Russia at war 1941-1945

It went on like this almost day after day during that winter of 1938-9. "The Red Army is Invincible," Pravda wrote on Red Army Day, February 23, 1939, and E. Shchadenko, Deputy Commissar for Defence, declared that, under the leadership of Comrade

Voroshilov, the Red Army was ready to "answer any attack by the militarists with a smashing blow of treble force". N. S. Khrushchev also joined in this chorus exalting the invincibility of the Red Army. Below a large picture of Khrushchev, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Pravda of March 4, 1939

published this message to Stalin from the Party Conference of the Kiev province:

The Kiev Party Organisation has spared no effort to turn the province of Kiev into an impregnable advance post of Soviet Ukraine. We are living here in a frontier

zone, on the border of two worlds... The Fascist warmongers have not ceased to

think of attacking Soviet Ukraine. We swear to you, dear Comrade Stalin, that we

shall always be in a state of military preparedness, and shall be fully capable, with all the strength of Soviet patriotism, of dealing with any enemies and of wiping them off the face of the earth... Under the guidance of your closest brother-in-arms, N. S.

Khrushchev, the Bolsheviks of the Kiev Zone will carry out with honour the tasks

with which they have been entrusted... Long live our wise leader and teacher, the genius of mankind, the best friend and father of the Soviet people, great Stalin!

Only a few days later a patriotic speech on the same lines was made by Khrushchev at the unveiling of the Kiev monument of Shevchenko, the Ukraine's national poet, ending with

"Long live he who is leading us from victory to victory, our dearly beloved friend and teacher, the great Stalin."

[ Pravda, March 7, 1939.]

The references to Kiev, both in the Kiev Party Organisation's address to Stalin and in Khrushchev's speech, as a "frontier zone" threatened by the "Fascists" are typical of the nervousness that existed in Russia at the time about Hitler's designs, despite all the bluster about "invincibility" and "impregnability". The press campaigns in the West (especially in France) about a "Greater Ukraine" which was to be detached from the Soviet Union and was to provide Germany with her much-needed Lebensraum, had clearly caused a profound impression in Russia. It was to be one of the principal themes in Stalin's survey of the international situation in his Report to the 18th Congress of the Communist Party which opened in Moscow on March 10.

The "personality cult", as we would now say, was at its height. On the opening day of the Congress, Pravda published a poem by Djambul, the veteran Kazakh bard, aged nearly a hundred:

Tenderly the sun is shining from above,

And who cannot but know that this sun is—you?

The lapping waves of the lake are singing the praises of Stalin,

The dazzling snowy peaks are singing the praises of Stalin,

The meadow's million flowers are thanking, thanking you;

The well-laden table is thanking, thanking you.

The humming swarm of bees is thanking, thanking you.

All fathers of young heroes, they thank you, Stalin, too;

Oh heir of Lenin, to us you are Lenin himself;

Beware, you Samurai, keep out of our Soviet heaven!

Perhaps the only excuse for publishing this rubbish was that it had a "folklorish" and