Russia at war 1941-1945

A State Defence Committee has been formed to deal with the rapid mobilisation of

all the country's resources; all the power and authority of the State are vested in it.

[The members of this Committee, presided over by Stalin, were Molotov (Deputy

Chairman), Voroshilov, Malenkov and Beria, a fact not mentioned in the 1961 History, which merely states that Stalin was Chairman.]

This State Defence Committee has embarked upon its work, and it calls upon the

whole people to rally round the Party of Lenin and Stalin, and round the Soviet

Government for the selfless support of the Red Army and Navy, for the routing of

the enemy, for our victory...

All the strength of the people must be used to smash the enemy. Onward, to victory!

The effect of this speech, addressed to a nervous, and often frightened and bewildered people, was very important. Until then there had been something artificial in the

adulation of Stalin; his name was associated not only with the stupendous effort of the Five-Year Plans, but also with the ruthless methods employed in the collectivisation campaign and, worse still, with the terror of the Purges.

The Soviet people now felt that they had a leader to look to. In his relatively short broadcast Stalin not only created the hope, if not yet the certainty, of victory, but he laid down, in short significant sentences, the whole programme of wartime conduct for a

whole nation. He also appealed to the national pride, to the patriotic instincts of the Russian people. It was a great pull-yourselves-together speech, a blood-sweat-and-tears speech, with Churchill's post-Dunkirk speech as its only parallel.

An admirable description of the effect of Stalin's speech is to be found in Konstantin Simonov's famous novel, The Living and the Dead; here the speech was listened to in a field hospital:

Stalin spoke in a toneless, slow voice, with a strong Georgian accent. Once or twice, during his speech, you could hear a glass click as he drank water. His voice was low and soft, and might have seemed perfectly calm, but for his heavy, tired breathing, and that water he kept drinking during the speech...

There was a discrepancy between that even voice and the tragic situation of which he spoke; and in this discrepancy there was strength. People were not surprised. It was what they were expecting from Stalin.

They loved him in different ways, wholeheartedly, or with reservations; admiring

him and yet fearing him; and some did not like him at all. But nobody doubted his courage and his iron will. And now was a time when these two qualities were needed more than anything else in the man who stood at the head of a country at war.

Stalin did not describe the situation as tragic; such a word would have been hard to imagine as coming from him; but the things of which he spoke— opolcheniye,

partisans, occupied territories, meant the end of illusions... The truth he told was a bitter truth, but at last it was uttered, and people felt that they stood more firmly on the ground...