All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [97]
The German invasion prompted a modest surge of popular enthusiasm for Mother Russia: some 3,500 Muscovites volunteered for military service within thirty-six hours, as did 7,200 men in Kursk province in the first month. But many Russians were merely appalled by their nation’s predicament. The NKVD reported a Moscow legal adviser named Izraelit saying that the government had ‘missed the German offensive on the first day of the war, and this led to the subsequent destruction and colossal losses of aircraft and personnel. The partisan movement which Stalin called for – that’s a completely ineffective form of warfare. It is a gust of despair. As for hoping for help from Britain and the United States, that’s mad. The USSR is in a ring, and we can’t see a way out.’
Correspondent Vasily Grossman described an encounter with a cluster of peasants behind the front: ‘They are crying. Whether they are riding somewhere, or standing by their fences, they begin to cry as soon as they begin to speak, and one feels an involuntary desire to cry too. There’s so much grief! … An old woman thought she might see her son in the column that was trudging through the dust. She stood there until evening and then came to us. “Soldiers, take some cucumbers, eat, you are welcome.” “Soldiers, drink this milk.” “Soldiers, apples.” “Soldiers, curds.” “Soldiers, please take this.” And they cry (these women), they cry, looking at the men marching past them.’ Yevgeni Anufriev was one of a host of messengers delivering call-up orders to the homes of reservists: ‘We were surprised how many of the recipients tried to hide so that they wouldn’t have to accept the papers. There was no enthusiasm for the war at that stage.’
The overwhelming majority of the Red Army’s soldiers were conscripts, no more eager for martyrdom than their British or American counterparts. Some arrived drunk at mobilisation centres, after long trudges from their villages. Soviet educational standards had risen since the Revolution, but many recruits were illiterate. The best human material was drafted to units of the NKVD, directed by Lavrenti Beria, which eventually grew into an elite enforcement arm 600,000 strong. Men from Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic republics were deemed too politically unreliable to serve in tank crews. As a consequence of Stalin’s purges the Red Army suffered a critical lack of competent officers and NCOs.
Infantrymen in the first months of war were taught only how to march, wearing portyanki – footcloths – to compensate for the shortage of boots; to take cover on command; to dig; and to perform simple drills with wooden rifles. There were insufficient weapons, no barracks or transport. Each man learned to cherish a spoon as his most useful possession – veterans said they might throw away their rifles, but never the spoons tucked into their boots. Only officers had watches. In the desperate days of 1941, many recruits were herded into action within a week or two of being drafted. A regimental commissar named Nikolai Moskvin wrote despairingly in his diary on 23 July: ‘What am I to say to the boys? We keep retreating. How can I get their approval? How? Am I to say that comrade Stalin is with us? That Napoleon was ruined and that Hitler and his generals will find their graves with us?’
Moskvin did his best in a harangue to his unit, but next day acknowledged its failure: thirteen men had deserted during the night. A Jewish refugee, Gabriel Temkin, watched Russian troops advancing to the front near Białystok, ‘some in trucks, many on foot, their outdated rifles hanging loosely