid had ended. No one dreamed of declaring it an open city. It was protected on the west by defense in depth, a Stalin zone of strong points. Squads of peasant women dug tank traps, gun pits, and repaired roads. Even the older children organized themselves to care for the smaller ones and to keep up the gardens while fathers fought and mothers worked. Under the heavy attacks of October, the diplomatic corps and the foreign correspondents were sent off for about two months to Kuibyshev (Samara) on the Volga (Oct. 20-Dec. 15); at Moscow men and women of many walks of life worked in relays day and night on the concentric ramparts outside the city. Ravines and woods were studded with pillboxes. At Leningrad in September, when barricades were already appearing in the streets, Voroshilov and Zhdanov introduced a curfew, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks after 8 p.m. and closing all shops at 9 p.m. A wing of the Royal Air Force came to help Russia.
War Measures Increased.
Naturally war taxes were heavy. From July 1, men earning 300 rubles monthly paid double income tax; those earning 500 monthly paid triple. Men under twenty and women paid from 50 to 100 per cent more than their previous income taxes. Such increases were based on the rather high income taxes of 1940. Late in November the Central Committee of the Union levied a tax of from 3 to 5 per cent on unmarried or childless persons except military men and their wives and students up to the ages of 23 (women) and 25 (men). This tax would not affect many. Soviet finances received further aid from the Soviet-British trade agreement of July 16, with the attached British credit of £10,000,000 at 3 per cent. The account with the Bank of England was to be balanced quarterly and, of the amount owed for British goods in excess of the amount owed for Russian goods, the Soviet Union was to pay 40 per cent, taking the other 60 per cent out of the large credit. Avoiding the delicate question of the value of the ruble, all prices were reckoned in dollars or pounds or gold. Sir Kingsley Wood said in September, however, that the £10,000,000 figure was of merely nominal importance. The United States promised extensive aid after the Atlantic Conference and again, Oct. 2, at the end of the three-power conference in Moscow.
There were three drastic war measures of note. Late in August there were rumors, soon confirmed, that the Communists had blown up the gigantic Dniepet dam, the great provider of power, irrigation and a waterway, symbol of the industrial advance of the Soviet Union, rather than see it in German hands. Then, there was danger from the Volga 'Germans.' Their ancestors had come from Germany in the 18th century. During September hundreds of thousands of them were exiled to Siberia. They had failed to report some of their number for planning disturbances. Thirdly, there was one treason trial: in Moscow. Nov. 15, and a military tribunal sentenced to death 2 engineers, 2 technicians, and 1 economist, for distributing counter-revolutionary leaflets.
In addition to the activities of fortification and fighting, one great task was to harvest the grain of southern Russia as early as possible and ship it eastward. Early in September the Ukraïnian Commissar of Agriculture announced that the whole Ukraïnian harvest had been gathered and half of it threshed by Sept. 1. He must have forgotten a few of his occupied western regions. The Germans were reported to have taken away about 2,000,000 tons of grain. Russia's total crop, however, was unusually good — about 130,000,000 tons.
The second burden was the moving of industry, an immense and original task which the Russians found for themselves. During the previous decade the Soviet Union had followed the policy of developing the more eastern and remote industrial centers (such as the Sverdlovsk — Magnitogorsk — Novosibirsk triangle of mutually supplementary industries) to balance, in some degree, the great industries of the Moscow region and Ukraïna, and to develop resources in regions less open to enemy invasion. The war suddenly accelerated the movement. Thus it came about that when the Germans finally took Kharkov, a city of some 800,000, they found most of the factories empty. Men and machines had been shipped to safety east of the Urals or at least east of the Volga. This process could not prevent the Germans from getting large quantities of iron ore and manganese. Nor could the Russians move the blast furnaces and rolling mills but they disabled them. One rolling mill making steel for tanks, and various other industries such as the chemical industries, were expeditiously transferred far from the German grasp. Another part of the work was the building of certain necessary new factories in the new centers. British experts, observing the work said that the industry the Russians had salvaged for themselves was more important than what they had left for the Germans. Indeed the task was so successfully done that estimates for 1942 production could be generally marked up, according to the British Ministry of Economic Warfare. In spite of additional burdens of this sort the Russian railways served the Union very efficiently.
Turn of the Tide — the German Rout.
December brought a third period of the war. After holding the city a few days the Germans were turned out of Rostov-on-Don, Nov. 29, and forced to retreat along the north shore of the Sea of Azov; at the same time German troops in the north withdrew from many positions near Moscow. After a few days the German withdrawal became general around Moscow and near the Black Sea. Later in December Cossack cavalry were in active pursuit in the south, while in the north the Germans were harassed by Russians on skis, the military use of which the Russians had first encountered in Finland. In the recovered sections the railroads were very rapidly rebuilt and usually came into use five or six days after the Germans had gone. In the north many German tanks stood without fuel and a number of German sentries were frozen to death. Fighting at night disrupted the German order and gave them little chance to start their tanks, so the Russians made frequent use of night attacks, for which they had been trained. German prisoners complained of bitter cold, insufficient clothing, terrible losses, and reported grippe and typhus in the German army. The Russians saw rifts between the Germans and their allies and seized the occasion to scatter behind the lines a variety of ingenious pamphlets in various languages, explaining to each group how the Germans were exploiting it and urging the unhappy soldiers to come over to comfortable Russian prison camps. Safe conduct slips were attached. This form of warfare, invented by the Bolsheviks in 1917, carried in this case nothing about class war or world revolution. The present Bolsheviks seem to think national and personal appeals more effective. At the same time the Soviet troops pushed along piece by piece and had recovered Kerch and Kaluga by the end of the year.
Stalin's Defiant Forecast.
Three weeks before the turn of the military tide, Premier Stalin in a long broadcast speech to the Moscow Soviet reviewed the past and forecast the future. While admitting the plight of the Soviet Union, he said that the Germans were in worse plight. With less man power to start with they had lost in the first 4 months of the war more than 4,500,000 in killed, wounded and prisoners, whereas the Russians, so far, had lost less than 1,750,000. The Russians needed the help of a second European front against Germany — 'and undoubtedly this will appear in the near future' — and a great increase in tanks, planes, and guns to meet the German equipment. The following day, speaking at a celebration of the 24th anniversary of the Revolution, Stalin further encouraged his people and gave them this charge: 'The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders.... A great, liberating mission has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of that mission.'
Three weeks later the Germans were in retreat, and by January 1942, the retreat had become a rout all along the 1,000-mile front from Leningrad to Rostov.
Closer Alliances: Litvinov.
During December, Soviet foreign policy was involved in a general tightening of the anti-Hitlerite combination. Secretary Anthony Eden spent nearly the last fortnight of the year in Moscow, which he had visited in March 1935, in his pre-Munich term of office. Ambassador Ivan M. Maisky accompanied him to assist in giving him a hospitable welcome; high British officials and officers were in his suite. British ambassadors from Ankara and Teheran joined Eden, Maisky and Cripps, for long talks with Stalin and Molotov. The consultations permitted full and frank discussion and showed a welcome 'identity of views' on the policies of war and the plans for peace. The tightening of the combination had been dramatically advanced by Japan's attack (Dec. 7, 1941) and German and Italian declarations of war (Dec. 11) upon the United States. The diplomatic combination was dramatically highlighted also by Prime Minister Winston Churchill's sudden Christmas visit to Washington and Ottawa, a move parallel to Eden's visit to Moscow. The Washington conferences planned united military action.
The Soviet Union made another contribution in the appointment of a successor to Ambassador Oumansky at Washington. Maxim Litvinov, Commissar of Foreign Affairs from 1930 and the famous advocate of collective security, had dropped into the background after his policy had been ruined by Chamberlain's and Daladier's action at Munich. In May 1939 he had resigned as Commissar. In February 1941 he was even dropped from the Central Executive Committee of the Party for 'inability to discharge obligations.' But on Nov. 6 he was given the new obligation of developing closer ties with the United States and getting for Soviet Russia a large supply of the tanks and planes, for which Stalin expressed great need. Litvinov was more than an ambassador; he was Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs residing abroad.
Hitler had hoped for the support of other powers in his attack on Communist Russia. Mussolini and Franco each sent token armies. Hungary joined under pressure. Finland and Rumania saw the chance for revenge. But the Soviet Union had more friends: China, the most persistent, Britain, United States, the exiled governments of the conquered countries of Europe from Greece to Norway (not counting the Baltic States), with the Dominions of the British Empire and the anti-German states of Central America. At the beginning of 1942, 26 states signed the pact for mutual assistance and no separate peace. Turkey was friendly and even Japan was neutralized. It was not the Reich but Communist Russia that had an abundance of allies. One reason for the success of the Soviet Union was her definite stand against Nazi Germany. Also, the period of more direct diplomacy brought more appreciable results than the earlier period of commercial negotiations, perhaps partly because the earlier period had prepared the ground. Soviet Russia had thus come into her natural position in political geography. Since she is opposed to Nazi Germany and feudal Japan, the Anglo-Saxon democracies have need of her and she of them. Their policies and hers have no essential conflict. There is, of course, a difference between Communism and Capitalism but these two doctrines, weakening under the menace of rampant militarism, have allowed Russia and Anglo-Saxony to come into the beneficial relation which geography indicates.
Effects of the War.
Certain effects of this intense war seem already apparent in Russia, early as it is to judge them. The physical and spiritual agonies of war have naturally been greatest in the invaded areas. In spite of instructions, the soldiers on each side seem to have relented and taken many prisoners. The Russians encouraged deserters. Like other peoples, the Russians in the conquered areas preferred the German regular soldiers who ruled them for the first month to the high-handed Party men who followed.
For all Russians the war meant strict regimentation. But Russians had had much of that under the 5-Year Plans, and much more of it after Munich. The Russians and the Germans were the only two peoples who prepared by years of hard work in advance for the great war which the Nazi leaders wanted to bring on. Russia, unlike England, had made most of the necessary social changes before the war.
Then there was the rapid movement of Russian industry. For many centuries populous centers of industry and trade have usually been located near the coasts. Recently, however, great industrial communities have migrated to the western interior of China and others have moved to the eastern interior of Russia or into Siberia. This seems an anthropographic revolution caused largely by the bombing plane.
The war has had an opposite tendency, however, in the relations of Russia to Europe. Munich had opened a gulf between them. Soviet Russia had been ignored, her collective security kicked aside. The government then closed the shell of the country, made it more difficult for westerners to visit Russia and for Russians to visit the West. Furthermore, the treason trials were still fresh in the western mind. Western papers could get little news of Russia. However, the war rapidly multiplied contacts. There were radio messages. Missions went back and forth. Fourteen Russian trade union leaders went with Eden in December to stay some weeks in London and take part in the Anglo-Saxon trade union congress. Western papers are now full of Russian news; it may be supposed that Russian papers have much more news of the West.
An emotional trend toward Europe had begun before the war. The Kremlin's agitators appealed less to submerged classes and turned to popular fronts, or urged fuller independence or fuller democracy. The world revolution of Trotsky had shown signs of turning into self-determination under Stalin. Russia's wartime surge of national patriotism brings her back emotionally to Europe, at least for the duration of the war. The Slavic-Marxian pattern of society was already weakening during the thirties; it may be much further softened and chipped by Russia's rapprochement to her comrades in arms. See also GERMANY; WORLD WAR II.
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