I've been reminded of the punch line more than once over the past several weeks as I've read endless lectures to the Russians on how they should go about remembering the defeat of Nazi Germany sixty years ago. Anne Applebaum's op-ed in the Washington Post fits the almost-universal pattern.
Try, if you can, to picture the scene. A vast crowd in Red Square: Lenin's tomb and Stalin's memorial in the background. Soldiers march in goose step behind rolling tanks, and the air echoes with martial music, occasionally drowned out by the whine of fighter jets. On the reviewing stand, statesmen are gathered: Kim Jong Il, the dictator of North Korea, Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former dictator of Poland -- and President George W. Bush.
That description may sound fanciful or improbable. It is neither. On the contrary, that is more or less what will appear on your television screen May 9, when the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II is celebrated in Moscow. I have exaggerated only one detail: Although Kim Jong Il has been invited, his attendance has not yet been confirmed. But Jaruzelski is definitely coming, as are Lukashenko, Bush and several dozen other heads of state. President Vladimir Putin of Russia will preside.
Of course, conveniently airbrushed from this Soviet-esque word-picture are the other leaders gathered in Red Square from the wartime allies of America and the USSR. But left out of this picture is also Red Square itself -- its colorful vitality, its glorious collection of ancient and modern symbols, Lenin's tomb and rock concerts. Standing in Red Square, one has the sense of an ageless, changeless society characterized incongruously by its never-ending arduous struggle to remake itself. This is not a place or a people trapped for eternity in a snapshot of politburo members atop a reviewing stand. That fact is, for me, one of the many reasons to celebrate this May 9 and makes Red Square an appropriate venue, among many, for those remembrances.
I've also found remarkable, in the editorials and media coverage leading up to May 9, that the costs borne by all of the Allies in the defeat of Nazi Germany seem to have been overlooked or even lost altogether. Searching for "Stalingrad" or "Leningrad" or the "Eastern Front" produces hardly a single recent item. For that matter, until President Bush appeared on Saturday at an American battlefield cemetery in the Netherlands, virtually nothing has been heard about those who lost their lives fighting the Nazis on the Western Front. That generation, which has been called the "greatest" in the US, endured horrors and made sacrifices that are simply unimaginable today. The last of that generation will be walking proudly to the "echoes of martial music" in Red Square on May 9. While some of them are still with us, we should remember them and the stories they wrote with their lives.
Certainly, we should never dismiss the real problems at the heart of quarrels over several centuries of Central and Eastern European history, including the Cold War period of Soviet domination. Russia itself is suffering from the failure to fill meaningfully huge lacunae in its historical narrative. A number of thoughtful comments have recently been written on the questions of "facing up to history" and reconciliation, and I'll try to take up those themes in a future post. But today I feel like assembling a few of the pictures -- undoubtedly familiar to most of you -- that are part of my impressionistic mental scrapbook but aren't likely to make much of an appearance in the media this VE Day.
First, Red Square itself, and the Kremlin on the other side of the wall, which forms one side of the Square and is in some ways an essential part of the Square. This panorama is of the most common view of the Kremlin side of Red Square, with Lenin's tomb at the base, and looking toward the State Historical Museum from the St Basil (river) end of the Square.
The Cold War images that dominate our notion of Red Square are so falsely one-dimensional. But then too, most guidebook photos are equally at fault -- dramatic but peopleless, capturing none of the rich lively variety of human activity that shares these oversized spaces in the heart of a great city. I'm not a photographer and am limited to the easy-to-locate images on the web, all too few of which catch the faces and color and motion that bring Red Square to life. But I hope you can get a bit of the flavor.
Opposite the Kremlin wall, taking up nearly the entirety of the eastern side of Red Square, is the shopping arcade cum department store, State Universal Store (GUM), which was built in the 1890s. This photo, which unlike most guidebooks gives a bit of the sense of the shopping crowds, is from August 2003 by Wikipedia user Stan Shebs.
Those who are frequent visitors to Red Square come to know its many changing faces, winter and summer, day and night: the daily to-and-fro of government officialdom; the Russian and foreign tourists sighing at the glories of churches, museums, and palaces; the commercial bustle from nearby shopping centers, hotels and conference halls; the imposing symbols of past imperial and Soviet power; the intimacy of rebuilt cathedrals and chapels with their stream of candle-lighting worshipers; the hushed and thoughtful visitors to the monuments and the eternal flame in the park just outside the entrance; the giggling hordes of school children avidly snapping photos of each other; the Muscovites of all ages for whom the Square is a vast central point to fix thousands of impromptu meetings throughout the day and evening.
St Basil's Cathedral sits at the mouth of the river end of the Square. For two months one winter I was lucky enough to have a view, day and night, of St Basil's from across the river. Like a cherished friend, I never tire of gazing at it. This is one of my favorite photos, taken by Denis Sinyakovan (AFP), of one of the countless personalities of St Basil.
The photos of the Kremlin from inside Red Square give only the smallest glimpse of the vast complex sitting on the other side of the wall. In person, the Kremlin is both enormously intimidating and part of the fabric of the place. The churches, palaces, offices, conference halls, museums -- all are sealed off by the red brick of the Kremlin yet are constantly visible in gold onion domes, pastel and ocher walls, glinting windows, roofs of all heights and angles, and people flowing in and out of the gates.
Just beyond St Basil's, the Kremlin wall that extends from Red Square curls around to form the long riverside wall. As the photo above suggests, Moscow's central traffic patterns are dominated by the huge roadway that forms the circumference of a district where fews cars have access. This central district encompasses not only the Kremlin and Red Square but the nearby rabbit-warren of mostly-old buildings stuffed with the offices of government ministries and various organizations that work closely with the government. Short version -- anywhere you want to go, you've got to drive at least halfway around Red Square and the Kremlin. The photo is by Ukraine and Russia-based journalist Veronica Khokhlova, better known to the blogosphere as the author of Neeka's Backlog, one of the main "go-to" blogs during the Orange Revolution.
And this is the same view of the riverside from the other direction. It's taken from across the river, seen from the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was built in the 1990s on the site of the old Cathedral that Stalin tore down in 1931. This photo, with the Kremlin walls and roadway just visible below the walls of the palaces and the church towers, gives a better sense of the sheer scale of the whole complex. By Georg Dembrowski in the German Wikipedia.
Red Square and the Kremlin are great places for strolling. Their imperious gigantism is constantly being broken up by niches of intimate space or restful bits of park, like this small cluster of trees with grass and benches. This particular spot is especially lovely at night in winter when graceful snow flakes are caught falling in the lights from the Kremlin. Photo courtesy of neeka's fotolog.
Another quiet park area along the base of the Kremlin walls -- this time on the cityside where the old Neglinnaya River used to run. This is where you find the eternal flame and the monuments to the cities. Here, neeka's fotolog has a picture of the memorials to Sevastopol and Odessa.
Preparations for the VE-Day celebrations have been underway for some time. Neeka was in Moscow in late April when this group of senior citizens was gathering and starting to get things ready. She has lots of wonderful shots -- these are just a few I picked out and don't include her favorites.
The hotel where you see them exiting as they head across the road to the Kremlin is the Rossiya, one of the great architectural crimes in history. A massive one-kilometer-square concrete and glass monstrosity on the river next to the Kremlin, it was built to house the representatives of the Congress of Peoples Deputies and the Supreme Soviet when they would come to town for their "legislative" sessions. To build it, the government razed an incredible collection of ancient churches and houses in what was the centuries-old foreign commercial quarter. Only a handful of tiny churches remain, popping up their heads incongruously next to a driveway or a parking garage or beside a building in the Rossiya complex. The Rossiya is infamous for, among other things, the difficulties its managers faced in the 90s in getting rid of the rats. The place is so big, that whatever section they'd close to fumigate, the little boogers would hide out in other sections and return straight away once the extermination was done. (Maybe the BugMan was doing some consulting on the side when he was in Moscow in the mid-90s.) And then there are the choice clientele in the discos and nightclubs, and then there's... oh, the tales of the Rossiya are simply legion. And just about the most valuable real estate in the world.
But enough of the Rossiya. Neeka has captured quite a collection of medals. And obviously quite a collection of characters as well. A noticeably large number of women, many looking to still be in pretty fine shape. And all far better dressed than would have been the case fifteen years ago. (The shoes were always the dead give-away in former Soviet attire.)
I'm not sure it would be wise to talk politics with all of the guys, however.
The pride and enthusiasm seen on the faces of the Russian survivors of the Great Patriotic War can only be fully understood when we remember the extraordinary price they paid in beating back the Nazi invasion of their country. The precise numbers will never be known, but a frequently cited estimate is that more than 27 million Russians and other nationalities died in the process of defending the Soviet Union and defeating Hitler in the East. For all the celebration in Moscow, the day will be dominated by memories of their staggering losses and their indominatable courage, and especially of Stalingrad and Leningrad, where they defeated the Germans on the soil of European Russia, but at a cost Americans can hardly imagine.
Stalingrad (now called Volgograd) was the site of perhaps the bloodiest single battle in human history. Over a million and a half from both sides died between August 1941 and early February 1942. Many historians of World War II view Stalingrad as the key turning point in the Allied war against Germany. Hitler lost an entire army, one-quarter of his entire forces on the Eastern Front. The fighting in the city itself was dominated by infantry -- brutal close quarter combat among the ravaged rubble of apartments, stores and factories -- and intense continuous shelling.
Before the Soviets launched their counter-attack on November 19, which ultimately achieved a giant encirclement of the Germans, the Germans had managed to take about 90% of the city, but the battle that had lasted two and a half months and at terrible cost on both sides. An overview of the battle for the city from Wikipedia:
By the end of August, [German] Army Group South (B) had finally reached the Volga to the north of Stalingrad. Another advance to the river south of the city followed. By 1 September 1942, the Soviets could only supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the Volga. A massive German air bombardment on 23 August had caused a firestorm in the city, killing thousands of civilians and turning the city into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins. Eighty percent of the living space in the city was destroyed. The Soviet 62nd Army formed defense lines amid the debris, with strongpoints situated in houses and factories. One example of this destruction's source is that in the month of September alone the Germans expended 25,000,000 rounds of small arms fire in Stalingrad.
Fighting in the city was fierce and desperate. Stalin had authorized execution of his own troops if they retreated. "Not a step back!" was the slogan. During the battle, Soviet security forces arrested, executed or sent 13,000 of their own troops to penal battalions for "cowardice". As many as 300,000 were returned to their units or used to reman other units. The Germans meanwhile pushed forward at all costs, also suffering heavy casualties. Soviet reinforcements were shipped across the river Volga from the eastern bank, constantly attacked by German artillery and air raids. The life expectancy of a newly arrived Soviet soldier in the city dropped to a few hours. Bitter fighting raged for every street, every factory, every house, basement and staircase. The Germans, calling this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("rat-war"), bitterly joked about having captured the kitchen but still fighting for the living-room.
Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a prominent blood-soaked hill above the city, was particularly merciless. The height changed hands several times. At one of their counter-assaults to recapture it, the Soviets lost an entire division of 10,000 men in one day. Meanwhile, close combat inside the Grain Elevator, a huge silo where Soviet and German soldiers were so close that they could hear each other breathe, went on for weeks. In another part of the city, an apartment building defended by a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov was turned into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later called "Pavlov's House", oversaw a square in the city centre. The soldiers surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and breached the walls in the basement for better communications.
With no end to the fighting in sight, the Germans started transferring increasingly heavy artillery to the city, eventually several gigantic 600mm mortars. Soviet artillery kept taking German positions under fire from the Eastern bank of the Volga. The Soviet defenders continued using the resulting ruins as defensive positions. Soviet snipers also successfully used the ruins to hide in. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans. (The highest scorer only identified as "Zikan", being credited with 224 kills by November 20, 1942, and Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev being credited with 149 kills during the battle). German tanks meanwhile became useless in heaps of rubble up to 8 m high. If they still were able to move forward, they were taken under Soviet anti-tank fire from the roof tops.
For both Stalin and for Hitler, the battle of Stalingrad became a question of life and death. Soviet command moved the Red Army's strategic reserves from the Moscow area to the lower Volga, and transferred all available aircraft from the entire country to Stalingrad. The strain on both military commanders was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, while Chuikov experienced an outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely.
In November, after three months of carnage and slow and costly advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90% of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow pockets. In addition, ice-floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders across the river. Nevertheless the fighting, especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the Red October tractor factory and the Barrikady factory became world famous. While Soviet soldiers defended their positions and took the Germans under fire, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks and other weapons in the direct vicinity of the battlefield, sometimes on the battlefield itself.
[Photos of Stalingrad are from a Russian book by Vasili Chuikov "The Battle of the Century" on the stalingrad.com website. The first is captioned "Front-line of 62th Soviet Army" and the second "Fighting on the Stalingrad's street"]
In the center of Volgograd today is a square with an eternal flame. If you look at the buildings lining the square on all four sides, you have to remind yourself that virtually everything you see was built since 1943. Almost nothing but foundations remained.
Mamayev Kurgan, the slopes of which saw such intense fighting, is now the site of the enormous memorial complex to the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad. It is crowned by a huge statue, 52 meters high, called "Mother Russia calls for!" that dominates the heights overlooking the city and river. As the website of the memorial explains, "The monument – a modern interpretation of an image of the antic Nikka – goddess of the victory – calls her sons and daughters to resist the enemy and continue advancing onto it. " These photos, of the statue and of the ceremonial avenue of poplars that lead to the base of the memorial, are from the official website. The statue and complex are so immense that, as a visitor to Volgograd during a particularly foggy week in winter, I was unable to see more than the base of the complex.
Stalingrad's citizens suffered enormously in the early weeks of bombing, but eventually the vast majority of the population was evacuated.
Thousands of houses and blocks of flats were destroyed in the heavy bombing, and consequently the civilian population suffered heavy casualties. Approximately 40 thousand people died and [more] than 150,000 were wounded. They took shelter in the gullies and in the basements of houses. By the end of August the population had been reduced to 400,000. To avoid further loss of life the City Defence Committee organised the evacuation of the population together with valuable property belonging to the state. From August 24th to September 14th some 300,000 people and a large amount of factory equipment were taken across the Volga under continuous enemy fire.
The population of Leningrad, which was under siege by the Germans for the famous "900 days" described by Harrison Salisbury, was not as lucky as that of Stalingrad. The siege of Leningrad isolated the city and its suburbs completely until late November, when Lake Lagoda froze and the Road of Life ice road was established. From the St Petersburg website:
Less than two and a half months after the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, German troops were already approaching Leningrad. The Red Army was outflanked and on September 8 1941 the Germans had fully encircled Leningrad and the siege began. The siege lasted for a total of 900 days, from September 8 1941 until January 27 1944. The city's almost 3 million civilians (including about 400,000 children) refused to surrender and endured rapidly increasing hardships in the encircled city. Food and fuel stocks were limited to a mere 1-2 month supply, public transport was not operational and by the winter of 1941-42 there was no heating, no water supply, almost no electricity and very little food. In January 1942 in the depths of an unusually cold winter, the city's food rations reached an all time low of only 125 grams (about 1/4 of a pound) of bread per person per day. In just two months, January and February of 1942, 200,000 people died in Leningrad of cold and starvation. Despite these tragic losses and the inhuman conditions the city's war industries still continued to work and the city did not surrender.
The story of the stages of the siege and the Road of Life is worth repeating:
The Road of Life began to operate on November 20, 1941 when the first convoy of horse-pulled sleighs brought supplies to the city. Shortly thereafter, the road began receiving truck traffic. Via the Road of Life, supplies could be brought into the city, and civilians evacuated to the still Soviet-controlled opposite coast. During the winter 1941-1942 the ice line of "Road of Life" operated for 152 days, till April 24. About 514 000 city inhabitants, 35 000 wounded soldiers, industrial equipment were evacuated from Leningrad during the first winter of blockade. While the road was protected by antiaircraft artillery on the ice and fighter planes in the air, truck convoys were constantly attacked by German artillery and airplanes, making travel dangerous. Some survivors therefore bitterly recall the route as a "Road of Death".
During the following winter, the Road of Life began to operate once again. On December 20, 1942 horse traffic began, and on December 24, 1942, motor vehicles began to operate. The construction of the pile and ice railway of 30 km long also began.
Subsequently, Operation "Spark" -- full-scale offensive of troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts -- started in the morning of January 12, 1943. After heavy and fierce battles, the Red Army units overcame the powerful German fortified zones to the South of the Ladoga Lake, and on January 18, 1943 the meeting of Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts units happened, opening a land corridor to the besieged city. Almost immediately, both truck and rail traffic began to bring supplies to Leningrad.
The city of Leningrad was still subject to at least a partial siege, as well as air and artillery bombardment, until a Soviet offensive broke through the German lines, lifting the siege in January 1944.
The figures of civilian dead in Leningrad during the siege are hard to come by. Most were buried in mass graves. Official figures are approximately 650,00 victims, although some estimates are closer to a million. The largest resting place is the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery, where about 500,000 people are buried in 186 graves. Each is a gently raised mound with only a single headstone marking the year in which they died. The photos below are from a visit to the then Soviet Union in 1990 by Eric Trachtenberg. His website also presents some of the materials he's collected for a book on his travels while he lived in Russia from 1998 through 2001.
The inscription reads: Here lies Leningraders. Here lie men, women and children next to soldiers of the Red Army. They were all sacrificed for you Leningrad...
Eric's caption: "More mounds ...they seemed to go on for miles"
The performance of the Soviets, military and civilians alike, in Leningrad and Stalingrad were not only vital for the Soviets in their own defense. The news of their fortitude and, eventually, their triumph had considerable effect on the other Allies. Though news was only radio and not 24/7, the stories from European Russia were followed avidly, especially in Britain, which was going through its own hardships and doubts. Battle sites in Stalingrad were world famous long before the war ended and historians started combing over the records. Coventry, England and Stalingrad became "sister cities" in 1943. And this brief passage from Wikipedia on the siege of Leningrad captures some of the ripple effects in the moral dimension of the war.
The bravery of the city's defenders was an important symbol of the Soviet will to resist - in the first few weeks of the war the British had been so disheartened by the collapse of the Soviet armies they thought a Nazi victory was all but inevitable. Most famously Dimitri Shostakovich's Seventh or Leningrad Symphony was largely written in the besieged city in 1941, and first performed there in the summer of 1942. The symphony became immensely popular in the United States and, as weapon of propaganda, was a highly effective symbol of the by then global struggle against fascism.
My scrapbook of VE-Day memories are not those of an historian. They're personal and impressionistic, and they must close on a personal note.
The day I was born would have been the thirtieth birthday of my uncle, who is buried in the Brittany American Cemetery in St James, France. May we remember with gratitude all those of every nation who lost their lives or endured great suffering in securing Allied victory in Europe.
{May 10 fixed layout for browsers & typos}
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