Medvedev condemns Stalin's Russia

Tomorrow, in their annual Victory Day observances, citizens of the former Soviet Union mark the 65th anniversary of the end of their four-year war with Nazi Germany and its allies. A recent Russian source calculates that the loss of lives on the Soviet side was more than 35 million.

According to Soviet and today’s Russian leaders, the Soviet victory saved Europe from Fascist rule and guaranteed the flourishing of Western democracy.

In Moscow the occasion will see the largest military parade for many years. Similar commemorations were slated for Kyiv and Minsk. In Belarus, the war eliminated about 25 per cent of the population and the republic remained under Axis occupation longer than any other part of the U.S.S.R.

The Ukrainian sacrifice was equally significant. In the city of Zaporizhzhya in the past week, on the territory of the Communist Party headquarters, a new statue of Stalin was erected that is about 2.5 metres in height. It is the first such statue to appear in Ukraine since 1953 and its supporters defend it with the statement that Stalin deserves recognition for his role as a war leader.

Today it is difficult to conceive of the scale of such a conflict. Over 3,000 tanks were involved in a single battle at Prokhorovka on July 12, 1943, when the Germans mounted their last offensive on the Eastern Front at the battle of Kursk Salient. Russia and Belarus have equated their contemporary states directly with the war victory. Ukraine was ambivalent until the recent election victory of Viktor Yanukovych, who has opted to ignore the fact that thousands of Ukrainians fought against the return of the Soviet occupants between 1944 and 1953.

The sacrifices are one aspect. The other is mythmaking on an epic scale. Soviet writers developed a narrative that went as follows: a treacherous attack by the Germans in the summer of 1941 met with bitter resistance but succeeded initially because of its suddenness. Nevertheless, the U.S.S.R. mounted a stand outside Moscow as winter approached and halted the German Blitzkrieg. In the following year the tide of war turned at Stalingrad in January 1943 and thereafter the war saw a continual advance as the population united behind the Red Army all the way to Berlin, led by Stalin in Moscow and commanders such as Georgii Zhukov at the front.

There have been variations on this theme but generally the interpretation has survived the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. As the Red Army veterans gradually die out, the narrative of the war filters down the generations. Contemporary youth can hardly escape the war, such is the epiphany of propaganda pervading television networks, monuments, museums and official commemorations that have reached a crescendo in 2010.

Not all are convinced of the official interpretations, as one can see in an exchange on the website of a Belarusian newspaper following publication of an article by Yurii Rubashevsky, entitled “And who will approach us with a sword?” about the defence of the Brest Hero Fortress in the summer of 1941, one of the first battles of the war

In the article, the author declares “the Victory of 1945 began at the walls of the legendary citadel in June 1941.” There follows a Sovietstyle rendition of selfless resistance, though the citadel ultimately fell into German hands.

One reader questions how the statement that “even the first hours of the war demonstrated that the Germans would not have an easy victory” squares with the fact that in these early weeks 400,000 Red Army soldiers perished and 280,000 were captured. Despite having forces comparable to or superior to those of the German Wehrmacht, he continues, the Red Army fled. “No such example is to be found in all the theatres of World War II.”

Another reader joins in by noting that even “good” journalists and historians are taken in by such ideological nonsense. In this reader’s view, there is no reason to take pride in the achievements of the defence of the fortress or the city of Brest. People fled in their pyjamas, throwing away their weapons and burning their Communist Party cards. Officers betrayed their troops.

After two readers defended the article, a third critic wrote that Victory Day should be declared a “national day of mourning in memory of the innocent souls of all the nationalities who perished under the leadership of the talentless Red commanders.”

The currently venerated Stalin hardly exuded gratitude. The surviving defenders of the Brest Fortress were arrested once the Red Army liberated German prison camps and deported to the Far East, where most remained until the late 1950s. The Brest Hero Fortress, as well as several Hero Cities, was not recognized until the 1970s when the Brezhnev regime elevated the war to its contemporary propagandistic level.

It is accurate to say that after the battle of Stalingrad (where the Germans surrendered on February 2, 1943), the Red Army bore the chief responsibility for the defeat of Hitler. But it has become impossible in Russia in particular for historians to criticize the official narrative of the war. The result is a version of events that bears little relation to reality and where memories are only valued if they conform to the prevailing line.

However, in contrast to the prevailing views in Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged yesterday that the figure that led the Soviet forces cannot be separated from his misdeeds.

Not only did Stalin’s purges, deportations and imposed mass famine on Ukraine cause the death of millions of his compatriots, but also he impeded the Soviet war effort by his lack of readiness for the German attack, victimizing and executing his own commanders, and exhibiting a lack of concern for Soviet losses that few generals would tolerate in modern warfare.

The 65th anniversary of Victory Day is a time for sober contemplation and commemoration, but not for celebration.

David Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta.

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