Russia at war 1941-1945

without our consent. We were never consulted." It had now become clear that the Germans had taken no notice of Molotov's plea that the "Eastern Balkans" were a Soviet sphere of interest. Yet, if the Russians were annoyed they still showed it only by small petulant pinpricks. Thus, for no obvious immediate reason, they attacked Knut Hamsun, calling him a "rotting corpse" who did not share his fellow-Norwegians' hearty dislike for German rule. "And to think that this corpse—rotting alive—used to be a highly popular author in our country'"

[ Pravda. January 25, 1941.]

Hitler's speech of January 30 was duly reported. He said that the outcome of the war had already been settled in 1940; that an all-out U-boat war against England would start in the spring, and that the Americans were "wasting their time". But what struck the Russians most was that there was no mention of the Soviet Union. Moreover, there was that

ominous little phrase at the end: "I have calculated every conceivable possibility." Stalin knew that, by now, his December "proposals" had been ignored by Hitler.

Moscow's nervousness produced strange results. On January 30 there was an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet appointing Beria, head of the NKVD, "General

Commissar of State Security"; a few days later the People's Commissariat of the Interior (NKVD) was turned into two different commissariats—Interior (NKVD) under L. P.

Beria and Security (NKB) under V. N. Merku-lov.

The phrase "mobilisational preparedness" kept recurring over and over again in propaganda and the press; the ukase of the previous June on labour discipline was being more and more rigidly enforced, "slackers" and absentees in industry being subjected to ruthless punishment; great attention was being given to the training of young people for industry in a network of establishments like railway and FZO (factory) schools with their 600,000 pupils. These young people were intended to become an important labour

reserve in the great national emergency.

In the middle of February, at the 18th All-Union Conference of the Party, long, detailed and rather critical reports were produced by Malenkov on the "Successes and

Shortcomings of Industry and Railways", by N. Voznesensky on the "General Progress of the Economy of the USSR in 1941 ", and so on.

The usual glorification of the "invincible" Red Army, referred to as recently as December 1940 by Zhukov as "the mightiest army in the world", gave way to a more sober and critical assessment. On Red Army Day, February 23, 1941, the same General Zhukov

clearly suggested in an article in Pravda that the Army was undergoing a process of transformation, which had not yet been completed, and that things were still far from perfect. 1941, he wrote, would be the year of the "great change" (perelom) in the Red Army, the year of "the reconstruction of the whole system of the soldiers' training and education". He congratulated himself on the changes that had already been made since the Finnish War, and pointed out that in August 1940 the officer's "single command" had been restored, which meant that the officer was no longer under the thumb of the

commissar; as a result the status, responsibility and authority of the officers had been greatly increased. This, Zhukov emphasised, was the "essential foundation" on which the other reforms would be built.

He stressed the importance of military "professionalism" and attributed the spectacular defeat of the French Army in 1940 largely to the French soldiers' low standard of

training, and to their un-familiarity with modern weapons. In the Red Army such "sloppi-ness" would not be tolerated: "An imperialist war is raging round us. In the reconstruction of our system of military training we have achieved some unquestionable successes. The training is taking place in near-combat conditions, and we have improved the tactical skill of our troops; but it would be a grave error to be smug and complacent about it; much still remains to be done."

The whole article, without sounding alarmist, nevertheless betrayed a certain feeling of uneasiness, though it is impossible to say whether a man like Zhukov anticipated a

German invasion only four months later; the whole suggestion underlying his article was that the "great change" in the Red Army was a fairly long-term affair which was not likely to be completed until 1942.

In reality the international situation in February 1941 was already rapidly deteriorating from the Russian point of view. The big question was whether Hitler would move west or east.

On February 16, the Soviet press quoted The Times—with some relief, one may suspect