Figure 1.2 Viktor Govorkov, “Stalin in the Kremlin Cares about Each One of Us.” 1940. Source: Novosti Collection/Topfoto.
Of millions of Soviet citizens, it has been argued, helped create a fearful and paranoid atmosphere that in certain ways persisted in the USSR even after Stalins death in 1953.42
While the arrest wave was peaking in 1937-9, the international situation appeared ever more ominous. Moscow watched uneasily as Japanese troops continued to conquer Chinese territory, and in August 1939 Soviet and Japanese troops engaged in a massive tank battle on the Mongolian border. Since 1933 Germany had been ruled by Adolf Hitler, whose maniacal antisemitism was paralleled by his fanatical hatred for communism. In 1938 Hitler had extended German rule to Austria and destroyed Czechoslovakia the following year - all without having to resort to arms. The next victim was obvious: Poland. Britain and France warned Hitler against any hostile action, while the world hoped that the fear of a two-front war would deter Nazi aggression. Thus the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (named after the Soviet and German ministers of foreign affairs who negotiated it) on August 23, 1939, came as a massive shock to the world and most of all to Poland. And indeed, barely a week later, on September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland. World War II had begun.
When the Wehrmacht poured across the Polish border on September 1, 1939, the USSR initially took no military action, as dictated by its nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. Then on September 17 Soviet troops crossed the border set by the Peace of Riga and occupied the eastern half of Poland, following a secret clause of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact dividing Poland and the Baltic States into “German” and “Soviet” spheres of influence.43 By the end of September the Polish army was no longer capable of open resistance and went underground, while the Polish government went into exile. Following further negotiations with Nazi Germany, the USSR began to put pressure on the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) to allow Soviet bases there, legalize the Communist Party, and align their foreign policy with the USSR. This process culminated with the absorption of the three Baltic states into the USSR in July-August 1940. The former eastern territories of Poland were absorbed into the Belarusian and Ukrainian SSRs, with the city of Wilno (now Vilnius) given to Lithuania.
The USSR applied similar pressure on Finland by trying to persuade the Finns to accept a large portion of Soviet territory to the north in exchange for shifting the Soviet-Finnish border near Leningrad some 20 miles further west. The Finns assured the Soviet negotiators that neither Finnish nor foreign troops would threaten the security of the USSR, but with the important arms-producing city Leningrad so close to the Finnish border, Moscow was not reassured. The Finns, on the other hand, had every reason to mistrust Soviet intentions; furthermore, the shift of the border in the south (away from Leningrad and toward Helsinki) would have rendered useless their carefully built defenses (the so-called Mannerheim Line). In November 1939 the Red Army attacked Finland and suffered major losses. For two months the small, but nimble and well-trained Finnish troops held back the Soviet aggressors. Meanwhile, the unprovoked attack caused the USSR to be expelled from the League of Nations. But eventually the military and economic strain was too great for the Finns who were obliged to sign an armistice with the USSR in March 1940, giving up nearly 10 percent of Finnish territory and twice that of Finnish industry. Almost a million refugees fled their homes rather than remain under Soviet rule.
The Soviet-Finnish “Winter War” (Finnish: Talvisota) was a military and public relations disaster for the USSR. Soviet casualties have been estimated as at least 270,000 men - fighting an army that could mobilize only 180,000 men. While Red Army troops and commanders quickly learned from the first disastrous weeks of fighting, the overall impression remained that the Red Army was disorganized and weak. Foreign commentators argued that the purges in the officer corps had destroyed morale, placing inexperienced and incompetent men in key leadership positions. The military losses against Finland sent a shock wave through the Communist Party and Red Army leadership. Major reforms and improvements would be rushed through in the following year. Adolf Hitler and his military advisors were careful observers of the Red Army against the Finns, but underestimated the extent to which the communists learned from their mistakes.44
The western border of the USSR changed significantly in 1940: besides acquiring land in Finnish Karelia, the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were absorbed into the USSR after fraudulent plebiscites in summer 1940. Formerly Polish territory was incorporated into the Belarusian and Ukrainian SSRs. To the south, Moscow handed the Romanian government an ultimatum in June 1940 demanding the return of formerly tsarist lands then known as Bessarabia. This territory was absorbed into the Moldovan SSR in August 1940. In all of these regions the year between incorporation into the USSR and the Nazi attack of June 1941 is remembered as a period of mass arrests, deportations, nationalization of property, and crude Stalinist propaganda.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had never been seen as permanent; Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union differed far too much in ideology for that. From September 1939 onward, especially after the disastrous Winter War with Finland, the USSR was desperately rearming and reforming its armed forces in preparation for war. At the same time Stalin went out of his way to avoid giving the Germans any excuse for a premature attack. In 1941 Stalin was convinced that the Red Army could not yet withstand the Wehrmacht; he had also persuaded himself that Hitler would wait at least another year before attacking. Despite a great deal of evidence from a number of sources that an attack was indeed planned, Stalin continued to believe that rumors of an impending invasion were spread by the British in order to pull the USSR into the war. Thus when Operation Barbarossa exploded across the Soviet frontier in the early morning hours of June 22, 1941, Red Army commanders were caught off guard. The Wehrmacht threw over three million soldiers - both Germans and allies such as the Hungarians and Romanians - against the weak Soviet defenses. At first commanders on the front lines frantically asked whether they were allowed to shoot back. In the first months of the war over a million Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner; most would die under the brutal conditions of German captivity. By autumn as the cold winds of winter began to blow, the Wehrmacht had reached the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad.45
Stalin apparently suffered a nervous breakdown upon receiving word of the German invasion. He was unable to make a radio address calling on Soviet citizens to resist the invaders; ironically, that task fell to Patriarch Sergius of the Russian Orthodox Church who urged Russians to destroy and expel the invaders just as the Napoleonic troops had been destroyed in 1812. Nearly two weeks after the invasion, on July 3, Stalin took to the radio waves with a patriotic speech, but privately was pessimistic. As the Germans neared Moscow, panic broke out with citizens storming the railroad stations to get out. With a combination of violence and persuasion, Stalin ended the panic, promising that he and the government would remain in Moscow (though he sent Lenin’s embalmed corpse eastward just in case).
Cut off by German troops in early September 1941, Leningrad came to symbolize the heroism and tragedy of the Soviet people in this war. Under siege for 100 days, with only a small route across the ice of Lake Ladoga to bring in supplies, some 1.5 million died of cold and starvation, with another 1.4 million being evacuated. The siege of Leningrad would be broken only in January 1944.46
By late 1941 it was apparent that Hitler’s risky strategy to deal the USSR a knockout blow had not succeeded. Assuming that the campaign would be over before winter set in, Wehrmacht planners had not provided their troops with adequate winter clothing. By year’s end, the Wehrmacht had suffered over 600,000 casualties; possibly only Hitler’s fanatical refusal to allow withdrawals prevented military collapse, though at a high human cost. In 1942 the German armies failed to take either Moscow or Leningrad, but surged to the south, capturing oil fields in Azerbaijan and, fatefully, taking the city of Stalingrad on the Volga river. The Wehrmacht conquered the city with large losses in building-by-building street fighting, but the Red Army evacuated its troops and artillery across the Volga in good order. From the eastern bank of the river Soviet artillery pounded the Germans who found themselves dangerously overextended. Despite pleas from German general Friedrich Paulus to allow a withdrawal, Hitler adamantly refused
To budge. As Paulus had feared, he and his army was cut off. He surrendered with 91,000 troops and 22 generals on January 31, only a day after Hitler had promoted Paulus to the rank of Generalfeldmarshall. Only about 5,000 of the soldiers who surrendered would survive captivity and return to Germany, some a decade or more later.47
Whether one considers Stalingrad in early 1943 or the Battle of Kursk six months later as the true “turning point” of World War II, by late 1943 it was clear that the Red Army had Hitlers troops on the run.'‘8 To be sure, it would take hundreds of battles and many thousands of casualties before the last German soldier was expelled from Soviet soil. In summer1944 the Red Army occupied the Baltic states and entered eastern Poland, setting up a communist-friendly Polish government in the city of Lublin. By early 1945 the Red Army was in East Prussia, where commanders tacitly allowed their troops to pillage, attack, and rape whatever German civilians remained. As the Red Army marched westward, millions of Germans fled toward the German heartland.
World War II in Europe - dubbed the “Great Patriotic War” like that of 1812 against Napoleon - ended for the USSR on May 9, 1945, with an unconditional German surrender. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought the Asian war to an end without significant Soviet participation, but the USSR gained back from Japan the southern half of Sakhalin Island and several nearby small islands. In 1945, with its army firmly in control of eastern Europe and a goodly part of Germany, the USSR was indisputably one of the two world superpowers. At home, however, Soviet citizens were cold and hungry, Soviet cities - and enormous parts of the countryside as well - were in ruins, and tens of millions of Soviet citizens had perished in the struggle. Still, the news of the war s end was received with great joy. Many hoped that the USSR’s victory against fascism and its secure place as a world power would translate into a more prosperous and less repressive Soviet Union in the postwar period.
World History
