EVE OF THE WAR
Chapter One. IMPERIALISTS START THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Chapter Two. THE SOVIET UNION BEFORE THE WAR
Chapter Two
THE SOVIET UNION BEFORE THE WAR
1. Strengthening the Defences
The thirties are recorded in the history of the Soviet Union as the period when socialism triumphed. Having healed the wounds inflicted by the First World War, the foreign armed intervention and the Civil War, and having rapidly restored industry and transport, the Soviet people led by the Communist Party tackled Lenin’s industrialisation plan, carrying out two imposing five‑year economic development plans in 1928‑37.
The advance made under the first five‑year plan was tremendous. Industry registered a spectacular growth by 1933. Tractor plants were built in Kharkov and Stalingrad (Volgograd), automobile plants in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky), and blast furnaces were started up in Magnitogorsk and Novokuznetsk in the country’s east, inaugurating a new coal‑and‑steel complex second to that of the Donets Basin. This was the foundation for the Soviet Union’s defence potential. The Lenin Hydropower Station on the Dnieper, pride of the Soviet people, was put into operation, with dozens of other large power plants built throughout the country. Electrification gave impetus to new industries, unknown in tsarist Russia, such as the chemical, aircraft, automobile, tractor and machine‑tool, providing a dependable industrial foundation for socialism.
Big changes were also wrought in agriculture, for socialism was inconceivable without a radical reconstruction of farming as outlined in the programme of the Communist Party along principles spelled out by Lenin. Acting on the programme and suiting its guidelines to the situation in the countryside, the 15th Party Congress proclaimed collectivisation in 1927. By the end of the first five‑year plan the collective‑farm system had become dominant in the countryside.
From then on agriculture, as well as industry, developed along socialist lines. From a backward agrarian country the Soviet Union grew into a powerful industrial and collective‑farm state by virtue of the dedicated labour of workers and collective farmers, who followed the path charted by the Party with enthusiasm.
In 1934 the 17th Party Congress launched a second economic development plan (for 1933‑37), which was completed in the main by the spring of 1937. Industrial growth continued on an unprecedented scale. The gross industrial product in 1937 was 2.2‑fold over 1932, nearly four times that of 1929 and six times that of pre‑revolution 1913. No capitalist country had ever registered such high growth rates. For industrial output the Soviet Union forged into first place in Europe and second (to the USA) in the world. The technical reconstruction of all branches of the economy had been essentially completed.
As many as 93 per cent of the peasant households were integrated in collective farms. Between 1933 and 1937 farming was supplied with more than 500,000 tractors (in terms of 15 hp units), 123,500 harvester combines and more than 142,000 lorries. A total of 5,818 machine‑and‑tractor stations were established to serve the collective farms. Agriculture was collectivised, and thereby firmly placed on the road of socialist development.
As a result of the two pre‑war five‑year plans, the building of socialism was essentially completed. The country changed beyond recognition, and so did its people. No exploiting classes existed any more. Soviet society consisted of the working class, the collective‑farm peasants and the intelligentsia, rallied round the Communist Party, loyal to Soviet power and united. A new Constitution was adopted, formalising the triumph of socialism.
But the victory was not final. The capitalist countries surrounding the Soviet Union surpassed it considerably in economic and military terms. The socialist state was not therefore entirely invulnerable to an armed intervention and attempts forcibly to restore capitalism.
The danger of an imperialist intervention compelled the Soviet Union to strengthen its defences, for which industrialisation provided the essential material and technical base.
In 1930‑31 the aircraft industry produced an annual 860 aircraft, the yearly average rising to 3,578 in 1935‑37. Seven hundred and forty tanks a year were produced in 1930 and 1931, and 3,139 a year in 1935‑37. The annual output of field guns climbed from 1,911 to 5,020. In 1938 1,174,000 rifles were produced.
This made the Soviet Union militarily self‑sufficient, enabling the Red Army to rearm and grow from a technically backward (in 1928) into a modern force. Trained soldiers, many of them former factory workers, tractor drivers or operators of harvester combines, were armed with modern weapons. All of them, sons of a politically and spiritually united nation, were brought up in the midst of socialist construction.
The 18th Party Congress was a fresh token of the nation’s unshakable loyalty to Lenin’s teaching. Its decisions became an action programme for the Party in the immediate pre‑war period, centring attention on the third five‑year economic development plan. As it entered the new stage—the stage of completing the building of socialism and of gradually passing from socialism to communism—the Soviet Union overtook most of the capitalist countries in many economic fields. But the biggest capitalist states were still ahead of the USSR in per capita production. The aim of overtaking and surpassing the main capitalist countries in production per head of population, which Lenin set with amazing foresight before the October Revolution, was proclaimed by the 18th Party Congress as the basic economic target.
The third five‑year plan was a programme of further economic and cultural growth, of raising the standard of living. It set targets for a precipitous growth of all branches of the economy, with the accent on the heavy and defence industries. Industrial output was to be nearly doubled as compared with the final year of the second five‑year plan. In view of the threat of war, special emphasis was laid on building up reserves of food, fuel, electric power, armaments, and so on. This called for larger budget allocations for defence. Suffice it to say, that in 1940 these allocations totalled 56,900 million rubles as against 17,500 million rubles in 1937. In 1928‑29 they amounted to only 10 per cent of the budget, rising to 32 per cent in 1940.
Special measures were taken to increase industrial output and enhance the country’s defence capability. In 1940 factory and office workers were switched to an eight‑hour working day and a seven‑day working week. They were forbidden to quit their jobs without good reason and were made more responsible for the quality of the output. A new state network of vocational schools was set up. The people’s commissariats for heavy industry, heavy engineering and defence industry were made independent branch commissariats. All this played an important part in preparing the country for defence.
At the 18th Party Conference in February 1941 attention was focussed on the ways and means of stepping up industrial production. The Conference considered the plan of economic development for 1941, and its decisions called for a more rapid development of industries essential to defence, the abolition of the disproportions still in evidence in industry, the creation of the necessary state reserves and the mobilisation of stocks. Though the plan was interrupted by the war, immense headway was made in the three pre‑war years. The economy grew rapidly, and the defence potential was considerably boosted. Gross industrial output grew by 45 per cent, with the output of the engineering industry increasing 76 per cent. Means of production accounted for 61.2 per cent of the 1940 total product, and consumer goods for 38.8. Coal output, which in 1937 amounted to 128 million tons, rose to 165,900,000 tons in 1940. From Russia’s sixth place for coal in 1913 the Soviet Union moved up to fourth place in the world and third in Europe. New coal areas were developed in the eastern regions, and shortly before the war these accounted for more than one third of the country’s coal output.
Oil production, too, was 45 per cent higher than in 1932, totalling 31,100,000 tons. New oilfields in the Volga area, the Urals, the Soviet Far East, Central Asia and Kazakhstan had raised their output and figured prominently in the oil balance. Steel output aggregated 18,300,000 tons and pig iron 14,900,000 tons, surpassing the top figures for 1913 by 300 per cent.
Under the pre‑war five‑year plans special attention was accorded to the production of high‑grade steels and rolled stock. The report to the 18th Party Congress stated that in 1937 the Soviet iron and steel industry had produced 860,000 tons of electrical steel as against 87,000 tons in 1932. In the same period the output of quality and high‑grade rolled stock had risen from 5,900 to 140,000 tons.
Some 3,000 new industrial enterprises began operating in 1938‑40. The total built in the 13 years of the pre‑war five‑year plans approached 9,000, with many located in the country’s east. This provided a vast production potential, enabling the Soviet Union to meet its needs in the war.
The Soviet engineering industry, eminently important for defence, ranked first in Europe and was second only to that of the United States. It produced machines and tools for factories that made more machines, including war machines.
During the first three years of the third five‑year plan the annual growth rate of the defence industry was 39 per cent, while industry as a whole registered an annual increment of 13 per cent. This was achieved by huge investments in the defence industry, which amounted to 15,600 million rubles during three and a half years of the third five‑year plan. This added to one‑fourth of the total investments in industry. In the first half of 1941 war output increased fourfold over the 1937 level.
The aircraft industry was in the midst of reconstruction. The programme opted by the Party Central Committee in June 1939 for this industry envisaged a considerable increase of its capacity. Forty per cent of the 1940 budget allocations for military purposes went into the development of the aircraft industry. The production capacities of aircraft factories were greatly enhanced. A total of 17,745 combat aircraft were produced in the period from January 1, 1939, to July 1, 1941. Production was started of the improved MiG‑3s, Yak‑1s, LaGG‑3s, Pe‑2s and Il‑2s. In 1940 the Army received 86 of these aircraft, while in the first half of 1941 their number rose to 2,653. The rearmament of the Air Force was only at its initial stages. On June 22, 1941, only 19 per cent of the aircraft in the western frontier districts were new machines. The old aircraft were technically inferior to the German planes. The measures taken by the Party and the Government in the period 1939‑41 created the conditions enabling the aircraft industry in the course of the war to attain rapid superiority over the enemy as regards both quantity and quality.
New types of tanks, the medium T‑34 and heavy KV, much superior to similar fighting machines abroad, had been developed before the war. In 1940 a total of 358 of these combat machines were put out. The production of new types of tanks increased during the first half of 1941, the output including 1,110 T‑34s and 393 KVs. But this was not enough. Besides, the troops in the frontier districts began receiving the new tanks only in the second half of 1940, as a consequence of which they did not have time in which to master them. The far‑reaching result of the reorganisation of the tank industry undertaken on the eve of the war was that during the very first war years it brought about a sharp increase of the output of new types of tanks and allowed winning superiority over the enemy.
The Red Army’s artillery had been improved. In the course of only five years (1934‑39), the quantity of artillery at the disposal of the Red Army had increased 225 per cent, new types of field, anti‑tank and anti‑aircraft guns had been developed, and the designing of the first types of rocket launchers had been completed. For a number of indices Soviet ordnance was superior to the corresponding types of German artillery. But it was only on the very eve of the war that the Army began to receive 82‑ and 120‑mm mortars in sufficient numbers. They were to prove an excellent weapon during the war. The High Command’s Reserve, which consisted of eight per cent of all available artillery, was found to be inadequate. Besides, this Reserve did not include anti‑aircraft and anti‑tank artillery. The first anti‑tank artillery brigades were formed only in April 1941 but by June they were still understrength in equipment and traction. In fact, even the regular Army artillery units were short of mechanical traction.
The Navy had been supplied with a large amount of up‑to‑date equipment during the pre‑war years. The surface vessels and submarines received by it in the period from the beginning of 1939 to 1941 totalled 108,000 and 50,000 tons respectively. During 11 months of 1940 the Navy received 100 fighting ships of different types: destroyers, submarines, mine‑sweepers and torpedo‑boats. At the close of the year another 269 vessels of various classes were under construction. In October 1940 the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government reoriented shipbuilding on the output of light surface vessels and submarines. The Navy’s air arm and the coastal defence were strengthened. The building of naval bases was stepped up. The further development of the armoured and air forces was the main problem in the Soviet defence build‑up in face of the mounting threat of a German attack.
In view of the certain lag in the output of ammunition, the Party Central Committee and the Government approved a special plan for the production of ammunition during the second half of 1941 and during 1942. This plan called for a substantial growth of output. The preceding development of the Soviet industry, in which the possibility of war had been taken into account, played a vital role in ensuring the production of modern aircraft and tanks and also of artillery, ammunition and military equipment.
On the whole, the defence industry built during the preceding years ensured the Armed Forces with an adequate supply of modern war equipment. Soviet people did not stint their strength, consciously accepting privation and displaying unexampled courage and dedication in order to turn their country into a mighty socialist power. However, there proved to be too little time to fully equip the Army and Navy with the latest weapons, and the outbreak of the war found the Armed Forces at the stage of rearmament.
Agriculture advanced swiftly during the years of the third five‑year plan, taking further steps towards large‑scale, mechanised socialist farming. By January 1, 1941, there were 236,900 collective farms, 4,159 state farms and 7,069 machine‑and‑tractor stations with a fleet of 684,000 tractors (in terms of 15 hp units), 182,000 harvester combines, 228,000 lorries and large numbers of other farm machines. In 1940 the man‑to‑power ratio at the collective and state farms and the machine‑and‑tractor stations was treble that of the peasant farms in 1913‑17.
This made it possible to enlarge the crop area to 150,400,000 hectares in 1940 as compared with 118,200,000 hectares in 1913. In the same period farm output grew by 41 per cent, with grain production rising from 76,500,000 to 95,600,000 tons. Production of cotton, sugar‑beet and other industrial crops likewise increased.
These achievements in agriculture were of tremendous importance for the defence might of the Soviet Union. On January 1, 1941, the reserves of rye, wheat, oats, flour and cereals amounted to 6,162,000 tons. This allowed the state to create a four‑six months’ stock of food and fodder for the Armed Forces. The hundreds of thousands of lorry‑drivers, tractor‑drivers and harvester‑combine operators constituted a huge reserve for the tank and motorised forces of the Red Army.
A cultural revolution was accomplished. Here the Party was guided by Lenin’s teaching that socialist culture can only be built up by mastering and critically analysing the cultural legacy of the past embracing all the values of world culture, resolutely uprooting the reactionary ideology of the exploiting classes and educating the people in the spirit of the ideas of communism.
In the course of this revolution the cultural level of the people rose steeply and illiteracy, that blight of pre‑revolutionary Russia, was wiped out. Universal secondary education was introduced in the towns, and seven‑year education, in rural localities. Higher education made swift progress. In 1940‑41 the institutions of higher learning had 812,000 students as against 127,000 in 1914‑15. In the Soviet Union there were over five times more students at industrial and agricultural institutions of higher learning than in Britain, Italy, Germany and Japan combined. The number of scientific workers increased from 11,600 in 1914 to 98,300 in 1940.
Numerous cultural establishments were built, the number of clubs increasing from 237 in 1914 to 118,000 in 1941, of public libraries rising more than fivefold and of operating film projectors twentyfold. Book production grew fivefold and newspaper circulation increased more than twelvefold. The cultural revolution ensured the rising generation’s education in the spirit of socialism.
The purpose of the extensive ideological work undertaken by the Party was to bring the people up as patriots of their socialist motherland devoted to the Communist Party and the cause of socialism. “During this tense period,” M. I. Kalinin said in 1940, “our people must be more vigilant than ever before so that our socialist state might be ready for any contingency. This must be accentuated by all our mass organisations, by literature, art, films, the theatre and so on.”
The Komsomol (10 million members) and the Osoaviakhim Society* (13 million members) were extremely active, helping the Party in the military training and patriotic education of the people. By the beginning of 1941 the Osoaviakhim Society had trained thousands of people in military specialties. This gave the Armed Forces a ready reserve.
* Osoaviakhim — Union of Societies for Assistance to Defence, Aviation and Chemical Construction.
Many patriotic works were written before the war, among them And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov and The Ordeal, a trilogy by Alexei Tolstoi. Sevastopol Fatigue by S. Sergeyev‑Tsensky and Tsushima by A. Novikov‑Priboi are two of many war novels. Permeated with profound patriotism, Soviet literature educated people in the spirit of the Communist Party’s ideals, instilling in them love and devotion to their socialist homeland. The same patriotic cause was served by many films, plays and paintings. This period also saw the appearance of harmful books and paintings showing probable adversaries in a primitive light and underrating their strength. An opinion fairly widespread at the time was that if war broke out hostilities would affect only enemy territory and that the enemy would be swiftly destroyed. These shortcomings could not, naturally, eclipse the extensive ideological work which the Party was conducting. It bolstered the morale and political consciousness of the Soviet people, and during the war that broke out soon afterwards their courage, staunchness and heroism commanded the admiration of the world.
The strides made in economic development, culture and other aspects of social life were nothing short of impressive. However, it must be noted that this progress might have been greater still but for the Stalin personality cult. In the Armed Forces it manifested itself chiefly in unfounded repressions on slanderous charges of a large number of experienced commanders and political workers. However, more than one‑fourth of the cadres dismissed from the Armed Forces were reinstated on the eve and during the first months of the war and they took an active part in the war.
The personality cult harmed socialist construction, but it could not stop the development of Soviet society or change the nature of the socialist state and its Armed Forces. The Party remained loyal to Marxism‑Leninism. Inspired by socialist ideals and utterly devoted to the Communist Party and Soviet power, the people worked with dedication to translate the programme of socialist construction into reality and strengthen the might of their Armed Forces. Therein lay the unconquerable force of socialism.
2. Security of the Frontiers
In the late thirties the Soviet Union started the large‑scale fortification of areas along its western border. Roads, depots, air strips and regular airfields were built in the border zone.
The Far Eastern border, too, was reinforced. This was known to the Japanese imperialists, who had invaded China. Bent on extending their aggression and seizing Soviet and Mongolian territories, the Japanese Army twice (1938 and 1939) tested the strength of the Soviet Union’s frontiers and those of its ally, the Mongolian People’s Republic, by direct attacks.
The first attempt was made in July‑August 1938 at the extreme southeastern tip of Primorye Territory at Lake Khasan. The Japanese opened hostilities on July 29. Two days later they crossed the Tumen‑Ula, a river along the border, and lunged into Soviet territory. The pirate attack was motivated through diplomatic channels by the pretext that the border there between Russia and China had been inaccurately designated.*
* The border was demarcated by the Sino‑Russian Hungchung Agreement of 1886, the attached map indicating incontrovertibly that the Lake Khasan area was inside the Russian border.
On August 6, in retaliation to the Japanese act of aggression troops under Marshal V. K. Blücher attacked the Japanese‑occupied heights. By the evening of August 9 Soviet territory was completely cleared of the invading force. The Red Army was ordered not to cross the frontier but to dig in on the heights. The hostilities ended on August 11.
But their failure at Lake Khasan did not deter the Japanese war architects. Less than a year later they repeated their aggression, this time on the border between China and the Mongolian People’s Republic at Khalkhin‑Gol. Some 300 Japanese troops crossed the Mongolian border on May 11, 1939, and advanced about 15 kilometres. In the days that followed the force was built up. The border violation sparked an armed conflict lasting nearly four months. The aggression was aimed both against Mongolia and the USSR. Under the terms of its friendship and mutual assistance agreement with Mongolia, the Soviet Union sent a large force against the invader.
Japanese attempts at mounting an offensive at the end of May and early in June failed. The US imperialists were obviously interested in fanning the Soviet‑Japanese conflict and exerted pressure on the Japanese rulers. Giving way, the Japanese militarists prepared assiduously for a fresh offensive. Planes, heavy guns and tanks were deployed to the battle area. By August the Japanese force was 75,000 strong. The assault was set for August 24.
But the Soviet and Mongolian commands forestalled the enemy’s offensive. Despite the remoteness of the war theatre from the railway and from supply depots, despite the absence of roads and the shortage of water and fuel, they deployed the Soviet 1st Army Group and attained a numerical advantage over the enemy. The group mounted an offensive on August 20 under G. K. Zhukov. Red Army and Mongolian troops inflicted a crushing defeat on the invasion force. By August 31 the last of the Japanese soldiers was driven out of Mongolia. The Soviet and Mongolian troops did not cross the frontier, a peace agreement being concluded between the USSR, the MPR and Japan in Moscow on September 15.
The failure of their two ventures convinced the Japanese militarists of Soviet strength. Their preparations for a new clash with the Soviet Union were now more deliberate and cautious, as borne out by the fact that Tokyo did not attack the Soviet Union together with Hitler Germany in 1941.
The war in the West posed new problems of defence and security for the USSR. After Poland’s defeat, Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia were in peril of nazi enslavement: their population, separated from the Soviet Republic by the Polish imperialists in 1920, was, like the whole Polish nation, abandoned to its fate. After the Polish Government fled the country, the Red Army received orders, on September 17, 1939, to enter Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia and place the lives and property of the people under its protection. This operation was assigned to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian fronts (renamed from the Kiev and Byelorussian military districts); Western Ukrainians became part of the fraternal people of the Ukraine, while Western Byelorussians rejoined their brothers in Byelorussia.
Soon, the freely‑elected people’s assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia requested reunification with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR granted the request in November 1939.
The tragic fate of bourgeois Poland alarmed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, for they, too, faced the imminent threat of German aggression. Although the peoples of these republics owed their independence to the October Revolution and naturally gravitated towards the USSR, from which they had been separated by the counter‑revolution in the early years of Soviet power, nazi Germany did her utmost to consolidate her influence there. This the Soviet Government could not countenance. Acting in the interests of the Baltic peoples, it offered Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia mutual aid agreements. These were concluded at the end of September and the beginning of October 1939. Under their terms, Red Army garrisons were stationed in the Baltic republics to ensure their security.
Economic and political contradictions beset the capitalist Baltic states. Reactionary elements stepped up their hostile activities against the Soviet Union and the Red Army units stationed in these countries. The anti‑popular policy of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian governments gave rise to discontent. Revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the respective Communist Parties became widespread. In June 1940 the bourgeois governments were overthrown and replaced by people’s governments. In July 1940 the newly‑elected Sejms of Latvia and Lithuania and the Estonian Duma requested the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to admit their countries to the Soviet Union, and in August 1940 they became, respectively, the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics.
That the Soviet border shifted westward improved the country’s strategic position. But in the northwest the situation deteriorated rapidly due to the provocative and aggressive policy of Finland’s rulers, who dreamed of extending their possessions eastward and founding a Greater Finland at the expense of Soviet territory. Leningrad, a large industrial and cultural centre whose population in 1939 equalled that of Finland, was the main object of their aggressive aims. The Soviet‑Finnish border along the Karelian Isthmus passed but 32 kilometres from Leningrad, which was thus within range of heavy artillery. Kronstadt, the main base of the Baltic Fleet, was also within range of Finnish heavy guns. The Finnish rulers built a powerful system of fortifications, known as the Mannerheim Line, along the isthmus so that the Finnish Command could rapidly concentrate and secretly deploy a large force to seize Leningrad in a lightning assault. In addition, Murmansk, the Soviet Union’s only ice‑free port in the north, remained unprotected: part of the islands covering it on the west belonged to Finland.
With the Second World War raging in the West, the Soviet Union could not suffer this situation at the doorsteps of Leningrad and repeatedly offered Finland mutually acceptable terms on which to settle the border question. But the Finnish reactionaries had other plans. Finnish war preparations indicated that, far from wishing to settle the dispute peacefully, Finland was deliberately creating tension as a prelude to an armed conflict.
General mobilisation was proclaimed in Finland in November 1939, and some 15 divisions were deployed along the frontier with the Soviet Union. Things came to a point where Soviet territory was shelled. This compelled the Soviet Government to denounce its non‑aggression treaty with Finland on November 28, 1939, and break off diplomatic relations. Finnish militarists responded with fresh provocations on the border near Leningrad.
In this situation hostilities broke out between the Finnish and Soviet armies on November 30.
An armed conflict might have been avoided if the Finnish Government had followed a policy consistent with the national interest of its people and had shown due understanding for the Soviet Union’s request to shift the frontier in the vicinity of the Karelian Isthmus. The more far‑sighted Finnish politicians admit this today. President Urho Kekkonen declared in September 1963: “If today, more than 20 years later, we put ourselves in the place of the Soviet Union, we would understand in the light of Hitler’s attack on the USSR in 1941 that the concern that country felt, and was bound to feel, with regard to its security at the end of the thirties, was entirely legitimate.” But the men who were at the helm at that time thought differently and plunged the country into a war.
The hostilities continued for three and a half months, surpassing the Far East conflict in scale and number of troops involved.
The main engagements were fought on the Karelian Isthmus. Soviet troops had to battle extraordinary difficulties. The winter that year was severe. The snow lay deep on all roads. The troops made slow and arduous headway against Finnish resistance between December 1939 and the beginning of February 1940. In the end, they reached the main zone of the Mannerheim Line. On February 11, the Northwestern Front (based on the Leningrad Military District), commanded by S. K. Timoshenko, assumed the offensive with naval and air support. Bitter fighting, which lasted all of a month, culminated in a breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line. Showing mass heroism Soviet troops occupied the fortified city of Vyborg, with operations also underway in other directions.
The breaching of the Mannerheim Line and the capture of Vyborg opened the road into Finland and, in particular, towards Helsinki, the capital. The Soviet Union, however, demonstrated once again that it did not intend to impair Finland’s independence and agreed on March 8 to open peace negotiations.
The Soviet‑Finnish conflict delighted reactionaries the world over. The German nazis worked covertly to fan it and turn it into a long, large‑scale anti‑Soviet war, while the Western imperialists did the same overtly. But the peace treaty signed with the Soviet Union by Finland against the formally expressed advice of the US, French and British governments frustrated their scheme. The situation along the northwestern border of the USSR returned to normal. Premises were created for lasting peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and Finland. The blame for the violation of peace on the Soviet‑Finnish frontier over a year later falls squarely on the Finnish reactionaries and their nazi patrons.
After the peace treaty with Finland, the main problems of the Soviet Union’s Western frontiers were solved, save one: that of Bessarabia. In 1918 the bourgeois‑landlord royal Government of Rumania had annexed from the Soviet Republic the territory of Bessarabia between the Dniester and Prut rivers populated by Moldavians. The USSR had never recognised Rumania’s title to this territory. Progressive elements in Rumania, notably the Communists, also opposed the forcible seizure of Bessarabia. The prospective military alliance with Germany and fascist developments in Rumania made the solution of the Bessarabian question vitally necessary.
On June 26 the Soviet Government demanded the return of Bessarabia and the transfer of the northern part of Bukovina, whose population consisted mostly of Ukrainians. The Rumanian rulers did not risk an open conflict with the USSR, and complied with this lawful demand. By agreement, the Red Army crossed the Dniester on June 28 and reached the Prut on June 30. A new Soviet‑Rumanian border was demarcated. Bessarabia was reunited with Soviet Moldavia. The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, with Kishinev as the capital, was set up on August 2, 1940. Northern Bukovina became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as Chernovitsy Region. This put an end to a historical injustice that had lasted 22 years.
The reunification of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Moldavian peoples, the restoration of Soviet power in the Baltic republics and their accession to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were major milestones in the solution of the national question and in strengthening the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union’s consistent fight for peace and security on the eve of the Second World War and in the war’s early stage yielded important results. The country’s international situation became more stable and its prestige rose. The strategic situation, too, was much improved. The new frontier was moved 200‑350 kilometres westward, meaning that the distance from the border to vitally important centres had increased. The Soviet Navy acquired incomparably better bases in the Baltic.
The frontier changes were accompanied by difficulties. Most of the fortified areas built along the old frontiers lost their former significance. In 1939, therefore, the personnel in these regions was reduced by more than one‑third, and in 1941 part of the artillery was removed from subsidiary sectors. The fortified areas were not entirely dismantled since it was seen that they could serve as a strong rear defensive line in the event of a forced withdrawal. The building of fortified areas along the new frontiers was started at a rapid rate. Nearly 140,000 men were engaged on this work daily, yet when nazi Germany attacked the strategic defensive lines still remained to be completed. Moreover, in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine railway tracks had not yet been widened to match Soviet standards. Communications were not as extensive as in the old border areas. Yet time was short. That fortifications along the western frontier were not ready when the war broke out greatly hindered resistance.
3. The Soviet Armed Forces
On the eve of the nazi attack the USSR had powerful Armed Forces organised along professional lines, with universal conscription exercised as an honourable duty of all male citizens reaching the age of 18. This provided the Red Army with a reserve of many millions.
The ground troops, Navy and Air Force had a large officer corps and political cadres. The ground troops had modern firearms, artillery, armour and other equipment. While some types of Soviet weapons were inferior to those of the Germans, others were superior.
The Communist Party devoted much of its attention to the political education of servicemen through Army and Navy Party organisations, fostering the spirit of Soviet patriotism, loyalty to socialist ideas and preparedness to defend the socialist country.
The Central Committee assigned 1,500 Party members to political posts in the Army and Navy at the beginning of 1940, and another 3,700 in June 1941, shortly before the war broke out. Of great importance was the further ideological and organisational strengthening of the Army and Navy Party organisations. More rank‑and‑file soldiers and commanders were admitted to Party membership. Ideological education improved. Primary branches grew and gained influence. By January 1, 1941, men from the ranks comprised 35 per cent of the Party membership in the Army and 46.3 per cent in the Navy. There were Communists in every Army platoon. In the Army, 12.7 per cent of the personnel were members or candidate members of the Party, and 39.5 per cent were Komsomol members.
Organisation, education and training were based on foremost Soviet military science that came into being together with the Red Army at the time of the Revolution and Civil War. It is founded on the general principles of dialectical and historical materialism, the Marxist‑Leninist teaching on war and Army and the policy of the Communist Party and Soviet Government.
The basic tenets of Soviet military science had been worked out by Lenin in writings devoted to the key maxims of Marxist military theory: the decisive role of the people; the socio‑economic and moral factors of modern warfare; importance of organisation and materiel in armed struggle; the dependence of military organisation and skill on the nature of the social system and technical development; the methods and forms of armed struggle and the laws governing it; the importance of single political and military leadership in war‑time, etc.
Lenin was the first to examine the key aspects of the origin and the character of wars. He revealed the economic roots of war in the imperialist epoch, classifying wars, outlining the military programme of the proletarian revolution, and substantiating the need for safeguarding the socialist country and building up its Armed Forces. Lenin’s legacy proved an invaluable foundation for Soviet military science, which rapidly attained a high standard, surpassing bourgeois military thought in many respects.
M. V. Frunze, M. N. Tukhachevsky, A. I. Yegorov, B. M. Shaposhnikov, I. E. Yakir, I. P. Uborevich, S. S. Kamenev and many other outstanding generals and military leaders had contributed to the growth of Soviet military science. Valuable contributions had been made by individual commanders and the professors and instructors of military academies.
Soviet strategy defined the tasks of the various service arms. It rejected, and rightly criticised the various one‑sided bourgeois theories ascribing the main role to some specific technical means—the air force or armour—or banking on “lightning war”. With the defence of the socialist fatherland as its guideline, Soviet military doctrine, a doctrine with a progressive outlook, justly envisaged the conduct of war with decisive joint operations by all the service arms. Attack was rightly considered the decisive strategic action, while defence was admitted to be necessary and natural. However, the possibility of long defensive operations along the entire strategic front on home ground, with the Armed Forces retreating in depth, was overlooked.
Soviet operational art, i.e., the theory and practice of preparing and conducting front and Army offensive and defensive operations, was of an extremely high standard. Soviet experts were the first to develop this new field in the science of war, which appeared during the wars at the beginning of the imperialist era, especially during the First World War. Leading Red Army theorists, rightly appreciating the increasing role of aircraft, tanks, airborne troops and long‑range artillery, advanced the theory of deep operations.
According to that theory, objectives had to be achieved by sledgehammer blows throughout the zone of the operational deployment of enemy troops, aiming to crush them. The theory of deep operations produced an alternative to positional warfare typical of the sanguinary but ineffective battles of the First World War. Methods were worked out for disposing defences in depth, capable of withstanding powerful offensives.
Tactics of general battle and combat by service arms—the theory and practice of fighting—were closely interlaced with the operational theory.
By and large, the Soviet science of war consisted of a sufficiently complete system of ideas on warfare, operations and combat. Soviet military thinking took into consideration the experience gained at Khalkhin‑Gol, and the wars in Spain, Finland and Western Europe. On the whole, with some exceptions,* correct conclusions were drawn from this experience.
In March 1940 a special plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) examined the lessons of the war with Finland. It pinpointed the shortcomings and charted measures to eliminate them. A sweeping programme was launched to reorganise and rearm the Red Army. Many commanders who had had their baptism of fire at Khalkhin‑Gol and in the Karelian forests were promoted. Training followed the principle, “Do as you would in battle”. But the programme was not completed.
(* The experience of using tank and motorised forces in Spain was wrongly assessed. It was decided to abolish tank corps and replace them with separate brigades and regiments. Soon afterwards the Soviet Command decided to return to the corps system. Nine motorised corps were formed in 1940. The formation of another 20 corps (with two tank and one motorised division in each) was commenced in February and March 1941. This measure was not completed by the time the war broke out because 16,600 tanks of new types were needed to bring these corps up to full strength, and industry was able to supply only 5,500 machines.)
At the time it attacked the USSR the German Army, as we have already pointed out, had nearly 8,500,000 effectives. Together with her satellites, Germany massed on the Soviet western frontier 190 divisions (5,500,000 men), close to 2,800 tanks (excluding light tanks), 47,260 field guns and mortars (excluding 50‑mm mortars) and 4,950 aircraft.
The powerful German force massed along the Soviet western frontier was faced by the Northern Fleet, units of the Leningrad Military District, the Baltic Fleet, and units of the Special Baltic, Western and Kiev districts, Odessa Military District and the Black Sea Fleet. The headquarters of each of the districts (excepting that of Odessa) was to serve as the headquarters of the respective fronts, while the Odessa HQ was to become that of the 9th Army.
At the close of April 1941, due to the worsening of the situation as a whole, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government took urgent steps to enhance the Red Army’s combat preparedness. Under the mobilisation plan, approved by the Government in February 1941, the People’s Commissar for Defence carried out a series of measures in May and June. On April 26 the Military Councils of the Transbaikal and Far Eastern military districts were ordered to prepare one motorised and two infantry corps (nine divisions in all) and two airborne brigades for dispatch to the western border districts. In mid‑June several air divisions were ordered to redeploy to the European part of the USSR from the Transbaikal area and the Far East. The Urals Military District received orders to send two divisions to the western frontier. On May 13, the 19th, 21st and 22nd armies from the North Caucasian, Volga and Urals military districts and the 25th Infantry Corps from the Kharkov Military District were ordered to deploy along the Western Dvina and the Dnieper. These units were to take up their positions on July 1‑3 as the Reserve of the High Command. The 16th Army was ordered to redeploy to the Kiev Military District from the Transbaikal Military District.
In late May 793,000 men were called up for training from the Reserve. The concentration of additional forces in the border military districts, the formation of new units and the transfer of territorial units to professional status required more officers. To meet this demand the pre‑schedule graduation of officer cadets from military schools was ordered by the People’s Commissar for Defence on May 14, 1941. On June 12‑15 the western border districts were ordered, in conformity with the defence plan, to move all the divisions, deployed in depth, closer to the state frontier. On June 19, three days before the war broke out, the military councils of the border military districts were ordered to detail field commands for the Northwestern, Western and Southwestern fronts and install them in field command posts. At the same time steps were taken to speed up the combat preparedness of the first‑echelon divisions of the border districts.
A decision to form the Southern Front was adopted on June 21. An operational group was dispatched from the Moscow Military District to Vinnitsa for this purpose. Under the same decision, the second‑echelon armies, i.e., the High Command Reserve, were placed under a single command—Marshal S. M. Budyonny. General G. K. Zhukov, Chief of the General Staff, was appointed to the overall command of the Southwestern and Southern fronts, and General K. A. Meretskov was put in command of the Northern Front.
The People’s Commissariat for the Navy ordered the fleets to intensify reconnaissance and tighten up security measures, and moved part of the Baltic Fleet from Liepaja and Tallinn to safer bases. Numerically the Soviet Armed Forces grew from 4,200,000 (in January 1941) to nearly 5,000,000 men (on June 1, 1941). Just before the outbreak of war the forces in the western border districts comprised 170 infantry, cavalry, tank and motorised divisions and two infantry brigades. These units had 2,900,000 effectives, and 1,800 heavy and medium tanks (including 1,475 KV and T‑34 tanks). Besides, they had many obsolete light and baby tanks, 34,695 field guns and mortars (excluding 50‑mm mortars), 1,540 aircraft of new types and a large number of obsolete planes. Special mention should be made of the fact that most divisions were understrength peace‑time units, with only part being converted to full strength.
Thus, as a result of the growing tension, the Soviet Command, acting on orders from the Party and the Government, started regrouping the Armed Forces both in the frontier and in the interior districts. But this measure was not completed. When the nazi hordes invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet troops were scattered over a vast territory stretching from the Barents to the Black Sea: the front‑line ran for 4,500 kilometres, of which 1,125 kilometres were along the coast guarded by the Navy. Actually, 170 Soviet divisions occupied a front 3,375 kilometres long and 300‑400 kilometres deep. The military districts’ first‑echelon units in direct proximity to the state frontier consisted of 56 divisions and two brigades. But even these units were thinly spread to a depth of some 50 kilometres. Second‑echelon divisions were deployed at a distance of from 50 to 100 kilometres from the frontier, while Reserve units were 150‑400 kilometres away from the frontier. All the tank divisions were in the second echelon or in the Reserve. The first echelon was weak, while the Reserve was inadequately prepared to carry out its tasks. The second strategic echelon was not fully deployed. Much of the mobilisation supplies stockpiled close to the border zone were hit or captured by the nazis in the first days of the war.
The enemy’s main advantage was that his troops were deployed close to the frontier in advance and concentrated in compact groups. His first echelon consisted of 103 divisions, ten of them panzer divisions, and was thus nearly twice as strong numerically as the Soviet first echelon. Furthermore, the German divisions were at full war‑time strength and primed for combat. In contrast, the Soviet divisions were not readied for combat and were thus caught unawares by the enemy attack. In these conditions effective resistance proved difficult.
When the war broke out the situation and the balance of strength were obviously unfavourable for the Red Army. Besides, in the areas of the main blows the nazi Command had built up overwhelming superiority. In the Kaunas‑Daugavpils direction, for example, it had 34 divisions (seven of which were panzer divisions) against 18 Soviet infantry divisions, in the Brest‑Baranovichi direction, 16 (including five panzer) divisions against seven Red Army divisions, in the Lutsk‑Rovno direction, 19 (including five panzer) divisions against nine Soviet divisions.
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Nevertheless, the industrialisation and collectivisation under the pre‑war five‑year plans provided enough material and economic resources for a maximum build‑up of the Soviet Union’s defence capability which forged ahead particularly under the third five‑year plan. “The Party,” state the Theses of the CC CPSU on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, “took important measures to reorganise industry and transport to meet the growing military threat. The defence industry built in the pre‑war years ensured the Armed Forces with supplies of modern military equipment.”
In the summer of 1941 the external situation was much more favourable for the Soviet Union than in 1939. There was no longer the threat of political isolation. The division of the imperialist states into two belligerent camps created the conditions for the formation of an anti‑fascist coalition. The USSR averted the threat of a simultaneous attack on its Western and Far Eastern frontiers, of a war against Germany and Japan, and thereby gained precious time in which to strengthen its defence capability. This time was not wasted. The Party and the Government secured an acceleration of the output of modern armaments and the build‑up of the necessary industrial potential, which in the course of the war gave Soviet arms numerical and qualitative superiority over the enemy.
Having seized many European countries, nazi Germany used almost their entire stock of armaments for her own Army. At her disposal were the armaments and equipment of 180 divisions of France, Belgium and other states. The absence of hostilities in the West enabled Hitler to throw the bulk of his own troops and those of the satellite states against the USSR. Along the frontiers of the Soviet Union nazi Germany deployed huge armies equipped with modern weapons and means of transportation.
All this put the Red Army at a disadvantage. The danger to the Soviet Union was extremely great.