The triumph of the Nazis in Germany and the consolidation of a Japanese puppet state (Manchukuo) on the Soviet Union’s eastern borders precipitated the Comintern strategy of Popular Fronts with all ‘progressive forces’ and an intensification of Soviet efforts to achieve collective security with the European democracies. These policies bore fruit in the form of mutual assistance pacts with France and Czechoslovakia (in 1935) and the election of a Popular Front government in France (in 1936). But the great test of the European commitment to contain fascism—the chief aim of the popular fronts—was the Spanish Civil War. Despite Soviet assistance to the Republic—or perhaps because European statesmen feared a ‘red’ Spain more than one ruled by Franco—the Western powers failed the test. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich (September 1938) confirmed Soviet suspicions that neither Britain nor France were unduly concerned about Nazi expansion to the East.
For the Soviet Union, the decade of the 1930s lasted until the Nazi invasion of 22 June 1941. The increasing likelihood of war in Europe precipitated a radical shift in foreign policy away from seeking collective security with the Western democracies and towards an accommodation with Hitler. Acting on secret provisions of the Soviet–German Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, Soviet armed forces occupied eastern Poland, the three Baltic republics, and the Romanian province of Bessarabia. Finland resisted territorial concessions along its eastern border; in the ensuing ‘Winter War’ (1939–40) the Red Army triumphed, but with difficulty and only because of superior numbers.
In the mean time, the regime moved to restore the authority, if not security of cadres in state and industrial management—badly shaken by the Great Purges and wary of denunciations from below. Laws stipulating a longer working day and draconian punishment for tardiness and absenteeism put teeth into demands for labour discipline. The Stakhanovite movement continued to celebrate high achievers among workers; but as the regime sought to close ranks with managerial and technical personnel, it now tended to attribute innovations to engineers. A steady diet of Soviet patriotism—psychological preparation for war—accompanied a massive build-up of the armed forces and defence industries.
Ten years earlier, in the midst of the First Five-Year Plan, Stalin told a conference of economic officials that they could not afford to slacken the pace of industrialization because to do so ‘would mean falling behind. And those who all behind get beaten’. He thereupon recited all the beatings ‘backward’ Russia lad suffered—by ‘Mongol khans’, ‘Turkish beys’, Swedish feudal lords, the Polish and Lithuanian gentry, British and French capitalists, and ‘Japanese barons’. ‘All beat her—because of her backwardness … military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness’. But, he added, correlating gender with political transformation, ‘Mother Russia’ has since become the socialist fatherland. ‘Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? … We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under’.
Stalin’s forced-pace industrialization undoubtedly contributed mightily to he Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War. The tempo of industrialization was literally killing and extremely wasteful, but by 1941 the USSR had closed he gap, militarily and industrially. The greatest spurt occurred during the ‘three good years’ of industrialization (1934–6). By 1937 steel output was nearly three times greater than in 1932, coal production had doubled, and electricity generation had risen by 250 per cent. Thereafter, the Great Purges and the channelling of investments into armaments—defence expenditure quadrupled between 1936 and 1940—caused growth rates in these and other branches of industry to subside. But on the eve of the war, Soviet industry was producing 230 tanks, 700 military aircraft, and more than 100,000 rifles every month. However, agriculture still lagged. A major crop failure in 1936—a yield even smaller than the official harvest for 1932—strained the state’s reserves and distribution network; it has even been argued that this crisis contributed to the political events of 1937. Because of increased military expenditure, investments in the collective and state farm system remained woefully minuscule.
But ‘backwardness’ is qualitative, not merely quantitative. In cultural and political terms, the USSR’s backwardness was perpetuated, even intensified, not because party and state officials tried to do too little, but because they tried to do too much. Browbeating the nation into modernity and socialism—the two were deemed to be synonymous—Stalin and his lieutenants provoked much resistance, but also conjured up demons of their own Manichean imaginings. These they combated with cults, reliance on miracles, and a great deal of force. They thus conformed to what Moshe Lewin has called ‘the contamination effect’, whereby radical and rapid transformation in fact ensures the survival of fundamental continuities, especially in social behaviour and political culture. Hence, the methods employed in ‘building socialism’, derived from previous centuries and combined with twentieth-century technology, actually built something called Stalinism.
12. The Great Fatherland War and Late Stalinism 1941–1953
WILLIAM C. FULLER, JR
Few events loom larger in Russian historical memory than the ‘Great Fatherland War’. Why was Stalin’s Soviet Union so ill-prepared for the conflict and how did it nevertheless manage to prevail? In the aftermath of victory, heedless of the threat of a cold or even thermonuclear war, the ageing tyrant rebuilt Stalinism at home and expanded its reach abroad.
At four a.m. (Moscow time) on 22 June 1941, several thousand pieces of German ordnance simultaneously thundered into Soviet territory. Operation Barbarossa had begun, initiating four years of the most brutal and destructive war in history. From the very beginning the Soviet–German conflict was waged with a ferocity and savagery that was unparalleled in modern times. When Hitler announced his move against Russia to his highest officers (30 March 1941), he made it absolutely clear that he expected his troops to discard every principle of humanity, chivalry, or international law. This was, he said, to be a war ‘of extermination’.
The 153 divisions of the invasion force formed three army groups—north, centre, and south. Army Group North was to punch through the Baltic republics in the direction of Leningrad. Army Group Centre was supposed to entrap and destroy Soviet units in the western expanses of the country. And, the third force—Army Group South—to drive south-east of the Pripet marshes and slice Ukraine off from the rest of the Soviet state.
It was obviously impossible to mask the colossal military preparations for Barbarossa. Since February, Germany had been concentrating forces on the Soviet frontier, ‘explaining’ this as a defence against British air raids. In the months, weeks, and days prior to 22 June, the Soviet government received over eighty discrete warnings of German attack. None the less, the surprise was virtually total. Though aware of the massing of German forces but unwilling to accept the truth, at 1 a.m. Stalin issued orders to Soviet military commanders not to shoot even if the Germans penetrated Soviet territory so as to avoid ‘dangerous provocations’.