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[introduction.]

p The victory of the Soviet Union in the war demonstrated not only the advantages of the socialist economy, but also the strength of the Soviet state and its social system, the inviolable friendship of all the big and small nations of our country, the unity of Soviet people around the Communist Party, the great force of the communist ideas. Lenin wrote: "All wars are inseparable from the political systems that engender them.”  [193•1  He also pointed out that the course of a war and its outcome depend primarily "upon the internal regime of the country that goes to war".  [193•2 

p Long before it attacked the Soviet Union the Nazi Reich put its reliance not only in brute force but also in what it thought was the weakness of the state and social system of the Soviet Union. Goebbels and his underlings at the propaganda ministry went to great lengths trying to prove the existence of "vulnerable spots" in the Soviet system and to give ideological support to the adventuristic idea of the Blitzkrieg. The Nazi aggressors hoped that the multinational Soviet state would fall to pieces under the blows the Wehrmacht.

History taught a severe lesson to those who hoped to defeat the Soviet Union, to those who did not see, or did not want to see, the indestructible potential, the viability of the socialist system born of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

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That "Mysterious Russian Soul"
and "Holy Russia" Traditions

p Western writers often refer to the patriotism of the Soviet people as rooted in the "unfathomable Russian character”, in that "mysterious Russian soul”, sa/ing for example, that it was not Soviet patriotism, but love for "Mother Russia" that enabled the Soviet Union to go through the ordeal of war. Gustav Welter (France) traces Soviet patriotism back to the times "when the Russian people had implicit faith in their leaders, be it Peter the Great, Kutuzov or Stalin”.  [194•1 

p The above interpretation of Soviet patriotism deprives it of class content and reduces it to a narrow national concept. Hence the conclusion that communist ideology did not sufficiently influence the consciousness of Soviet people, which led the Communist Party to sing the praises of "Holy Russia”. In support of these allegations they cite such facts as the conferring of the title of “Guards” upon some Soviet Army units (Guards divisions, Guards regiments, etc.), the institution of government awards named after celebrated generals and admirals of the past: Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Pavel Nakhimov, Fyodor Ushakov, Alexander Nevsky. This line of reasoning is manifest in the works of Georg von Rauch (FRG), Holene Carrere d’Encausse (France) and others.  [194•2 

p That is what can be said on that score. Every nation has gone through crucial periods when it had to fight for its independence, when it faced social changes that had a far-reaching effect on its political life as a state. Such crucial periods brought forth progressive political and military leaders whose activity had a positive effect on social development. Alexander Nevsky is alive in the memory of the people not because he was a prince, but because he headed the struggle of his people against 195 foreign invaders for the independence of Old Rus. The Soviet people honour the memory of Suvorov, Kutuzov, Ushakov and Nakhimov not because of titles and promotions they received from the tsars, but because they, a^ the progressive representatives of their time, understood the needs of the people and of the state and honestly served their country as talented commanders. Another progressive political leader and general was Bogdan Khmelnitsky who was one of the first representatives of his class to understand the unity of interests of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples.

p In its ideological work to educate Soviet people in the spirit of patriotism the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has always turned to the glorious past and to the traditions of the peoples of the Soviet Union born of the centuries of struggle for freedom and independence. At the same time the Communist Party has always maintained that historical research should be carried on from clearly-stated class positions, that the glorious past of the Russian people must not be identified with the history of the bourgeois-landowner system of tsarist Russia which for a long time was a "prison of the peoples”.  [195•1 

p The institution of the honorary title of Guards does not hark back to tsarist traditions either. Bourgeois historians deliberately ignore the fact that certain traditional concepts and notions may change in the language of any nation as time goes by. One such traditional notion is the word “Guards”, which in modern Russian denotes troops that are best trained and have a strong revolutionary spirit and are devoted to the cause of communism. Not accidentally, the first detachments of the armed workers who fought against tsarism were called the Red Guards who in later years formed the backbone of the armed forces of the proletariat prior and during the Great October Socialist Revolution and in the early stages of 196 the Civil War (1918-1920).  [196•1  In Soviet publicistic writing and fiction such concepts as the Lenin Guards and the Guards of the Revolution took root long before the war. During the war the Guards title was conferred upon the best army formations and warships which had distinguished themselves in battle against the Nazi invaders.

p Western historians have put into circulation the malicious invention that the "communist regime in Russia" revised its attitude to the church during the war and actually "made peace" with and secured the support of the church it had allegedly persecuted. These falsifiers are trying to cash in on the prevalent ignorance in the West of the specific relations that exist between the socialist state and religious organisations, including the Russian Orthodox Church. The church was separated from the state in 1918 by a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars. Identity with any religious creed is the personal matter of every citizen of the USSR. The Constitution of the USSR guarantees freedom of worship for all citizens. In the early years of Soviet rule many clergymen who had connections with the exploiter classes in tsarist Russia and tried to block socialist change were prosecuted. Our country was surging ahead on the road of social and economic progress, and the working people, including some who went to church, took an active part in building a new life. If the church had stood apart from the mainstream of social change and ignored the loyalty of the believers to the new sociopolitical system, it would have lost its influence with this part of the population. This is why it openly renounced all anti-Soviet activities.

p Back in 1927, Metropolitan Sergius, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called upon the clergy and all religious people to give their active support to the Soviet government. In the years preceding the war the church held a loyal position with regard to the social and state system in the USSR.

197

p After the Nazi aggressors attacked the Soviet Union, the entire Soviet nation, including religious people, rose in defence of their country. The church condemned the fascist aggression. When a national fund-raising and aid programme for the Soviet army was launched, the church took an active part. The money collected by believers was used to build a tank column which bore the name of Dmitry Donskoi.

p At the same time, while respecting believers’ religious feelings, the state and party bodies of the USSR never departed from the principle of separation of church from state. Neither the Orthodox Christian faith, nor any of its denominations, or any other religions, were admitted to participation in running the state. The Communist Party has always considered it its duty to disseminate the ideas of Marxist materialism and scientific atheism.

All this goes to show that no substantive change took place in relations between church and state during the war. The influence of the Orthodox Christian and other religions on the population was a far cry from what bourgeois historians claim it was and could not serve as a source of inspiration in the struggle against the enemy.

Still Another Version

p The falsifiers of history are using still another ploy in looking for the roots of Soviet patriotism. They allege that the popular struggle against the invaders was triggered off by the “erroneous” occupation policy of the fascist leaders. In the 1960s arguments of this sort appeared in books by the British historian Edgar O’Ballance and Alan Clark, the American historian Trumbull Higgins, the West German historian E.Hess, and others. Following this line, French sociologist Raymond Aron said that Russia’s patriotic war against the Nazis was the result of the “mistakes” of the German occupation authorities.  [197•1  He is echoed by Klaus Reinhardt who tries to explain the heroic struggle of the Soviet people on the front of war and on the home 198 front by the “errors” of the leaders pf the Third Reich in their policy for the population of the occupied areas and for the Soviet prisoners of war. At the same time Reinhardt is trying to justify the criminal orders and actions of the Wehrmacht command which allegedly “censured” this policy, blaming the SS for it.  [198•1  Carrere d’Encausse, whose works exude anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism, thinks that the leaders of Nazi Germany could have played "the nationalities card" which would have weakened the USSR. According to her, if the plan proposed by the war criminal Alfred Rosenberg had been put through and the Soviet Union had been dismembered, "the Soviet federation would have been doomed".  [198•2 

p All those disquisitions about the possibility of the Nazis adopting some sort of “humane” policy for the Soviet population, and the “effectiveness” of such a policy are all the more impermissible since they are clearly aimed at whitewashing German imperialism and nazism and giving the brutal regime a "human face”. It may be well to recall here that long before the war the Nazi leaders put forward in numerous documents a programme for conquering territories in Eastern Europe and set forth monstrous plans for exterminating Slavic peoples and for Germanising some groups of the population which the invaders intended to turn into their slaves. Hitler declared cynically: "Our guiding principle is that these [Slavic] peoples have the only justification for their existence: to be economically useful to us.”  [198•3  The master plan Ost worked out with the participation of Himmler and Rosenberg in May 1540, provided for the destruction of 30 million Slavs. The section of this document dealing with the Soviet Union reads: "The idea is not merely to destroy the Russian state with Moscow as its centre, but rather to smash the Russian people as a nation, to dissociate them.”  [198•4  The Nazis were planning to destroy the Soviet intelligentsia on all occupied territory, to abolish 199 higher and secondary education, to turn Soviet people into dumb slaves.

p Shortly before the outbreak of the war a special letter of instruction was circulated in Germany as to the behaviour of Nazi officials on the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. It read: "You must make it quite clear that you are here to represent great Germany for centuries to come... Therefore you must-with honour and dignity-carry through the most harsh and ruthless measures that the Vaterland will require of you.”  [199•1 

p The German military unhesitatingly put into practice the racist, misanthropic theories, using brute force and the worst kind of savagtiy against the population of the occupied areas. Under the directive "On Military Jurisdiction in the Barbarossa Area and on the Special Powers of the Troops" issued on May 13, 1941, the Wehrmacht soldiers were given full license "to use violence against partisans and all suspected persons”, also against populated centres. They were absolved a priori of any responsibility for acts of tyranny and brutality against Soviet people.  [199•2 

p The OKW order July 22, 1941, instructed the occupation authorities to use "such terror as is likely, by its mere existence, to crush every will to resist amongst the population".  [199•3 

An order issued by Walther von Reichenau, Commander of the 6th Army, "Conduct of Troops in Eastern Territories" read: "The troops should be interested in extinguishing fires only as far as it is necessary to secure sufficient numbers of billets. Otherwise, the disappearance of symbols of the former Bolshevistic rule, even in the form of buildings, is part of the struggle of destruction. Neither historic nor artistic considerations are of any importance in the Eastern Territories.”  [199•4 

200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1984/WWII279/20070928/272.tx"

It stands to reason that the Nazi policy of terror in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union served to stoke the flames of the popular struggle against the Nazis. The outstanding Soviet statesman Mikhail Kalinin wrote back in the war days: "The cruelty which makes even cold stones cry out for revenge has caused even the most peaceful people to throw themselves into the selfless struggle against Hitler’s criminals. And yet, the violence and brutality perpetrated by the German invaders against the civilian population are only accessory factors in the spread of the partisan war. The main wellsprings that so abundantly supply the partisan movement lie much deeper-in the midst of the people themselves.”  [200•1 

Patriotism and Heroism

p The war fought by Germany and her satellites against the Soviet Union was both aggressive and criminal.

p The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government laid bare the designs of the German aggressor at the very outset of the war. "The aim of the Nazi attack is to destroy the Soviet system, to seize the Soviet land, to enslave the Soviet Union and to plunder our country,”  [200•2  read the directive of the Central Committee of the Party and the Government of June 29, 1941.

p The Party called upon all its countrymen to fight selflessly against the invaders, to defend every inch of their native soil, to fight to the last drop of blood for their towns and villages. At the call of the Party the whole nation rose in struggle against the invaders. Millions of Soviet^ people, right from the very first hours of the war showed an unbending will in the fight against the enemy, a dignity of spirit, and devotion to their duty as citizens of their socialist Motherland.

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p The main source of patriotism and self-sacrifice of Soviet citizens in the struggle against the invaders was the Soviet social and state system, the ideals of communism. When we speak about heroism in the Great Patriotic War we think of it not only in terms of personal bravery; we know it was unprecedented heroism on the part of the entire nation. During the war seven million Soviet soldiers were awarded government decorations, more than 11,000 men and women won the highest distinction, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The mass heroism of the Soviet people was proof of their patriotism, love for their land, and boundless loyalty to the socialist system.

p Reactionary historians never let up on their attempts to detract from the Soviet army’s heroism, to distort the facts relating to the Soviet people’s struggle for their socialist Motherland. Hanson Baldwin, for one, puts forward this “insight” explanation: "...The muzhik feared the iron discipline of the commissars, and the Soviet execution squads.”  [201•1  Here is a scene shamelessly penned by the earlier mentioned American historian William Craig: "...The colonel moved purposefully to the long lines of massed soldiers. A pistol in his right hand, he turned at the end of the first row and began counting in a loud voice: ’One, two, three, four.’ As he reached the tenth man, he wheeled and shot him in the head. As the victim crumpled to the ground, the colonel picked up the count again: ’One, two, three...’ At ten he shot another man dead and continued his dreadful monologue: ’One, two..."  [201•2  Reactionary historians and anti-Soviet propaganda-mongers have no scruples about using such crude fabrications to brainwash the uninitiated and poorly informed reader.

p Baldwin, Craig and others of their ilk pass over in silence the assessments of those who learned to know the Soviet soldiers on battlefield. "The Soviet soldier was fighting for his political ideals consciously and fanatically. This applies particularly to younger soldiers,” wrote Hans 202 Friessner, a former Nazi general.  [202•1  After visiting Stalingrad with a group of war veterans from France, General Fernand Gambiez commented on the watchword of Stalingrad defenders-No land for us beyond the Volga!-in these words: "For us this watchword brings home the meaning of the patriotic education of the Red Army men, the love of Soviet people for their much-suffering country, the high morale of the masses.”  [202•2 

p Back in 1919 Lenin spoke about the invincibility of socialism in its confrontation with the exploiter states: "A nation in which the majority of the workers and peasants realise, feel and see that they are fighting for their own Soviet power, for the rule of the working people, for the cause whose victory will ensure them and their children all the benefits of culture, of all that has been created by human labour-such a nation can never be vanquished.”  [202•3 

Most of the defenders of the Socialist Motherland in the Great Patriotic War were the sons and daughters of those whom Lenin and the Communist Party led to victory in the socialist revolution in November 1917. They belonged to the generation of people who studied and worked in the years of the tremendous socio-economic transformations in the country, who built a socialist society and for whom the socialist way of life was a reality.

Fraternal Family of Nations

p “Lenin’s behests and his principles underlying the policy in the nationalities question are sacred to us. Relying on and steadfastly asserting them in practice we have created a powerful state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose formation was not only a major step in the development of socialism but also a crucial turning point in world history,"  [202•4  203 said Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of theCentral Committee of the CPSU, in a speech at the meeting in the Kremlin devoted to the 60th anniversary of the formation of the USSR. The war years particularly bear out the truth of these words. The war brought still closer together all the big and small nations of our vast country. The defence of the socialist Motherland was the common cause of all Soviet citizens whatever their nationality. Fighting shoulder to shoulder were representatives of big and small nations of our country and their heroic exploits were a source of pride for all Soviet people.

p Two hundred rifle divisions with a total strength of one million that fought in 1944 were 58.3 per cent Russian, 22.3 per cent Ukrainian, 2.7 per cent Byelorussian, 2.0 per cent Uzbek, 1.5 per cent Kazakh, 1.5 per cent Azerbaijanian, 1.4 per cent Armenian, 1.0 per cent Kirghiz, and the rest-other nationalities of the USSR. One Estonian army corps, three Kazakh divisions, one Latvian, one Lithuanian, one Azerbaijanian, one Georgian, one Armenian, and one Bashkir divisions and smaller army units of the other nationalities were formed during the war.  [203•1  The defence of the socialist Motherland was the common cause of all the peoples of our country.

p Speaking at a Soviet youth meeting in September 1941, the son of the Spanish revolutionary, Dolores Ib&rruri, Captain Rub6n Ruiz Ibarruri, who later died in the Battle of Stalingrad, said: "I am Spanish, and fighting next to me is a Russian and a Georgian, a Byelorussian and a Kazakh, a Ukrainian and a Tajik. Come and join us, all of you who want to win happiness and freedom for yourselves.” The feelings voiced by a Soviet officer, Spanish by nationality, were close to all Soviet people for whom the class solidarity of the working men and women of all countries, the unity of the multinational family of the peoples of the USSR had become part of their life and the social framework which had taken shape in the course of the socialist reconstruction of the country.

p The insinuations of the neofascist historians like Joachim 204 Hoffmann, who is in the pay of the Bundeswehr’s Military History Department, Wielfried Strik-Strikfeldt, and others who try to prove that in the years of the war the nationalities policy of the Soviet government "did not pass muster”, will not lead to anything.

p The hopes of the Nazi leaders and of world imperialism for the resurgence of old feuds between different nationalities and for the disintegration of the multinational socialist state were built on sand. The unity and friendship of all nations of the Soviet Union-big and small-stood up to the severest of tests.

The strength of the Soviet multinational state in the years of the Second World War has been noted by many Western historians saying that the fascist policy-makers and strategists were labouring under a delusion when they tried to foment non-existent dissensions between nationalities in the USSR. "That was a good lesson for the anticommunists of the whole world who, when the war broke out, placed their hopes now on a soldiers’ mutiny, now on a peasant uprising, now on the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Republics.”  [204•1 

Struggle in the Enemy Rear

p The deep patriotic feelings of Soviet citizens were demonstrated in their struggle on occupied territory. Even in conditions of brutal terror, at the risk of their lives, the overwhelming majority of Soviet citizens in the occupied areas did not succumb to the invaders; they did all they could to sabotage the economic and political actions of the occupation authorities. Tens of thousands of them went underground, and hundreds of thousands fought as partisans.

p Altogether 6,200 partisan detachments and underground groups, involving more than one million people fought in the enemy rear in the occupied areas of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldavia. By the beginning of 1944, more than 30 per cent of the partisans were industrial workers, 41 per cent collective 205 farmers, and about 29 per cent were office employees. Almost ten per cent of the partisans were women. Fighting in the partisan detachments were people of all nationalities of the Soviet Union.  [205•1 

p The resistance fighters inflicted heavy losses upon the invaders. According to far from complete reports, the Soviet resistance fighters derailed more than 21,000 troop trains and trains carrying materiel, destroyed or damaged 1,618 locomotives and 170,800 railway carriages, blew up and burned 12,000 railway and highway bridges, killed or took prisoner about 1,500,000 Nazi officers and men and their servitors, and supplied the Soviet army with a great deal of valuable information.  [205•2 

p In some regions the resistance fighters kept large areas clear of the enemy and maintained Soviet power. There were large zones controlled by the freedom-fighters where the Nazis never set foot. In the summer of 1943, a total of more than 200,000 square kilometres of Soviet territory were under partisan control.

p The partisan movement was of great political significance. By handing out leaflets and underground newspapers and by making personal contact with Soviet people on occupied territory, partisans and underground Party organisations passed on truthful information about the situation on the Soviet-German front, exposed the lies and slander of the occupation authorities, and nurtured in people the belief that the enemy would soon be routed and that they would soon be freed from the Nazi yoke. Both in scope and in the actual political and military results, the heroic struggle of Soviet people on the temporarily occupied territory became an important factor in the defeat of the Nazis.

p In some of their works Western historians give fairly realistic assessments of the struggle of Soviet people in the enemy rear. The British historian Ralph White writes that "Soviet resistance quickly emerged ... committed to the 206 most directly military forms of organization and activity, under central direction from Moscow and with its strategy closely aligned with that of the main Soviet forces”, and became a realistic major force in the struggle against Germany.  [206•1  This view was influenced in a way by Wehrrnacht generals who took part in military operations on the SovietGerman front, and by the official documents of the Nazi command. Lothar Rendulic, an ex-Nazi general, wrote: "The history of wars knows no other example of a partisan movement playing such an important role as it played in the last world war.... For the colossal impact it had on the conduct of warfare and on the problems of supply, the management of the rear and the administration of affairs in the occupied areas, the partisan movement became part of the broader concept of total war.... The partisan movement ... had a marked effect on the entire course of the Second World War.”  [206•2 

p On July 1, 1941, Franz Haider, C-in-C of the Army GHQ, wrote in his diary that "ensuring safety in the rear of Army Group Centre was becoming a major task, and it apparently takes more than just security divisions to accomplish it".  [206•3  An order of September 16, 1941, signed by Keitel, C-in-C of the OKW GHQ, reads: "With the opening of hostilities against Soviet Russia, a communist-inspired resistance movement sprang up on German-occupied territory. It takes many forms-from purely propaganda actions to attacks on individual Wehrmacht servicemen to open uprisings and fullfledged war...”  [206•4 

p On August 18, 1942, the OKW issued Directive No. 46 stiffening anti-partisan operations and instructing all higher military staffs to carry out special combat operations against 207 the partisans.  [207•1  In April 1943, Hitler signed a special order in which the organisation and the actual conduct of antipartisan operations were equated to those on the frontline. By their active operations in the rear and along communication lines the people’s avengers tied up considerable forces of the enemy. Beginning with the middle of 1942 about 10 per cent of the Nazi troops were tied up in the struggle against the partisans on the Soviet-German front. In 1943, the OKW used auxiliary formations of "about 25 divisions against the partisans.

p The invaders were particularly concerned about the resistance put up by the whole population against the occupation regime. T. Oberlander, responsible for anti-partisan action on the southern sector of the Soviet-German front, reported to Berlin in October 1941: "Of still greater danger than the active resistance of the partisans is the passive resistance of the population, labour sabotage, and our chances of success in breaking that are even fewer.”  [207•2 

p Western historians have moved a whole array of often mutually exclusive arguments to give a distorted picture of the popular struggle of the Soviet people against the invaders. Some of them hold that the partisan movement was not initiated by the people but was forced upon them by the “commisars”, who "drove civilians into the forests”. Others try to create the impression that the partisan movement was a “spontaneous” expression of "that mysterious Russian soul”, something the Soviet political leadership was not prepared for and unable "to get under control”.

p Erich Helmdach (FRG) claims that the people of the temporarily occupied areas did not support the partisans, while the partisans themselves desisted from struggle.  [207•3  He is echoed by Edgar Howell (USA), who specialises in the Soviet partisan movement: "There was no question of a popular 208 rising; the mass of the people had no part in it.”  [208•1  Another study on the Soviet partisan movement contends that "the partisan movement was not a volunteer organization.”  [208•2 

p The malicious theses of a coerced and an uncontrollable partisan movement were cooked up in order to conceal the popular and patriotic sources of the struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders.

p The political and military leaders of the Soviet Union, who hailed the Soviet people’s ardent wish to join in the active struggle against the enemy, took early measures to organise nation-wide popular resistance. On July 18, 1941, the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopted a decision "On the Organisation of a S truggle in the Rear of the German Army”. The directive read in part: "We shall be supported in every town and village by hundreds and thousands of our brothers and sisters who have fallen under the heel of the Nazis and who expect our help in organising the forces for the fight against the invaders.”

p Already in 1941, in the first six months of the war, 18 underground regional party committees, more than 260 area, city and district committees and other underground party bodies, many primary party organisations and groups were set up in spite of the exceptionally difficult conditions of war and occupation. Altogether about 65,500 members of the Communist Party operated in the Nazi-occupied territory by the end of the first year of the war, organising the anti-Nazi struggle. In the Moscow region alone 41 partisan detachments and 37 sabotage groups operated that year.  [208•3  On May 30, 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was set up.

p The network of underground organisations was steadily expanding. In the autumn of 1943, 24 regional party committees, more than 370 area, city and district committees and other underground party bodies were operating on the Nazi- 209 occupied territory of the USSR. Party leadership strengthened the partisan movement which, in the words of Mikhail Kalinin "grew into a truly people’s struggle which was gaining momentum with every passing month".  [209•1 

p Some reactionary historians even attempt to prove that the partisan struggle of the Soviet people was against international law. They have borrowed from the arsenal of Goebbels propaganda and from modem U.S. Army manuals some insulting references to partisans who, in their words, "violated the traditional norms of warfare".  [209•2 

p Those historians should know that long before the outbreak of the Second World War, partisans were given legal status by international law. At two conferences held- in The Hague in 1899 and 1907 it was agreed that participants in the guerrilla movement should be protected by international law on an equal footing with the servicemen of regular armies.

The biased assessments of the character, scope and sources of the Soviet partisan movement are apparently part of the modem political strategy of world reactionary forces and are clearly aimed at discrediting this highly effective form of armed struggle for national independence, and against imperialist aggression.