Читаем Stalin: A Biography полностью

Ideas were tried out to increase the Red Army’s appeal in eastern and east-central Europe. Among them was Panslavism. This was the notion that the Slavs, regardless of nationality, politically and culturally had much in common. Alexander III and Nicholas II had exploited it so as to increase the Russian Empire’s influence in Bulgaria and Serbia. Stalin let groups be formed dedicated to the unification of the Slavs in the struggle against Hitler.18 He gave the non-Marxist historian Yevgeni Tarle a platform to promote the idea. For Stalin, the USSR — unlike the Russian Empire — was practising Panslavism (or Slavophilia as he referred to it) on a unique basis: ‘We, the new Slavophile Leninists — the Slavophile Bolsheviks, communists — stand not for the unification of Slavic peoples but for their union.’ For Stalin, such a union was crucial if the Slavs were to solve the age-old problem of protecting themselves against the Germans.19

The intent was obvious: the conquest of the eastern half of Europe would be eased if the USSR could count on sympathy in those countries beyond the usual constituency of communist parties. This had been done by the last two Romanovs with much success in diplomatic relations with Bulgaria and Serbia, and Stalin counted on using it similarly. It contained damaging flaws, however, which were exposed almost as soon as he played the Panslavist card. Not all Slavs were of the Orthodox Church or had a traditional feeling of linkage with Russians. Poles and Czechs, being Catholic, remembered centuries of antagonism. Furthermore, not all peoples in eastern and east-central Europe were Slavs. Panslavism was a downright threat to Hungarians, Romanians and Germans. (It did not commend itself to Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, but they were anyway going to be re-annexed to the USSR.) Stalin persisted with the policy until after the defeat of Nazi Germany. It was a sign of his wrong-headedness. Not all his wartime shifts in policy were successful. It also exhibited an acute perception that the campaign to win the peace had to be worked up long before the war was over. Stalin had no illusions about the difficulties ahead.

Proof that his Panslavism had ulterior motives lies in the development of Soviet internal policy. The motif of the Motherland dominated official statements, and steadily the coarseness of anti-internationalism increased. Alexander Fadeev, Chairman of the USSR Union of Writers, roundly condemned ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’. 20 Stalin did not comment publicly on this initiative; but the fact that Fadeev’s provocative article became the unchallengeable party line is proof that this chauvinistic version of patriotism had Stalin’s approval and indeed had been instigated by him. Among those groups most clearly threatened by the accusation of cosmopolitanism, of course, were Soviet Jews. Stalin was already playing with one of the grubbiest instruments of rule: anti-semitism.

This deserves consideration by those who want to make sense of Stalin and Soviet politics. Public life in the wartime USSR was not homogeneous. Nor was there a sudden break in 1945. Of course Stalin made concessions in the war; but several of them — especially as regards the Orthodox Church and the Comintern — really belonged to an agenda of increased rather than decreased state pressure. Stalin conceded when he had to, but snatched back his limited compromises as soon as he had the chance. His behaviour was mysterious to those who surrounded him. To them it appeared that he was more open than in the past to military advice and to the country’s religious and cultural traditions. They hoped that some kind of conversion had taken place and that this behaviour would continue after the war had been won. They fooled themselves. There were plenty of signs in 1943 and even earlier that Stalin had given ground only tactically. Those who knew him intimately, especially fellow members of the State Committee for Defence, noticed nothing to indicate that the Boss wanted reform; they understood that the recent relaxations might not necessarily be permanent. They were right.

Yet the rest of Soviet society — or at least those of its members who wanted to think the best of him — were kept in the dark. War left them no time to ponder. They were fighting, working and looking for food. The relief of pressures was welcomed by them, but they expected much more. Indeed thousands of Russian POWs, once removed from the grip of Stalin’s regime, decided that Stalin too was an enemy and volunteered to help the Germans defeat him under the leadership of Lieutenant-General Andrei Vlasov. But the vast majority of those captured by the Wehrmacht refused to cross sides.21 Like other citizens of the USSR, they hoped against hope that deep reforms would take place at the end of the war. Rigours which had been bearable in the battles against Nazism would be regarded as unnecessary and intolerable once Germany had been defeated.

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