Stalingrad. Ranking Death.

Tverskaya Street, corner with Gazetny Pereulok

Read the Russian version of this post here.

Every time I rode in a trolleybus down Tverskaya (Gorki) Street in Moscow, my father or grandfather would point out a building and say: 'Ah, this one was built/rebuilt by the Germans after the war'. As a little boy I was always impressed at how neat and solid the huge blocks of red-brown granite looked.

Another phrase I often heard was that German POWs were treated in camps better than our own people outside. It was said with bitter irony.

It appears the impression was wrong. English historian Antony Beevor mentions in Stalingrad a figure that astonished me – the death rate among German POWs:

Altogether some 235,000 former members of the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army, including those captured during Manstein's attempted relief operation in December, as well as Romanians and other allies, had been held in around twenty camps and prison hospitals in the region.

Chances of survival proved brutally depedent on rank. Over 95 percent of soldiers and NCOs died, 55 percent of junior officers and just 5 percent of senior officers. ... The privileged treatment which the generals received, however, was a revealing testimony to the Soviet Union's sense of hierarchy.

Out of one convoy of 1,800 men in March, 1,200 died.

(p.415 in the Penguin paperback)

The full translation of Stalingrad is on Militera website here.

I've blogged on Beevor in Russian here and in English here and here. And read my review of The Battle for Spain.

Songs of Victory: In The Dugout

VE Day - Den' Pobedy - is a huge holiday in Russia. It is marked on the 9th of May, not on the 8th as in Western Europe. The difference is because of the time zones - what happened late at night on 8 May in Berlin, was already the 9th Moscow time. But I also like to argue that we, Russians, celebrate the first day of peace, while in the West  the last day of war is celebrated.

My correspondents write to me that over the recent years the holiday has become the biggest event in the Russian calendar of official festivities. This is probably connected to the resurgence of Russian nationalism. A multitude of militant nationalist groups practically hijack the event. There is also bitterness and anger in the former Soviet republics where nazi collaborators and nationalists who fought against the Soviet Union freely parade and harass the Red Army veterans.

However, as everywhere in Europe, in Russia the end of the Second World War was a powerful liberating moment. The soldiers returning home stood tall, walked proud, the felt free and not afraid of anything. The feeling was universal - from the private to Generalissimo himself.

Of the war books I've read recently I was most impressed by Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' (1998.) It has been waiting on a shelf for a long time. Something in me resisted picking it up. As a Russian, I've read many books, fiction and non-fiction, on Stalingrad. Konstantin Simonov, Vassily Grossman and others. I started on Grossman's 'Life and Fate' and then remembered that Beevor cites him often. Then I saw 'Enemy At the Gates' (Jude Law as the Russian sniper, Ed Harris his German opposition and Bob Hoskins as Khrushev) - and decided to have a go at 'Stalingrad'. It was unputdownable. I read it first in one go, then again with a pencil and a wad of stickies.

Beevor the historian is meticulous. His every sentence is supported by a wealth of documental evidence, and where that evidence is dubious or politically or ideologically slanted, he indicates it.  Beevor the narrator is a brilliant master of multi-angled technique. Close-ups of events described through the eyes of participants on both sides, from ordinary riflemen to officers in the field to staff members to commanders and politicians are then interspersed with commentary and analysis, also by participants and observers. We see the unfolding battle from the trenches, through tank sites and from the cabins of airplanes above the ruined city. We go from Stalin's Stavka (HQ) to Hitler's Wolfsschanze.

The result is both a convincing historical account and an exciting read.

All over Russia today war-time songs are played. Beevor mentions the 'Dugout' (Zemlyanka)  as the most popular song among the Russian soldiers. The words

It is so hard for me to come to you
And here there are four steps to death.

were especially poignant, as the Army commander in Stalingrad Vassily Chuikov ordered the positions never to be farther than 50 metres away from the German lines. That made it impossible for the Germans to use heavy artillery and bomb Russian positions from air.

Here is the Dugout sung by Lidiya Ruslanova in 1942.
Text of the poem in English as quoted in 'Stalingrad' is below the video.



The Dugout (or In the Dugout),
lyrics by Alexei Surkov, music by Constantine Listov

The fire is flickering in the narrow stove
Resin oozes from the log like a tear
And the concertina in the bunker
Sings to me of your smile and eyes.

The bushes whispered to me about you
In a snow-white field near Moscow
I want you above all to hear
How said my living voice is.

You are now very far away
Expanses of snow lie between us
It is so hard for me to come to you
And here there are four steps to death.

Sing concertina, in defiance of the snowstorm
Call out to that happiness which has lost its way
I'm warm in the cold bunker
Because of your inextinguishable love.

Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain

If you want to know all about the Spanish civil war, read Anthony Beevor's book (586 pages), if you want to understand what it was like and be able to feel it, read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (220 pages), first published in 1938 when the war was still going on.

Ever since 'Stalingrad' Beevor's successive historical bestsellers have been praised by critics for their strong narrative. I disagree: I think the narrative side of The Battle for Spain is its weakest feature. The book is cluttered, events are presented in a fragmented, difficult to follow way. There are unnecessary repetitions in some cases, and in others there are omissions which make it difficult to make sense of the sequence of events and their relation to one another. One has to have a degree of prior historical knowledge to navigate through The Battle for Spain - and enjoy it.

Still, as with Stalingrad, Berlin and especially A Writer at War, Beevor brings back to the forefront of contemporary intellectual life the events that had shaped the modern world - and the ideas, prejudices, social phobias and stereotypes which still live on.

Of particular interest is the description of the workings of the non-intervention committee, a European grouping through which Britain and France conducted their policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini in an effort to avoid a second European war. Stalin's Soviet Union supported the republican government also in an effort to avoid direct confrontation with Germany - but also to extend the communist reach into Western Europe.

Mikhail Bakunin

While today's neo-conservatives routinely cite the failure of pre-WWII appeasement policy as justification for American-led interventionist foreign policy - in defense of democracy, it is worth remembering that it was the fear of democratic freedoms in Spain and in their own countries that had been driving British and French governments appeasement policy.

And the second very important element - politically, economically and ideologically - in Beevor's account is his extensive, though sadly somewhat scattered, depiction of anarcho-syndicalist contribution to the war effort and to the reforms in the economy. Badly armed anarchist militias, later transformed into divisions of the regular Popular Army, turned out to be the most efficient. Industries and farms 'collectivised' by anarchists were flourishing. And ideologically anarchists proved to be the most principled, consistent - and flexible force on the republican side of the conflict until they were first side-lined and then pushed out of administration. It is poignant that even today 'anarchist' is used as a derogatory term, and the few attempts to look into their Spanish legacy are restricted to academic world while staying largely unnoticed and unused in a Western society in desperate search for a 'third way' in the face rising religious militancy. A way which may well be provided by anarcho-syndicalism, with a huge legacy in theory and practice going all the way back to Michel Bakunin (pictured above) whose anarchist faction was famously ousted from Marx's First Internationale.

George Orwell Homage to Catalonia