THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Even by the typically monumental standards of Soviet-era memorials, “The Motherland Calls” is an impressive sight. Towering seventeen stories above the Russian city of Volgograd, the monolithic statue depicting a windswept woman holding aloft a sword is a striking combination of neoclassical styling and Stalinist kitsch. A symbolic representation of Soviet victory over Nazi invaders, the figure intentionally recalls the “Winged Victory of Samothrace.” Like that ancient masterpiece, the Soviet composition communicates dynamism and strength.  A closer inspection of “The Motherland Calls,” however, reveals at least one important difference. Cast entirely out of reinforced concrete,  the dull, grey surface (interrupted here and there by cracks and the rust marks caused from embedded rebar) suggests none of the solidity and timelessness of the marble Greek statute.

The incredible mass of the statue is difficult to comprehend unless seen in person. From its plinth to the top of the figure’s head, “The Motherland Calls” measures 170 feet. Its highest point (the tip of the sword) is located nearly 300 feet in the air. Each of the two shawl pieces extruding wing-like from the figure’s back exceeds the length of an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer. Both weigh close to 250 tons. The composition as a whole tips the scales at 8,000 tons. Not surprisingly, “The Motherland Calls” was the world’s largest statue at the time of its public dedication on October 15, 1967. [For a better view, click on the image to the right. Note the adults standing alongside the statue's base.]

“The Motherland Calls” is not a stand-alone monument. Rather, it is the focal point of a vast memorial complex covering 1.3 square miles. The complex is located on Mamaev Kurgan (“Hill of Mamai”), the former epicenter of the Battle of Stalingrad (as the city was then known). It was here that the fate of Europe was determined in 1942-43. The hill was stormed by the Germans in mid-September 1942 only to be recaptured by the Red Army several days later. It subsequently changed hands several times before the encirclement and destruction of the Nazi forces was completed. Continue Reading »

Those interested in American policy toward the Russian Federation may want to investigate the new website “Designing U.S. Policy Toward Russia.” Sponsored by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences with support from the Carnegie Corporation, “Designing U.S. Policy Toward Russia” is part of a larger initiative aimed at “develop[ing] a comprehensive, coherent, and effective policy on U.S.-Russian relations for consideration by the new U.S. administration.”

The website’s primary feature is a “Strategic Assessment” PowerPoint presentation which analyzes Russia’s current (and potential) place within the U.S. foreign policy agenda, challenges facing the countries’ bilateral relationship, and specific recommendations for how to structure and conduct a high-level strategic dialogue. Members of the project’s Steering Committee invite feedback from informed readers and will aim to answer as many questions as possible. (Responses will be posted to the project’s blog available via a link from the project’s main page.)

In addition to the “Strategic Assessment,” the site provides a number of recent reports regarding current thinking about the U.S.-Russian relationship. Additional reports will be made available as they are completed.

Peter Lavelle, who works for the English-language Russian television network Russia Today, has weighed in on Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev’s efforts to defend the honor of the Soviet Union against historical falsification.

Lavelle is generally supportive of Medvedev’s effort. He suggests that this initiative is an understandable reaction

to the way history, particularly events before, during, and after World War II, is being reinterpreted and even rewritten in a number of post-Soviet and Eastern European states. This approach often undermines, or even denies, the role the Soviet Union played in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

This claim is puzzling–after all, it’s hard to make the case that German troops triumphantly raised the swastika over the Kremlin, instead of Soviet troops triumphantly raising their flag over the Reichstag. Lavelle later clarifies his meaning. The histories he wants to criticize in the Baltics and Eastern Europe:

claim that not only did the Soviet Union not liberate them from fascism, but that it replaced Nazi Germany as the occupying power.

This, he suggests, is political and pathological, for

Instead of facing up to the sins of the past, it is all too easy to blame contemporary Russia for the real or imagined sins of the Soviet Union.

Lavelle concludes,

Denying the Holocaust is a legal offense in Germany. This is the case in many countries in the world, and is morally right. Consigning to oblivion the murder of millions of people is simply wrong. Russia wants the same to hold true for the 27 million Soviet citizens (at the very least) who gave their lives to defeat Hitler’s murderous regime.

The problems here are quite similar to the ones I identified yesterday in Colonel Kovalyov’s claims about the origins of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and even Medvedev’s original complaints about falsifiers. First, there’s a reluctance common to most of these complaints to name names or quote quotations to identify the historians who have made egregiously false claims. Does anyone actually deny Soviet victory? If so, who is it?

And the reason that people link contemporary Russia to the sins of the Soviet Union is that contemporary Russia is claiming the legacy of the Soviet Union. It’s not clear to me how Medvedev can bask in the glory of Soviet victory in World War II without taking some of the responsibility for the darker side. Certainly I’d love to have American history that was all Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, no slavery or internment camps, but things don’t work that way.

More substantively, no serious Western historian denies the enormous contribution of the Soviet Union to victory. Sure–the American public doesn’t know much about the German-Soviet war, but the American public doesn’t know much about the German-AMERICAN war. Where there’s a debate, and it’s a legitimate one, is the extent of the various allied contributions that qualify and provide nuance to the Soviet Union’s clear predominance in terms of where German soldiers were actually fighting. They relate to things like the importance of Lend-Lease, strategic bombing, diversion of German aircraft and AA, and so on. I don’t question the Soviet Union’s predominance in the victory over Nazi Germany, but the question is certainly worth discussing.

Along the same lines, I understand why some in the Baltics and Eastern Europe would not view 1944 and 1945 as liberation but as new occupation, and why they might have decidedly mixed feelings about monuments to Soviet soldiers. It’s certainly worthy of discussion, but not worthy of state authorities ruling the question settled in advance.

I happen to think, actually, that opening up the sources would not actually hurt the Russian / Soviet case. I’ve recently been reading a fair amount of the literature on the struggle for the borderlands by scholars like Jeff Burds and Alex Statiev. What they show is how complicated the politics were, and how no one had clean hands. Statiev is pretty convincing that German occupation policies were themselves quite draconian in the Baltics, that Soviet policies were harsh but not nearly as harsh as local nationalists have claimed, that resistance movements (particularly in Ukraine) killed far more locals than they killed Soviet officials, and that the Soviets relied heavily on local collaborators to reexert control and pacify their newly-acquired territories. The real story is incompatible with a neat, politically-correct narrative from any side.

By the standard Lavelle ends with–denying Soviet sacrifices for victory– the first and most egregious falsifier of Soviet victory was the victor, Stalin himself, who systematically downplayed the Soviet Union’s loss of life in the Second World War in order to avoid any appearance of weakness.

Colonel S. N. Kovalyov’s essay on the origins of World War II (mentioned here and with Russian text available through here )is an excellent example of the pitfalls in attempting to draw history into contemporary politics by going after vague and undefined falsifiers.

One pitfall is that trying to score political points makes you screw up your facts, and thereby look dumb. The claim in Kovalyov’s article that stirred up public controversy is that Poland produced the war by failing to accept Hitler’s perfectly reasonable demands in the fall of 1938.

What Kovalyov misses are two salient facts. First, Hitler’s allegedly reasonable demands for Danzig and an extraterritorial connection across the Polish corridor to East Prussia came in the immediate aftermath of some other allegedly reasonable demands for Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. Hitler’s request to the Poles is hardly as innocent and pure as Kovalyov makes it seem, and the Poles were quite correct to see the threat behind the superficially limited demand.

Second, Kovalyov points out that it is only after the Poles’ final refusal of German demands on 26 March 1939 that Hitler denounced the 1934 German-Polish non-aggression pact. What Kovalyov fails to note is that this Polish refusal came ELEVEN DAYS after the German invasion and annexation of rump Czechoslovakia. This provided such a clear and unequivocal demonstration of the true nature of Hitler’s supposedly reasonable and limited demands that even Neville Chamberlain picked up on it. Kovalyov fails to mention this obvious piece of context.

Kovalyov also suggests that the Soviets had no choice but to occupy the Baltics, or else face the prospect of the Nazis doing it instead. That’s a reasonable argument, and people could certainly discuss its merits. But when Kovalyov says that the Baltics joined the Soviet Union “by request of the governments and parliaments of these states absolutely voluntarily,” my response is “pull the other one.”

(For non-native English speakers who might be reading this, that idiom means “that argument is obviously ridiculous, and would only be convincing if I were stupid.”)

The second pitfall of going after falsifiers of history as Kovalyov does is that it is pushing on an open door. His bigger claim is not really about Poland, but instead that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the only reasonable choice for Stalin in summer 1939. The Western allies had made it abundantly clear, especially at Munich, that they would rather do anything than fight the Germans, and the Poles refused to even consider allowing Soviet troops passage to get the Germans.

Anyone who has even the smallest familiarity with Western literature on the origins of World War II would reply to Kovalyov, “Yes, of course, almost everyone who’s looked at 1938 and 1939 would agree with you that the Western allies gave Stalin no reason to trust them to fight Hitler. You make Hitler look like a good guy to prove THAT?”

The third pitfall of torturing the historical record is that you get caught. Given that Kovalyov’s article has been pulled from the Ministry of Defense’s website, and that his attacks on Poland and the Baltic States and partial rehabilitation of Hitler will win no friends in Europe, he has to be a little worried about a posting to scenic Kamchatka.

I have never met Kovalyov nor read anything else he’s written. That said, I get the sense that he set out to score some points on Poland and the Baltics. To do that, though, he had to make Hitler seem reasonable and statesmanlike, which doesn’t fly with a lot of Russians who might otherwise be quite happy with his stance.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Kovalyov’s article appears to have been pulled from the Russian Ministry of Defense website. I was able to track down what I think is a good text of the piece, though, and I’ve put it on my personal website’s sources page as a Russian-language .pdf. I’ll have further comments once I’ve had time to give it a read.