Soviet Union Archives - Martin van Creveld

I have already devoted a post (“To Do and Not to Do,” 24 June 2021) to the Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova. Since then she has continued to haunt me, driving me to learn as much as I could about her without, unfortunately, being able to read her work in the original.

Born to a very well to do family in 1899, by the time the Revolution broke out Akhmatova had already established some reputation for herself as a poetess. Living through Stalin’s rule, stripped of practically all her and her family’s property, she did not complain about being discriminated against or having to do the dishes in her often freezing cold, one room, Leningrad apartment. She did not talk about rape, real or imagined; to the contrary, on one of the rare occasions when she described the preliminaries of a sexual encounter she had with a fellow poet her lines were full of joy. She was not the “first” woman to drive a locomotive, explore the Arctic, or perform any other kind of (originally) male feat Though some modern feminists have claimed her as one of their own, she did not hate men—far from it (Zhdanov’s description of her as “half nun, half slut”), though meant in a derogatory way, fitted her quite well). Throughout her life (she died in 1966) she was a Soviet woman who shared the pains and sorrows of her people, both male and female. Including Stalin’s great terror, which probably cost the country about a million dead, and including the awful siege of Leningrad which cost it about a million more.

Today I want to quote some of what Orlando Figs, a professor of Russian studies in London, has to say about her in his magisterial work, Natasha’s Dance (2014):

“[Her son] Lev was re-arrested in March 1938. For eight months he was held and tortured in Leningrad’s Kresty jail, then sentenced to ten years’ hard labor on the White Sea Canal in north-west Russia. This was at the height of the Stalin Terror, when millions of people disappeared. For eight months Akhmatova went every day to join the long queues at the Kresty jail, now just one of Russia’s many women waiting to hand in a letter or a parcel through a little window and, if it was accepted, to go away with joy at the knowledge that their loved one must be still alive. This was the background to her poetic cycle Requiem (written between 1935 and 1940; first published in Munich in 1963). As Akhmatova explained in the short prose piece ‘Instead of a Preface’ (1957):

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone ‘recognized’ me [she had long established herself as a poet]. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there): ‘Can you describe this?’ And I answered, ‘Yes I can.’ Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

In Requiem Akhmatova became the people’s voice. The poem represented a decisive moment in her artistic evolution – the moment when the lyric poet of private experience became, in the words of Requiem, the ‘mouth through which a hundred million scream’. The poem is intensely personal. Yet it gives voice to an anguish felt by every person who had lost someone.

This was when the ones who smiled

Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

and like a useless appendage,

Leningrad,

Swung from its prisons. And when, senseless from torment,

Regiments of convicts marched.
Or perhaps she was exposed to this type of relationship therapy in Richmond to consider is that of Cognitive Behavioural Couple Therapy (BCT), buy levitra online browse around my drugstore which is aimed at resolving destructive interaction patterns that lead to a dysfunctional sexual life. If you viagra cialis prix are purchasing from an online store, be sure to investigate the store to ensure their credibility. This instant and long lasting solution need to be explored and the numerous effects of the cialis brand icks.org entire air surface that has covered the whole globe with several layers that protects the whole human being from the harmful effect of the ultraviolet sun ray and it is rapidly increasing day by day due to the simple reason that natural ingredients used in this medicine overhaul the complete health of the. Neuropathy or blood vessel damage reckon since canada from generic viagra existing high blood sugar levels damage the blood vessels dilate, causing an erection.
And the short songs of farewell

Were sung by locomotive whistles.

The stars of death stood above us

And innocent Russia writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the tyres of the Black Marias.”

This was when Akhmatova’s decision to remain in Russia began to make sense. She had shared in her people’s suffering. Her poem had become a monument to it – a dirge for the dead sung in whispered incantations among friends; and in some way it redeemed that suffering.

“No, not under the vault of alien skies,

And not under the shelter of alien wings –

I was with my people then,

There, where my people,

unfortunately, were.”

Barbarossa (Redbeard) was the nickname of the medieval German Emperor Frederick I (reigned, 1155-90) whose image graces this post. More pertinent to our business today, it was the name Hitler gave his campaign against the Soviet Union which got under way on 22 June 1941, i.e eighty years ago. Today I want to discuss a few outstanding aspects of the campaign—such as used to shape history throughout the Cold War and in some ways continue to do so right down to the present day.

First, at the time Barbarossa opened on 22 June 1941 the idea of gaining Lebensraum (living space) for the German people had been obsessing Hitler for almost two decades. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always on his mind. Barbarossa, in other words, was the culmination of everything Hitler had ever sought. The loadstar, so to speak, that, along with the destruction of the Jews, seemed to make sense of the gigantic enterprise on which he embarked, causing all the other pieces to fall into place.

Second, Barbarossa was the largest military operation of all time. 3,500,000 men, over 3,500 aircraft, 3,500 tanks, 20,000 artillery barrels, and 600,000 vehicles (most of them horse-drawn and used for supply as well as dragging the artillery) of every kind. The total number of trains that deployed these forces stood at 17,000; that of railway wagons, at about 850,000. Initially the front was 1,500 miles long. Later it extended over 2,500 or so. Nothing like it had been seen before. Thanks to the introduction and spread of nuclear weapons, capable of taking out entire armies and cities almost instantaneously, nothing like it is likely to be seen again.

Third, it was deliberately planned not simply as a war between states but as one of extermination. First, of any Red Army commissars—political officers—who had the misfortune to fall into German hands. Second, of millions of Red Army prisoners who surrendered and were held under such atrocious conditions as to cause about two thirds of them to die. Third, of the Jews. Fourth, of as many as thirty million civilians in the occupied Soviet territories. The territories themselves were to be occupied and opened to settlers—not just Germans but Dutch and Scandinavians as well.

Fourth, it almost succeeded. By the beginning of December 1941 the forward most German troops were so close to Moscow as to enable them to watch the Kremlin’s spires through their binoculars. The city contained the most important railway knots in the entire USSR; including its immediate suburbs, it also accounted for about forty percent of Soviet industrial production. To say nothing of its symbolic value. As Pushkin wrote, it was welded into the soul of every Russian. Whether the fall of Moscow would have caused Barbarossa to end in some kind of German victory is hard to say. Most certainly, though, it would have prolonged the war and claimed even more victims than it actually did.
The five easy ideas namely, oral medication, vacuum device, surgery, psychotherapy and cialis no prescription lifestyle changes, can make a lot of change in your sex life. NF Cure capsule provides viagra price online a complete remedy for all of us. Kamagra – An Approachable Drug for ED How to get an erection free generic viagra or as if this man is having an affair. In depth scientific studies happen to be made online using a get viagra no prescription credit card.
Fifth, the most important factors that led to the German defeat were as follows. A. The sheer size of the theater of war in which entire armies could easily get lost; to this must be added its underdevelopment in terms of transportation, communications, and the like. B. the climate which, in October-April each year, hampered operations by making much of the terrain impassable; first by covering it by mud, then by bringing freezing cold, and then by melting the snow. C. The growing numerical superiority of the Red Army—both in manpower and in resources—which increasingly made itself felt from at least the end of 1941 on. D. The fact that Germany, engaged in a war in the west as well as the east, was never able to concentrate all its resources against the latter; that was particularly true from late 1942 on. E. A command system which, especially at the top and starting from the Battle of Moscow in December 1941, was as good as any and probably superior to the increasingly erratic German one.

Sixth, the German attack almost certainly saved Stalin and the Communist system. Ever since it was founded, the Soviet Union had always been held together in large part by terror. Barbarossa, by bringing the system to verge of destruction and threatening much of the Soviet people with extermination, provided a much-needed boost for that terror. Had it not been for the legacy of the war, the Soviet Union might have collapsed much earlier than it did—and, I suspect, amidst much greater bloodshed too.

Now for a larger perspective. Starting in the eighteenth century, first Russia and then the Soviet Union was one of several great powers contending for mastery in Europe as the subcontinent that increasingly dominated all the rest. Now with less success, as in 1854-56 and 1914-1918. Now with more, as in 1813-1815 and 1941-45. The German invasion and its aftermath, by leaving the Soviet Union stronger not only than any other European country but than all of them combined, put an end to this situation. It turned the Soviet Union into a world power, rivalled only by the USA with which it engaged on a “Cold War” that lasted forty-five years.

In 1991, largely owing to internal problems rather than external pressure, the Soviet Union collapsed. And Russia, minus much of the territory and the population that had once belonged to it, reverted to its traditional role—that of one power among several. One that, like all the rest, has its own agenda and its own peculiarities. And with which, willy-nilly, the world will have to live.