Russia at war 1941-1945

starting with the Russo-Japanese war, and going on to Japanese Intervention in 1919, to Lake Hassan and Halkin Gol, and to all the help Japan had given to Hitler. If, in the past, Marxist writers had said that Japan had stopped the spread of Russian imperialism in the Far East in 1904-5, the papers now spoke of her "perfidious attack on the Russian Navy at Port Arthur", and the "blot of shame" from which Russia had suffered for forty years.

In the next few days, the press reported mass meetings in many factories loudly

approving the declaration of war on the "Japanese militarists and imperialists." In reality, the Russians who felt passionately about Germany, had no feelings about Japan at all, and the new war against Japan was distinctly unpopular, except possibly among Russians in the Far East.

The only thing in its favour was that it did not last long. It was clear from the start that the three Russian army groups—the Baikal Front under Marshal Malinovsky, the First

Far-Eastern Front under Marshal Meretskov and the Second Far-Eastern Front under

General Purkayev, all of them under the general command of Marshal Vassilevsky—had

overwhelming superiority over the much-vaunted Kwantung Army. Within a few days

they had penetrated deep into Manchuria. The heavy and often fanatical Japanese

counter-attacks made little difference; the Russians had more men and incomparably

more guns, tanks and planes than the Japanese. On August 16 General Antonov, the

Soviet Chief-of-Staff, announced that the declaration of August 14 by the Emperor was

"only a general statement on Japan's capitulation", and that no cease-fire order had been given to the Japanese troops fighting the Russians. There had been no actual capitulation by the Japanese armed forces; therefore "the Soviet offensive in the Far East must continue." On August 17 Marshal Vassilevsky sent an ultimatum to the commander of the Kwantung Army, demanding surrender by noon, August 20. The surrender of this

Army was, indeed, announced by Stalin in an Order of the Day on August 22. The

Russians had used airborne troops extensively in Manchuria, particularly to occupy the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur where they feared an American landing. They also

hastened to penetrate into Northern Korea. The Russian Pacific Navy played an important part in the combined operations that resulted in the occupation of Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands; here, in particular, the Russians met with stiff Japanese resistance—

even long after the official capitulation.

In Manchuria, too, even after the official capitulation of the Kwantung Army, numerous Japanese units continued to fight and it was not till September 12 that the final results of the war against Japan were published in a special Sovinformbureau statement. This said that, between August 9 and September 9 the Japanese losses were: 925 planes, 369 tanks, 1,226 guns, 4,836 machine-guns, 300,000 rifles. In relation to the number of prisoners, these figures suggested that the mighty Kwantung Army had been very poorly equipped.

594,000 Japanese prisoners had been taken, including 20,000 wounded. Among the

prisoners were 148 generals. The Japanese dead were put at 80,000. The Russian

casualties were stated to be extremely low in comparison: 8,000 dead and 22,000

wounded.

[The present-day History (IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 581) gives the same figures for the Japanese prisoners, but puts the equipment figures rather higher; it says that the Baikal and 1st Far-Eastern Front alone captured 1,565 guns, 2,169 mortars, 600 tanks, 861

planes, and 13,000 machine-guns. The History gives no figures for Russian casualties, which suggests that they were higher than the official 1945 figure.]

On September 2 the final capitulation of Japan was signed on board the US battleship Missouri. The Soviet signatory was a General Derevyanko, totally unknown to the general public in Russia.

Stalin's broadcast that day left people with a strangely unsatisfactory impression. He dwelt, to an extraordinary degree, on the victory over Japan being Russia's revenge for her defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. He recalled that, taking advantage of the weakness of the Tsarist Government, Japan had perfidiously attacked the Russian Navy at Port Arthur, in almost exactly the same way as she was to attack the US Navy at Pearl Harbour thirty-seven years later.

Russia was defeated in that war. As a result, Japan grabbed Southern Sakhalin and firmly established herself in the Kuriles, thus padlocking our exits to the Pacific...