Russia at war 1941-1945

70%; pigs, 38%; horses, 51%. In the liberated areas the percentages were lower still (cows, 76%; pigs, 34%; horses, 44%).

[IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 392. Some of the new cattle had been brought from Germany.]

There was also, in 1945, a shortage of high-quality forage; as a result of this and other factors, the state purchases of meat were 61.8 percent of what they had been in 1940, and those of dairy produce, 45 percent. Which, obviously, meant that the civilian population, particularly in the cities, had to continue on short rations— especially those holding clerical-workers', dependents' and children's ration cards. Diplomats and other privileged foreigners in Moscow at that time, who enjoyed higher rations and often attended

sumptuous official Soviet receptions, were scarcely aware of the miserable standard of living that continued among "ordinary" Russians. Special efforts were made to give reasonably ample food to industrial workers, and to provide extra meals of sorts for schoolchildren; but most Russians still lived very poorly, their diet consisting almost entirely of bread, potatoes and vegetables, with very little sugar, fats, meat or fish. In 1945, I knew many families with clerical workers' ration-cards who, without actually starving, were having a worse than thin time, and to whom a whole lump of sugar in their tea was almost a luxury. The stopping of Lend-Lease, which had supplied a substantial amount of food to the Army— i.e. to about ten million people—caused an appreciable

drop in the total amount of food consumed in Russia.

[A small proportion of Lend-Lease food also went to the civilian population.]

UNRRA was of some help in Belorussia and the Ukraine, though it could not be said to be over-generous; and there was no UNRRA relief at all in the rest of the Soviet Union.

[There might have been UNRRA help in the western parts of Russia proper, but,

apparently as a matter of prestige, the Soviet Government declined it.]

For a time, the great drought of 1946 was to make food conditions in very large parts of the Soviet Union even more difficult.

These hardships at the end of the war, which were, after all, only a continuation of the war-time hardships, cannot, however, be said to have undermined Russian morale as a

whole, except that a certain relaxation in war-time discipline was to be reflected, before long, in intensified black-market activities and in a considerable increase in crime—a familiar post-war phenomenon in most countries.

But in the summer of 1945 the feeling of elation continued, with the homecoming of

millions of soldiers. In many places, life was already beginning to rise from the ruins; the Donbas mines were being rapidly put back into operation; the Kharkov Tractor Plant was beginning to turn out tractors again; villages in western Russia and in Belorussia were being rapidly rebuilt—though usually by only the most rudimentary methods; hundreds

of thousands of people were returning to Leningrad. The reconstruction that had already begun in the liberated areas in 1944 was being speeded up.

Along with this, there were also millions of personal tragedies— of women who had now lost all hope of seeing their husbands or sons return from captivity, and ex-war-prisoners who had survived the war, but were now being put through the NKVD mill, and of whom

so many were to spend years in camps. There were purges in which not only real, but also alleged collaborators were to suffer. These purges were probably heaviest of all in the Baltic Republics and in the western Ukraine. But officially, very little was known about all this at the time, and the full story of the 1944-5 purge still remains to be written—if the real facts ever come to light.

(c) International Pleasantness and Unpleasantness

A somewhat uneasy international atmosphere marked those three months of peace "twixt Germany and Japan". It cannot be said that a uniform process of Gleichschaltung was yet being applied by the Russians to the whole of eastern Europe. Czechoslovakia was to

remain for some time a sort of show-window of East-West coexistence, with the powerful Communist Party under Gottwald apparently co-operating loyally with the "bourgeois"

parties. President Benes, though not really trusted by the Russians, was, nevertheless, treated with a great show of respect.

[It was at this time that the Czechoslovak premier, Fierlinger, came to Moscow to sign the agreement whereby Ruthenia (the eastern tip of pre-war Czechoslovakia) was

"returned" to the Soviet Ukraine.]

More curious were the friendly gestures made by the Russians to King Michael of

Rumania, despite all the unpleasantness of the previous February. Now, in the summer of 1945, it was prominently reported that Marshal Tolbukhin had solemnly conferred on the young King the Order of Victory, the highest Russian military decoration, for the

courageous stand he had taken in August 1944 when he broke with Germany. On another