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From Donny Gluckstein (ed.): Fighting on all Fronts: Popular Resistance in the Second World War, London 2015, pp. 129–149.
Copyright © Bookmarks Publications.
Published here with kind permission of the publishers.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The battle between Germany and the Soviet Union formed the largest and most important theatre of operations during the Second World War. Hitler’s Wehrmacht deployed 674 divisions there compared to the 56 to 75 opposing the D-Day landings in Western Europe. [1] Yet the Soviet Union sits uneasily within the history of a war that officially began when Germany attacked Poland in September 1939.
Just a week before, Stalin and Hitler had jointly signed up to a pact partitioning Poland. Indeed, the Soviet Union only fought Germany in 1941 after it was itself attacked. Due to this belated entry Russians refer to the “Great Fatherland War” rather than the Second World War. [2] The Soviet Union seems so very different, politically and socially, to all other protagonists that it is legitimate to ask whether it fits into the pattern of war from above and below seen elsewhere.
The Tsarist Empire was 5,000 miles across and 2,500 miles from top to bottom. It employed a powerful, centralised state to intensively exploit the people to both staff and pay for a large army. This was imperialism on a grand scale but of the traditional kind rather than the modem version described by Lenin as “the highest stage of capitalism”. Indeed, the heavy burden of the state depressed economic development, perpetuating a backward semi-feudal society composed of a vast amalgam of Russian and non-Russian groups.
The “Russian steamroller” could prevail as long as the sheer number of soldiers deployed brought success. But advances abroad in military technology threatened this strategy. Fear of falling behind motivated Tsar Peter the Great to open a window on the west by moving his capital from Moscow to St Petersburg in 1712. Thus industrial development was consciously championed by the state in order to provide the military basis for its survival.
In 1914 the Russian economy was still largely dominated by agriculture and the challenge of war proved too much for it. Mass strikes, army mutinies and peasant seizures of the land swept Tsarism aside in February 1917 and carried the Bolsheviks to power in October. The peasantry gained the land while the working class established a new form of democracy through soviets. The Bolshevik rejection of imperialism was expressed by Lenin’s Decree on Peace: “The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war.” [3] The principle of opposing the dominance of “the strong and rich nations” over “weak nationalities” was also applied at home when oppressed non-Russian nationalities were offered the chance to secede.
The October Revolution represented the antithesis of the past. If the state had formerly been shaped by the needs of imperialism, now there was a chance of escaping these imperatives in favour of internationalism and socialism. A new society, however, could not survive as an isolated socialist island in a sea of capitalism. Successful international socialist revolution was vital for two reasons.
Firstly, only this could provide the resources needed to improve the lives of the masses rather than merely sharing out poverty equally. Secondly, unless capitalism was undermined the state would again face pressure to defend its vast, economically backward territory from attack That threat was evident in the foreign intervention and civil war of 1917–1921.
By 1923 hopes of international revolution had passed, ending hopes that isolation would soon be broken. The working class was decimated, leaving a society dominated by the state/party bureaucracy. Once collective control from below had disintegrated a factional struggle developed within the Bolshevik Party itself. Trotsky, who was loyal to the original aim of internationalism, clashed with others who, like the Romanovs, saw their state as jostling for position in a world interplay of states. In the latter camp were Stalin and Bukharin who saw the national state’s interest as paramount.
Though they claimed to be building “socialism in one country”, that phrase was merely a staging post towards imperialism because if survival was not secured by international revolution, it would have to be sustained through military competition. As Stalin put it: “We are 50 or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must close this gap in ten years. Either we shall do it, or they will crush us.” [4] Everything was now “subordinated to the supreme question of the defence of the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]”. [5] Therefore, in conscious emulation of Tsar “Peter the Great [who] built mills and factories to supply the army and strengthen the defences of the country” [6], Stalin launched a policy of intensive industrialisation in 1929. As before, the method employed was massive exploitation of both the workers and the peasants. From now on the state did not exist to defend the population; the population existed to defend the state.
Military power required the expansion of heavy industry (coal, iron and steel) and that could not wait for light industry (making consumer goods) to develop in parallel. The five-year plan involved spectacular growth in heavy industry. By 1932 output was almost double the pre-war level with particular areas, such as electric power and machine tools, seven and 13 times greater respectively. [7] While all forms of capitalism are exploitative, Soviet industrialisation, which put huge demands on labour while offering few consumer goods in return, was particularly brutal.
That was obvious in agriculture. The October Revolution legitimised the peasant seizure of the land and its division into family plots. But Stalin wanted forced collectivisation so as to release labour and food for burgeoning towns, along with earnings from grain exports to buy foreign technology. In the four years to 1933 state procurement of grain doubled while grain exports increased 56 times over. [8] But the process was deeply contradictory. Seizure of peasant farms led to resistance and a cut in output. By 1933 the country was in the grip of an appalling famine which cost millions of lives in the Ukraine and elsewhere.
In the towns there were few consumer goods, housing was totally inadequate and from 1929 to 1933 workers’ wages fell by half. [9] Disgruntled workers kept labour productivity low and, deprived of the right to strike or protest collectively, discontent was expressed individually through changing jobs. This was economically disruptive. In 1930 the average worker moved workplace every eight months. In 1939 it was every 13 months. [10] At one Moscow factory half the workforce quit during the first half of 1936 due to a drop in earnings. [11]
Forced labour was another feature. At this time there were between 3 and 5 million people in slave labour camps – the notorious gulag. Filtzer writes that: “By the time war broke out in June 41 the Soviet working class was in a worse position politically and socially than it had been at any time since the Bolshevik Revolution.” [12]
To enforce such draconian policies Stalin not only had to repress society in general but also parts of the state itself, starting with the Bolshevik Party. By 1927 Trotsky’s Left Opposition was destroyed. Then Stalin turned on his erstwhile ally Bukharin and his Right Opposition. The scale of repression was revealed in President Khrushchev’s “secret speech” of 1956: “Of the 139 members and candidates of the party’s Central Committee (elected in 1934) 70 percent were arrested and shot ... Of 1,966 delegates.. .1,108 were arrested.” [13]
Stalinist terror is often portrayed as the arbitrary, irrational result of one man’s obsession. However, it had a double purpose. The gains of October 1917 had to be nullified in order to meet the requirements of imperialist competition. Therefore, as Reiman has pointed out, repression had a horrible logic:
While political terror played an important role, the real core of Stalinism ... was social terror, the most brutal and violent treatment of very wide sections of the population, the subjection of millions to exploitation and oppression of an absolutely exceptional magnitude and intensity. The social function of terror and repression explains the apparent irrationality, senselessness, and obscure motivation of Stalin’s penal system. As a social instrument, terror could not be aimed narrowly, at particular persons. It was an instrument of violent change, affecting the living and working conditions of millions, imposing the very worst forms of social oppression, up to and including the slave labour of millions of prisoners. [14]
The results of this programme were impressive at one level. The first Russian tank model appeared in 1929 and by 1933, 3,000 were produced annually. The Soviet Union developed the equivalent of the Panzer Division two years before Germany. By the mid-1930s “the Soviet Union led the world in production, planning, and fielding of mechanised forces. Perhaps most important, the Red Army was well ahead of its German counterparts.” [15] On the eve of war, while Germany marginally outnumbered the Soviet Union in divisions and soldiers, the ratio of Soviet to German tanks was 3.8:1, planes 2.2:1 and artillery 1.4:1. [16]
And yet Stalinism risked its own core purpose – the defence of the state. Suspicion of virtually every segment of the population, including its own high officials, became a self-destructive process. The repression designed to ultimately strengthen the military spilled over into repression of these very forces. Between May 1937 and September 1938:
36,761 men were purged in the army and more than 3,000 in the navy ... All military district commanders were removed, 90 percent of the district chiefs of staff and deputies, 80 percent of corps and divisional commanders, 90 percent of staff officers and chiefs of staff. A sharp fall in the intellectual quality of officers resulted. By the beginning of 1941 only 7.1 percent of commanding officers had a higher military education ... and 12 percent of officers and political personnel had had no military education at all. By the summer of 1941, about 75 percent of officers and 70 percent of political officers had been in their posts for less than a year. [17]
This not only removed valuable experience. US historians conclude that those who survived realised that “in contrast to the German belief in subordinate initiative ... any show of independent judgment was hazardous to their personal health”. [18] Thus: “The bloodletting ... tore the brain from the Red Army, smashed its morale, stifled any spark of original thought, and left a magnificent hollow military establishment, ripe for catastrophic defeat.” [19]
Stalin’s domestic policies had both prepared the Soviet Union for an inter-imperialist conflict and damaged its chances of success. It possessed mountains of military equipment but had destroyed the skilled people who could deploy it. This did not go unnoticed. Hitler commented: “This guy is a lunatic! He is destroying his own army!” [20]
The same contradictions obtained in the sphere of foreign policy. The millions of foreign Communists who made up the Communist International (Comintern) identified the Soviet Union as the embodiment of socialism and Stalin was perfectly prepared to subordinate their energy and enthusiasm to his imperialist goals.
In 1929 he needed left cover to carry through counter-revolution at home and so adopted an insane policy called “the Third Period line”. This led the powerful German Communist Party to categorise the German Socialist Party as “social fascist”. To divide the working class at a time when the real fascists, the Nazis, were making a bid for power was an awful mistake. The error became clear after Hitler became German chancellor in 1933 and wiped out the Communists. Stalin had helped an aggressive imperialist committed to Lebensraum (“living space” in the east) gain command of Europe’s strongest economy.
Now that the Soviet Union was under increased threat the question was, who were its real allies? Although the prospects of international revolution had receded for the time being, grassroots opposition to imperialist policies was still the best means of avoiding a war for repartition of the world. Stalin did not see it that way. He was now a player in the imperialist game and saw his future as playing one state off against the other. This was the genesis of the Popular Front, a policy diametrically opposite to the Third Period. Launched in 1934, it consisted of seeking an alliance with Britain and France against Germany. To achieve this Stalin was prepared to sacrifice the revolutionary potential of the mass uprising in Spain against Franco and his Nazi/fascist backers. A workers’ victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) would have boosted the confidence of anti-imperialism everywhere. The Popular Front policy prevented that. During the Second World War the interests of the resistance movements led by Communists would also be sacrificed.
Despite the switch to a popular front policy Soviet appeals for friendship were ignored by the British and French governments. This was epitomised by the fate of Czechoslovakia, the last surviving parliamentary democratic state in Central or Eastern Europe. When Hitler threatened invasion an alliance of the Soviet Union and the West would have confronted Germany with war on two fronts. But the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler at the Munich Conference of September/October 1938, handing over the key defensive region of the Sudetenland. In March 1939 the rest of Czechoslovakia was dismembered.
If one imperialist camp was uncooperative, Stalin concluded, why not collaborate with another? The result was the Hitler-Stalin pact, signed on 23 August 1939. It is true this mirrored the Chamberlain-Hitler pact of Munich [21], but that is not a justification. Making Poland the victim after Czechoslovakia was no improvement. Yet Volkogonov argues: “Looking back, the Non-Aggression Pact appears extremely tarnished, and morally an alliance with the Western democracies would have been immeasurably more preferable. But neither Britain nor France were ready for such an alliance. From the point of view of state interest the Soviet Union had no other acceptable choice.” [22] And that is precisely the point. Once the force that could oppose imperialism, the international working class, was abandoned for “state interest” in the imperialist game, the outcome could only be a self-serving admixture of fear, cynical greed and shared imperialist interests.
Alongside public phraseology of non-aggression secret protocols made it a pact for war of conquest. [23] As Stalin said, the non-aggression pact was “cemented by blood”. [24] While Germany seized western Poland, the Soviet Union would be authorised to occupy what remained as well as the Baltic states and Romanian territory. This added 23 million people to the Soviet Union’s population of 170 million. [25] It also meant that during the Second World War the Nazis found numerous collaborators in the (formerly Polish) Western Ukraine, the Baltic states, Romania and Finland. [26]
On the first anniversary of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact the official Soviet newspaper, Pravda, admitted it assisted Hitler’s war strategy: “this pact has made things easier for us; it has also been of great advantage to Germany, since she can be completely confident of peace on her Eastern borders”. [27] Exploiting this confidence for his own ends, Stalin used Germany’s preoccupation with the Second World War to launch an ill-fated war with Finland. Not for nothing did Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, tell the Supreme Soviet on 31 October 1939 that: “the new Soviet-German relations are built on a strong basis of mutual interests”. [28]
It is easy to imagine the demoralising effect on anti-fascists everywhere of Molotov welcoming the subjugation of Poland, “that monster child of the Versailles treaty”. [29] And later on as the Wehrmacht stormed across Western Europe Pravda put forward an extraordinary explanation for who was at fault: “the German armies have achieved considerable successes. They have occupied the greater part of Holland ... We can see how great is the responsibility of the Anglo-French imperialists who, by rejecting Germany’s peace offers, set off the Second Imperialist War in Europe.” [30]
When Germany came to invade the Soviet Union, it descended upon an imperialist competitor which had partly wasted its advantage at home and damaged potential for resistance to Nazi war plans abroad.
Despite Stalin’s manoeuvring, war was virtually inevitable, and his approach to it combined avarice and cowardice. On 5 May 1941 he told his generals they were entering an “era during which the Soviet state would develop and expand”. [31] At that time he expected to make the first move [32], believing Hitler would not start a war on two fronts and would first defeat Britain before acting. [33] In June, however, Stalin was warned no less than 80 times that Germany was about to invade [34]:
Communist railway workers in Sweden, resistance fighters in Poland, and numerous other agents reported the massive buildup of forces in the east. German high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft flew over Soviet territory on more than 300 occasions ... [35]
Unfortunately, Stalin’s fear of displeasing Hitler had become “maniacal”, according to General Zhukov, the most important Soviet military figure of the war. [36] So while senior commanders called for a general alert, Stalin responded by saying that “it would be premature to issue that order ... border units must not allow themselves to be provoked”. [37]
This mistake came very close indeed to losing the entire war [38] because it gave Operation Barbarossa (the German codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union) the overwhelming element of surprise. The experience of Oleg Ozerov shows the consequences:
I was a participant in the fighting from the very start, 4 a.m. on the morning of 22 June 1941 ... The terrible pressure of the fascists compelled us to withdraw from prepared positions. The route was difficult and long. Enemy aircraft commanded the sky, German tanks bypassed our positions and threatened to surround us ... It was totally unlike what we were told to expect; that we would be fighting “on the enemy’s territory, and at little cost in blood”. [39]
On the first morning 1,200 aircraft were destroyed, mostly on the ground. [40] After the first day the Germans had penetrated some 60 km. [41] By the end of the first week “virtually all of the Soviet mechanised corps lost 90 percent of their strength”. [42] In the period June to December 1941 the Germans took some 3 million prisoners of war (POWs). Their fate was tragic. The total number of Soviet POWs who died from hunger, cold and torture was 5 million. [43]
The impact on civilians was similar. Grossman was a witness:
I’ve never seen anything like what I am seeing now ... Exodus! Biblical exodus! Vehicles are moving in eight lanes ... This isn’t a flood, this isn’t a river, it’s the slow movement of a flowing ocean, this flow is hundreds of metres wide. Children’s heads, fair and dark, are looking out from under the improvised tents covering the carts, as well as the biblical beards of Jewish elders, shawls of peasant women, hats of Ukrainian uncles, and the black-haired heads of Jewish girls and women. What silence is in their eyes, what wise sorrow, what sensation of fate, of a universal catastrophe. [44]
With Stalin close to a nervous breakdown it fell to Molotov to inform a stunned population by radio that yesterday’s friend had committed an aggression “unprecedented in the history of civilisation”. [45] By 3 July Stalin’s courage had returned but he gave no hint of apology. “The war of fascist Germany against the USSR began under favourable conditions for their army, and unfavourable ones for the Soviet army.” His speech combined two key elements. The first was an appeal for “a great war of all the Soviet peoples against the German-fascist army ... a fatherland war”. Yet even as the general secretary called for war by the people, it was not a war for the people but for his repressive regime.
Stalin would not be Stalin if he did not call for the extermination of the internal enemy. With no sense of self-reflection Stalin declared: “We must organise merciless struggle against all disorganising forces, deserters, panic-mongers ... All those whose cowardly panic interferes with defence must be immediately judged by military Tribunal, regardless of who they are.” [46]
It was ironic that the people’s war that Stalin now invoked was hampered by his own past policies. It is difficult to ascertain popular opinion under a totalitarian state but a study of NKVD (secret police) files in Ablodosk, Eastern Ukraine, gets over this obstacle. Lack of enthusiasm for war showed itself in 1940 when the government sought to raise three battalions from the area: 500 invitations to recruitment offices were issued, 40 individuals attended but only three actually joined the Red Army. [47] Significantly, the imperialist seizure of Eastern Poland was disapproved of: “The Bolsheviks said that we didn’t need any foreign land. So why are they crossing the Polish frontier and seizing foreign land.” [48]
On the eve of Barbarossa comments like this were recorded: “Advance towards socialism? We are miles behind the bourgeois countries,” and “Communism is supposed to be less about worrying about work, and more about yourself.” Thus the latest extension of working hours felt like “the imposition of martial law” and just “a way of replenishing the prisons”. The most negative views were expressed by women whose husbands had been purged. Even after 22 June one woman said: “We are happy if the Germans cross the Soviet Union’s frontier as our men will be released from prison. Hitler will replace the current leaders. That would make them cry, but we are crying too.” Another opined: “Thank goodness the war has begun ...without the Communists life will be better.” [49]
The mood in the Soviet Union changed very quickly once the imperialist character of the invaders was revealed. German soldiers were told: “For your personal glory you must kill 100 Russians. Have no heart and no nerves – in war they are unnecessary. Extinguish pity and compassion, kill all Russians; none should remain – old, women, girls or boys. Kill. That will save you from defeat and guarantee your land forever.” [50] The general guideline for German rule was: “Under no circumstances should the status quo be maintained ... This will necessarily lead to the extinction of both the [native agriculture] industry and larger segments of the population ... Tens of millions of people in these areas will become superfluous and either die or have to move to Siberia.” [51] Along with this came the Holocaust and involved directly targeted murder, such as the mass shooting of 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar, Kiev.
Other horrors were recorded by Grossman. He described conditions for miners under the Germans: “One day of absence from work meant a concentration camp ... They were beaten with lashes while working”. [52] He interviewed a young teenage boy:
“Where is your father?”
“Killed,” he answered.
“And mother?”
“She died.”
“Have you got brothers and sisters?”
“A sister. They took her to Germany.”
“Have you got any relatives?”
“No, they were all burned in a partisan village.” [53]
Werth, another eyewitness, summed up the general reaction to the carnage:
They were robbing, and looting and killing; when they were retreating they would bum down every house, and in the depth of winter civilians were left without house and home ... The anger and resentment against the Germans, mixed with a feeling of infinite pity for the Russian people, for the Russian land, defiled by the invader, produced an emotional reaction of national pride and national injury. [54]
Ablodosk’s NKVD registered the impact of Nazi aggression on popular consciousness. During the first half of 1941 there were 2,304 army deserters and 1,684 draft dodgers; but between 22 June and 1 September 1941 the figure for deserters was 59. [55] In workplaces large-scale collections were held to support the army. The 2,270 workers of a locomotive factory set out to “double and then triple production” norms. This may have been management propaganda but it was the case that at the end of 1941 output had exceeded the annual norm by 123 percent. Thousands of local people also became blood donors. [56]
War from below, a people’s war, was a common phenomenon in the Second World War and the Soviet Union was no exception. Many commentators have argued that it was this which rescued the country. Xblkogonov, historian and former head of the Soviet military’s psychological warfare department, writes: “In those dark days, the enemy struck blow after blow and Stalin felt that only a miracle would save him But it was the people who saved him, the people who found the strength to stand firm.” [57]
It was this readiness of ordinary people to risk their lives in fighting fascism that turned the situation around. And, as one veteran puts it: “We were not defending Stalin, but our homes and families ... At the front, in our battery were Armenians, Kazakhs, Russians and representatives of other nationalities. There were many nationalities in my unit. There were those who didn’t want to fight, but we were an example of heroism.” [58] Another explains that: “For me Stalin appears to have been the embodiment of an evil genius – cunning, but absolutely amoral and ruthless. We did not win the war thanks to Stalin, but despite him!” [59]
In the rest of Europe the rapid advance of Axis forces either drove governments into exile (as in Greece or Yugoslavia) or induced them to collaborate (like Vichy France). In these circumstances resistance movements were relatively free of Allied imperialism and reflected the needs of the ordinary people who participated. That was not the case in the Soviet Union. The social atomisation wrought by Stalinism, fear of repression and the destruction of viable alternatives such as Trotskyism, made it virtually impossible to generate a collective response that stood apart from the regime.
This did not mean that the state could do without the people’s war. One difficulty Stalin faced was that official “Communist” ideology was tarnished by association with repression and exploitation, so it was sidelined. On the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1941 Stalin talked of a war inspired by “our great ancestors”, victorious in battles in 1242, 1380, over Poland in the 1600s, and against Napoleon. [60] Relations with the Russian Orthodox Church were also carefully cultivated. [61] Instead of combating extreme German nationalism with internationalism, he invoked Russian chauvinism
The dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943 was emblematic of the new direction in internal propaganda as well as a move to placate Britain and the US. To the extent that such reactionary appeals were felt to be effective, this unfortunately proved the lack of a meaningful alternative on offer. But such chauvinism came with a price – the alienation of numerous non-Russian victims of “Russification” under the tsars.
The presence of people’s war but its lack of independent self-expression was evident in four arenas: the Red Army, partisan struggles, among Soviet citizens in the unoccupied areas and non-Soviet movements under Nazi occupation.
It was in the Red Army that the mettle of the people’s war was teste6d to the greatest degree. According to one fairly conservative estimate, the Soviet Union suffered 10 million military deaths. Britain and the US lost 300,000 and 274,000 respectively. [62] This disparity cannot be attributed to inferior fighting abilities on the part of the Red Army. Although 3.2 Red Army soldiers died for every one German [63] this ratio was partly due to the disastrous way Stalin allowed millions of his soldiers to be captured and killed early on. The ratio of Allied to Axis deaths on the eastern front was 1.3 to 1 compared to 2.2 to 1 in the west. [64]
The shattering assault of the Wehrmacht did lead to disarray and a loss of nerve. In July 1942 Stalin’s Order 227, “Not one step backwards” introduced draconian penalties for “cowards and deserters”. Anyone who surrendered would be “be shot on the spot” and their family arrested. [65] This undoubtedly helped restore order and stem the rout. But soon afterwards the war from below against fascism became a self-generating phenomenon and so, as one veteran puts it, “The inpact of Order 227 was not prolonged. Already after a few months.. .it was more or less ‘forgotten’ as more punishment measures were not needed”. [66]
The Battle of Stalingrad, fought during the winter of 1942–1943, is generally recognised as the key turning point in the fortunes of war. Before this event the Axis powers were in the ascendant. Afterwards their doom was generally predicted, even though many years of fighting lay ahead. Chuikov, a key commander at Stalingrad, told Grossman: “A soldier who’d spent three days here considered himself an old-timer. Here, people only lived for one day.” [67] Viktor Karelin lost both hands in fighting and describes the circumstances:
We had to fight the enemy step-by-step, one room after the other, floor after floor, structure after structure ... I made it to the middle of the street in two or three leaps. And suddenly a burst of fire flashed in front of my eyes.. .my left forearm began to bum with pain. Around had passed through it ... Then I looked at my right hand. The fingers on my gloves had been mangled into unrecognisable shreds, like the frayed ends of a rope ... A mine detonated several metres behind me ... Twice my comrades had tried to drag me out from under fire, each time unsuccessfully. One Soviet soldier was killed, the other seriously wounded. [68]
While civilians, partisans and soldiers centred their fight on the Nazi enemy, the state focused on maintaining its grip. It fought the imperialist rival but continued to suppress its own population. Order 227 had established penal battalions to which those who had been imprisoned by the enemy were sent. Almost half a million Red Army POWs ended up in these units. Alexander Revich, who escaped from the Germans twice, was one:
Punishment battalions meant death. 90 percent of the time they were used for surprise attacks, usually without artillery support. While army advances were backed by tanks, a soldier in a punishment battalion fought with bare hands and virtually all of them died. They could go to hell, because to have been captured, was an absolute crime. [69]
Oleg Ozerov was taken as a POW to France but managed to join the Resistance there. He was bitter about his return home in 1945. Interrogated by SMERSH, the counter-terrorist department, he felt:
Stalin simply betrayed us. He considered anyone who became a POW to be a traitor. We were not even recognised as having stoically resisted fascist conquest before or after capture. Yet we had created secret cells and organised escapes. According to German figures, 500,000 Soviet prisoners successfiilly broke out in the war years. Many were recaptured or shot, but those who made it to freedom, joined partisan units and continued the fight against occupation. [70]
Nevertheless: “The majority of my comrades, former prisoners of the Germans, ended up in the Gulag after the war despite their fighting for the Resistance! Many were shot without a trial or died in Soviet camps.” [71] Stalin’s assault on his own people was less intense than against his imperialist rival but the scale was still enormous. When the occupied territories were recovered the NKVD arrested 931,549 people for “checking” of whom two thirds were in the armed services. [72]
Partisans in occupied Soviet territory, like their counterparts elsewhere in Axis-occupied Europe, acquired a powerful reputation for anti-fascist activity. Yet their path to struggle was fraught. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet Union, marshalling the skills and experience of veterans from the civil war period, made considerable preparations for partisan warfare. However, as P.K. Ponomarenko, who led the Second World War partisan movement from Moscow later wrote, “Due to Stalin’s wrong and mistaken position, that we would only be fighting beyond our own frontiers ... all that work was cast aside.” [73] Many experts in partisan warfare were killed in the purges of 1937–1938. The movement developed in spite of these obstacles.
It is inportant not to idealise the red partisan movement. Sokolov suggests that it was often sheer survival under conditions of occupation that drove some to join. Some 60 percent were escaped POWs or Red Army soldiers overtaken by the swift enemy advance. [74] The rest were local inhabitants. There were examples of partisans pillaging local villages, massacring the families of those believed to be collaborators, fighting each other or lapsing into passivity rather than confronting the enemy. [75] Although the Nazi view that Slavs were “Untermenschen” (sub-human) was a drive towards resistance, defections in both directions indicate that ideological principle was not always the main motivation, with some choosing the path of working for the Germans as an alternative survival strategy. [76]
Nonetheless, between November 1942 and March 1943 some 125,000 fighters [77] undertook 2,500 attacks on the enemy railway system, wrecking 750 locomotives and 4,000 wagons. In the summer of 1943 there were 142,000 partisans with 215,000 reserves. [78] A German officer described the impact:
The struggle with the partisans is different to the fighting at the front. They are everywhere and nowhere ... blowing up railways, communication routes, acts of sabotage at all existing enterprises, robbery etc. They become ever more brazen and unfortunately we don’t have enough security forces to act decisively against them. We only have the strength, with the Hungarians, to guarantee the main roads, railways and centres of population. Over broad swathes the partisans rule, with their own government and administration. [79]
Some partisan operations were on a grand scale. The destruction of the Savkino Bridge in March 1943 was the work of a 3,000-strong assault force. [80]
Such feats were often accomplished without external assistance, arms coming from supplies left behind by the retreating Red Army. In 1942 a commander in Belorussia sent this radio message: “Young men and women, the old, beg with tears in their eyes to be taken into the partisans, but the numbers we can take are limited by the supply of guns ... We need armaments if we are going to put more people on the front line.” This plea was echoed by many others. [81] And yet the risks of joining up were enormous. In the autumn of 1943 partisan brigades attempting to force the Dnieper lost 70 percent of their number in a few days. [82] Captured partisans were tortured and killed. The Germans reported that:
In the overwhelming majority of cases the interrogation of partisans is very difficult. Despite the brutal methods employed, due to their fanatically-held convictions, members of partisan groups refuse to give testimony. It is only at the moment of their being shot that they confess their devotion to Stalin and membership of the partisans. [83]
Though red partisans fought heroically like their counterparts elsewhere, they never developed an independent trajectory. Foreign partisans clashed with the Axis and pursued a path different to that of Allied governments. In their situation admiration for the Soviet Union, mistakenly identified as the embodiment of “actually existing socialism”, was no immediate hindrance to this dual struggle (problems arising mainly after the weir). But under occupation the proximity of the Stalinist regime across porous front lines tied the red partisans to the Soviet government.
Furthermore, that institution left nothing to chance. Top-down control of the partisans was ever-present. A Central Partisan Headquarters was established in Moscow in May 1942. Stalin’s instructions were that “alongside their fighting activities, the leading organs of the partisan movement, commanders and commissars of partisan units must always disseminate among the population the rightness of the Soviet Union’s cause”. [84] Another source of control was through the supply of weaponry. One directive required that apart from arms seized from the enemy, “all arms and equipment for the partisan movement … must go through the appropriate application process”. [85]
The incredible speed of the German advance, which overtook so many Red Army formations, meant that basic defence tasks often fell to civilians. Veterans describe the role of the people’s militias that formed spontaneously in the defence of Leningrad: “Volunteers showed exceptional heroism, though it was fairly absurd that they were fighting at the front at all. They had insufficient military training and lacked arms. We had one gun between three! Still, I am quite certain that it was the volunteers who saved Leningrad.” [86] The whole population was involved.
Another Leningrad veteran was then a 13-year-old girl. Elena Rzhevskaia watched the militia march off from her window: “There were workers, students, white-collar employees, musicians and professors ... They all went to fight the enemy inspired by an enormous wave of patriotism I didn’t feel like a hero. I simply had to share the fate of my people, of my country.” [87] So she joined the partisans in the woods.
The evacuation of industry to the east, well beyond the reach of the advancing Germans, was one of the most extraordinary non-military feats of the Second World War. It could not have been achieved without a titanic physical effort. The figures are staggering. By October 1941, 65 percent of the Economic Ministry’s military-industrial enterprises had been relocated. Between July and November 1941, 1,523 factories, 1,360 related to armaments, were transferred using 1.5 million railroad wagons. [88] These plants were dismantled, loaded, and reconstructed “non-stop for 24 hours a day, often under enemy bombing”. [89] Writing in 1942 a US eyewitness wrote: “Even if Moscow is lost, the Red armies will be able to go on fighting for months, even years, basing themselves on the stronghold of the Urals ... All this sums up one basic reason why the Soviet Union has not suffered decisively as a result of Hitler’s attack The second basic reason is the Soviet people.” [90]
If in the occupied lands Soviet partisans were unable to develop any real independence from the Stalinist state, were there alternative currents ideologically free from both Moscow and Berlin? We have seen that Stalinist repression in the pre-war period minimised the chances of organised opposition developing in the Soviet Union. Now in the parts under German control there was a new, equally vicious power at work How would the population react?
We have seen the core of German policy was racism and imperialist exploitation which planned the deaths of millions. But there were counter-currents to this blanket approach. Klaus von Shtraffenberg of the SS wrote in 1942: “The SS, despite its Untermenschen theory, uses people without scruple. And if Himmler organises a Russian liberation movement, he will win for the SS hundreds of thousands of Russians.” [91] This more flexible approach opened the way for Germany to encourage collaboration.
Caught in a vice between the two power blocs, some chose the German side, though the number of Soviet citizens who did this is disputed. [92] Zhukov and Kovtin think the number between 700,000 and a million, Medinskii suggests 200,000 [93], while Burovskii says “millions”. [94] Given that there were over 5 million Soviet POWs and the population under German occupation reached 80 million, even the higher estimates show collaboration was limited.
In May 1943 Germany’s “Eastern troops” were formed of 170 battalions, of which 30 came from Turkestan, 21 were Cossack, 12 Azeri, 12 Georgian, ten Ukrainian, nine Armenian and so on. [95] Interpreting such data is difficult, and there is no agreement among contemporary Soviet historians about whether the Germans were using the collaborators as their tools or whether these people were leaning on Nazi support as a necessary resource to defend themselves from the Stalinist system Undoubtedly the motives were varied. Some joined the Axis to escape life as Soviet POWs, whose death rate at the hands of the Germans was 58 percent, compared to 4 percent for British and US POWs. [96] Others were reacting to Russian chauvinism stretching back to tsarist times. No doubt some wholeheartedly agreed with fascism and became its willing perpetrators.
The complexity of the issue at the level of whole ethnic groups can be illustrated by reference to the Crimean Tatars and Chechens. During the Second World War Germany hoped to bring Turkey on to its side and so wooed the ethnically related Tatars. “Racial specialists” from Berlin were tasked with reclassifying them from “lower race” to “Eastern Goths”. Between 8,000 and 20,000 volunteered for active military service under the Germans. [97] Traffic was not all in one direction, however. At Soviet Partisan HQ the person responsible for the area reported: “The atrocities, pillaging and violence of the Germans embitters and enrages the population of the occupied territories ... In the last six weeks 14,060 have joined partisan units, of which there are now 138.” [98] Tatars played a part in the Red Army too. While they formed 2.5 percent of the Soviet population, they made up 1.4 percent of those given the military honour of Hero of the Soviet Union This ratio compares favourably with other ethnic groups such as Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Georgians and so on. [99]
Chechnya illustrates the link between pre-war Soviet imperialism and the unfolding of events later on. The “Autonomous” Republic of Chechnya had a population of 380,000 in 1939, of whom 57,000 were Chechen and 258,000 Russian, the rest coming from a variety of backgrounds. There were very few city dwellers among the largely Muslim Chechens whose occupation was overwhelmingly farming. Therefore, they were disproportionately hurt by forced collectivisation in the 1930s. A key element of Chechen personal property was livestock, including horses. In the process of concentration into 490 giant collective farms incorporating 69,400 villages, most livestock was removed. The 1938 purges hit Chechen Communists hard and the party halved in size. [100]
Despite this background, in August 1942 the region produced 18,500 volunteers for the Red Army and eventually 36 Heroes of the Soviet Union. [101] Under occupation it is true that the number of red partisans was limited and collaboration occurred but overall Burovskii concludes: “If you compare those fighting for the Third Reich and the USSR, it seems that the Chechens were ‘less guilty’ than the Crimean Tatars ... A lower percentage of Chechens fought for the Third Reich than did Crimean Tatars, while they performed well as soldiers in the Red Army.” [102]
The Soviet state had no time for subtle analysis and showed no awareness of class differentiation or the legacy of Russian chauvinism and religious intolerance. All Crimean Tatars and Chechens were victimised for the actions of some, because, as one writer puts it, the state adopted a “final solution for these undesirable peoples”. [103]
In early 1944 Moscow issued a decree to: “Evict all Tatars from the Crimea and place them permanently as special settlers in areas of Uzbekistan.” [104] The action took place on 18 May, affected some 200,000 and included Tatars fighting in the Red Army who were sent into forced labour camps. Many people died as a result of this deportation. In February 1944 the entire population of Chechens, young and old, women and men, was declared a collaborationist enemy people and deported. It took 40,200 railway wagons to transport them to their destination. [105] In addition hundreds of thousands from other ethnic groups – Balkars, Ingushes, Kalmyks, Karachays and Meskhetian Turks – were forcibly removed from their homes in collective punishment for collaboration. [106]
Writers hostile to the repressive role of the Soviet regime have searched for popular movements that escaped the confines of Stalinist ideology. The Lokot Republic has been held up as evidence of “an independent Russian state flourishing deep in the German rear”, a third way between Nazism and Stalinism. [107] From the German point of view this small Russian administered enclave was an experiment in collaborationism. Its leader, Bronislav Kaminskii, drew on resentment of Stalin, and the Republic’s newspaper, Voice of the People, reminded readers of mass exploitation and falling living standards in the Soviet Union. [108] One article contrasted “Their way and ours”: “Our way – the peasants get the land. Their way – forced collectivisation.” [109] However, this did not lead to independence from imperialism in general, simply an alliance with the imperialist rival:
It is the bloodthirsty Stalin and his Communist and Commissar henchmen who need war, but they are not the ones fighting in the regular army, they are hiding in the rear ... They brought poverty and hunger, sending tens of millions of Russians to labour camps, martyrdom and death ... The people, our people, do not want a war that will only benefit a handful of scoundrels and active traitors of the population. The German army is the liberator of the Russian people, the friend of the Russian people, and together with them, is the enemy of the entire Stalinist structure and its lackeys. [110]
In practice this meant that the Lokot Republic became an arm of the Nazi war machine. From the first day the “Russian National Liberation Army” of some 8,000 undertook anti-partisan operations, thus relieving the Wehrmacht of that task in the area. In July 1942, 42 clashes between the Lokot militia and red partisans were recorded. In December 1943 there were 573. [111] The administration declared that for every one of its fighters killed, 20 partisan hostages would be executed, the tariff being 50 if a commander died. [112] The Republic finally fell to the Red Army after two years. It had killed some 10,000 civilians including all the Jews in its reach. [113]
If the Lokot Republic failed to achieve an independent stance between the rival imperialisms, the same applied to the purely military experiment that was led by Andrei Vlasov. He was captured by the Germans in July 1942 and like many POWs given the choice of continued captivity or freedom through collaboration. [114] But being a decorated Red Army general he was allotted a special role as leader of an alternative Russian force to the Red Army. Did Vlasov offer a genuine anti-Stalinist alternative or was he simply a pawn in the Nazi propaganda machine?
His manifesto accused Stalin of military failings and ruling through “the terror system”. It claimed broad sections of the army and population realised further war could only bring “the destruction of millions”. The question was: “What road can lead to the overthrow of Stalin’s government and the creation of a new Russia? ... And who can best assist that – Germany, England or the US?” Vlasov concluded it was the Germans since they were already at war with Stalin. However, he made a gesture towards an independent stance by suggesting that the millions of Russians in the occupied territories were the basis for “implementing a new Europe in parallel with the Germans”. [115]
The hollowness of this pose was exposed when Vlasov called on the Germans to help him establish a Russian army with legal authority in occupied areas. The answer from the German leadership was a flat “No”. Goering stated that Germany “never included Vlassov and his army in its calculations”. [116] Himmler too was dismissive: “I guarantee we can make almost any Russian general into a Vlasov! And their price is incredibly cheap ... schnapps, cigarettes and women.” [117]
Although Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army was much vaunted in leaflets dropped behind Soviet lines, it was entirely a fiction. Only in September 1944, when the Germans were in full retreat, was a Russian force of ten divisions agreed to. [118] It fought one unsuccessful battle against the Red Army and soon afterwards, in true opportunist fashion, Vlasov declared: “only if we become a real power alongside the Czechs, Poles, Yugoslavs and prudent Germans will the Anglo-Saxons eventually recognise us.” So in May 1945 Vlasov switched sides and backed the Czech resistance to Germany in Prague.
In 1945 Stalin triumphed against his imperialist rival but, as Volkogonov writes: “Utterly insensitive to the countless tragedies caused by the war, Stalin was guided by the desire to inflict the greatest possible damage on the enemy without regard to the human cost for the Soviet people.” [119] Pursuing a scorched earth policy the general secretary thought nothing of laying waste to vast tracts or destroying entire towns. [120] His guiding star was this: “The law of war is such that whoever seizes booty, keeps it.” [121] Whatever country the Red Army marched into was counted as booty and that amounted to most of Eastern Europe.
Hitler and Stalin were both imperialists, though there were differences between them. The former, for historical reasons (related to defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles), was expansionist. Stalin’s initial stance was rather more defensive (though this changed when the opportunity presented itself in 1945). Hitler was the unashamed representative of violent counter-revolution, racism and untrammelled capitalist exploitation. Stalin’s regime was the product of counter-revolution but clung to the socialist rhetoric of October 1917. If within the Soviet Union this merely covered up the horrors of forced collectivisation, industrialisation and the gulag, internationally the struggles at places like Stalingrad were a potent source of inspiration for resistance movements and anti-fascism generally.
Soviet victory over Germany ultimately relied on war from below. It cost the lives of some 27 million Soviet citizens, most of them civilians [122], and was motivated by a hatred of occupation and hope for a better life. As one war veteran puts it: “I didn’t think about the Gulag or other sad things. I believed that after the war, as an ally of Britain and the US, Stalin would see the sense of introducing democratic reforms.” [123] Another affirms that: “many hoped that after the war the country would be more democratic, [but, alas] after the victory arrests gained a new intensity”. [124]
It was out of the disjuncture between imperialist and people’s war that one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the era was to emerge. Despite the famine and pre-war repression, despite the disaster of Barbarossa, despite the deportations of entire populations and the interrogations of SMERSH, Stalin acquired the status of demigod.
As we have seen, the returning POW, Ozerov, felt betrayed by Stalin but writes: “He was often right, and in a big country like the USSR you can only maintain order through iron discipline. Stalin was the man who united the whole people ... Without him victory was impossible”. [125] Another veteran says: “I was thrown in jail at the age of 13, my mother-in-law was arrested, my father-in-law shot, yet I still believed in Stalin!” [126] Finally, this soldier, after noting the killing of millions of innocent people, including his own father, concludes that: “Stalin united the whole Soviet Union in the struggle for victory.” [127]
These are classic examples of what Marx calls the “enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world” of reification. [128] In a similar vein Wilhelm Reich wrote how repression makes a person hide “behind illusions of strength and greatness someone else’s strength and greatness. He’s proud of his great generals but not of himself.” [129] The masses suffered enormously in their successful war against fascism but were unable to claim victory for themselves. So they projected their achievements onto Stalin. His cult was inverted proof of their strength and greatness.
1. V. Medinskii, Voina, Mify SSSR, 1939–1945 (Olma, Moscow 2012), p. 394.
2 Medinskii, 2012, p. 39.
3. Vladimir Lenin, Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers ’ and Soldiers ’ Deputies, Report on Peace, October 26 (November 8) 1917, at www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26b.htm.
4. Quoted in D. Hallas, The Comintern(Bookmarks, London, 1985), p. 123.
5. M. Beloff, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1929–1941, vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1949), p. 20.
6. Quoted in A. Applebaum, Gulag: A History (Penguin, London 2004), pp. 68–69.
7. Details from T. Cliff, Trotsky: The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars, vol. 4, ch. 2, at www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/02-industrial.html.
8. Cliff, Trotsky, >vol. 4, ch. 1, at www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/01-collect.html.
9. Cliff, Trotsky, ch. 2, at www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/02-industrial.html.
10. D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization (Pluto Press, London 1986), p. 135.
11. Filtzer, 1986, p. 138.
12. Filtzer, 1986, p. 150.
13. N. Khrushchev, The Secret Speech (Spokesman Books, Nottingham 1976), p. 33.
14. M. Reiman, The Birth of Stalinism(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 49.
15. D.M. Glantz and J. House, When Titans Clashed(Birlinn, Kansas 2000), pp. 9–10.
16. A. Burovskii, Velikaia Grazhdanskaia Voina (Iauza Eksmo, Moscow 2011), p. 211.
17. D. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (Grove Weidenfeld, New York 1991), pp. 368–369.
18. Glantz, 2000, p. 33.
19. Glantz, 2000, p. 44. This judgement is confirmed by Stepan Mikoyan in E. Joli, Pobeda liuboi tsenoi (Iausa Eksmo, Moscow 2010), p. 116.
20. Elena Rzhevskaia, in E. Joli, 2010, p. 215.
21. Medinskii, 2012, p. 54.
22. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 395.
23. Danilov in V. Suvorov and M. Solonin (eds.), Pro ... li Voinu! Kak Stalin Ugrobil Krasnuiu Armiu i Pogubil SSST? (Iauza-Press, Moscow, 2012), p. 193.
24. Quoted in A. Werth, Russia at War (Dutton & Co, New York 1964), p. 71.
25. Quoted in Werth, 1964, p. 111.
26. Werth, 1964, p. 111.
27. Quoted in Werth, 1964, p. 96; Pronin in Suvorov, 2012, p. 191.
28. Aleksandr Pronin, Sovetsko-Pol’skie Sobytia 1939 g, in Suvorov, 2012, p. 104.
29. Quoted in Werth, 1964, p. 62.
30. Pravda, 16 May 1940, quoted in Werth, 1964, p. 86.
31. Danilov in Suvorov, 2012, p. 221.
32. V. Suvorov, Vdmg oni Voz’mut i Pomiriatsia, in Suvorov, 2012, p. 17.
33. Danilov, 89 and Kirill Aleksandrov, Planirovalsia Udar po Rumynii vnapravlenii neftianykhmestorozhenii, pp. 219–233, in Suvorov, 2012. Also Georgii Kumanev, 238, why did we lose at first? Stalin was convinced Hitler would not fight on two fronts and so would have to defeat the UK first. 393. A month before the G attack, S, speaking to a close circle, said: “The conflict is inevitable, perhaps in May next year.” By the early summer of 1941, acknowledging the explosiveness of the situation, he approved the premature release of military cadets, and young officers and political workers were posted, mostly without leave, straight to units which were below full strength. On 19 June begin camouflaging aerodromes, transport depots, bases and fuel dumps, dispersing aircraft. The order came hopelessly late, and even then Stalin was reluctant in case “all these measures provoke the German forces”.
34. Vasily Grossman (author), A. Beevor and L. Vinogradova (translators), A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945
35. Glantz, 2000, p. 41.
36. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 400.
37. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 401.
38. Stepan Mikoyan, in Joli, 2010, p. 117.
39. Oleg Ozerov, in Joli, 2010, p. 87. Confirmed by another veteran – 30 we didn’t think there would be fighting in Russia but in Germany; Dannil Granin in Joli, 2010.
40. Glantz, 2000, p. 49.
41. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 406.
42. Glantz, 2000, p. 51.
43. Joli, 2010, p. 23.
44. Grossman p. 48.
45. Burovskii, 2011, p. 234.
46. Burovskii, 2011, p. 236.
47. Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, Navemoe, budet voina ..., in Suvorov, 2012, p. 278.
48. Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, Navemoe, budet voina ..., in Suvorov, 2012, pp. 273–275.
49. Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, Navemoe, budet voina ..., in Suvorov, 2012, p. 280.
50. Quoted in Mediniskii, 2012, pp. 127–128.
51. Quoted in G. Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries (Verso, London 2006), p. 171.
52. Grossman, p. 222.
53. Grossman, p, 249.
54. Werth, 1964, p. 271.
55. Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, Navemoe, budet voina ..., in Suvorov, 2012, p, 286.
56. Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, Navemoe, budet voina ..., in Suvorov, 2012, p. 288.
57. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 434.
58. Y. Grigorian in Joli, 2010, p, 313.
59. S. Mikoyan in Joli, 2010, p. 262.
60. Werth, 1964, p. 249.
61. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 486.
62. I.C.B. Dear and M.R.D. Foot, The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (OUP, Oxford 1995), p. 290.
63. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 505.
64. Medinskii, 2012, pp. 394–395.
65. Quoted in Volkogonov, 1991, p. 427.
66. G. Ter-Gazariants in Joli, 2010, p. 129.
67. Grossman, p. 155.
68. Quoted in D. Loza, Fighting for the Soviet Motherland (Nebraska Press, Nebraska 1998), pp. 129–130.
69. Alexander Revich in Joli, 2010, p. 167.
70. Oleg Ozerov in Joli, 2010, pp. 87–88.
71. Ozerovin Joli, 2010, p. 96.
72. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 445.
73. B.V. Sokolov, Okkupatsiia, Pravda i Mify, 2002 in www.militera.lib.ru/research/sokolov3/index.html.
74. Sokolov, 2002.
75. Sokolov, 2002.
76. Sokolov, 2002.
77. A.S. Sawin et al. (eds.), Der zweite Weltkrieg(Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1988), p. 366.
78. Sokolov, 2002.
79. I. Ermolov, Russkoe Gosudarstvo v Nemetskom Tylu. Istoria Lokotskogo Samoupravleniia, www.militera.lib.ru/research/ermolov_ig02/index.html.
80. Sawin et al., 1988, pp. 366–367.
81. Sokolov, 2002.
82. Sokolov, 2002.
83. Sokolov, 2002.
84. Sokolov, 2002.
85. Sokolov, 2002.
86. D. Granin in Joli, 2010, p. 30.
87. E. Rzhevskaia in Joli, 2010, p. 218.
88. Glantz, 2000, p. 72.
89. Werth, 1964, p. 215.
90. J. Scott, Behind the Urals (Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1942), p. 263.
91. D.A. Zhukov, I.I. Kovtin. RNNA. Vrag v Sovetskoi Forme(Veche, Moscow 2012), p. 18.
92. Zhukov, 2012, p. 27.
93. Medinskii, 2012, p. 302.
94. Burovskii, 2011, p. 343.
95. Burovskii, 2011, p. 344.
96. Medinskii, 2012, p. 391.
97. Burovskii, 2011, p. 353.
98. T. Selesnev, quoted in Sokolov, 2002.
99. Medinskii, 2012, p. 265.
100. Burovskii, 2011, pp. 359–361.
101. This latter figure is for both Chechens and Ingushes – Volkogonov, 1991, p. 444.
102. Burovskii, 2011, p. 363.
103. As Burovskii puts it, Burovskii, 2011, p. 363.
104. GKO decree no. 5859. www.memorial.krsk.ru/DOKUMENT/USSR/440511.htm.
105. Burovskii, 2011, p. 363.
106. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 444.
107. See Medinskii’s critique, 2012, p. 331. Ermolov writes, for example: “An important role was played by individuals who against the background of the collapse of soviet power in the remaining Red Army regions attempted to create a political movement, which, in its conceptions, could in future develop beyond the limits of the Lokot district and achieve an all-Russian dimension.”(I. Ermolov, Russkoe Gosudarstvo v Nemetskom Tylu. Istoria Lokotskogo Samoupravleniia, p. 32.)
108. D.I. Cherniakov, Lokotskaia gazeta, ‘Golos naroda na sluzhbe u Natsistkoipropagandy, www.august-1914.ru/occupation2.pdf, p. 68.
109. Quoted in Cherniakov, p. 69.
110. Quoted in I. Ermolov, p. 31.
111. Ermolov, p. 21.
112. Ermolov, pp. 16–17.
113. Medinskii, 2012, p. 332.
114. Zhukov, 2012, p. 67.
115. Oleg Smyslov, Predateli i Padachi(Veche, Moscow 2013), pp. 76–77.
116. Goering, quoted in Smyslov, 2013, p. 95.
117. Quoted in Smylsov, 2013, pp. 94–95.
118. Smyslov, 2013, p. 147.
119. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 456.
120. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 456.
121. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 491.
122. Volkogonov, 1991, p. 505.
123. L. Rabichev in Joli, 2010, p. 202.
124. S. Mikoyan in Joli, 2010, pp. 121–122.
125. Ozerov in Joli, 2010, p. 97.
126. S. Mikoyan in Joli, 2010, p. 262.
127. V. Etoosh in Joli, 2010, p. 150.
128. www.marxists.org/archive/petrovic/1983/reification.htm.
129. W. Reich, Listen, Little Man! (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1974), p. 7 at www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/listen_little_man.pdf.
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