Writing History in the Soviet Union : Making the Past Work Book

Since the cold war, the US government and news media have continuously demonized Russia and ignored the role that Russia played in defeating Germany in WWII. So too the popular culture: growing up as I did on a diet on war films, I was under the impression that my heroes Audie Murphy and Lee Marvin had themselves defeated Hitler. In a recent diplomatic scuffle, the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia was made no longer welcome in the Czech Republic because he criticised the Czech President's plan to attend Russian MayDay celebrations in honour of the war dead. The Czech President said, "Were it not for Russia, I'd now be speaking German." In light of all of the above, and the propaganda in the mainstream media regarding Ukraine, I decided to do some reading to fill in my education.

In 1941 Germany was on a roll. With the appeasement of France and England, Germany annexed Austria and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Then in 1939 Germany invaded and quickly conquered Poland. BY April 1940 Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France. Then, while maintaining aerial bombardment of England, Germany turned its attention to Russia. In June 1941 invaded Russia along a 2700 mile front with 145 Divisions and nearly 4 million men.

This book was written by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a British diplomat and author who was Great Britain's Ambassador to Russia from 1988 to 1992. It tells the story of the war and the invasion from the Russian point of view. The climax is the decisive battle for Moscow.

We learn about the lead-up to the war, Stalin's purges, the organisation of the Military, the roles of Stalin and the Generals during the war. We learn about the lives of many individual politicians, soldiers, artists and families. We get to see from a citizen's perspective what it meant to live in Moscow under war time conditions and Moscow coming under siege.

Russian defences finally held less that 20 miles from Moscow. Russia re-grouped and pushed back the Germans all the way to Berlin decimating the bulk of German armies, armour and artillery. By the time the Allies landed in Normandy, Germany was broken. Some statistics that I found stunning, given the lack of "history" on the war in Russia: Germany deployed a maximum of 195 Divisions on the eastern front. On the western front, against the Allies, Germany deployed a maximum of 79 Divisions. When they met in Berlin, Russian losses totalled over 27,000,000 including 7,000,000 military.