In the strictly military arena, the Western allies rendered valuable services to the Soviet Union even before the break-out from Normandy pinned down 105 German divisions. Operations in the Middle East, Sicily, and Italy drained Axis resources. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Germany was so massive that, in the judgement of some scholars, it constituted a second front all by itself. At the very least, since the German anti-tank gun doubled as an antiaircraft gun, thousands of these weapons were kept trained on British and American aeroplanes, not Soviet tanks. Finally, after November 1943 Hitler’s strategy in Europe was to de-emphasize the Eastern Front and to build up strength to repel the allied invasion that he anticipated in France or Norway. This decision also alleviated the pressure on the USSR.
None the less the greatest credit for victory in the war surely belongs to the Soviet population itself. It was Soviet men and women who sowed the fields, operated the lathes, stormed enemy positions, and survived siege and occupation. They often did so with signal heroism under conditions of unspeakable deprivation.
The war exacted appalling sacrifices from Soviet citizens. The USSR lost more soldiers than did any other belligerent. Nor was the civilian population spared. One million people succumbed to famine or disease during the siege of Leningrad alone—more than all combat deaths sustained by the British, Commonwealth, and American armed forces put together. In the urban areas of the country factory labourers put in twelve-to sixteen-hour working days and achieved record outputs. And they did so despite malnutrition: by 1942 official rations provided a caloric consumption nearly a quarter less than the prewar norm. This led to an explosion in black marketeering and grotesquely inflated prices; in 1945 a kilo of butter in Rostov-on-the-Don cost 1,000 roubles. Rural Russia felt hunger and want too. The government’s official rationing system deliberately excluded peasants, and left them to their own provisions. Consumption of bread (the chief staple in the peasant diet) declined to 40 per cent of pre-war levels. Manufactured goods, including such necessities as clothing and medicine, were virtually unavailable.
What sustained the people through these trials? What kept them working and fighting? Revulsion from the barbarism of the Nazis was certainly one motivation. On a deeper level, however, there was a sense that the war was a national struggle. For millions of people the war was for the survival of Russia, not necessarily for the defence of communism. No doubt for that reason the regime itself chose to sell the war to the population by using symbols and images from pre-revolutionary Russian history, not socialist bromides. Stalin relaxed ideological controls: the poems, novels, and journalism of the early war years were remarkably free from cant. He also initially put some restraints on the activities of the secret police, and in 1943 permitted the Orthodox Church to re-establish the Patriarchate. Such measures of liberalization encouraged the belief that victory would bring still more substantive reforms. Agents in occupied territories fed these expectations by apparently spreading the rumour that Stalin intended to de-collectivize agriculture as soon as Hitler had been beaten. Nevertheless, millions of ardent communists marched off to war; millions more joined the Communist Party during the war. But most of those who waged war did so not because they wanted to preserve the Soviet Union as it was, but in the hope that it would soon evolve into something better. This is yet another sense in which the war was won despite the Soviet regime.
The Costs of the War
By the time the war was over 8.6 million Soviet troops and at least 17 million civilians had been killed. Twenty-five million survivors were homeless;
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union had gained power and prestige from the war. Battered at it was, the USSR was the strongest land power left standing on the continent of Europe. In the post-war era, the Soviet Union had to rebuild its economy, while coping with unique opportunities (and dangers) abroad.
Soviet Domestic Policies after the War
