Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (37 page)

^{83
Mem. Khmelev,}
Ya khochu na front
, 101.

^{84
D. Loza, trans., J. F. Gebhardt,}
Commanding the Red Army’s Sherman Tanks:
The World War II Memoirs of Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitriy Loza (Lincoln NA, 1996), 7–8, 129.

^{85
A much smaller number visited Odessa as well in 1944–5. See: TsDAHOU f. 1,}

op. 23, d. 1455, ll. 7–8.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
101

Official relations and the contest for honour

Life in the Arctic ports was extremely hard for the Soviet population.
In 1942 Murmansk was largely destroyed by German bombing and the daily food supply in Arkhangel’sk, and its sister port of Molotovsk, barely outstripped that in Leningrad.
^{86
Between 1941 and 1945 thousands of}
over-paid, over-sexed, and under-employed foreign sailors descended on these deprived towns.
^{87
As Golubtsova notes, ‘In the memories of con-}
temporaries in 1943 Arkhangel’sk was overflowing with foreigners . . . You could meet them in the street and at the market, at the station, in the church and the cinema, in the summer at the beach, in winter on the ice rink.’
^{88
Air raid free Arkhangel’sk was dubbed the ‘Las Vegas of Northern}
Russia’ and felt the force of the sailors more than anywhere else.
^{89
It was}
not the first time in the city’s history that the streets had thronged with British servicemen: it had a long heritage of trade with England and was the centre of operations for British interventionist forces during the Civil War.
^{90
By 1941, however, the British had been absent for over twenty}
years, and their arrival heralded an unprecedented degree of contact with the outside world for the younger generation of city residents.

This unprecedented ‘invasion’ presented a conundrum for the Soviet
press. The convoyers’ dangerous journey to the USSR dramatically embodied the Allies’ military contribution to the war and the USSR’s partial reliance on foreign technology. In the early, desperate days of 1941, this was regarded in a positive light. The first allied convoys arrived at Murmansk in September 1941 bringing 300 Hurricane aircraft and an entire squadron of pilots, ground staff, and engineers.
^{91
The Hurricanes, and their crew, rapidly became a symbol of Anglo-}
Soviet cooperation. Their pictures appeared in
Pravda
, and in 1941 Konstantin Simonov wrote in
Krasnaia Zvezda
about how they had

^86
Suprun,
Lend-Liz,
161–2.

^{87
Many of the experiences of the sailors mirrored those of the ‘over-sexed, over paid}
and over here’ GI’s in wartime Britain. See: D. Reynolds,
Rich Relations: The American
Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945 (London, 2000).

^{88
O. Golubtsova,}
Voennaia liubov’ po-angliiski. Dokumental’naia povest’
(Severod-

vinsk, 2000), 9.

^{89
R. Woodman,}
The Arctic Convoys: 1941–1945
(London, 1994), 180. C. B. Tye,
The
Real Cold War: Featuring Jack in Joe’s Land (Gillingham, 1995), 79–80, 90, 115, 122.

^{90
R. L. Willett,}
Russian Sideshow: America’s Undeclared War: 1918–1920
(Dulles,

2003), 3–20.

^{91
Mem. See: H. Griffith,}
R.A.F. In Russia
(London, 1943); J. Golley,
Hurricanes Over Murmansk
(Wellingborough, 1987).

102
Being Soviet

found ‘a common language’ with their Russian hosts.
^{92
They had}
‘arrived here to fight and have behaved like true soldiers’.
⁹³

However, the Hurricane crews were the only Anglo-American service-
men stationed in the USSR during the war to benefit from such favoured reporting.
Pravda
’s article ‘O-Kei Britannia’ in January 1942 marked the end of the era in which the paper regularly spoke in open terms about the presence of British and American personnel on Soviet soil.
^{94
When Soviet}
papers described the naval battle in the North, they routinely did so without making any reference to the allied convoys operating in that sector.
^{95
Even the Arkhangel’sk}
oblast’
newspaper,
Pravda Severa,
made almost no direct references to the fact that Lend Lease supplies were disembarking in the region. On the other hand, the actions of French Normandie-Niemen Squadron, who served on the Russian front, were openly discussed. They presented no meaningful threat to the Official Soviet Identity of the USSR as a leader of the Grand Alliance.
⁹⁶

The two major exceptions to this rule were an often cited, but highly
atypical, speech by Maiskii, the Soviet Ambassador in Britain, that praised the convoyers ‘endurance, staying power, and bravery’ and a serialized story in
Ogon¨ek
at the start of 1944.
^{97
In the}
Ogon¨ek
story a Russian Captain, Zhitkov, has developed a lacquer to make periscopes invisible. His great rival, a German spy, enters the USSR disguised as a British officer on the ship
Mary Glory
to steal the new product. The German spy also finds a willing accomplice in Miles, the storeman of the
Mary Glory
, who agrees to blow the ships up as they travel back to Britain carrying Soviet conserves for the British people. Needless to say, the plot is foiled but the image it presents of the convoyers could hardly be more negative.
^{98
Beyond these fleeting references, the blanket of}
silence was nearly total. As Stalin himself admitted at a Kremlin banquet during the Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers, ‘We don’t talk much about them [the convoyers] but we do know what they do.’
⁹⁹

^92
Pravda
, 18.11.41, p. 2; 28.11.41, p. 2.

^{93
Krasnaia Zvezda}
, 30.11.1941, p. 4.

^94
Pravda
, 16.01.42, p. 2. The only subsequent references, largely in the mouths of foreign leaders, I found were: 12.05.42, p. 4; 28.08.42, p. 4; 22.04.43, p. 4; 21.05.44, p. 4.

^95
Ogon¨ek
, 01.1943: 1, p. 9;
Krasnaia Zvezda
, 04.06.1943, p. 4.

^96
Ogon¨ek
, 07.1943: 27, p. 11.

^97
Pravda
, 22.04.43, p. 4. Simonov also published a positive short piece about American convoyers in May 1942: Kiparsky,
English and American Characters in Russian
Fiction (Berlin, 1964), 103.

^98
Ogon¨ek
, 10–18.1944.

^{99
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War,
751.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
103

However, the presence of hundreds of foreign servicemen could not
be ignored in the port cities themselves. The behaviour of the local Soviet administration was constrained by the need to maintain a cordial relationship with their wartime allies. Nonetheless, it is clear from the internal reports of the city and
oblast’
authorities that they regarded the convoyers as at best a nuisance, and at worst a threat to the honour of the USSR. Inter-allied relations ashore were dominated by a concern for status and reputation. Soviet officials persistently complained that ‘The British do not treat the Russians as equals.’
^{100
From the other point of}
view, the convoyers were upset by the ingratitude of the local Soviet adminsitrators. Signalman Rob Lowe ‘often wondered what some of our colleagues who had been lost en route to Polyarnoe [Murmansk] and back had died for’ he was ‘convinced the average Russian was not aware of their sacrifice’.
^{101
The origins of this Maussian ‘contest for}
honour’ lay in two differing understandings of the convoyers’ presence in the USSR, as gift bearers or reciprocators.
¹⁰²

Official relations ashore were marred by a series of tit-for-tat allega-
tions on both sides. Soviet reports often cast aspersions on the bravery of the foreign sailors during the crossing to Northern Russia. The Royal Navy’s tactic of scuttling damaged but still floating ships was a source of particular irritation.
^{103
Tales, such as that of an American crew which}
jumped into their lifeboats on hearing the shout ‘aeroplane’ before returning when it transpired that the sighting had only been of a bird, were repeated with delight.
^{104
When a staff member at the Molotovsk}
International Club complained that the sailors were pampered, spoiled, and lovers of comfort, they were simply reiterating a standard official view of the convoyers.
^{105
Gluzman, the director of the International}
Club, claimed that many sailors came to the USSR simply for financial reward.
¹⁰⁶

The memoirs of the convoyers counter that the Red Fleet was
incompetent. Robert Hughes, a Gunnery Officer on HMS
Scylla,
remembers that they ‘seldom put out to sea and I doubted whether

^{100
Mem. Taffrail,}
Arctic Convoy
(London, 1956), 281.

^{101
Mem. Tye,}
Real Cold War,
102.

^{102
M. Douglas, ‘Foreword’, in, Mauss,}
The Gift,
ix.

^{103
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 124, ll. 89–90.}

^{104
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1210, ll. 14, 19–20.}

^{105
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 219, l. 151b.}

^{106
Inf. GAAO f. 1649, op. 2, d. 2, l. 9; f. 296, op. 2, d. 3, l. 10.}

104
Being Soviet

they would stand up to the weather much less the enemy’.
^107
Percy
Price, a survivor of PQ 17, commented, ‘We didn’t see much of them! They only came out as we arrived in port.’
^{108
The convoyers also}
complained that the local government, through incompetence or mal- ice, was wasting the supplies which they struggled to bring to Russia.
^{109
Both sides also accused the other of spying. The convoyers were con-}
vinced that the staff of the International Club were handpicked by the Secret Police.
^{110
On the other hand, the Secretary of the Arkhangel’sk}
oblast’
committee complained that only 25 of the 238 permanent British staff stationed in the city were naval operatives. The rest were engaged in ‘active spying work’.
^{111
Such allegations reinforced the}
impression on both sides that they were innocent victims of a dishon- ourable ally.