Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (36 page)

^{60
Int. Viktor Dmitrovich, Moscow, September 2004.}

^{61
Mem. Wettlin,}
Fifty Russian Winters,
188.

^{62
Sv. TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 23, d. 685, l. 97.}

^{63
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a. d. 14701, l. 2.}

^{64
Ibid. d. 20886, l. 25.}

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
97

A counter-narrative did emerge at the end of the war, but largely in
the post-war period, which argued that Lend Lease had been an essential mechanism for the wartime victory. This was argued by a number of respondents to HIP, possibly to flatter their American interviewers.
^{65
It also appeared as an example of anti-Soviet prosecut-}
able speech by 1945.
^{66
Some Soviet citizens, demonstrating what was}
almost certainly diplomatic politeness, thanked American representa- tives for their help during the war.
^{67
However, the wartime profile of}
Lend Lease was strikingly low. It made a very limited impact on the wartime rumour network, and rarely become a source of conversation or speculation. This lack of comment suggests that Soviet citizens did not regard Lend Lease, unlike the Second Front, as a vital strategic feature of the anti-Hitler struggle.

When they personally interacted with Lend Lease goods, however,
Soviet citizens developed a diversity of complex and nuanced views concerning the foreign-produced material. Lend Lease was not a strate- gic priority in the minds of the Soviet population, but the opportunity to make use of British and American technology resulted in inevitable comparisons with their Soviet-made equivalents. They employed the ‘tactic’ of
bricolage
, fusing personal experience with their pre-existing prejudices and the language of Official Soviet Identity, to generate a plethora of different responses.

The evidence concerning these reactions is fragmentary, but it does
demonstrate that at least some Soviet citizens reiterated the claims of Official Soviet Identity that the goods were inferior to their domestic equivalents. Such comments were particularly common amongst Red Army soldiers who were often very critical of Anglo-American tanks.

A. T. Mar’ian wrote in his wartime diary in June 1943,

I saw some English tanks in the neighbouring brigade. They are better than the
Americans ones but incomparably worse than our [T] 34s. They are not that manoeuvrable and very high. Of course they are frightening to Africans but

^{65
HIP. A. 4, 32, 52.}

^{66
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 34977, ll. 13–14; d. 36321, ll. 26, 29. For}

examples from 1945 see d.75172, l. 8; d. 36799, l. 6. Of the small number of those
prosecuted for making such comments during the war, several were prosecuted well after it was over, in the early 1950s, raising questions about the authenticity and timing of the purported comments.

^{67
van Tuyll,}
Feeding the Bear,
38.

98
Being Soviet

they are metal coffin targets for the German guns . . . our tankists have dubbed
the Churchill tank ‘the enemy of the tankists.’
⁶⁸

A number of my interview respondents echoed these sentiments. One
veteran described the Lend Lease tanks as ‘children’s toys’ and claimed their primary value had been for removing the clocks and measuring instruments inside.
^{69
Other combatants complained that the British-}
made ‘Matilda’ tank was as ‘inflammable as a box of matches’.
^70
Viktor
Iosifovich mistakenly thought the name ‘Matilda’ was a Red Army nickname to mock the machines.
^{71
There were also occasional com-}
plaints about the quality of the foodstuffs sent over. Moscow schoolboys complained that the marmalade sent from America was
drisnia
(‘the squits’).
^{72
Spam apparently ‘excited the eye, but not the taste buds’,}

whilst others complained that a few ‘rotten sausages’ would not make
the Soviet people strong.
^{73
Such comments at the very least exhibited}
the ‘tactic’ of performance and quite possibly the internalization of official rhetoric or ‘thinking Bolshevik’. However, they also reflected the realities of personal experience in many cases. The Churchill tank had to undergo a major redesign in 1943 and production of the Matilda was abandoned altogether.
^{74
Pride in the achievements of domestic}
production, and the Soviet project as a whole, fused with negative experiences of foreign products to produce a contemptuous attitude towards imported goods amongst some Soviet citizens.

However, the pragmatic circumstances of use and consumption en-
sured that the reactions of Soviet citizens were not entirely monochrome concerning Lend Lease produce. This was particularly the case in areas of American excellence: trucks and food. Many wartime combatants were unstinting in their praise of Studebaker trucks and Dodge jeeps. Vasili Ermolenko repeatedly described in his diary how the Manchurian offen- sive could not have been carried out without these ‘Amerikankas’.
⁷⁵

^{68
Mem. Mar’ian,}
Gody moi, kak soldaty: Dnevnik sel’skogo aktivista 1925–1953 gg.

(Kishinev,1987), 173.

^{69
Int. Viktor Iosifovich, Moscow, May 2004.}

^{70
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War,
620–3.

^{71
Int. Viktor Iosifovich, Moscow, May 2004.}

^{72
Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War,
761–2.

^{73
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 3a1, d. 15112, l. 35; V. Shalamov, trans., J. Glad,}

Kolyma Tales
(1994)
,
275.

^{74
P. Chamberlain and C. Ellis,}
British and American Tanks of World War II
(New York, 1969), 54, 66–7.

^{75
Mem. Ermokenko,}
Voennyi dnevnik,
169, 171, 173.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
99

Nikolai Litvin was similarly effusive in his praise for the Willys Jeeps he
drove: they demonstrated ‘decent speed, excellent off-road capability and good power’. They were long-lasting and extremely popular amongst the Red Army soldiers.
^{76
According to a GI who served at the Poltava airbase}
in 1944, the word ‘Studebaker’ became a superlative term of praise for anything excellent, including a Soviet soldier’s female object of desire.
^{77
My military interview respondents, who were dismissive of Lend Lease}
tanks, often spoke in rapturous tones about the cars and jeeps:

The cars, of course, were excellent.
⁷⁸

Then the American cars arrived, Dodge and Jeep—wonderful cars, they helped
a lot.
⁷⁹

Similar praise was sometimes, though not always, lavished by Soviet
veterans on Lend Lease aeroplanes, which they credited with reviving the Soviet Air Force.
^{80
A number of veterans also spoke in glowing}
terms about the Lend Lease cans of pork and milk which were distributed at the front line. Viktor Dmitrovich claimed that Lend Lease meat was still his benchmark for quality.
^{81
Marshal Akhromeyev,}
the last remaining senior Soviet officer to have seen combat in the war, reminisced about the quality of Lend Lease sausage forty years later during the Gorbachev–Reagan talks.
⁸²

The evidence for such attitudes is fragmentary, and a significant
volume, though not all of it, was gathered well after the war itself. Nonetheless, comments such as these demonstrate that the process of
bricolage
did occur when Soviet citizens directly interacted with Lend Lease goods. Allied aid was not extensively discussed within the wartime oral news network; the Soviet press succeeded in focusing attention on the absent Second Front. However, Red Army truck and tank drivers were able to draw on their personal experiences, as well as the contents of the official press, and at least some of them appreciated the quality

^{76
Mem. N. Litvin, trans., S. Britton,}
800 Days on the Eastern Front: A Russian Soldier
Remembers World War II (Lawrence KS, 2007), 50.

^{77
Barghoorn,}
Soviet Image,
240.

^{78
Int. Viktor Iosifovich, Moscow, May 2004.}

^{79
Int. Viktor Dmitrovich, Moscow, September 2004.}

^{80
Int. Boris Romanovich, Moscow, September 2004; Mem. Werth,}
Russia at War,

787; G. Khmelev,
Ia khochu na front (dnevnik, pis’ma s peredovoi)
(Moscow, 2003)
,
130.

^{81
Int. Viktor Dmitrovich, Moscow, 2004; Viktor Iosifovich, Moscow, May 2004.}

^{82
M. Walker,}
The Cold War
(1993), 294.

100
Being Soviet

of what was sent. Even if they did not regard them as strategically
significant, Soviet soldiers sometimes could not help but marvel at the precise edges of the American sugar cubes they received.
⁸³

Dmitri Loza’s tank memoir, published in the 1990s, demonstrates
that even many years later, Soviet veterans remained sensitive to the dual
demands of practical experience and the language of honour. Although he praises the Sherman tanks that he used throughout the war, he is quick to point out how the Soviet tankists had adapted and improved them. He also draws the inevitable comparison to the T 34.
^84
Loza’s
fusion of personal observations with a sensitivity to the categories of official rhetoric and a pride in Soviet achievements reveals that the ‘tactics’ of the Soviet habitat remained ingrained many years after the Stalin era had come to an end.

ANGLO-AMERICAN SERVICEMEN IN THE WARTIME USSR

Official Soviet Identity embraced Anglo-American art and science, with
a few reservations, during World War II, but was more cautious about the presence of Lend Lease goods in the USSR. The presence of British and American servicemen in the Soviet Union presented a more signifi- cant challenge. They brought foreign food, mores, and music into the heart of the Soviet homeland when thousands of them visited the Arctic ports of Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk.
^{85
Their presence created major}
difficulties for local administrators and presented great opportunities for innovative members of the local community. The under-written story of their life ashore in the USSR provides a microcosm for the tensions at the heart of Official Soviet Identity as a civilization during the war and the creativity with which ordinary people negotiated the boundaries of what could and could not be Soviet between 1941 and 1945.