I propose this toast to the health of the Russian people because in this war it earned general recognition as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country.
Previously he had never unequivocally endorsed one nation out of the many which composed the USSR. To many Russians it seemed that the oven of war had smelted the base metals out of him and produced a stainless Leader who deserved their trust and admiration.
These were canting words since Stalin was as much afraid of Russians as proud of them. But it suited him to put the Russian people on an even higher pedestal of official esteem than before the war. Intuitively, it would seem, he understood that he needed to grant legitimacy to a national patriotism less qualified by Marxism–Leninism. At least he did this for a while. (And perhaps even Stalin got a bit carried away by the euphoria of the moment.) What had appeared completely inconceivable in summer 1941 had come to pass. Hitler was dead. Nearly all the eastern half of Europe was under Soviet military control. The USSR was treated by the USA and the United Kingdom as co- arbiter of the fate of the world.
Allegedly Stalin had wanted Hitler caught alive and was annoyed by his suicide, and there was a story that Zhukov had vowed to parade him in a cage on Red Square. This may indeed have been how a commander might have bragged to his political master. But it is improbable that Stalin would have allowed such a spectacle: he still wished to avoid giving unnecessary offence to his allies. The goal of the USA and the United Kingdom was the methodical de-Nazification of German public life, and they hoped to persuade Germans to abandon their affection for Hitler. Conquerors had last humiliated their enemy leaders in such a fashion during the triumphs granted to successful Roman commanders. Cheated of catching his quarry alive, Stalin instructed his intelligence agencies to bring him the physical remains. This was done in deadly secrecy; once it had been ascertained that the charred parts of a burnt corpse outside Hitler’s bunker were those of the Fuhrer, they were conveyed to the Soviet capital. Stalin’s sense of urgency derived from political concerns. Nothing was to be left on German soil which could later become a focus for pro-Nazi nostalgia.
In a peculiar way this was an involuntary gesture of respect for Hitler, as Stalin was implying that his dead enemy was still dangerous. Towards most other leaders in the world apart from Churchill and Roosevelt he felt condescension at best. (What he thought about Mussolini remains mysterious, but the only Italian he took seriously was the communist party leader Palmiro Togliatti.) Churchill’s successor Clement Attlee made little imprint on his consciousness. Even Truman failed to impress him. Whereas Roosevelt had aroused his personal curiosity, he barely gave his successor a second thought. There is nothing in the records of Stalin’s conversations to indicate an appreciation of Truman’s talents. He was more appreciative of Churchill. Yet the United Kingdom, as Stalin’s economic experts such as Jeno Varga demonstrated to him, was no longer the force in world affairs it had once been. Churchill could huff and puff, but the house of the USSR would not fall down. Stalin saw himself as one of history’s outstanding figures. When he came across domineering characters of his own type such as Mao Tse-tung, he refused to treat them decently. Mao arrived in Moscow in December 1949 after seizing power in Beijing, and he was told none too politely that the USSR expected massive concessions from China. In any case Stalin, mounting to his crest of post-war grandeur, had no intention of allowing a fellow communist to rival his prestige. Master of world communism and leader of a triumphant state, he desired to bask alone in the world’s acclaim.
The day set aside to celebrate the triumph over Nazism was 24 June 1945. There was to be a parade on Red Square in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Victorious regiments which had returned from Germany and eastern Europe were to march in triumph before the Kremlin Wall. It was put to Stalin that he should take pride of place, riding a white horse in the traditional Russian mode. (This was how Russia’s generals had headed military parades through Tbilisi.) An Arab steed was found which Stalin tried to mount. The result was humiliation. Stalin gave the stallion an inappropriate jab with his spurs. The stallion reared up. Stalin, grabbing the mane ineffectually, was thrown to the ground. He injured his head and shoulder and was in a vile mood as he got to his feet. Spitting in anger, he declared: ‘Let Zhukov lead the parade. He’s an old cavalryman.’7 Some days before the parade he summoned Zhukov, who had returned from Berlin, and asked whether he could handle a horse. Zhukov had belonged to the Red Cavalry in the Civil War; but his first instinct was to remonstrate that Stalin should head the parade as Supreme Commander. Without revealing his equestrian difficulties, Stalin replied: ‘I’m too old to lead parades. You’re younger. You lead it.’8
The ceremonial arrangements were meticulously realised on the day itself. While Stalin and other political leaders stood on top of the Lenin Mausoleum below the Kremlin Wall, Marshal Zhukov rode across Red Square to salute him. The entire Soviet military effort between 1941 and 1945 was acclaimed. A regiment from each front in the war marched behind Zhukov. All saluted Stalin. The packed crowd, drawn from people whom the authorities wanted to reward, roared approval. The climax of the ceremony came when the banners of the defeated Wehrmacht were carried over the cobbled space to be cast down directly in front of Stalin. The weather was not at its best; there had been an earlier downpour.9 But the applause for Stalin and the troops of the Soviet armed forces cancelled the gloom. He had risen to the apex of his career and was being recognised as father of the peoples of the USSR.
All went to plan on 24 June apart from the unseasonable rain, and the Soviet order seemed stronger than ever. The Red Army dominated to the River Elbe. Eastern and east-central Europe were subject to Soviet military and political control and, while the war in the Pacific continued, Red forces were being readied to take part in the final offensive against Japan. Secretly, too, the USSR was intensifying its research on the technology needed to make an atomic bomb. Already its armaments industry was capable of supplying its military forces with all they needed to maintain Soviet power and prestige. The political and economic system consolidated before the Second World War remained intact. Party, ministries and police had firm authority, and the tasks of peaceful reconstruction of industry, agriculture, transport, schooling and healthcare seemed well within the USSR’s capacity to discharge. Hierarchy and discipline were at their peak. Morale in the country was high. Stalin’s despotism appeared an impregnable citadel.
Next day at the Kremlin reception for participants in the Victory Parade he was triumphant:10
I offer a toast to those simple, ordinary, modest people, to the ‘little cogs’ who keep our great state mechanism in an active condition in all fields of science, economy and military affairs. There are a lot of them; their name is legion because there are tens of millions of such people.
The ‘people’ for him were mere cogs in the machinery of state and not individuals and groups of flesh and blood with social, cultural and psychological needs and aspirations. The state took precedence over society.
Yet Stalin, while masterminding an image of omnipotence for the Soviet state, did not himself believe in it. The USSR had daunting problems. He ordered the security agencies to collate information with a view to making the Soviet case for reparations when the Allies next conferred. Catalogues of devastation were compiled. Twenty-six million Soviet citizens had perished in the Second World War. Stalin was not innocent of blame: his policies of imprisonment and deportation had added to the total (as had his disastrous policy of agricultural collectivisation, which impeded the USSR’s capacity to feed itself). But most victims died at the front or under Nazi occupation. Some 1.8 million Soviet civilians were reportedly killed by the Germans in the RSFSR; double that number was recorded for Ukraine.11 The dead were not the only human losses in the USSR. Millions of people were left badly wounded or malnourished, their lives having been wrecked beyond repair. Countless children had been orphaned and fended for themselves without public support or private charity. Whole districts in the western borderlands had been depopulated so drastically that farming had ceased. The Soviet Union had paid a high price for its victory, and it would take years to recover.
As the NKVD completed its cataloguing tasks (while not ceasing to discharge the duty of arresting all enemies of Stalin and the state), the scale of the catastrophe was made clear. In the zone of the USSR previously under German occupation scarcely a factory, mine or commercial enterprise had escaped destruction. The Wehrmacht was not the sole culprit: Stalin had adopted a scorched-earth policy after 22 June 1941 so as to deprive Hitler of material assets. Yet the subsequent German retreat in 1943–4 had taken place over a lengthier period, and this had provided the Wehrmacht with time to carry out systematic destruction. The record put together by NKVD almost defies belief. No fewer than 1,710 Soviet towns had been obliterated by the Germans along with around seventy thousand villages. Even where the Wehrmacht failed to set fire to entire townships, it succeeded in burning down hospitals, radio stations, schools and libraries. Cultural vandalism was as near to comprehensive as Hitler
