The Great Patriotic War and Soviet Society: Defeatism, 1941–42

Abstract

In October 1941, David Kaufman, a Moscow student and aspiring poet, wrote in his diary: Civil War was our fathers. The Five Year Plan, our older brothers. The Patriotic War of '41, this is us.... The people of our generation, from diverse walks of life, now have but one path: everyone to front. Here are heroes, cowards, and ordinary people. Nobody is excluded from If I must write, I will write about how this sense of duty came to govern us. There is only one feeling that should be instilled in people from cradle: duty. (1) Kaufman, later published under pseudonym David Samoilov, would become one of most beloved poets of Soviet intelligentsia. His generation was raised under Soviet power and did not know or recognize any other. He belonged to a cohort of educated, urban young people, many of whom rushed to recruitment offices on 22 June 1941, fearful of missing out on On that very day, when so many young enthusiasts were rushing to sign up as volunteers, Olimpiada Poliakova, a resident of town of Pushkin, outside Leningrad, wrote in her diary: Could our liberation be at hand? Whatever Germans may be, they can't be worse than our own. And what are Germans to us? We'll live somehow without them. Everyone has sense that, at last, thing we have awaited for so long but did not dare to hope for-although we did hope for it very much in depths of our consciousness-has finally arrived. Without this hope it would not have been possible to live. And there is no doubt about coming German victory. Lord forgive me! I am not an enemy of my people or my homeland. I'm not a degenerate. But you have to look truth straight in eyes: of us, of Russia, fervently desires victory of enemy, whoever he may be. This accursed regime stole everything from us, our feelings of patriotism. (2) Clearly, Poliakovas claims about all of Russia wishing for victory of enemy are grossly exaggerated, as are Kaufman's touching words about spirit of duty animating his entire generation. What is clear is that, more than 20 years after revolution, Soviet society was still not homogenous: a significant part of it would have been happy to witness disappearance of Bolsheviks. Historiography The war was to be most serious test of Stalinist systems durability, becoming, in words of Robert Thurston, the acid test of (3) The nature of public opinion about Soviet regime and outbreak of war continues to be one of most important, and consistently controversial, questions for history of Soviet society during war period. Meanwhile, year 1941 constitutes an important chronological boundary for scholars of Stalinism. According to Stephen Lovell, among historians the war is usually recognized as traumatic and important, but ultimately is granted status of a cataclysmic interlude between two phases of Stalinism: turbulent and bloody era of 1930s and deep freeze of late 1940s.... Nonmilitary historians do not quite know what to do with war. (4) Historians whose work relates to history of Soviet society during war years have starkly different assessments of popular attitudes toward state and In literature of early 1950s, one already finds idea that defeat of Red Army in 1941 and vast number of prisoners taken at that time reflected unwillingness of Soviet soldiers to fight for regime. (5) According to Martin Malia, Soviet soldiers in 1941 felt no ardor for defense of Stalinist system, and even clearer signs of collapse appeared among civilian population. (6) In accordance with authors who argue that Red Army soldiers in 1941 were forced to fight under threat of reprisals, Mark Edele and Michael Geyer have claimed that desertion and evasion of service were not restricted to catastrophic events of 1941-42 but were in fact characteristic, albeit to a lesser degree, of entire war period. …