The textbook reveals the main mechanisms of development of the Soviet political system during the Great Patriotic War with the fascist occupiers and in the subsequent, final decades of Soviet history. Complex issues of the evolution of the Soviet political system are revealed against a broad socio-economic background. Complex, debatable issues related to the struggle for power in the highest echelons of the party and state bureaucracy are not passed over in silence. Based on the latest trends in historiography, the authors thoroughly trace the development of communist ideology, which during the period under review repeatedly changed its appearance, highlight the processes of its death, as well as the scope and consequences of this. The manual was prepared by employees of the department of modern national history MPGU: E.M. Shchagin is an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Honorary Professor of Moscow State Pedagogical University and Ryazan State University. S. A. Yesenina, head Department of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Doctor of Science. n. - Ch. 12; D. O. Churakov – deputy. head Department of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow State Pedagogical University, acting prof., doctor of science n. - Ch. 1, § 1, ch. 2, § 1–3; A. I. Vdovin – prof., doctor of science. n. - Ch. 13.
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by liters company.
Chapter I. The Soviet country during the Great Patriotic War and post-war reconstruction
§ 1. Political development of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War: directions, results, discussions
The beginning of the war: a difficult road to truth
The Great Patriotic War became a serious test for the entire Soviet people. Despite the fact that the country was preparing to repel aggression, in the first weeks of the war, luck favored the fascist occupiers who invaded our territory. War conditions put on the agenda the solution of many cardinal tasks, including the restructuring of the entire political system of the USSR. IN modern science it was understood that plans to transform the country into a single military camp existed even before it began. But reality made its own harsh adjustments to the original intentions.
The reconstruction of the state machine had to be done under extraordinary conditions. Under the blows of superior enemy forces, the Red Army fought deeper and deeper into the East. The channels and levers of control that had been established in the pre-war decades, including those of the army, were disrupted. A serious correction of ideological work was required, since before the war the prevailing belief was that the enemy would have to be beaten on his territory, and victory would be achieved with little bloodshed. It was necessary to build a new system of relationships between government and society. Without a strong bond and mutual trust between them, one would not have dreamed of victory. It was necessary to unite the will of millions of people and direct it towards achieving a common goal. Each Soviet person - from soldier to generalissimo - had to fulfill his part of the common task. Only in this way was it possible to break the back of the enemy, who imposed on us a war of survival, a total war, unprecedented in its scale and inhumanity.
The difficult conditions in which the USSR found itself in the first months of the war, the need major changes in the style and methods of leading the country gave rise to a whole train of black mythology, the purpose of which was to prove the collapse of the Soviet pre-war model of development. Today this mythology is actively being introduced into mass consciousness. It was presented in a concentrated form, for example, in one of the programs of the “Judgment of Time” series, during which the question was proposed for electronic voting: “Did the Stalinist system [during the war] fail or survive”? Let's try, without emotions, based on facts, to understand this issue and see what happened in those fateful days?
According to one of the oldest myths about the war, the head of the Soviet state, Stalin, did not believe that Hitler would attack. Nowadays, the discrepancy between this myth and real facts is self-evident. Throughout the entire Third Five-Year Plan, the USSR was actively preparing for the defense of its Western borders. In his speech at the graduation of students of the Red Army Academies on May 5, 1941, Stalin publicly outlined the inevitability of war. He compared Hitler with Napoleon - for a Russian person the parallel is more than understandable. Stalin addressed the young officers of the Red Army directly in those days when he officially headed the Soviet Government. It is clear that this appointment was not at all accidental.
At that moment, the Soviet leadership, following intelligence reports, expected Hitler to attack on May 15. German General K. Tippelskirch, who at that time headed the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, in his “History of the Second World War,” noted: “Of course, it did not escape Russian intelligence that the center of gravity of Germany’s military power was increasingly moving to the East. The Russian command took its countermeasures... On May 6, Stalin, who until now had only Secretary General Communist Party, although the most powerful man in the Soviet Union, became Molotov's successor as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and thus officially headed the government. This step meant, at least formally, a strengthening of the government’s authority and a unification of forces.”
The TASS statement of June 13, 1941, about which so much has been written in modern historiography (including direct speculation), should be considered a turning point in the preparation for war. It openly called on Germany to confirm its peaceful intentions. Berlin's silence in diplomatic language meant only one thing - a declaration of war. It is no coincidence that it is on these days that the first orders to put troops on combat readiness and move to defensive positions go to the border districts. The repeated order is accepted on June 18. Its text has not yet been found. At the same time, the documents of the military districts adopted in its execution have been preserved and are well known. In addition, exercises for a number of districts and fleets were scheduled for mid-June - several months earlier than usual. According to the memoirs of the military, it was clear that under the cover of exercises in the USSR, a hidden mobilization and transfer of additional forces to the western borders began. So there is clearly no need to talk about a belated reaction from the political leadership.
No one had any illusions that the war could begin on June 22. This is evidenced by the intense activity of the USSR leadership on the last peaceful day - June 21, 1941. This day is filled with continuous meetings and consultations on defense issues. In particular, the preparation of the country's leadership for war is evidenced by the words of the leader of the capital's communists, A.S. Shcherbakov, who told how on the evening of June 21, Stalin discussed in detail the state of Moscow's air defense. According to the memoirs of N. G. Kuznetsov, a little earlier, at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, Stalin personally called I. V. Tyulenev (who at that time commanded the Moscow Military District) and demanded to increase the combat readiness of the air defense troops. As you know, Moscow is located in the depths of Soviet territory, and if not for the threat of a massive invasion and possible retreat, such issues would hardly require increased attention from the head of the Government. The nature of the threat looming over the country was beyond doubt: according to the recollections of the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, V.P. Pronin, on Saturday, June 21, Stalin ordered the detention of district committee secretaries at their workplaces and forbade them to travel outside the city. “A German attack is possible,” the head of the USSR emphasized.
Intense work was also carried out in the border regions of the country. After the 20th Congress, a story was widely circulated that the commanders Western districts on the night of June 22, suspecting nothing, they slept peacefully or spent time carefree. It had to be refuted personally by G.K. Zhukov. Let's turn to the 13th edition of his memoirs. It is this publication that these days is called the most objective, free from censorship. Moreover, and importantly, it was supplemented by the author’s manuscripts preserved in the archives. “On the night of June 22, 1941, all employees of the General Staff and the People’s Commissariat of Defense were ordered to remain in their places,” Zhukov reports. “It was necessary to transmit to the districts as quickly as possible a directive to bring border troops to combat readiness. At this time, the People’s Commissar and I had continuous negotiations with district commanders and chiefs of staff, who reported to us about the increasing noise on the other side of the border.”
Other measures well known to historians also speak about preparations to repel the invasion of June 22:
– On June 12, the Main Military Council was ordered to bring up second-echelon troops closer to the state border.
– Exactly the same measures are being carried out in the Leningrad Military District.
- On June 19, 1941, the troops received an order to camouflage airfields, military equipment, warehouses, parks, as well as the locations of military units.
– Mining begins on a number of sections of the border with Germany.
– In the western border districts, upon command from the center, individual mechanized corps are put on combat readiness and withdrawn to their areas of dispersal.
- Finally, on June 19, an order was given to the military councils of the border districts to form departments fronts, and most importantly, by June 22–23, 1941, bring them to field command posts.
Based on an analysis of these and other similar events that took place in June 1941, modern historians, such as R. S. Irinarkhov, A. V. Isaev, A. Yu. Martirosyan, conclude that by the second half of June 21, Stalin considered the outbreak of war inevitable, at least very, very probable. Already in the evening of that day, Stalin, People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov prepared the famous “Directive No. 1”. This happened no later than 22:20 on June 21, since at that time both military men left the office of the head of the Government. In fact, the political decision to put troops on alert was made even earlier, at least by 20:50, when Timoshenko was again summoned to Stalin. He was no longer called to confer, but to give orders. At this time, Stalin had Captain 1st Rank, Naval Attache at the USSR Embassy in the Third Reich, M. A. Vorontsov. Vorontsov is a legendary and undeservedly forgotten figure. A few hours before the war, he placed on the table of the head of the Soviet government a German official request obtained by our intelligence to the Swedish government, in which June 22 was indicated as the date of the start of the war. Based on obvious facts, a decision is made to send “Directive No. 1” to the troops. Even before midnight, its text became known to the People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov.
Another, perhaps the most common myth about the beginning of the war, speaks of the paralysis of will that struck Stalin after the news of the beginning of the fascist invasion. Its authorship belongs directly to Khrushchev. Since at the beginning of the war Nikita Sergeevich occupied an important, but still secondary post of leader of one of the union republics, he was not in Moscow on June 22 and he could only judge the events there by hearsay. To give his words a semblance of credibility, he had to refer to the alleged story of L.P. Beria. According to Khrushchev, Beria assured that Stalin was shocked by the affairs at the front and went to his nearby dacha in Kuntsevo. The dictator sat there helplessly for some time. Seeing Beria and other members of the leadership come to see him, Stalin seemed to be afraid of arrest. But when high-ranking visitors began to convince him to return and lead the country, he perked up and became the old Stalin.
It cannot be ruled out that the basis for Khrushchev’s story, as well as for the episode voiced at the 20th Congress of the CPSU with Stalin planning military operations on the globe, was cinema. If in the episode with the globe one can read the influence of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” then in the description of the visit of members of the Politburo to Stalin’s dacha, a parallel with S. M. Eisenstein’s film “Ivan the Terrible” is clearly visible. There was an episode in the life of the real Ivan the Terrible when boyars came to him in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda to ask him to return to the throne, which he had defiantly abandoned. Today, some authors write that this historical episode could have given Stalin the idea of testing the loyalty of his “boyars” in a similar way. This is exactly how, with a touch of historical allegories, Stalin’s act is interpreted in the book by A. Mertsalov and L. Mertsalova “Stalinism and War.” It cannot be ruled out that Khrushchev thought in the same way when announcing from the rostrum of the congress about Stalin’s seclusion.
Khrushchev’s version of events (later supported by A.I. Mikoyan, who was close to Khrushchev) became so firmly ingrained in people’s minds that even the Stalinists accepted it at face value. In order to somehow justify their idol, they proposed several historical myths at once. Thus, the writer V. Zhukhrai in his book “Stalin: Truth and Lies” reported about the sore throat that struck the leader. V.P. Meshcheryakov goes even further. He writes about the attempts of individual Soviet leaders to isolate Stalin. This is precisely what he explains about Molotov’s speech on June 22, the absence of Stalin’s signatures on some official documents, and the inability of some high-ranking officials to obtain an audience with the head of the Government. That is, Meshcheryakov actually writes about a creeping coup d'etat. The book in which he developed his argument bears the expressive title: “Stalin and the Military Conspiracy of 1941.” The version of the conspiracy at the top is vulnerable to criticism. Perhaps, when carrying out his attack on the USSR, Hitler was counting on just such a scenario. In all the countries into which his armies entered, there was a fifth column, representatives of the elite, ready to buy their well-being through betrayal. But, as we know, this did not happen in the Soviet Union, which cannot be considered an accident. So why would anyone come up with various fables on this topic after the fact?
Initially, according to Khrushchev and Mikoyan, it turned out that Stalin lost his composure in the initial hours of the war. Fearing retribution and not knowing how to justify himself, he refused to speak to the people, entrusting this to Molotov. Khrushchev and some of his supporters put a panicky phrase into Stalin’s mouth, which, in a censored form, sounds like this: “What Lenin created, we have lost all of this irrevocably.” Later in his memoirs “Time. People. Power" Khrushchev will "strengthen" its version of the start of the war, giving it more dynamism and flavor. At the same time, he will especially emphasize that Stalin, in addition to showing cowardice, also voluntarily removed himself from governing the country. ““I,” he said, “resign from leadership,” and left. He left, got into the car and drove away,” Khrushchev wrote about Stalin’s behavior.
In the system of power that Stalin created, the role of the leader was central. Because of this, as V.V. Cherepanov notes, Khrushchev accused Stalin that by his actions he had paralyzed the entire management system. From here it is not far to the conclusion that we read in the book of the Chechen dissident A. Avtorkhanov: the leader behaved like a deserter. Thus, the blame for the first defeats was completely shifted to Stalin. For Khrushchev it was important to voice this precisely at the 20th Congress. The reaction of his delegates to the “exposure of the cult of personality” was difficult to predict, and, in case of complications, Khrushchev might need the help of Zhukov and other military personnel interested in ensuring that some of the unclear circumstances of the first days of the war were not revealed.
It was in this form that the version of “Stalin’s prostration” became the subject of conversation in dissident kitchens in the 1960s and 1970s. It was in this form that it was put into the minds of the population of the USSR when the policy of glasnost made it possible to translate Western history books. In particular, when previous domestic textbooks lost authority, and new ones had not yet been created, the textbook of the Frenchman Nicolas Werth gained popularity. It spoke specifically about Stalin’s long, almost two-week absence. However, during the period of its greatest spread in the 90s of the 20th century, the Khrushchev version encountered an unexpected obstacle. In 1996, the “Historical Archive” published a log of visits to Stalin’s Kremlin office. It would seem that the myth has disintegrated, it can be handed over to the museum of the history of human delusions. But the followers of Khrushchev's version have our clue. If it is impossible to prove the two-week “Kuntsevo sitting”, then one should try to defend at least the very fact of panic. The fact is that there is a gap in the visit log: the entries in it end on the 28th, and begin again only on July 1, 1941. And now General Volkogonov writes not about several, but only about three days, during which “the first person in the state was in prostration and did not lead the country.”
However, even in this noticeably truncated form, Khrushchev’s version did not last long. The fact is that June 29 immediately falls out of this scheme. On this day, Stalin was actively working on the “Directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the party and Soviet organizations of the front-line regions on the mobilization of all forces and means to defeat the fascist invaders.” The fruit of collective creativity, the Directive was signed on the same day and played an important role in turning the country into a single military camp. In addition, as V. Cherepanov’s reconstruction shows, on June 29, Stalin visited the People’s Commissariat of Defense twice, where the relationship between the political and military leadership of the country was clarified. The Head of the Government was furious with the results of the activities of his People's Commissar and Chief of the General Staff. In the literature it is even written that with his rudeness he brought the general to tears Zhukov - in such cases, a strong man and not prone to sentimentality.
Analyzing the memories of the participants in the negotiations that took place that day in the People's Commissariat of Defense, V. Cherepanov noted: “The authors of the memoirs missed or kept silent about one thing, but fundamentally important point. We are talking about the manifestation of the first disagreements between the political and military leadership of the country and Stalin’s suppression of a possible split... Stalin, as a wise politician, in this difficult hour made an attempt to unite the efforts of the political and military leadership, emphasizing the unconditional priority of the first. Although he did it in an extremely harsh manner. But the situation was such that there was no time to persuade my subordinates.” For Timoshenko and Zhukov, the main result of Stalin’s visit will be the imminent loss of their high position (although what happened to them cannot be called “disgrace”, since both commanders will remain in the thick of events at the front). And for Stalin himself, this probably resulted in the idea of creating a body that would unite the leadership of the front and rear, and at the same time allow for better control over the activities of the military.
The question of Stalin's capacity in the first days of the war has no independent significance. It was necessary to dwell on it in such detail only because its example can clearly show how black myths about our country are born. Having analyzed the actual course of events, we can state that the Soviet system, whether it was good or not, did not collapse and withstood the first blows of the Nazis. If for us living today, the question of the strength of the system and the readiness of the Soviet leadership to continue the fight is predominantly academic in nature (hence the discussions), then for people who survived the horrors of the beginning of the war, it was a question of life and death. Their life choices and life position depended on what people thought about their leaders. The Soviet leadership showed that it would not waver, would not give up limply, would not abandon its people, would not run abroad, as the leaders of Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and other countries did. From the very first hours of the war, the Soviet leadership showed its readiness to fight. Today, in relatively prosperous days, it is not easy for everyone to understand what a colossal mobilizing significance this had. The patriotic upsurge of the people and the strong will of the leadership of the USSR were welded together. This became an important guarantee of future successes on the battlefields. People warmly responded to the call for the Patriotic War, pronounced by Molotov in his address to the people at noon on June 22:
“This is not the first time our people have had to deal with an attacking, arrogant enemy. At one time, our people responded to Napoleon’s campaign in Russia with a patriotic war, and Napoleon was defeated and came to his collapse. The same will happen to the arrogant Hitler, who announced a new campaign against our country. The Red Army and our entire people will once again wage a victorious patriotic war for our homeland, for honor, for freedom... The government calls on you, citizens of the Soviet Union, to rally your ranks even more closely around our glorious Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet government, around our great leader Comrade Stalin. Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours".
The heroism of the people, the strength of the Soviet system and the active position of the top leadership already in the first days of the war thwarted the plans of the blitzkrieg, which means they brought victory closer. This, of course, does not mean that Victory was already predetermined, that there were no miscalculations or difficulties on the way to it. There were difficulties, mistakes, cowardice, desertion and betrayal in certain lower levels of the government apparatus. Miscalculations, sometimes very serious, were also made at the center level. But only now, having abandoned both the ceremonial gloss and black mythology, has it become possible to objectively understand their causes and character.
In particular, we can note the following facts, which are well known today. Thus, on the eve of the war, the Soviet military leadership overestimated the combat power of the Red Army units. General K. A. Meretskov, at a meeting of the army leadership in January 1941, for example, stated: “When developing the regulations, we proceeded from the fact that our division was much stronger than the division of the Nazi army and that in a meeting battle it would certainly defeat the German division . In defense, one of our divisions will repel the attack of two or three enemy divisions.” It is not clear on what such misguided conclusions were based, but they were the ones reported to the political leadership. It was they who were included in the plans to cover the western borders. It was they who found a place in the field regulations of the Red Army. The very first clashes with a well-armed and trained enemy showed their groundlessness.
Or one more thing. Today there is a lot of talk about Soviet defensive structures on the old and new borders of the USSR: the Stalin Line and the Molotov Line, respectively. There is even a corresponding myth according to which, after shifting the border far to the West, Stalin ordered the destruction of the old defensive line. In reality, there was no such order. According to the directive of the Chief of the General Staff in 1940, the old fortified areas were not only not destroyed, but were not even preserved initially. Only later, as new SDs were built, the old ones were ordered to be mothballed and their protection organized. Arms and ammunition should have been stored in special warehouses “in full combat readiness for release to the line.” Another thing is that in some military districts this work was carried out extremely poorly. The seized weapons were not guarded; the structures themselves were dilapidated and fell into disrepair. This was the case, for example, in the Minsk fortified area, which was in the area of responsibility of the commander of the ZOVO D. G. Pavlov. At the same time, special observers from the center repeatedly recorded failures in the implementation of plans for the construction of the Grodno fortified area. Things were no better with the Polotsk fortified area. During their construction, among other things, secrecy measures were not observed. The enemy, using this circumstance, could know the state of our defensive structures.
It is not entirely clear why the military, despite the emergency measures that were taken back in May and intensified in mid-June 1941, met the enemy in varying degrees of readiness? For example, the fleet met the enemy in full combat readiness. Here we have to deal with another deep-rooted misconception that the command of the RKKF has brought the fleet to combat readiness, contrary to the will of the center. It is unclear whether the author of this myth is Admiral Kuznetsov himself, or whether his party editors added the corresponding words for him. In any case, Kuznetsov is actually accused of rebellion - this is how the unauthorized actions of people holding weapons are qualified. The rest of the content of Kuznetsov’s books refutes the words about the arbitrariness of the admiral’s actions during the critical hours for our country on June 21–22. It is known that on June 19, by order from Moscow, the fleet was transferred to combat readiness No. 2. Later, confirmation came from Moscow that the fleet could repel an enemy attack if it followed. Readiness No. 1 in the fleet was announced on June 21 at 23:15 - that is, immediately as the contents of “Directive No. 1” were conveyed by Zhukov to Kuznetsov. In addition, not only the sailors, but also the border guards subordinate to Beria met the enemy fully armed. The troops of the Odessa Military District were in the proper level of combat readiness. Not fully, but they were ready to meet the invasion in KOVO and PribOVO. They were completely late with the deployment of troops only in ZapOVO. In addition, there is still no clarity on the issue of why some orders on the Zapovovo contradicted the directives of the center, did not increase, but, on the contrary, decreased the combat readiness of personnel and equipment. Among them, for example, are the following:
– Removal and transfer of ammunition from pillboxes, tanks, and aircraft to warehouses (many warehouses, however, were located too close to the borders, as a result, already in the first two days they were set on fire by enemy aircraft or had to be blown up by the retreating Soviet units themselves).
– An order to remove automatic weapons from border posts, supposedly for inspection.
- An instruction received on the very eve of the attack, June 21, to dry the aircraft’s fuel tanks.
– Prohibition on dispersal of district aviation, etc.
The list of similar orders and instructions that cannot be explained from the point of view of normal logic can be continued, delving into ever finer details. The finale is known - the capital of Belarus, one of the main cities of the USSR, Minsk, was captured on June 28. The fate of General Pavlov was also tragic. He himself, as well as some other senior officers of the ZapOVO, were shot. During the investigation, the accusation was based on Article 58, “Treason,” but in the end the verdict was pronounced under the articles “Negligence” and “Failure to Perform Official Duties.”
Some party and Soviet leaders also did not rise to the occasion. The Reader on the History of 1914–1945, prepared back in the mid-90s of the last century by the staff of the Department of Contemporary Russian History at Moscow State Pedagogical University, contains an interesting selection of documents on this subject for history students. Thus, in his letter to the Chairman of the State Defense Committee Stalin dated July 7, 1941, a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1925, S. Bolotny, reported on the shameful behavior of the leadership of the Lithuanian SSR. “On the day of the treacherous military attack of fascist Germany on our homeland, i.e. June 22 of this year,” the document notes, “the government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania shamefully and thieves fled from Kaunas in an unknown direction, leaving the country and people to the mercy of fate, without thinking about the evacuation of government institutions, without destroying the most important state documents... Kaunas, a small city, the wary population saw a caravan of government vehicles moving at top speed towards the station, loaded with women, children and suitcases. All this brought demoralization among the population.”
Suitcase moods also gripped some leaders of the Ukrainian SSR. This is the harsh tone in which Stalin wrote to the leader of the Ukrainian communists, Khrushchev, on July 10, 1941: “Your proposals for the destruction of all property contradict the guidelines given in Comrade Stalin’s speech, where the destruction of all valuable property was discussed in connection with the forced withdrawal of units of the Red Army. Your proposals mean the immediate destruction of all valuable property, grain and livestock in a zone 100–150 km from the enemy, regardless of the state of the front. Such an event could demoralize the population, cause discontent with the Soviet government, upset the rear of the Red Army and create, both in the army and among the population, a mood of mandatory withdrawal instead of determination to repel the enemy.” Stalin actually, in a veiled manner, accused Khrushchev of alarmism. Was it not these reproaches that Khrushchev belatedly responded to at the 20th Congress, creating the myth of Stalin’s prostration?
Unfortunately, there were enough such negative manifestations of bureaucratic negligence and unscrupulousness not only in the first days of the war, but also later, when the enemy began to advance deep into the territory of the USSR. Of course, this could not but cause fair discontent among ordinary citizens. As British Embassy employee J. Russell, who worked in the USSR at that time, formulated it, spontaneous discontent that had been accumulating among the people for years was directed against communists and Jews. Thus, in October 1941, mass spontaneous protests took place in the homeland of the first Soviets - in the Ivanovo region. Workers expressed dissatisfaction with the methods of mobilization for the construction of defense structures and the state of state and cooperative trade. Protests were heard: “All the headquarters have fled the city, and we are left alone.” When representatives of the district committee tried to dispel the rumors spread by the provocateurs, people shouted in response: “Don’t listen to them - they don’t know anything, they’ve been deceiving us for 23 years!”
Similar sentiments, according to the head of the NKVD of Moscow and the Moscow region M.I. Zhuravlev and other sources from which last years removed the classification of secrecy, appeared in Moscow during the period of panic on October 14–16, 1941. It was not only the former oppositionists or representatives of the overthrown classes who hastened to disassociate themselves from the Soviet past. According to the testimony of Muscovite G.V. Reshetin, who survived the October tragedy, a reaction of a purely protective nature (according to the principle “your shirt is closer to the body”) was widely manifested among ordinary townspeople: “On the evening of October 16, in the corridor, neighbor Aunt Dunyasha lit the stove. A bright fire devours... books, magazines. Stirring with a poker, she endlessly repeats so that everyone can hear: “But my Misha has long been a non-party member, and in general he didn’t go to meetings.”
It should be noted that events like those in Moscow became possible only in conditions when, for several hours, faint-hearted people had the illusion that the Soviet system had collapsed. Under these conditions, the maximum that ordinary Muscovites were able to self-organize was to block the roads leading to the East and smash cars with refugees’ belongings. Moreover, not only cowardly bosses, but also representatives of the intelligentsia were subjected to reprisals and humiliation. But there was a fascist at the gates of Moscow, and it was necessary to think about how to defend the city! Just as significant is how the crisis was overcome. As soon as it became known that Stalin remained in Moscow, all panic and pogrom sentiments passed. Stalin was only a symbol of the Soviet regime. Just like him, many other people remained at their workplace or at their combat post: red directors, police officers, soldiers and officers, militias, workers, employees - in a word, all those who did not succumb to panic and defended Moscow. Pronouncing his famous toast “to the Russian people” on May 24, 1945 in the Kremlin at a reception in honor of the commanders of the Red Army, Stalin recalled: “Our government had many mistakes, we had moments of desperate situation in 1941–1942, when our the army was retreating, leaving our native villages and cities in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Leningrad region, the Karelo-Finnish Republic, leaving because there was no other way out. Another people could say to the Government: you have not lived up to our expectations, go away, we will install another government that will make peace with Germany and provide us with peace. But the Russian people did not agree to this, because they believed in the correctness of the policy of their Government and made sacrifices to ensure the defeat of Germany.”
Changes in the Soviet political system in 1941–1945: a difficult road to Victory
Often, as evidence of the crisis and defeat of the Soviet system during the war years, they cite the fact that, after the very first shots were fired on the Soviet-German border, its transformation began. Management methods that seemed unshakable back in the late 1930s were rejected. Instead, there was a transition to new, often more democratic ones. However, one should be aware of two circumstances of general theoretical and practical plan. Firstly, the Soviet system changed during the war years not only under the pressure of the negative factors discussed above, including protest sentiments in society. The abrupt transition from peace to war itself required serious adjustment of the apparatus of power, taking into account the rapidly changing situation. Secondly, changes continued throughout all previous decades, starting in 1917. Democratic and anti-democratic tendencies fought in society. And today many scientists, including those in the West, are in no hurry to unequivocally assert that this struggle ended as soon as the civil war ended. We should also not forget the fate of Tsarist Russia. The inertia of political institutions and unwillingness to take into account the trends of the times ultimately led to its death. Accordingly, the flexibility of the Soviet system is evidence of its stability rather than of crisis.
The restructuring of the state mechanism on a military scale begins already in the first hours after the Nazi aggression. Some events were planned in advance, others were a response to a rapidly changing situation. Already on the first day of the war, June 22, the Politburo, and then the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, adopted four important documents that determined the nature of mobilization measures. These are decrees: No. 95 “On the mobilization of those liable for military service”: No. 96 “On declaring martial law in certain areas of the USSR”, No. 97 “On martial law”; No. 98 “On approval of the Regulations on military tribunals.” The decree “On Martial Law,” with reference to the Constitution, explained that martial law in individual localities or throughout the country could be introduced to ensure public order and state security. In areas declared under martial law, all power in terms of defense was transferred to the military. For disobedience to orders of military authorities and for crimes committed, criminal liability was provided for under martial law. Violators were to be dealt with by special tribunals, the verdicts of which were not subject to appeal. An important provision was contained in the final paragraph of the decree, which explained that the jurisdiction of this decree “also extends to areas where, due to emergency circumstances, there are no local authorities state power And government controlled THE USSR". We were talking about enemy-occupied territories.
The next day, June 23, the Politburo adopted a resolution “On the Headquarters of the Main Command of the Armed Forces USSR" Without delay, it was formalized by a joint closed resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The headquarters thus became the first emergency governing body created during the war. Her competence included the leadership of the armed forces. Timoshenko was appointed People's Commissar of Defense as Head of Headquarters. It also included Stalin, Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, S. M. Budyonny, Zhukov and Kuznetsov. Soviet historiography did not like to emphasize this fact, but, as is easy to see, the majority of the “ordinary” members of the headquarters were in position, and most importantly in terms of authority in the country, disproportionately higher than its formal leader. This could not but create certain difficulties. Apparently, Tymoshenko himself understood the state of affairs, who signed the documents emanating from Headquarters not as its Chairman, but with a vague formula: “From the Headquarters of the High Command, People's Commissar of Defense S. Timoshenko.”
Later, the composition and even the name of this important military command body underwent repeated changes. So, on July 10, as officially explained, in connection with the formation of the Main Commands of individual directions (North-Western, Western and South-Western), it was renamed the Headquarters of the Supreme Command. Noteworthy is the fact that on the same day, instead of Timoshenko, Stalin became Chairman of the Headquarters. At the same time, B. M. Shaposhnikov was introduced into it, as it soon became clear - with a long-range view: on July 30, he would head the General Staff, replacing Zhukov, who was less experienced in the staff turnover. A little earlier, on July 19, 1941, Tymoshenko would lose his high post. Instead, the NGO will be headed personally by Stalin. Finally, on August 8, Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Accordingly, the Headquarters of the Supreme Command will be transformed into the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. Thus, the organization of army management takes on its complete form. As A. M. Vasilevsky emphasized in this regard, as a result of the reorganizations, “the management of the Armed Forces, their construction and support has significantly improved.”
The above-mentioned “Mobilization Directive” of June 29, 1941 played an important role in transferring the political system and the country as a whole to a military footing. As leading modern historians rightly note, it formulated “the main program of action to transform the country into a single combat camp.” The directive extremely succinctly, but succinctly formulated the essence of the events taking place. “The treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union continues. The purpose of this attack is the destruction of the Soviet system, the seizure of Soviet lands, the enslavement of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the robbery of our country, the seizure of our bread, oil, the restoration of the power of landowners and capitalists... In the war imposed on us with Nazi Germany, it was noted in it, the peoples of the Soviet Union will be free or fall into enslavement." The document noted that, despite not all the seriousness of the threat looming over the Motherland, “some party, Soviet, trade union and Komsomol organizations and their leaders have not yet realized the significance of this threat and do not understand that the war has dramatically changed the situation”, that “the Motherland found itself in the greatest danger." It was necessary to throw off the veil of illusions and complacency and, rolling up our sleeves, take on the difficult task of organizing resistance to the aggressor.
The document called for “to fight to the last drop of blood”, “to show the courage, initiative and intelligence characteristic of our people.” The rear had to be strengthened “by subordinating its activities to the interests of the front.” It was proposed to adapt the premises of schools, clubs and even government agencies to help the wounded. There was a call to deal with deserters, alarmists, and saboteurs mercilessly and to bring them before a military tribunal. Provocative rumors were called the enemy's special weapon. The directive realistically assessed the situation and recognized the possibility of leaving part of Soviet territory to the enemy. The document called for, in the event of a forced withdrawal of the Red Army, “not to leave the enemy a single locomotive, not a single carriage, not to leave the enemy a single kilogram of bread or a liter of fuel.” Collective farmers were called upon to steal livestock and export grain. Anything that could not be evacuated had to be “absolutely destroyed.” The directive demanded that unbearable conditions be created in the occupied areas “for the enemy and all his accomplices, to pursue and destroy them at every step.” To do this, it was supposed to kindle a partisan war in the enemy rear, as was the case during the Patriotic War of 1812. The directive ended with words addressed directly to the communists: “The task of the Bolsheviks,” it said, “is to rally all the people around the Communist Party, around the Soviet government for selfless support of the Red Army, for victory.”
The logical consequence of the Directive is the creation of the above-mentioned State Defense Committee almost immediately after its adoption. The need for it was dictated solely by the conditions of the war. The decree of June 30, with which it begins its history, stated that the State Defense Committee was being created “in view of the current state of emergency and in order to quickly mobilize all the forces of the peoples of the USSR to repel the enemy who treacherously attacked our Motherland.” The document is only three short paragraphs. The first listed the composition of the State Defense Committee: Stalin (chairman), Molotov (deputy), Voroshilov, G.M. Malenkov, Beria. The second paragraph contained a demand to “concentrate all power in the state in the hands” of the new body. Finally, in the third paragraph, all citizens, all party, Soviet, Komsomol and military organizations pledged to “unquestioningly implement the decisions and orders” of the State Defense Committee, which, in essence, acquired the force of wartime laws. “All power in the state” was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee. Never again - neither before nor after the war - has there existed a body with such powers that existed for more than 4 years and was not provided for by the Constitution.
IN historical science There are different points of view on who came up with the idea of creating state bonds. Not all historians agree that it came from Stalin himself. Some authors name such figures as Molotov, Malenkov, Beria. In particular, according to Yuri Zhukov, the creation of the State Defense Committee was a kind of palace coup. Stalin was included in its composition only to give the State Defense Committee the appearance of legitimacy and greater efficiency. Only when Stalin realized that no one intended to remove him from power did he get involved in the work in full force. In addition to the evidence on this score from Khrushchev and Mikoyan, there are also, for example, the records of V. S. Semenov, who at one time was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1964, he wrote in his diary a story allegedly heard from K. E. Voroshilov at one of the Kremlin receptions:
“Stalin believed the Germans. He was so affected by the treachery of the Germans: to violate the treaty several months after signing!.. This is vile. Stalin was so upset that he went to bed... Only gradually did Stalin control himself and get out of bed. And at this time, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich began to say that it was necessary to drive out Stalin, that he could not lead the party and the country. We began to explain to him that Stalin was trusting and had such a character. But Molotov didn’t want to hear, he didn’t understand Stalin’s peculiarities.”
As we can see, the version about Molotov as the initiator of the creation of the State Defense Committee is based on the same scheme as in relation to “Stalin’s prostration.” However, this point of view is based only on memoir sources. Apart from them, there is nothing at its core. As has already been shown above, Stalin did not fall out of the leadership of the country. And if Stalin never found himself in a situation of inaction for a single day, then all constructions in the spirit of “conspiracy theory” lose their meaning. Their groundlessness is evidenced, among other things, by subsequent events. It is unlikely that Stalin, given the severity of the struggle for power in the Soviet elite, would have kept close to him the people who encroached on his leadership. The mere fact that all those whom modern authors classify as “conspirators” continued to occupy important positions and enjoyed Stalin’s confidence throughout the war is sufficient reason not to take the “conspiracy theory” too seriously.
In turn, studies of the most recent period indicate rather the opposite, namely that the initiator of the creation of the State Defense Committee was Stalin himself. He was dissatisfied with the impotence of some civilian and military leaders and wanted to decisively turn the situation around. It cannot be ruled out that the legacy of the “Tukhachevsky case” also played a role, when the political leadership felt distrust of the generals. The solution to the emerging problem lay precisely in the creation of such a body that would unite all branches of government in one hand. Only Stalin, of all the remaining leaders of the USSR at that time, had experience working in such a body. This refers, of course, to Lenin's Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense (later transformed into the Council of Labor and Defense).
As you know, V.I. Lenin established the Defense Council also with the goal of curbing the power of the military led by Trotsky. Such a need arose when Trotsky, together with Sverdlov, after the assassination attempt on Lenin, formed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. In fact, the RVSR had broader powers than Lenin’s Council of People’s Commissars. By creating the Defense Council, Vladimir Ilyich restored the status quo, since the RVSR also had to submit to the newly created body. The parallel between the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense and the State Defense Committee has always been obvious.
The idea of the State Defense Committee was apparently born to Stalin on June 29, 1941. This happened either, as already assumed, after visiting the NGO, or at the time of work on the Directive on mobilizing the country to repel the aggressor. The fact that it was Stalin who could stand at the origins of the GKO, among other things, is evidenced by the content of his speech on July 3, 1941. Not only in meaning, but also in style, it followed from the June 29 directive and the resolution on the creation of the State Defense Committee. In all three documents there are not only semantic repetitions, common images and phrases, but also textual coincidences, which cannot be called accidental and confirms their common authorship.
Rising as a kind of superstructure above all state bodies, the State Defense Committee did not have its own large apparatus. He acted through party and state bodies, as well as public organizations. In the future, when the need for prompt resolution of a number of issues is identified, a special institution of authorized State Defense Committees will be established. They will operate on the fronts, in the People's Commissariats, individual union republics, territories and regions, at the most important enterprises and construction sites. In special cases, special committees and commissions were created under the State Defense Committee. For example, at different times there existed a Trophy Commission, an Evacuation Committee, a Radar Council, a Transport Committee, etc.
In the front-line areas, the function of emergency authorities was carried out by city defense committees created by the State Defense Committee in 1941–1942. In total, city defense committees were created in more than 60 cities, including in such hero cities as Sevastopol, Odessa, Tula, etc. Just like the State, city defense committees were called upon to unite all the levers of power: the party, army, local administration. As a rule, they were headed by the first secretaries of regional or city committees of the CPSU(b). Representatives of local Soviet and military bodies became members of city defense committees. The scope of activity of local emergency authorities included management of the production and repair of military equipment and weapons, construction, and the creation of a people's militia and other volunteer formations.
In areas declared under martial law, all power in terms of defense, public order and state security passed directly to the military councils of fronts (districts), armies, and where there were no military councils - to the high command of the formations operating in these territories. The decree of June 22, 1941 gave the military authorities the broadest powers. They controlled entry and exit from areas declared under martial law. By order of the military, any undesirable persons could be administratively evicted from this zone. The decrees issued by the military authorities for the population of a given area were generally binding. For failure to comply, the perpetrators were subject to administrative imprisonment for up to 6 months or a fine of up to 3 thousand rubles. If necessary, the military could mobilize vehicles and establish military housing and labor service. They also received the right to regulate the operation of enterprises, institutions, trade and public services. The order of holding meetings and processions also became the responsibility of the military authorities.
Martial law could be introduced not only in areas facing the threat of enemy occupation, but also in certain sectors of the national economy that were especially important from a defense point of view. In particular, taking into account the experience of World War I, martial law was declared in transport. Here it meant the introduction of military discipline in the system of transport departments. In fact, transport employees and workers were equated to military personnel and, on an equal basis with them, bore disciplinary and, in some cases, criminal liability for committed offenses and crimes. Such measures helped maintain high transport efficiency throughout the war.
In conditions of an immediate threat of capture of cities in the front-line zone by the enemy, a state of siege could be introduced in them. The state of siege differed from the military state by even stricter regulation of the regime. A state of siege was introduced by decree of the State Defense Committee, for example, in October 1941 in Moscow. It also operated in Leningrad, Stalingrad and some other cities and areas of the front line that were especially important militarily. In cities declared under a state of siege, a curfew was introduced, and the movement of vehicles and the population was regulated and subject to control. The protection of public order was intensified. Violators of the state of siege could be prosecuted and the case transferred to a military tribunal. Anyone who was caught in provocative activities, espionage, or calling for a violation of order was subject to execution on the spot.
To solve specific problems during the war years, highly specialized emergency bodies were also formed. In particular, such a body was the Extraordinary State Commission to establish and investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to citizens, collective farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR. It was created by decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces of November 2, 1942. Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions N.M. Shvernik was appointed chairman of the commission. In addition to party representatives such as A. A. Zhdanov, it included well-known, authoritative public figures: writer A. N. Tolstoy, patriotic historian E. V. Tarle, neurosurgeon N. N. Burdenko, breeder and agronomist academician T D. Lysenko and others. A number of researchers, in particular the German historian Dieter Pohl, are trying to question the objectivity of the commission (which, however, in the context of growing attempts in the West, including even in Germany, to revise the position of the USSR in World War II, It’s quite understandable - one of the methods of belittling the role of our country’s contribution to the common victory is increasingly downplaying the scale of Nazi atrocities and whitewashing war criminals). In addition to the national one, there were similar commissions in the republics, regions, regions and cities. The results of their investigations were presented by the Soviet side at the Nuremberg trials as irrefutable evidence of the criminal activities of the occupiers.
Emergency bodies could not completely replace the entire peacetime management system, and this was not required. Along with them, constitutional bodies of power and administration continued to operate. The war made its own adjustments to the organization and order of their work. In particular, the conditions of war and occupation of large territories of the USSR did not allow regular elections to the Soviets at all levels to be held within the time limits provided by law. The Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces and the Presidiums of the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics repeatedly postponed their holding, but during the war they were never organized. Elections took place only after the war, when the political and economic situation began to stabilize. Despite this, the Soviet authorities had to continue their work. It was decided that the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Supreme Soviets of republics and local Soviets elected in the pre-war period would continue their work as long as the need for this remained.
The activities of Soviet bodies were complicated not only by the inability to ensure the holding of elections in a timely manner. It was also difficult to meet the deadlines for convening the next sessions and ensure a quorum at them. This was due to the fact that many deputies, feeling their patriotic duty, went into active service. The following figure is indicative: by January 1, 1945, more than 59% of the deputies elected before the war and more than 38% of the members of the executive committees of the Soviets had left the local Soviets. Most of them fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. As a result, it was necessary to make serious compromises with the law, and to recognize as plenipotentiary sessions of the Soviets at which 2/3 of the available deputies were present, whereas in peacetime, according to the Constitution, the presence of 2/3 of the elected deputies was required for this. In total, during the war, sessions of the USSR Supreme Council were convened only three times, while before the war from 1937 to 1941 - 8 times. Things were even more complicated in the union republics that became the target of aggression. Thus, in Ukraine, the first session of the highest legislative body of the republic was convened only at the beginning of March 1944. In addition, the war changed the appearance of the deputy corps, in which women now played a much larger role than before the war.
Just as during the Civil War, the ratio of executive and representative bodies of power changed dramatically. The first, represented by the executive committees of the Soviets, became noticeably stronger. Among other things, the executive committees of higher Councils received additional rights in relation to the executive committees of lower Councils. In particular, if necessary, the executive committee of a higher Council could, without additional elections, through co-optation, replenish the composition of the executive committees of lower Councils. As a rule, the deputy corps was replenished with trusted people, representatives of the party and Soviet activists. This practice was especially widely used in territories liberated from the enemy, where it was necessary to restore not only the economy, but also the Soviet organization of power.
The processes that led to the strengthening of the vertical executive bodies took place not only locally, but also in the center. Thus, the role of the USSR Armed Forces decreased somewhat, but at the same time the role of its Presidium and, to an even greater extent, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR strengthened. Sessions of the USSR Supreme Council were held only in exceptional cases. Thus, the 9th session took place only a year later, after the start of the war - on June 18, 1942. It ratified the Soviet-British Treaty of Alliance with England in the war against Nazi Germany. We had to wait even longer for the 10th session of the USSR Supreme Council, which opened on January 28, 1944. Finally, the final 11th session of the USSR Supreme Council during the Great Patriotic War took place on April 24–27, 1945. Most of the changes to the country's legislation during the hard times of war were adopted by the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces. Among the legal acts approved by him during these years are decrees on mobilization; introduction of martial law; structure of the Armed Forces; state awards; finally, on the creation of new (including emergency) government bodies and many others.
During the war years an even greater burden fell on the Soviet Government and its units. On some of the most important, primarily military-economic issues, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted joint solutions with the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The competence of the Council of People's Commissars included issues related, for example, to the evacuation of enterprises from the front-line to the eastern regions of the country. For this purpose, a new structure was created under the Council of People's Commissars - the Evacuation Council, headed by N. M. Shvernik. The Evacuation Council under the Council of People's Commissars in its activities relied on front-line evacuation commissions under the executive committees of local Soviets, evacuation departments created in the apparatus of the People's Commissariats, as well as authorized sectoral People's Commissariats responsible for the evacuation of individual enterprises. Locally, the location of evacuated enterprises was controlled by regional party and Soviet structures. The emergency body was created to optimize activities in such an important area as agitation and propaganda. It becomes the Sovinformburo under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which arose on June 24, 1941. During the Great Patriotic War its activities were led by the leader of the Moscow communists A.S. Shcherbakov and Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs S.A. Lozovsky.
Other new structures were also created under the Council of People's Commissars. Among them are Glavsnabneft, Glavsnabugol, Glavsnables and other institutions that were in charge of supplying the national economy. In addition, a committee for the accounting and distribution of labor, the Office for Evacuation of the Population, and the Office for State Provision and Household Services for Military Families were formed. When in 1943 the Red Army drove the enemy to the West and Soviet territories began to be liberated en masse, the task of their economic revival arose. Work in this direction was entrusted to the Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for the restoration of the economy in areas liberated from German occupation, specially created by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated August 21, 1943, whose work was led by G. M. Malenkov. The tasks that were solved during the war required the creation of such new People's Commissariats of the USSR as the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, Tank Industry, Mortar Armament and a number of others. In addition, new structural units were created in the already existing People's Commissariats. For example, Glavvoentorg is being created in the People's Commissariat of Trade, a hospital department is being created in the People's Commissariat of Health, a department of military road construction is being created in the People's Commissariat of Railways, etc.
It is important to note that during the hard times of war, the improvement of the management mechanism took place not only through centralization, but also through its democratization, through increasing the responsibility and freedom of maneuver of its units. Thus, already on July 1, 1941, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On expanding the rights of people's commissariats in wartime conditions” was adopted. The People's Commissariat was given the right to redistribute material resources. Factory directors also received the right to issue subcontractors with the necessary materials from their reserves, if this was required to fulfill planned targets. Moreover, the People's Commissariats received the right to freely maneuver finances, even direct them to completely different objects than previously envisaged. It was allowed to put objects into operation without directives from the center only with subsequent notification of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It was allowed to reserve up to 5% of the approved salary fund. In addition, the rights of departments in the field of capital construction and restoration of war-damaged areas were expanded.
Historian V. Cherepanov identifies Stalin's personnel policy as one of the main ways to increase the efficiency of the state mechanism. Even before the war, its main content was cast in the formula “Personnel decides everything.” Nowadays, many historians admit that during the war years, when selecting management personnel, the priority was not personal loyalty to superiors, but, first of all, professionalism and responsibility for the assigned area of work. In the struggle for the survival of the Soviet system, Stalin boldly got rid of people who showed their unpreparedness to work in new conditions. This happened even with figures whom historians call a kind of “leader’s favorites” - Mehlis, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and others. Young and talented leaders were appointed in their place.
Thus, during the war, M. G. Pervukhin became People's Commissar of the Chemical Industry, I. T. Peresypkin - People's Commissar of Communications and Head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Red Army, A. I. Shakhurin - People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry, A. V. Khrulev - People's Commissar of Railways and at the same time the head of the Main Logistics Directorate of the Armed Forces of the USSR, I. A. Benediktov - People's Commissar of Agriculture, N. K. Baibakov - People's Commissar of the Oil Industry. Being very young specialists, they made a significant contribution to the organization of Victory. In his book “Stalin’s People’s Commissars Speak,” Academician G. A. Kumanev cited several interviews with these and other figures who represented the young, active generation of leaders who grew up and became stronger under Soviet power and showed its best qualities just during the war. In addition to those presented in this book, in the same years D. F. Ustinov (People's Commissar of Armaments), B. L. Vannikov (People's Commissariat of Ammunition), I. F. Tevosyan (People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy), A. I. Efremov (People's Commissar of Tank Building) industry), A. N. Kosygin (since 1943 - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR) and many others.
The years of the Great Patriotic War saw the finest hour of another young politician - N. A. Voznesensky. During this difficult period for the country, he headed the USSR State Planning Committee. The military situation also made important adjustments to the work of this institution, which should be mentioned. The most important element of the Soviet economic system in the pre-war decade was long-term planning. It represented a significant advance over the short-term planning of the War Communist era. However, in the conditions of the war with the Nazis, long-term planning could no longer play its leading role. The situation at the front was changing too quickly and unpredictably. This required great flexibility from business management. The need to make operational decisions objectively increased the role of current planning. Quarterly, monthly and even ten-day economic plans become tools for such planning.
Examples of the successful activities of planning bodies in emergency conditions are the national economic mobilization plan for the third quarter of 1941, developed with the participation of the State Planning Committee and adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR at the very beginning of the war. And already in August of this year, the same plan was approved for the fourth quarter of the year. In addition, during the war, plans were adopted for individual regions of our large country. Thus, for 1942, a plan was approved for the Urals, Volga region, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The following year, 1943, a plan for the development of the economy of the Urals was adopted. When Soviet troops drove the invaders to the West, the State Planning Committee began preparing plans for the restoration and development of the economy in the areas liberated from the occupiers. Voznesensky later summarized the experience of his work and the development of the country’s economy in those years in the book “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War.”
The restructuring also affected the administrative apparatus at the republican level. The rights of not only union but also republican departments were expanded. If necessary, new administrative structures were created in the republics. Thus, in the union republics, which were especially hard hit by the war, new republican people's commissariats for housing and civil construction arose. Their functions included working not only with economic facilities, but also with ordinary people who had lost their homes.
The changes affected not only the management of the national economy, but also more important areas of activity of republican bodies. Thus, on February 1, 1944, the law “On granting the Union republics powers in the field of foreign economic relations and on the transformation in this regard of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs from an all-Union to a Union-Republican one” was adopted. It, among other things, established “that the Union republics can enter into direct relations with foreign states and conclude agreements with them.” This step was dictated by the desire to strengthen the role of the USSR in the international arena, in particular to expand its influence on the United Nations, the creation of which was planned after the defeat of the bloc of fascist states. Stalin sought the inclusion of all 16 union republics in the UN (the corresponding proposal was voiced at the conference of the three great powers in Dumbarton Oaks on August 28, 1944). At the same time, it is obvious that such a decision strengthened the democratic principles in the state mechanism of the USSR and was a kind of step towards our allies - the so-called. Western democracies.
At the same time, on February 1, 1941, a similar law was adopted on the transformation of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense from a union to a union-republican one. Its first article contained a very important provision that allowed the Union republics to create their own military formations. Corresponding changes were made to the Constitution of the USSR. So, a new article appeared in it, which read: “Each union republic has its own republican military formations.” Let us note, however, that national formations operated during the war years before. They were created, for example, in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and the Baltic states.
Within the framework of the topic raised, it is also necessary to dwell at least briefly on the activities of the Soviet administrative apparatus in the territories occupied by the enemy. It would seem that here, behind enemy lines, the crisis of Soviet power should have manifested itself especially clearly. Hitler's totalitarian machine of suppression was supposed to eradicate all the shoots of the political system created by the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is no secret that this goal was designated by Hitler as one of the priorities at the dawn of his political biography, including in the program book “My Struggle.” To realize their plans, the fascists used a wide variety of measures: from flirting with collaborators to the merciless destruction of all disobedient ones. But all these measures did not give the desired results. The aggressor in the occupied regions of the USSR failed to completely eliminate Soviet bodies, be they party or state.
Eloquent facts testify to the collapse of the Nazis’ plans to eradicate Soviet bodies. At different times, in the rear of the fascists, 2 regional party centers, 35 regional party committees, 2 inter-district committees, 40 city committees, 19 district committees developed their activities in major cities, 479 rural district committees and other party bodies at various levels. The network of government agencies also remained extensive. Councils at various levels were not only able to survive, but also actively fulfilled their main function of mobilizing the population of the occupied territories to fight the enemy. Acting behind enemy lines, councils at various levels contributed to the preservation of the Soviet way of life and the maintenance of Soviet traditions even under extreme conditions of occupation. For these purposes, underground sessions of village and district councils were convened, and underground deputies and partisans held meetings with their voters, as in peacetime. Such work was practiced, for example, in Ukraine, Belarus, and the occupied regions of the RSFSR (Leningrad, Oryol, etc.). Sometimes, behind enemy lines, emergency Soviet bodies were formed in the form of regional troikas, representatives of Soviet power and other institutions.
The highest republican bodies of those union republics whose territories were completely occupied also played a role in organizing the victory. At the beginning of the war they were evacuated. Their main task is to organize an anti-fascist underground. For example, the central government bodies of the Ukrainian SSR were evacuated to Saratov. Later they will be transferred to Ufa and, finally, to Moscow. While in evacuation, the central party and Soviet bodies of the republics sent their representatives to the occupied territories. They delivered information about the life of the “Big Earth”, directives, instructions. In addition, experienced workers were sent to the German rear to strengthen underground organizations and collect intelligence information. Along with the information obtained military intelligence, intelligence received through local Soviet and party bodies played an extremely important role in organizing the offensives of the Soviet army. When the enemy was driven to the West, the leadership of the republics became involved in the restoration of the Soviet system in the liberated territories. Thus, the leadership of Ukraine resumed its activities in Kharkov already in 1943.
The basis for the existence of Soviet power in the territories captured by the Nazis was the powerful partisan movement. In a number of cases, when the occupiers managed to temporarily suppress the activities of Soviet authorities, their functions were taken over by the command of partisan detachments. During the period of the highest rise of the partisan movement in the summer of 1943, under full control There were over 200 thousand square meters of partisans. km of Soviet land behind enemy lines. In the territories liberated by the partisans, peaceful life and traditional authorities were restored. In turn, Soviet and party bodies provided every possible assistance to the rise of the partisan movement. It is important to emphasize that all bodies of Soviet power operating behind the front line, even in underground conditions, were guided by the principle that occupation does not stop the operation of Soviet laws. Thus, despite all the atrocities and demagogy committed, the aggressor failed to tear apart the single body of the Soviet country and deal a mortal blow to its political system even in temporarily occupied territories.
The issue of the evolution and activity of the Soviet political system in 1941–1945 will be the subject of scientific debate and public interest for a long time. Without predetermining the main results of the upcoming further work above these plots, we present several general conclusions from the facts discussed above.
The management system that existed at the end of the 1930s, which generally confirmed its effectiveness during the peaceful pre-war five-year plans, required restructuring in war conditions to achieve fundamentally new tasks related to the need to repel enemy aggression, transform the USSR into a single military camp and achieve Victory.
Modern historiography (works by O. Rzheshevsky, M. Myagkov, E. Kulkov, V. Cherepanov, A. Vdovin, E. Titkov, etc.) shows that the priority political and legal principles of perestroika and the functioning of the power system at that point in time were:
1. Unity of political, state and military leadership.
2. The principle of maximum centralization and unity of command in management (due to which, during the war, the previously existing merger of the party and state apparatuses of all levels significantly intensified).
3. The principle of clarity in defining and setting tasks for each level of management.
4. The principle of responsibility of management subjects for solving problems of public administration.
5. The principle of Soviet legality, law and order and strict state discipline.
6. The principle of control over the army by the political leadership and some others.
The model of political power that emerged during the war years in the USSR was genetically connected with the pre-war model and acted as its continuation, and not something fundamentally new. Given the unique diversity of the country's regions and an insufficiently developed communications system, the leadership of the USSR was able to ensure the unity of the front and rear, the strictest discipline of execution at all levels from bottom to top with unconditional subordination to the center, but at the same time develop the personal initiative and responsibility of each performer. This combination of centralization and democracy during the war undoubtedly played a positive role; it enabled the Soviet leadership to concentrate its main efforts on the most important, decisive areas. The motto is “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” did not remain just a slogan, it was put into practice. Wars have always been a serious test of society's strength. K. Marx called this ability of wars their “redemptive side.” He compared social institutions that had lost their vitality to instantly disintegrating mummies exposed to the jet fresh air. Soviet society did not collapse; it was able to get rid of everything that interfered with the fight against the enemy. His political system showed vitality and withstood the most difficult conditions. This seems to be one of the most important reasons for our Great Victory 1945.
§ 2. The creation of the collective and state farm system in the Soviet countryside and its significance in the historical victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.
The Russian revolution, which went through two interconnected stages in its development - the February-March, bourgeois-democratic, and the October-November, Bolshevik-proletarian - liberated the peasantry, which made up the absolute majority of the country's population, from the centuries-old oppression of feudal-landowner landownership in origin and transferred it to labor use of almost all privately owned agricultural land. Under the influence of these changes, the agrarian system of post-revolutionary Russia acquired a peculiar small-peasant character.
Ten years after the revolution, the country, on the basis of the compromise NEP course of the Soviet government, was able, basically, to restore the national economy of Russia, destroyed by two wars - the First World War and the Civil War, as well as by the revolution itself. In 1927, there were 24–25 million peasant households, each of which on average sown 3–5 acres of arable land, most often having a working horse, a cow and several heads of small livestock. Among the arable tools, a wooden plow was preserved, and among the harvesting tools, a scythe and a sickle were preserved. Only about every sixth or seventh farm had some kind of machinery, mostly horse-drawn.
But even under these conditions, the restoration process in the country’s agricultural sector on the basis of the new economic policy proceeded much faster than in the field of industry and national economic infrastructure. True, here too it had an uneven pace: the starting and subsequent spurts of the 1924/25 and 1925/26 economic years, which in the 1920s covered the time from October of one year to September 30 of the next, were replaced by periods of slow growth that occurred in the third and final years NEP These failures were associated with the sales crisis of 1923 and the policy of redistribution of national income in the interests of industrialization of the country, proclaimed by the XIV Congress of the RCP (b). In order to come close to the pre-war (1913) level of agricultural production, it took no more than five years, which eloquently testified to the successful use by the Russian peasantry of the modest capabilities of the NEP. Albeit unequal, but still “cooperation between the state and the private economy,” according to the apt definition of the famous agricultural economist B. Brutskus, which lies at the basis of the NEP policy, has taken place. The peasantry not only restored the productive forces of the village, but also helped the state pull the entire national economy out of the quagmire of the deepest crisis. It paid for food products and raw materials for industry for depreciated paper money, bearing the brunt of the financial reform of 1924. Now not half of the burden of the state budget, but three-quarters of it fell on the shoulders of the peasant, who lost 645 million full NEP rubles in an unequal exchange with the city .
The decline in the marketability of peasant farming was especially acute. Before the revolution, half of the grain was collected in landowner and kulak (entrepreneurial-type) farms, which produced 71% of commercial grain, including export. Semi-proletarian and medium-sized small-scale peasant farms produced (without kulaks and landowners) the other half of it, and consumed 60%, and in the second half of the 20s. 85 and 70%, respectively. In 1927/28 the state prepared 630 million poods of grain against the pre-war 1300.6 million. But if the amount of grain at the state’s disposal now turned out to be half as much, then its exports had to be reduced by 20 times.
The high naturalization of the majority of peasant farms was the deep basis of the grain procurement crises that constantly threatened the country at that time. Grain procurement difficulties were aggravated by low agricultural prices, especially grain prices. Before the First World War, the agricultural ruble was equal to 90 kopecks, and in the mid-1920s. - about 50. In addition, the bread producer received only half the price, since the rest was absorbed by the swollen overhead costs of Vneshtorg, state and cooperative bodies involved in the procurement and sale of bread on the domestic and foreign markets.
The peasant also suffered significant losses due to the deterioration in the quality of manufactured goods purchased in exchange for bread and other agricultural products, the disappearance of imports and the constant shortage of goods in the village, which, according to the authoritative opinion of another expert on small peasant farming in post-revolutionary Russia N. Chelintsev, received less than 70% manufactured goods.
Under NEP conditions, violent measures by the state to confiscate food from peasants began to be used relatively widely for the first time in the conditions of the grain procurement crisis of the winter of 1927/28. Formally, the object of violent measures was declared to be kulaks who delayed the sale of bread to the state in order to increase the price of bread. A directive was issued to bring them to justice under Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which provides for imprisonment for up to 3 years with confiscation of all or part of the property. As in the times of the notorious “war communism,” in order to interest the poor in the fight against holders of large surpluses, it was recommended that 25% of confiscated grain be distributed among them at low state prices or as a long-term loan.
The position of the kulaks was also undermined by increased taxation, the confiscation of their land surpluses, the forced purchase of tractors, complex machines, and other measures. Under the influence of such a policy, wealthy households began to curtail production, sell off livestock and equipment, especially cars, and their families increased their desire to move to cities and other areas. According to the USSR Central Statistical Office, the number of kulak farms in the RSFSR decreased by 1927 from 3.9 to 2.2%, in Ukraine by 1929 - from 3.8 to 1.4%.
However, the use of emergency measures by the state was not limited only to the farms of kulaks and wealthy peasants, but soon it began to hit the middle peasantry, and sometimes even the poor, more and more often and more and more strongly. Under the pressure of impossible grain procurement assignments and pressure from secretaries and members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) specially sent to the grain regions - I. Stalin, V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, A. Mikoyan and others - local party and state bodies took the path of widespread searches and arrests, not only supplies, but seed grain and even household belongings were often confiscated from peasants. During the procurement of the 1929 harvest, the orgy of violence became even more widespread. Thus, on June 17 of this year, the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks sent out a directive “On measures to eliminate kulak sabotage of grain procurements”, in which it obliged to carry out through meetings of the poor and gatherings “resolutions on the eviction from the villages and the deprivation of land shares of those kulaks who did not complete the layout and who will have surplus grain hidden... or distributed for storage to other farms.” In the report on this campaign, the secretary of the regional committee, A. Andreev, wrote to Stalin that all efforts were thrown into grain procurements in the region - more than 5 thousand workers of the regional and district scale, the property of 30-35 thousand farms was fined and largely sold, Almost 20 thousand were put on trial and about 600 people were shot. The same arbitrariness occurred in Siberia, the Lower and Middle Volga regions, Ukraine, and the republics of Central Asia.
These and similar facts allow us to consider the grain procurement emergency of 1928, especially 1929, as a prelude to the deployment of complete collectivization and mass dispossession, as well as a kind of reconnaissance in force that the Bolshevik regime carried out before deciding on a general battle in the struggle for a “new » village.
Observant contemporaries-eyewitnesses then noticed the close relationship between one and the other economic and political campaigns in the countryside. Specific feature The Soviet-party campaign was that “it was a direct continuation of the grain procurement campaign,” emphasized G. Ushakov (a student and follower of A. Chayanov) in his manuscript “Siberia on the Eve of Sowing,” who saw and recorded how Stalin’s “began and progressed.” revolution from above" in the West Siberian and Ural villages. “For some reason this circumstance,” he continued, “is not properly taken into account.” People sent to the regions for grain procurements mechanically switched to the shock work of collectivization. Together with the people, they mechanically switched to new work and methods of the grain procurement campaign. Thus, mistakes and excesses, both already existing, were doubled, and the ground was created for new ones.”
The genetic relationship of both phenomena was captured absolutely correctly by an inquisitive eyewitness. Let us only add that reconnaissance in force, carried out for two years in a row, allowed Stalin and his entourage, firstly, to make sure that the village, in which the policy of the class approach deepened the socio-political division, was no longer capable of being as united as it was at the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921, to resist the radical disruption of the traditional foundations of its economic life and everyday life, and, secondly, to test the readiness of their forces (the Bolshevik-state apparatus, the OGPU, the Red Army and the young Soviet public), to extinguish isolated outbreaks of peasant discontent with the actions of the authorities and its individual agents. At the same time, Stalin and his associates managed to successfully complete the struggle with former political opponents in the ranks of the party: L. Trotsky, L. Kamenev, G. Zinoviev and their supporters, and then managed to identify new ones in the person of the so-called right deviation, creating certain prerequisites for his subsequent ideological and political defeat.
The new course of socio-economic policy of the Soviet government, as the outstanding domestic economist N.D. Kondratyev would later characterize the actions of the ruling elite of the Bolsheviks associated with the implementation of the accelerated industrialization of the country and the departure on this basis from the principles of NEP, expressed, on the one hand, that , that unprecedentedly rapid rates of industrial development were determined, and on the other hand, that the development of industry itself occurred unevenly in relation to its different sectors, with clear priorities for the production of means of production to the detriment of the production of means of consumption. In search of the necessary capital investments to ensure accelerated industrialization, the state had to take the path of redistributing the country's national income by pumping a significant part of it from villages to cities, from agriculture to industry.
However, small peasant farming, on which the agricultural sector of the Russian economy was based, limited the possibility of such transfer. This circumstance, as well as the tasks of creating a socially homogeneous and politically monolithic society, predetermined the accelerated socialization of the country's small peasant economy. The same was demanded by the interests of strengthening the country’s defense capability, especially if we take into account the threat of an armed conflict that actually increased after the “military alarm” of 1927. Similar considerations were reflected in the report of the defense sector of the USSR State Planning Committee to the country's Labor and Defense Council, dedicated to taking into account defense interests in the first five-year plan. The significant increase in the share of socialized peasant farms planned by the plan was recognized in this document as an event that fully met the requirements of the defense of the USSR. “There is no doubt,” the report emphasized, “that in war conditions, when maintaining regulatory capabilities is especially important, the socialized sector will be of exceptional importance. Equally important is the presence of large production units that are more easily amenable to planned influence than a large mass of small, dispersed peasant farms.”
The course towards transferring peasant farms to large-scale production was outlined by the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in December 1927. At the same time, it put forward the task of “further developing the offensive against the kulaks”, taking a number of measures limiting the development of capitalism in the countryside and leading peasant farming in the direction towards socialism."
The policy of attacking the kulaks left a sad memory, mainly because in the heated situation of those years, the label “bourgeois kulak” was often hung on an independent, strong, albeit tight-fisted owner-worker, capable under normal conditions of feeding not only himself, but also the whole country. The largely arbitrary escalation of measures of class violence against the kulaks sharply intensified with the publication in the summer of 1929 of the resolution “On the inexpediency of admitting kulaks to the collective farms and the need for systematic work to cleanse the collective farms of kulak elements trying to corrupt the collective farms from the inside.” With this decision, many wealthy families, already subject to economic and political ostracism, were literally put in a hopeless situation, finding themselves deprived of a future. With the active support of villagers such as Ignashka Sopronov, whose collective image was talentedly recreated on the pages of the novel “Eves” by Vasily Belov, a campaign was launched to cleanse collective farms of kulaks, and the latter’s very entry into collective farms was considered a criminal act, and collective farms created with their participation qualified as false collective farms.
But no matter how cruel these measures were in relation to the kulaks, the main vector of the new course in the countryside, as subsequent events showed, were the decisions of the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which dealt with the transfer of small-scale peasant farming to large-scale production.
On their basis, in the spring of 1928, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture and the Kolkhoz Center of the RSFSR drew up a draft five-year collectivization plan, according to which by the end of the five-year plan, i.e. by 1933... it was planned to involve 1.1 million farms in collective farms (4% of the total number in the republic) . A few months later, the Union of Agricultural Cooperation Unions increased this figure to 3 million (12%). And in the five-year plan approved in the spring of 1929, it was planned to socialize 4–4.5 million farms, i.e. 16–18% of their total number.
How can we explain the fact that in just one year the plan figures were increased three times, and their latest version was four times higher than the original? Firstly, this is due to the fact that the pace of the collective farm movement in practice exceeded that initially planned: by June 1929, there were already more than a million households on collective farms, or approximately as many as was originally planned for the end of the Five-Year Plan. Secondly, the leadership of the party and state hoped to speed up the solution of the grain problem, which became extremely acute in 1928 and 1929, by accelerating the creation of collective and state farms.
And from the second half of 1929, the scale and pace of collective farm construction jumped even more significantly. If by the summer of 1929 there were about one million households on collective farms, then by October of the same year there were 1.9 million, and the level of collectivization rose from 3.8 to 7.6%. The number of collective farms grew much faster in the main grain-producing regions: the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga region. Here the number of collective farmers increased by 2–3 times in four months (June–September 1929). And in the middle of the summer of this year, the Chkalovsky district of the Middle Volga region was the first to take the initiative to achieve complete collectivization. By September, 500 collective farms had been created here (461 partnerships for joint cultivation of land, 34 artels and 5 communes), which included 6,441 farms (about 64% of the total number in the region) with socialized 131 thousand hectares of land (out of all available in the region). territory of the district 220 thousand hectares). In the region, a similar movement soon appeared in some other regions of the republic.
To support this initiative, the department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for work in the countryside convened a meeting in August at which the issue of socializing peasant farms of entire regions was considered. The idea of complete collectivization began to be put into practice. Following the Middle Volga region, areas of complete collectivization began to emerge in other areas of the country. In the North Caucasus, seven regions almost simultaneously began complete collectivization, in the Lower Volga - five, in the Central Black Earth Region - also five, in the Urals - three. Gradually, the movement spreads to certain areas of the consuming strip. In total, in August 1929, there were 24 districts in the RSFSR where complete collectivization was underway. In some of them, collective farms united up to 50% of peasant households, but in most cases the coverage of collective farms did not exceed 15–20% of households.
In the same Lower Volga, an initiative arose and became a kind of symbol of the entire “revolution from above” to carry out complete collectivization on the scale of the entire district - Khopersky. Here the district committee of the Bolsheviks decided to complete complete collectivization by the end of the five-year plan. And a week later, the Kolkhoz Center of the RSFSR supported the initiative of the Khopers, recognizing the need to “carry out complete collectivization of the entire district within a five-year period.” At the same time, the district’s initiative was approved by the bureau of the Lower Volga Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Republic declared it an experimental demonstration of collectivization. On September 15, a month of collectivization took place in the district. As usual, about 400 workers of party and other government bodies were sent to the “lighthouse” district as “pushers” (as popular rumor would later call them). The result of all these efforts was 27 thousand households, which by October 1929 were listed on the district's collective farms.
Such quasi-successes were achieved mainly through methods of administration and violence. The instructor of the Kolkhoz Center had to admit this in a letter read out at the November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. “Local authorities are implementing a system of emphasis and conviviality,” the letter emphasized. – All work on the organization took place under the slogan: “Who is more.” Locally, district directives were sometimes translated into the slogan “Whoever does not go to the collective farm is an enemy of Soviet power.” Widespread mass work was not carried out... There were cases of broad promises of tractors and loans: “Everything will be given - go to the collective farm”... The combination of these reasons gives formally so far 60%, and maybe, while I am writing a letter, and 70% of collectivization. We have not studied the qualitative side of collective farms... If measures are not taken to strengthen the collective farms, the business may compromise itself. Collective farms will begin to fall apart.”
In other words, the Khoper training ground of the “all-out” demonstrated firsthand the typical ailments of the village “revolution from above”, which, after spreading on an all-Union scale, will receive from the lips of Stalin the name “excesses” of the general line, who redirected them to the distraught local Soviet party and other activists.
In order to better understand the origins and nature of collective farm euphoria, which will soon overwhelm all parts of the country’s party-state system, it is necessary to at least briefly characterize the state of domestic socio-political thought on the issue of the fate of small peasant farming in connection with forced industrialization. After the XV Party Congress, this problem, which had long been of interest to many domestic politicians and scientists, as the wheels of the Bolshevik NEP began to turn in the second half of the 1920s. more and more often they began to stall (until they stopped altogether during the years of emergency) and moved to the forefront of the socio-economic and party-political life of Soviet society. In the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin’s emphasis on “revolution from above” as a more painless option for solving the problem of “socialist modernization” of the countryside was opposed by the views of the leaders of the “right deviation”, which in modern literature are called the Bukharin alternative.
N. I. Bukharin, after his rehabilitation in 1987, began to be considered by some domestic agrarian historians (V. P. Danilov and his supporters), who considered the collective farm system, first as a kind of third edition of serfdom in Russia, and now as a triumph of “state capitalism” in Soviet village) one of the consistent promoters of Lenin’s views on cooperation, through which small private farms of peasants, including kulak ones, will, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, as he (Bukharin) put it, “grow into socialism.” At the same time, opinions also appeared that he allegedly “developed his own plan for the cooperative development of the village,” which largely echoes V. I. Lenin’s article “On Cooperation” and A. V. Chayanov’s book on peasant cooperation.” But they cannot be considered justified. After all, if Lenin and Bukharin basically had a similar view of cooperation as the best form of introducing peasants to socialism, then the non-party Chayanov, who was by no means a blind admirer of V.I. Lenin and the entire Bolshevik regime of power in the country, understood it fundamentally differently.
Firstly, he considered the presence of market relations in the country to be a natural, normal condition for the life and activities of cooperation, while Lenin and Bukharin considered these relations as a temporary phenomenon, designed only for the transition period from capitalism to socialism. Secondly, Lenin and Bukharin thought of socialist cooperation of peasants exclusively under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As for Chayanov, he directly linked the genuine successes of small-peasant village cooperation with the democratic regime of power in the country, which should replace the dictatorial, Bolshevik government in a unique evolutionary way, counting on the so-called degeneration of Bolshevism. According to Chayanov’s concept of peasant “self-collectivization,” the implementation of his version of rural modernization would mean a painless, evolutionary-type restructuring of the country’s agricultural sector, which, while increasing labor productivity and raising the agricultural level of agriculture, would solve complex problems social problems country, since cooperation was supposed to cover and help strengthen all social strata of the village.
In most of these parameters, it was fundamentally different from Stalin’s forced “revolution from above,” which was based not so much on the power of example and voluntary socialization of the peasant economy, but on the violent disruption of the individual way of life and production activity of the Russian peasantry, which turned into a tragedy for several hundred thousand families of dispossessed and dispossessed the death of an even larger number of the population from the famine of 1932–1933, as well as a significant, although certainly temporary, drop in the productive forces of the village in the first years of collectivization.
But the tasks of large-scale transfer of material and labor resources from village to city in order to ensure the industrial leap that the country made during the pre-war five-year plans, Chayanov’s method of solving the agrarian-peasant problem in the specific conditions of that time did not guarantee. Moreover, under the existing political regime it was simply unfeasible. Both the scientist himself and his like-minded people became convinced of this relatively soon. That is why their hopes and practical actions are to, using their position as “specialists” at the relevant Soviet People’s Commissariats and other government institutions, to try to repeat the attempt to “envelop” Bolshevik power, which was successfully implemented by the Kadet-progressive opposition in relation to the tsarist autocracy, before overthrow him in February 1917. Chayanov made corresponding proposals among his colleagues in cooperative work (as I showed over 10 years ago), starting from the years of the civil war. “NEP's economic Brest of Bolshevism,” as characterized the reformist line of the Soviet leadership of the early 20s. the theorist of change of leadership N.V. Ustryalov, gave Chayanov and his associates even greater confidence that the tactics of “envelopment” were much more effective than open confrontation of opposition-minded layers of the intelligentsia with the communist government.
Chayanov outlined the essence of his political thoughts in a letter to a relative by his second wife - an emigrant and prominent publicist, activist of Russian political Freemasonry E. D. Kuskova. For Western concessions, the author of the letter advised recipients to seek political guarantees. The scientist saw the meaning of these guarantees in that “one by one, the Soviet government will include non-Soviet people who work with the Soviets.” How can all this be practically accomplished? - he asked and answered - “We need to agree ourselves, that is, everyone who understands what is happening in Russia, who is able to accept new Russia. We need private influence on Western European leaders - we need a conspiracy with them and some kind of common front.” He associated the tactics of “enveloping” Soviet power with intervention, but not military, but economic. “It seems inevitable to me,” he explained to the addressee, “in the future, the penetration of foreign capital into Russia. We won't crawl out on our own. This intervention...is still going on in forms that are most ruinous for Russia. This intervention will intensify, since with a money economy in Russia, Western pressure will always be more real. After all, if the chervonets is quoted in the West, then any reputable bank can get a concession - it’s worth threatening and intimidating. This is much worse than Wrangel and any military campaigns(my italics – E.Shch.).
Chayanov’s quoted considerations, expressed in a letter written and sent during his business trip abroad approximately five years before the adoption of the collectivization course by the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, essentially anticipated the programmatic guidelines of the so-called Labor Peasant Party (TKP), which were set out on interrogations in the case of the Central Committee of the TKP and the group of N. N. Sukhanov - V. G. Groman A. V. Chayanov, N. D. Kondratyev and other agricultural scientists arrested in the summer - autumn of 1930.
Stalin and his entourage interpreted the testimony of those arrested as confirmation of the existence of such an anti-Bolshevik organization and, most importantly, as a justification for the start of political reprisals against them. Of course, the “leader of the peoples” at that time could not have known the contents of Chayanov’s letters to Kuskova, since they entered the Soviet archives only after the end of World War II. But, as his correspondence from the late 20s to mid-30s shows. XX century with V.M. Molotov, according to the protocols of interrogations of arrested scientists, the Kremlin leader appreciated the danger of the political views of Chayanov, Kondratiev and their associates for the Bolshevik regime. He was primarily concerned that the tactics of the TKP assumed its blocking with the right wing of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during the transfer of power to it, for this bloc was considered by Chayanov and Kondratiev and their like-minded people as “a stage towards the implementation of the democratic principle.” But a day after Kondratiev made this confession, Stalin would write to Molotov: “I have no doubt that a direct connection will be revealed (through Sokolnikov and Teodorovich) between these gentlemen and the rightists - (Bukharin), Rykov, Tomsky) Kondratiev, Groman and a couple “The other scoundrels must be shot.”
Despite the fact that Chayanov and Kondratyev denied such a connection during subsequent interrogations, there is reason to believe that, if not it, then the ideological dependence of the views of representatives of the “right deviation” on the so-called. “bourgeois specialists,” nevertheless, existed, and the latter did not reject it.
But be that as it may, the organizational disunity of the political opponents of the Bolsheviks objectively poured grist into the mill of Stalin and his circle. Taking advantage of this disunity, the “leader of the peoples” and his comrades not only dealt with them one by one, but even resorted to defamation of some political opponents through the lips of others. For example, a campaign of shameless mockery of Chayanov, Kondratyev and others was started at the end of 1927 by one of the leaders of the “new opposition” and then the Trotskyist-right bloc, G. Zinoviev, calling them “Smenovekhites” and “internal Ustryalovites.” And after him, from the rostrum of the April Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Chayanov, Kondratyev and their supporters were thundered by the leader of the right-wing deviationists himself, Bukharin, who characterized the ideas of scientists regarding the balanced development of industry and agriculture as “a decisive shift from industrialization towards the kalivization of the country " With the light hand of modern Western researchers (M. Levin, S. Cohen, T. Shanin, etc.), in modern domestic literature on the history of collectivization, it has become fashionable to elevate not only Chayanov’s, but also Bukharin’s options for solving the problem of modernizing agriculture in the USSR to the rank of supposedly real-life alternatives to Stalin’s “revolution from above” in the Soviet countryside.
However, neither the original ideas of Chayanov, nor the more eclectic judgments of Bukharin and his so-called. schools did not receive any significant chance of implementation in the specific conditions of the country in the late 20s and 30s. In other words, the Russian village seemed historically doomed to forced collectivization.
This is precisely the character that collective farm construction throughout the country acquired in the last two months of 1929 and the first months of 1930. This was largely facilitated by Stalin’s article “The Year of the Great Turning Point,” published by Pravda on November 7, 1929. Wishful thinking, it argued that the party “succeeded in turning the bulk of the peasantry... to a new, socialist path of development; managed to organize a radical change in the depths of the peasantry itself and lead the broad masses of the poor and middle peasants.”
In reality, things were not so simple. Both in the USSR as a whole and within the RSFSR, the turning point in the consciousness of the majority of peasants not only did not take place, but was not even clearly visible. Indeed, as of October 1 of this year, the collective farms of the Union and the RSFSR accounted for 7.6 and 7.4 of the total number of peasant households, respectively. However, the whole tone of Stalin’s article oriented the party towards the utmost acceleration of the pace of collectivization and had a direct impact on the course and decisions of the November (1929) Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. It is no coincidence that in the report of the Chairman of the Collective Farm Center on the results and tasks of collective farm construction, the participants of the Plenum were told that this “movement is gaining such momentum, the influence of collective farms... on individual farming is increasing so much that the transition to collective footing for the rest of the peasantry will be a matter of months, not years.” .
Not content with the fact that the party had previously systematically fueled the collective farm movement with its personnel, the Plenum decided to send 25 thousand industrial workers with organizational and political experience to the villages at a time. This measure was intended to speed up collectivization. Since the collective farm movement began to outgrow the boundaries of districts and regions and caused the emergence of such all-Union or republican organizations as Kolkhoz Center, Tractor Center, Zernotrest, etc., it was decided to create an all-Union People's Commissariat of Agriculture, which, as its primary task, was entrusted with the management of the construction of a large public farm in the countryside.
Considering the kulak as the main class force interested in disrupting this construction, the Plenum obliged the party and the state to intensify the fight against the capitalist elements of the countryside, to develop a decisive offensive against the kulak, suppressing his attempts to get into collective farms in order to destroy the latter. And although his documents did not contain direct instructions on the use of administrative and repressive measures to eliminate the kulaks, the experience of the emergency of 1928–1929. and the entire course of discussion of the issue at the Plenum led closely to this.
The transition to a policy of complete collectivization under the slogans “Give it a breakneck pace” logically put on the agenda the question of the fate not of individual kulak farms, but of the kulaks as a class as a whole. Forcing collectivization meant the inevitable deployment of dispossession as a policy of forcibly depriving the kulaks of the means of production, buildings, etc. in order to eliminate them as the last exploitative layer in the village. Both were imposed under powerful pressure from above. In the minds of Stalin and his associates, the end here justified the means. The country's leaders were well aware that otherwise it was impossible to break the resistance of the middle peasantry to go to the collective farm (i.e., to solve the immediate problem - to speed up the formal socialization of the peasant economy), and, moreover, to achieve a remodeling “in the spirit of socialism” of the peasant’s proprietary psychology and thereby socialize the country’s agricultural sector in practice (i.e., to implement the main and perhaps the most difficult task of the Bolsheviks’ long-term policy in the countryside).
And the matter rested not only on the fact that the kulaks resisted collective farm construction in every possible way. The main thing is that for the majority of village workers they personified the vital ideal of independent farming, property and other wealth, and thus essentially nullified the Bolshevik propaganda of the advantages of the collective form of farming. That is why, with the transition to mass collectivization, the fate of the kulak layer was predetermined. Realizing this, its most far-sighted representatives, as noted above, hastened to “dispossess themselves” and move to cities and construction sites.
However, even after the proclamation of the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class, the question of how to carry out dispossession and what to do with the dispossessed remained unresolved. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930 “On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction,” prepared by a commission chaired by A. Yakovlev and personally edited by Stalin, did not bring sufficient clarity to it, limiting itself to merely confirming the inadmissibility of accepting kulaks to collective farms.
This document established strict deadlines for completing collectivization: for the North Caucasus, Lower and Middle Volga - autumn 1930 or “in any case” - spring 1932. For other regions it was indicated that “within five years we ... will be able to solve the problem of collectivization of the vast majority peasant farms." This formulation focused on the completion, basically, of collectivization in 1933, when the first five-year plan ended.
The agricultural artel was recognized as the main form of collective farm construction. When editing the text, Stalin crossed out the explanation about the degree of socialization of the means of production in the artel from the draft of this document, as a result of which the grassroots workers did not receive adequate clarity on this issue. At the same time, the agricultural artel was interpreted as a form of economy transitional to the commune, which also aimed local collectivizers at strengthening the socialization of the means of production of peasant households and testified to the reluctance of the party leaders to take into account the interests of the peasants and the underestimation of the strength of the peasant’s attachment to his farm.
End of introductory fragment.
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The given introductory fragment of the book The Political System of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war decades. Tutorial(D. O. Churakov, 2012) provided by our book partner -
The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) is a war between the USSR and Germany within the Second World War, which ended with the victory of the Soviet Union over the Nazis and the capture of Berlin. The Great Patriotic War became one of the final stages of the Second World War.
Causes of the Great Patriotic War
After defeat in the First World War, Germany was left in an extremely difficult economic and political situation, however, after Hitler came to power and carried out reforms, the country was able to increase its military power and stabilize the economy. Hitler did not accept the results of the First World War and wanted to take revenge, thereby leading Germany to world domination. As a result of his military campaigns, in 1939 Germany invaded Poland and then Czechoslovakia. A new war has begun.
Hitler's army rapidly conquered new territories, but until a certain point, there was a non-aggression peace treaty between Germany and the USSR, signed by Hitler and Stalin. However, two years after the start of World War II, Hitler violated the non-aggression agreement - his command developed the Barbarossa plan, which envisaged a rapid German attack on the USSR and the seizure of territories within two months. In case of victory, Hitler would have the opportunity to start a war with the United States, and he would also have access to new territories and trade routes.
Contrary to expectations, the unexpected attack on Russia did not produce results - the Russian army turned out to be much better equipped than Hitler expected and offered significant resistance. The campaign, designed to last several months, turned into a protracted war, which later became known as the Great Patriotic War.
Main periods of the Great Patriotic War
- The initial period of the war (June 22, 1941 - November 18, 1942). On June 22, Germany invaded the territory of the USSR and by the end of the year was able to conquer Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus - troops moved inland to capture Moscow. Russian troops suffered huge losses, the inhabitants of the country in the occupied territories ended up in German captivity and were driven to Germany into slavery. However, despite the fact that the Soviet army was losing, it still managed to stop the Germans on the approach to Leningrad (the city was besieged), Moscow and Novgorod. Plan Barbarossa did not produce the desired results, and battles for these cities continued until 1942.
- The period of radical change (1942-1943) On November 19, 1942, the counter-offensive of Soviet troops began, which produced significant results - one German and four allied armies were destroyed. The Soviet army continued its offensive in all directions, they managed to defeat several armies, begin pursuing the Germans and push the front line back towards the west. Thanks to the build-up of military resources (the military industry worked in a special regime), the Soviet army was significantly superior to the German one and could now not only resist, but also dictate its terms in the war. The USSR army turned from a defensive one into an attacking one.
- The third period of the war (1943-1945). Despite the fact that Germany managed to significantly increase the power of its army, it was still inferior to the Soviet one, and the USSR continued to play a leading offensive role in the war effort. The Soviet army continued to advance towards Berlin, recapturing the captured territories. Leningrad was retaken, and by 1944, Soviet troops were moving towards Poland and then Germany. On May 8, Berlin was captured and German troops declared unconditional surrender.
Major battles of the Great Patriotic War
- Defense of the Arctic (June 29, 1941 - November 1, 1944);
- Battle of Moscow (September 30, 1941 - April 20, 1942);
- Siege of Leningrad (September 8, 1941 - January 27, 1944);
- Battle of Rzhev (January 8, 1942 - March 31, 1943);
- Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942 - February 2, 1943);
- Battle for the Caucasus (July 25, 1942 - October 9, 1943);
- Battle of Kursk (July 5 - August 23, 1943);
- Battle for Right Bank Ukraine(December 24, 1943 - April 17, 1944);
- Belarusian operation (June 23 - August 29, 1944);
- Baltic operation (September 14 - November 24, 1944);
- Budapest operation (October 29, 1944 - February 13, 1945);
- Vistula-Oder operation (January 12 - February 3, 1945);
- East Prussian operation (January 13 - April 25, 1945);
- Battle of Berlin (April 16 - May 8, 1945).
Results and significance of the Great Patriotic War
The main significance of the Great Patriotic War was that it finally broke the German army, not giving Hitler the opportunity to continue his struggle for world domination. The war became a turning point during the Second World War and, in fact, its completion.
However, the victory was difficult for the USSR. The country's economy was in a special regime throughout the war, factories worked mainly for the military industry, so after the war they had to face a severe crisis. Many factories were destroyed, most of the male population died, people were starving and could not work. The country was in a difficult state, and it took many years for it to recover.
But, despite the fact that the USSR was in a deep crisis, the country turned into a superpower, its political influence on the world stage increased sharply, the Union became one of the largest and most influential states, on a par with the USA and Great Britain.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the territory of the USSR without declaring war. The Great Patriotic War began, which from the first days differed from the war in the West in its scope, bloodshed, extreme intensity of struggle, mass atrocities of the Nazis, and unprecedented self-sacrifice of citizens of the USSR.
The German side presented the war as preventive (warning). The fiction of a preventive war was intended to give the attack on the USSR the appearance of moral justification. The decision to invade was made by the fascist leadership not because the USSR threatened Germany, but because fascist Germany sought world domination. Germany's guilt as an aggressor cannot be questioned. On June 22, Germany carried out, as the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg established, a carefully prepared attack on the USSR “without any warning and without a shadow of legal justification. It was clear aggression." At the same time, some facts of the pre-war history of our country remain the subject of controversy among historians. Of course, this cannot change the assessment of Germany’s attack on the USSR as an act of aggression. In the national historical memory of the people, the war of 1941-1945. will forever remain as the Patriotic Liberation War. And no details of interest to historians can obscure this indisputable fact.
In June 1940, the German General Staff began developing a plan for a war against the USSR, and on December 18, Hitler approved the Barbarossa plan, which provided for the completion of the military campaign against the USSR during a “lightning war” in two to four months. The documents of the German leadership left no doubt that they were betting on the destruction of the USSR and millions of its citizens. The Nazis intended to “defeat the Russians as a people,” undermine their “biological strength,” and destroy their culture.
Germany and its allies (Finland, Hungary, Romania, Italy) concentrated 190 divisions (5.5 million soldiers and officers), 4.3 thousand tanks, 5 thousand aircraft, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars along the USSR border . In the western border military districts of the USSR, 170 divisions (3 million soldiers and commanders), 14.2 thousand tanks, 9.2 thousand combat aircraft, 32.9 thousand guns and mortars were concentrated. At the same time, 16% of tanks and 18.5% of aircraft were under repair or required repair. The attack was carried out in three main directions: Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.
There are three periods in the history of the Great Patriotic War. During the first period (June 22, 1941 – November 18, 1942), the strategic initiative belonged to Germany. The Wehrmacht managed to seize the initiative, using the factor of surprise of the attack, concentration of forces and means in the main directions. Already in the first days and months of the war, the Red Army suffered huge losses. In three weeks of fighting, the aggressor completely defeated 28 Soviet divisions, and another 70 lost more than half of their personnel and equipment. The retreat of the Red Army units often occurred in disarray. A significant part of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were captured. According to German documents, at the end of 1941 they had 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war.
What were the reasons for the defeats of the Red Army at the initial stage of the war? First of all, it should be emphasized that the USSR was faced with the strongest and invincible army in the world at that time. The forces and means of Germany and its allies at the beginning of the war were 1.2 times greater than the forces and means of the USSR. In certain positions, the USSR Armed Forces were quantitatively superior to the enemy army, but inferior to it in strategic deployment, in the quality of many types of weapons, in experience, training and literacy of personnel. By the beginning of the war, it was not possible to complete the rearmament of the army: there were not enough modern tanks, aircraft, automatic small arms, communications equipment, etc.
Secondly, serious damage to the command cadres was caused during the repressions. In 1937-1939 About 37 thousand commanders of various ranks were dismissed from the army, the majority for political reasons. Of these, 3-4 thousand were shot as “conspirators”, 6-8 thousand were convicted. Although the overwhelming majority of those dismissed and convicted were rehabilitated and returned to the army, the repressions undermined the combat effectiveness of the Red Army. A significant portion of command personnel (55%) were in their positions for less than six months. This was due to the fact that the size of the Red Army had more than doubled since 1939.
Thirdly, serious military-strategic miscalculations made by the Soviet political and military leadership affected the formation of the military concept, the assessment of the strategic situation in the spring and summer of 1941, the determination of the timing of a possible attack on the USSR and the directions of the main attacks of the German troops, which ensured strategic and tactical surprise and multiple superiority of the aggressor in the main directions.
Fourthly, miscalculations were made in the organization of defense and training of troops. The army was in the process of reorganization, the tank corps were not yet combat-ready, the pilots had not yet learned to fight with new equipment, the western borders were not completely fortified, the troops had not learned to fight on the defensive, etc.
From the first days of the war, the restructuring of the country's life on a war footing began. The basis for restructuring the activities of the party, government bodies and administration was the principle of maximum centralization of leadership. On June 23, the Headquarters of the Main Command was created, headed by the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal S.K. Timoshenko. On July 10, Stalin was appointed chairman of the Headquarters (Headquarters of the Supreme High Command). On June 30, the State Defense Committee was organized under the chairmanship of Stalin. All power in the country was concentrated in his hands. The main focus of the GKO's activities was the deployment of the Armed Forces, training reserves, and providing them with weapons, equipment, and food. During the war years, the State Defense Committee adopted about 10 thousand resolutions. Under the leadership of the Committee, the Headquarters planned 9 campaigns, 51 strategic operations and 250 front-line operations.
Military mobilization work became the most important area of state activity. The general mobilization of those liable for military service made it possible to replenish the army by 5.3 million people by July. During the war years, 34.5 million people (17.5% of the pre-war population) were mobilized into the army and to work in industry (including those who served before the war and volunteers). More than a third of this composition was in the army, of which 5-6.5 million people were constantly in the active army. (17.9 million people were recruited to serve in the Wehrmacht - 25.8% of the German population in 1939). Mobilization made it possible to form 648 new divisions during the war, 410 of them in 1941.
Military operations at the front in 1941 were extremely tragic. In the fall of 1941, Leningrad was blockaded. On July 10, the Battle of Smolensk unfolded on the central sector of the front. A dramatic situation arose in September in the Kyiv region, where there was a threat of encirclement by Soviet troops. The enemy closed the encirclement ring, captured Kyiv, destroying and capturing more than 600 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. Having defeated the Kyiv group of Soviet troops, the German command resumed the offensive of Army Group Center on Moscow. The defense of Odessa continued for more than two months. From October 30, 1941, Sevastopol fought heroically for 250 days.
The attack on Moscow (Operation Typhoon) began on September 30. Despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy was approaching Moscow. From October 20, a state of siege was introduced in the capital. On November 7, a military parade took place on Red Square, which had great moral, psychological and political significance. On the other hand, the morale of the German troops was significantly broken. Their losses on the Eastern Front were unprecedented: in June–November 1941 they were three times greater than in Poland and on the Western Front, and losses in the officer corps were five times greater than in 1939–1940. On November 16, after a two-week pause, a new German offensive began on Moscow. Simultaneously with repelling the enemy's offensive, a counteroffensive was being prepared. On December 5, the troops of the Kalinin Front (I.S. Konev) went on the offensive, and on December 6 - the Western (G.K. Zhukov) and Southwestern (S.K. Timoshenko). The Soviet side had 1,100 thousand soldiers and officers, 7.7 thousand guns and mortars, 774 tanks, 1 thousand aircraft against 1,708 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, 13.5 thousand guns and mortars, 1,170 tanks, 615 aircraft .
In the Battle of Moscow from November 16 to December 5, German troops lost 155 thousand people killed and wounded, about 800 tanks, 300 guns and up to 1.5 thousand aircraft. In total, by the end of 1941, Germany and its allies had lost 273.8 thousand people killed, 802.7 thousand wounded, and 57.2 thousand missing on the Eastern Front.
During a month of fighting, the Moscow, Tula and significant parts of the Kalinin region were liberated. In January 1942, the counteroffensive near Moscow developed into a general offensive of the Red Army. However, by March 1942 the power of the offensive had dried up, and the army suffered heavy losses. It was not possible to develop the success of the counteroffensive along the entire front, which lasted until April 20, 1942. The battle for Moscow was great importance: the myth of the invincibility of the German army was dispelled, the plan for a lightning war was thwarted, and the international position of the USSR was strengthened.
In the spring and summer of 1942, German troops took advantage of the miscalculations of the Soviet command, which was expecting a new offensive on Moscow and concentrated more than half of the armies, 62% of the aircraft and up to 80% of the tanks here. The German command was preparing an offensive in the south, trying to seize the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region. There were not enough Soviet troops in the south. Diversionary offensive operations in the Crimea and in the Kharkov direction turned into major defeats. German troops occupied Donbass and entered the big bend of the Don. On July 24, the enemy captured Rostov-on-Don. The situation at the front was critical.
On July 28, the People's Commissar of Defense issued order No. 227 (“Not a step back!”), which was intended to suppress manifestations of cowardice and desertion and categorically prohibited retreat without an order from the command. The order introduced penal battalions and companies for military personnel to serve sentences for criminal and military crimes. In 1942, 25 thousand people were sent to them, in the subsequent years of the war - 403 thousand. Within each army, 3-5 detachments were created (200 people each), obliged in case of panic and disorderly withdrawal of units to shoot panickers on the spot . The barrage detachments were disbanded in the fall of 1944.
In August 1942, the enemy reached the banks of the Volga in the Stalingrad area and the foothills of the Caucasus range. On August 25, the battle for Stalingrad began, which became decisive for the outcome of the entire war. Stalingrad has become synonymous with the mass heroism of soldiers, fortitude Soviet people. The brunt of the struggle for Stalingrad fell on the armies led by V.I. Chuikov, M.S. Shumilov, A.I. Lopatin, divisions A.I. Rodimtsev and I.I. Lednikova. The defensive operation in Stalingrad cost the lives of 324 thousand Soviet soldiers. By mid-November, the Germans' offensive capabilities had dried up, and they went on the defensive.
The war required a change in proportions in the development of the national economy and an improvement in the structure of state management of the economy. At the same time, created rigidly centralized system management was combined with the expansion of powers of economic bodies and the initiative of workers. The first six months of the war were the most difficult for the Soviet economy. Industrial production fell by more than half, and the production of military equipment and ammunition dropped sharply. People, industrial enterprises, material and cultural assets, and livestock were evacuated from the front-line zone. For this work, a Council for Evacuation Affairs was created (chairman N.M. Shvernik, deputies A.N. Kosygin and M.G. Pervukhin). By the beginning of 1942, more than 1.5 thousand industrial enterprises were transported, including 1,360 defense ones. The number of evacuated workers reached a third of the staff. From December 26, 1941, workers and employees of military enterprises were declared mobilized for the entire period of the war, and unauthorized departure from the enterprise was punished as desertion.
At the cost of enormous efforts of the people, the decline in industrial production stopped from December 1941, and from March 1942 its volume began to increase. By mid-1942, the restructuring of the Soviet economy on a war footing was completed. In the context of a significant reduction in labor resources, measures to provide labor for industry, transport, and new buildings have become an important direction of economic policy. By the end of the war, the number of workers and employees reached 27.5 million people, of which 9.5 million worked in industry (by the 1940 level this was 86-87%).
Agriculture was in an incredibly difficult situation during the war. Tractors, cars, and horses were mobilized for the needs of the army. The village was left practically without draft power. Almost the entire working-age male population was mobilized into the army. The peasants worked to the limit of their capabilities. During the war years, agricultural production fell catastrophically. Grain harvest in 1942 and 1943 amounted to 30 million tons compared to 95.5 million tons in 1940. The number of cattle decreased by half, pigs - by 3.6 times. Collective farms had to hand over almost the entire harvest to the state. For 1941-1944. 66.1 million tons of grain were harvested, and in 1941-1945. – 85 million tons (for comparison: 22.4 million tons were harvested in 1914-1917). Difficulties in agriculture inevitably affected the food supply of the population. From the first days of the war it was introduced card system providing the urban population with food.
During the war, extreme conditions were created for the functioning of the financial system. During the war years, budget revenues increased due to taxes and fees from the population. Government loans and money issues were used to cover the deficit. During the war years, voluntary contributions were widespread - fundraising from the population to the Defense Fund and the Red Army Fund. During the war, the Soviet financial system showed high mobilization capabilities and efficiency. If in 1940 military spending amounted to about 7% of national income, then in 1943 it was 33%. Military spending increased sharply between 1941 and 1945. amounted to 50.8% of all budget expenditures. At the same time, the state budget deficit amounted to only 2.6%.
As a result of emergency measures and the heroic work of the people, already from mid-1942 the USSR had a strong military economy, which provided the army with everything necessary in ever-increasing quantities. During the war years, the USSR produced almost twice as much military equipment and weapons as Germany. We used material and raw material resources and equipment better than in the German economy. The Soviet economy turned out to be more efficient during the war than the economy of Nazi Germany.
Thus, the model of mobilization economy that developed in the 1930s turned out to be very effective during the war years. Strict centralism, directive planning, concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state, the absence of competition and market egoism of individual social strata, and the labor enthusiasm of millions of people played a decisive role in ensuring economic victory over the enemy. Other factors (Lend-Lease, labor of prisoners and prisoners of war) played a subordinate role.
The second period (November 19, 1942 – end of 1943) is a period of radical change. On November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and on November 23 closed the ring around enemy troops. The cauldron included 22 divisions with a total number of 330 thousand soldiers and officers. The Soviet command offered the surrounded troops to capitulate, but they refused. On February 2, 1943, the grandiose battle of Stalingrad ended. During the liquidation of the encircled enemy group, 147 thousand soldiers and officers were killed, 91 thousand were captured. Among the prisoners were 24 generals, along with the commander of the 6th Army, Field Marshal F. Paulus.
The operation at Stalingrad grew into a general strategic offensive that lasted until the end of March 1943. Stalingrad raised the authority of the USSR, led to the rise of the Resistance movement in European countries, and contributed to the strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition.
The Battle of the Volga predetermined the outcome of the fighting in the North Caucasus. There was a threat of encirclement of the enemy's North Caucasian group, and it began to retreat. By mid-February 1943, most of the North Caucasus was liberated. Of particular importance was the breakthrough of the enemy blockade of Leningrad in January 1943 by troops of the Leningrad (A. A. Govorov) and Volkhov (K. A. Meretskov) fronts.
In the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht command decided to organize a powerful offensive in the Kursk area. The Citadel plan was based on the idea: with unexpected counter strikes from Orel and Belgorod, to encircle and destroy Soviet troops in the Kursk salient, and then develop an offensive into the interior of the country. For this purpose it was planned to use a third of the German formations located on the Soviet-German front. At dawn on July 5, the Germans attacked the defenses of the Soviet fronts. Soviet units stubbornly defended each defensive line. On July 12, a tank battle unprecedented in the history of wars unfolded near Prokhorovka, in which about 1,200 tanks took part. On August 5, Soviet troops captured Orel and Belgorod, and on August 23 they liberated Kharkov. The Battle of Kursk ended with the capture of Kharkov. During 50 days of fighting, German troops lost half a million soldiers and officers, 2,952 tanks, 844 guns, 1,327 aircraft. The losses of the Soviet troops were comparable to the German ones. True, the victory at Kursk was achieved with less blood than before: while Stalingrad claimed the lives of 470 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, 253 thousand died during the Battle of Kursk. The victory at Kursk cemented a fundamental turning point in the course of the war. The Wehrmacht's omnipotence on the battlefields ended.
Having liberated Orel, Belgorod, and Kharkov, Soviet troops launched a general strategic offensive at the front. The radical turning point in the course of the war, which began at Stalingrad, was completed by the Battle of the Dnieper. On November 6, Kyiv was liberated. From November 1942 to December 1943, 46.2% of Soviet territory was liberated. The collapse of the fascist bloc began. Italy was withdrawn from the war.
One of the important areas of the fight against the Nazi invaders was ideological, educational, and propaganda work. Newspapers, radio, party propagandists and political workers, cultural figures explained the nature of the war, strengthened faith in victory, cultivated patriotism, loyalty to duty and other high moral qualities. The Soviet side contrasted the misanthropic fascist ideology of racism and genocide with such universal human values as national independence, solidarity and friendship of peoples, justice, and humanism. Class and socialist values were not discarded altogether, but were largely replaced by patriotic, traditionally national ones.
During the war years, changes occurred in the relationship between the state and the church. Already on June 22, 1941, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergius, blessed all Orthodox Christians to defend the Fatherland. The metropolitan’s word carried a huge charge of patriotism and pointed to the deep historical source of people’s strength and faith in victory over their enemies. Like the official authorities, the church defined the war as national, patriotic, and patriotic. Anti-religious propaganda has stopped in the country. On September 4, 1943, Stalin met with Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy, and Nikolai, and on September 12, the Council of Bishops elected Metropolitan Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. The Council adopted a document which stated that “anyone guilty of treason against the general church cause and who has gone over to the side of fascism, as an opponent of the Cross of the Lord, shall be considered excommunicated, and a bishop or cleric shall be deprived of his rank.” By the end of the war, 10,547 were active in the USSR Orthodox churches and 75 monasteries (before the war - about 380 churches and not a single monastery). Open churches became new centers of Russian national identity, and Christian values became an element of national ideology.
The third period (1944 - May 9, 1945) is the final period of the war. By the beginning of 1944, the German armed forces had 315 divisions, 198 of which fought on the Eastern Front. Together with the Allied troops, there were 4.9 million soldiers and officers here. German industry produced a significant amount of weapons, although Germany's economic situation was steadily deteriorating. Soviet industry surpassed German industry in the production of all major types of weapons.
In the history of the Great Patriotic War, 1944 became the year of the offensive of Soviet troops on all fronts. In the winter of 1943-1944. The German Army Group South was defeated, the Right Bank and part of Western Ukraine were liberated. Soviet troops reached the state border. In January 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. On June 6, 1944, a second front was opened in Europe. During Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944, Belarus was liberated. It is interesting that Operation Bagration was almost a mirror image of the German blitzkrieg. Hitler and his advisers believed that the Red Army would deliver a decisive blow in the south, in Galicia, where the prospect of an attack on Warsaw, to the rear of Army Group Center, opened up for Soviet troops. It was in this direction that the German command concentrated its reserves, but miscalculated. Having gone on the offensive in Belarus on June 22, 1944, Soviet troops fought 700 km in five weeks. The rate of advance of the Soviet troops exceeded the rate of advance of the tank groups of Guderian and Hoth in the summer of 1941. In the fall, the liberation of the Baltic states began. In the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, Soviet troops advanced 600-1100 km, completing the liberation of the USSR. Enemy losses amounted to 1.6 million people, 6,700 tanks, more than 12 thousand aircraft, 28 thousand guns and mortars.
In January 1945, the Vistula-Oder operation began. Its main goal was to defeat the enemy group on Polish territory, reach the Oder, seize bridgeheads here and provide favorable conditions for striking Berlin. After bloody battles, Soviet troops reached the banks of the Oder on February 3. During the Vistula-Oder operation, the Nazis lost 35 divisions.
At the final stage of the war, German troops in the West ceased serious resistance. Almost encountering no resistance, the Allies advanced to the East. The Red Army was faced with the task of delivering the final blow to Nazi Germany. The Berlin offensive operation began on April 16, 1945 and lasted until May 2. Troops of the 1st Belorussian (G.K. Zhukov), 1st Ukrainian (I.S. Konev), and 2nd Belorussian (K.K. Rokossovsky) fronts took part in it. Berlin was fiercely defended by more than a million German soldiers. The advancing Soviet troops numbered 2.5 million soldiers, 41.6 thousand guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 7.5 thousand aircraft. On April 25, the encirclement of the Berlin group was completed. After the German command rejected the ultimatum to surrender, the assault on Berlin began. On May 1, the Victory Banner flew over the Reichstag, and the next day the garrison capitulated. On the night of May 9, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. However, German troops still held Prague. Soviet troops quickly liberated Prague.
The turning point in the war and victory were the result of an incredible effort and mass heroism of the people, which amazed enemies and allies. The idea that inspired the workers of the front and rear, uniting and multiplying their strength, was the idea of defending the Fatherland. The acts of supreme self-sacrifice and heroism in the name of victory, personified by squadron commander Nikolai Gastello, 28 Panfilov fighters led by political instructor V.G., will forever be preserved in the grateful memory of posterity. Klochkov, underground fighter Liza Chaikina, partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, fighter pilot Alexey Maresyev, sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his famous “Pavlov’s House” in Stalingrad, underground fighter from the “Young Guard” Oleg Koshevoy, private Alexander Matrosov, intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, young partisan Marat Kazei , Lieutenant General D.M. Karbyshev and many thousands of other heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
For courage and heroism, more than 38 million orders and medals were awarded to the defenders of the Motherland; the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to over 11.6 thousand people, among whom were representatives of most nationalities of the country, including 8160 Russians, 2069 Ukrainians, 309 Belarusians, 161 Tatar, 108 Jews, 96 Kazakhs. 16 million 100 thousand home front workers were awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was awarded to 202 home front workers.
Nazi Germany was defeated, but World War was still going on. The USSR declared war on Japan. This step was dictated by both allied obligations and the interests of the Soviet Union in the Far East. Japan did not openly oppose the USSR, but remained an ally of Germany throughout the war. It concentrated an army of one and a half million people near the borders of the USSR. The Japanese navy detained Soviet merchant ships and actually blocked the ports and sea borders of the Soviet Far East. On April 5, 1945, the USSR government denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality treaty of 1941.
By August, the Soviet command transferred part of the forces from Europe to the Far East (over 400 thousand people, over 7 thousand guns and mortars, 2 thousand tanks). Over 1.5 million soldiers, over 27 thousand guns and mortars, over 700 rocket launchers, 5.2 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, and over 3.7 thousand aircraft were concentrated against the Kwantung Army. The forces of the Pacific Fleet (416 ships, about 165 thousand sailors), the Amur Flotilla, and border troops were involved in the operation. The commander-in-chief of the Soviet troops was Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky.
On August 6 and 9, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union announced that from August 9 it would consider itself at war with Japan. Within 10 days, Soviet troops defeated the main forces of the Kwantung Army, which began to capitulate on August 19. In the second half of August 1945, Soviet troops liberated Manchuria, Northeast China, the northern part of Korea, captured Southern Sakhalin and Kuril Islands. The military campaign in the Far East lasted 24 days. In terms of its scope and dynamism, it occupies one of the first places among the operations of the Second World War. Japanese losses totaled 83.7 thousand people killed and more than 640 thousand captured. The irretrievable losses of the Soviet Army amounted to about 12 thousand people. On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered.
With the liquidation of the hotbed of war in the Far East, the Second World War ended. The main result of the Great Patriotic War was the liquidation mortal danger USSR-Russia, threats of enslavement and genocide of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR. Soviet troops liberated, in whole or in part, 13 countries in Europe and Asia.
The USSR made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Germany and its allies. The Soviet Union was the only country that was able to stop the victorious march of Germany in 1941. In fierce one-on-one battles with the main force of the fascist bloc, the USSR achieved a radical turning point in the world war. This created the conditions for the liberation of Europe and accelerated the opening of a second front. The USSR eliminated fascist domination over the majority of enslaved peoples, preserving their statehood within historically just boundaries. The Red Army defeated 507 Nazi divisions and 100 divisions of its allies, which is 3.5 times more than the Anglo-American troops on all fronts of the war. On the Soviet-German front, the bulk of the Wehrmacht's military equipment was destroyed (77 thousand combat aircraft, 48 thousand tanks, 167 thousand guns, 2.5 thousand warships and vehicles). More than 73% total losses The German army suffered in battles with the Armed Forces of the USSR. The Soviet Union was thus the main military-political force that determined the victory and protection of the peoples of the world from enslavement by fascism.
The war caused enormous demographic damage to the Soviet Union. The total human losses of the USSR amounted to 26.6 million people, 13.5% of the number of the USSR at the beginning of the war. During the war years, the losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 11.4 million people. Of these, 5.2 million people died in battles and died from wounds during the stages of sanitary evacuation; 1.1 million died from wounds in hospitals; 0.6 million were non-combat losses; 5 million people went missing and ended up in fascist concentration camps. Taking into account those who returned from captivity after the war (1.8 million people) and almost a million people from those previously recorded as missing in action, but who survived and were called up for the second time into the army, the demographic losses of military personnel of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8.7 million people.
The war unleashed by the Nazis turned into a human tragedy for Germany itself and its allies. On the Soviet-German front alone, Germany's irretrievable losses amounted to 7,181 thousand troops, and with the allies - 8,649 thousand people. The ratio between Soviet and German irretrievable losses is 1.3:1. It should be borne in mind that the number of prisoners of war who died in Nazi camps (more than 2.5 million people out of 4.6 million) was more than 5 times higher than the number of enemy troops who died in Soviet captivity (420 thousand . people out of 4.4 million). The total irreversible demographic losses of the USSR (26.6 million people) are 2.2 times greater than the losses of Germany and its satellites (11.9 million). The big difference is explained by the Nazi genocide against the population in the occupied territories, which claimed the lives of 17.9 million people.
As noted in modern literature, “the main reasons for the collapse of the alliance (in addition to the disappearance of the common threat that held it together) were growing disagreements on issues of the post-war world order and the intensifying rivalry between the USSR and the USA in strategically important areas, where a vacuum of power formed on the ruins of the Second World War - Central and Eastern Europe, Middle and Far East, China and Korea. The situation was aggravated by the polarization of power between the two new superpowers against the backdrop of a sharp weakening of other world centers of power. Overlaid on this geopolitical “landscape after the battle” were the universal ideological claims of the American and Soviet models strengthened during the war years, which gave particular urgency and global scope to their struggle for influence in the world.”
During the war years, all the peoples of the USSR suffered great irreparable losses. At the same time, the losses of Russian citizens amounted to 71.3% of the total demographic losses of the Armed Forces. Among the dead military personnel, the greatest losses were suffered by Russians - 5.7 million people (66.4% of all deaths), Ukrainians - 1.4 million (15.9%), Belarusians - 253 thousand (2.9%), Tatars – 188 thousand (2.2%), Jews – 142 thousand (1.6%), Kazakhs – 125 thousand (1.5%), Uzbeks – 118 thousand (1.4%), other peoples of the USSR – 8.1%.
Related information.
USSR during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)
Period 1941 -- 1945 - one of the most tragic and at the same time the most heroic periods in the history of our Motherland. For four long years, the Soviet people waged a mortal struggle against fascism. It was the Great Patriotic War in the full sense of the word. It was about the life and death of our state; fascism pursued the goal not only of seizing new territories rich in natural resources, but also of destroying the USSR and exterminating a significant part of its population. Hitler repeatedly stated that the destruction of the USSR as a socialist state was the meaning of his whole life, the goal for which the National Socialist movement existed.
The Great Patriotic War still excites the minds and hearts of people, it continues to remain at the forefront of political battles, causing a violent clash of different points of view. In foreign, and now also in our, historiography, attempts continue to rewrite history, to at least to some extent rehabilitate the aggressor, to present his treacherous actions as a “preventive war” against “Soviet expansionism.” These attempts are complemented by a desire to question the decisive contribution of the USSR to the defeat of fascism.
Tens of thousands of works have been published on the history of the Great Patriotic War, including fundamental multi-volume publications that comprehensively reflect the events of the war years, analyze major military operations that had a turning point in the Second World War, and much more. Anyone interested in more detailed history of the war can study this literature. We will focus on some stories related to the start of the war, the reasons for the failures, the restructuring of the country on a military basis, and the most important operations that decided the outcome of the war.
The Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941. Nazi Germany, violating the non-aggression treaty of August 23, 1939, attacked the USSR. Allies of fascism were Italy, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia and Croatia. Spain and France sent “volunteer” formations to the Soviet-German front: the “blue division” and the anti-Bolshevik legion. From that moment until the end of World War II, the main forces of the fascist bloc fought on the Soviet-German front. Imperialist Japan and Turkey concentrated their military forces near the borders of the USSR, ready to attack our country at any convenient moment.
Back in December 1940, Hitler approved the Barbarossa plan. It outlined the plans of the Nazis in the East. In accordance with this plan, the defeat of the USSR was envisaged during the summer campaign of 1941. In two or three months of the war, the fascist army expected to reach the Volga line along the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line. Reaching this line was considered winning the war. In the first days the war developed in accordance with the Barbarossa plan. However, the lightning war did not work out. It took on a protracted nature, lasting 1418 days and nights.
Historians distinguish three main periods in it:
first-- from June 22, 1941 to November 18, 1942, the period of repelling the fascist aggressor;
second-- from November 19, 1942 to the end of 1943, a period of radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War;
From May 9, 1945 to September 2, 1945, imperialist Japan was defeated. This is a separate campaign of World War II. By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Nazi army numbered about 8.5 million people. The invasion army, together with Germany's satellites, had 190 divisions (5.5 million people), about 4,300 tanks and assault guns, 4,980 combat aircraft, 47,200 guns and mortars, about 200 ships of the main classes. These forces were opposed by 170 Soviet divisions with a total strength of 2.9 million people, 9,200 tanks, 8,450 aircraft and 46,830 artillery pieces and mortars. But only 1,475 tanks and 1,540 aircraft were of new types. The Northern, Baltic and Black Sea fleets included 182 ships of the main classes. On the eve of the attack, the Soviet troops were not equipped with personnel and military equipment, and did not have a repair base or material supplies. And although they had superiority in tanks and aircraft, in terms of quality they were still inferior to the enemy. The fascist German troops, mobilized in advance and deployed into battle formations, had an overwhelming superiority over the Soviet ones in the direction of the main attack.
From the first days of the battles, hundreds of thousands of army and navy soldiers fought the enemies to the last drop of blood. The defenders of the Brest Fortress, Liepaja, Leningrad and many other cities covered themselves with unfading glory. Already in the first battles, generals K.K. showed their leadership talent and personal courage. Rokosovsky, N.N. Russiyanov, Colonel P.D. Chernyakhovsky. Thousands of soldiers and officers accomplished various feats similar to the feat of fighter pilot Senior Lieutenant I.I. Ivanov, June 22, 1941, who rammed an enemy plane. On June 26 of the same year, Captain N.F. Gastello directed his crippled bomber towards a concentration of enemy equipment. Even when surrounded, Soviet soldiers and officers stubbornly defended themselves, and having exhausted all possibilities, they made their way to their troops.
Hitler's powerful tank groups broke through the defenses and quickly advanced into the interior of the country. By July 10, fascist German troops had advanced 500 km in the northwestern direction. The Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, and part of Ukraine were captured. What happened? Why did the fascist army penetrate so deeply into the USSR in a short time? By their nature, the reasons for our failures are twofold: objective and subjective.
Objective reasons.
1. German troops had almost two years of experience in victorious wars in Western Europe. The enemy troops were highly trained and coordinated; they were significantly superior to the Soviet troops in mobility and were ahead of them in occupying advantageous positions.
2. The economic potential of Germany, together with the occupied regions, significantly exceeded the economic capabilities of the USSR: in the production of coal, cars, electronics, etc. by more than three times. Industry was transferred to a war footing in advance. In addition, the weapons of 92 French, 22 Belgian, 18 Dutch, 12 British, 6 Norwegian and 30 Czechoslovak divisions fell into the hands of the aggressor. In France alone, the Nazis took 4,390 tanks and armored personnel carriers and 300 aircraft as trophies.
3. Nazi Germany surpassed the USSR in human resources. The population of the conquered states of Europe together with Germany was about 400 million people, the USSR - 191 million people.
4. B technical equipment and the combat training of the Red Army had serious shortcomings. The quality of most aircraft and tanks was low. There was a shortage of anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery, communications equipment, automatic weapons, and vehicles. Many units, especially mechanized ones, were newly formed and were not equipped with equipment. The coherence of units and subunits and the training of personnel left much to be desired.
5. The surprise of the German attack for the Armed Forces of the USSR and the entire Soviet people.
Subjective reasons.
1. Unjustified repressions in the USSR significantly weakened the officer corps. For 1936 - 1939 More than 42 thousand officers were dismissed from the army. Of these, about 9 thousand were shot. About 12 thousand officers were reinstated (among them were the later famous commanders K.K. Rokossovsky, A.V. Gorbatov, etc.). Repression and intensive deployment of the army led to a large shortage of officers. It was replenished mainly by calling up often poorly trained commanders from the reserve. Many people appointed to high positions had no experience in commanding large military formations.
2. Stalin’s miscalculations contributed to the defeats. He did not trust intelligence about the start of the war and believed that he would be able to delay a military clash with Germany. As a result, the troops of the border districts were not put on combat readiness. Soviet troops were evenly dispersed over a vast territory - 4500 km along the front and 400 km in depth. The German armies were concentrated in dense, compact groups in the directions of the main attacks.
3. Erroneous plan for the defense of the USSR. He proceeded from Stalin’s proposal that in the event of war, Germany’s main attack would be directed not in the center of the front, against Moscow, but in the southwest, against Ukraine, with the aim of seizing territory rich in grain and coal.
These are just some of the reasons for the failures of the USSR at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Characterizing the reasons for the failures of the Soviet Armed Forces in the first months of the war, many historians see their cause in serious mistakes made by the Soviet leadership in the pre-war years. However, despite the enormous difficulties and significant losses in the first days of the war, the Soviet leadership quickly developed a program for mobilizing all forces and means to fight the enemy.
1. First of all, these are heavy defensive battles and battles of 1941 - 1942. This is a heroic defense Brest Fortress, Leningrad, Smolensk, Tula, Moscow, Odessa, Sevastopol, Stalingrad.
The Battle of Smolensk lasted for two months, its most important result was the disruption of the strategic plans of the Nazi command for a non-stop advance towards Moscow. The widely publicized plan for a “lightning war” against the USSR showed a major crack.
The success of the Battle of Smolensk was achieved primarily by the massive heroism, dedication and combat valor of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. During this battle, the Soviet Guard was born - 4 famous rifle divisions of the Western direction (100th, 127th, 153rd and 161st) on September 18, 1941 were transformed into the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Yu and 4th Guards. They were commanded respectively by Major General I.N. Russiyanov, Colonel A.3. Akimenko, Major General N.A. Gagen, Colonel P.F. Moskvitin.
2. Battle of Moscow. It began on September 30, 1941 and ended on January 8, 1942. It has two periods, defensive, from September 30 to December 4, 1941, and a counteroffensive period - from December 5-6, 1941 to January 7-8 1942 During the defensive period, fascist German troops carried out two general attacks on Moscow. The enemy concentrated a defensive group of troops: 1.8 million soldiers and officers, more than 14 thousand guns, 1,700 tanks, 1,390 aircraft. Our troops were inferior to the enemy in terms of strength and means. On the approaches to Moscow, Soviet troops heroically defended themselves near the cities of Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk, Tula, etc. Despite the proximity of the front, on November 6 a ceremonial meeting was held in Moscow dedicated to the 24th anniversary October revolution, and on November 7 - a traditional parade of troops on Red Square. Straight from the parade, many military units went to the front to defend Moscow.
On December 5, 1941, a turning point came in the Battle of Moscow. Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive, which was planned in advance. 38 German divisions were defeated, over 11 thousand settlements were liberated, including the cities of Kalinin and Kaluga, and the danger of encirclement of Tula was eliminated. The enemy was driven back 100-250 km from the capital. The counteroffensive near Moscow developed into a general offensive of Soviet troops in the main strategic directions.
The significance of the Battle of Moscow was enormous:
* the plan for a lightning war was thwarted;
* Germany faced the prospect of waging a protracted war;
* the victory near Moscow was clear evidence of the power of the Soviet state;
* victory in this battle raised the international authority of the USSR and accelerated the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
3. Battle of Stalingrad. July 17, 1942 The Battle of Stalingrad began. Stalin issued order No. 227 “Not a step back!” The order strengthened the action of the repressive authorities, instilling a sense of fear and mistrust in the soldiers and commanders. But even after this document, the army continued to retreat. From July to November 1942, the enemy lost up to 700 thousand people, 1 thousand tanks, 2 thousand guns and mortars, and almost 1.5 thousand aircraft between the Volga and Don rivers. The human losses of the Soviet Armed Forces were great; more than 10 thousand tanks, 40 thousand guns and mortars, and 7 thousand aircraft were lost.
From November 19, 1942 to February 2, 1943, a counter-offensive of our troops was carried out. The total losses of German troops as a result of the counteroffensive near Stalingrad amounted to over 800 thousand people, about 2 thousand tanks, over 10 thousand guns and mortars, and up to 3 thousand combat and transport aircraft. 24 generals led by Field Marshal Paulus surrendered.
Military-political significance of the Battle of Stalingrad:
The defeat of fascist troops in this battle marked the beginning of a radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War. The Soviet Armed Forces seized the strategic initiative;
Germany entered a period of deep crisis; Japan abandoned plans to attack the USSR; the morale of Hitler's army was greatly undermined;
III favorable conditions were created for the mass expulsion of the occupiers from Soviet soil;
III, under the influence of the victories of the Soviet troops, resistance to the enemy in the occupied territories intensified; The partisan movement was actively developing.
On January 18, 1943, the 900-day blockade of Leningrad was broken. In the city, food rations were reduced 5 times; workers received 250 grams of bread per day, the rest - 125 grams. Malnutrition led to a catastrophic increase in population mortality. During the blockade in the city, according to official data, over 641 thousand people died of hunger. These numbers are quite arbitrary. A number of historians believe that we are talking about 1 million people.
4. Battle of Kursk. By the summer of 1943, the military-political position of the USSR had strengthened significantly. Its military power has increased, and the morale of the country's citizens has strengthened. In July 1943 in Moscow, in the Park of Culture and Leisure named after. Gorky, a large exhibition of captured weapons opened. It presented samples of the latest military equipment of Nazi Germany.
On July 5, 1943, Hitler planned an offensive operation in the Kursk area. However, the Soviet troops were ahead of the Germans. In the early morning of July 5, a powerful artillery preparation was carried out, in which 2,460 guns, mortars and rocket artillery combat vehicles took part. Soviet troops successfully completed defensive tasks for 7 days, and then launched a counteroffensive on July 12. On August 5, 1943, Orel and Belgorod were liberated from the Nazi occupiers. In honor of this major success, the capital of the USSR - Moscow - saluted the troops of the Western, Bryansk, Central, Voronezh and Steppe fronts. This was the first victorious salute during the war.
The victory of the Soviet troops at Kursk had enormous political and military significance. In this battle, the Wehrmacht's offensive strategy finally collapsed. The strategic offensive initiative firmly passed to the Red Army. The victory at Kursk and the advance of Soviet troops to the Dnieper marked a radical turning point in the course of the Great Patriotic War. The myth about the “seasonality” of the Soviet strategy was dispelled, that the Red Army supposedly could only attack in winter and was not capable of conducting offensive operations in the summer.
5. Offensive operations of the Red Army in 1944-1945. By the beginning of 1944, a strategic situation favorable for the Red Army had been created on the Soviet-German front. In 1944-- 1945 it carried out a number of large-scale offensive operations. Numerous partisan formations and detachments helped the Soviet troops defeat the enemy.
In January-February 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. During the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, Soviet troops completed the liberation of the entire territory of the Soviet Union and the restoration of the state border. In mid-1944, the Red Army began liberating the peoples of Europe from the Nazi occupiers. Germany found itself in complete isolation. The peoples of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary turned their weapons against their former ally.
The final stage of the Great Patriotic War was the Berlin offensive operation, which began on April 16, 1945. Soviet troops defeated one of the largest Nazi groups. On May 2, the resistance of the Berlin garrison was broken. On May 8, in the suburbs of Berlin - Karlshorst, in the presence of representatives of the command of the armies of the USSR, USA, England and France, representatives of defeated Germany signed an act of unconditional surrender of their armed forces. The war unleashed by Hitler's Germany ended in its complete defeat.
This Great Victory was won at a heavy price. She embodied both the tragic and the heroic. More than 27 million Soviet people died in the war, including 11.1 million irretrievable combat losses on the Soviet-German front. Unfortunately, the Red Army, especially in the early years, often fought with numbers rather than skill. Apparently, it is no coincidence that our major military leaders during the last war, with the possible exception of K.K. Rokossovsky (“A Soldier’s Duty”), avoid this sore point in their memoirs. In reality, on the Soviet-German front, the ratio of irretrievable combat losses (killed and those who died from wounds) of Germany and its allies, on the one hand, and Soviet Union--s the other is 3.8:1 not in our favor. The main hero of the Great Victory in this war was the Soviet people, who made enormous sacrifices to ensure the complete defeat of Nazi Germany.
1. The most important source of the victory of the USSR was the mobility of our economy and its enormous potential. The home front workers won a victory in a single combat with the enormous military-economic potential of Nazi Germany. They provided the Red Army with all the necessary means of warfare.
2. The role of the Communist Party was great. During the war, up to 60% of the party was in the army, ranging from members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to ordinary communists.
3. The war demonstrated the outstanding achievements of Soviet military art. The names of the commanders G.K. became known to the whole world. Zhukova, A.M. Vasilevsky, N.F. Vatutina, K.K. Rokosovsky, V.I. Chuikova and others.
4. More than 6 thousand partisan detachments and underground groups operated behind enemy lines, in which more than a million people fought. They organized an attack on more than 21 thousand of the enemy's largest trains, blew up 12 thousand railway and highway bridges, and destroyed more than 1.6 million Nazi soldiers and officers.
5. A major role belongs to Soviet foreign policy. Her efforts were focused on solving problems such as:
* creation and strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition;
* undermining and eliminating the bloc of fascist powers;
* development of solid foundations and guarantees for the post-war world.
The main result of the war is that the Soviet Union achieved victory over the fascist state. Our victory was achieved with the blood and enormous sacrifices of the Soviet people. The victory of the Soviet Union saved all of humanity from the threat of fascist enslavement. She changed the world's attitude towards the Soviet state. Capitalist countries were forced to reckon with the Soviet Union when solving international problems. A socialist community arose from countries that had taken the path of building socialism. After the Great Patriotic War, the national liberation movement entered its final stage.
What conclusions can be drawn from the lessons of World War II and the Great Patriotic War?
1. Coalitions and collective security systems must be created when the guns have not yet started talking.
2. The forces of peace must seek from the ruling circles a retreat from military confrontation, and direct policy toward expanding economic, scientific, cultural, and trade cooperation.
3. Find not what divides peoples, but what brings them together.
4. In view of the increasing threat of a nuclear disaster, it is necessary to establish control over the production of nuclear weapons and bring them to a complete ban.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the territory of the USSR without declaring war. The Great Patriotic War began, which from the first days differed from the war in the West in its scope, bloodshed, extreme intensity of struggle, mass atrocities of the Nazis, and unprecedented self-sacrifice of citizens of the USSR.
The German side presented the war as preventive (warning). The fiction of a preventive war was intended to give the attack on the USSR the appearance of moral justification. The decision to invade was made by the fascist leadership not because the USSR threatened Germany, but because fascist Germany sought world domination. Germany's guilt as an aggressor cannot be questioned. On June 22, Germany carried out, as the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg established, a carefully prepared attack on the USSR “without any warning and without a shadow of legal justification. It was clear aggression." At the same time, some facts of the pre-war history of our country remain the subject of controversy among historians. Thus, some works claim that the USSR was allegedly preparing an attack on Germany. This far-fetched version is borrowed from Hitler’s propaganda. As evidence, they cite a draft directive on launching a pre-emptive strike against German troops concentrated near the borders of the USSR. A draft of such a directive was actually prepared at the General Staff in May 1941 with the participation of A.M. Vasilevsky. But there was neither political expediency nor real forces to launch a pre-emptive strike, just as the directive itself did not exist. The project remained a project. Of course, this cannot change the assessment of the German attack on the USSR as an act of aggression. In the national historical memory of the people, the war of 1941-1945. will forever remain as the Patriotic Liberation War. And no details of interest to historians can obscure this indisputable fact.
In June 1940, the German General Staff began developing a plan for a war against the USSR, and on December 18, Hitler approved the Barbarossa plan, which provided for the completion of the military campaign against the USSR during a “lightning war” in two to four months. The documents of the German leadership left no doubt that they were betting on the destruction of the USSR and millions of its citizens. The Nazis intended to “defeat the Russians as a people,” undermine their “biological strength,” and destroy their culture.
Germany and its allies (Finland, Hungary, Romania, Italy) concentrated 190 divisions (5.5 million soldiers and officers), 4.3 thousand tanks, 5 thousand aircraft, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars along the USSR border . In the western border military districts of the USSR, 170 divisions (3 million soldiers and commanders), 14.2 thousand tanks, 9.2 thousand combat aircraft, 32.9 thousand guns and mortars were concentrated. At the same time, 16% of tanks and 18.5% of aircraft were under repair or required repair. The attack was carried out in three main directions: Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.
There are three periods in the history of the Great Patriotic War. During the first period (June 22, 1941 – November 18, 1942), the strategic initiative belonged to Germany. The Wehrmacht managed to seize the initiative, using the factor of surprise of the attack, concentration of forces and means in the main directions. Already in the first days and months of the war, the Red Army suffered huge losses. In three weeks of fighting, the aggressor completely defeated 28 Soviet divisions, and another 70 lost more than half of their personnel and equipment. The retreat of the Red Army units often occurred in disarray. A significant part of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were captured. According to German documents, at the end of 1941 they had 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war.
What were the reasons for the defeats of the Red Army at the initial stage of the war? First of all, it should be emphasized that the USSR was faced with the strongest and invincible army in the world at that time. The forces and means of Germany and its allies at the beginning of the war were 1.2 times greater than the forces and means of the USSR. In certain positions, the USSR Armed Forces were quantitatively superior to the enemy army, but inferior to it in strategic deployment, in the quality of many types of weapons, in experience, training and literacy of personnel. By the beginning of the war, it was not possible to complete the rearmament of the army: there were not enough modern tanks, aircraft, automatic small arms, and communications equipment.
Secondly, serious damage to the command cadres was caused during the repressions. In 1937-1939 About 37 thousand commanders of various ranks were dismissed from the army, the majority for political reasons. Of these, 3-4 thousand were shot as “conspirators”, 6-8 thousand were convicted. Although the overwhelming majority of those dismissed and convicted were rehabilitated and returned to the army, the repressions undermined the combat effectiveness of the Red Army. A significant portion of command personnel (55%) were in their positions for less than six months. This was due to the fact that the size of the Red Army had more than doubled since 1939.
Thirdly, serious military-strategic miscalculations made by the Soviet political and military leadership affected the formation of the military concept, the assessment of the strategic situation in the spring and summer of 1941, the determination of the timing of a possible attack on the USSR and the directions of the main attacks of the German troops, which ensured strategic and tactical surprise and multiple superiority of the aggressor in the main directions.
Fourthly, miscalculations were made in the organization of defense and training of troops. The army was in the process of reorganization, the tank corps were not yet combat-ready, the pilots had not yet learned to fight with new equipment, the western borders were not completely fortified, and the troops had not learned to fight on the defensive.
From the first days of the war, the restructuring of the country's life on a war footing began. The basis for restructuring the activities of the party, government bodies and administration was the principle of maximum centralization of leadership. On June 23, the Headquarters of the Main Command was created, headed by the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal S.K. Timoshenko. On July 10, Stalin was appointed chairman of the Headquarters (Headquarters of the Supreme High Command). On June 30, the State Defense Committee was organized under the chairmanship of Stalin. All power in the country was concentrated in his hands. The main focus of the GKO's activities was the deployment of the Armed Forces, training reserves, and providing them with weapons, equipment, and food. During the war years, the State Defense Committee adopted about 10 thousand resolutions. Under the leadership of the Committee, the Headquarters planned 9 campaigns, 51 strategic operations and 250 front-line operations.
Military mobilization work became the most important area of state activity. The general mobilization of those liable for military service made it possible to replenish the army by 5.3 million people by July. During the war years, 34.5 million people (17.5% of the pre-war population) were mobilized into the army and to work in industry (including those who served before the war and volunteers). More than a third of this composition was in the army, of which 5-6.5 million people were constantly in the active army. (17.9 million people were recruited to serve in the Wehrmacht - 25.8% of the German population in 1939). Mobilization made it possible to form 648 new divisions during the war, 410 of them in 1941.
Military operations at the front in 1941 were extremely tragic. In the fall of 1941, Leningrad was blockaded. On July 10, the Battle of Smolensk unfolded on the central sector of the front. A dramatic situation arose in September in the Kyiv region, where there was a threat of encirclement by Soviet troops. The enemy closed the encirclement ring, captured Kyiv, destroying and capturing more than 600 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. Having defeated the Kyiv group of Soviet troops, the German command resumed the offensive of Army Group Center on Moscow. The defense of Odessa continued for more than two months. From October 30, 1941, Sevastopol fought heroically for 250 days.
The attack on Moscow (Operation Typhoon) began on September 30. Despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy was approaching Moscow. From October 20, a state of siege was introduced in the capital. On November 7, a military parade took place on Red Square, which had great moral, psychological and political significance. On the other hand, the morale of the German troops was significantly broken. Their losses on the Eastern Front were unprecedented: in June–November 1941 they were three times greater than in Poland and on the Western Front, and losses in the officer corps were five times greater than in 1939–1940. On November 16, after a two-week pause, a new German offensive began on Moscow. Simultaneously with repelling the enemy's offensive, a counteroffensive was being prepared. On December 5, the troops of the Kalinin Front (I.S. Konev) went on the offensive, and on December 6 - the Western (G.K. Zhukov) and Southwestern (S.K. Timoshenko). The Soviet side had 1,100 thousand soldiers and officers, 7.7 thousand guns and mortars, 774 tanks, 1 thousand aircraft against 1,708 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, 13.5 thousand guns and mortars, 1,170 tanks, 615 aircraft .
In the Battle of Moscow from November 16 to December 5, German troops lost 155 thousand people killed and wounded, about 800 tanks, 300 guns and up to 1.5 thousand aircraft. In total, by the end of 1941, Germany and its allies had lost 273.8 thousand people killed, 802.7 thousand wounded, and 57.2 thousand missing on the Eastern Front.
During a month of fighting, the Moscow, Tula and significant parts of the Kalinin region were liberated. In January 1942, the counteroffensive near Moscow developed into a general offensive of the Red Army. However, by March 1942 the power of the offensive had dried up, and the army suffered heavy losses. It was not possible to develop the success of the counteroffensive along the entire front, which lasted until April 20, 1942. The battle for Moscow was of great importance: the myth of the invincibility of the German army was dispelled, the plan for a lightning war was thwarted, and the international position of the USSR was strengthened.
The partisan movement became an important direction in the fight against the enemy. Already in July 1941, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution on the organization of the partisan movement in the occupied territories. In May 1942, the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement was formed at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (headed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus P.K. Ponomarenko). The total number of partisans during the war was 2.8 million people. Acting as auxiliary forces of the Red Army, the partisans diverted up to 10% of the enemy’s armed forces to themselves.
In the spring and summer of 1942, German troops took advantage of the miscalculations of the Soviet command, which was expecting a new offensive on Moscow and concentrated more than half of the armies, 62% of the aircraft and up to 80% of the tanks here. The German command was preparing an offensive in the south, trying to seize the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region. There were not enough Soviet troops in the south. Diversionary offensive operations in the Crimea and in the Kharkov direction turned into major defeats. German troops occupied Donbass and entered the big bend of the Don. On July 24, the enemy captured Rostov-on-Don. The situation at the front was critical.
On July 28, the People's Commissar of Defense issued order No. 227 (“Not a step back!”), which was intended to suppress manifestations of cowardice and desertion and categorically prohibited retreat without an order from the command. The order introduced penal battalions and companies for military personnel to serve sentences for criminal and military crimes. In 1942, 25 thousand people were sent to them, in the subsequent years of the war - 403 thousand. Within each army, 3-5 detachments were created (200 people each), obliged in case of panic and disorderly withdrawal of units to shoot panickers on the spot . The barrier detachments were disbanded in the fall of 1944.
In August 1942, the enemy reached the banks of the Volga in the Stalingrad area and the foothills of the Caucasus range. On August 25, the battle for Stalingrad began, which became decisive for the outcome of the entire war. Stalingrad became synonymous with the mass heroism of soldiers and the fortitude of the Soviet people. The brunt of the struggle for Stalingrad fell on the armies led by V.I. Chuikov, M.S. Shumilov, A.I. Lopatin, divisions A.I. Rodimtsev and I.I. Lednikova. The defensive operation in Stalingrad cost the lives of 324 thousand Soviet soldiers. By mid-November, the Germans' offensive capabilities had dried up, and they went on the defensive.
The war required a change in proportions in the development of the national economy and an improvement in the structure of state management of the economy. At the same time, the created strictly centralized management system was combined with the expansion of powers of economic bodies and the initiative of workers. The first six months of the war were the most difficult for the Soviet economy. Industrial production fell by more than half, and the production of military equipment and ammunition dropped sharply. People, industrial enterprises, material and cultural assets, and livestock were evacuated from the front-line zone. For this work, a Council for Evacuation Affairs was created (chairman N.M. Shvernik, deputies A.N. Kosygin and M.G. Pervukhin). By the beginning of 1942, more than 1.5 thousand industrial enterprises were transported, including 1,360 defense ones. The number of evacuated workers reached a third of the staff. From December 26, 1941, workers and employees of military enterprises were declared mobilized for the entire period of the war, and unauthorized departure from the enterprise was punished as desertion.
At the cost of enormous efforts of the people, the decline in industrial production stopped from December 1941, and from March 1942 its volume began to increase. By mid-1942, the restructuring of the Soviet economy on a war footing was completed. In the context of a significant reduction in labor resources, measures to provide labor for industry, transport, and new buildings have become an important direction of economic policy. By the end of the war, the number of workers and employees reached 27.5 million people, of which 9.5 million worked in industry (by the 1940 level this was 86-87%).
Agriculture was in an incredibly difficult situation during the war. Tractors, cars, and horses were mobilized for the needs of the army. The village was left practically without draft power. Almost the entire working-age male population was mobilized into the army. The peasants worked to the limit of their capabilities. During the war years, agricultural production fell catastrophically. Grain harvest in 1942 and 1943 amounted to 30 million tons compared to 95.5 million tons in 1940. The number of cattle decreased by half, pigs - by 3.6 times. Collective farms had to hand over almost the entire harvest to the state. For 1941-1944. 66.1 million tons of grain were harvested, and in 1941-1945. – 85 million tons (for comparison: 22.4 million tons were harvested in 1914-1917). Difficulties in agriculture inevitably affected the food supply of the population. From the first days of the war, a rationing system was introduced to provide the urban population with food.
During the war, extreme conditions were created for the functioning of the financial system. During the war years, budget revenues increased due to taxes and fees from the population. Government loans and money issues were used to cover the deficit. During the war years, voluntary contributions were widespread - fundraising from the population to the Defense Fund and the Red Army Fund. During the war, the Soviet financial system showed high mobilization capabilities and efficiency. If in 1940 military spending amounted to about 7% of national income, then in 1943 it was 33%. Military spending increased sharply between 1941 and 1945. amounted to 50.8% of all budget expenditures. At the same time, the state budget deficit amounted to only 2.6%.
As a result of emergency measures and the heroic work of the people, already from mid-1942 the USSR had a strong military economy, which provided the army with everything necessary in ever-increasing quantities. During the war years, the USSR produced almost twice as much military equipment and weapons as Germany. We used material and raw material resources and equipment better than in the German economy. The Soviet economy turned out to be more efficient during the war than the economy of Nazi Germany.
Thus, the model of mobilization economy that developed in the 1930s turned out to be very effective during the war years. Strict centralism, directive planning, concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state, the absence of competition and market egoism of individual social strata, and the labor enthusiasm of millions of people played a decisive role in ensuring economic victory over the enemy. Other factors (Lend-Lease, labor of prisoners and prisoners of war) played a subordinate role.
The second period (November 19, 1942 – end of 1943) is a period of radical change. On November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and on November 23 closed the ring around enemy troops. The cauldron included 22 divisions with a total number of 330 thousand soldiers and officers. The Soviet command offered the surrounded troops to capitulate, but they refused. On February 2, 1943, the grandiose battle of Stalingrad ended. During the liquidation of the encircled enemy group, 147 thousand soldiers and officers were killed, 91 thousand were captured. Among the prisoners were 24 generals, along with the commander of the 6th Army, Field Marshal F. Paulus.
The operation at Stalingrad grew into a general strategic offensive that lasted until the end of March 1943. Stalingrad raised the authority of the USSR, led to the rise of the Resistance movement in European countries, and contributed to the strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition.
The Battle of the Volga predetermined the outcome of the fighting in the North Caucasus. There was a threat of encirclement of the enemy's North Caucasian group, and it began to retreat. By mid-February 1943, most of the North Caucasus was liberated. Of particular importance was the breakthrough of the enemy blockade of Leningrad in January 1943 by troops of the Leningrad (A. A. Govorov) and Volkhov (K. A. Meretskov) fronts.
In the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht command decided to organize a powerful offensive in the Kursk area. The Citadel plan was based on the idea: with unexpected counter strikes from Orel and Belgorod, to encircle and destroy Soviet troops on the Kursk ledge, and then develop an offensive inland. For this purpose it was planned to use a third of the German formations located on the Soviet-German front. At dawn on July 5, the Germans attacked the defenses of the Soviet fronts. Soviet units stubbornly defended each defensive line. On July 12, a tank battle unprecedented in the history of wars unfolded near Prokhorovka, in which about 1,200 tanks took part. On August 5, Soviet troops captured Orel and Belgorod, and on August 23 they liberated Kharkov. The Battle of Kursk ended with the capture of Kharkov. During 50 days of fighting, German troops lost half a million soldiers and officers, 2,952 tanks, 844 guns, 1,327 aircraft. The losses of the Soviet troops were comparable to the German ones. True, the victory at Kursk was achieved with less blood than before: while Stalingrad claimed the lives of 470 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, 253 thousand died during the Battle of Kursk. The victory at Kursk cemented a fundamental turning point in the course of the war. The Wehrmacht's omnipotence on the battlefields ended.
Having liberated Orel, Belgorod, and Kharkov, Soviet troops launched a general strategic offensive at the front. The radical turning point in the course of the war, which began at Stalingrad, was completed by the Battle of the Dnieper. On November 6, Kyiv was liberated. From November 1942 to December 1943, 46.2% of Soviet territory was liberated. The collapse of the fascist bloc began. Italy was withdrawn from the war.
One of the important areas of the fight against the Nazi invaders was ideological, educational, and propaganda work. Newspapers, radio, party propagandists and political workers, cultural figures explained the nature of the war, strengthened faith in victory, cultivated patriotism, loyalty to duty and other high moral qualities. The Soviet side opposed the misanthropic fascist ideology of racism and genocide with such universal human values as: national independence, solidarity and friendship of peoples, justice, and humanism. Class and socialist values were not discarded altogether, but were largely replaced by patriotic, traditionally national ones.
During the war years, changes occurred in the relationship between the state and the church. Already on June 22, 1941, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergius, blessed all Orthodox Christians to defend the Fatherland. The metropolitan’s word carried a huge charge of patriotism and pointed to the deep historical source of people’s strength and faith in victory over their enemies. Like the official authorities, the church defined the war as national, patriotic, and patriotic. Anti-religious propaganda has stopped in the country. On September 4, 1943, Stalin met with Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy, and Nikolai, and on September 12, the Council of Bishops elected Metropolitan Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. The Council adopted a document which stated that “anyone guilty of treason against the general church cause and who has gone over to the side of fascism, as an opponent of the Cross of the Lord, shall be considered excommunicated, and a bishop or cleric shall be deprived of his rank.” By the end of the war, there were 10,547 Orthodox churches and 75 monasteries in the USSR (before the war there were about 380 churches and not a single monastery). Open churches became new centers of Russian national identity, and Christian values became an element of national ideology.
The third period (1944 - May 9, 1945) is the final period of the war. By the beginning of 1944, the German armed forces had 315 divisions, 198 of which fought on the Eastern Front. Together with the Allied troops, there were 4.9 million soldiers and officers here. German industry produced a significant amount of weapons, although Germany's economic situation was steadily deteriorating. Soviet industry surpassed German industry in the production of all major types of weapons.
In the history of the Great Patriotic War, 1944 became the year of the offensive of Soviet troops on all fronts. In the winter of 1943-1944. The German Army Group South was defeated, the Right Bank and part of Western Ukraine were liberated. Soviet troops reached the state border. In January 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. On June 6, 1944, a second front was opened in Europe. During Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944, Belarus was liberated. It is interesting that Operation Bagration was almost a mirror image of the German blitzkrieg. Hitler and his advisers believed that the Red Army would deliver a decisive blow in the south, in Galicia, where the prospect of an attack on Warsaw, to the rear of Army Group Center, opened up for Soviet troops. It was in this direction that the German command concentrated its reserves, but miscalculated. Having gone on the offensive in Belarus on June 22, 1944, Soviet troops fought 700 km in five weeks. The rate of advance of the Soviet troops exceeded the rate of advance of the tank groups of Guderian and Hoth in the summer of 1941. In the fall, the liberation of the Baltic states began. In the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, Soviet troops advanced 600-1100 km, completing the liberation of the USSR. Enemy losses amounted to 1.6 million people, 6,700 tanks, more than 12 thousand aircraft, 28 thousand guns and mortars.
In January 1945, the Vistula-Oder operation began. Its main goal was to defeat the enemy group on Polish territory, reach the Oder, seize bridgeheads here and provide favorable conditions for striking Berlin. After bloody battles, Soviet troops reached the banks of the Oder on February 3. During the Vistula-Oder operation, the Nazis lost 35 divisions.
At the final stage of the war, German troops in the West ceased serious resistance. Almost encountering no resistance, the Allies advanced to the East. The Red Army was faced with the task of delivering the final blow to Nazi Germany. The Berlin offensive operation began on April 16, 1945 and lasted until May 2. Troops of the 1st Belorussian (G.K. Zhukov), 1st Ukrainian (I.S. Konev), and 2nd Belorussian (K.K. Rokossovsky) fronts took part in it. Berlin was fiercely defended by more than a million German soldiers. The advancing Soviet troops numbered 2.5 million soldiers, 41.6 thousand guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 7.5 thousand aircraft. On April 25, the encirclement of the Berlin group was completed. After the German command rejected the ultimatum to surrender, the assault on Berlin began. On May 1, the Victory Banner flew over the Reichstag, and the next day the garrison capitulated. On the night of May 9, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. However, German troops still held Prague. Soviet troops quickly liberated Prague.
The turning point in the war and victory were the result of an incredible effort and mass heroism of the people, which amazed enemies and allies. The idea that inspired the workers of the front and rear, uniting and multiplying their strength, was the idea of defending the Fatherland. The acts of supreme self-sacrifice and heroism in the name of victory, personified by squadron commander Nikolai Gastello, 28 Panfilov soldiers led by political instructor V.G., will forever be preserved in the grateful memory of descendants. Klochkov, underground fighter Liza Chaikina, partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, fighter pilot Alexey Maresyev, sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his famous “Pavlov’s House” in Stalingrad, underground fighter from the “Young Guard” Oleg Koshevoy, private Alexander Matrosov, intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, young partisan Marat Kazei , Lieutenant General D.M. Karbyshev and many thousands of other heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
For courage and heroism, more than 38 million orders and medals were awarded to the defenders of the Motherland; the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to over 11.6 thousand people, among whom were representatives of most nationalities of the country, including 8160 Russians, 2069 Ukrainians, 309 Belarusians, 161 Tatar, 108 Jews, 96 Kazakhs. 16 million 100 thousand home front workers were awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was awarded to 202 home front workers. Medal "For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945" 14 million 900 thousand people were awarded, and more than 1 million 800 thousand were awarded the medal “For Victory over Japan”.
Nazi Germany was defeated, but the world war still continued. The USSR declared war on Japan. This step was dictated by both allied obligations and the interests of the Soviet Union in the Far East. Japan did not openly oppose the USSR, but remained an ally of Germany throughout the war. It concentrated an army of one and a half million people near the borders of the USSR. The Japanese navy detained Soviet merchant ships and actually blocked the ports and sea borders of the Soviet Far East. On April 5, 1945, the USSR government denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality treaty of 1941.
By August, the Soviet command transferred part of the forces from Europe to the Far East (over 400 thousand people, over 7 thousand guns and mortars, 2 thousand tanks). Over 1.5 million soldiers, over 27 thousand guns and mortars, over 700 rocket launchers, 5.2 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, and over 3.7 thousand aircraft were concentrated against the Kwantung Army. The forces of the Pacific Fleet (416 ships, about 165 thousand sailors), the Amur Flotilla, and border troops were involved in the operation. The commander-in-chief of the Soviet troops was Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky.
On August 6 and 9, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union announced that from August 9 it would consider itself at war with Japan. Within 10 days, Soviet troops defeated the main forces of the Kwantung Army, which began to capitulate on August 19. In the second half of August 1945, Soviet troops liberated Manchuria, Northeast China, the northern part of Korea, and captured Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The military campaign in the Far East lasted 24 days. In terms of its scope and dynamism, it ranks one of the first among the operations of the Second World War. Japanese losses totaled 83.7 thousand people killed and more than 640 thousand captured. The irretrievable losses of the Soviet Army amounted to about 12 thousand people. On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered.
With the elimination of the hotbed of war in the Far East, World War II ended. The main result of the Great Patriotic War was the elimination of the mortal danger of the USSR-Russia, the threat of enslavement and genocide of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR. Soviet troops liberated, in whole or in part, 13 countries in Europe and Asia.
The USSR made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Germany and its allies. The Soviet Union was the only country that was able to stop the victorious march of Germany in 1941. In fierce one-on-one battles with the main force of the fascist bloc, the USSR achieved a radical turning point in the world war. This created the conditions for the liberation of Europe and accelerated the opening of the Second Front. The USSR eliminated fascist domination over the majority of enslaved peoples, preserving their statehood within historically just boundaries. The Red Army defeated 507 Nazi divisions and 100 divisions of its allies, which is 3.5 times more than the Anglo-American troops on all fronts of the war. On the Soviet-German front, the bulk of the Wehrmacht's military equipment was destroyed (77 thousand combat aircraft, 48 thousand tanks, 167 thousand guns, 2.5 thousand warships and vehicles). The German army suffered more than 73% of its total losses in battles with the USSR Armed Forces. The Soviet Union was thus the main military-political force that determined the victory and protection of the peoples of the world from enslavement by fascism.
The war caused enormous demographic damage to the Soviet Union. The total human losses of the USSR amounted to 26.6 million people, 13.5% of the number of the USSR at the beginning of the war. During the war years, the losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 11.4 million people. Of these, 5.2 million people died in battles and died from wounds during the stages of sanitary evacuation; 1.1 million died from wounds in hospitals; 0.6 million were non-combat losses; 5 million people went missing and ended up in fascist concentration camps. Taking into account those who returned from captivity after the war (1.8 million people) and almost a million people from those previously recorded as missing in action, but who survived and were called up for the second time into the army, the demographic losses of military personnel of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8.7 million people.
The war unleashed by the Nazis turned into a human tragedy for Germany itself and its allies. On the Soviet-German front alone, Germany's irretrievable losses amounted to 7,181 thousand troops, and with the allies - 8,649 thousand people. The ratio between Soviet and German irretrievable losses is 1.3:1. It should be borne in mind that the number of prisoners of war who died in Nazi camps (more than 2.5 million people out of 4.6 million) was more than 5 times higher than the number of enemy troops who died in Soviet captivity (420 thousand . people out of 4.4 million). The total irreversible demographic losses of the USSR (26.6 million people) are 2.2 times greater than the losses of Germany and its satellites (11.9 million). The big difference is explained by the Nazi genocide against the population in the occupied territories, which claimed the lives of 17.9 million people.
During the war years, all the peoples of the USSR suffered great irreparable losses. At the same time, the losses of Russian citizens amounted to 71.3% of the total demographic losses of the Armed Forces. Among the dead military personnel, the greatest losses were suffered by Russians - 5.7 million people (66.4% of all deaths), Ukrainians - 1.4 million (15.9%), Belarusians - 253 thousand (2.9%), Tatars – 188 thousand (2.2%), Jews – 142 thousand (1.6%), Kazakhs – 125 thousand (1.5%), Uzbeks – 118 thousand (1.4%), other peoples of the USSR – 8.1%.
