Russia at war 1941-1945

The Mood after VE-Day

Although it was generally known that a large number of soldiers were being moved to the Far East during those summer months, very little thought was given to Japan by the

Russian people generally. As far as they were concerned, the war—the real war— was over with the collapse of Hitler's Germany. The thought that there might yet be another war to fight against Japan was hateful to most; Russia had lost quite enough men as it was.

It is not easy to describe the general mood in the country during that summer of 1945. It was composed of many different things. First of all, perhaps, a feeling of overwhelming relief that the war was over; but this went together with a feeling of immense national pride and a sense of enormous achievement—and every soldier, and nearly every civilian, too, felt that he had done his bit. This feeling of spontaneous joy, pride and relief found perhaps its fullest expression on that unforgettable VE-Day of May 9 in Moscow.

The Army was enormously popular—too popular, indeed, for Stalin's and the Party's

taste, though, for a short time after VE-Day, Stalin was determined to cash in on the Army's popularity and, in June, went so far as to assume the title of Generalissimo.

Shortly before, on May 24, he held a great reception at the Kremlin in honour of

numerous Soviet marshals, generals and other high-ranking officers, and it was then that he made that strange speech in which he singled out for special praise the Russian people,

"the most remarkable of all the nations of the Soviet Union"—"the leading nation, remarkable for its clear mind, its patience and its firm character." The Soviet Government, he said, had made many mistakes, but even in the desperate moments of

1941-2, the Russian people had not told its government to go, had not thought of making peace with Germany, had shown confidence in the Soviet Government and had decided

to fight on till final victory, whatever the cost.

A great deal could be read into that speech: a belated mea culpa for many things that had happened before the war and during the early days of the war; a tribute to the Russians for having fought on when the Ukraine and so many other parts of the country had been overrun by the Germans; all sorts of mental reservations not only about the "disloyal"

nationalities like the Crimean Tartars, the Caucasian mountaineers and probably also the Balts (who were being punished in varying degrees), but even about the Ukrainians

whose record, in Stalin's suspicious eyes, had been uneven. The Red Army was rich in Ukrainian generals and Ukrainian Heroes of the Soviet Union, and yet there were other Ukrainians whose loyalty to Moscow and the Soviet system had been questionable. In the Western Ukraine, at that time, Ukrainian nationalists were still conducting a guerrilla war against the Russians, and this was going to continue till 1947. Were the Russians, "the leading nation", to be the Number One citizens in the Soviet Union henceforth? There were some uneasy reactions in Moscow to this exaltation of Great-Russian nationalism, especially coming, as it did, from a Georgian who spoke Russian with a broad Caucasian accent. What strange mental kink was behind it?

Then, on June 24, came the great apotheosis of the Red Army, with "Generalissimo"

Stalin at its head—the famous Victory Parade in the Red Square. Marshal Zhukov, by

common consent the greatest of Russia's soldiers, reviewed the troops, and Marshal

Rokossovsky commanded the Parade, in the course of which hundreds of German

banners were flung down, in a torrential rainfall, on the steps of the Lenin Mausoleum, and at the feet of Victorious Stalin. Owing to the downpour—some old women in

Moscow saw in this an evil omen—the civilian parade that was to follow the military

parade was called off; but that night Stalin entertained 2,500 generals, officers and soldiers at the Kremlin. Here he made another strange speech, in which he paid tribute to the "small people", to "the little screws and bolts" of the gigantic machine without which the machine, with all its marshals and generals and industrial chiefs could not have worked. This speech also gave rise to some uneasy speculation: was there not here, apart from an extreme anti-egalitarian motif, a warning to the "military caste" that had emerged from the war? During the months that followed Moscow began to buzz with "anecdotes"

about marshals' and generals' wives, with their nouveau-riche ways and their endless malapropisms.

[For example, there was the general's wife who kept on talking at the Opera while the overture was being played: "Sh-sh, overture!" her neighbour said. " Overture yourself,"