Russia at war 1941-1945

Army's Party Organisations largely consist of young party members and are being

replenished by more young men who have been tested as brave soldiers but who,

politically, are insufficiently experienced. More attention must be given to the ideological upbringing of candidates and members.

Secondly... the front now runs through territory outside our borders. To find his way

about in these new conditions, a Communist needs a sound ideological equipment

more than ever (emphasis added).

As the war was moving to its close the admission of new Party members was tightened

up. "What we need now is not quantity but quality," Red Star wrote on November 1, thus completely abandoning its earlier position. It now recalled that the rules of admission to the Party had been relaxed early in the war, and now argued that far too many people, including soldiers who had never been in any battle at all, had been admitted to the Party.

[ It recalled the two decrees of August and December 1941, the latter issued at the height of the Battle of Moscow. Under this any officer or soldier "who has distinguished himself in battle" could be admitted to the Party after a three months' candidate stage.]

The Party's representatives within the Army had often "misused the authority given them"

and had admitted far too many people into the Party. Now, "the chief object of the Army's party organisations must be the ideological-political education of communists and their absorption into Party work." The same line was taken by Bolshevik in October 1944

which declared: "In the complex international situation facing the Soviet Union, the Party member needs a compass, and there is no better one than Marxist-Leninism." It

recommended the intensive study of the Stalinist Short History of the Communist Party.

The same Bolshevik article then referred to two recent Central Committee decrees which concerned newly liberated areas. It was remarkably outspoken in commenting on the

Central Committee's Decree on Belorussia:

Ideological and political education is of exceptional importance in the newly-

liberated areas... The enemy has spread the poison of racialist theories in these areas, inciting Ukrainians against Russians, Belorussians against Lithuanians,

Estonians against Russians, etc... The Nazi invaders have also inflamed private-

property instincts among these peoples. They liquidated the kolkhozes, distributed the land among German colonists, destroyed the intelligentsia, encouraged trading and profiteering, and played off workers and peasants against each other...

In short, political education in these newly-liberated areas must be intensified. And Bolshevik also emphasised a number of awkward facts seldom, if ever, mentioned in the daily press at the time:

White emigrants, Ukrainian nationalists, Bandera, Bulba and Melni-kov bands are

being extensively used by the Germans in the Ukraine... These contemptible

flunkeys of Hitler placed their nationalist slogans at the service of German

imperialism, and also actively participated in the massacres organised by the

Germans.

[The massacres obviously refer to the massacres of Jews, though these are, as usual, not specifically mentioned.]

The Party organisations must intensify their work, especially in the rural areas of the Ukraine. They must remember that until this German-Ukrainian nationalism is