Catherine Merridale - Ivan's War

31 Archive of the Komsomol , hereafter RGASPI-M, 33/1/360, 3–8.

32 TsDNISO, 8/2/99, 1–2.

33 E. M. Snetkova, Pis’ma very, nadezhdy, lyubvy. Pis’ma s fronta (Moscow, 1999), p. 1.

34 RGASPI-M, 33/1/276, 4.

35 Stroki, opalennye voiny. Sbornik pisem voennykh let, 1941–1945 , 2 izd. (Belgorod, 1998), pp. 115–6.

36 Gordon, pp. 160–1.

37 Alexander Nevsky defeated the Teutonic knights in 1242. Dmitry Donskoi’s defeat of the Tatars followed in 1380. Minin and Pozharsky drove out the Poles in the seventeenth century and the last two generals, Suvorov and Kutuzov, led the campaign against Napoleon in 1812.

38 Stalin, ‘Rech’ na parade krasnoi armii’, in O velikoi otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moscow, 1947), pp. 37–40.

39 Moskva voennaya , pp.44–5.

40 Werth, p. xvi.

41 Kursk NKVD report, GAOPIKO, 3605/1/307, 1–3.

42 TsDNISO, 8/1/25, 7–8.

43 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv smolenskoi oblasti (GASO), 1500/1/1, 16–18.

44 See Vasil Bykov, ‘Za Rodinu! Za Stalina!’, Rodina , 1995, no. 5, pp. 30–7.

45 On swearing, see E. S. Senyavskaya, Frontovoe pokolenie: istoriko-psikhologicheskoe issledovanie, 1941–1945 (Moscow, 1995), p. 83.

46 Memorial essay no. 2272: ‘Memoirs of Valish Khusanovich Khabibulin,’ Ed. Nina Pavlovna Bredenkova (Tyumen’ 2002).

47 TsDNISO, 1555/1/3, 3–5.

48 Knyshevskii, p. 355.

49 TsDNISO, 1555/1/3, 5.

50 Moskva voennaya, p. 167.

51 RGASPI-M, 33/1/1395, 6.

52 Velikaya otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 155.

53 See photo on facing page, which is a typical representation.

54 Sidorov, p. 60.

55 Velikaya otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 114–5.

56 Ibid ., p. 155.

57 Ibid ., pp. 114–5; 193–4.

58 Ibid ., p. 166, 6, p. 120.

59 Werth, p. 370.

60 Velikaya otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 73.

61 Ibid ., pp. 252–3; 166 (on thieving).

62 For an example from the battle of Moscow, see Knyshevskii, p. 184.

63 Cited in Knyshevskii, p. 164.

64 TsDNISO, 1555/1/3, 3.

65 Velikaya otechestvennaya , 6, p. 97, order no. 307 of Glav PURKKA.

66 TsAMO, 206/298/2, 15, 49–50.

67 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, RH2-124, p. 22.

68 Werth, p. 422.

69 GASO, 1/1/1500, p. 15.

70 TsDNISO, 8/2/82, 50.

71 Werth, pp. 705–7.

72 RGASPI, 17/125/169, 5–8.

73 TsDNISO, 8/1/25, 12.

74 ‘Vystuplenie po radio’, 3 July 1941, in Stalin, O velikoi otechestvennoi voine , p. 15.

75 TsDNISO, 8/1/25, 12.

76 See John A. Armstrong (Ed.), Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison, 1964), p. 3.

77 On field post in general, see Velikaya otechestvennaya , 6, pp. 76 and 134.

78 Ponomarenko’s figures, from RGASPI 69/1/19, 129.

79 The ‘big country’ – bol’shaya zemlya – was the partisans’ term for the unoccupied part of the USSR.

80 GASO, 1500/1/1, 25–35; TsDNISO, 8/2/99, 17.

81 Armstrong, p. 170.

82 Pis’ma s fronta i na front 1941–1945 (Smolensk, 1991), pp. 77 and 94–5.

83 Stalin, O velikoi otechestvennoi voine , p. 43.

84 Bundesarchiv, RH2-1924, p. 21.

85 Overy, p. 117.

86 V. L. Bogdanov et al. (Eds), Zhivaya pamyat’: pravda o voine , vol. 1 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 392–6.

87 Rodina , 1995, no. 5, p. 68.

88 RGALI, 1814/4/5, 32.

89 Werth, pp. 388–9.

90 Information from the Adzhimuskai museum and from local people in Kerch.

91 Evseev, cited in Knyshevskii, pp. 334–7.

92 Werth, p. 398.

93 Rodina , 1991, nos. 6–7, p. 68.

94 Ibid ., p. 60 (voenyurist Dolotsev).

95 Zhivaya pamyat , (diary of Vladimir Ivanov), p. 388.

1 RGVA, 32925/1/504, 34.

2 See Chuikov’s account in Werth, pp. 444–5.

3 Rodina , 1995, no. 5, p. 60.

4 Interview with Lev Lvovich, Moscow, April 2002; RGVA, 32925/1/504, 34.

5 I have cited one respondent for each of these explanations of wartime cowardice. In fact, almost every veteran interviewed blamed generic central Asians or Ukrainians for the army’s failures at different points in the war. Most also gave examples of ‘good’ representatives of those groups. Indeed, few could name a ‘bad’ one among the people they knew personally.

6 Special orders concerning the national minorities in the army, 17 September 1942. Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 6, pp. 173–4.

7 See Beevor, Stalingrad , pp. 84–5.

8 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 6, p. 153.

9 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), pp. 276–7. According to more recent Soviet figures, the true number was at least 90 million. See Sidorov, p. 60.

10 Cited in Vasily Chuikov, The Beginning of the Road , trans. Harold Silver (London, 1963), p. 175.

11 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 278.

12 GASO, 1/1/1500, 31.

13 Cited in Roger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991 (London, 2000), p. 115.

14 All figures cited by Overy, p. 160.

15 Erickson, ‘The System’, p. 244.

16 Rodina , 1995, no. 5, p. 61.

17 Gorin’s story featured in a television documentary shown in Moscow in 2002, but he was kind enough to repeat it for me, and to answer questions, in Moscow in the same year.

18 Erickson, ‘The System’, p. 236. This figure is almost certainly too low. At least a million prisoners were released from the Gulag and sent to the front, and most of these served in penal units of some kind, though some were drafted into regular units and used for dangerous tasks like clearing mines by hand. See Chapter 6, below, pp. 174‒6.

19 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 6, pp. 176–7.

20 Ibid ., p. 157.

21 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), 351.

22 See also Overy, p. 160.

23 Krivosheev, pp. 125–6; Werth, p. 408.

24 TsAMO, 1128/1/4, 61.

25 See Volkogonov’s biographical essay in Stalin’s Generals , pp. 317–21.

26 Erickson, Stalingrad , p. 349.

27 Anfilov’s biographical essay in Stalin’s Generals , p. 64.

28 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 6, p. 176.

29 Ibid ., p. 161.

30 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), pp. 372–3.

31 Order no. 307 of the Defence Commissariat, ibid ., pp. 326–7.

32 Chuikov, The Beginning , p. 284.

33 TsAMO, 1128/1/4, 61.

34 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 359.

35 For examples, see ibid ., pp. 281–3 and 318–20.

36 TsAMO, 206/298/4, 6. For more on the play, see also Werth, pp. 423–6.

37 Temkin, p. 137; Werth, p. 622. In fact, the T-34 had a diesel engine, which made it less prone to combustion than most previous Soviet models, although plenty of T-34s would burn in combat conditions through the war.

38 See Overy, p. 195.

39 Ibid ., p. 197. Veterans remember both these brands by name today.

40 Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), p. 287.

41 Svetlana Alexiyevich, War’s Unwomanly Face , trans. Keith Hammond and Lyudmila Lezhneva (Moscow, 1988), p. 128.

42 RGASPI-M, 33/1/1454, 36.

43 Garthoff, p. 249.

44 Van Creveld, p. 112; RGASPI, 17/125/78, 123.

45 On decorations, see Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (2), pp. 360–1; on shoulder boards, see Velikaya Otechestvennaya , 2 (3), pp. 30–1.

46 TsAMO, 523/41119c/5, 51 (relates to an artillery regiment).

47 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, RH-2, 2467, p. 127.