Allegations about the secondary role of the USSR in the victory over Nazism can be easily refuted by referring to historical chronicles and statistics
By Kirill Privalov
The sonorous word “jubilee” is used everywhere in Russia today. Lately I have even seen an announcement about the “one-year jubilee” of such-and-such a company. In fact, a “jubilee” is the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary, and in the Russian tradition also the centenary, the millennium… Or at least the date should be divided by twenty-five, say: the twenty-fifth or the seventy-fifth jubilee.
The fact is that the term “jubilee” came to us from ancient times. “Jubilee” is a derivative of “yovel”. The Hebrew word “yovel”, or “yuvel”, meant “ram’s horn”, and later – “year of freedom”. It was the name of the fiftieth year established by the Prophet Moses, when sold and mortgaged lands were returned to their former owners, slaves were set free, debts to debtors were forgiven, the Law (Torah) was read out to people and the land rested from field work. This “year of freedom”, which was announced by the sounds of the very ram’s horn – that is, “yuvel” – came every fifty years, after the seventh Sabbath year…
The eightieth anniversary is certainly not a jubilee. However, the significance of this date for us is not diminished at all. For with the approach of an important memorable date the memory of not only individuals, but also of a whole nation becomes keener. The eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the national territory of the USSR is exactly such a date. After all, by late 1944 the Soviet Army had cleared the territory of the country from the Nazi invaders and returned to its State borders. The long–awaited liberation from the Nazis of Eastern Europe – Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia – had begun… And not only Eastern Europe: let’s recall the northern regions of Norway.
Those who do not understand their past, run the risk of reliving it soon. This is an axiom. This is why we cherish the memory of our ancestors with gratitude, including those who died in 1944 and those who managed to survive in the crucible of the most terrible of wars. We also keep the “black” memory of the barbarians who attacked our country and attempted to conquer and occupy it. No wonder Alexander Tvardovsky wrote: “Wherever I look and wherever I go – the cruel memory is alive.”
“Dialectics requires that we look at today’s history from the perspective of 1944,” the famous Soviet historian and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Eugene Tarle maintained. Let’s leave aside the style of this statement (as we know, measurements of time have no eyes) and pay attention to the main thing. The one who could compose (thanks to Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak) “a huge volume about every Charles and any Louis” gave a clear assessment of what happened on the front of the war during its fourth year. For nowadays, understanding the history of the Great Patriotic War not only remains an extremely important part of our national history, but also forms national consciousness.
It is hard to object to another thesis of Tarle (incidentally, he was a native of Kiev in Ukraine) that at critical moments, when there is a real threat to the existence of a nation or society, an inevitable mobilization of historical memory takes place.
Family history
2.5 million of our soldiers laid down their lives liberating European countries from Hitlerism. In total, we paid for the Victory over fascism with 26 million lives – both military and especially civilian. I remember once finding myself in St Petersburg at the same time with two of my Swiss old acquaintances. They asked me to show them the city on the Neva River. I admit I was confused: Moscow, my native capital with its Arbat Street, Zamoskvorechye and Khamovniki, is one thing, but St Petersburg is quite another… A local colleague helped me out. He, a fourth generation native of St Petersburg, agreed to take us on a tour, which he referred to as “the family Leningrad.” We walked from building to building, from palace to palace, and my colleague, while having time to talk about St Petersburg’s magnificent sights, accompanied the walk with sad comments: “My uncle died of hunger in this house during the siege… And here my great-aunt was killed during German bombing in 1943…”
While walking down a street with the following stenciled historic inscription on a wall: “Citizens! During shelling this side of the street is the most dangerous”, the Swiss, as if in a winter draught, shivered together, and finally “surrendered” on the approach to the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery: “Was it really necessary to bear all those terrible hardships for 872 days and nights in order to lose 1.5 million people! That’s eight times the population of Geneva! Wouldn’t it have been easier to give the city to the Germans and survive?” My friend from St Petersburg did not respond and only looked at the visitors with a long, hard look in disappointment.
By the way, Leningrad – exhausted, emaciated, but not conquered – was finally liberated in that memorable year 1944 too.
For my family that year turned out to be a terrible and cursed one of mourning. My mother’s younger brother who could have become my uncle, died of tuberculosis and lack of medicine in the Moscow region at the age of sixteen. Another “homefront” victim of the war…
It is known that there is hardly any family in our country that did not lose one of its members during the Great Patriotic War. In our multinational family my other uncle (first cousin once removed, to be more exact) was the first to die. Boris Higrin was an artilleryman who served on the western borders, and in the first days of the war he was confronted by tanks with spider-shaped crosses in Belarus. Near the town of Belynichi he personally shot down four Nazi armoured vehicles and died a heroic death. He was posthumously awarded the Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Later, after the Victory, journalists would call him the “fiery captain”. I must admit I was pleased to see his name on the tablets of the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel. A monument to Boris Khigrin was set up in Belarus as well.
Marina Tsvetaeva’s words came to mind: “The motherland is not the conventionality of the territory, but the immutability of memory and blood… He who has it inside him will lose it with his life.”
In the Chain of History
By the summer of 1944 the Soviet Union had virtually single-handedly broken the back of the Wehrmacht’s well-oiled military machine. The Red Army disrupted the blitzkrieg during the Battle of Moscow, destroying the myth of the “invincibility” of Hitler’s armadas, forced Germany to switch to strategic defence after the Battle of Stalingrad, completed a fundamental turning point in the Second World War near Kursk and, as a result of crossing the Dnieper, paved the way for the liberation of Europe.
The Great liberation campaign on the territories of the USSR occupied by the enemy began in 1943 and gained irresistible momentum in 1944. After all, in December of 1943 the famous Battle of the Dnieper ended. As a result, the lands of left–bank Ukraine and the “mother of Russian cities” – Kiev – were liberated. Thanks to that battle the Soviet Army created a springboard for the further liberation of its native lands, which continued in 1944. In the winter and spring, the Red Army conducted several successful military operations. As a result of the four-month offensive Hitler’s Army Group South was defeated and the regions of right-bank and Western Ukraine were liberated: Chernivtsi, Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog, Lutsk, Rivne… The Soviet troops reached the borders with Hungary and Romania. At the same time, Novgorod was liberated, and the Red Army was able to move on to banish the enemy from the Baltic States. Odessa was liberated on 10 April and on 9 May – exactly one year before the Victory – the Red Army liberated Sevastopol and the Crimea.
In the late autumn of 1944, the Germans were driven out of the last territories of the USSR. That year went down in history as that of the “Stalin’s ten blows”.
The Red Army’s obvious possibility of going beyond the borders of the USSR forced the UK and the United States to accelerate the opening of the second front – the Allied landings took place in northern France. (Previously, Soviet people called tinned stewed meat and chocolate, which came under lend-lease, the “second front”). That event took place on 6 June 1944. The situation of the Wehrmacht deteriorated significantly, which was now forced to transfer troops to the western front.
But the outcome of the war was determined six months before the Normandy landings. Allegations about the secondary role of the USSR in the victory over Nazism can be easily refuted by referring to historical chronicles and statistics. Judge for yourselves: on the Eastern Front Hitler lost as many as 507 divisions, while on all the other fronts – 176, that is, three and a half times fewer. It was in the battles with the Red Army that the Germans lost three quarters of their aircraft, tanks, artillery, warships and transport vessels. The facts speak for themselves, and it’s a waste of time to twist them.
However, we should pay tribute to the allies as well. The military equipment that the United States transferred to the USSR became an important help for the belligerent Red Army.
“Without lend-lease supplies we would probably have fought for another year or one and a half years,” Anastas Mikoyan, who oversaw seven Soviet People’s commissariats – that is, ministries – during the war, wrote. “American tinned stewed meat, fats, egg powder, flour and other products gave very significant calories for soldiers and workers in the rear. Cars: almost 400,000 in number. Studebakers, Fords, Willis. Оur entire army was put on wheels by lend-lease! This increased its maneuverability and abilities.”
Stalin said the same thing: “Without lend-lease supplies we would have had a very hard time. It was an extremely serious support in our enormous and difficult struggle.”
However, we should not exaggerate the importance of Western aid – our country accounted for only a fifth of all American lend-lease supplies, while two thirds went to the UK and its colonies. It is known that the former US President Herbert Hoover once remarked sarcastically: “The Soviet country had stopped the Germans before lend-lease reached it.” Yes, you can’t argue with this! And here’s what the then President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself said: “It’s hard to get away from the obvious fact that the Russian troops are destroying more enemy soldiers and weapons than all the other twenty-five Allied States combined.” Charles de Gaulle did not remain silent either. The General noted: “The French know what Soviet Russia did, and they know that it was Soviet Russia that played the main role in their liberation.”
On 23 June 1944, three years after the German invasion of the USSR, the Red Army launched a large-scale operation to liberate Belarus called Bagration. It involved almost 1.7 million Soviet soldiers and officers, almost 6,000 tanks and over 5,000 aircraft. It lasted over two months till 29 August and as a result all of Belarus and most of the Baltic States were liberated from the Germans and the liberation of Poland started. During Operation Bagration about 150,000 Germans were captured and 57,000 of them marched through the streets of Moscow on 17 July 1944. That event went down in history as the “parade of the vanquished”. Its aim was to prove to the Western world, which was slow to believe in the success of the Red Army, the scale of its victories.
Having almost completely cleared the Soviet land of the fascist occupiers, the Red Army moved its forces to liberate European states and subjugate Hitler’s allies. Many of them hastened to declare war on Germany and surrender to the mercy of the victors. Despite the rapid advance, Soviet soldiers met stiff German resistance in these countries. Fierce battles were fought for Warsaw, Budapest, Belgrade and other European cities. Their residents enthusiastically welcomed the Soviet soldiers as liberators. On 8 September 1944 the armed forces of the USSR crossed the Romanian-Bulgarian border.
“Less than half an hour passed,” Marshal Georgy Zhukov wrote in his reminiscences, “as the commander of the 57th army reported that one of the infantry divisions of the Bulgarian Army, having lined up by the road, met our units with unfurled red banners and solemn music. After a while the same events occurred in other directions. The commanders reported that there was spontaneous fraternization of Soviet soldiers with Bulgarian people.”
Senior Sergeant M. S. Alexandrov, who took part in the liberation of Czechoslovakia, wrote in his reminiscences: “I don’t have enough words to describe how we were greeted. Everywhere we just drowned in enthusiastic crowds of people who flocked from all the neighbouring villages to look at us. Flowers were showered everywhere, and girls threw themselves on our necks, hugging us and saying something excitedly in their own language… There was an elderly soldier in my platoon: he had been very collected and emotionless throughout the war. But here, in Czechoslovakia, he was crying and laughing.”
Are the eighty years that have passed since then much or little? For History they are a drop in the bucket, a speck of dust in space. And for us, Russian people, they are just one handshake that separates today’s generation from their fathers and grandfathers. A strong, warm handshake with those who stand in the unbroken chain of glorious Russian history. In this centuries–old Russian chain of fathers and children, grandchildren and grandfathers, great-grandchildren and great-grandfathers stand St Alexander Nevsky and Peter the Great, Dmitry Pozharsky and St Fyodor Ushakov, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov, Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky…
The great heroes of the nation are with us. This succession will never be interrupted. We believe in this, we know this. Because we understand that descending into the glorious past, we get a precious chance to emerge in a future worthy of the memory of our selfless forefathers. And many jubilees still await us.
