Russia at war 1941-1945

In January 1939 he told Beck that he had lost interest in the Ukraine. But the very fact that such a scheme had been considered and applauded by influential sections of the

French (and British) press, was, of course, not lost on Stalin, and his suspicions of some deal between London, Paris and Berlin inevitably grew during the winter of 1938-9.

Even at this stage, however, Stalin continued to distinguish carefully between the

"aggressive" powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and the "non-aggressive" powers (France, Britain, USA), although he deplored the latters' weakness and gutlessness—as he was to make very clear in his Report to the 18th Congress of the Communist Party on March 10, that is, five days before the German march into Prague, which put an end to the

precarious "peace in our time" after barely six months.

That winter of 1938-9 was an uneasy winter in Russia. True, the Purges had been largely discontinued by the end of 1938, but thousands had been sent to exile or to labour camps; and many—no one could tell how many—had been shot. At the Lenin Commemorative

Ceremony at the Bolshoi Theatre on January 21, 1939, Yezhov, Stalin's No. 1

executioner, was still to be seen amongst the top Party and Army leaders—Stalin, Beria, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Shcherbakov, Andreyev, Kalinin, Shkiriatov, Malenkov,

Molotov, Budienny, Mekhlis, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, and Badayev. It was to be Yezhov's

last public appearance.

Now, at the end of the Second Five-Year Plan, living—though not housing—conditions

in Russia, and particularly in Moscow, had greatly improved. Stalin's zhit' stalo legche, zhit' stalo veselei—"life has become easier, life has become more cheerful"—had become the country's official slogan. Trivial musical comedies, operettas and comic films were in vogue. Popular song writers like Pokras, Blanter and Dunaevsky were at the height of their fame; Blanter had just composed his famous Katyusha (which was, alas, to become one of the favourite soldiers' marching songs in 1941) and Dunaevsky his Shiroka strana moya rodnaya (Vast is my Country) with the more than incongruous line "I know of no other country where man breathes so freely". (This at the height of the Purges!) Alongside popular slapstick comic films like Volga-Volga starring Lubov Orlova, a sort of Soviet Gracie Fields, and illustrating how cheerful life had become in the Soviet Union under the "Sun of the Stalin Constitution", there were the patriotic films, among them Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky—showing what would happen to the descendants of the villainous Teutonic Knights if they ever dared invade Holy Russia. Another famous film, Doctor Mamlock, denounced Hitler's persecution of the Jews.

More or. less consciously everybody was aware of the Nazi danger. There was an uneasy feeling that everywhere in the world the "aggressors" were having it their own way—

except where they dared touch the Soviet Union and her Mongolian ally, as Japan had

done at Lake Hassan only a few months before. But Japan, Italy and Germany were

becoming increasingly arrogant, and throughout that winter the news from Spain was

more and more depressing despite the meaningless assurances in Pravda that "the Spanish people would not lay down their arms until final victory". At the beginning of January, Colonel Beck, Poland's strong man, was on his way to Berchtesgaden to see

Hitler. Had Russia any friends, a few wondered on the quiet—except, of course, gallant little Mongolia?

No wonder that in those days people looked to the Army for protection and that for

example some women ace-fliers like Valentina Grizodubova, Polina Osipenko and

Marina Raskova became popular idols. When in May 1939 one of them, Polina

Osipenko, and the ace-flier Serov were killed in an air-crash, it was like a day of national mourning; they were given a public funeral in Red Square, and the pall-bearers included Stalin, Molotov, Beria and other leaders.

Every opportunity was taken to glorify the Armed Forces of the Soviet homeland,

though, as some observers later recalled, all this was a little like whistling in the dark; below all the bluster about the invincibility of the Red Army there was a good deal of anxiety. On January 1, 1939, in its New Year's Day editorial, Pravda recalled a recent warning by Stalin himself: "We must be ready at any moment to repel an armed attack on our country, and to smash and finish off the enemy on his own territory."

Significantly, at the Lenin Commemorative Ceremony on January 21, 1939, a large part of the long address delivered by Shcherbakov was devoted to the Red Army:

The Socialist Revolution has triumphed in one country. The Socialist State is

encircled by the capitalist world, and this encirclement is only waiting for an