Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (34 page)

^{24
Inf. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Arkhangel’skoi Oblasti, henceforth GAAO, f. 5790,}
op. 3, d. 7, ll. 51–2; GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1541, l. 57; Stites, ‘Frontline Entertainment’, 138.

^{25
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 28, ll. 69–77.}

^{26
Inf. Ibid., d. 135, ll. 1–3.}

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
89

remembered that all of her student friends read the foreign journals
during the war.
^{27
Even more concerning, from the point of view of}
Agitprop, were the letters sent by agitators to
Britanskii Soiuznik
and
Amerika
informing the editors that their material was being employed ‘to the full’ in agitational work.
^28
When
Amerika
first went on release in October 1944, the 10,000 copies sold instantaneously and worn copies circulated on the black market.
^{29
These journals provided fresh informa-}
tion and ideas that could be drawn upon in the process of
bricolage
that Soviet citizens used to understand the outside world. One respondent to HIP commented that even the colour photographs and quality of the paper on which
Amerika
was printed enabled readers to infer certain things about the USA.
³⁰

The wartime openness to foreign research and technology also seems
to have generated great enthusiasm amongst Soviet scientists. Eric Ashby, an Australian scientist who visited the USSR in 1944–5, com- mented that, ‘It is rare to find a laboratory without half-a-dozen British, American, or German journals on the table, and some zealous young research worker puzzling over one of them with a dictionary.’
^31
Soviet
academics and scientists spoke in public about Western science in a manner that would have been unthinkable during the 1930s. At a gathering of the All Union Plenum on Architecture Burov, an architect from Moscow, spoke of how the Soviet agricultural and industrial revolutions had been ‘carried out through reliance on American experi- ence’. He suggested that Soviet architects should now pay similar attention to the work of their colleagues in the United States.
^32
Indeed
all the evidence suggests that Soviet scientists wrote, in large numbers, to their leaders requesting permission to travel to the West and restock their laboratories there. As Academician Vavilov explained, in a spring 1945 letter to Agitprop, many researchers felt that the breakdown of contact with foreign science before the war had seriously harmed the development of Soviet research.
^{33
In July 1943 Zhebrak, the prominent}

^{27
Int. Svetlana Ivanovna, Moscow, July 2004.}

^{28
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 135, ll. 1–3.}

^29
Parks,
Culture, Conflict and Coexistence
, 87.

^{30
HIP. A. 37, 628, 66.}

^{31
Mem. E. Ashby,}
Scientist in Russia
(New York, 1947), 27.

^{32
Livshin and Orlov,}
Sovetskaia Propaganda v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny:
‘Kommunikatsiia Ubezhdeniia’ i mobilizatsionnye mekhanizmy (Moscow, 2007), 583–8.

^{33
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 362, ll. 9–12. Others wrote in similar terms. See:}
Holloway,
Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956
(New

Haven, 1994), 112–13; Krementsov,
Stalinist Science,
140.

90
Being Soviet

geneticist, wrote to the Soviet leadership in a letter that exemplifies the
tactic of performance in action. His letter placed great emphasis on the Marxist and Darwinist nature of genetics, and refuted Lysenko’s allega- tion that genetics was a capitalist and degenerate science. At the same time he also stressed the rich international heritage of chromosomal theory, drawing strength from the current sympathy for Western sci- ence.
^{34
The Director of the Lenin Library wrote to Malenkov and}
Andreev in similar terms, stressing the international significance of the Library and suggesting that, as there was likely to be a large growth in foreign visitors after the war was over, their staff budget would have to be increased.
^{35
Soviet scientists, academics, musicians, film-makers, and}
artists performed the language of Official Soviet Identity with gusto when it suited their personal and institutional agendas during the Great Patriotic War.

When the Red Army occupied Eastern Poland in 1939, the response
of its soldiers was largely to ‘plunder’ the economic resources before them. The wartime enthusiasm for Anglo-American film, music, and science suggests that capitalist civilization exerted an appeal that went beyond purely economic motivations. Jazz music and Hollywood films were fun and glamorous, and British and American researchers were highly regarded by their Soviet counterparts. The opportunity to inter- act with the fruits of capitalist civilization was made possible by the Soviet government’s careful wartime embrace of Anglo-American cul- ture and science. However, there were limits to legitimate enthusiasm for Western products, as demonstrated by the official anxiety surround- ing
Britanskii Soiuznik
and
Amerika
. Film, science, and music were some of the easiest aspects of Anglo-American culture for Soviet power to embrace because it was comparatively easy to control access to them. However, the way in which Soviet citizens interacted with and under- stood the military hardware, clothing, and food that arrived in the USSR from overseas was more difficult to control. The presence of allied military personnel presented an even greater challenge to the carefully constructed official narrative about Soviet civilization between 1941 and 1945.

^{34
Let. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 198, ll. 41–68.}

^{35
Let. Ibid. d. 219, ll. 83–7.}

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
91

LEND LEASE: GIFT OR PAYMENT?

The key mechanism that brought foreign servicemen and technology
into the USSR during World War II was Lend Lease. The Lend Lease Agreement was originally signed in 1939 to provide Britain with Amer- ican military aid, but in October 1941 it was extended to include the USSR. By the end of the war the Soviet Union had received around 11 billion dollars of supplies, or 29 per cent of all Lend Lease aid.
^{36
Most of}
the goods received were high calorie foodstuffs and clothing that were shipped to Vladivostok. However, the Soviets also received a significant number of tanks during 1941–2, and trucks, planes, and communica- tions equipment in 1942–5.
^{37
Much of this military materiel arrived}
via the Northern Route, from Britain and Iceland to the Arctic ports of Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk, where the flow of goods peaked in 1943–4.

Allied imports of military materiel were a sensitive issue inside the
USSR. The quality of Soviet technology was an important aspect of Official Soviet Identity through which the superiority of Soviet civiliza- tion could be asserted. The thirteen years before the German invasion, since 1928, had been devoted to the crash industrialization of the Soviet Union. Part of the rationale for that programme had been to prepare the USSR technologically for war. The brutal defeats of 1941 came as a major shock to many Soviet citizens. They also made the drawing of comparisons between Soviet and foreign-made hardware an even more sensitive issue. One respondent to HIP remembered that ‘there were many conversations about the technological superiority of the Germans’ that year.
^{38
Some official publications demonstrated an awareness of}
this attitude. One of the leading characters in Korneichuk’s play,
The Front,
comments that, ‘German radio communications, like their sys- tem of communications in general, are first-rate. It is our duty to learn from the enemy in order to surpass him.’
^{39
However, by the start of}
1943, the achievements of Soviet science were being trumpeted as one of the causes of the decisive turn in the war. The official press even

^{36
H. P. van Tuyll,}
Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union, 1941–1945

(London, 1989), 22–3. Estimates vary between 22 and 29%.

^{37
M. Suprun,}
Lend-Liz i severnye konvoi, 1941–45 gg.
(Moscow, 1997), 122.

^{38
HIP. B6, 144, 4.}

^{39
A. Korneichuk, ‘The Front’, in,}
Four Soviet War Plays
(London, 1944) 9.

92
Being Soviet

directly denied that Germany had enjoyed a technological advantage at
the start of the war.
^{40
The arrival of vast volumes of military hardware}
from overseas was, therefore, a delicate issue. The government was simultaneously fostering Soviet honour and civic pride in the techno- logical achievements of the USSR, whilst importing foreign machinery in its hour of greatest need.

In the early, desperate months of the war, the Soviet press gave a high
profile to the economic support that the capitalist Allies had promised to the USSR. The planes and tanks from Britain and America were afforded particularly prominent coverage. And a number of expressions of gratitude from senior Soviet leaders were published.
^41
Molotov
praised the ‘close cooperation’, and ‘broad and systematic manner’ in which the Anglo-Americans had agreed to help the Soviet Union; Litvinov offered the ‘warm thanks of my government’; and Stalin expressed his ‘sincere thanks’ for the ‘exceptionally significant sup- port’.
^{42
This promise of military and economic aid was intended to}
bolster the mood of the population during the desperate hours of the German advance on Moscow. Aid from Britain and America was also afforded a prominent role in the
listovki
dropped behind enemy lines carrying headlines such as, ‘Everything that England has promised to send to Russia has been sent.’
⁴³

However, once the early danger had passed, the Soviet press began to
ignore the programme. Lend Lease was ignored by the official mass media because the arrival of foreign-made goods threatened the idea that the USSR was technologically and militarily advanced enough to win the war with its own weapons. The flow of supplies increased in 1942–3 but the volume of Soviet reportage fell.
Pravda
published, on average, one article every two months about the scheme, and they were largely excerpts from official speeches by American public figures. These reports tended to be highly factual and numerical, detailing the volume of goods that had been received. Hence Roosevelt’s report to Congress in December 1942 noted that the USSR had received 4,000 tanks, 3,000 planes, and 30,000 trucks in the previous year. These figures were, however, buried in a mass of other details, and they lacked any clear sense of the overall contribution allied goods were making to the

^40
Pravda
, 25.03.43, p. 1.
^41
Pravda
, 25.10.41, p. 4; 02.10.41, p. 1.