137

[introduction.]

p The tasks and goals of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War were defined in a directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) issued on June 29, 1941,  [137•4  and in a radio address by Stalin, which contained its main provisions, on July 3, 1941.

“The war with Nazi Germany is no ordinary war. This is not only a war between two armies. This is also a great war of the entire Soviet nation against the Nazi troops. The aim of this truly people’s Patriotic War against the fascist 138 oppressors is not only to eliminate the danger threatening our country, but also to help all the peoples of Europe languishing under the yoke of German fascism.”  [138•1 

To Rout the Enemy,
and Liberate the Enslaved Nations

p The aims of the war determined the principal objectives of Soviet foreign policy: to set up a powerful coalition of states and peoples for the struggle against fascist aggression. The struggle of the USSR for the formation and consolidation of such a coalition was the continuation, in new historical conditions, of its consistent policy aimed at repelling the aggressor by collective effort, at carrying out its internationalist duty to the freedom-loving nations which our country had pursued before the war. Of great importance for the accomplishment of this goal was the Soviet-British Treaty of Alliance signed in London on May 26, 1942, and the Soviet-American agreement on the principles of mutual assistance in the conduct of war against aggression  [138•2  signed in Washington on June 12, 1942. These documents served as the legal basis for the wartime coalition of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain.

p The heroic struggle of the Soviet people, who took the brunt of the fighting against the fascist bloc, and the just liberatory goals of the Soviet Union in the war put the USSR in the vanguard of the anti-Hitler coalition.  [138•3 

139

p “If the Soviet Union had failed to hold on its front, the Germans would have been in a position to conquer Great Britain. They would have been able to overrun Africa, too, and in this event they could have established a foothold in Latin America. This impending danger was constantly in President Roosevelt’s mind,” wrote U.S. Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius.  [139•1 

p A natural ally of the anti-Hitler coalition was the popular resistance movement against the German, Italian, and Japanese invaders, which was particularly strong in Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, China, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines. An important contribution to the struggle against the fascist regimes in their own countries were the anti-fascist organisations in Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and in Germany itself.

p Under the leadership of the Communists and some other left-wing forces, the patriots of the Nazi-occupied countries set up underground organisations and put up stiff resistance to the fascists. Examples of this were the uprisings in Paris, in northern Italy, the liberation of many towns in France, Italy and other countries from the fascist regimes even before the arrival of the Allied troops.

p Throughout the entire period of the Second World War the Soviet Union offered all-round assistance, including military aid, to the forces fighting against the fascists in the occupied countries.

p The year 1944 opened with the offensive of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts which brought to a successful conclusion the epic battle for Leningrad which had been going on for more than two and a half years. The defeat of the Nazi armies in the part of the Ukraine west of the River Dnieper 140 created a desperate situation for the fascist armed forces in the Crimea (seven Romanian and five German divisions— a total of 195,000), which were put to rout in April and May that year.

p In the course of the winter and spring of 1944 the Soviet army advanced up to 450 km and smashed 172 enemy divisions.

In spite of the major successes of the Anglo-American forces in the Mediterranean, the European and the Pacific theatres of the war, the area of decisive action continued to be the Soviet-German front, where the Wehrmacht and its allies maintained the bulk of their forces, which can be judged from the following table.

The Number of Divisions That Germany and Its Allies Maintained in the War of 1941-1945 June ‘i’l 1!)41 April 1942 November 1942 April 1943 January 1944’ June ’1944 January 1(14.1 Soviet-German front 190 219 266 231 245 239.5 195.5 Other fronts 9 11 12.5 14.5 21 85 107

p The Soviet armed forces which mounted a giant offensive from the Barents Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south over a front of 4,500 km, had 6.6 million troops, 98,100 guns and mortars, 7,100 tanks and self-propelled guns, about 12,900 aircraft.  [140•1  The Soviet armed forces also included some Polish, Czechoslovak, Romanian, Yugoslav units and formations and the French Normandie-Niemen air regiment.  [140•2  The Soviet army had firmly taken the strategic initiative into its own hands and was now inexorably closing in on the vital industrial and military centres of the enemy outside Soviet territory. As early as the end of March 1944, the 2nd Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Konev 141 entered the territory of Romania. Early in June the Soviet army reached the frontiers of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

p The cleverly conceived and executed operations in 1944-1945 in Byelorussia, at Lvov and Sandomir, at Jassy and Kishinev, on the Vistula and the Oder, at PetsamoKirkenes, in Budapest, Belgrade, Prague, Berlin, and (after the USSR had entered the war against Japan) in Manchuria, cleared fully or in part the territory of Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Finland, Norway, Denmark. Germany, China and Korea.

p In fighting the strong and treacherous enemy and fulfilling its liberation mission the Soviet Army lost more than three million men, including more than one million killed in action. Soviet soldiers considered it their internationalist duty to come to the aid of other nations and fulfilled in unhesitatingly though at the cost of heavy losses.

p The peoples of the countries’which the Soviet army liberated from fascist oppression hailed the Soviet soldiers with gratitude and respect.

p Here is an example:

p On July 26, 1944, G.P.Kunavin, private first class of the 1021st Infantry Regiment, a CPSU member, fell in battle fighting outside the village of Gierasimowicze of the Bialystok region. When the company he was serving with began an offensive on Gierasimowicze, their progress was checked by machine-gun fire from a height that dominated the whole area. The attackers dropped flat. At that moment Kunavin lunged forward and flung himself upon the embrasure. The company was now able to continue the attack. The inhabitants of liberated Gierasimowicze gathered for a meeting on August 9, 1944, and decided on the following: "Grigory Pavlovich Kunavin came from the far-off Urals to liberate our country. His heart was pierced here by enemy bullets. But he cleared the road to victory for Red Army men as valiant as himself. He fought for our happiness, so that the enemy would never again set foot on the threshold of our house.

p “We honour the name of the Russian soldier Grigory Kunavin as the banner of the great brotherhood of the Russian and the Polish peoples.... As a token of our gratitude 142 to the Russian brother-liberator, the people of Gierasimowicze, at this general meeting today, have decided:

p “1. To enter the name of the Russian soldier, Grigory Pavlovich Kunavin, onto the scroll of the honorary citizens of the Polish village of Gierasimowicze for all time.

p “2. To set up a marble slab with his name in the centre of the village.

p “3. To request that the name of Grigory Kunavin be given to the school our children go to.

“4. To decree that every year the first lesson in the first form shall be about the hero-soldier and his comrades- inarms who shed their blood to make Polish children free and happy....”  [142•1 

"Soviet Expansionism" and "Export
of Revolution" Myths

p The liberation mission of the Soviet armed forces has over the years been maligned by Western historians, who have brought forth a whole lot of stories about mythical Soviet expansionism, saying that the Soviet troops entered the territory of other countries against the will of their people. The West German historian, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen says bluntly that the Soviet army "started planting communist regimes under the slogan of ‘liberation’ and at the point of its bayonets  [142•2 ”. The idea of these fabrications is to inflate the myth of the Soviet military threat and in this way to drive a wedge into the fraternal relations between the USSR and the other socialist countries.

p Stories of this sort are clearly meant for an ill-informed reader and are insulting to the peoples of Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway and other countries who fought courageously against the Nazi invaders and know that in this struggle the Soviet Union was their steadfast ally.

p In liberating foreign countries from occupation, the Soviet Union strictly abided by the existing treaties and 143 agreements. For instance, the Soviet army entered Poland in accordance with an agreement reached with the Krajowa Rada Narodowa in the spring of 1944. Analogous agreements were signed with Czechoslovakia in December 1943, and with Norway in May 1944. The question of moving hostilities to the territory of Yugoslavia was agreed with the Supreme Command of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, etc.  [143•1  By sending its armed forces on a liberation mission to the countries of Europe and Asia, the USSR never interfered in their internal affairs and showed profound respect for the national traditions and customs of their peoples.

p The term "export of revolution" was coined by Churchill who was the first to suggest many years ago that there had been some deal between Britain and the Soviet Union, dividing up the Balkans into "spheres of influence”. Different versions of this story come up in the works and memoirs of many reactionary historians, such as Charles Bohlen and Charles L. Mee. References to these fabrications have also been made by Francis Loewenheim, Harold Langley, and Manfred Jonas in their commentaries on the secret correspondence between Roosevelt and Churchill.  [143•2  All these stories boil down to the thesis that when Churchill met Stalin in October 1944, the latter gave his consent to a division of the Balkans into "spheres of influence"  [143•3 

p Now, who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

p First, a few words about the circumstances in which the Balkans story originated.

p ...In October 1944, the final defeat of Nazi Germany, gripped in the vice of two fronts, was only a few months away. The Soviet army was inexorably advancing upon the enemy, crushing its armies and liberating the peoples of Europe from fascist slavery. The Soviet troops were completing the 144 liberation of Romania, had freed the eastern areas of Poland and had entered the territory of Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Helped by the peoples of these countries the Soviet army continued its westward advance. The expulsion of the fascist invaders and the rising democratic movement in the liberated countries of Europe created a revolutionary situation there.

p That was when Churchill flew to Moscow. The Balkan strategy of the Western Allies was about to collapse, and with it the plans for dispatching the Anglo-American armies from Italy, through the Ljubljana Pass, to the Balkans and establishing, reactionary British- and American-oriented regimes in that area. This is what Lord Oliver Lyttelton, one of the Cabinet ministers, wrote about Churchill in his memoirs: "Time and again he drew attention to the advantages to be gained if the Western Allies rather than the Russians were the liberators and the occupying armies of some of the capitals, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, which are part of the very foundation of Europe.”  [144•1  A few years ago a memorandum was published. It was written by William Bullitt, a leading American diplomat, to President Roosevelt and dated August 10, 1943, which provides more evidence as to the existence of such plans. The memorandum reads: "Our political objectives require the establishment of British and American forces in the Balkans and eastern and central Europe. Their first objective should be the defeat of Germany, the second, the barring to the Red Army of the way into Europe.”  [144•2 

p Kent Greenfield believes that it was President Roosevelt who gave life to the Balkan variant of Western Allied strategy. In 1942, he says, Roosevelt "took the initiative in encouraging Mr. Churchill’s brightest hopes for concentration in the Mediterranean, proposing that he have the Combined Chiefs explore the possibilities of forward movement directed against Sardinia, Sicily, Italy, Greece and other Balkan (please note, “Balkan”) areas, and including the possibility
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145

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of obtaining Turkish support for an attack through the Black Sea against Germany’s flank.”  [145•1 

p In October 1944, the existing military and political situation did not favour these plans. That was when Churchill set himself the task of getting the Soviet Union to consent to a "division of the Balkans into spheres of influence”. This plan foundered, too. In his memoirs Churchill tried belatedly to clear himself and to attribute to the Soviet Union the very same imperialist policy which the ruling elite in the West sought to implement with regard to the Balkan countries.

p Hence the story about the division of the Balkans into "spheres of influence" which was so readily picked up by many bourgeois historians.

p To set the record straight, here is the transcript of the conversation that Stalin had with Churchill on October 9, 1944, from the archives of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "Churchill announced that he had prepared a rather rough and clumsy document that showed the distribution of Soviet and British influence in Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The table was drawn up by him to show what the British think on this question.”

p The Soviet record of the talks makes it clear that Churchill did propound the idea of partitioning some of the countries into spheres of influence. This gave the Soviet government a lead on the true intentions of the British .ruling elite. But Churchill’s contention that Stalin had consented to such a partition is far from truth.  [145•2 

p More proof of Churchill’s misstatement is a recently declassified British record of this conversation which confirms that Stalin gave no consent to the partition proposed by Churchill.  [145•3 

p Some Western historians doubt both Churchill’s version and the interpretation by their more reactionary colleagues of Soviet policy in the countries liberated by the Soviet army. Gabriel Kolko, for example, points to the realism of Soviet 146 policy. In his words it was quite clear by October 1944, that "the Soviet Union was pursuing a pluralistic policy in Eastern Europe based on the specific political conditions in each country".  [146•1 

p These and other documents prove that by dispatching its armed forces to liberate the countries of Europe and Asia from fascism the Soviet government, strictly in accordance with international law, rendered massive assistance to the peoples who had risen against Germano-Italian fascism and Japanese militarism.  [146•2 

p The bourgeois thesis of "exporting revolution" has clearly anti-Soviet implications. As Lenin put it, "Revolutions are not made to order, they cannot be timed for any particular moment; they mature in a process of historical development and break out at a moment determined by a whole complex of internal and external causes.”  [146•3 

As is known, the capitalist system still exists in a number of countries where Soviet troops once had their battle stations (Norway, Denmark, Austria, Iran, Finland). At the same time, Soviet troops never reached Albania, Vietnam, or Cuba which, nevertheless, did have revolutions.

Allegations of Brutality

p Some reactionary authors who do not so much as bother themselves with facts, make gratuitous accusations of “ savagery”, “looting” and “violence” allegedly committed by the Soviet army in the countries it liberated.  [146•4 

147

p All these accusations are wide of the mark. Brought up since childhood in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, Soviet soldiers did not nurture feelings of revenge for the German people, nor for the peoples of the countries which had been Germany’s allies and satellites. The Soviet government and the Communist Party had repeatedly stressed that the Soviet Union was’waging the war against German fascism, and not against the German people. As the Soviet troops approached the German frontier, Stalin, who was the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces issued an order (on January 19, 1945) that the personnel of the Soviet armed forces should not permit instances of maltreatment of German civilians.  [147•1 

p The Soviet army entered Germany with the sole purpose of carrying out the joint decisions of the Allied powers, to bring the defeat of nazism to completion and to help the German people rid themselves of the fascist yoke and build a new life on democratic principles. All actions of the Soviet soldiers on German soil were imbued with the spirit of internationalism and profound humanity. Here is an example. The Nazis were holding a house in Berlin, obstructing the advance of the Soviet troops. In spite of that, the Soviet soldiers asked the supporting artillery battery and tankmen not to destroy the building so as to save the life of the women and children on the ground floor and in the basement  [147•2 . Another illustration of the humanity and real nobility of the Soviet soldier is the heroic feat of Nikolai Masalov who, under heavy enemy fire saved a small German girl at the risk of his own life. There are many such examples.  [147•3 

p Ryan, Toland and others contend that German civilians 148 were in constant fear of the Soviet army, but they keep silent about the fact that this unfounded fear had been stoked up by the Goebbels propaganda media which kept rubbing it in that to fall into Russian hands was worse than death itself. It is well to recall in this connection that on April 28 Hitler ordered that the dams that separated the Landwer Canal from the tunnels of the underground railway be blown up. The water from the canal began to flood the tunnels. This was something none of the Berliners hiding in the tunnels from bombs, artillery shells and bullets had expected. Thousands of people, mostly children, women, old folk and wounded soldiers were drowned in the tunnels that day.

p Immediately after the formal capitulation of Berlin, the Soviet command took measures to provide the civilians with food. Already on May 2, 1945, field kitchens were set up in different places of the city so that German children, women, old people and those of the’ soldiers who had surrendered voluntarily could have their meals. Significantly, the four years of the war, the atrocities that the Nazis had perpetrated on Soviet soil did not make Soviet soldiers cruel and vengeful towards the Germans.

p The Soviet army command took urgent measures to restore electric power stations, water supply, sewerage and city transport. By the beginning of June the underground railway and the tram service were back in operation, and water, gas and power supply had been restored. The concern shown by the Soviet troops for the civilian population of Germany began to dispel the thick haze of fascist propaganda. "We did not expect such magnanimity towards the Germans,” said a German doctor after the liberation of the city.  [148•1  A Berlin electrician summed up the new situation in the city in those words: "The weeks of nightmare are over. The Nazis were trying to scare us, saying that the Russians would send all Germans into eternal slavery in cold Siberia. Now we can see that all that was nothing but a barefaced lie.”  [148•2 

149

p However, with all their references to “objective” facts and their impartial treatment of events, neither Toland, nor Sulzberger, nor Ryan, nor any other Western authors say anything about this assistance. Toland says, for instance, that all he has written is based on eye-witness reports of people he met and talked to. Doubts about the authenticity of such reports have been voiced by Brigadier General S. Marshall, who is far from friendly to the Soviet Union. In a review on Toland’s book The Last 700 Days, Marshall writes: "Toland draws heavily on statements from principals and eyewitnesses, which he gathered years later. Though that deserves orchids for enterprise, as all historians know, it is dangerously tricky material.”  [149•1  In this case Marshall noticed, and quite correctly so, a peculiarity not only of Toland’s book but in fact of most of other authors specialising in the armed struggle on the Soviet-German front: the dubious origin of the sources used in their books.

The heroic internationalist mission of the Soviet army in the war brought it undying fame throughout the world. Having completed this liberation mission, the Soviet Union helped the peoples of many countries to consolidate their freedom and independence, and protected them from counterrevolutionary encroachments by world imperialism. "Those who went through the Second World War and took part in the anti-fascist struggle will never forget the Soviet Union’s exceptional role in the battle for the freedom of nations, its sacrifices, and the heroism of its people and army. They will never forget that the Soviet Union’s struggle and sacrifices enabled many nations to regain their national freedom and state independence, and also to start fighting for the working-class victory, for the way to socialism,”  [149•2  said Gustav Husak, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. This is the truth of history.