Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (21 page)

The final mechanism via which information and goods flowed was
the rapid migration of hundreds of thousands of ex-capitalist citizens into the USSR. A significant number of new Soviet citizens were either deported to the heartland as politically suspect groups or travelled there for training and work.
^{192
A group of Poles working in Drogobych}
oblast’
spread ‘all kinds of scandalous rumours about the life and order in the USSR, praising the order and life in the former Poland and Germany’. Others complained of the lack of freedom in the USSR and ridiculed the ‘untruths’ of the Soviet press.
^{193
The personal luxuries}
enjoyed by these internal migrants often created tensions amongst receiver communities. As the head of the NKVD in Gorky
oblast’
explained to a destitute newly arrived Estonian, ‘You have a watch on your arm, so I won’t help you.’
¹⁹⁴

^{187
Mem. Scott,}
Duel for Europe,
70.

^{188
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 20485, l. 8.}

^{189
HIP. A. 11, 143, 31.}

^{190
Mem. Scott,}
Duel for Europe
, 87.
^{191
HIP. A. 31, 1953, 27; B11, 64, 35.
192
HIP. A. 34, 1434, 31.}

^{193
Sv. Iu. Slivka,}
Deportatsii: Zakhidni zemli Ukrainy Kintsia 30-kh – Pochatku 50-kh
rr. Dokumenty, Materialy, spozady. T. 1, 1939–1945 rr. (L’vov, 1996), 87, 104.

^{194
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 8, l. 147.}

The Liberator State? 1939–41
37

As tales of opportunity percolated back into the USSR, some Soviet
citizens tried to find a pretext to visit the newly acquired borderlands.
Komandirovki
(travel authorization documents) to the newly occupied territories became highly sought-after documents.
^{195
The Belorussian}

Komsomol received an avalanche of ‘requests to go and work in West-
ern Belorussia’. Not all these requests were motivated by patriotism. Some of those sent as agitators spent ‘the majority of their time in the markets and bazaars turning themselves into carpetbaggers’. The Brest
oblast’
committee wrote more elliptically of staff who had ‘yielded to petty bourgeois influences and entangled themselves in connections with suspicious elements’.
^{196
In the spring of 1941 a letter writer to}
Pravda
, from previously Finnish Vyborg, complained that the city was overrun with ‘adventurist cheats’ or ‘trophyists’ looking for foreign- made property.
^{197
This kind of behaviour passed into popular humour}
via jokes poking fun at the spurious pretexts some people found to go on official ‘missions’ to the newly occupied territories.
¹⁹⁸

Poland, despite its comparative poverty, acquired a reputation as a
land of luxury in this period. Respondents to HIP referred to the lavishness of Polish living more than any other newly occupied territory.
^{199
An army lieutenant, who wound up in prison, later claimed that he}
would return to prison gladly if he could live for a short while as he had in the former Polish borderlands.
^{200
A number of individuals, such as}

P.A.B. were prosecuted for making comments such as ‘in the former
Poland before the arrival of Soviet power, it was better than now’.
^{201
After his liberation by the Red Army during the war, Gabriel Temkin}
was quizzed by his interviewer about life in capitalist Poland: ‘“It was good in capitalist Poland wasn’t it? There was plenty of food and everything in the stores? Each family in the cities had its own apart- ment?” All questions, not a single statement on his part.’
^{202
Countries}
such as America or Germany, as well as the other newly occupied regions, also occasionally cropped up as places where the good life

^195
Gross,
Revolution From Abroad
, 48.

^{196
Inf. RGASPI f. M1, op. 23, d. 1399, ll. 24–54.}

^{197
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 8, ll. 16–19.}

^{198
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War
, 95.

^{199
e.g., HIP. A. 34, 1398, 30.}

^200
Gross,
Revolution From Abroad
, 46.

^{201
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 70429, l. 14.}

^{202
Mem. Temkin,}
My Just War
, 89.

38
Being Soviet

could be enjoyed.
^{203
However, Eastern Poland became a watchword for}
affluence and economic opportunity in this period.

The headlong rush to buy goods in the newly acquired borderlands
became an object of mockery amongst those portions of the newly acquired border population who resented the Red Army’s presence. Kalniete tells an oft-repeated story about some Soviet officers’ wives who went to the theatre in silk underwear, thinking they were wearing evening dresses.
^{204
Such condescending stories infuriated Soviet admin-}
istrators on the ground who fumed against their implicit rejection of the cultural hierarchy within Official Soviet Identity. ‘Absurd’ rumours that the ‘Red Army was badly fed and clothed and dirty and uncultured’, or that the soldiers were ‘surprised by the volume of goods in the stores’ were a common target within the ambassadorial dispatches.
^205
Red
Army soldiers also responded harshly when mocked by local citizens, pointing out that they had tanks, guns, and aeroplanes, not luxury goods.
^{206
Others rushed their wives and children indoors when they}
first arrived so that their poor quality clothing would not be seen.
^{207
The reality of capitalist living made many Red Army soldiers aware of}
their comparative poverty, but did not necessarily shake their pride in their Soviet identity.

However, as news about the reality of life in the ex-capitalist border-
lands percolated through the oral news network, it contributed to an increasingly pragmatic view of the means by which these territories had been acquired. Ordinary people often fused the high-powered official rhetoric of liberation with a no-nonsense, almost realpolitik, vision of the relationship between the USSR and the outside world. The Pact itself bred a certain hard-headed view of affairs. A number of intellec- tuals later told Werth that they had been happy with it from a national perspective but aware that it made them ‘disreputable’ in the West.
^{208
This kind of reaction typified the growing gap between the claims of the}
official press and the realities of international affairs as Soviet citizens

^{203
Sv. RGASPI f. 17, op. 88, d. 3, l. 35; Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 67393,}

l. 9; HIP. A. 18, 342, 35.

^{204
Mem. S. Kalniete, trans., M. Gailitis,}
With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows
(Riga, 2006), 48.

^{205
Inf. Komplektov,}
Polpredy Soobshchaiut
, 183, 190.

^206
Gross,
Revolution From Abroad
, 48. See also: Weiner, ‘Something to Die for’, 103–5.

^{207
HIP. B7, 135, 14.}

^{208
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War
, 60.

The Liberator State? 1939–41
39

knew them to be. For some people an awareness of the pragmatic
methods of the regime bred a sense of embarassment. Scott describes the ‘shame’ some Muscovites felt at the partitioning of Poland, whilst Mikhail Solov’ev, a senior army political officer, wrote in his memoirs that ‘there was not a feeling of hatred for the Finns. Only a sense of shame and degradation.’
^{209
N.G.K. spoke in similar terms when he}
described the Finnish War as ‘sticking our noses in where it was not necessary’.
^{210
Others reacted with ironic humour, rather than guilt;}
even ‘communist loyalists’ told jokes about the Pact.
^{211
During the}
Finnish War a joke circulated that the USSR was ‘extending the hand of friendship’ to the Finns, and they were ‘extending their feet’ [dying].
^{212
John Scott recalled that the Terijoki government was widely mocked:}
‘the simplest Muscovites were sceptical, even amused . . . It was the only instance I can remember in nearly a decade in Russia when large numbers of average Soviet citizens actually laughed at Stalin’s govern- ment.’
²¹³

As the divide between official claims and the unofficial information
circulating within the word-of-mouth network grew, some individuals adopted a more cynical and negative view of both international affairs and the official press itself. A Soviet soldier on the Finnish front confided in his diary that, ‘We were told that we must fight for the Finnish people and for their liberation. Now we see that the Finnish are burning their own homes and meeting the “liberators” with fire and shells.’
^{214
One respondent to HIP claimed that ‘The Polish War, the}
occupation of the Baltic countries, and Bessarabia showed that Stalin was lying.’
^{215
Several individuals were prosecuted for branding Soviet}
foreign policy ‘predatory’, rather than liberating, in this period.
²¹⁶

However, the vast majority of Soviet citizens did not adopt such a
negative view of government policy. Where their views diverged from the official press, it was often a symptom of confusion or the ongoing attempt to reconcile information obtained via various mechanisms.

^{209
Mem. Scott,}
Duel For Europe
, 99; cited in: Van Dyke,
Soviet Invasion
, 127. See also: Davies,
Popular Opinion
, 97–8.

^{210
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 63543, l. 54.}

^{211
Sv. Davies,}
Popular Opinion
, 98.