Celebrating Soviet heroism

In Moscow on May 9, a parade to commemorate the victory in the Second World War. - REUTERS

Russia, which suffered the most in terms of human casualties in the Second World War, celebrates the 60th anniversary of the victory over fascism.

ON May 9, Russia commemorated the 60th anniversary of its victory in the "Great Patriotic War" (the Second World War) on a grand scale. More than 50 heads of state - including United States President George W. Bush, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - were present in Moscow to witness the impressive military parade. It was the first time a U.S. President witnessed a military march past from the Kremlin.

Participating in the parade were veterans of the Soviet Red Army who saw action in the War. Only around a million of them survive today. Eight out of ten Russians have close relations who fought in the War. More than 27 million Russians, about 14 per cent of the country's population, died fighting for their motherland, defending freedom and socialism. The Soviet war dead account for 40 per cent of all those killed in the War. In all, 8,66,800 Red Army officers and soldiers were killed in action.

Thirty per cent of the Soviet Union's national wealth was destroyed in four years of the War. In comparison, Britain lost only 0.6 per cent of its population in the War. U.S. casualties were even lower - it amounted to about 0.3 per cent of its population. An estimated 20 million Chinese died under Japanese occupation during the War. The Nazis killed more than 60 million people. Another 90 million were wounded. The War left more than 28 million disabled.

It is now acknowledged, even by Western historians, that it was the fight put up by the Soviet Union under its leader Joseph Stalin that turned the military tide against Nazi Germany. When Germany launched "Operation Barborossa" in 1941, the situation appeared bleak for the Allied Powers. German forces were sweeping through North Africa under the command of General Erwin Rommel and Japanese forces had South-East Asia under their jackboots. The decisive military leadership provided by Stalin was personified by his order No. 227 of July 1942, to the Red Army troops fighting in Stalingrad. The order - "Not One Step Backwards" - galvanised the Soviet forces and finally brought the German war machine to a grinding halt. The battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad will forever be engraved in world history. Battles of such epic proportions have not occurred since.

The German Army never recovered from the huge military defeats suffered in Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943. Volgograd, as Stalingrad is known today, celebrated the anniversary by installing a statue of Stalin in the city. Giving him company are statues of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

It was after a long time that a statue of the Soviet leader was put up in Russia. However, the name Stalingrad is again being used in the monument built to honour Soviet cities and towns that played a heroic role in the War. Almost all the statues of Stalin were removed in the 1960s when Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader.

A recent opinion poll showed that 60 per cent of the Russian people attributed the victory in the War to Stalin's military genius. Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted to a German paper that "Stalin and his epoch are an inalienable part" of Russian history. Earlier, Putin had regretted the demise of the Soviet Union, calling it one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century.

The Soviet Union emerged from the War as a global power. Before the War, most Western analysts dismissed the Soviet Union as a paper tiger, despite the tremendous progress it made under socialism. The consensus among Western experts was that it would not survive the German blitzkrieg for more than three months. Subsequent events proved otherwise. The Soviet Union showed its economic might and resilience, and its ability to organise military operations. It was its superior war tactics and better combat hardware that defeated the Nazis. The victory was, of course, facilitated by the heroism of the Red Army, backed by the collective effort of the nation. During the course of the War, the Red Army conducted eight military campaigns, 51 strategic operations and over 1,000 army level operations. Many of the operations are now considered classic examples of modern warfare.

More than 6,200 guerilla and underground units, numbering above 1.4 million, fought behind enemy lines. They accounted for 1.6 million German soldiers and collaborators who were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Soviet guerillas destroyed or disabled more than 4,500 tanks and armoured vehicles, 2,500 artillery pieces and over 11,000 planes. The Soviet government did not let down its frontline fighters. Soviet industry produced almost 100 per cent more combat hardware than the German military industrial complex. It produced 40 per cent more aircraft than the Germans.

The War proved that the people were behind the Soviet government unlike the other countries in Eastern Europe, which surrendered to the Germans in a matter of weeks. During the May 1945 reception dedicated to the "Great Victory", Stalin for the first time proposed a toast to the Russian people who had stood by the government in difficult times. He praised the Russian people for the defeat of fascism and for fighting for freedom and independence.

Predictably, there was criticism from the West that the Putin government was using the occasion to refurbish Stalin's legacy and exaggerate Russia's role in the defeat of fascism. The Russian leadership, however, made it clear that by highlighting the "Great Patriotic War", it was not belittling the contributions made by the U.S., Britain, France, China, India and innumerable other countries. It also paid tribute to the role played by resistance movements and national liberation movements. Most of the leaders present in Moscow acknowledged that the world owed a huge debt of gratitude to the Soviet people for their role in the defeat of fascism.

MEANWHILE, in a letter to the Latvian President, Bush said that the end of the Second World War marked the beginning of "Soviet annexation and occupation" of the Baltic states and the "imposition of communism" in Central and Eastern Europe. Naturally, Putin had a different take on the subject. He said: "Our people did not just defend their own homeland - they liberated 11 European states. On the field of battle from the Barents Sea to the Caucasus the aggressor's military machine was broken." Significantly, representatives of two Baltic republics, Estonia and Lithuania, were not present at the ceremony. Also absent was Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvilli, who preferred to stay at home to prepare a grand welcome for the visiting U.S. President. Bush visited Latvia before going to Georgia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took the unusual step of protesting the U.S. President's itinerary. The U.S. State Department said that Bush's trip was planned deliberately to send a message that he did not condone "Russian repression" after the Second World War or now. Interestingly, Putin and Bush did not jointly address the media in Moscow. Bush chose to address a joint press conference with the Georgian President, where he again talked about the need for "democracy" in the region.