THE RUSSIAN FRONT

I’m delighted to say that a book I’ve edited, entitled The Soviet Union at War 1941-1945, is about to come out from Pen & Sword Publishers in the UK. The focus of the book is not on operational history, but instead on Soviet society during the war. In that sense, it’s intended as a sequel and update of Alexander Werth’s Russia at War and, more recently, John Barber and Mark Harrison’s 1991 The Soviet Home Front The book is available for pre-orders from the publisher, as well as from amazon.com
(or here for our readers in the UK)

Editing a book can be a real chore, but in this case I’ve been delighted by the quality of contributors and by how easy they’ve been to work with. I truly could not ask for a better team.

We have Richard Bidlack of Washington & Lee on public opinion and propaganda, and Nicholas Ganson of Holy Cross on food supply and living standards. Nick’s the junior member of our team, but has a new book out on the 1947 famine.

Mark Harrison, University of Warwick, takes on industry and the economy, Jean Levesque of the University of Quebec-Montreal looks at agriculture and the countryside, and Reina Pennington of Norwich University covers women. Jeremy Smith, late of the University of Birmingham and now of the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland, discusses non-Russian nationalities, and Kenneth Slepyan of Transylvania University takes the partisan movement. Finally, I have a chapter on the Red Army as an institution.

You’ll have to take my word for it, and I’m certainly a biased observer, but the quality of the chapters in uniformly high, and Pen & Sword has come through with a spectacular cover and a number of nice photographs. I’m sure you’re all looking for good holiday gifts . . .

UPDATE: US distributor for the book is Casemate Publishers, which at present has a distribution date in February 2011. It shouldn’t in fact take that long.

Several months back, Dave Stone drew attention to the new website, 1941-1945: Chronicle of Victory, recently established by the Russian Ministry of Mass Communications “for the purpose of providing objective information about the Great Patriotic War.” [natch]

The MinMassComm isn’t the only Russian state agency sponsoring a site devoted to the War. The Ministry of Defense also has one of its own. Titled “Feat of the People,” this new(ish) site aims: “to perpetuate the memory of all the Wars’  heroes – irrespective of rank, scale of exploit, or award status; to educate youth concerning the military valor of their forefathers; and to provide a documentary base for counteracting attempts the falsification of World War II history” by creating a digital database of the 30 million military awards given out during the conflict together with archival documents relating to wartime military operations.

As with the “Chronicle of Victory,” non-Russian speakers are a bit out of luck. Although an “English” button is available on the site, it only translates the site’s anchor page and navigational bar.

On 7 September, the Kremlin hosted a joint meeting of two commissions: the Commission to Oppose Attempts at Falsification of History, and the Interinstitutional Commission on Defense of State Secrets. The falsification group last met back in January; for additional background, see here and here.

To the outside observer, this would sound like two opposed organizations. This being Russia, of course, appearances can be deceiving. Only a few of the speeches and statements have been released, but what’s available so far suggests that there was much more about openness and access than there was about secrecy. Being generally bitter and cynical by nature, I was expecting only boilerplate (and there was, to be sure, plenty of that), but there was a remarkable amount of substantive information on offer. In particular, historians of Russia owe it to themselves to read the speech of Rosarkhiv head A. N. Artizov in full.

Chair of the meeting was S. E. Naryshkin, head of Medvedev’s Presidential Administration. His remarks were quite brief, and opened with a very vague set of goals for the meeting: “perspectives on the development of archival affairs, working out and realization of a series of measures directed at supporting a just and objective representation of Russian history.” This is, of course, not especially enlightening.

It did get better though. Naryshkin conceded that the falsification and anti-Russian history that Russian political leaders have been getting so worked up about are largely the result of bad access to documents. In Naryshkin’s words, “lack or inaccessibility of information becomes the condition and reason for falsification.” This makes the most important step “further declassification of archival documents.”

Naryshkin also set priorities for the Russian archival system. His first was electronic access–both the preservation of newly-generated electronic documents (not a big deal for most historians, at least not now) and improving electronic access to existing collections.

Next came access to documents, in which Naryshkin actually referred to the “society’s right of free access to information.” This was immediately followed by a qualification to “strictly provide for the security of the state and respect the rights of citizens,” but the very idea of treating access to archival information as a right, even if phrased in social rather than individual terms, is a major step.

A. N. Artizov’s speech was much heavier on concrete information. He noted the particular problems Russian archives face: finding qualified staff, and coping with the mass of records created by the totalizing nature of the Soviet state. Nonetheless, he touted the achievements of Russian archives in the last few years, including declassification and scholarly publication. Scans of key documents on the Katyn massacre achieved two million hits per day when made available to the public.

Veterans of reading rooms know that many of the people there are seeking to document the work or military service records of themselves or their relatives. Rosarkhiv has a new website where such inquiries can be submitted electronically. Historians of limited time and unlimited funding should note the ability to submit thematic requests for information as a paid service.

Thanks to Artizov, fans of the political use of history can look forward to a document collection that Artizov has promised will be coming soon: “the collaboration of Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis”

Artizov had quite a bit to say about declassification. He cited 10 million files declassified since 1991, but noted how slow and labor-intensive the process is. He claimed that 1.7 million files remain classified, 1.1 million of those Communist Party or USSR government files. I should note that those numbers sound low to me. They could be true, I suppose, if they exclude some very important archives that are outside the Rosarkhiv system: the military, the foreign ministry, and the security services.

New files come in to the Rosarkhiv system at the rate of 1.5 million per year. Most notably, Artizov says the Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev fonds have all been transferred from the Kremlin’s Presidential Archive to Rosarkhiv. The bulk of the remaining Politburo archive will make the same transfer in 2010-12. Transfer doesn’t mean declassification, of course, but certainly the move from presidential to archivist hands is a good thing for researchers.

Artizov also gave some updated information on the major World War II archive that he discussed back in March. I was skeptical of this on practical and scholarly grounds, and remain so. Artizov is remarkably specific, though, which suggests that efforts proceed apace to make this archive happen. The plan for the new archive is to build it on the grounds of the existing Ministry of Defense Archive in Podol’sk. While this will certainly make the physical transfer of MoD records much simpler, it makes life much tougher for foreign researchers, who will be faced with the unenviable choices of either taking a daily elektrichka trek out from Moscow, or living all the way out in Podol’sk.

Although there’s no shortage of books and monographs devoted to the history of the Eastern Front during the Second World War, readers interested in supplementing their personal libraries with documentary collections have been hard-pressed to find accessible and affordable volumes.

Fortunately, this situation is about to change. Late next month, Routledge publishers will make its 2009 release The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: A Documentary Reader by Alexander Hill (Associate Professor of Military History, University of Calgary) available in a handy paperback edition.

Hill’s edited volume contains documents covering wide-ranging aspects of the Soviet military experience: from pre-War diplomacy and preparations, through the debacle of 1941, to the Fall of Berlin and invasion of Manchuria. Separate chapters covering the Siege of Leningrad, Lend-Lease and the Economy, and the Partisan movement round out the volume. The collection is accompanied by Hill’s expert commentary and suggestions for further readings.

The book is an ideal supplement for individuals interested in the documentary history the Soviet war effort. And it makes a terrific companion text for courses devoted to the Second World War.

To pre-order your copy directly from Routledge, just click on the link above.

Pundits love to complain about the abysmal ignorance of history among the American public. They’re right, of course, but I’m not convinced things are any different outside the United States. Everyone should know more history, especially if it involves buying my books. It’s nice to be able to quantify those questions, if only a little bit. The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) has surveyed Russian opinion and knowledge of World War II, and the results are intriguing (this material has been available for a couple of months, but I only found out about it thanks to a mention in today’s Johnson’s Russia List).

Our GlavKom Scott Palmer will be delighted to know that the Rodina-mat’ monument in Volgograd is an easy winner for the most significant symbol of victory.

VTsIOM also surveyed turning points in the war. Russians were asked what they considered to be a decisive moment in the Great Fatherland War, and the moment in the Great Fatherland War. Stalingrad wins both: 68% of Russians saw it as a decisive moment, and 31% as the turning point of the war. Kursk and Moscow essentially tied for second place in both circumstances, as Kursk scored 49% as a decisive moment and 17% as the turning point; Moscow got 46% and 15%.

That surprises me to some degree. I’m not surprised at all to see Stalingrad winning, though my own inclination would be to see Moscow as the most significant moment, an issue that we can perhaps argue about in the comments. Finding Kursk in 2nd is odd, though I’ve been aware that it looms far larger in the Russian consciousness than in the Western. I’m not sure what to make of that. Back during perestroika, Duma member and former Deputy Minister of Defense Andrei Kokoshin argued for the importance of the battle of Kursk as showing the viability of a fundamentally defensive strategy, though it’s hard to imagine that view affecting the general public. I also note that Operation Bagration–the destruction of Army Group Center in Belorussia in summer 1944–only rates 4% as a significant moment, well below the breaking of the Leningrad blockade (34%), the taking of Berlin (13%), and tied with the Rzhev operation [?!?!?!?].

There’s also a pattern in the data: young people are significantly less likely than older people to see any of the big events of the war as decisive–74% of those over 60 see Stalingrad as a decisive moment; only 58% of those 18-24. The sole exception is Moscow, where there is no drop-off by age. I think can be attributed to ignorance–Moscow is important now, one might think, and so it must have been important then. The youngest cohort is by far the most likely (14%) to fail to name a single decisive moment in the war.

What about the question of ignorance? One of the ways VTsIOM measures this is by asking people to name hero-cities.

This is a task I would fail miserably. I’d have no trouble with the obvious ones–Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad–but then I’d start thinking too much. Kursk? Big battle, but it wasn’t actually fought that close to the city itself . . . . Brest-Litovsk? More a fortress than a city, but I’m pretty sure I remember it from the Aleksandrovskii Garden outside the Kremlin . . . No way I’d get Kerch or Novorossiisk. The oddity here is that despite Stalingrad’s centrality to Russian memories of the war, it’s only mentioned by 45% of the respondents as a hero-city; Moscow (59%) and Leningrad (57%) both beat it.

In terms of more substantive knowledge of the basic facts of the war, I was not able to find detailed breakdowns on VTsIOM’s website, so I’m going by the summaries available here.

First, it’s reassuring to know that Russians are clear (88%) that Germany started the war, and only 1% blame the US.

The good folks at VTsIOM are bothered that only 22% percent of Russians can name the correct start date of World War II (1939), and the bulk of the rest, 58%, name 1941. That one doesn’t bother me so much, and I would imagine you’d get very similar answers from an American audience. For Americans and Soviets, World War II really did start in 1941, though as a good broad-minded historian I certainly know the war begin in 1939. While seeing 1941 as the start of the war betrays a certain Russocentrism or Americacentrism, insisting that the start date is 1939 suggests a similar Eurocentrism. If we look at the Far East, one could make a decent case for 1937, or even 1931.

Similarly, in response to the question of who commanded the Red Army, only 49% say Stalin, with the bulk of the rest (31%) naming Zhukov. As above, that large number of errors is understandable, and the supposed wrong answer isn’t entirely wrong. Stalin certainly wasn’t commanding armies in the field.

What about unambiguous questions? The record on dates isn’t impressive. Only 34% can name 1942 as the start of the battle of Stalingrad, and 35% can name 1944 as the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. Things look somewhat better when we get to who fought on what side. 62% can identify the US as an ally, and 53% Britain. 82% got Germany as an enemy, but only 30% Japan. Since Japan was only at war with the USSR for about two weeks, that’s hardly surprising.

Those figures are not entirely out of line with American ones. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a right-of-center American organization, did a survey in which 69% of Americans could identify Germany and Japan as America’s enemies in a multiple choice test. Of course, it’s appalling that 31% couldn’t manage even that, but I’m not sure it’s any more or less appalling than 18% of Russians not managing to hear that Germany was the enemy in World War II.