Stalin's Debacle
OAK, LISTON M.
Stalin's Debacle THE 900 DAYS?THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD By Harrison E. Salisbury Harper & Row. 635 pp. $10.00. Reviewed by LISTON M. OAK Writer and specialist on international affairs When Stalin...
...He was supremely confident that he could outmaneuver Hitler, if necessary by further appeasement and concessions, and postpone any battle until the Soviet Union was ready...
...The 900 Days, is a remarkable account of the catastrophe and deserves all the praise already heaped on it...
...C. P. Snow, brilliantly reviewing The 900 Days for the New York Times, agrees with its author that Leningrad is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, ranking with Venice, Stockholm and San Francisco...
...His book, however, should serve to keep alive the memory of Stalin's deeds...
...Probably no nation had ever been as well informed about an impending enemy attack...
...But Stalin, supported by his top minions—Beria, Malenkov, Vishinsky, among others—stubbornly insisted this was all a plot by undercover agents and enemies seeking to disturb relations between Communist Russia and Nazi Germany...
...Utter degradation was mixed with heroism, self-sacrifice, and incredible stoicism...
...Salisbury's eloquence here leads him to extravagance when he says, "The memory of the nine hundred days will always live...
...Reviewed by LISTON M. OAK Writer and specialist on international affairs When Stalin awoke on the morning of June 22, 1941, all was calm in the Kremlin...
...He believed the Tass report that "nothing of importance has happened," and refused to take seriously the rumor, "spread by agents provocateurs," that at 4 a.m...
...In that Stalinist fantasy, the heroes of the siege became traitors who had plotted to surrender the city to the Nazis and establish a new regime subservient to British and American imperialism...
...It was a beautiful spring day, with a warm sun shining over Moscow...
...On December 18, 1940, Hitler had approved Operation Bar-barossa, the plan for conquest of Russia, to begin in the spring of 1941...
...In the at least partial restoration of Stalin's reputation and methods, a trend that has gained great ground in recent years, much evidence of his grievous errors has been destroyed...
...Stalin also calculated that Hitler would not open a second front until Nazi Germany had defeated France, Britain and the rest of Europe...
...the Soviet experience reveals that neither the quantity nor the quality of intelligence reporting and analysis determines whether a national leadership acts in timely and resolute fashion...
...When irrefutable proof arrived, Stalin lost his nerve, collapsed, and locked himself in his room, refusing to participate in defense preparations...
...Salisbury records: "As always in Russia, the writers and artists [who survived the siege] were the first victims of the savage political warfare which followed victory...
...But over this lovely place, erected by Peter the Great as a "window to the West," will always hang a pall, at least for those who choose to remember a catastrophe of such magnitude it is nearly incomprehensible: the massacre of over a million courageous Russian defenders...
...Thousands of survivors were shot or sent to prison camps...
...Cannibalism was common...
...In his "secret speech" of February 1956, exposing Stalin's crimes, Nikita Khrushchev revealed part of the tragic story of Leningrad and of the "Leningrad Affair" that followed...
...But almost the only thing for which the Communist dictator cannot be blamed is the fact that the coldest winter Leningrad had known for 30 years came at the end of the 900-day siege...
...An astonishing number of reliable individuals, including Sir Stafford Cripps, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Sumner Welles, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and other British and American experts warned Stalin of this, and his own intelligence network and diplomatic corps confirmed the warnings...
...The great mistake of January, 1941, made by Stalin," Salisbury writes, "is that he simply refused to believe that a German attack was near and therefore did not order the drafting of urgent plans" to defend Leningrad and other Russian areas...
...Nazi troops had crossed Soviet border and Red Army concentrations were being bombed...
...Stalin knew, and often said, that Nazism and Fascism were the worst enemies of the Soviet Union and ultimately war was inevitable—but not in 1941...
...I too agree, though I would add Jerusalem, Haifa and Florence to the list...
...Marshal Voronov, like other Russian military leaders, concluded after the War that "It was clear that the Russian General Staff did not anticipate that war would begin in 1941...
...What is certain is that both were monsters, guilty of crimes unprecedented in human history...
...For even now relatively few really remember either the Stalinist terror or the Nazi holocaust...
...Nothing in the chamber of Stalin's horrors," notes Salisbury, "equaled the Leningrad blockade and its epilogue, the Leningrad Affair...
...Some people were shot for stealing a loaf of bread...
...The encyclopedic mass of Soviet intelligence makes even the imposing data which the United States possessed concerning Japanese intentions to attack Pearl Harbor look quite skimpy...
...No totalitarianism is ever quite total...
...They constitute a monument to the colossal mistakes of Stalinist totalitarianism, whose victims even outnumber the six million Jews murdered under Nazi and Fascist repression...
...The city was without heat or electricity most of this time, and the food rations were near a starvation level...
...Possibly Salisbury denigrates Stalin too much as a military leader, though I doubt he possessed the evil genius many think he had, just as I question the competence attributed by some to Hitler...
...The blockade may have cost the lives of a million and a half people...
...This viewpoint emanated from Stalin, who beyond reason believed in the nonagression pact with Germany and refused to see the various dangers that threatened...
...The Affair destroyed thousands who survived the most terrible days any city had ever known...
...Harrison E. Salisbury, for nearly a decade the New York Times and United Press International correspondent in the USSR, has come to understand and love the Russian people, and to hate the evils of Stalinism...
...He has read all the accounts of the Leningrad siege that survived the severe censorship, and interviewed most of the important men who foiled Stalin's effort to kill them and thereby hide the truth about his ghastly errors...
...This includes documents concerning the purge of many of those who fought in Leningrad's defense, as well as their books, poems, and reports...
...Salisbury feels that "Stalin could not have had more specific, more detailed, more comprehensive information" about the impending Nazi attack than he received in the weeks and months before the invasion...
Vol. 52 • March 1969 • No. 6
