Read Fighting on all Fronts Online
Authors: Donny Gluckstein
Fighting on all Fronts (33 page)
Writers hostile to the repressive role of the Soviet regime have searched for popular movements that escaped the confines of Stalinist ideology. The Lokot Republic has been held up as evidence of “an independent Russian state flourishing deep in the German rear”, a third way between Nazism and Stalinism.
107
From the German point of view this small Russian administered enclave was an experiment in collaborationism. Its leader, Bronislav Kaminskii, drew on resentment of Stalin, and the Republic’s newspaper,
Voice of the People
, reminded readers of mass exploitation and falling living standards in the Soviet Union.
108
One article contrasted “Their way and ours”: “Our way—the peasants get the
land. Their way—forced collectivisation”.
109
However, this did not lead to independence from imperialism in general, simply an alliance with the imperialist rival:
It is the bloodthirsty Stalin and his Communist and Commissar henchmen who need war, but they are not the ones fighting in the regular army, they are hiding in the rear… They brought poverty and hunger, sending tens of millions of Russians to labour camps, martyrdom and death… The people, our people, do not want a war that will only benefit a handful of scoundrels and active traitors of the population. The German army is the liberator of the Russian people, the friend of the Russian people, and together with them, is the enemy of the entire Stalinist structure and its lackeys.
110
In practice this meant that the Lokot Republic became an arm of the Nazi war machine. From the first day the “Russian National Liberation Army” of some 8,000 undertook anti-partisan operations, thus relieving the Wehrmacht of that task in the area. In July 1942, 42 clashes between the Lokot militia and red partisans were recorded. In December 1943 there were 573.
111
The administration declared that for every one of its fighters killed, 20 partisan hostages would be executed, the tariff being 50 if a commander died.
112
The Republic finally fell to the Red Army after two years. It had killed some 10,000 civilians including all the Jews in its reach.
113
If the Lokot Republic failed to achieve an independent stance between the rival imperialisms, the same applied to the purely military experiment that was led by Andrei Vlasov. He was captured by the Germans in July 1942 and like many POWs given the choice of continued captivity or freedom through collaboration.
114
But being a decorated Red Army general he was allotted a special role as leader of an alternative Russian force to the Red Army. Did Vlasov offer a genuine anti-Stalinist alternative or was he simply a pawn in the Nazi propaganda machine?
His manifesto accused Stalin of military failings and ruling through “the terror system”. It claimed broad sections of the army and population realised further war could only bring “the destruction of millions”. The question was: “What road can lead to the overthrow of Stalin’s government and the creation of a new Russia?… And who can best assist that—Germany, England or the US?” Vlasov concluded it was the Germans since they were already at war with Stalin. However, he made a gesture towards an independent stance by suggesting that the millions of Russians in the occupied territories were the basis for “implementing a new Europe in parallel with the Germans”.
115
The hollowness of this pose was exposed when Vlasov called on the Germans to help him establish a Russian army with legal authority in occupied areas. The answer from the German leadership was a flat “No”. Goering stated that Germany “never included Vlassov and his army in its calculations”.
116
Himmler too was dismissive: “I guarantee we can make almost any Russian general into a Vlasov! And their price is incredibly cheap…schnapps, cigarettes and women”.
117
Although Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army was much vaunted in leaflets dropped behind Soviet lines, it was entirely a fiction. Only in September 1944, when the Germans were in full retreat, was a Russian force of ten divisions agreed to.
118
It fought one unsuccessful battle against the Red Army and soon afterwards, in true opportunist fashion, Vlasov declared: “only if we become a real power alongside the Czechs, Poles, Yugoslavs and prudent Germans will the Anglo-Saxons eventually recognise us.” So in May 1945 Vlasov switched sides and backed the Czech resistance to Germany in Prague.
In 1945 Stalin triumphed against his imperialist rival but, as Volkogonov writes: “Utterly insensitive to the countless tragedies caused by the war, Stalin was guided by the desire to inflict the greatest possible damage on the enemy without regard to the human cost for the Soviet people”.
119
Pursuing a scorched earth policy the general secretary thought nothing of laying waste to vast tracts or destroying entire towns.
120
His guiding star was this: “The law of war is such that whoever seizes booty, keeps it”.
121
Whatever country the Red Army marched into was counted as booty and that amounted to most of Eastern Europe.
Hitler and Stalin were both imperialists, though there were differences between them. The former, for historical reasons (related to defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles), was expansionist. Stalin’s initial stance was rather more defensive (though this changed when the opportunity presented itself in 1945). Hitler was the unashamed representative of violent counter-revolution, racism and untrammelled capitalist exploitation. Stalin’s regime was the product of counter-revolution but clung to the socialist rhetoric of October 1917. If within the Soviet Union this merely covered up the horrors of forced collectivisation, industrialisation and the gulag, internationally the struggles at places like Stalingrad were a potent source of inspiration for resistance movements and anti-fascism generally.
Soviet victory over Germany ultimately relied on war from below. It cost the lives of some 27 million Soviet citizens, most of them civilians,
122
and was motivated by a hatred of occupation and hope for a better life. As one war veteran puts it: “I didn’t think about the Gulag or other sad things. I believed that after the war, as an ally of Britain and the US, Stalin would see the sense of introducing democratic reforms”.
123
Another affirms that: “many hoped that after the war the country would be more democratic, [but, alas] after the victory arrests gained a new intensity”.
124
It was out of the disjuncture between imperialist and people’s war that one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the era was to emerge. Despite the famine and pre-war repression, despite the disaster of Barbarossa, despite the deportations of entire populations and the interrogations of SMERSH, Stalin acquired the status of demigod.
As we have seen, the returning POW, Ozerov, felt betrayed by Stalin but writes: “He was often right, and in a big country like the USSR you can only maintain order through iron discipline. Stalin was the man who united the whole people… Without him victory was impossible”.
125
Another veteran says: “I was thrown in jail at the age of 13, my mother-in-law was arrested, my father-in-law shot, yet I still believed in Stalin!”
126
Finally, this soldier, after noting the killing of millions of innocent people, including his own father, concludes that: “Stalin united the whole Soviet Union in the struggle for victory”.
127
These are classic examples of what Marx calls the “enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world” of reification.
128
In a similar vein Wilhelm Reich wrote how repression makes a person hide “behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else’s strength and greatness. He’s proud of his great generals but not of himself”.
129
The masses suffered enormously in their successful war against fascism but were unable to claim victory for themselves. So they projected their achievements onto Stalin. His cult was inverted proof of their strength and greatness.
1
V Medinskii,
Voina, Mify SSSR, 1939-1945
(Olma, Moscow, 2012), p394.
2
Medinskii, 2012, p39.
3
Vladimir Lenin, Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,
Report on Peace
, October 26 (November 8) 1917, at
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26b.htm
.
4
Quoted in D Hallas,
The Comintern
(Bookmarks, London, 1985), p123.
5
M Beloff,
The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1929-1941
, vol 2 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1949), p20.
6
Quoted in A Applebaum,
Gulag: A History
(Penguin, London, 2004), pp68-69.
7
Details from T Cliff,
Trotsky: The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
, vol 4, ch 2, at
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/02-industrial.html
.
8
Cliff,
Trotsky
, vol 4, ch 1, at
marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/01-collect.html
.
9
Cliff,
Trotsky
, ch 2, at
marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/02-industrial.html
.
10
D Filtzer,
Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization
(Pluto Press, London, 1986), p135.
11
Filtzer, 1986, p138.
12
Filtzer, 1986, p150.
13
N Khrushchev,
The Secret Speech
(Spokesman Books, Nottingham, 1976), p33.
14
M Reiman,
The Birth of Stalinism
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987), p49.
15
D M Glantz and J House,
When Titans Clashed
(Birlinn, Kansas, 2000), pp9-10.
16
A Burovskii,
Velikaia Grazhdanskaia Voina
(Iauza Eksmo, Moscow, 2011), p211.
17
D Volkogonov,
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
(Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1991), pp368-369.
18
Glantz, 2000, p33.
19
Glantz, 2000, p44. This judgement is confirmed by Stepan Mikoyan in E Joli,
Pobeda liuboi tsenoi
(Iausa:Eksmo, Moscow, 2010), p116.
20
Elena Rzhevskaia, in E Joli, 2010, p215.
21
Medinskii, 2012, p54.
22
Volkogonov, 1991, p395.
23
Danilov in V Suvorov and M Solonin (eds),
Pro… li Voinu! Kak Stalin Ugrobil Krasnuiu Armiu i Pogubil SSSR
(Iauza-Press, Moscow, 2012), p193.
24
Quoted in A Werth,
Russia at War
(Dutton & Co, New York, 1964), p71.
25
Quoted in Werth, 1964, p111.
26
Werth, 1964, p111.
27
Quoted in Werth, 1964, p96; Pronin in Suvorov, 2012, p191.
28
Aleksandr Pronin, “Sovetsko-Pol’skie Sobytia 1939 g”, in Suvorov, 2012, p104.
29
Quoted in Werth, 1964, p62.
30
Pravda
, 16 May 1940, quoted in Werth, 1964, p86.
31
Danilov in Suvorov, 2012, p221.
32
V Suvorov, “Vdrug oni Voz’mut i Pomiriatsia”, in Suvorov, 2012, p17.
33
Danilov, 89 and Kirill Aleksandrov, “Planirovalsia Udar po Rumynii v napravlenii neftianykh mestorozhenii”, pp219-233, in Suvorov, 2012. Also Georgii Kumanev 238, why did we lose at first? Stalin was convinced Hitler would not fight on two fronts and so would have to defeat the UK first. 393 A month before the G attack, S, speaking to a close circle, said: “The conflict is inevitable, perhaps in May next year.” By the early summer of 1941, acknowledging the explosiveness of the situation, he approved the premature release of military cadets, and young officers and political workers were posted, mostly without leave, straight to units which were below full strength. On 19 June begin camouflaging aerodromes, transport depots, bases and fuel dumps, dispersing aircraft. The order came hopelessly late, and even then Stalin was reluctant in case “all these measure provoke the German forces.”
34
Vasily Grossman (author), A Beevor and L Vinogradova (translators),
A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
(Pimlico, London, 2006), p3.
35
Glantz, 2000, p41.
36
Volkogonov, 1991, p400.
37
Volkogonov, 1991, p401.
38
Stepan Mikoyan, in Joli, 2010, p117.
39
Oleg Ozerov, in Joli, 2010, p87. Confirmed by another veteran—30 we didn’t think there would be fighting in Russia but in Germany; Dannil Granin in Joli, 2010.
40
Glantz, 2000, p49.
41
Volkogonov, 1991, p406.
42
Glantz, 2000, p51.
43
Joli, 2010, p23.
44
Grossman p48.
45
Burovskii, 2011, p234.
46
Burovskii, 2011, p236.
47
Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, “Navernoe, budet voina…” in Suvorov, 2012, p278.
48
Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, “Navernoe, budet voina…” in Suvorov, 2012, pp273-275.
49
Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, “Navernoe, budet voina…” in Suvorov, 2012, p280.
50
Quoted in Mediniskii, 2012, pp127-128.
51
Quoted in G Aly,
Hitler’s Beneficiaries
(Verso, London, 2006), p171.
52
Grossman, p222.
53
Grossman, p249.
54
Werth, 1964, p271.
55
Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, “Navernoe, budet voina…” in Suvorov, 2012, p286.
56
Aleksandr Kuz’minykh, “Navernoe, budet voina…” in Suvorov, 2012, p288.