Lend-Lease and the Soviet War Effort1

Abstract

The contribution made by allied deliveries2 to the Soviet war effort during the second world war has been subject to some controversy, but it is generally agreed to have been minor. The official Soviet history of the Great Patriotic War acknowledges that about twelve per cent of aeroplanes, ten per cent of tanks and less than two per cent of artillery used by Soviet forces were imported from the west.3 In some logistical materials, lorries and telephone-wire being particular cases in point, the contribution was much greater. Nicholas Riazanovsky sums it up: 'It should be stressed that while Soviet military transportation depended heavily on vehicles from lend-lease, the Red Army was armed with Soviet weapons'.4 At a more general level, Voznesensky, the wartime director of Gosplan, estimated that lend-lease deliveries had amounted to only four per cent of Soviet wartime industrial production.5 This figure has had general credence ever since, though some western observers have noted that Voznesensky referred, apparently, only to the years 1941 to 1943. There was no mention of 1944-45 when deliveries were far more significant than 1941.6 Further, there is no explanation of the basis of this figure, nor is it clear whether it refers to industrial production per se or to national income. Nonetheless, the four per cent figure has become accepted and widely repeated.7 An East German author has written that lend-lease deliveries amounted 'at most to four per cent of the material means available' to the Soviet Union;8 a Soviet writer, Tamarchenko, refers to four per cent of 'total production'.9 Further, the American scholar J.R. Millar notes that this estimate 'does not seem unreasonable'.'? Some specialist Soviet monographs on the war make virtually no reference to allied aid at all,1 and some that do are at pains to stress the minor significance of that aid.12 During the Cold War, rather less scrupulous Soviet scholarship attempted to discredit any value in allied aid to recipient parties, seeing it rather as a weapon of American imperialism.'3 There were