Russia at war 1941-1945

In short, I have made extensive use of recent Russian books on the war—most of which might be classified as "Khrushchevite", and ipso facto anti-Stalinite. There is, however, a danger in taking all these as gospel truth merely because they are anti-Stalinite. Stalinite history was notorious for its lack of "objectivity", and for its shameless suppression and distortion of historical facts. But the same, to a lesser extent, is often also true of Khrushchevite history. To give a small example. When I saw General Chuikov at

Stalingrad in February 1943, he declared that two members of the hierarchy had been on the Stalingrad Front almost all through the battle—Khrushchev and Malenkov. One

would look in vain in any recent book, even in Chuikov's own extremely candid story, for any mention of Malenkov. Khrushchev's role is greatly magnified in recent histories of the war and much is made of two particular instances (Kiev in 1941 and Kharkov in

1942) when disaster could, allegedly, have been averted if only Stalin had followed

Khrushchev's advice.

Khrushchevite history, like Stalinite history in the past, suffers from sins of omission. As Molotov, Malenkov and Beria were Stalin's closest associates on the State Defence

Committee (i.e. the War Cabinet, as it were), one would correctly assume that they

played a role of the utmost importance in the conduct of the war and the organisation of the war economy; but, except for a few rare references to Molotov as Foreign Commissar and to Beria's "treasonable activities", these names are not mentioned in recent accounts of the war. Similarly, the role of some generals, now in high favour, is magnified, and that of others, notably Zhukov, greatly minimised. In the official History, the fact that Zhukov had anything to do with the defence of Leningrad (which in reality he saved) is merely mentioned in a perfunctory one-line footnote. There are some other flaws in

Khrushchevite history: some crucial landmarks—such as the far-reaching reforms in the Red Army in the summer and autumn of 1942 after the fall of Rostov—are glossed over

completely, though General Malinovsky, whom I saw soon afterwards, attached the

greatest importance to them.

The various changes in the propaganda line, the attitude of the people to Stalin and the Party and the relations between the Party and the Red Army are other topics which

(perhaps not surprisingly) are rarely touched upon in Soviet writings on the war.

Much of the more or less official "Khrushchevite" writing also fails to render the real atmosphere of the war years. Thus, I find that not only my personal notes but also the Soviet press of the Black Summer of 1942, when the Germans were crashing ahead

towards Stalingrad and into the Caucasus, render much more accurately than any official history written today the intense anxiety and exasperation that swept the country. There were days when the tone of the press was frantic and almost hysterical with patrie-en-danger propaganda and, a little later, in its outcry against cowardice, disobedience and incompetence in the Army. (This, as we shall see, was at least partly designed to divert the dismay in the country from Stalin and the government to the Army.)

Despite these shortcomings, recent Soviet books on the war still contain an enormous amount of valuable factual material. I have used this extensively, but not uncritically, and not without a great deal of laborious cross-checking. In many cases I have had to

compare Russian statements and figures with their German counterparts.

Though my story is chiefly concerned with the war years in the Soviet Union, I thought it necessary to deal briefly, in an introductory part, with the 1939-41 period in Russia. After going through the Soviet press of the time and questioning scores of Russians on that period, I have tried to show in these chapters how the post-Munich developments—the

Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations in the spring and summer of 1939, the Soviet-German Pact, the partition of Poland, the war with Finland, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the rapid deterioration of Soviet-Nazi relations after Molotov's Berlin visit at the end of 1940 were presented to the Soviet people in their press, and also what a very large number of Soviet people privately felt about it all. I think readers will find some