Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
Catherine Merridale
In her book Catherine Merridale takes a closer look at the Soviet Army during the Second World War (1939-1945) primarily focusing on the beliefs, attitudes, values, and what it took to survive the atrocities of war for a Soviet solider. Her goal is very much a grassroots approach to individual experiences as she tries to discover what it was like for an average Ivan to fight against the Germans. However, perhaps inadvertently, the author paints a broad picture of the Soviet war effort setting the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians today refer to World War II, in the context of the pre-war Stalinist years, early Soviet military failures, political propaganda, major battles, plundering of Europe by the Red Army as it advanced towards Berlin, and demobilization. Finally she presents dilemmas with the war’s legacy in now newly independent non-Russian post-Soviet states. She touches upon the mental and physical anguish of those who survived it. Veterans who saw the Soviet Union crumble were finally able to learn the jarring truth about the Second World War although many, after decades of propaganda, still cling to their own vision and memory.
Cathrine Marridale does not explicitly state her argument though it is clear from her book that only a regime so cruel and repressive as Stalinist Soviet Union was able to turn around the circumstances with which the country was faced on the eve of the German invasion in June 1941 and produce what became the Red Army. A whole generation inundated in Soviet propaganda and educational system loyal to the Communist regime grew up since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Although I believe that she perhaps overstates the level of complacency of the populace to the regime ignoring some of the more subtle expression of dissent such as jokes and the sheer fact that people could not express themselves freely, she makes a clear point that on the eve of the Nazi attack most people were indoctrinated to believe in Communism and Stalin, which ultimately proved to be a decisive factor. However, she is also very explicit in her argument that those who fought, fought courageously sacrificing their lives without really giving much though to the propagandist slogans such as “for Victory! For Stalin!” Punitive battalions and “rats” or the NKVD troops at the rear, however, served as a method of terror for those who thought of desertion or self mutilation as a way of escaping a war which meant almost a certain death.
Freedom of speech or thought was never permitted, and political officers or politruks were attached to soldiers’ units to agitate and monitor the political correctness of their behavior. Even close friendships were looked down upon with suspicion since they could encourage spying or subversion. Letters from the front were censored. This, undoubtedly, presents a problem for scholars who want to uncover the true attitudes and thoughts of the soldiers. Mental illness, stress or post-traumatic disorders were dismissed as illegitimate health concerns. The author says that the estimates vary but “it seems likely that only a hundred thousand of the Red Army’s twenty million active service troops would eventually be counted as permanent causalities of the mind.”
More than three million Soviet (principally Russian) prisoners of war were killed in Nazi camps, many as a result of direct acts of brutal and illegal violence. The atrocities committed by the Soviet troops simply did not exist in the official record, although the organs of political education in the Red Army encouraged this kind of behavior and thinking. There is no doubt that the men’s actions were encouraged, if not orchestrated by Moscow. Rape was the most prevalent from the atrocities and was committed on a massive scale, most prominently in East Prussia, but “rape was a problem wherever the Red Army uncounted its enemies.” The author sites that while thousands of German women and girls undoubtedly suffered rape at the hands of Soviet troops; the figure may well have reached hundreds of thousands.” Although rape was not the only crime that Soviet soldiers committed as they swept through Prussia. Towns were burned, officials murdered, and columns of refugees were strafed and shelled as they fled west toward Berlin.
One of the things that Merridale does exceptionally well is place the Red Army at the center of the Stalinist regime. The Soviet Army was what it was because of state propaganda and censorship, the cruelty of punitive battalions and the state’s general disregard for the human life. She underscores the individual courage and patriotism of Soviet citizens, without which victory would have never been possible, but she also reveals the brutality of the government not only towards its own citizens but the state’s encouragement of atrocities including mass rapes and murder which the Soviet soldiers committed in the West without any apparent protest from Moscow.
Dr. W: An excellent critique. A
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