Russia at war 1941-1945

well account for the extensive wave of juvenile crime that was to mark the immediate post-war years in Russia.

There was a serious shortage of teaching staff in 1944, and both the elementary and

secondary schools suffered most from it. Also, in Moscow—now deep in the rear—the

very young were less conscious of the immediate war tension as life was returning to

"normal", except for the shortage of everything. On the other hand, vocational and trade schools, whose purpose was to create large industrial labour reserves, were given priority; similarly, top priority was given to the training of more and more new soldiers.

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The spirit of the Russian working class was still good, despite unquestionable signs of physical fatigue. It was better still in the Army. Not only was there a feeling of great elation among the soldiers, as every day brought new victories, but there was a great national pride, a sense of achievement, and a well-cultivated desire for more and more distinctions, medals and decorations. These medals and decorations ran into many

millions, and acted as a great incentive to every soldier. There were already "Stalingrad medals" and "Leningrad medals" and "Sebastopol medals" and "Moscow medals" and the end of the war was to see new medals "for the capture of Bucharest", "for the liberation of Warsaw"—as well as Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Berlin medals, besides a whole range of new decorations.

In the Army both Stalin and the generals were popular. I remember the tragic, but typical case of a nineteen-year-old boy I knew, Mitya Khludov. He belonged to a well-known

Moscow merchant family, whose survivors had inevitably had a difficult time during the early years of the Revolution. He was in an artillery unit during the Battle of Belorussia in the summer of 1944. He wrote me a letter, in which he said: "I am proud to tell you that my battery has done wonders in knocking the hell out of the Fritzes. Also, for our last engagement, I have been proposed for the Patriotic War Order, and, better still, I have been accepted into the Party. Yes, I know, my father and my mother were burzhuis, but what the hell! I am a Russian, a hundred percent Russian, and I am proud of it, and our people have made this victory possible, after all the terror and humiliation of 1941; and I am ready to give my life for my country and for Stalin; I am proud to be in the Party, to be one of Stalin's victorious soldiers. If I'm lucky enough I'll be in Berlin yet.

We'll get there—and we deserve to get there—before our Western Allies do. If you see Ehrenburg, give him my regards. Tell him we all have been reading his stuff... Tell him we really hate the Germans after seeing so many horrors they have committed here in

Belorussia. Not to mention all the destruction they've caused. They've pretty well turned this country into a desert."

Ten days later Mitya's sister had another letter from him, this time from a hospital. He had been wounded, but said he was feeling better and would soon be back with his

battery. He gave no details of his injury. But a few days later he died. We learned later that he had died in one of those terribly overcrowded field hospitals in which it was physically impossible to give the wounded all the individual attention and care that they needed.

Mitya's enthusiastic feeling of being "one of Stalin's soldiers" was not the only reaction.

But this nationalist mood with its eagerness for medals and distinctions, and its hatred of the Nazis who had "humiliated" Russia, was probably the most widespread of all, and was shared by most of the peasant lads in the Army. Such moods were, of course,

encouraged by the politotdels, the Army's propaganda services. Others were conscious of belonging to a lost and condemned generation which was destined to be sacrificed—a

mood reflected in that pathetic little literary masterpiece by Emmanuel Kazakevich, The Star, the story of a reconnaissance raid, written towards the end of the war. The consciousness of living close to death runs through most of the Soviet writing during the war— whether in Surkov's poetry, or Siminov's poetry and plays, or Grossman's and

Kazakevich's stories and novels. In the poems of Simeon Gudzenko, a remarkable poet

(discovered during the war by Ehren-burg) there was a slightly different frontovik mentality; war to such men is a desperate, but still fearfully exciting gamble, and, after the war, such men felt a nostalgia for it. He, like so many others, also hoped it would be a better and freer Russia after the war.

1944 was to be known as the year of the Ten Victories.

1. In January the Leningrad Blockade was finally broken. After a tremendous artillery barrage from the Oranienbaum Bridgehead, the Russians broke through the powerful

German ring of concrete and armoured pillboxes and minefields and joined with other