Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (28 page)

remarked to each other that, ‘Now the war will be over soon.’
¹¹³

Margaret Wettlin, an American resident of the USSR, heard the news
in a grocery queue. ‘People laughed and slapped each other on the back . . . “Things should move fast now”, said a workman. “Maybe everything will be over by fall.”’
^{114
The newly opened commercial}
restaurants in Moscow were packed that night with British, American, and Russian revellers.
¹¹⁵

This interest in the question of the Second Front was shared by many
soldiers in the Red Army. A. T. Mar’ian noted in his diary that an April 1943 army lecture on the life of Lenin had been distracted by questions about the Second Front.
^{116
Their personal experience of the front line}
did little to undermine their faith that a Second Front would play a decisive role in the anti-Hitler struggle. The Politruk, Iu. Kominskii, wrote home in May 1942 to greet his family and celebrate the joint Anglo-American declaration about the Second Front; he was convinced it would accelerate the end of the war.
^{117
I. Rodiukov wrote to his pre-}
war university Professor, M. A. Veller, in similar terms: ‘The winter and the English from the West will help our people to set itself free in the spring from the fascist invaders.’
^{118
Vasily Ermolenko noted in his diary}
in July 1943 that if the Allies ‘put pressure on Hitler from the west, then the war can be finished in 1943’.
^{119
When the invasion finally came it}
was greeted with expressions of joy. A front-line Guards soldier wrote to Leonid Utesov on 6 June 1944, ‘Today we received the joyous news about the opening of the Second Front . . . You cannot understand how

^{112
Let. RGALI f. 600, op. 1, d. 20, ll. 77, 130, 169.}

^{113
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 235, l. 72.}

^{114
Mem. M. Wettlin,}
Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman’s Life in the Soviet
Union (New York, 1992), 247.

^{115
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War
, 853.

^{116
Mem. A. T. Mar’ian,}
Gody moi, kak soldaty: Dnevnik sel’skogo aktivista 1925–1953
gg. (Kishinev, 1987), 172.

^{117
Borisov et al.,}
Rossiia i Zapad
, 286.

^{118
Let. RGASPI M-f. 1, op. 46, d. 29, l. 12.}

^{119
Mem. V. Ermolenko,}
Voennyi dnevnik starshego serzhanta
(Belgorod, 2000), 22.

Perfidious Allies? 1941–45
67

all our moods were transformed.’
^{120
From the front line to the factory}
floor Soviet citizens imbibed the message of the official press, that the Second Front in Europe would play a decisive role in the military victory over fascist Germany.

Once the longed-for Second Front had arrived in mid 1944, the
official narrative, that claimed the USSR was striking the decisive blows against Germany, also seems to have had a profound influence over the thinking of many Soviet citizens. This was particularly the case at the front line, where pride in the military feats of the Red Army was prominent. A popular Red Army marching song about Hitler, that even made it into the repertoires of some Soviet performing groups, included a verse about allied unwillingness to engage the Germans:

The Allies ran away from him,

They were suited to the Mussolini road.
Waiting for cakes and buns,

They got black eyes and bumps.
Scarcely saving their skins.
¹²¹

The notion that the Allies were playing a secondary role also spread
beyond the ranks of active combatants. Alexander Werth remembered that within a few weeks of the landings, the allied operations had been relegated in the minds of many Soviet citizens to ‘relatively small stuff’ in comparison to the massive Soviet offensive in Belorussia.
¹²²

The Secret Police gathered a huge volume of material about subver-
sive comments during the war. They recorded almost no remarks in which Soviet citizens claimed that the Allies were actually doing the majority of the fighting against Germany. A typical example of what the NKVD regarded as subversive talk was the claim by Professor Grinchenko, a Ukrainian academic in Ufa that, ‘The English and Americans . . . are commanding our army on the basis of their strategy . . . We are just being used as a blind weapon in their hands.’
^{123
Grinchenko}
manipulated, but did not contest the idea that the Allies were not doing their fair share of the fighting. Rumours that suggested the Anglo- Americans were doing all of the fighting were very rare. They were not successful and so did not spread. The Soviet press established a near

^{120
Let. RGALI f, 3005, op. 1, d. 750, l. 69.}

^{121
Let. Ibid. l. 53.}

^{122
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War
, 856.

^{123
Sv. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 23, d. 125, l. 21.}

68
Being Soviet

hegemonic image of the respective contributions of the various alliance
partners to the anti-Hitler struggle.

The Soviet press was also extremely successful at communicating
certain aspects of Official Soviet Identity during this period. The narra- tive of Soviet moral and military greatness enjoyed widespread success amongst significant proportions of the population. As one Russian woman expressed it, after the victory at Stalingrad, ‘For the first time in my life, I think we are a very great people, perhaps the greatest people in the world.’
^{124
A group of factory workers in Arkhangel’sk}
oblast’
indignantly enquired in 1942, ‘Why do they say Anglo-Soviet-American and not Soviet-Anglo-American Coalition?’
^{125
The former term}
diminished the leading role of the USSR. The visitors’ book for a July 1943 exhibition about ‘Soviet Culture Overseas During the War’ was filled with comments such as,

I left this exhibition with a great sense of pride in our country.

We swelled with pride at the knowledge that we were the guiding star to the
peoples of the world.

Now I am once again proud of the strength of our country and her place in the
world. The love of the peoples of the world towards us as the leading force was inspiring.
¹²⁶

This notion of Soviet greatness is also evident in the NKVD
svodki
from the years 1943–5. A doctor, named Sokol from Kiev, remarked exultantly after the Crimean Conference that, ‘The fact alone of the journey of Roosevelt and Churchill to the territory of the USSR testifies about the mighty capacity of our country and the dominating role of the Soviet Union amongst the other allied powers ... ’
^{127
Seniuk, a}
kolkhoz- nik
from Voinilovskii
raion,
noted in a similar vein, ‘Now we believe that the Soviet power has great strength. It has won the authority of the greatest state in the world.’
^{128
The imprint of Soviet late-war greatness}
remained a prominent feature in the memories of Soviet citizens for years afterwards. Vasilii Ivanovich, a child during the war, remembered how he heard that at Tehran Churchill had stood like a soldier before

^{124
Mem. A. Werth,}
Russia: The Post-War Years
(New York, 1971), 10.

^{125
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1301, l. 38.}

^{126
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 219, ll. 144–5.}

^{127
Sv. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 23, d. 1449, l. 2.}

^{128
Sv. Ibid. ll. 3, 4, 5, 14, 24.}

Perfidious Allies? 1941–45
69

Stalin because of the great authority of the
vozhd’
.
^{129
Even some of the}
most anti-Soviet respondents to HIP affirmed that the USSR had done a great thing in defeating Hitler and liberating Eastern Europe.
¹³⁰

This sense of Soviet global greatness was particularly powerful
amongst the front-line soldiers. After Stalingrad the
frontoviki
were feted as celebrities in the USSR. Their new-found status was closely connected to the moral and military authority of the USSR.
^131
Young
men, such as V. S. Litvinov, wrote to Soviet leaders begging to be allowed to participate in the ‘great task’ at the front.
^{132
One respondent}
to HIP remarked that ‘the feeling of being a victor was predominant’ during his first months in Berlin. He enjoyed walking the streets in civilian clothes and then watching the Germans tremble with fear when he revealed his identity.
^{133
Red Army soldiers were the active arm of the}
leading nation within the Grand Alliance. As Boris Romanovich, a front-line officer, explained in an interview, ‘Our place in the world was higher than in ’41 . . . The status as winners was of course very high in 1945.’
^{134
The official Soviet narrative of self provided a powerful and}
engaging identity for many Soviet citizens both at the front line and away from it.

Alternative imaginations: rumour, speculation, and manipulation

It is perhaps unsurprising that Soviet citizens were convinced their
armies were bearing the brunt of the fight against Germany. The scale of the German invasion and the ongoing casualties were clear to both combatant and non-combatant citizens alike. Soviet citizens were also by no means wrong to conclude that the fighting in France was ‘relatively small stuff ’ in comparison to the massive offensive being

^{129
Int. Vasilii Ivanovich, Moscow, May 2004. See also: Zubkova,}
Russia After the
War, 32–3.

^{130
HIP. A. 30, 642, 60; 9, 121, 30.}

^{131
Mem. A. Korin,}
Sovietskaia rossiia v 40–60 godakh
(Frankfurt, 1968), 107.

^{132
Let. GARF f. R7523, op. 29, d. 52, ll. 51; see also ll. 25–6. See Edele,}
Soviet Veterans of World War II
, and Weiner,
Making Sense of War
, 49–56, for a discussion of Red Army service as a marker of status in the post-war period.

^{133
HIP. B9, 25, 6.}