Russia at war 1941-1945

It is interesting to note that the present-day History does not breathe a word about Stalin's

"revenge for 1904", but attributes Russia's entry into the war to three high-minded motives: 1) security against future Japanese aggression; 2) Russia's sacred duty to her Western Allies; and, 3) her moral duty to help, China, Korea and other Asian peoples in their struggle against the Japanese imperialists.

The "new look" of American policy after the dropping of the atom bomb soon became apparent. On August 16 Truman declared that, unlike Germany, Japan would not be

divided into occupation zones. Truman firmly rejected the Russian proposal that the

Japanese surrender to Russian troops in northern Hokkaido; nor were the Russians to take any part whatsoever in the occupation of Japan. Truman went even further: on August 18

he asked that the Russians let the Americans use one of the Kurile Islands as an air base, a proposal that Stalin rejected with a great show of indignation.

[ Correspondence between Stalin and the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain.. . (Moscow 1957), vol. II, pp. 267-8.]

The uneasiness and anxiety created in Russia by the atom bomb were such that, soon

after the capitulation of Japan, Russian correspondents visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and deliberately reported that the bombs had not been nearly as destructive as the

Americans had made out; if there were very heavy casualties, it was because of the

inflammable nature of Japanese houses, and any city with stone houses and adequate

shelters would not have suffered nearly as much. The correspondents said they had

interviewed several people who had escaped injury by simply lying down in an ordinary trench!

These stories about the relative innocuousness of the atom bomb were not only intended to reassure the Russian public, but also to support the theory that it was not the atom bomb, but the destruction of the Kwantung Army by the Russians, that had brought Japan to her knees.

They did not make much impression in Russia. Everybody there fully realised that the atom bomb had become an immense factor in the world's power politics, and believed

that, although the two bombs had killed or maimed a few hundred thousand Japanese,

their real purpose was, first and foremost, to intimidate Russia.

After causing a spell of anxiety and bewilderment, all the bombs did, in effect, was to create on the Russian side a feeling of anger and acute distrust vis à vis the West. Far from becoming more amenable, the Soviet Government became more stubborn.

[The only major exception was Iran, where Moscow yielded to American pressure by

evacuating Iranian Azerbaijan.]

Inside Russia, too, the régime became much harder after the war instead of becoming

softer, as so many had hoped it would be.

It was scarcely a coincidence that, ten days after Hiroshima, the Supreme Soviet should have instructed the Gosplan—the State Planning Commission—and the Council of

People's Commissars to get busy on a new Five-Year Plan. No breathing-space was to be allowed to the Russian people; the great industrial and economic reconstruction of the country was to start immediately. And, together with it, the making of the Russian atom bomb.

The end of the war was to be followed by years of disappointment and frustration for the Russian people. The wartime hopes of a Big Three Peace gave way to the reality of the Cold War and the "Iron Curtain". The happy illusions of 1944 that the Soviet régime would become more liberal, and life easier and freer after the war, soon went up in

smoke. For one thing the Soviet economy was largely in ruins, and to rebuild it a gigantic programme of austerity and hard work was called for. The policy of restoring heavy

industry as fast as possible meant that consumer goods remained scarce for a long time.

Housing conditions were bad and food was short. The NKVD, which had shown a certain

discretion during the war, came into its own again and a new terror developed which did not come to an end until 1953, after Stalin's death.

Yet despite the disappointments that followed it, the grim but heroic national war of 1941-5 remains both the most fearful and the proudest memory of the Russian people—a war which, for all her losses, turned Russia into the greatest Power oil the Old World.

Already it almost seems an historical epic of a bygone age—which can never be repeated.

To the Russian people the thought of another war is doubly horrifying; for it would be a war without its Sebastopol, Leningrad or Stalingrad; a war in which—everywhere—there would be only victims and no heroes.

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