Posted by: Dale Franks on Monday, September 11, 2006
One of the things we know very little about, however, is how the average Soviet soldier lived and died in those long, horrific years between 1941 and 1945. We know about the major operations. We know when Marshal Zhukov did this or Marshal Konev did that. What has remained hidden, for more than sixty years, is what life and death was like for the average Russian infantryman—the "Ivan"—during that brief, but deadly time. Those experiences have, for the most part been hidden behind a wall of Soviet censorship. Now, thanks to Russian studies scholar Catherine Merridale, we can look behind that wall, and see the truth—sometimes grim, sometimes darkly humorous—that the average "Ivan" lived with. Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Soviet Army, 1939-1945, is not a tale of grand strategy, or a lofty view of Generals and Marshals moving pieces around on a sand table. Instead, it is the story of the privates, the sergeants, and the young lieutenants and captains who led them into battle. It is the story of the frontoviki, the front-line men—and women—who faced the German guns, who fought, and who mostly died during what the Russians still call The Great Patriotic War. Merridale, through meticulous research through formerly secret archives, and through interviews with surviving veterans, writes about what it was like to live and die as a common soldier on the front lines of that war. It is a glimpse of the wartime experience of Soviet soldiery that was denied to us for more than half a century. Unlike the story of other Allied soldiers, the story of Ivan is essentially a tragic one, despite the defeat of the Nazis and their allies. In other allied countries, the soldiers kept faith with their governments, and that faith was returned. Most of them came home knowing that they had fought a "good war". Ivan was denied that comfort. Despite the undeniable bravery and gallantry of the Soviet Infantryman, they were betrayed at every turn. Their training—if they received it—was substandard. Their living conditions were execrable. They were encouraged—indeed, forced—to take part in war crimes, such as units being forced, at gunpoint, to systematically rape German girls and women in Prussia. Finally, after winning the war, they were betrayed by Stalin, who, when the war was over, discarded them, and forced them to knuckle under to one of the most repressive regimes of state terror ever known. Their hopes for a better post-war world were dashed. There were few happy endings for Ivan. Merridale tells the whole story, from beginning to end. And she does so with an undisguised compassion for the men and women who were forced to endure so much, suffer so much, and commit horrific acts, and who, as payment, were forced to suffer the deep suspicion of a party and state that distrusted the independent modes of thinking and acting that they had become used to on the front lines. This is an excellent book that tells a story that has needed to be told for decades. |
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