For all the mobilizing force of political education, the army’s initiatives were often inconsistent and contradictory, less products of a single unified theory than of conflicting temperaments and viewpoints. For instance, military leaders differed greatly on whether soldiers should receive vodka to steel themselves for battle. On August 22, 1941, Stalin decreed that every soldier should receive one hundred grams of vodka a day. The directive was repealed on May 11, 1942, and then reintroduced on November 12, 1942. From May 1943 until the end of the war, unit commanders made their own decisions about alcohol allowances for troops.208 Senior Lieutenant Vasily Leshchinin of the 39th Guards Rifle Division spoke openly about giving alcohol to his men when preparing them and some recently arrived reserve units for an assault on Stalingrad’s industrial district. “We got to know the new reinforcements, talked to every one of them, organized assault teams. We spread our seasoned soldiers among them, cooked them a hot supper, gave them their hundred grams and said ‘All right guys, go and get it.’ We didn’t tell them how, but they went ahead and took that plant.”209 Other officers warned of the dangers of intoxication in battle. Here is Major Spitsky’s account:
Some say the one hundred grams handed out by order of the People’s Commissar was a necessity. I would say it was just the opposite. The more complicated the situation, the more we would choose to do without. For example, we commanders simply didn’t want to drink. Conducting an operation with a clear head is better.[ . . . ] There were indeed some small individuals who would credit the alcohol with actions that went beyond what was humanly possible, that were heroic, saying that nothing was impossible for someone who has had a few. But that of course wasn’t typical of the general opinion on that subject—just a minor aberration.
The admonition to avoid inebriation appears in an early 1943 report from Stalingrad: “[Enemy intelligence] can meet its objectives successfully only when [ . . . ] both the commander and soldiers are brave and resourceful, if their mind is clear and sober.” The wording of the report suggests that alcohol was widely used to prepare soldiers for their combat missions.210
There were also differences in combat style. Political officers urged soldiers to stand tall and proud as they marched into battle in the belief that the heroic posture would encourage others to follow suit. The agitator Izer Ayzenberg remembered how he assumed control of his battalion after the commander sustained an injury while preparing the unit to storm a hill. He called over a soldier named Polukhin, pressed the regiment flag into his hands, and told him to plant it on top of a water tower held by the enemy, in the hope that the waving flag would rally the troops. “When the enemy began retreating, covering us with fire, that Polukhin rose to full height and went across the battle line, carrying the flag. Infantry, not waiting for the flag to be placed, also rose up tall and threw themselves into the offensive. Our divisional commander watched that scene and said that it was exceedingly beautiful how the infantry, standing tall and crying hurrah, followed the flag. Polukhin did place the flag.” Ayzenberg does not specify the number of soldiers who lost their lives during this assault.
The sight of his soldiers falling in a shower of enemy bullets exhilarated Brigade Commissar Alexander Yegorov, of the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade. He was thrilled by his men’s willingness to put themselves in harm’s way. Earlier, a Soviet attack had stalled when the infantry refused to leave the trenches after an initial artillery barrage. At that point Yegorov’s reserve brigade received the order to step in: “As soon as the enemy noticed movement on our line they opened fire. But the joyful thing—my heart rejoiced at it—was that our people were resilient. Shrapnel was ripping our men out of line, there were huge bloodstains on the snow (the first snow had just fallen), but still they didn’t get down, they kept advancing.”211
Writer Vasily Grossman displayed similar enthusiasm when describing a battle in which an entire regiment of the 308th Rifle Division perished: “An iron wind struck them in the face, yet they kept moving forward. The enemy was likely possessed by a superstitious fear: Are these people who are attacking us? Are they mortal? [ . . . ] [They] were indeed mortal, and while few of them made it out alive, they had all done their duty.”212 Both Grossman and Yegorov were in thrall to the hero cult, convinced of every man’s ability to transform himself into a self-sacrificing warrior. Soviet ideas of heroism permeated all levels of warfare, from the upright bearing of the troops as they entered battle to infantrymen pitting themselves against German panzers to pilots crashing into enemy airplanes in midflight. These ideas came at a price: many of the Red Army’s enormous losses were a direct result. Yet as cultural norms they also had a great motivating power. Fighter pilot Ivan Sapryagayev summed it up in conversation with Grossman: “I always get into a fight. I don’t want distinction. I want to defeat the Germans, sacrificing my life. The battering ram—that is the character of a Russian; that is Soviet upbringing.”213
Major Zayonchkovsky shared this heroic disposition, but he also pointed out its dark side: the “rash, senseless courage, and the sometimes unnecessary risks. Here’s the kind of thing that happens during a day on the front lines: ‘Vanka, give me a smoke,’ and he gets up and runs over to him. Or people are walking normally in places where they need to crawl, and the next second they’re dead.” The flamboyant display of heroism that Zayonchkovsky criticized was, for General Chuikov, an indispensible linchpin in his authority as commander:
Attack. Stalingrad, 1943. Photographer: Natalya Bode
We don’t have heroes who aren’t afraid of anything. No one sees or knows what Chuikov does when he’s by himself, when there’s no witnesses, nobody to see him, to see what’s going on in his head. The idea that a commander would go to his subordinates and bare his poor little soul—you could find them, but they are the rejects. We’re in a bunker, and shell fragments are flying at us. But what, you just sit there, and that doesn’t get to you? I don’t believe it. The survival instinct is still there, but a man’s pride—an officer’s especially—is of vital importance in combat.
By contrast, General Mikhail Shumilov of the 64th Army repeatedly stressed that the first job of a good commander was to protect his troops. He recounted a successful attack that began with a fifty-five-minute artillery bombardment: “First there was a five-minute fire raid on the front line that was then taken deeper for ten minutes. At that time the infantry started firing heavily from all weapons, stuck out mannequins, and cried ‘Hurrah!,’ imitating a mass infantry attack. That disoriented the enemy, who decided that we were already attacking and started leaving the dugouts to go into the trenches. Just then, all of our artillery again concentrated on the enemy’s front line.”214 Other experienced commanders also noted the effectiveness of subterfuge. The fighter pilot Stepan Prutkov defended this furtive, ignoble form of warfare by arguing that the Germans did it too: “That is how we began tricking the Germans. [ . . . ] You shouldn’t fight them head-on. They’re crafty and sly, so you’ve got to be clever about it.”215 Since these maneuvers lacked the expressive and electrifying power of heroic, straight-backed soldiers striding into battle, they received little attention from political officers and war correspondents.
Shumilov acknowledged an important fact corroborated by other interviewees: for most of 1942 his soldiers lacked weapons and equipment. By January 4, 1943, when Shumilov gave his interview, the situation had changed. “Now that the army is saturated with machinery,” he said, the ability to operate them was paramount. The hero cult, filled with tales of soldiers who threw themselves into the path of oncoming German panzers, grew in part out of this scarcity. Consider Lieutenant Colonel Svirin’s depiction of the bloody battle on the northwest outskirts of Stalingrad in September 1942: “We educated the soldiers using the example of the brave defenders of Sevastopol, five of whom threw themselves under the tanks, and the example of the twenty-eight Panfilov soldiers who managed to hold back an avalanche of armor.”216
But the officers interviewed also noted a growing divide within the military. General Shumilov cited Front, a play by Alexander Korneychuk that premiered in the summer of 1942. It portrayed the conflict between the obstinate veterans of the Civil War and the younger generation of officers who had graduated from military academies in the 1930s. After the battle of Stalingrad, the soldiers’ confidence had become palpable. The defeat of an opponent previously considered invincible testified to their own military prowess. Many officers criticized superiors who relied on brute force alone, without military expertise. Regimental commander Alexander Gerasimov took an indirect swipe at his division head, Vasily Glazkov.217 When talking about divisional commander Ivan Afonin, the sailors of the Volga flotilla did not mince words.218 An especially severe rebuke was reserved for General Vasily Gordov, who commanded the Stalingrad Front in July and August 1942. Divisional commander Stepan Guryev of the 39th Guards Division, who had served under Gordov, believed that he was “chiefly responsible” for the heavy losses in the 62nd and 64th Armies on the Don steppes: “History will never forgive him. [ . . . ] Gordov completely lacks talent.” Senior Lieutenant Dubrovsky also pinned the blame on Gordov. “To be honest,” he said, “what happened on the Don in August could only be described as a catastrophe.” He too pinned the blame on General Gordov. General Chuikov noted that he saved the 64th Army from annihilation by disobeying Gordov’s commands and ordering a rapid retreat; the 62nd Army held its position and was nearly destroyed by German panzers and aircraft. “The front command,” Chuikov summed up, “did not take the direction into consideration, even though Comrade Stalin had warned Gordov and the rest that Tsymlyanskaya was the foremost and most important direction for the enemy.” Gordov was relieved of command and demoted in August 1942, allowing the eyewitnesses interviewed in 1943 to criticize him without fear of reprisals. Yet Stalin, who time and again goaded commanders on the front to initiate bloody offensives and threatened them with severe punishment if they failed, escaped criticism of any kind. (It is not known how many Red Army soldiers in Stalingrad knew of Stalin’s leadership style or mistrusted it.)
General Mikhail Shumilov (center) and members of his military council (S. T. Serdyuk, front; Konstantin Abramov, rear) in Stalingrad, January 1943.
Despite the emphasis on military expertise and strategy after 1942, many of the command forms from the Civil War survived. Stalin valued commanders like Gordov, who did not hesitate to sacrifice entire divisions for a spectacular offensive. The vilified ex-commander made a comeback in 1943, rising to colonel general and later taking part in the attacks on Berlin and Prague. In April 1945 he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.219