Communist-inspired partisan movement in both Latvia and Lithuania; but while, in the larger cities like Tallinn and Riga, the working-class welcomed the Red Army with
apparent enthusiasm, the peasantry were lukewarm. The middle-class, and the many
government officials who had more or less collaborated with the Germans, had either
followed them in their retreat, or were now lying low. All three countries had their own Nazis and their own Gestapo men. When I went to Tallinn in October 1944, I saw furtive and anxious looks on a good many faces, especially among the better-dressed people. The NKVD were becoming very active, and thousands of Balts were to be deported in the
next few years.
[ In Solzhenitsyn's famous One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, several seemingly quite harmless Balts figure among the convicts.]
By the end of October all the three Republics were liberated, with the exception of the Courland peninsula (where thirty German divisions were to remain trapped till the end of the war). By that time over 300 square miles of German territory in East Prussia had also been conquered by the Russians. The great exodus of the German population from East
Prussia had begun, many fleeing to Königsberg, others further west.
The fighting for these small areas of German territory had been extremely heavy. The Russians were also meeting with very strong German resistance in Slovakia and
Hungary, where the Red Army's progress was very much slower than it had been in
Rumania. Budapest was not to fall till February 13, 1945.
In Poland the front had become more or less stabilised in September, but it was generally expected that the final blow at Nazi Germany would be struck from here.
Fighting, however, continued on the Sandomierz bridgehead, south of Warsaw which the Germans were attacking with great determination. Among the Red Army soldiers there
was now a feeling of impatience—and distrust. In November 1944 I was shown a letter
from a soldier who was fighting "somewhere in Poland"— apparently at Sandomierz: As before, I am on my way to Berlin. True, we may not get there in time, but Berlin is precisely the place that we must reach. We have suffered enough, and we deserve the right to enter Berlin. Our "military rank" entitles us to it, while the Allies are not entitled to it. They probably wouldn't understand, but Fritz understands it only too well. Hence the frantic resistance with which we are meeting. They keep shelling us morning, noon and night, and must have brought pretty well everything they had in the west. They obviously prefer to be licked by the Allies, and not by us. If that happened, it would really hurt us. I trust, however, you will soon hear some good news from us. Our fellows' fury and thirst for revenge after all we have seen are more intense than ever. Even in the days of our retreat it was nothing like it...
But the question of who would reach Berlin first—and this had already become a real
obsession with many Russian soldiers—was now thought to be no longer a military, but a diplomatic question, which would have to be settled in the Russians' favour.
[At any rate, all Russians were convinced that there was such a diplomatic agreement, and the soldiers had no doubt whatsoever that the Allies could have taken Berlin had they wanted to, but that the Allied governments decided against it for political reasons—
namely, so as not to antagonise the Russians unduly. As we know, Eisenhower, fearing that German resistance might continue for a very long time in the mountainous "Southern Redoubt", gave priority over Berlin to the occupation of southern Germany and western Austria, despite angry protests from Churchill who thought it politically of the utmost importance for the Western Powers to occupy Berlin before the Russians got there. It has, nevertheless, been suggested that there was a Stalin-Roosevelt agreement behind
Eisenhower's choice. But, as Stettinius says: "I know of no evidence to support the charge that President Roosevelt agreed at Yalta that American troops should not capture Berlin ahead of the Red Army." (Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference, London 1950, p. 264). The fact remains that had the Western Powers occupied Berlin before the Russians, it would have created violent anti-American feeling in Russia, especially in the Army. Roosevelt was no doubt aware of it. By the time Truman took over, the final
Russian offensive against Berlin was on the point of starting.]
It is probably true to say that the Red Army as a whole was prepared to lose many
thousands of men in the Battle of Berlin, rather than see the British and Americans get there first with a minimum loss of life. It was, obviously, also politically important, from the Russian standpoint, to record in every German mind the fact that Berlin had not been voluntarily surrendered to the Western Allies, but had been conquered by the Russians in bloody battle.
A very large number of new questions arose during the latter half of 1944, now that the war was moving to its close—questions concerning foreign policy, internal policy, as well as a variety of cultural and ideological problems. A paradoxical aspect of Russia at that time was that the gigantic human losses it had suffered and the immense devastation wrought by the retreating German armies, as well as great hardships and shortages in both town and country, were combined with a nation-wide feeling of pride and an
immense sense of achievement.
The Soviet Union was faced with the vast problem of economic reconstruction and the at least equally serious population problem. Today it is estimated that, by the end of the war, the Soviet Union had lost, in one way or another, about twenty million people,
among them at least seven million soldiers. Although no exact figures are available, it would seem that these seven million include some three million soldiers who died in
German captivity. Further, several million civilians died under the German occupation, including about two million Jews who were massacred, besides the victims of the
German anti-partisan punitive expeditions; about a million people died in Leningrad
alone, while the sharp lowering of living and food conditions throughout Russia, the shortage of medical supplies, etc., must account for a few million more deaths. Several hundred thousand also died in the various evacuations in 1941 and 1942, in the strafing of refugees and the bombings of cities. Thus in Stalingrad alone some 60,000 civilians were killed.
One of the characteristic developments of 1944 was the new Family Code embodied in
the Supreme Soviet Decree of July 8, 1944. The two main purposes of the reform were to discourage "loose living" after the war, and to increase the birth-rate. The decree established the Order of "Mother-Heroine" for mothers of ten or more live children, the Order (three classes) of "Motherly Glory" for mothers of nine, eight or seven live children, and the "Motherhood Medal" (two classes) for mothers of six or five live children. A progressive scale of monetary grants was laid down. Thus, at the birth of a third child the mother received 400 roubles, at the birth of the fourth, 1,300 roubles, and so on, till 5,000 roubles for the tenth, eleventh, etc., child. Especially after the monetary reform of 1947 it became positively good business to produce children ad infinitum. The system was, in substance, not unlike the French allocations familiales established after the Liberation.
The same decree made divorce very much more difficult, troublesome, and costly than it had been. The most controversial part of the decree concerned "lone" (i.e. unmarried) mothers. Alimony was abolished, though not retroactively. Monetary grants were allowed to unmarried mothers, and they could also, if they wished, hand their child, or children, over to a. State institution, with the option of claiming them back at any time. This measure was dictated partly by wartime conditions which, especially in the war zones and the newly-liberated areas, made it both difficult and embarrassing to enquire too closely into a child's parentage. Secondly, in view of the larger number of women than men in Russia towards the end of the war, this decree was, in fact, intended to encourage the production of "illegitimate" children by relieving unmarri
ed mothers of all, or most of the financial responsibility for them. The rather crude demographic principle underlying it was "illegitimate children, rather than none at all". In later years, this part of the 1944
decree was to be severely criticised, since, with the encouragement it gave the
professional seducer, it went counter to the "cult of the family" and that high standard of morals the rest of the decree was striving to bring about, notably by making the
registration of marriage compulsory before the father could incur any legal and financial responsibilities for the children. De facto marriages, without registration, were no longer legally valid, and the children remained officially "fatherless", even if the father was a model family man. The decree of August 8, 1944, besides providing various financial
benefits relating to pregnancy and confinement, also imposed a heavy tax on bachelors over twenty-five and a smaller tax on couples with fewer than three children. The law of 1936 prohibiting abortion remained in force, and was not to be changed until many years after the war.
As important as the population problem after the war was that of the economic restoration of the country. Hundreds of cities and towns and thousands of villages had been wholly or partially destroyed by the Germans, much livestock and agricultural machinery had been taken, and the great question that began to be discussed at top level as early as 1943
was how this economic restoration was to be financed. There were, in principle, three possible sources: the Soviet Union's own admittedly depleted resources; a large foreign loan—inevitably from the United States; and, finally, substantial German reparations in kind, and similar reparations, on a smaller scale, from Germany's allies. (The ideal would have been a combination of all three). The armistice terms accepted by Finland and
Rumania in 1944 were the first examples of such limited reparations agreements. Finland, for example, agreed to pay 300 million dollars over a period of six years, later extended to eight years. At Yalta, Stalin was to propose that Germany pay Russia ten billion
dollars in kind, a figure to which Churchill, in particular, strongly objected.
A further source of "reconstruction expenses", as the post-war years were to show, were the various trade agreements and other financial arrangements made between Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.
[The Yugoslavs were the first to rebel against such agreements which were highly
advantageous to Russia, but unfavourable to them.]
But this was still in the future, and the problem that preoccupied Stalin and the other Russian leaders, from 1943 on, was an American loan of seven billion dollars or more.
American visitors to Russia, representing important business interests, such as Donald M.
Nelson and Eric Johnston, favourable to a programme of large-scale American exports to Russia after the war, and seeing this as a precaution against a possible post-war slump in the USA, were taken very seriously by the Russians, especially at the height of the Big-Three harmony, roughly between the middle of 1943 and the Yalta Conference in
February 1945. At the same time, the Russians felt certain ideological and political inhibitions about such a loan, since they feared that excessive financial dependence on the United States might well go counter to their own security considerations. Put perhaps a little crudely, there was a conflict between reconstruction and security. Speedy and relatively easy reconstruction meant a certain dependence on the United States, but it also inevitably meant a greatly-reduced degree of Soviet control over eastern Europe and parts of central Europe, which represented, in the Russian military conception of 1944-5, an indispensable security precaution against a new German aggression or against any kind of aggression from the West. Loose talk in the United States about a "war with Russia in fifteen years' time" had already begun in 1944, and was to become more and more widespread once the first American atom bomb had been dropped.
In the end, the American loan of seven billion dollars came to nothing. But it seems certain that the Russian leadership was to some extent divided on the question and that, inside the Party itself, there were roughly three tendencies, often in conflict inside the minds of the same people. There were, to quote William Appleman Williams's definition, the "softies", the "conservatives" and the "doctrinaire revolutionaries".
[ The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1962), pp. 222-3.]
Since many Soviet leaders combined all three tendencies in varying degrees, it is
impossible to say how large each "school of thought" was. The pattern also varied greatly from year to year. There were certainly far more "softies" in 1944 than there were to be in 1947 or 1948.
Perhaps the most diehard "softy" was Litvinov, who remained one even as late as 1947. I had a conversation with him at the reception given by Molotov on Red-Army Day in
February 1947 which threw some light on what had happened. Taking me aside, he
suddenly started pouring his heart out. He said he was extremely unhappy about the way the Cold War was getting worse and worse every day. By the end of the war, he said,
Russia had had the choice of two policies: one was to "cash in on the goodwill she had accumulated during the war in Britain and the United States." But they (meaning Stalin and Molotov) had, unfortunately, chosen the other policy. Not believing that "goodwill"
could constitute the lasting basis for any kind of policy, they had decided that "security"
was what mattered most of all, and they had therefore grabbed all they could while the going was good—meaning the whole of eastern Europe and parts of central Europe. At
this point, Vyshinsky walked past, and gave us both an exceedingly dirty look. Litvinov was never to appear at any public reception again. Ivy Litvinov's reckless indiscretions at the same party—remarks made for anybody to hear —added to Molotov's great
displeasure.
In the end, for a variety of reasons, it was the "conservative" policy that prevailed, i.e. the policy lying half-way between the "softy" policy and the "world revolution" policy. The
"conservative" policy finally adopted by Stalin was a rejection of the "world revolution"
idea, at least in any foreseeable future (his advice that the Communist "patriotic militia"
be disbanded in France after the liberation is a case in point); at the same time, the security of the Soviet Union, as he saw it, required a strict Russian control of eastern Europe, a control that became increasingly strict as the cold war developed. The most important landmark in this process was the "stalinisation" of Czechoslovakia in February 1948.
The "softy" attitude was not perhaps widespread among the Party hierarchy in 1943-4, but it certainly was among the general public, and most of all, perhaps, among the
Russian intellectuals. Their great belief was that, after the war., Russia would be able to
"relax".
In Moscow, in particular, there were some extraordinary signs of relaxation by the middle of 1944, with a kind of foretaste of easier living conditions, of post-war prosperity and of a growing frivolity in public taste.
Although the "commercial restaurants" and "commercial shops" which opened in April 1944 had nothing to do with that ideological "softness" against which the Party journals were to protest before long, they undoubtedly contributed to the easy-going mood among the more privileged sections of the Moscow population, and even among wider sections.
Foreigners in Moscow, and especially the English, with their ideas on war-time austerity, were scandalised by anything so "undemocratic" as these shops and restaurants where people with a lot of money could buy any luxuries they liked. In such restaurants, a good meal, including drinks, cost about 300 roubles or, at the "diplomatic" rate, about £6 per head. These shops and restaurants represented a sort of legal black market.
After a ruinous party for four at the Moskva Restaurant on May-Day, 1944 (there was a jazz band playing, and the meal, with two bottles of wine, cost nearly £30) I asked Boris Voitek
hov, the writer, a diehard party-man, about the "party line" on these commercial restaurants.
"This country," he said, "is in a tragic plight after three years of war. Look at our women, for instance. When I see how they work— how they run our agriculture, and look after their children, though tired and dirty and hungry, how they drive steamships and fly aeroplanes—it brings a lump to my throat. It affects me more even than the Red Army, with its fearful casualties. There are people in our country who are literally dying of hunger. At first sight, the commercial restaurants are a scandal. But they are not. And I'll tell you why. It is sentimental democracy to say you mustn't allow an officer on leave to have a night out at the Moskva. What he eats and drinks is a drop in the ocean and won't help the poor and the starving. It is also a good thing when a factory director from the provinces, who has been reporting on his work to the Kremlin, can go somewhere for a decent meal. It keeps him in good humour, makes him think kindly of Moscow, and has a good effect on his work. And even if there are twenty or thirty crooks and racketeers out of every hundred people in the restaurant, it doesn't matter. Crooks don't last long in our country."
People were, in fact, glad to have commercial restaurants and commercial shops to go to.
Especially the shops. These gave even the poorly-paid a chance to have an occasional treat, such as buying some chocolates or cream cakes, even at an absurd price, and so, for once, getting something different from the same dreary old rations. The restaurants were mostly frequented by highly-paid industrial executives, writers, artists and scientists and, above all, by officers on leave who were only too glad to "blow" a whole month's unspent salary on a night out.
These commercial shops and restaurants were also part of a long-term policy for
regulating prices in the kolkhoz markets, and their introduction was, in fact, to be a first step towards the abolition of rationing two years after the war, after a further series of price adjustments and the monetary reform.
But whether commercial restaurants and shops were an economically sound proposition
Russia at war Page 105
