March of memories

FIREWORKS LIGHT UP Red Square in Moscow on May 9, which marks the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany. In the background is St. Basil's Cathedral.-PAVEL GOLOVKIN/AP

RUSSIA and the other countries that constituted the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) marked the 65th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War on May 9 with a grand military parade at Moscow's Red Square. The parade, on Victory Day, has been described as the largest in Russia's post-War history. For the first time, a contingent of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops also participated in the ceremony, which was attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and many other foreign leaders. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used the occasion to drive home the point that it is only through a spirit of cooperation, like the one that existed during the Second World War, that the problems of global security can be addressed.

Medvedev, in his speech, went out of his way to placate the West. Playing to the Western gallery, he also attacked Joseph Stalin in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper. Before that, in April, the Kremlin took responsibility for the massacre of Polish military officers in the Katyn forests in 1940. Most Russians still prefer to believe the earlier version that the Polish officers were killed by the Nazis. Katyn was a very dark page. It is not just those abroad who allow history to be falsified. We ourselves have allowed history to be falsified, Medvedev said.

The Russian Communist Party, the country's second biggest party, criticised the decision of the government to invite NATO troops to the parade. The party said it was a violation of tradition and a reminder that Russia lost the Cold War. Until the other day, the Kremlin was railing against the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders. The Communist Party held a rally in Moscow after the Red Square parade in protest against the presence of soldiers belonging to NATO countries at the celebrations.

Many Russians consider Stalin as the man most responsible for guiding Russia to victory in the Great Patriotic War. In a 2007 speech to mark the anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, then President Vladimir Putin indirectly compared Washington's foreign policy to that of the Third Reich. But the last one year has seen a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, with a slew of important agreements being signed between the two countries. The Barack Obama administration did not make much noise as Ukraine once again shifted to Moscow's ambit of influence. In short, there has been a great deal of cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin on issues ranging from Iran to energy security.

Victory Day

Victory Day is the most important holiday on the Russian calendar. The existential threat posed by Nazi Germany to the rest of humanity ceased to exist after its defeat on the Eastern Front by the Soviet forces. More and more historians have now come to the conclusion that it was the victory on the Eastern Front that was pivotal in the eventual outcome of the Second World War. The Great Patriotic War, as the Commander-in-Chief Joseph Stalin chose to describe the titanic war which lasted from June 22, 1941, to May 9, 1945, claimed the lives of more than 27 million Soviet citizens, around 14 per cent of the population of the USSR at the time. Eight out of 10 Russians living today have had close relatives who either fought or perished in the war against the Axis Powers led by Germany. Soviet soldiers and citizens who died in the war account for 40 per cent of all the casualties in the Second World War. In all, 8,66,800 Soviet combatants were killed in action. Thirty per cent of the USSR's national wealth was destroyed during the bitterly fought war.

In comparison, the United Kingdom lost only 0.6 per cent of its population in the War. The American casualties were even lower, amounting to only 0.3 per cent of its population. Other countries suffered more at the hands of the occupying Axis Powers. China lost an estimated 20 million people under Japanese occupation. The Nazi occupation is responsible for the death of more than 60 million people, the overwhelming majority of them citizens of European countries. The Japanese paid a bigger price than their European Axis allies when the Americans dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The key role of Stalin in the War was sought to be obscured during the Cold War years by Western historians and later on even by Russian revisionist historians. But in recent years, the Kremlin has publicly acknowledged the leadership provided by Stalin in turning the tide against the Nazi war machine. School textbooks, recently approved by the government, show Stalin in a positive light and highlight the role he played in making the USSR a superpower. A statue of Stalin along with that of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill was put up in Volgograd, as Stalingrad is called today, before the 60th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War.

Geopolitical catastrophe'

In Moscow, the Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, had initially agreed to allow posters of Stalin to be hung up. But he backed down under pressure from the Kremlin. The posters were later exhibited in 15 museums run by the city administration. In St. Petersburg and Omsk, Stalin's portraits were put up this year by a faction of the Russian Communist Party to commemorate the anniversary of the War. Almost all of the statues and portraits of Stalin were removed during the 1960s after his denunciation by President Nikita Khrushchev. Prime Minister Putin has said on several occasions that Stalin and his epoch are an inalienable part of Russian history. He has also said that the demise of the Soviet Union is the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

When Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941, the military situation for the Allied Powers appeared grim. Britain was struggling to stave off a German invasion. The United States was reeling after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Japanese forces were sweeping through Asia and threatening to knock the British out of India. German forces under the command of General Erwin Rommel were threatening to take control of the whole of North Africa.

That was when Stalin decisively stepped into the picture. His style of leadership was personified by his Order No. 227 of July 1942 to the Red Army soldiers fighting in Stalingrad. The order Not One Step Backwards galvanised the Soviet forces. When they launched a counter-offensive in the historic battle of Stalingrad on November 11, around 1.1 million Russian troops faced an enemy of a similar size. During the see-saw battle for the city, 750,000 Soviet soldiers died or went missing. The casualties on the Axis side were around 850,000.

Another important battle in the Great Patriotic War was the one at the Kursk bulge, which followed the German defeat at Stalingrad. The Germans, seeking to regain the military initiative, deployed more than 800,000 soldiers in an operation, code-named Citadel. The Soviets, who gained the military momentum, deployed more than a million men to confront the Germans. In the Battle of Kursk, more than 180,000 Russian soldiers were killed in action. The German losses were estimated at around half a million.

The battles fought by the U.S.- and British-led forces against the Axis Powers pale in comparison. In the much-hyped Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23-November 4, 1942), which many Western historians claim to be as important as the Battle of Stalingrad, the troops involved were fewer. A 220,000-strong Allied army confronted an Axis army numbering 116,000. As many as 13,000 Allied and 38,000 Axis troops were killed in that battle. That the Soviet-German theatre was the most important front during the War is clear from the fact that 60 to 80 per cent of Germany's ground forces, half of its air force and a third of its navy were deployed on the Eastern Front.

In all, during the course of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conducted eight big military campaigns, 51 strategic operations and more than a thousand army-level operations. The Soviet army scored decisive victories in 1944, the year in which its actions were concentrated outside the territory of the USSR. Soviet forces liberated the Balkans and removed pro-fascist regimes in countries such as Finland, Bulgaria and Romania. The Red Army was the first to reach Berlin and force the surrender of the Nazis. Many of the military campaigns of the Red Army are now considered textbook examples of modern warfare.

Roosevelt's letter

The letter sent by Roosevelt to Stalin in February 1943 acknowledges the crucial role played by the Red Army in stopping the German military juggernaut. On behalf of the people of the United States I want to express to the Red Army on its 25th anniversary our profound admiration for its magnificent achievements unsurpassed in all history. For many months, in spite of many tremendous losses of supplies, transportation and territory, the Red Army denied victory to a most powerful enemy. It checked him at Stalingrad, at Moscow, at Voronezh, in the Caucasus, and finally at the immortal Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army not only defeated the enemy but launched the great offensive, which is still moving forward along the whole front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Red Army and the Russian people have surely started the Hitler forces on the road to ultimate defeat, the letter addressed to Stalin by Roosevelt stated.

The Soviet Union emerged from the War as a superpower alongside the U.S. When the Germans launched their blitzkrieg against the USSR, most Western military experts predicted that Moscow would capitulate within a matter of months. The German military high command had promised Hitler that it would subdue Russia with lightning speed. The Soviet Union, instead, showed its resilience and also demonstrated to the world that it had the support of its people. Most East European countries either chose to surrender meekly or only put up a token fight when the German army invaded them.

The Soviet historian K. Voroshilov, echoing the views that many Russians held at the time, wrote that the U.S. and the United Kingdom did little to help Russia as it faced the entire might of the German army. By their unworthy game of provocation the Anglo-American Allies' who desired the greatest possible exhaustion and weakening of the Soviet Union, and consequently the prolongation of the war, gave Hitler the opportunity of waging the war for three years solely on the Soviet front without a glance behind him and having no fear from his rear, having concentrated against the Soviet Union huge masses of troops and equipment.

Stalin's superior war tactics coupled with the economic advances the country had made under socialism helped thwart Hitler's plans for world domination. More than 6,200 guerilla and underground units, numbering over 1.4 million combatants, fought behind enemy lines. More than 1.6 million German soldiers along with their collaborators were eliminated, wounded or taken prisoners by these partisans. According to Russian military historians, underground Soviet fighters were responsible for either destroying or disabling more than 4,500 enemy tanks and armoured vehicles, 2,500 artillery pieces and over 11,000 planes. At the beginning of Germany's military campaign, its air force had overwhelming aerial superiority. Ultimately, the USSR ended up producing 40 per cent more fighter planes than the Germans. The enemy sadly miscalculated, wrote Stalin. He failed to take into account the strength of the Red Army, failed to take into account the stability of the Soviet rear, failed to take into account the determination of our people to achieve victory.

The Soviet government, after initial hiccups, saw to it that its front-line fighters were well provided with combat hardware. Soviet factories produced combat weaponry at a much faster pace than their German counterparts. These included fighter planes, tanks and warships. The AK-47, which continues to be the weapon of choice for the armies and the guerillas of the world, started production during the War.

The outcome of the war changed the course of geopolitics. The victory sounded the death knell of colonialism. Those under the colonial yoke in Asia and Africa rose up against their oppressors. With Soviet power on the ascendant, liberation movements got a new friend. Moscow's help was a factor in the liberation of China, Vietnam and many African countries.