Stalin´s irresponsibility

[titoman]

By contrast, in 1941, the USSR was in a very poor state for war. The Purge trials had exterminated the bulk of the general staff, including its most talented officers. Nor was the damage done by Stalin's Purges limited to the military potential of the USSR. It dealt a terrible blow against the economy also. This is now recognised even by those who yesterday justified the Purges and everything else Stalin did. In a study published by Yale University about the same time, attention was drawn to the damaging effects of the Purges on the Soviet economy. This was reported without comment in the daily paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1980s:
"'Moreover, in the Purges of 1937-38 many of the most able administrators and scientists in the chemical industry were imprisoned or executed,' writes Robert Amann. 'For those who did not suffer directly the Purges had a numbing effect. The penalties for failure were so extreme that decisions involving risk, novelty and personal initiative were avoided at all costs.'
"'It would be hard to exaggerate the extent to which these lingering attitudes have exerted a detrimental effect on the long-term development of the chemical industry, and on other Soviet industries.' Nor were defence industries immune: 'For all that Stalin's policies had built up Soviet military and industrial power, the Purges and repression of the 1930s greatly weakened the Soviet Union's ability to defend itself,' writes David Holloway." (Morning Star, 5/8/82, my emphasis.)
The main factor that undermined the Red Army's capacity to fight at the start of the war was the destruction of its finest generals and cadres in the Purges. The October Revolution had thrown up a whole layer of talented young officers, some of whom, like Tukhachevsky, Yakir and Gamir were brilliantly original military thinkers. It is not generally known that the theory of the Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") was not a German invention. The Wehrmacht copied it from the Russians. Long before the war, when the British and French army chiefs were still convinced that the next war would be a war of position, like the first world war, Tukhachevsky's genius led him to conclude that the second world war would be fought with tanks and aeroplanes. When Tukhachevsky and his comrades were murdered in the Purges, their place was taken by Stalin's cronies like Voroshilov, Timoshenko and Budyonny, who thought that the coming war would be fought with cavalry! The second-rate and inept Voroshilov was put in charge of the Defence Commissariat, surrounded by others of the same ilk. These creatures of Stalin were promoted to key positions not for their personal abilities but for their servile loyalty to the ruling clique.
Former General Grigorenko, who served at the time as a lecturer in the central Soviet military academy, recalls the disastrous effects of the Purges on the quality of military training:
"No sooner had the academy taken its first halting steps than the trumped-up trial of Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Yakir, and others cast suspicion on all things planned by Tukhachevsky. Stalin saw the academy as an 'anti-Stalinist military centre,' and the pogroms commenced. Arrests began in winter 1936 and intensified in 1937. The highly qualified teaching staff assembled by Tukhachevsky was almost totally annihilated.
"Positions were taken by untalented or inexperienced people. In turn, some of the new teachers were arrested, which frightened the rest and left them with little enthusiasm for their new jobs. Texts that had been written by 'enemies of the people,' the first teachers, now could not be used. The new teachers wrote a hasty conspectus of each of their lectures, but fearful of being accused of proffering views hostile to Stalin, they filled their lectures with faddish dogmas." And he adds: "The theory of battle in depth worked out by Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Uborevich and Yakir was cast aside." (Grigorenko, op. cit., pp. 91-2.)
All this was admitted by Khrushchev in 1956:
"Very grievous consequences, especially in reference to the beginning of the war, followed Stalin's annihilation of many military commanders and political workers during 1937-1941 because of his suspiciousness and through slanderous accusations. During these years repressions were instituted against certain parts of military cadres, beginning literally at the company and battalion commander level and extending to the higher military centres; during this time the cadre of leaders who had gained military experience in Spain and in the Far East was almost completely liquidated.
"The policy of large-scale repression against the military cadres led also to undermined military discipline, because for several years officers of all ranks and even soldiers in the party and Komsomol cells were taught to 'unmask' their superiors as hidden enemies. (Movement in the hall.) It is natural that this caused a negative influence on the state of military discipline in the first war period.
"And, as you know, we had before the war excellent military cadres which were unquestionably loyal to the party and to the Fatherland. Suffice it to say that those of them who managed to survive, despite severe tortures to which they were subjected in the prisons, have from the first war days shown themselves real patriots and heroically fought for the glory of the Fatherland; I have here in mind such comrades as Rokossovsky (who, as you know, had been jailed), Gorbatov, Maretskov (who is a delegate at the present Congress), Podlas (he was an excellent commander who perished at the front), and many, many others. However, many such commanders perished in camps and jails and the army saw them no more. All this brought about the situation which existed at the beginning of the war and which was the great threat to our Fatherland." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
There are still many misconceptions about the second world war, especially concerning the role of Stalin. According to Alec Nove (normally quite an astute commentator on Russia): "Germany's colossal power was greater than Russia's and she had at her disposal the industries of occupied Europe. Her armies were well equipped, and the equipment had been tested in the battlefield. Despite the very greatest efforts and sacrifices in the preceding decade, the Soviet Union found itself economically as well as militarily at a disadvantage." (A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, p. 273.)
As a matter of fact, at the time of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, the combined firepower of the Red Army was greater than that of the Wehrmacht. Yet the Soviet forces were rapidly encircled and decimated. This unprecedented catastrophe was not the result of objective weakness, but of bad leadership. Having destroyed the best cadres of the Red Army, Stalin placed such blind confidence in his "clever" manoeuvre with Hitler, that he ignored numerous reports that the Germans were preparing to attack. The Minsk fortified area, a mighty defensive line which had been built on the western border of the USSR in anticipation of a German attack was actually demolished on Stalin's orders, presumably as a gesture of good faith to Berlin. Grigorenko, who had worked before the war on the building of these fortifications, describes his feelings of indignation when they were demolished:
"[These] fortifications were to have reliably shielded the deployment of assault groups and repelled any attempts by the enemy to break up the deployment. When the army attacked, the fortified areas were to have supported the troops with firepower. Instead, our western fortified areas did not fulfil any of these tasks. They were blown up without having fired once at the enemy.
"I do not know how future historians will explain this crime against our people. Contemporary historians ignore it. I cannot offer an explanation myself. The Soviet government squeezed billions of roubles (by my calculations not less than 120 billion) out of the people to construct impregnable fortifications along the entire western boundary from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Then, right before the war in the spring of 1941, powerful explosions thundered along the entire 1,200-kilometre length of these fortifications. On Stalin's personal orders reinforced concrete caponiers and semicaponiers, fortifications with one, two, or three embrasures, command and observation posts--tens of thousands of permanent fortifications--were blown into the air. No better gift could have been given to Hitler's Barbarossa plan." (Grigorenko, op. cit., pp. 46-7, emphasis in original.)
Had it not been for the criminal actions of Stalin, the USSR would have not been caught unawares by the German onslaught, as Khrushchev explained:
"Did we have time and the capabilities for such preparations? Yes, we had the time and the capabilities. Our industry was already so developed that it was capable of supplying fully the Soviet army with everything that it needed. This is proven by the fact that, although during the war we lost almost half of our industry and important industrial and food-production areas as the result of enemy occupation of the Ukraine, Northern Caucasus and other western parts of the country, the Soviet nation was still able to organise the production of military equipment in the eastern parts of the country, install there equipment taken from the western industrial areas, and to supply our armed forces with everything which was necessary to destroy the enemy.
"Had our industry been mobilised properly and in time to supply the army with the necessary material, our wartime losses would have been decidedly smaller. Such mobilisation had not been, however, stated in time. And already in the first days of the war it became evident that our army was badly armed, that we did not have enough artillery, tanks and planes to throw the enemy back.
"Soviet science and technology produced excellent models of tanks and artillery pieces before the war. But mass production of all this was not organised, and, as a matter of fact, we started to modernise our military equipment only on the eve of the war. As a result, at the time of the enemy's invasion of the Soviet land we did not have sufficient quantities either of old machinery which was no longer used for armament production or of new machinery which we had planned to introduce into armament production.
"The situation with anti-aircraft artillery was especially bad; we did not organise the production of anti-tank ammunition. Many fortified regions had proven to be indefensible as soon as they were attacked, because the old arms had been withdrawn and new ones were not yet available there. This pertained, alas, not only to tanks, artillery and planes. At the outbreak of the war we did not have sufficient numbers of rifles to arm the mobilised manpower. I recall that in those days I telephoned to Comrade Malenkov from Kiev and told him, 'People have volunteered for the new army and demand arms. You must send us arms.'
"Malenkov answered me. 'We cannot send you arms. We are sending all our rifles to Leningrad and you have to arm yourselves.' (Movement in the hall.)
"Such was the armament situation." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
Despite the fact that the combined fire power of the Red Army was greater than that of the Germans, the Purges had effectively crippled it. This was the decisive element which persuaded Hitler to attack in 1941. At the Nuremberg trial, Marshal Keitel testified that many German generals had warned Hitler not to attack Russia, arguing that the Red Army was a formidable opponent. Rejecting these Hitler gave Keitel his main reason--"The first-class high-ranking officers were wiped out by Stalin in 1937, and the new generation cannot yet provide the brains they need." On the 9th January 1941, Hitler told a meeting of generals planning the attack on Russia: "They do not have good generals." (Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 214.)
"Our initial defeat," writes Grigorenko, "was caused by those in the very highest positions. Thousands of capable army commanders had been purged, our border airdromes were poorly developed, we had inadequate anti-aircraft defence, our tank units and anti-tank defence had been sharply reduced (at Stalin's whim) immediately before the war, our fortified areas had been blown up, and our troops had been trained on a peacetime basis. We were not prepared. We paid for this criminal unpreparedness both during and after the war. I pointed to Stalin as the chief culprit, but I also mentioned Voroshilov, Timoshenko, Golokov, and Zhukov. Our failures could not be blamed on the fascists but on ourselves." (Grigorenko, op. cit., p. 332.)

[titoman]

By the middle of June 1941 Hitler had moved enormous military resources to the Soviet border. Four million German troops were amassed on the border ready to invade. There were also 3,500 tanks, around 4,000 planes, and 50,000 guns and mortars. Attempts were made to keep this mobilisation secret, but given its size, numerous reports from border units, the Soviet intelligence service, even officials of the British and US governments, were passed on to the Soviet government. Stalin refused to act on these reports, instead wrote on them "For the archives", and "To be filed". This was all confirmed by General Zhukov in his Reminiscences and Reflections. When the Soviet military command asked for permission to put the Soviet troops on to alert, Stalin refused. He refused to believe Hitler would invade. "German planes increasingly broke into Soviet airspace," reports Air Marshal A. Novikov, "but we weren't allowed to stop them." (Quoted in Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 332.)
In his speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev pointed out that on the 3th April 1941, Churchill, through his ambassador to the USSR, the British minister Stafford Cripps personally warned Stalin that the Germans had begun regrouping their armed units with the intent of attacking the Soviet Union. Churchill affirmed in his writings that he sought to "warn Stalin and call his attention to the danger which threatened him". Churchill stressed this repeatedly in his dispatches of the 18th April and on the following days. "However," said Khrushchev, "Stalin took no heed of these warnings. What is more, Stalin ordered that no credence be given to information of this sort, in order not to provoke the initiation of military operations.
"We must assert that information of this sort concerning the treat of German armed invasion of Soviet territory was coming in also from our own military and diplomatic sources; however, because the leadership was conditioned against such information, such data was dispatched with fear and assessed with reservation.
"Thus, for instance, information sent from Berlin on May 6, 1941, by the Soviet military attaché, Captain Vorontsov, stated: 'Soviet citizen Bozer ? communicated to the deputy naval attaché that, according to a statement of a certain German officer from Hitler's headquarters, Germany is preparing to invade the USSR on May 14 through Finland, the Baltic countries and Latvia. At the same time Moscow and Leningrad will be heavily raided and paratroopers landed in border cities?'
"In his report of May 22, 1941, the deputy military attaché in Berlin, Khlopov, communicated that: '?the attack of the German army is reportedly scheduled for June 15, but it is possible that it may begin in the first days of June?'
"A cable from London Embassy dated June 18, 1941, stated: 'As of now Cripps is deeply convinced of the inevitability of armed conflict between Germany and the USSR, which will begin not later than the middle of June. According to Cripps, the Germans have presently concentrated 147 divisions (including air force and service units) along the Soviet borders?'
"Despite these particularly grave warnings, the necessary steps were not taken to prepare the country properly for defence and to prevent it from being caught unawares." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
And again:
"In this connection we cannot forget, for instance, the following fact: Shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Hitlerite army, Kirponos, who was chief of the Kiev Special Military District (he was later killed at the front), wrote to Stalin that the German armies were at the Bug River, were preparing for an attack and in the very near future would probably start their offensive. In this connection, Kirponos proposed that a strong defence be organised, that 300,000 people be evacuated from the border areas and that several strong points be organised there: anti-tank ditches, trenches for the soldiers, etc.
"Moscow answered this proposition with the assertion that this would be a provocation, that no preparatory defensive work should be undertaken at the borders, that the Germans were not to be given any pretext for the initiation of military action against us. Thus, our borders are insufficiently prepared to repel the enemy. When the fascist armies had actually invaded Soviet territory and military operations began, Moscow issued the order that the German fire was not to be returned. Why? It was because Stalin, despite evident facts, thought that the war had not yet started, that this was only a provocative action on the part of several undisciplined sections of the German army, and that reaction might serve as a reason for the Germans to begin the war.
"The following fact is also known: On the eve of the invasion of the territory of the Soviet Union by the Hitlerite army, a certain German citizen crossed out border and stated that the German armies had received orders to start the offensive against the Soviet Union on the night of June 22 at 3 o'clock. Stalin was informed about this immediately, but even this warning was ignored.
"As you see, everything was ignored: warnings of certain army commanders, declarations of deserters from the enemy army, and even the open hostility of the enemy. Is this an example of the alertness of the chief of the party and of the state at this particularly significant historical moment? And what were the results of this carefree attitude, this disregard of clear facts? The result was that already in the first hours and days the enemy had destroyed in our border regions a large part of our Air Force, artillery and other military equipment; he annihilated large numbers of our military cadres and disorganised our military leadership; consequently we could not prevent the enemy from marching deep into the country." (Ibid.)
Incredibly there were no defence plans prepared in the event of a German attack. Many Soviet tanks were without their crews. Even when Hitler actually launched his offensive, Stalin ordered the Red Army not to resist. Thus, the mighty Soviet armed forces were paralysed for the first critical 48 hours. The Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground. Due to this confusion and paralysis at the top, huge swathes of territory were lost in the first few weeks. Millions of Soviet soldiers were captured with little resistance. With proper leadership, there is no doubt that the German invaders could have been pushed back into Poland at the beginning of the war. A decisive defeat could have been inflicted on Hitler as early as 1941. The war could have been brought to an end far earlier, avoiding the horrific losses suffered by Belarus, western Russia and the Ukraine. The nightmare suffered by the peoples of the USSR were the direct result of the irresponsible policy pursued by Stalin and his clique.
Stalin feared war with Germany because he was afraid that this could lead to his overthrow. He was particularly afraid of the military. After the disastrous Finnish campaign of 1939-40, he ordered the release of thousands of officers who had been imprisoned in the Purges, but Medvedev points out that as late as "1942, Stalin ordered a large group of leading Red Army officers to be shot in the camps; he considered them a threat to himself in the event of unfavourable developments on the Soviet-German Front". (R. Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 312.)
After the war, strenuous attempts were made by the Kremlin to spread the myth of Stalin as a "great war Leader". This does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. We have already seen how Stalin's policies left the Soviet Union at the mercy of Hitler. When Hitler invaded, the Soviet leaders were in disarray. Stalin initially panicked and went into hiding. His actions amounted to total capitulation. Despite this he gave himself the title of "Generalissimo" and embellished his role in the Great Patriotic War. The true position was expressed by Khrushchev in the following terms:
"It would be incorrect to forget that, after the first severe disaster and defeat at the front, Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: 'All that which Lenin created we have lost for ever'. After this Stalin for a long time actually did not direct the military operations and ceased to do anything whatever. He returned to active leadership only when some members of the Political Bureau visited him and told him that it was necessary to take certain steps immediately in order to improve the situation at the front.
"Therefore, the threatening danger which hung over our Fatherland in the first period of the war was largely due to the faulty methods of directing the nation and the party by Stalin himself. However, we speak not only about the moment when the war began, which led to serious disorganisation of our army and brought us severe losses. Even after the war began, the nervousness and hysteria which Stalin demonstrated, interfering with actual military operations, caused our army serious damage.
"Stalin was very far from an understanding of the real situation which was developing at the front. This was natural because, during the whole Patriotic War, he never visited any section of the front or any liberated city except for one short ride on the Mozhaisk highway during a stabilised situation at the front. To this incident were dedicated many literary works full of fantasies of all sorts and so many paintings. Simultaneously, Stalin was interfering with operations and issuing orders which did not take into consideration the real situation at a given section of the front and which could not help but result in huge personnel losses.
"I will allow myself in this connection to bring out one characteristic fact which illustrates how Stalin directed operations at the fronts. There is present at this Congress Marshal Bagramian, who was once the chief of operations in the headquarters of the south-western front and who can corroborate what I will tell you.
"When there developed an exceptionally serious situation for our army in 1942 in the Kharkov region, we had correctly decided to drop an operation whose objective was to encircle Kharkov, because the real situation at that time would have threatened our army with fatal consequences if this operation was continued. We communicated this to Stalin, stating that the situation demanded changes in operational plans so that the enemy would be prevented from liquidating a sizeable concentration of our army. Contrary to common sense, Stalin rejected our suggestion and issued the order to continue the operation aimed at the encirclement of Kharkov, despite the fact that at this time many army concentrations were themselves actually threatened with encirclement and liquidation.
"I telephoned to Vasilevsky and begged him: 'Alexander Mikhailovich, take a map'--Vasilevsky is present here--'and show Comrade Stalin the situation which has developed.' We should note that Stalin planned operations on a globe. (Animation in the hall.) Yes, comrades, he used to take the globe and trace the front line on it." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were captured in the first days of the war. The losses later suffered by the Red Army were made far worse by Stalin's insistance on frontal attacks, irrespective of cost in lives. When the Red Army counterattacked at the end of 1941 instead of trying to outflank the enemy with tactical manoeuvres, Stalin demanded the capture of one village after another. "Because of this," Khrushchev explained, "we paid with great losses--until our generals, on whose shoulders rested the whole weight of conducting the war, succeeded in changing the situation and shifting to flexible-manoeuvre operations, which immediately brought serious changes at the front favourable to us." (Ibid.)
By the end of November 1941 the Soviet retreat had lost ground that contained 63 per cent of all coal production, 68 per cent of pig iron, 58 per cent of steel, 60 per cent of aluminium, 41 per cent of railway lines, 84 per cent of sugar, 38 per cent of grain, and 60 per cent of pigs. Some major centres, notably Leningrad, were effectively isolated. Huge supplies of basic materials and equipment were suddenly cut off, and much more was put at risk by the swift German advance. Faced with the prospect of imminent defeat and overthrow, Stalin reluctantly replaced his talentless and incompetent stooges with other more able commanders, some of them having been released from jail for the purpose:
"After fearing for his life and being threatened by a total loss of power, he understood that he needed specialists to conduct the war successfully, and in his search for them he even turned to those he had arrested. Men were freed from prison and sent to high command posts--Rokossovsky and Gorbatov, among others; but this did not, of course, solve the entire problem. It was impossible to fill with individual bricks the enormous gaping hole that Stalin's insane terrorist activity had made in the leadership of the armed forces." (Grigorenko, op. cit., p. 211.)

[titoman]

Under war conditions, a new general staff was rapidly developed. The new generation of Soviet officers was trained under fire. These were drawn from the junior officers who had been brought up in the traditions of the October Revolution and the civil war. The Voroshilovs and Budyonnys were quietly shunted into the sidelines. Men who had been arrested during the Purges, were released from prison to take over the leadership of the Red Army. These talented officers were the product of the revolutionary school of the military genius Tukhachevsky. They led the Red Army in the most spectacular advance in the entire history of warfare. Thus, not only in the economic sphere, but in the field of military talent, the Revolution showed what it was capable of. It is sufficient to compare the performance of the Red Army with that of the Tsarist forces in 1914-17 to see the difference. The brilliant victory of Russia in the war was, in itself, the most outstanding confirmation of the superiority of a nationalised planned economy over capitalist anarchy.
After initially dragging its feet, the Soviet government evacuated human and material resources on a gigantic scale. From July to November 1941, no fewer than 1,523 industrial enterprises, of which 1,360 were described as large-scale, were uprooted and physically removed from threatened areas. This was an incredible feat, unequalled in the history of war. With the German advance, tens of millions of people were moved eastwards. The Soviet economy however suffered heavy blows. By November 1941 over three hundred armament factories were captured by the Germans. In the same year, 1941, industrial production totalled only 51.7 per cent of the output of November 1940. Between 1940 and 1942 there was a massive fall in production. The production of pig iron fell from (in million tons) 14.9 to 4.8; steel from 18.3 to 8.1; rolling mill products from 13.1 to 5.4; coal from 165.9 to 75.5; oil from 31.1 to 22.0; and electricity (milliard kwhs) from 48.3 to 29.1. In 1942 the Germans had occupied the north Caucasus and the Don basin which cost the USSR the best of its remaining grain areas and the Maikop oilfield, and for a period the crucial oil from Baku was stopped. Harvests were devastated. Only by March 1942--despite continuing defeats and retreats--did production show a steady upward trend.
Engels once pointed out that in a siege economy, the laws of capitalism no longer apply. Faced with a life-or-death dilemma, the bourgeoisie will resort to measures of planning, centralisation and nationalisation. This fact in itself is a crushing answer to all those who trumpet the supposed superiority of the market. Incidentally, during the second world war, living standards actually rose in Britain and the United States, despite the fact that a huge amount of production went on the war effort. Thus, even in the West, the advantages of central planning (partial, of course, since real planning is not possible in a capitalist economy) were not seriously disputed during the war. But in the case of the Soviet Union, the overwhelming superiority of a nationalised planned economy was crushingly demonstrated, especially when subjected to the most serious test of all, the bloody equation of war.
A spectacular turnaround was effected which was the key to victory. The war industry was reorganised and put on a more effective footing. Specialists were released from Stalin's labour camps to work in the war industries. In 1940, 15 per cent of the national income was devoted to military purposes. In 1942 this had increased to 55 per cent. According to Nove, "perhaps the highest ever reached anywhere". The nationalised economy made all the difference. As Nove further explained: "No doubt the experience of centralised planning in the previous ten years was a great help. In the process of tightening control over resources the government resorted to quarterly and even monthly plans, in far greater detail than in peacetime.
"The practice of material balances was used successfully to allocate the materials and fuel available between alternative uses in accordance with the decisions of the all-powerful State Committee on Defence. An emergency war plan was adopted in August 1941, covering the rest of that year and 1942. There were annual economic-military plans thereafter, as well as some longer-term plans, including one for the Urals region covering the years 1943-47." (A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, pp. 278-9.) These few facts are sufficient to demonstrate the enormous superiority of the Soviet economy.
Not only was Soviet industry capable of producing a vast quantity of military equipment, but the tanks, planes and guns were of a very high quality, and more than a match for the German equivalents. This, plus the determination of the Soviet working class to defend the gains of the Revolution, was what determined the outcome of the conflict, and, ultimately the second world war in Europe, which was really a titanic duel between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Although Hitler had a big advantage at the start of the war and had all the resources of occupied Europe behind him, he was defeated. Before the astonished eyes of the world, the Red Army recovered from what for any other country would have been a mortal blow, regrouped, and counterattacked, pushing the German army all the way back to Berlin.
Although the military tide began to turn at the very end of 1942, the recaptured territory sometimes added little to Soviet economic strength. The Nazis had conducted a scorched earth policy. Thus, in 1943 the gross output of industry in the (Soviet) Ukraine was just 1.2 per cent of the total of 1940. Despite this the Soviet masses were fighting a war of liberation against the Nazi invaders. If the Nazi armies were victorious, it would have been a horrific outcome for the Russian people. These facts provided the Red Army with the fighting morale to defeat Hitler. The German army was finally halted at Stalingrad. The Battle of Kursk was a turning-point on the Eastern Front. This was undoubtedly the most decisive battle of the war. In a titanic struggle, with no fewer than 10,000 tanks deployed on either side, the Red Army was victorious.
Incidentally, throughout all this a large British army was stationed in Persia, just across the border of the USSR. Stalin asked Churchill to send the British troops who were doing nothing to help the Red Army on the Eastern Front. His British "ally" amiably counter-proposed to the Generalissimo that the Russian troops which were facing them on the other side of the border might be withdrawn to the front, while the British army would then kindly look after the border for them. In point of fact, Churchill was waiting for the Red Army to be defeated, so that he could order the British army to seize oil-rich Baku, pursuing the same policy as when the British army invaded the Caucasus during the civil war. Even Stalin could understand this!
The end result was that both sides remained in their positions, while the most decisive battles of the war were being fought out on Soviet soil. Unfortunately for Churchill, the battle ended in the victory of the Red Army, which rapidly advanced into the heart of Europe. The Germans were gradually pushed back, although, as a result of Stalin's insane policies, the Russian losses were frightful. The explanation for this is more political than military. Had the Soviet Union adopted an internationalist policy, appealing to the German workers to overthrow Hitler, this would have had enormous repercussions, especially after the first German defeats. The perspective of a socialist Germany united in a fraternal federation with Soviet Russia would undoubtedly have found an echo in the hearts and minds of the German workers and soldiers.
In this way, it would have been possible to avoid the terrible losses suffered by the Red Army in its advance towards Berlin. Victory could have been achieved sooner, and at a far smaller cost. But the policy pursued by Stalin bore a completely chauvinist character. Reflecting this policy Ilya Ehrenburg announced that "if the German workers meet us with red flags, they will be the first to be shot". Such a policy guaranteed that the German army would fight desperately every inch of the way. This explains the ghastly loss of life suffered by both sides.
As a result of a monumental miscalculation by the imperialist powers, the Russians and not the Allies arrived first in Berlin. Trotsky explained that the main danger to the nationalised planned economy was not so much a military defeat as the cheap consumer goods that would arrive in the baggage train of an imperialist army. As it happened, Hitler's armies brought, not cheap commodities, but gas chambers. As a result, not just the working class, but the peasants fought like tigers to defend the Soviet Union.
The victory of the USSR in the war was one of the main factors that allowed the Stalinist regime to survive for decades after 1945. To the workers of Russia and the world, it appeared that the bureaucracy was playing a progressive role, not just in defending the planned economy against Hitler, but in extending the nationalised property forms to Eastern Europe, and, later China. In reality, these revolutions began where the Russian Revolution finished--as monstrously deformed regimes of proletarian Bonapartism. The installation of such regimes, far from weakening the Moscow bureaucracy, enormously strengthened it for a whole historical period.

[vorosilov]

Titoman,

Who were the most talented officers?

[vorosilov]

Titoman,

Where did you get that article above?