Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (32 page)

^{197
D. M. Griffiths, ‘Catherine II, George III, and the British Opposition’, in A. G.}
Cross, ed.,
Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth Century: Contacts and Comparisons
(Newtonville, 1979), 306–20.

^{198
N. A. Erofeev,}
Tumannyi Albion: Angliia i anglichane glazami russkikh 1825–1853

(Moscow, 1982), 308–10; O. A. Kaznina, A. N. Nikoliukin,
‘Ia pokidal Tumannyi

Perfidious Allies? 1941–45
81

understanding of Russia towards the start of the 20th century there was a
traditional lack of faith in England.’
^{199
This aversion developed during}
World War I when a common joke ran that England was ‘prepared to fight until the last Russian soldier’.
^{200
Britain, the ultimate imperial}
state, had remained the key enemy of the USSR throughout the 1920s, and its behaviour at Munich had only confirmed this antipathy. As one of the respondents to HIP explained, ‘All the old wars were caused by economic reasons. Russia always competed with England.’
²⁰¹

Historic British manipulation, allied with Soviet-fuelled ideas of
English imperialism, directly contributed to the culture of mistrust directed at the Anglo-American Allies during World War II. Britain was regarded as the primary partner within the Western powers during World War II. Churchill, in particular, was understood to have played a leading role in the strategic policy of the alliance. In the absence of a clear narrative to explain the internal military dynamics of the Grand Alliance, Soviet citizens resorted to the ‘tactic’ of
bricolage
. Explanations for the unopened Second Front, and by extension the rumours about wider allied perfidy, relied on pre-existing ideas about capitalist Britain’s manipulative diplomatic game. A number of listeners at agitational meetings openly wondered whether ‘the English have abandoned their traditional policy of “getting others to do their dirty work?”’
²⁰²

The Soviet population seems to have had a more positive vision of
America.
^{203
Roosevelt enjoyed the status of ‘a real friend’ to the Soviet}
Union in a way that Churchill never did.
^{204
His death provoked an}
outburst of genuine grief in the USSR and also fear that America’s pro- Soviet line might be reversed.
^{205
Molotov, who was in San Francisco at}
the time, later remembered that, ‘We took it to heart more than they

Al’biona’: Russkie Pisateli ob Anglii 1646–1945
(Moscow, 2001), 11–16; J. Siegel,
End-
game: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London, 2002), 198–201.

^{199
Borisov et al.,}
Rossiia i Zapad
, 275.

^{200
Ibid. 277; Figes and Kolonitskii,}
Interpreting the Russian Revolution
, 164–75.

^{201
HIP. A. 1, 7, 31.}

^202
(
Pfuht,fnm ;fh xy;ybvb hyrfvb), literally, ‘obtaining results through others’ hands’. Inf. GAOPDiFAO, f. 296, op. 1, d. 1652, l. 171; d. 1551, l. 18; Sv. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 24, d. 1477, l. 9; d. 1631, l. 4; d. 2837, l. 2.

^{203
See HIP. B3, 64, 82.}

^{204
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War,
972;
Russia: The Post-War Years
, 13–14, 51, 60.

^{205
Mem. Ibid. 972. Inf. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 23, d. 1632, ll. 1–5. Soviet leaders}
received a number of letters after 1945 suggesting a memorial to Roosevelt or a formal marking of the anniversary of his death: RGASPI f. 588, op. 11, d. 872, ll. 3, 26–8, 112.

82
Being Soviet

did.’
^206
Pravda
itself occasionally endorsed this distinction, particularly in late 1942 when it presented the British ‘blimps’ as the major force behind the failure of the Second Front. On the whole, however, the official press was respectful of both allies. The collective assumption that Britain, and to some extent America, were manipulating the USSR was founded on pre-existing ideas about these nations’ historical characters. These ideas predated 1917, but had been reinforced by Soviet rhetoric in the 1920s and 1930s. The rapid shift in Official Soviet Identity in 1941 did not instantaneously transform Soviet citizens’ imaginations about the outside world. In the absence of a clear explanation for the absence of the Second Front, Soviet citizens turned to traditional and historically informed ideas about the character of Britain, as an expla- nation for their contemporary perfidy.

CONCLUSION

Being Soviet mattered during wartime in the USSR. Soviet identity was
more than simply a coded form of Russian nationalism. The diplomatic identity of the USSR as a great and morally authoritative power, that emerged after Stalingrad, was deeply attractive to many Soviet citizens. Nonetheless, rumours that the USSR was being exploited by their wartime partners also circulated widely. These rumours about the Comintern, churches, or collective farms were largely attempts to understand the official press, rather than reject it.
Pravda
and the language of Official Soviet Identity remained the starting point in the struggle to understand the relationship between the USSR and the world around it.

^{206
Resis, ed.,}
Molotov Remembers
, 51. See also: Scott and Krasilshchik, eds.,
Yanks
Meet Reds, 74, 167.

3

Patrons or Predators? Foreign Servicemen, Technology, and Art within Official Soviet Cultural Identity 1941–45

The German invasion of June 1941 transformed the cultural, as well as
diplomatic identity of the USSR. The wartime alliance with Britain and America led to a dramatic about-turn in official attitudes towards the scientific and artistic products of the outside world. During 1939–41 Soviet citizens had been discouraged from listening to, watching, or making use of the fruits of capitalist civilization. However, after 1941, jazz music, American films, and Western science were swiftly rehabili- tated and Official Soviet Identity embraced the contribution of these foreign artefacts.

A few Soviet citizens had already enjoyed the opportunity to person-
ally interact with capitalist civilization in the newly occupied borderlands during the Pact Period. During the Great Patriotic War, that opportu- nity was afforded to a vastly greater number of people. Both defeat and victory built on the process that began in 1939. The Wehrmacht’s occupation of large swathes of the USSR forced many Soviet citizens to interact with German food, technology, music, religion, and combat- ants. The conquest of Eastern and Central Europe in 1944–5 also offered millions of Red Army soldiers their first taste of the outside world. The story of wartime interaction with the Germans is now thoroughly told, with the prevailing view that contact with capitalist riches led many to question the credibility of the Soviet system.
¹

This chapter focuses instead on the much less well examined place of
the Allies within Official Soviet Identity as a civilization during the war.

^1
Zubkova,
Russia After the War
:
Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957
(Armonk, NY, 1998), 25–6. See also Edele,
Soviet Veterans of World War II
(Oxford, 2009).

84
Being Soviet

Contact with the wartime Allies was less widespread than with the
German occupiers or the peoples of Eastern Europe. However, the relationship with the scientific, human, and artistic products of the Western powers was far more complex. The Soviet press could not openly denigrate Anglo-American civilization, but there were limits to
the extent of legitimate enthusiasm for newspapers, trucks, and human visitors from Britain or the USA.

The first half of this chapter examines some of the less complex aspects
of Official Soviet Identity in this arena: foreign films and music, and the wartime goods sent to the USSR via Lend Lease. The second half of the chapter deals with the more delicate question, from the point of view of the Stalin-era government, of personal interaction between Soviet and Anglo-American citizens. The most celebrated example of this took place at Torgau, in Central Germany, where Red Army and allied troops celebrated their shared victory in April 1945.
^{2
However, a much greater}
and more sustained volume of interaction took place in the Arctic ports of Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk. Between 1941 and 1945 seventy-eight allied convoys, made up of around 1,400 ships, arrived in these two northern towns making them the centre point for inter-allied relations. Arkhangel’sk hosted up to a thousand foreign visitors at any one time. This chapter focuses on this almost completely ignored aspect of the Soviet wartime experience. The presence of so many foreign sailors deep inside the Soviet heartland placed great strain on local Bolshevik admin- istrators. They struggled to reconcile the interpersonal relationships that emerged with the boundaries of Official Soviet Identity as a civilization. For their part, Soviet citizens carefully deployed the ‘tactics of the habitat’ in this unprecedented situation, juggling the imperatives of their own personal interest and the need to be loyally Soviet.

OFFICIAL SOVIET IDENTITY AND WESTERN SCIENCE AND CULTURE

The outbreak of World War II transformed Soviet press coverage
concerning the outside world. For the first time since 1917, government newspapers held their fire about the social injustices and economic woes

^{2
Scott and Krasilschik,}
Yanks Meet Reds
:
Recollections of US and Soviet Vets from the
Linkup in World War II (Santa Barbara, 1988).

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
85

of capitalist life.
^{3
In the pre-war period, American racial inequality and}
British class oppression had served to reinforce the superiority of Soviet civilization. During the first few months of the war, however, syrupy articles comparing the sufferings of London, ‘the city of fogs and parks’, and Moscow were common.
^{4
This early war enthusiasm waned some-}
what, though there were prominent exhibitions on ‘Britain in the War’ and concerts to celebrate American Independence Day in 1943.
^5
In
1944 Alexandr Korneichuk’s play,
Mr Perkins’ Mission to the Land of the
Bolsheviks, was first performed. It narrated the visit of an American millionaire to the USSR and his discovery that the Soviet Union was not, as he had been told, a land of oppression. The message of the play was that ultimately these two nations could, and should, get along.
^6
The
peace-loving nature of Britain and America superseded their capitalist character and made them worthy allies for the USSR.

This positivity about the allied way of life also found expression on
the cinema screens and in the dance halls of the wartime USSR. During World War II 70 per cent of Soviet-made films dealt with the war;
She Defends the Motherland
and
Zoia
established the dominant motif of the partisan hero. The Anglo-American Allies were rarely mentioned, let alone featured, in these films, though Eisenstein’s 1944 historical epic
Ivan the Terrible
played up the Tsar’s alliance with Elizabethan

England.
^{7
However, the Soviet state’s new-found positivity about the}
culture of their wartime Allies led to the screening of the first new