Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (42 page)

However, Ronald Phelps remembered that the easiest way to obtain a drink
in Arkhangel’sk in 1945 was still to step outside of the house and offer a few cigarettes to the local lads, who would exchange them for a bottle of vodka.
¹⁹⁹

The under-employed convoyers appreciated the opportunity to assist
the ‘destitute’ children of the Arctic ports. Some of these relationships developed into more lasting attachments. The crew of the
Dianella
‘adopted’ a quayside orphan called Wolfga, whom they renamed ‘Vodka’. They sewed him a petty officer’s uniform and gave him a bosun’s pipe. There were tears on both sides when the ships departed, leaving their adoptees behind.
^{200
Ken Bull, a sick-bay attendant on the}
Tuscaloosa
, gathered extra fruit and vegetables for a malnourished child in Murmansk: ‘It was very rewarding to see the great improvement and he was soon actually walking on his own.’
^{201
The opportunity to help}
these ‘lost children’ provided great satisfaction to the visiting seamen.

However, the local Soviet regime did not perceive the exchange of a
piece of chocolate between a sailor and a Soviet child as a moment of inter-allied solidarity and comradeship. In November 1941 Mal’kov, the head of the Arkhangel’sk NKVD, spoke to the
oblast’
party activists on this topic.

You can observe on the streets crowds of children who are running after the
Englishmen . . . and they are given a square of chocolate or another item. The English . . . take back to England material which represents the population, our Soviet children, as beggars for any petty gift. At the same time as giving them the cigarettes or chocolate they are taking photographs of the children and then giving them to British journals. This type of contraband provides an opportu- nity for the English to discredit our Soviet children.
²⁰²

From Mal’kov’s perspective, the foreign sailors’ behaviour dishonoured
the Soviet children, and by implication the USSR as a whole. They were taking advantage of the material struggles of the population to prey on the weakest elements within Soviet society. The giving of the gift of a square of chocolate established a hierarchy of patronage which they then exploited to their advantage. These everyday interactions provided a microcosm for the Soviet regime’s anxieties about Lend Lease. No Soviet citizen could be in debt to a foreigner. The exchange of a square

^{199
Int. Ronald Phelps, Oxford, September 2005.}

^{200
Mem. Tye,}
Real Cold War,
57.
^{201
Ibid. 47.}

^{202
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 934, l. 84. See also: d. 1136, l. 11.}

120
Being Soviet

of chocolate asserted the superiority of British or American civilization
and was an act of predation on the USSR’s most vulnerable citizens.

The children themselves have left only fleeting glimpses of their
own perspectives. However, Igor Andreevich, who was 11 in 1941, remembered his interactions with the foreign sailors with much mirth. He lived at the wood factory, along the river from the city centre, and remembered with delight the experience of fooling the sailors with worthless currency. He laughed as he remembered that the only English he knew at that age was ‘give me one cigarette!’ ‘They were able to see how we lived, that life was difficult for us . . . I remember a benevolent (lj,hj;t
Jl
fnt
Jl
ysq
) relationship from us to them and from them to us . . . They of course made an effort to help us. That was my conclusion from the impression of a young child.’
^{203
Remembering the black-}
market cigarettes he used to trade he commented that, ‘The majority of the time they just gave them to us and we were very glad.’ I asked him whether they were generous and he replied, ‘Yes they were generous. We were very happy to have them here. It was pleasant (ghbznysq).’
²⁰⁴

G. N. Loginova wrote to
Poleznaia Gazeta
when Golubtsova began to publish her research on wartime relationships: ‘I remember how the English and the Negroes were in the barracks. They gave gifts to all of us children of chewing gum. We had frequent trips to the room of the cleaner of the barracks. After the war the woman disappeared: they said that she had been put in prison . . . Thank you newspaper for exploring this “forbidden” theme.’
²⁰⁵

The tone of these limited sources is very positive. At least some Soviet
children did not consider trading and receiving goods from the foreign sailors to be a humiliating experience.
^{206
The government’s attempts to}
curb street speculation were to no avail. At the end of the war, allied seamen were arriving in the USSR forewarned, with stockpiles of cigarettes and cigars.
^{207
Soviet children did not feel preyed upon by}
the foreign sailors. Instead they took advantage of the situation before them to supplement economic, and on occasion relational, resources. It is likely that few of them even considered that their behaviour might

^{203
Int. Igor Andreevich, Arkhangel’sk, August 2004.
204
Int. Ibid.}

^{205
Poleznaia Gazeta}
(Severodvinsk), 14.09.2001.

^{206
Their comments mirrored those of many Soviet children who lived through the}
German occupation and remembered the gifts they received of chocolate and cigarettes. Int. Mikhail Borisovich, Moscow, June 2004.

^{207
F. S. Herman,}
Dynamite Cargo: Convoy to Russia
(London, 1943), 93.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
121

imperil the dignity of Soviet civilization. The ‘tactics’ they employed
were less subtle than the local women. They had not yet become sophisticated users of the ‘little tactics of the habitat’. Nonetheless, like the female population of the Arctic ports, their behaviour exhibited the ‘tactic’ of
bricolage
in action.

SOVIET WARTIME MENTALIT E´ : THE GLAMOUR OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD

Between 1939 and 1941 a few Soviet soldiers enjoyed a once in a
lifetime opportunity to interact with the material culture of the capital- ist world. Their approach was largely to ‘plunder’ the economic oppor- tunities before them. During the Great Patriotic War, this opportunity was extended to many millions more Soviet citizens. Their reactions to Anglo-American films, music, technology, and servicemen reveal that glamour and excitement, as well as raw economic interests, shaped the way Soviet citizens evaluated their allies. It is hardly surprising that the wartime population of the USSR were so enthusiastic about American feature films: good quality movies were in short supply in the USSR. Lend Lease goods and even foreign sailors were also assessed, to some extent, in terms of their usefulness. If a tank or truck was poorly made, then Soviet citizens were prepared to say so.

However, the popularity of jazz music,
Britanskii Soiuznik
, and foreign convoyers seems to have extended beyond these purely pragmatic con- cerns. It reflected their exotic associations with the outside world. Forty years on, Golubtsova’s respondents still talked about the ‘gallant cavaliers’ from Britain, the ‘glittering lights of the dance floor’, and the splendour and ‘finery’ of the balls at the International Club.
^{208
The foxtrot, foreign}
films, and Big Band music clearly enjoyed glamorous associations for some of the population of Arkhangel’sk. Just as American GI’s in Britain capitalized on the allure of Hollywood, so the convoyers cashed in on the exotic mystique associated with the outside world.
^{209
The very act of}

^{208
Golubtsova,}
Voennaia liubov’,
32, 33, 40, 46. Such memories might reflect the glow of memory, though the evidence suggests it was a factor at the time as well.

^{209
On the enthusiasm with which visiting Americans were greeted during the 1957}
Youth Festival see: K. Roth-Ey, ‘Loose Girls’ on the Loose?: Sex, Propaganda and the 1957 Youth Festival’, in M. Ilic, S. Reid, and L. Attwood, eds.,
Women in the Khrushchev

Era
(Basingstoke, 2004), 75–95.

122
Being Soviet

‘enclosing’ the USSR in the 1930s had not dampened, and may even have
excited, some Soviet citizens’ interest in the capitalist West. Whether they simply enjoyed
Britanskii Soiuznik
or actually got to dance with a foreign sailor, Britain and America represented an exciting world of novelty and interest. Such enthusiasm often stretched the boundaries of what could be authentically Soviet during wartime.

However, this image of a capitalist world of exotic luxury could easily
be turned on its head. The allegations of cowardice directed at the convoyers reflected the wider wartime rhetoric about the stoic Soviet citizen who was preternaturally capable of enduring great hardship.
^{210
The readiness with which Soviet citizens passed on these tales, even}
many years later, provides an indication of the extent to which this self- image had entered into the
mentalit
^´
e
of those who lived at the time.

It would be an error, however, to assume that these two narratives of
Soviet stoicism and Western glamour were antithetical to one another. Official propaganda had propagated the image of overfed and over- dressed capitalists. It is not hard to imagine how such an image could be rather attractive in food and entertainment starved wartime Arkhan- gel’sk. Eric Ashby described in his wartime memoir how the occupants of his carriage on a train journey to Murmansk refused all offers of food until he produced some chocolate. Even the unfriendly NKVD colonel could not resist that.
^{211
It was entirely possible to disapprove of Western}
decadence but be partial to certain Western luxuries. Stalin himself enjoyed
Lucky Strike
and
Philip Morgan
cigarettes. Many of the best quality goods and foodstuffs associated with Lend Lease were consumed by the Soviet elite. Images of the West as an arena of cowardly deca- dence may have reinforced the idea that it was a world of exotic luxury. The two concepts coexisted side by side as features of the Soviet wartime
mentalit
^´
e
. As a common joke about the meeting at the Elbe went, the American’s first comment was ‘Congratulations on our meeting’, the Russian asked ‘Do you have bread and vodka?’
^{212
Cowardly decadence}
and exotic luxury were structural features of the way Soviet citizens imagined the world their allies inhabited beyond the border.

^{210
Allegations of excessive luxury are a common feature of anti-Western rhetoric.}

I. Buruma and A. Margalit
, Occidentalism. A Short History of Anti-Westernism
(London, 2004), 49–72. In the Soviet context, see Werth,
Russia at War
, 9.

^{211
Mem. Ashby,}
Scientist in Russia,
151–3.

^{212
HIP. A. 1, 2, 39.}

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
123

CONCLUSION

Evgeny Petrov, the popular author, with Il’ia Ilf, of the American
travelogue
One Storey America
(1937) was writing a book when he died in 1942. The new novel,
Journey into the Land of Communism
depicted the USSR, as seen through the eyes of two American travellers in 1963. The USSR that they visit closely resembles the USA that Petrov described in
One Storey America
but without the typical American problems. There is a People’s Commissariat for Service and excellent transportation, but no poverty and no advertising. Petrov’s vision of the Soviet future was typical of the wartime attitude towards British and American civilization. The best parts of it could be imported into the USSR and redeemed for the good of the people.
^{213
This admiration for}
certain aspects of capitalist civilization was by no means new. The status of foreign science and music had ebbed and flowed through the Soviet era. However, it underwent an extraordinary renaissance during World War II.