The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-45

A Documentary Reader

Alexander Hill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781135765255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book consists of extracts from key documents, along with commentary and further reading, on the 'Great Patriotic War' of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, 1941-45.

Despite the historical significance of the war, few Soviet documents have been published in English. This work provides translations of a range of extracts from Soviet documents relating to the titanic struggle on the Eastern Front during World War II, with commentary. This is the only single-volume work in English to use documentary evidence to look at the Soviet war effort from military, political, economic and diplomatic perspectives. The book should not only facilitate a deeper study of the Soviet war effort, but also allow more balanced study of what is widely known in the West as the 'Eastern Front'.

This book will be of much interest to students and scholars of military history, Soviet history, and World War II history.

1 Lenin, Stalin and the West 1917–39¹

The Soviet Russian republic that came into existence after the Bolshevik seizure of power of October 1917, and that would become the Soviet Union in 1924, was born into a hostile international environment. In late 1917 the Bolsheviks had to deal with the German threat that had played a crucial role in both bringing down the Tsarist regime and weakening the Provisional Government. Peace with Germany with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 came at the temporary price of vast swathes of Russian imperial territory, including the Ukraine, and marked the longer-term separation of the Baltic Republics and Finland from the former Empire. The peace also brought the Bolsheviks into direct confrontation with the Entente, determined to preserve an Eastern Front in the war against the Central Powers. British and French input into the Civil War undoubtedly prolonged the fighting, and would not be forgotten quickly by Soviet leaders.

Whilst by 1921 the Bolsheviks found themselves nominal masters of much of the former Russian Empire, they faced a population and particularly peasantry weary of the excesses of the politics of War Communism and the bloodshed of war, prompting the Bolsheviks under Lenin’s leadership to take a step back from propelling the fledgling republic towards communism, a key dimension of which, for many within the Party, was ‘forced’, or at least intensified industrialization. War Communism was replaced by the semi-capitalist New Economic Policy (NEP).

There was an uneasy peace not only in Soviet society and within the Communist Party, but also between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world. Whilst both sought to normalize relations and particularly trade, the Soviet Union was aware of the latent hostility towards the upstart republic, and the capitalist world of the fact that for the Bolsheviks the international revolutionary project was on hold rather than off the agenda. Under Lenin’s leadership, the development of the Soviet military power required to spread ‘revolution’ by force, as attempted in Poland in 1920, was increasingly of secondary importance to stability, both internally and in relations with other powers. This situation was to remain under the collective leadership following Lenin’s death in January 1924.² With the rise of Stalin, however, the pursuit of military power for use against an abstract capitalist threat would become a key justification for the ending of NEP and the associated projects of forced collectivization and industrialization from 1928 onwards, Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’.

International relations and the ‘revolution from above’

For the Soviet Union, eventual conflict with the capitalist world was always inevitable, even if, in the short term, undesirable. The capitalist threat to the Soviet Union was, however, at least in Soviet eyes, to become more significant with the apparently increasing prospects of revolution in capitalist countries associated with depression in the 1920s:

DOCUMENT 1: From the report of the Chairman of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars A.I. Rikov at the IVth Congress of Soviets SSSR, 18 April 1927

Soviet foreign policy has recently been developing in conditions in which there has been a growth in active hostility towards the Soviet Union from a whole host of countries…. Recently a number of [British] conservative newspapers have repeated that it is necessary to ‘encircle the Soviet Union’, ‘destroy the Bolshevik menace’, ‘establish a cordon sanitaire’, and alike….

(Source: A.F. Kiselev and E.M. Shchagin, 1996, p. 667)

DOCUMENT 2: From the speech of V.M. Molotov at the tenth plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, 9 July 1929

The situation is now such, that in all of the core capitalist countries of Europe events are in progress, signifying the rise of revolutionary mood….

From what I have said, it follows that the most important responsibility of communist parties is … preparation for new revolutionary struggles on a massive scale….

Now, more than ever before, the tactic of coming to terms with reformers, the tactic of coalition between revolutionary organisations and the organisations of the reformers is unacceptable and damaging….

In conditions of the current period the question of strengthening the struggle against social democracy has gained special significance. The struggle with social democracy, and in particular with its left wing,… cannot but be the centre of attention for communist parties….

The increase in international revolutionary mood and the successful conduct of socialist reconstruction in the USSR is indicative of the weakening progress of capitalism…. It means that now the danger of a new imperialist war and a new intervention against the Soviet Union is intensifying.

(Source: A.F. Kiselev and E.M. Shchagin, 1996, pp. 671–672)

Fearing revolution, capitalist powers were portrayed as likely to seek to destroy the Soviet beacon for communism across Europe in order to forestall revolution, although there is little or no evidence of concrete preparations. The Soviet ‘war scare’ of 1927, which stemmed from a series of apparently unrelated events and, in particular, the Arcos crisis with Britain, was suffi-ciently serious to result in a British break in diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.³ The Soviet response was both to strengthen the Soviet economy and defence sector and to make certain that the Soviet rear in future ‘war’ against the capitalist world was secure:⁴

DOCUMENT 3: Extracts from an article by Stalin on the threat of war, 28 July 1927

It can scarcely be doubted that the main issue of the present day is that of the threat of a new imperialist war. It is not a matter of some vague and immaterial ‘danger’ of a new war but of the real and actual threat of a new war in general, and of a war against the USSR in particular….

The fact that the initiative in this matter of creating a united imperialist front against the USSR has been assumed by the British bourgeoisie and its general staff, the Conservative Party, should not come as any surprise to us….

The British Conservative government struck its first open blow in Peking with the raid on the Soviet Embassy….

This blow, as we know, failed.

The second blow was struck in London, by the raid on Arcos and the severance of relations with the USSR….

This blow, as we also know, failed.

The third open blow was delivered in Warsaw, by the instigation of the assassination of Voikov. Voikov’s assassination, organised by agents of the Conservative Party, was intended by its authors to play a role similar to that of the Sarajevo assassination by embroiling the USSR in an armed conflict with Poland.

This blow also seems to have failed….

The task is to strengthen the defensive capacity of our country, to expand our national economy, to improve our industry – both war and non-war – to enhance the vigilance of the workers, peasants and Red Army men of our country….

The task is to strengthen our rear and cleanse it of dross, not hesitating to mete out punishment to … terrorists … who set fire to our mills and factories, for it is impossible to defend our country in the absence of a strong revolutionary rear.

(Source: J.V. Stalin, Works. Volume 9, 1954, pp. 328, 330, 331–332, 335)

Some indication of direct Soviet investment in defence, even during the First Five Year Plan, the least obviously defence-oriented of the three plans prior to the Great Patriotic War, is provided in Table 1.1. The production of tanks continued to receive high priority, the development of Soviet tank production by 1934 being the subject of Document 4:

DOCUMENT 4: Basic indicators of the development of base motor-mechanization [of the Red Army] for the period of time from XVI-XVII Party congresses: From materials of Gosplan USSR, 11 January 1934

The qualitative development and quantitative distribution of technical weapons resources has decisive significance in operational-tactical forms for the conduct of war, the driving force of which is the motor….

Bourgeois military specialists and the military headquarters of the capitalist states consider that the modern army should have in the region of 10,000 tanks, 200,000 automobiles and 30,000 tractors in service….

Up until 1929 a few tens of tanks, captured by the Red Army from the Whites … were those sole examples, on which our Red Army learned.

Difficulty in the organisation of the production of tanks consisted of the fact, that up until 1928–1929 we did not have an automobile nor tractor industry, nor the corresponding technical cadres.

With the aim of establishing the production of tanks, examples were purchased abroad and from 1929/30 modern tank types were introduced into production…. Dynamics in the growth of production of significant types:

	1929/30	1930	1931	1932	1933
Tankettes T-27 and T-37	–	–	365	1,593	1,072
Tanks T-18 and T-26	170	239	535	1,361	1,405
Tanks T-24 and BT	1	–	28	393	1,005
Tank T-35	–	–	–	–	1
Artillery tractors	–	–	–	–	173
Tracked tractors	491	280	614	464	451

(Source: A.F. Kiselev and E.M. Shchagin, 1996, pp. 413–414)

Industrialization continued to be closely linked to the defence of the Soviet Union throughout the 1930s, providing a sense of urgency that would otherwise have been difficult to create. The Soviet regime, whilst advancing the revolution as Stalin and much of the Party saw it, was also rectifying weaknesses in the defence capabilities of the Soviet Union, heir to the Russian Empire:

Table 1.1 Soviet orders for and production of key armaments 1929/30–1930/31

DOCUMENT 5: The Tasks of Business Executives. Speech delivered at the First All-Union Congress of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry, 4 February 1931

One feature of the history of Old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol Khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her – because of her backwardness: because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness. They beat her because it was profitable and could be done with impunity…. Such is the law of exploiters…. You are backward, you are weak – therefore you are wrong; hence you can be beaten and enslaved. You are mighty – therefore you are right; hence we must be wary of you.

That is why we must no longer lag behind….

We are fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.

(Source: J.V. Stalin, Works. Volume 13, 1954, pp. 31, 40–41)

Given the apparent urgency of the situation, longer-term defence concerns such as the location of strategic industries had to be balanced not only with shorter-term needs for equipment, but also the need for short-term achievements for political purposes. The latter meant, for instance, that strategically vulnerable concentrations of defence industrial capacity in the west, particularly in Leningrad, could not be simply and cheaply transferred to more secure locations.⁵ Whilst the Soviet Union might have been able to afford to build the Baltic–White Sea Canal, the subject of Document 7, the construction of which had been long discussed under Tsarist rule, cost and the time for construction as a political rather than strategic issue were major factors in what was actually constructed and in what time. The canal, as finally constructed, was certainly not of the size and quality of construction...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Lenin, Stalin and the West 1917–39
• 2 The Icebreaker controversy and Soviet intentions in 1941
• 3 Barbarossa
• 4 The Battle of Moscow
• 5 The tide turns: the Battle for Stalingrad
• 6 The Battle of Kursk and the race for the Dnepr
• 7 The siege of Leningrad
• 8 Lend-Lease aid, the Soviet economy and the Soviet Union at war
• 9 The Soviet Partisan Movement
• 10 The ‘Ten “Stalinist” Crushing Blows’ of 1944
• 11 From the Vistula to Berlin: the end of the Reich
• 12 The Soviet invasion of Manchuria
• Conclusion
• Chronology of key events
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography