Russia at war 1941-1945

many kolkhozniki who wholly lacked the proper collectivist spirit, and were, in fact, enemies of the collective sector of the kolkhozes—the opening of the Agricultural Exhibition gave rise to rapturous eulogies on the state of Soviet Agriculture.

With this exhibition [Pravda wrote on August 1] we are celebrating a glorious victory of socialism. This is the tenth birthday of the kolkhoz system, and a report on its achievements. It was in the autumn of 1929 that the peasants started entering the

kolkhozes by whole villages and districts. It was the year of the Great Change. The incantations of the Trotskyite and Bukharinite agents of Fascism about the

inevitable clash between the workers and the peasants, and about the impossibility of building socialism in one country have been thrown into the dustbin of history.

New machinery has taken the place of the individual peasant's plough, wooden

harrow, sickle and scythe.

These raptures continued for several days, and 20,000 to 30,000 people a day visited the exhibition, with its ornate domes, Stalin-Gothic spires and its orgy of fountains, colossal statues of Lenin and Stalin, and with Vera Mukhina's giant silver statue of the worker with the hammer and the kolkhoznitsa with the sickle sweeping into a glorious future above the main entrance. The opulent and luscious exhibits in all the various palaces and pavilions were there to show that agriculture under the kolkhoz system had become a magnificently going concern, whereas, according to Pravda, the peasantry in Nazi Germany was "undergoing a process of continuous pauperisation".

Moscow was in a festive mood, and the blessings of peace seemed wonderful under the

wise leadership of Comrade Stalin. No doubt, not all was well—least of all in a great number of kolkhozes—but conditions had certainly become easier in the last five years.

The Exhibition teemed with lemonade and ice-cream stalls and eating places, and, in their light summer clothes, people looked cheerful, contented and even superficially

prosperous. War seemed a long way away, whatever the papers said about "more Nazi provocations in Danzig".

At last, on August 12, Pravda announced the arrival in Moscow of the British and French Military Missions:

The Missions, headed by Admiral Drax and General Doumenc, were met yesterday

morning at the Leningrad Station by a number of Soviet personalities... Later in the day, Comrade V. M. Molotov received the leaders of the Missions. Present at the

meeting were also Sir William Seeds, M. Naggiar, and the Deputy Foreign

Commissar V. P. Potemkin... Later they were received by Defence Commissar

Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Army Commander

of the 1st rank, B. M. Shaposhnikov.

In the evening a banquet was given in honour of the British and French Military

Missions, and all the Soviet top brass were there— Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Budienny, Timoshenko, heads of the Kiev and Belorussian Military Districts and leaders of the

Navy and Air Force. "Friendly toasts were exchanged between Comrade Voroshilov and the heads of the British and French Military Missions."

[ Pravda, August 12, 1939.]

That was as much as the Soviet public were allowed to learn at that stage about the

Anglo-French visit. What did it really amount to? The visit had been announced more

than three weeks before; but the British and French had obviously been in no great hurry to come, having travelled by slow boat to Leningrad. Needless to say, nobody had ever heard of Admiral Drax or General Doumenc. Why had nobody of note come to Moscow