Russia by Martin Sixsmith

Author:Martin Sixsmith [Sixsmith, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446416884
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Moscow had held out. Christmas and New Year celebrations in the exhausted capital were muted. Yet Stalin seems to have exchanged acute depression for manic optimism. He told the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, that the war had reached a turning point:

The German army is1 exhausted. Its commanders hoped to end the war before winter and made no proper preparations for a winter campaign. They are poorly clothed, poorly fed and losing morale. But the USSR has massive reinforcements, which are now going into action … We will continue to advance on all fronts.

Stalin’s exuberance was not shared by the military. Marshal Zhukov’s troops had pushed the Germans back some 80 miles, but the momentum had not yet swung to the Soviets. Zhukov pleaded that the Red Army needed time to regroup; Stalin ordered an all-out counter-offensive. He told his generals they must emulate Kutuzov in 1812 and chase the invading armies out of the Russian lands. But the attack launched in January 1942 made little impact. The Soviet forces2 were too weak to dislodge the Germans, and by April the offensive was bogged down in the mud of the spring rasputitsa. Four hundred thousand more men were captured or wounded. Stalin was forced to abandon the campaign. The conflict settled into a brief stalemate.

The men at the front were not the only ones to suffer. Those left behind endured their own hardships. It was a rare family that did not have a father, son or brother away in battle, and by the end of the war few would escape without losing a relative. The longing and anxiety of the separated was captured in a poem by Konstantin Simonov, Zhdi Menya (Wait for Me3), which became as popular in Russia as the songs of Vera Lynn in Britain or Marlene Dietrich in Germany. Its hypnotic rhythms are a half-comforting, half-despairing prayer for the safe return of millions who would never come back:

Wait for me, and I’ll come back!

Wait in patience yet,

When they tell you off by heart

That you really should forget.

Even when my dearest ones

All say that I am lost,

Even when my friends give up,

And sit and count the cost,

Drink a glass of bitter wine

To their absent fallen friend –

Wait! And do not drink with them!

Wait until the end!

But the women of the Soviet Union did more than just wait. It fell to them to fill the gaps left in industry and agriculture. In December 1941, a new law mobilised all undrafted workers for war work. Overtime was made obligatory, holidays were suspended and the working day increased to 12 hours. Women between the ages of 16 and 55 took up the jobs left by the fighting men, stoking furnaces, driving tractors and operating heavy machinery.

More and more factories were being dismantled and relocated to the east, hastily reassembled in the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Millions of people were evacuated with them, plunged into a new life in an unknown region. Living conditions were harsh: factories were rebuilt first and accommodation second.

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