Despite—or because of—its massive expansion between 1938 and 1941, the Red Army was poorly equipped for the German attack in June 1941. The impressive number of Red Army soldiers enlisted by that time—5 million versus 1.6 million in January 1938108—obscured the fact that most of the recruits, assembled near the Polish border, were inexperienced and poorly trained. When the Hitler-Stalin pact put half of Poland in the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, the Red Army positioned its soldiers close to the new border, where they could repel an enemy attack quickly and decisively. They erected a wall immediately behind the border, mostly with materials taken from the old line of defense, known by the Germans as the Stalin line. When war broke out, the new wall was still incomplete and the old one half demolished; neither provided significant protection.
The first phase of the Soviet Union’s wartime production favored quantity over quality, especially when it came to aerial forces. When the Germans invaded, Soviet warplanes lacked radio equipment, making effective communication with ground troops and other aircraft impossible,109and the pilots and airplane mechanics were inadequately trained. As a result, in the first year of the war Germany managed to immobilize almost the entire Soviet air force, a large part on the ground in the Blitz raids of June 1941. By the end of 1941, the Soviet Union had lost more than 10,000 aircraft. Another 10,000 machines were inoperative due to breakdowns and mechanical defects. Germany incurred fifteen times fewer losses during the same period.110 Many of the Red Army soldiers interviewed in Stalingrad noted the poor performance of the Soviet air force and Germany’s absolute air superiority in the summer and fall of 1942. The soldiers criticized the poor coordination within the armed services and the lack of experience in mechanized and mobile warfare. In 1942 the Red Army improved its coordination, as well as its military hardware, especially with the introduction of the T-34 tank and the Pe-2 dive bomber, which the Germans came to respect and fear.111
The Soviets were up against a 4 million man army that possessed superior technology, well-rehearsed tactical maneuvers, and almost two years of uninterrupted combat experience. The Wehrmacht’s arsenal comprised first-rate reconnaissance, tested coordination between tank troops, air force, and infantry, and a proven artillery that could unleash devastating barrages. Hitler and his generals believed that they could deliver a death blow to the Red Army with deep pincer movements. This strategy yielded hundreds of thousands of prisoners, but it did not break the Red Army’s will. The Wehrmacht lost 185,000 men on the Eastern Front in the first three months of battle, almost twice as many as it had since June 1941.112
The German leadership was oblivious to the strong backing the Soviet regime received from its people and its ability to mobilize a seemingly inexhaustible number of troops. Just as Nazi Germany was skilled militarily, the Soviet system was well versed politically: with a push of a button it could launch a political campaign, exhorting citizens to go above and beyond. One example was the evacuation of industry after the German invasion on June 22, 1941. Within six months, the Soviets completely dismantled 1,500 large plants and relocated their machinery and workers to the east. As Soviet leaders had not reckoned with the Germans advancing so far into the country, no evacuation plans had been drawn up in advance. The massive campaign worked because it was executed in the command economy style that the Soviets had employed successfully for many years.113 The regime sought to raise the fighting spirit of civilians and soldiers against the “fascist aggressors,” just as the Russian empire had in the Patriotic War of 1812. Stalin appealed to his people’s love for country, calling on his “brothers and sisters” to fight a “just war” that would end in either Soviet liberation or German enslavement. The many thousands of Soviet citizens, men and women alike, who volunteered for the front in the first weeks of the war confirmed the effectiveness of his appeal.
Owing to the enormous losses sustained by the Red Army in the initial months—by December 1941, 3 million soldiers had been killed or captured114—the military leadership kept expanding the pool of potential recruits. From late 1941 on, it began sending non-Slavic soldiers to the front, though their political loyalty and military ability were considered suspect. By 1945, 8 million people besides the Slavs—Uzbeks, Kazaks, Tatars, Latvians, and others—had joined the Red Army, close to one-fourth of the 34 million who enlisted during the war.115 The high number of casualties compelled Stalin to conscript women into the Red Army, in particular female Komsomols who had volunteered in the summer of 1941 but had yet to be cleared for armed combat. Over the course of several recruitment waves beginning in 1942, a total of 1 million women entered the armed forces.
The inexperience of the recruits led to panicked retreats, especially in the first months of war, prompting Soviet commanders to take drastic measures. Following a method implemented in the Civil War and then again in the Winter War,116 they deployed blocking squads ordered to shoot soldiers who were unwilling to fight and could not be persuaded in any other way. Order no. 270, issued by Stalin in August 1941, branded any Red soldier captured alive a traitor to his country.117 The family members of imprisoned troops saw their benefits cut; wives of captive officers were often sent to labor camps. At the same time, the regime appealed to the soldiers’ sense of honor and sought to raise the morale of the commanders. As in the tsarist army, units that distinguished themselves through bravery and perseverance were granted Guards status. Leading the way in September 1941 were four divisions, “divisions of heroes,” as the army newspaper Red Star put it, their ranks “welded together like steel, firm and unshakable.”118
General Chuikov (pictured on the far left) presents the commander and the commissar of the 39th Rifle Division (both kneeling) with the Guards title in Stalingrad, January 3, 1943. The ceremony took place on the steep banks of the Volga. The division soldiers (outside the picture) kneel before the commanding officers. Photographer: Georgy Samsonov
Soviet leaders put most of their stock in the political mobilization of Red Army soldiers. They banked on the influence of the Communist party and sought to increase it at every turn. As the war progressed, the number of party members in the Red Army rose steeply, and by July 1945 there were 2,984,750 party members, more than one in four, up from 654,000 at the war’s onset. Between 1941 and 1945 membership in the Young Communist League tripled to 2,393,345 soldiers who were Komsomol members. Taken together, these figures amount to a strongly communist army by war’s end.119 This development was consistent with the party’s earlier expansions—during the Civil War, when party membership increased by 600 percent, and once again during the first five year plan. By contrast, party membership contracted in the wake of the political purges (in 1921, 1933–1939, and starting again in 1944).
To acquire as many new members as possible in a short period of time, the party simplified its admission criteria. In December 1941 the Central Committee shortened the trial period for new candidates from one year to three months. Moreover, applicants no longer needed to submit recommendations from longtime party members. Pragmatic considerations dictated some of these changes. The previous system was time-consuming and impractical in wartime, especially when the objective was to increase membership. Another obvious factor was the changing character of the party.120 Soldiers who before the war had stood no chance of membership were now achieving glory and honor as party comrades. Captain Alexander Olkhovkin, the propaganda instructor for the 39th Guards Division, spoke of one such soldier in his interview. On November 19, 1942, some men from his division met to discuss the circulation of the general attack order. Olkhovkin joined the meeting as a sniper was speaking. The sniper, Olkhovkin remarked, was “completely uneducated. This is how he talks: ‘We was about to go on the attack.’ He’d say, ‘I knowed I was gonna be a sniper today.’ Before that he was a runner for the battalion commander. This man—Afonkin was his name—started working as a sniper. Over the course of eighteen days he racked up thirty-nine Hitlerites. Now he’s been admitted to the party and decorated.”121
In the war years the idea of a good party comrade was quite simple. A successful candidate had to prove that he had killed a German soldier, shot down an enemy plane, or taken out a panzer. Soldiers received forms known as “vengeance accounts” to record the number of opponents they killed and the number of weapons they destroyed. A soldier with an empty account had no chance of being admitted to the party.122 By contrast, someone like the sniper Vasily Zaytsev rose immediately to communist status—the number of Germans he killed was recommendation enough. As Zaytsev explained, “I thought, How can I join the party when I don’t know the program? I read the program and wrote my application right there in a trench. Two days later I was summoned to a party commission. By then I’d killed sixty Germans. I’d been decorated.”123
The ideal communist in wartime was occasionally described as bloodthirsty. Consider Colonel Nikolai Glamazda’s description of the final battle of a commissar named Yudayev, who led an assault unit in the 253rd Regiment of the 45th Division. When storming a German bunker, his:
rifle was knocked out of his hands by a grenade fragment. Comrade Yudayev rushed at one of the unarmed Germans, grabbed him by the throat, and strangled him. The Germans threw in some reinforcements and again pounced on that handful of heroes. Yudayev was raised by the Germans on their bayonets but wouldn’t let go of his victim. Impaled and raised on bayonets, he was still holding on to his strangled German. So he had strangled him and died on the bayonets himself. The Germans overran that trench but after some time that company kicked them out of the dugout, took that hero Yudayev, and buried him by the third workshop of the Red October plant.124
Colonel Dobryakov, the deputy director of the political department of the 64th army, described a similarly violent scene:
The battery commander of the 154th Marine Brigade was put in charge of the defense. He had thirteen men including himself. He was ordered not to engage the Germans under any circumstances because he had so few men and the Germans were already advancing. He couldn’t bring himself to stay put, yelled “Hurrah!,” and attacked a company that was supported by machine guns. He drove them out, killing seven Germans himself. During that assault a piece of flesh was torn from his side. He went up to the brigade commander, Colonel Smirnov, and asked: “Comrade Colonel, can I have a little something to drink?”
“Yes, of course,” said the colonel.
And then the wounded battery commander held up that piece of flesh and asked: “Do you suppose this is worth seven Germans?”125
Needless to say, the missing flesh from the commander’s body guaranteed his admission to the party.
As the war raged on, the party extended its influence by tailoring its political efforts to circumstances on the battlefield. Retaliation for the suffering inflicted by the enemy and the will to victory constituted a common denominator among the soldiers. “We are communists; we will avenge our murdered soldiers, commanders, and political officers.” To the mind of Ivan Vasiliev, commissar of the 62nd army, this expressed the overwhelming mood in the battle for Stalingrad.126 General Chuikov relayed to Vasily Grossman the hands-on quality of political education: “Political work: everything has only one purpose, and everything is done together with the soldiers. As for isms—communism, nationalism—we weren’t doing that.” Nevertheless, as Chuikov stressed when interviewed by historians, Soviet soldiers in Stalingrad demonstrated a high level of political consciousness.127 He meant that Red Army soldiers had internalized the “patriotic duty” promoted by the party to hold Stalingrad at all costs. For Chuikov, this was the essential reason for Soviet victory.
During the battle of Stalingrad the Communist party made an extra effort to deepen its influence. Between August and October 1942, the number of party members on the Stalingrad Front increased by 25,000, reaching a total of 53,500.128 By November membership surpassed 60,000.129These numbers do not take into account battlefield losses and need an upward correction for an accurate total. Major Yakov Serov, the political department director of the 45th Division, provided some unit-level specifics. In the first months of the battle of Stalingrad, the 45th Division had 840 party members, of whom 163 died in battle and 405 were sidelined by injuries. During the same period, 659 additional soldiers joined the party. “People took joining the party very seriously and applied only when they had six, seven, ten Fritzes130 to their name. One would show up and claim: I have killed ten Fritzes. Here is my certificate. No commando would apply before opening his [vengeance] account.” Conveying what party membership meant for soldiers, Serov quoted from their applications:
Junior Sergeant Ivan Sleptsov of the 178th Artillery Regiment expressed this wish: “In the fight with beastly fascism I want to be a communist. I will smite the enemy until my eyes can see and my hands can rotate the elevation and traverse wheels of my cannon. I will not disgrace the lofty rank of a Bolshevik warrior in the fight for the motherland. I ask to be admitted to the ranks of the Communist party, I ask that my request be granted. In these trying times when the destiny of mankind lies in the balance, our party is leading us to victory. I want to become its member, and under its banner my strength and hatred for the occupiers will grow ever more. The single-mindedness of the party is my own single-mindedness, and should I fall in battle, the party will avenge me. I swear to be its faithful member, to be its faithful defender to my last drop of blood.”
And here is the application of Novitsky, a sergeant-major in our reconnaissance unit: “In these trying times when the destiny of mankind lies in the balance, our party is leading us to victory. I want to become its member, and under its banner my strength and hatred for the occupiers will grow ever more. The single-mindedness of the party is my own single-mindedness, and should I fall in battle, the party will avenge me. I swear to be its faithful member, to be its faithful defender to my last drop of blood.”131
The high casualty rates in the battle of Stalingrad supplied additional impetus to join the party. Party functionaries tried to persuade soldiers to submit their applications before combat. This way they could be certain of finding a place in the communist pantheon if they were killed. “They don’t want to join the Komsomol before entering combat,” reported 2nd Lieutenant Nikolai Karpov, the Komsomol secretary in the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade. “They start looking for an excuse—‘let’s wait till after this fight.’ I put it to them bluntly: ‘How can you go fight? If you’re killed, you’ll die without being politically conscious. But if you die as a member of the Komsomol, you will die in glory.’ I got six people to join the Komsomol that way.”132 Several political officers reported that seriously injured soldiers asked to enter the party so they could die as communists. Sergeant Alexander Duka, also of the 38th Rifle Brigade, explained how the thought of death motivated him to join the party.133