Russians Know about World War II from Those who Served at the End rather than Those who Served at the Beginning, Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 20 – Russians often talk about the veterans of the Great Fatherland War as if they were all of a piece, but in fact, only those who were born between 1919 and 1927 left any memoirs or spoke to historians. Those born earlier, in the years before the revolution, who fought when the Soviet Union was on the defensive did not, Artyom Drabkin says.

            That reality, the Russian historian who has interviewed more than 6,000 veterans is critical and plays a key role in how Russians think about the war. Those called up in 1941 to repel the Nazis were not only older but mostly passed from the scene before glasnost made it possible to speak more openly about their experiences (business-gazeta.ru/article/554362).

            These veterans, Ryabkin continues, did not take part in discussions about the war in anything but the most scripted formats, and “they did not leave a record of their experiences, in military memoirs, ‘lieutenants’ prose,” or in conversation with historians. And so the veterans of the period of defeat have not had a major impact on how Russians view that war and war more generally.

            Instead, he says, those who have written and been interviewed by historians like himself are the second generation of veterans, who came from rural areas but moved to the cities and grew up in Soviet times. But perhaps most importantly, they took part in the war when the Red Army counter-attacked and won victory after victory.

            Not surprisingly, their war and the war of their slightly older comrades in arms were two very different things. But because of Soviet censorship until Gorbachev’s time, the war their elders saw was not the war they saw or talked about – and it is not the war that Russians have in mind when they speak of the Great Victory.

            The older of these two military generations has passed from the scene, and what it saw and felt cannot be recovered easily. But at the very least, Ryabkin’s comments help to explain why the image of World War II for Russians is what it is and why that image is not just the result of ideological censorship by Moscow.

            And his words should be kept in mind both in assessing Russian histories of World War II and even more in evaluating why Russians feel the way they do about it. Obviously, if more of the history of that war was devoted to the period of retreat and defeat, many now would have a different view of the slogan “we can do it again.”