the Lublin government expanded by several representatives of the London Poles and to hold free elections and establish a democratic regime in Poland proved unrealistic and amounted in the end to a Western surrender to Soviet wishes. This and
other grave problems of postwar eastern Europe are treated in the next chapter.
The Soviet performance in the Second World War presents a fascinating picture of contrasts. Seldom did a country and a regime do both so poorly and so well in the same conflict. Far from purposely enticing the Germans into the interior of the country or executing successfully any other strategic plan, the Red Army suffered catastrophic defeat in the first months of the war. Indeed, the Russians were smashed as badly as the French had been a year earlier, except that they had more territory to retreat to and more men in reserve. Moreover, while the German army was at the time the best in the world, Soviet forces did not at all make the most of their admittedly difficult position. Some top Red commanders, such as the Civil War cavalry hero Marshal Semen Budenny, proved to be as incompetent as the worst tsarist generals. The fighting spirit of Soviet troops varied greatly: certain units fought heroically, while others hastened to surrender. The enormous number of prisoners taken by the Germans testified not only to their great military victory, but also in part to the Soviet unwillingness to fight. Even more significantly, the Soviet population often welcomed the Germans. This was strikingly true in the recently acquired Baltic countries and in large areas of the Ukraine and White Russia, but it also occurred in Great Russian regions near Smolensk and elsewhere. After a quarter of a century of Communist rule many inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. greeted invaders, any invaders, as liberators. In addition to Red partisans there developed anti-Soviet guerrilla movements, which were at the same time anti-German. In Ukraine, nationalist bands continued resisting Red rule even long after the end of the Second World War. To the great surprise of the Western democracies, tens of thousands of Soviet citizens liberated by Allied armies in Europe did all they could not to return to their homeland.
But the Soviet regime survived. In spite of its staggering losses, the Red Army did finally hold the Germans and then gradually push them back until their defeat became a rout. Red infantry, artillery, cavalry, and tanks all repeatedly distinguished themselves in the Second World War. Uncounted soldiers acted with supreme heroism. The names of such commanders as Zhukov and Rokossovsky became synonymous with victory. In addition to the regular army, daring and determined partisans also fought the invader to the death. The government managed under most difficult conditions to organize the supply of the armed forces. It should be stressed that while Soviet military transportation depended heavily on vehicles from Lend-Lease, the Red Army was armed with Soviet weapons.
Although many people died of starvation in Leningrad and elsewhere, government control remained effective and morale did not break on the home front. Eventually the Soviet Union won, at an enormous cost, it is true, a total victory.
Much has been written to explain the initial Soviet collapse and the great subsequent rally. For example, it has been argued that the Germans defeated themselves. Their beastly treatment of the Soviet population - documented in A. Dallin's study and in other works - turned friends into enemies. It has even been claimed that to win the war the Nazis had merely to arm Soviet citizens and let them fight against their own government, but Hitler was extremely reluctant to try that. The Russian Liberation Army of Andrew Vlasov, a Soviet general who had been taken prisoner by the Germans and had proceeded to organize an anti-Communist movement, received no chance to develop and prove itself in combat until it was too late. Commentators have also rightly stressed the importance of the Soviet appeal to patriotism and other traditional values. The Communist government consciously utilized the prestige of Russian military heroes of the past and the manifold attractions of nationalism. It emphasized discipline and rank in the army, reducing the power of the commissars. Concurrently it made concessions to the practice of religion and spoke of a new and better life which would follow the end of the war. The Russians, it has been maintained, proved ready to die for their country and for that new life, while they felt only hostility to the Soviet regime.
These and other similar explanations of the Soviet turnabout and of the German defeat appear to contain much truth. Yet, in the last analysis, they might give as one-sided a picture of the Soviet scene as the wholesale admiration of the Communist regime and its virtues popular during and immediately after the war in less critical Western circles. The salient fact remains that in one way or another Stalin and his system prevailed over extreme adversity. Besides, whatever its wartime appeals and promises, the regime did not change at all in essence - as subsequent years were to demonstrate to the again astonished world.
XXXIX
We demand that our comrades, both as leaders in literary affairs and as writers, be guided by the vital force of the Soviet order - its politics. Only thus can our youth be reared, not in a devil-may-care attitude and a spirit of ideological indifference, but in a strong and vigorous revolutionary spirit.
When the immediate passions of the war recede into the background and it becomes possible to view the decade after 1939 in greater perspective, the statesmanship exhibited during World War II by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin will doubtless be more fully understood. What is remarkable is not that the Western democracies and the Soviet Union failed to reach any general agreement as to the postwar organization of Europe, but rather that they were able to maintain their coalition until the end of the war with so few alarms and disagreements. It is now clear that the success of the coalition must be attributed more to the immediacy and gravity of the common danger represented by the military might of Germany and Japan, than to any harmony of opinion among the Allies regarding the political bases of a stable peace. During the long period since the winter of 1917-18, when the Bolsheviks had negotiated a separate peace with the Central Powers, agreement between Russia and the West had been the exception rather than the rule. Close co-operation had been achieved almost as a last resort in the face of an immediate threat to their security, and once the enemy was defeated the differences in political outlook which had been temporarily overlooked inevitably reappeared.
The Second World War brought tremendous human losses and material destruction to the Soviet Union. In addition to the millions of soldiers who died, millions of civilians perished in the shifting battle zone and in German- occupied territory. Of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens who went west, either as Nazi slave labor or of their own will, only a part ever returned to their homeland. The brutality of the invaders defied description. Red Army prisoners starved to death in very large numbers in German camps; whole categories of people, such as Jews, Communists, government officials and gypsies were exterminated wherever they could be found. Partisan warfare led to horrible reprisals against the population. In contrast to the First World War, most atrocity stories of the Second World War were true. The total number of Soviet military and civilian
dead in the dreadful conflict remains quite uncertain. In 1946 the Soviet government set the figure at seven million. A similiar total has been reached by a few specialists outside the Soviet Union, such as Mironenko. Most foreign scholars, however, have arrived at much higher figures, for instance, Prokopovich estimates fourteen million and Schuman twenty million. Latest calculations based on some newly available material raised the figure even to twenty-seven million. It is generally believed that the losses were about evenly divided between the military and civilian. To the dead must be added perhaps another twenty million for the children that were not born in the decade of the forties. Population figures announced by the Soviet Union in the spring of 1959 tend to support high
