Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  At his press conferences, Mr Patrasceanu graphically described the coup d'état of August 23, and the way in which Antonescu was trapped by "our King"; he also stressed the heroic deeds of the Rumanian troops during the days when Bucharest was being bombed

  and shelled by the Germans, and concluded that the Rumanians were a peace-loving and democratically-minded people who at heart had always hated the Germans.

  Of the difficulties that were likely to arise inside the new coalition he said nothing. In the background, at one of his press conferences, sat a Mr Popp, the Minister of Agriculture, but he had little to say about land reform, and preferred to let Patrasceanu do the talking.

  [Privately, Mr Popp remarked to me that the Germans would have found it difficult to drag the Rumanians into the war against Russia, if the Russians hadn't recklessly grabbed Bessarabia and Bukovina from them in 1940.]

  That month Armistice Delegations were simply queueing up in Moscow. No sooner had

  the Rumanians gone than the Finns were ready to be received. The Rumanian Armistice

  was signed on the 12th, and the Finnish on the 19th; and then came the Bulgarians.

  In June, after their capture of Viipuri (Viborg), the Russians had stopped at the 1940

  Finnish frontier, and did not go beyond it. They were giving the Finns time to reflect. But the Finns refused to be rushed.

  It was not till the beginning of the Russian invasion of Estonia, that they became

  thoroughly alarmed. For what if the Russians were to land troops from Estonia in the most vital parts of Finland, just across the Gulf of Finland? In the first week of August President Ryti, the person most responsible for the recent last-ditch agreement with Germany—an agreement under which the Finns would not conduct separate peace

  negotiations without Germany's approval— very suddenly resigned, and the Finnish

  Parliament, ignoring the usual procedure in these matters, passed a law handing over the President's powers to Field-Marshal Mannerheim. Keitel, who rushed to Helsinki on

  August 17, was informed by Mannerheim that the Ryti-Ribbentrop agreement was "off".

  On August 25 the Finnish Minister in Stockholm handed a Note to the Soviet

  Ambassador, Mme Kollontai, asking that an Armistice Delegation be received in

  Moscow. The Soviet Government agreed, provided Finland publicly announced its

  breach with Germany and demanded that all German troops be withdrawn from Finland

  by September 15. If the Germans refused, the Finns would disarm them and hand them

  over to the Allies as war prisoners. The Soviet Note added that it was sent in agreement with Britain, and with no objections from the United States.

  Despite some hedging by the Finns on the question of "disarming" the Germans, a cease-fire was agreed to, to take place on September 4 along the Finnish frontier of 1940.

  The Finnish Armistice Delegation, headed by K. Enckel, arrived in Moscow on

  September 14 and the Armistice was signed on the 19th. The chief Soviet negotiator was Zhdanov, who soon afterwards became head of the Allied Control Commission in

  Helsinki. The 300 million dollars-worth of reparations in kind—the hardest of the

  armistice terms—were spread out over six years., later to be extended to eight years; the 1940 frontier was restored; the Russians renounced their claim on Hangö but, instead, leased the territory of Porkkala Udd, only a few miles from Helsinki, as a military base

  [The Russians renounced this some years after the war], and the Petsamo area, with its nickel mines and its outlet to the Arctic, "voluntarily" surrendered to Finland in 1920, was now returned to the Soviet Union. The loss of Karelia and Petsamo implied the

  repatriation to Finland of some 400,000 people who did not want to stay under Soviet rale and the loss of substantial timber and hydroelectric resources. The agreement not to occupy Finland with Russian troops was a gesture of goodwill to the Finns themselves and a gesture of reassurance to the Scandinavian countries generally.

  When Zhdanov, who had stood at the head of the defence of Leningrad, went to Helsinki, he conferred politely for two hours with "fascist Beast" Mannerheim, the object of so many vicious Russian cartoons; and in October Stalin sent a friendly message to the

  Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society in Helsinki, whose president was none other than that conservative but ultra-realist new Premier, Paasikivi himself.

  In the end, the Finns did not do much to "disarm" the Germans, and there does not appear to have been any actual fighting between Finns and Germans. What in fact happened was that the Germans withdrew from most of northern Finland of their own free will, after burning down all the towns and villages (to be later rebuilt with UNRRA help). What

  fighting there was was done by Russian troops under Marshal Meretskov who broke

  through the strong German lines west of Murmansk, and then captured Petsamo and

  Kirkenes [The German air base whose main purpose had been to smash the

  convoys from England to Murmansk and Archangel], the latter inside Norway.

  Everything in northern Norway was burned down by the Germans who then withdrew by

  sea. The rest of Norway remained under their occupation till May 1945. But the fact that even a small part of Norway was liberated by the Red Army continued to be of some

  sentimental value in Soviet-Norwegian relations for some years after the war.

  The story of Bulgaria can be told very briefly. Although Britain and the United States were at war with Bulgaria, the Soviet Union was not, and there was a Bulgarian Minister in Moscow (or Kuibyshev) throughout the war. The Germans had used Bulgaria as a

  source of raw materials and as a military and naval base, but the Russians, making

  allowances for the widespread pro-Russian sentiment in Bulgaria and the weakness of its government, had shown considerable tolerance to that country for a long time, even

  despite serious provocations—for instance when the Germans freely used Bulgarian ports during their evacuation of the Crimea. But by August 1944, the situation had changed.

  When the Red Army overran Rumania, several armed German ships escaped from there

  to Bulgarian ports, and were not interned. These ports were also alleged to harbour

  German submarines.

  On August 26, Draganov, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, made a "neutrality" declaration and promised that any German soldiers in Bulgaria would be disarmed if they refused to withdraw from the country.

  The Russians did not think this good enough and declared war on Bulgaria on September 5. Three days later Tolbukhin's troops invaded Bulgaria. They met with no resistance, and were received with enthusiasm. On the following day as a result of an anti-German insurrection in Sofia, Kimon Georgiev's "Fatherland Front" Government was formed and declared war on Germany. The bloodless Two Days' War was over. Messages of

  brotherly affection were sent by the Bulgarian Government to Tito, and a Bulgarian

  Army was getting ready to fight the Germans. The "revolutionary enthusiasm" in Bulgaria was much deeper and more general than in Rumania.

  Before many weeks had passed, the Russian press noted with satisfaction that all over Bulgaria People's Courts had been set up to try war criminals, and that the Bulgarian Army was being purged of all its "Fascist elements".

  The Armistice between the Allies and Bulgaria was signed in Moscow on October 28.

  [One of the Bulgarian signatories was N. Petkov, the Agrarian leader, who was to be tried and shot soon after the war as a Western "agent".]

  Bulgaria, like Rumania, had entered the Soviet "sphere of influence".

  The link-up between the Red Army and Tito's Yugoslavs took place at the end of

  September. On the 29th a TASS communiqué announced that, in order to be able to

  attack the Germans and Hungarians in Hungary from the south, the Russians had asked

  permission from the Yugoslav Committee of Nation
al Liberation to enter Yugoslav

  territory. On October 4 it was announced that the Russian and Yugoslav armies had

  joined forces in an unspecified town in the Danube valley.

  On October 20, Tolbukhin's troops and Tito's Yugoslavs entered Belgrade together

  amidst great popular rejoicing.

  On the same day Malinovsky's troops took Debrecen in eastern Hungary, but the Russian advance in Hungary, though rapid at first, was then slowed down by veiry stiff German and Hungarian resistance, especially as the Russians approached Budapest in November.

  The Germans had, by then, foiled Horthy's attempt to "do a King Michael on them", and Hitler and Salasi, the Hungarian Fascist leader, decided at their meeting early in

  December, to hold Budapest "at any price". Although, officially, the Germans expressed their confidence in being able to hold Budapest, it was known that many of its industries were now being evacuated to Austria.

  It took some time to set up at least the nucleus of a "democratic régime" in Russian-occupied Hungary. It was not till December 20 that it was announced that a Hungarian Provisional National Assembly had been formed at Debrecen, "the citadel of Hungarian Freedom—that Debrecen where Kossuth raised the flag of independence in 1849".

  On the following day the Soviet press announced:

  At the beginning of December, under the chairmanship of Dr Vasary, the mayor of

  Debrecen, a group was formed of representatives of the different Hungarian parties.

  In the liberated territory the election of delegates to the Provisional National

  Assembly took place between December 13 and 20. 230 delegates were elected,

  representing the democratic parties, the town and village councils and the trade and peasant unions... The Assembly opened with the playing of the Hungarian National

  Anthem. The meeting was held in the Reformation College where, in 1849, Kossuth

  proclaimed the independence of Hungary...

  An Address to the Hungarian People was adopted which said:

  It is time to make peace. Salasi is an usurper... We call upon the Hungarian people to rally to the banners of Kossuth and Rakoszi and to follow in the footsteps of the Honweds [volunteer militia] of 1848. We want a democratic Hungary. We guarantee

  the inviolability of private property as the basis of our social and economic order.

  We want Land Reform... Turn your arms against the German oppressors and help

  the Red Army... for the good of a Free and Democratic Hungary!

  Two days later a Provisional Hungarian Government was formed; no Communist leaders

  were included in it—it would have been premature when a large part of Hungary,

  including Budapest, was still in German hands. The premier was General Miklos; the

  other ministers included a peasant leader, Ferenc Erdei, Janos Göngös, Count Gesa

  Teleki, and General Janos Veres, the Minister of Defence, a Horthy man, who had been Hungarian chief of staff since April 1944, was then arrested by the Germans, but

  managed to escape.

  This assortment of back-the-winner Hungarian gentlemen were not to stay long at the

  head of affairs. "Kossuth" was a convenient symbol, but did not mean much. Nor did Rakoszy. It was the other Rakosi who was waiting for the signal to enter the stage.

  It was also in the eventful autumn of 1944 that in "independent" Slovakia a great rising took place against the Germans by Slovak partisans, supported by Red Army units and by part of the Slovak Army. In the end, the rising was crushed by strong German forces that were rushed to Slovakia, though some partisans escaped to the mountains. Although, at the time, there was a virtual news blackout about the whole tragic business, there was later to be much recrimination, on the part of the Russians, both against the "dubious"

  and "half-hearted" rôle played in the rising by the Slovak Army and by the Czechoslovak Government in London which had not given the insurrection sufficient encouragement.

  [ The Slovak Communist Party, allegedly riddled with "bourgeois nationalists", was also to be blamed for its half-heartedness and for its failure to carry out the instructions of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak C.P. (IVOVSS, vol. IV, p. 318).]

  Both the Slovak Insurgents and the Soviet troops, fighting in incredibly difficult

  conditions in the Carpathians, suffered very heavy casualties.

  Significantly (and the London Government was largely to be blamed for this) only about a thousand men from Bohemia and Moravia came to join in the Slovak rising, the average unromantic Czechs preferring not to stick their necks out.

  The facts available on the Slovak rising are numerous, but highly confusing, and the Russian presentation of the rôle played by the non-communist elements in Slovakia has been far from generous.

  There was also much recrimination in the opposite direction, and in Slovakia, to this day, there continues to be some ill-feeling against the Red Army amongst many non-communists, whose stories about having been "let down" are not unlike those still current amongst pro-Western elements in Poland.

  Chapter XI CHURCHILL'S SECOND MOSCOW VISIT

  In October 1944 the Red Army was overrunning Estonia and Latvia in the north; farther south, General Cherniakhovsky's troops first set foot on German soil at the eastern tip of East Prussia; but what interested—and worried—Churchill above all were first, the Polish Problem and second, the Russian penetration of the Balkans and Central Europe—by

  which he meant, in the first place, Hungary.

  He was ready to write off Rumania and Bulgaria as part of the Russian sphere, but was not prepared to do so in the case of Yugoslavia, Hungary and, above all, Greece. The Kings of Greece and Yugoslavia were looking to Britain for protection against

  communism and although the Russians were losing thousands of men every day in the

  heavy fighting in Hungary, he felt that Hungary, like Yugoslavia, should at least be the object of an East-West compromise.

  As we know from Churchill's own account the whole question of the Balkans, including Hungary, was "settled" in a few minutes between him and Stalin.

  [Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, p. 198.]

  During their very first meeting on October 9, he scribbled on a half-sheet of paper his proposal for Russian or British "predominance"—Rumania: Russia 90%, the others, 10%; Greece: Britain (in accord with USA) 90%, Russia, 10%; Bulgaria: Russia, 75%, the

  others, 25%; Yugoslavia and Hungary: 50-50%.

  I pushed this across to Stalin... Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us... At length I said:

  "Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues ... in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper." "No, you keep it,"

  said Stalin.

  As Churchill himself says, even in retrospect, relations between him and Stalin were never better than they were during that October visit to Moscow. Shortly before that, he had gone out of his way to flatter the Russians by saying that they had "torn the guts" out of Hitler's war machine. The British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr was eager to make the Churchill-Eden visit to Moscow an overwhelming success and something of a

  personal triumph for himself.

  [He was very conscious of his historic rôle as wartime Ambassador to Russia. Asked,

  before leaving Moscow for Washington in 1945, what had impressed him most in Russia, he said unhesitatingly, " Stalin." Stalin had gone out of his way to be pleasant to him.]

  Since the British statesmen were the guests of the Soviet Government, Clark-Kerr (at Churchill's suggestion, it is true) organised a banquet and, for the first time in his life, Stalin dined at the British Embassy. The Ambassador also exercised all his diplomatic skill and charm on the two sets of Poles. He tried to be particularly nice to Bierut and Osöbka-Morawski who had been offended by the treatment given them by Churchill and

  Eden, who looked upon them
as a pair of Russian "quislings" who had gone so far as to declare that the "Polish people" did not want Lwow. Clark-Kerr also hoped that he had persuaded Mikolajczyk during this Churchill-Eden visit to return to Moscow after a

  flying visit to London, and to go to Poland immediately to form the new government

  there. When Mikolajczyk failed to return, Clark-Kerr felt he had been badly let down.

  Outwardly, an unprecedented atmosphere of cordiality surrounded the Anglo-Soviet

  talks; for several minutes a thunderous ovation at the Bolshoi Theatre greeted Churchill and Stalin as they both appeared in the State Box.

  On October 18, at the end of his Moscow visit, Churchill received the press in the large Ambassador's study; outside the large windows were the bare trees and an autumn

  twilight, and in the study hung the large oil paintings of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII in his regalia, Queen Alexandra, King George V and Queen Mary. Wearing a lounge

  suit with a blue bow tie, Churchill looked in good form. He began by jokingly referring to his days as a war correspondent in South Africa and to "the bitter irritation of having my dispatches censored: and I sympathise when a good story is spoilt by the blue pencil—or it may be the red pencil here."

  When I last came to Moscow (he said), Stalingrad was still under siege, and the

  enemy was sixty or seventy miles from this city, and he was even nearer Cairo. That was in August 1942... Since then the tide has turned, and we have had victories and wonderful advances over vast expanses... Coming back here, I find a great sense of hope and confidence that the end of the trials will be reached... Some very hard

  fighting will yet have to be done. The enemy is resisting with discipline and

  desperation, and it is best to take a sober view of the speed with which the

  conclusion will be reached on the Western Front. But there is good news everyday, and it is difficult not to be over-sanguine.

  After referring to the "circle of fire and steel" closing in on Germany and the hunger, cold and shortages with which Germany was now faced, Churchill said: