People were deluding themselves. Stalin had made only those concessions vital for the prosecution of a successful military effort. The basic Soviet order remained intact. Since the start of Operation Barbarossa Stalin had ordered the NKVD to mete out merciless punishment to military ‘cowards’ and labour ‘shirkers’. Any sign of deviation from total obedience invoked instant retaliation. The state planning agencies diverted available resources to the armed forces at the expense of civilians, who were left with barely enough for subsistence. The vertical chains of command were tightened. Central and local political leaderships were required to carry through every decree from the Kremlin to the letter. The one-party dictatorship was being put to the ultimate test and was reorganised so as to use the powers at its disposal to the maximum effect. The party in particular acquired importance as an organisation co-ordinating relations between the Red Army and the governmental institutions in each locality; it was also the party which devised the propaganda to stiffen the morale of soldiers and civilians. Yet the USSR remained a terrifying police state and the basic structures of coercion stayed in place. No informed citizens should have expected anything different from Stalin. He had ruled by fear for too long for there to be doubt about how he would behave on the resumption of peace.
41. SUPREME COMMANDER
The man with the gammy left arm rejected for conscription in the First World War and criticised for military bungling in both the Civil War and the Soviet-Polish War commanded a state at war with Nazi Germany. Stalin in Moscow confronted Hitler in Berlin. In the minds of both men this was a personal duel as well as a clash between ideologies and state-systems. Neither of them lacked self-belief in directing his war effort.
The Soviet war leader took time to judge how to handle public opinion. Molotov made the initial announcement about the war on behalf of the political leadership on 22 June 1941. Another hero of the day was the radio announcer Isaak Levitan, whose rich bass voice epitomised the popular will to resist the German invasion at any cost. When at last Stalin made his broadcast to Soviet citizens on 3 July, eleven days after the start of military hostilities, he adjusted his language to the wartime emergency. These were his opening words:1
Comrades! Citizens!
Brothers and sisters!
Fighters in our army and navy!
It is to you I appeal, my friends!
Many have noted that Stalin was reverting to traditional Russian discourse by addressing himself to ‘brothers and sisters’. This is true. But what is usually missed is that he started his speech by appealing to comrades and citizens (and at least one listener noted a caesura between ‘Citizens! Comrades!’ and ‘Brothers and sisters’).2
Nor did he seek to identify himself exclusively with Russians. When listing the peoples threatened by Germany, he mentioned not only the Russians but also ‘the Ukrainians, Belorussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and the other free peoples of the Soviet Union’.3Listeners were grateful for signs that resolute defence was being prepared. The writer Yekaterina Malkina heard the speech and was inspired by it; and her house servant was so moved that she broke down in tears. Malkina wrote to a friend:4
I forgot to tell you further about Stalin’s speech that, as I listened to it, it seemed that he was very upset. He talked with such large pauses and frequently drank a lot of water; you could hear him pouring it out and swallowing it. All this served to strengthen the emotional impact of his words. That very day I went and signed up with the volunteer army.
Few persons who heard him that day forgot the experience.
Groping his way towards an appropriate mode of communication, he sometimes succeeded brilliantly: