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Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
A powerful, groundbreaking narrative of the ordinary Russian soldier's experience of the worst war in history, based on newly revealed sources.
Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan -- as the ordinary Russian soldier was called -- remain a mystery. We know something about hoe the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.
Drawing on previously closed military and secret police archives, interviews with veterans, and private letters and diaries, Catherine Merridale presents the first comprehensive history of the Soviet Union Army rank and file. She follows the soldiers from the shock of the German invasion to their costly triumph in Stalingrad, where life expectancy was often a mere twenty-four hours. Through the soldiers' eyes, we witness their victorious arrival in Berlin, where their rage and suffering exact an awful toll, and accompany them as they return home full of hope, only to be denied the new life they had been fighting to secure.
A tour de force of original research and a gripping history, Ivan's War reveals the singular mixture of courage, patriotism, anger, and fear that made it possible for these underfed, badly led troops to defeat the Nazi army. In the process Merridale restores to history the invisible millions who sacrificed the most to win the war.
Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan -- as the ordinary Russian soldier was called -- remain a mystery. We know something about hoe the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.
Drawing on previously closed military and secret police archives, interviews with veterans, and private letters and diaries, Catherine Merridale presents the first comprehensive history of the Soviet Union Army rank and file. She follows the soldiers from the shock of the German invasion to their costly triumph in Stalingrad, where life expectancy was often a mere twenty-four hours. Through the soldiers' eyes, we witness their victorious arrival in Berlin, where their rage and suffering exact an awful toll, and accompany them as they return home full of hope, only to be denied the new life they had been fighting to secure.
A tour de force of original research and a gripping history, Ivan's War reveals the singular mixture of courage, patriotism, anger, and fear that made it possible for these underfed, badly led troops to defeat the Nazi army. In the process Merridale restores to history the invisible millions who sacrificed the most to win the war.
462 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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5496 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Merridale
10 books90 followersCatherine Anne Merridale, FBA (born 12 October 1959) is a British writer and historian with a special interest in Russian history. Merridale was Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London from 2004 to 2014. She has been a senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, since her retirement from full-time academia in 2014. Having retired from her academic career, Merridale became a freelance writer in 2014. She has also contributed to BBC Radio.
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July 2, 2023
“For many, what awaited was a mutilating wound or death. But that is not the whole tale of this war. The paradox is chilling, but nonetheless it remains true that foot soldiers on the Soviet side, if they survived, could genuinely talk of progress. Those who lived would meet foreigners…They would fight beside Soviet citizens who did not speak their Russian language…They would see and handle new machines, learn to shoot, learn to drive, learn to strip parts out of heavy guns and tanks. They would also become adepts in black market trade and personal survival. As conquerors in the bourgeois world they would use its fine china for their meat, drink its sweet Tokyo wine till they passed out, force their masculine bodies on its women. By the war’s end, they would have gained a sense of their own worth. But even as they entered villages…so like their own lost peacetime homes, they would have sensed the extent of their transformation, the distance each had traveled since their first call-up…”
- Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
In tsarist times, the Imperial Russian Army was known as “the Steamroller,” a testament to its sheer, overwhelming size, and its perceived indomitability. The metaphor further implied that the Russians were a blunt instrument, a relentless, inertial force capable of overcoming any obstacle simply by throwing nameless, faceless bodies at it.
The depersonalization of the Russian soldier became even more literal in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. There, individual soldiers were treated as the property of the state, their lives forfeited to the needs of their dictator. When Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German forces invaded, Stalin did not simply trade space for time, he sacrificed blood, and a lot of it. Millions of men were ordered into suicidal attacks, were thrust into battle without weapons, were forced to clear mines on their hands and knees, and were summarily executed for numerous perceived failures.
While the Red Army played a central role in the Allied victory in the Second World War, it is often viewed as a monolith that spent the first half of the conflict being ineptly slaughtered, and the second half wreaking a terrible vengeance on everyone in their path.
In Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale attempts to treat the Red Army with something resembling empathy, and to carve from this vast and impersonal legion a few of the actual lives of which it was made.
***
Structurally speaking, Ivan’s War – the title reflects a nickname for Soviet soldiers, akin to Britain’s “Tommies” – unfolds chronologically, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. Given its subject matter, it’s not particularly surprising that Merridale starts with the outbreak of war, and ends with the silencing of the guns. Still, two things are worth pointing out about the presentation.
First, this isn’t Band of Comrades. That is to say, this is not a unit history, following a specific group of men in a particular company, regiment, division, or corps. Rather, Merridale gives us dozens of different men and women posted to different formations at different parts of a continent-sized battlefield. Due to the difficulty Merridale had in tracking down sources, the soldiers do not represent any kind of scientific cross-section. Meanwhile, some of the names appear once and disappear, while we check in with others several times.
Second, this is not a military history of the Red Army. To be sure, many battles are mentioned, some necessary strategic concepts are discussed, and Merridale will occasionally describe combat, such as at the famed, turning-point battle of Stalingrad, or the clash of tanks at Kursk. That said, this is not the book to turn to if you want to know how the war ebbed and flowed, or to learn tactical dispositions. Indeed, it is quite helpful to know the overarching outline of the Red Army’s actions before starting this.
***
This is war on an intimate level, told through low-level participants who often did not know where they fit within the grand scheme of things. In each chapter, Merridale tries to capture the experiences of ordinary soldiers at the different stages of the war’s progression. For instance, early chapters cover conscription, training, and deployment, while the later ones show us veterans who know how to loot a home and navigate the black market.
Interestingly, much of what Merridale narrates is non-battle oriented. Even for Soviet soldiers, it seems, much of the war was spent trying to stay dry, trying to keep warm, and trying to find enough to eat.
I appreciated this look at the aspects of war that went beyond flanking movements, shaping attacks, and the capture of vital towns, hills, or bridges. Merridale covers a great deal including clothing, equipment, supply shortages, rations, home-front relationships, faith, superstition, songs, sex, propaganda, post-traumatic stress, plunder, and memory.
Frankly, it was sometimes hard to keep everyone straight, because Merridale is more intent on forming a collage of many experiences than in describing discrete character arcs. Nevertheless, I found Ivan’s War incredibly absorbing, a fascinating mosaic of the horrific and the mundane.
***
In describing her efforts and methodology, Merridale notes that she began working on Ivan’s War in 2001, and eventually had it ready for publication in 2006. Her preparations included around 200 interviews with veterans, along with extensive archival work.
Unknowingly, Merridale managed to research and write this book in a very narrow window – now closed – between the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation’s decided turn away from rapprochement with the West. With all that has happened since this was published, including aggressive Russian moves against Georgia and Ukraine, it is unlikely that any western historian will have such access again for quite some time.
Even during the post-Cold War thaw, Merridale noticed a peculiar reticence among many of her subjects to say anything negative. As such, she had a hard time getting them to speak about some of the war’s most notorious incidents, including the staggering number of sexual assaults committed by the Red Army as it moved into Germany.
Refusing to admit to criminal activity is one thing, but many of these former Red Army soldiers appeared to withhold even anodyne criticisms. Some seemed to actually miss the old days of Stalinist rule. Others had been so thoroughly indoctrinated from birth that they accepted their lot without question. This can be frustrating, as Merridale is often unable to get as deep as she wants.
One of the tragedies of the Red Army is that it got little glory for its accomplishments. The laurels went mostly to Stalin, and he took center stage in the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Most soldiers received very little official thanks. Those who had been captured often found themselves transferred from a German camp to a Soviet one, prisoners for additional years. Soldiers who had seen the bounty of the “bourgeois” West were closely watched upon their return, lest they tell others that Soviet claims regarding comparative standards of living were woefully inaccurate.
***
Most histories give you the bottom line. That’s to be expected, because conclusions must be drawn from the full weight of the evidence.
Generally speaking, the Red Army presents a complicated moral case. We know that the Red Army invaded Finland in violation of international law; that it invaded Poland in concert with Hitler, and committed atrocities that at any other time would have shocked the world; that it ravaged the countryside that it conquered; and that its soldiers raped thousands of German women.
On the other side of the ledger, the Red Army suffered millions upon millions of casualties grinding the Wehrmacht into a bloody puddle. The Soviet Union did not win the war on its own, but it cannot be denied that it did most of the fighting, killing, and dying.
Merridale does not shy away from the bad or neglect the good, but her purpose is not to form sweeping judgments of the whole. She instead tries to break the Red Army down to its component parts; to capture some fraction of the humanity of those who comprised it; and to survey the variety of responses to one of the most intense experiences imaginable. More than anything, this is a study of distinct beings living within an authoritarian system, meaning it is about the limits of autonomy, the ephemerality of free will, the endurance of suffering, and the remarkable instinct to survive.
- Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
In tsarist times, the Imperial Russian Army was known as “the Steamroller,” a testament to its sheer, overwhelming size, and its perceived indomitability. The metaphor further implied that the Russians were a blunt instrument, a relentless, inertial force capable of overcoming any obstacle simply by throwing nameless, faceless bodies at it.
The depersonalization of the Russian soldier became even more literal in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. There, individual soldiers were treated as the property of the state, their lives forfeited to the needs of their dictator. When Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German forces invaded, Stalin did not simply trade space for time, he sacrificed blood, and a lot of it. Millions of men were ordered into suicidal attacks, were thrust into battle without weapons, were forced to clear mines on their hands and knees, and were summarily executed for numerous perceived failures.
While the Red Army played a central role in the Allied victory in the Second World War, it is often viewed as a monolith that spent the first half of the conflict being ineptly slaughtered, and the second half wreaking a terrible vengeance on everyone in their path.
In Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale attempts to treat the Red Army with something resembling empathy, and to carve from this vast and impersonal legion a few of the actual lives of which it was made.
***
Structurally speaking, Ivan’s War – the title reflects a nickname for Soviet soldiers, akin to Britain’s “Tommies” – unfolds chronologically, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. Given its subject matter, it’s not particularly surprising that Merridale starts with the outbreak of war, and ends with the silencing of the guns. Still, two things are worth pointing out about the presentation.
First, this isn’t Band of Comrades. That is to say, this is not a unit history, following a specific group of men in a particular company, regiment, division, or corps. Rather, Merridale gives us dozens of different men and women posted to different formations at different parts of a continent-sized battlefield. Due to the difficulty Merridale had in tracking down sources, the soldiers do not represent any kind of scientific cross-section. Meanwhile, some of the names appear once and disappear, while we check in with others several times.
Second, this is not a military history of the Red Army. To be sure, many battles are mentioned, some necessary strategic concepts are discussed, and Merridale will occasionally describe combat, such as at the famed, turning-point battle of Stalingrad, or the clash of tanks at Kursk. That said, this is not the book to turn to if you want to know how the war ebbed and flowed, or to learn tactical dispositions. Indeed, it is quite helpful to know the overarching outline of the Red Army’s actions before starting this.
***
This is war on an intimate level, told through low-level participants who often did not know where they fit within the grand scheme of things. In each chapter, Merridale tries to capture the experiences of ordinary soldiers at the different stages of the war’s progression. For instance, early chapters cover conscription, training, and deployment, while the later ones show us veterans who know how to loot a home and navigate the black market.
Interestingly, much of what Merridale narrates is non-battle oriented. Even for Soviet soldiers, it seems, much of the war was spent trying to stay dry, trying to keep warm, and trying to find enough to eat.
I appreciated this look at the aspects of war that went beyond flanking movements, shaping attacks, and the capture of vital towns, hills, or bridges. Merridale covers a great deal including clothing, equipment, supply shortages, rations, home-front relationships, faith, superstition, songs, sex, propaganda, post-traumatic stress, plunder, and memory.
Frankly, it was sometimes hard to keep everyone straight, because Merridale is more intent on forming a collage of many experiences than in describing discrete character arcs. Nevertheless, I found Ivan’s War incredibly absorbing, a fascinating mosaic of the horrific and the mundane.
***
In describing her efforts and methodology, Merridale notes that she began working on Ivan’s War in 2001, and eventually had it ready for publication in 2006. Her preparations included around 200 interviews with veterans, along with extensive archival work.
Unknowingly, Merridale managed to research and write this book in a very narrow window – now closed – between the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation’s decided turn away from rapprochement with the West. With all that has happened since this was published, including aggressive Russian moves against Georgia and Ukraine, it is unlikely that any western historian will have such access again for quite some time.
Even during the post-Cold War thaw, Merridale noticed a peculiar reticence among many of her subjects to say anything negative. As such, she had a hard time getting them to speak about some of the war’s most notorious incidents, including the staggering number of sexual assaults committed by the Red Army as it moved into Germany.
Refusing to admit to criminal activity is one thing, but many of these former Red Army soldiers appeared to withhold even anodyne criticisms. Some seemed to actually miss the old days of Stalinist rule. Others had been so thoroughly indoctrinated from birth that they accepted their lot without question. This can be frustrating, as Merridale is often unable to get as deep as she wants.
One of the tragedies of the Red Army is that it got little glory for its accomplishments. The laurels went mostly to Stalin, and he took center stage in the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Most soldiers received very little official thanks. Those who had been captured often found themselves transferred from a German camp to a Soviet one, prisoners for additional years. Soldiers who had seen the bounty of the “bourgeois” West were closely watched upon their return, lest they tell others that Soviet claims regarding comparative standards of living were woefully inaccurate.
***
Most histories give you the bottom line. That’s to be expected, because conclusions must be drawn from the full weight of the evidence.
Generally speaking, the Red Army presents a complicated moral case. We know that the Red Army invaded Finland in violation of international law; that it invaded Poland in concert with Hitler, and committed atrocities that at any other time would have shocked the world; that it ravaged the countryside that it conquered; and that its soldiers raped thousands of German women.
On the other side of the ledger, the Red Army suffered millions upon millions of casualties grinding the Wehrmacht into a bloody puddle. The Soviet Union did not win the war on its own, but it cannot be denied that it did most of the fighting, killing, and dying.
Merridale does not shy away from the bad or neglect the good, but her purpose is not to form sweeping judgments of the whole. She instead tries to break the Red Army down to its component parts; to capture some fraction of the humanity of those who comprised it; and to survey the variety of responses to one of the most intense experiences imaginable. More than anything, this is a study of distinct beings living within an authoritarian system, meaning it is about the limits of autonomy, the ephemerality of free will, the endurance of suffering, and the remarkable instinct to survive.
February 8, 2017
The story of the Soviet war experience from the ground up as recorded through dozens of interviews with octogenarian veterans has a distinctly polycephalic feel to it. The passage of time has left Catherine Merridale with a drop out of an ocean’s worth of stories, but by the time you turn the last page it will become clear why this is for the best. It was not only dangerous to testify against the authorized tale of the war, it often became simply inconceivable for the survivors to recount those years from a different mental framework.
This state of reference has survived the collapse of the USSR in some aspects. “Having a bit of fun with a woman” is one Stalinist expression still useful on the subject of the mass rapes in East Prussia. It is left to the interviewer to provide context, to touch upon the Puritan streak in Soviet ideology that produced a generation whose first sexual experience would often occur as part of a gang rape. She also chronicles in broad strokes the experience of the millions that gave in to the human urge to forget a harsh past that only led to an equally harsh present, devoid of realization of dreams that they nurtured between battles, as they went back to the plough or scraped out an existence as crippled beggars.
The main course of the war runs in the background with a familiar rumble: Barbarossa, Typhoon, Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, Crimea, Berlin… In the foreground treads the proverbial Ivan as immortalized in the mythology of the Great Patriotic War: inured to hardship by his peasant roots, stoic in urban defense yet bold in attack, with a blood-curling “Hurrah !”. There is little room for individuality within the colossal numbers that convey the scale of the fight on the Eastern Front.
A handful of living individuals, reinforced by the letters of people long dead that they have preserved, cannot fully turn ink into blood, no matter how diverse their backgrounds; apart from Russian frontoviks from the ranks we find their former officers, pressed men from the satellite states, women in uniform or on the home front, even politruks . Yet they unveil so many aspects that were shared by millions in khaki that they make an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Russia’s war.
While malnutrition as a phenomenon can be recognized as part of front-line hardships, it is discomforting to see it result in dysentery, boils and sores, gingivitis and a greater death toll from feverish afflictions due to a vitamin-depleted immune system. Victims from methanol or antifreeze fit the stock image of the hard-drinking Russian. In an amusing recollection, these simple men could discriminate against a fine French champagne in favor of properly intoxicating cognac. Others developed a taste for Rhine wine; such men of refine would evolve into pivotal players on the black art market. It comes as expected that PTSD, contemporarily known as battle fatigue or shellshock, was ranked as a quantité négligable by the Red Army command, but it becomes surprising when the leading role of Russia’s medical establishment in the last decades of Tsarist rule is taken into consideration, with the own war against Japan (1904-05) as well as the proxy wars in the Balkans (1912-13) as source material.
The cry of Uri! Uri! is as common in the German memory as the photograph of a Red Army soldiers with a dozen watches on each arm that jerks a bicycle out of a German woman’s hands, only to unaccustomedly pedal it into the first ditch. Yet parcels of plunder mailed home are a good reflection of private preoccupation that doesn’t fit the indiscriminate looting: a selection of shoes that his children could grow into, wrapped in quality wool cloth to sew them winter clothing, or a rolled-up saw to rebuild a devastated farm. Even the attitude towards the Frau softened once the red banner flew over the Reichstag ruin, with men settling into a rudimentary form of playing house that differed from the casual polygamy of campaign mistresses. Either way, the Kremlin introduced another abrupt shift in policy within its zone of occupation that curtailed the worst excesses, even if it merely regimented the export of German machinery to rebuild the domestic industry west of the Urals. (one specific aspect, the NKVD-led search for Nazi Germany’s atomic laboratories and their personnel, is sadly absent from this book)
We are on murkier ground with the dissection motivation and beliefs. The forementioned fossilization of veterans’ attitudes once again casts the historian in the role of main speaker. It is easy to trace the evolution of party rhetoric from internationalism (muted by the Nazi invasion) over Great Russian neo-patriotism (Stalin’s first speech, addressing the peoples of the Soviet Union as “brothers and sisters”) and back to a harder form of Soviet nationalism that neither the destalinization under Khrushchev nor the formalized commemoration under Leonid Brezhnev did much to alter.
Hate for the enemy was readily nurtured by the devastated landscape of western Russia, but the notion of socialist brotherhood remained brittle in an army saturated with ad hoc replacements (a practice which eroded esprit de corps in all combatant armies of WWII) and plagued by 100% casualty rates on the bloodiest days of battle. The stabilization of the frontlines after Moscow and Stalingrad helped somewhat; tank crews especially reached a bounding level during long periods of training together. However, the subsequent battle of Prokhorovka signaled a switch to offensive operations where the universal 1:3 ratio indicted losses among the attackers that reached the old levels of 1941. Of course, with a certain typical Soviet disregard for human life is a factor not be neglected here, As Zhukov would demonstrate with the ill-illuminated frontal assault on the Seelower Höhen and later famously tell Eisenhower “We sent troops into a minefield as if there were no minefield. The losses are similar if we attack positions defended by machine-guns instead of minefields.” The fatalism of the assault troops under these conditions is the hardest to dissect and, unfortunately, a part of war that does not feature prominently in veterans’ stories. Like aging men everywhere, they filter out the sheer brutality and panic of combat.
It is possible to reconstruct the effect of wartime indoctrination by political commissars on the troops, as they gathered around a little red flag on the pre-1939 border. The animosity of the ‘liberated’ Poles and Ukrainians came as a surprise to many. The sight of the neat German houses or even the well-stocked individual farms that dotted the countryside around Bucharest raised more alarming questions. The answer as to why any people who had it so well would choose to invade the motherland could be conveniently lost in the clouds of Hitler’s warped Realpolitik, but the divide between the agricultural wealth of the West and the much deplored kolkhoz would oft awaken the unfulfilled ambition of a private farm on the rich soil of the Ukraine.
The Balkan stirred up an emotion that the Baltics could not: the sense of crossing the line between the world that the Red Army had rightfully wrestled from the German invaders and the capitalist world, where its reason to exist was a lot vaguer. All tough some countries were former Axis allies, they did not feature on the mental map of Europe as the dim corners of “the Beast’s Lair”. This matter is dealt with lightly, as any justification occurred post-war. Stavka would reorientate the compass of several Soviet armies another abrupt time by sending them across half a dozen time zones to Manchuria.
Cleaning the skeletons out of the closet is the third layer in the narrative. The voices of the past speak here, too, but they can no longer speak for the present. This is the level of the inferno shaped by the merciless Stalinist Empire, a place glimpsed from the outside by few and discussed by fewer, where Merridale guides us past unsung heroes such as the shtrafniki, the minefield fodder whose rehabilitation depended on the shedding of their own blood. Most infamously, the many atoned for the sins of the few. Contrary to the popular myth, the welcome extended by Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists was not an expression of enthusiasm but of caution. As the Polish fable goes, the cat only helped the bird out of the turd to eat it. Still, large Cossack formations took to the steppes in German service, Estonian SS-volunteers made a last stand in the ruins of Berlin and most nationalities between Oder and Dnepr were represented in the Vlasov Army. This proved ample justification for the NKVD to organize the deportation of entire ethnic minorities to the barren interior; it would equally prove good training to repatriate all Soviet POWs as traitors to the Gulags. How does oral history fit in here? Just as military comradeship was not as plentiful as propaganda proclaimed, so racism was not absent among the ethnic Russian conscripts.
Conversely, anti-Semitism was relatively rare, which makes the official Soviet stand on the Holocaust all the more deplorable. Arguably, the western Soviet Union had witnessed an amount of suffering that was hard to surpass, but The Einsatzgruppen had operated on these lands and Babi Yar near Kiev has become a symbol of the ‘wild’ extermination of the European Jews (one of the interviewees’ father was executed in the ravine). So it is awkward to stress the multi-national nature of the Majdanek concentration camp to guarantee that Soviet martyrdom reigned supreme in the post-war memory.
Well, the collected stories cited are legion. They have one thing in common: sad or happy in nature, they leave a Western reader with a bitter taste in the mouth. We do not have a perfect record of reintegrating our troops into society. We can reconstruct disfigured faces and replace missing limbs with high-tech prosthetics, but we cannot heal their mental scars. We can offer them a good education and employment, but an honest reappraisal of the wars they fought in is only possible after a lifetime’s worth of political debate. This is why the voices of veterans come only in old age, when only a minority is left to speak. Nevertheless, “Ivan” had seen a better world, only to return to the old world to face the continued oppression in the name of the collective, with little to help him build a new life.
This state of reference has survived the collapse of the USSR in some aspects. “Having a bit of fun with a woman” is one Stalinist expression still useful on the subject of the mass rapes in East Prussia. It is left to the interviewer to provide context, to touch upon the Puritan streak in Soviet ideology that produced a generation whose first sexual experience would often occur as part of a gang rape. She also chronicles in broad strokes the experience of the millions that gave in to the human urge to forget a harsh past that only led to an equally harsh present, devoid of realization of dreams that they nurtured between battles, as they went back to the plough or scraped out an existence as crippled beggars.
The main course of the war runs in the background with a familiar rumble: Barbarossa, Typhoon, Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, Crimea, Berlin… In the foreground treads the proverbial Ivan as immortalized in the mythology of the Great Patriotic War: inured to hardship by his peasant roots, stoic in urban defense yet bold in attack, with a blood-curling “Hurrah !”. There is little room for individuality within the colossal numbers that convey the scale of the fight on the Eastern Front.
A handful of living individuals, reinforced by the letters of people long dead that they have preserved, cannot fully turn ink into blood, no matter how diverse their backgrounds; apart from Russian frontoviks from the ranks we find their former officers, pressed men from the satellite states, women in uniform or on the home front, even politruks . Yet they unveil so many aspects that were shared by millions in khaki that they make an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Russia’s war.
While malnutrition as a phenomenon can be recognized as part of front-line hardships, it is discomforting to see it result in dysentery, boils and sores, gingivitis and a greater death toll from feverish afflictions due to a vitamin-depleted immune system. Victims from methanol or antifreeze fit the stock image of the hard-drinking Russian. In an amusing recollection, these simple men could discriminate against a fine French champagne in favor of properly intoxicating cognac. Others developed a taste for Rhine wine; such men of refine would evolve into pivotal players on the black art market. It comes as expected that PTSD, contemporarily known as battle fatigue or shellshock, was ranked as a quantité négligable by the Red Army command, but it becomes surprising when the leading role of Russia’s medical establishment in the last decades of Tsarist rule is taken into consideration, with the own war against Japan (1904-05) as well as the proxy wars in the Balkans (1912-13) as source material.
The cry of Uri! Uri! is as common in the German memory as the photograph of a Red Army soldiers with a dozen watches on each arm that jerks a bicycle out of a German woman’s hands, only to unaccustomedly pedal it into the first ditch. Yet parcels of plunder mailed home are a good reflection of private preoccupation that doesn’t fit the indiscriminate looting: a selection of shoes that his children could grow into, wrapped in quality wool cloth to sew them winter clothing, or a rolled-up saw to rebuild a devastated farm. Even the attitude towards the Frau softened once the red banner flew over the Reichstag ruin, with men settling into a rudimentary form of playing house that differed from the casual polygamy of campaign mistresses. Either way, the Kremlin introduced another abrupt shift in policy within its zone of occupation that curtailed the worst excesses, even if it merely regimented the export of German machinery to rebuild the domestic industry west of the Urals. (one specific aspect, the NKVD-led search for Nazi Germany’s atomic laboratories and their personnel, is sadly absent from this book)
We are on murkier ground with the dissection motivation and beliefs. The forementioned fossilization of veterans’ attitudes once again casts the historian in the role of main speaker. It is easy to trace the evolution of party rhetoric from internationalism (muted by the Nazi invasion) over Great Russian neo-patriotism (Stalin’s first speech, addressing the peoples of the Soviet Union as “brothers and sisters”) and back to a harder form of Soviet nationalism that neither the destalinization under Khrushchev nor the formalized commemoration under Leonid Brezhnev did much to alter.
Hate for the enemy was readily nurtured by the devastated landscape of western Russia, but the notion of socialist brotherhood remained brittle in an army saturated with ad hoc replacements (a practice which eroded esprit de corps in all combatant armies of WWII) and plagued by 100% casualty rates on the bloodiest days of battle. The stabilization of the frontlines after Moscow and Stalingrad helped somewhat; tank crews especially reached a bounding level during long periods of training together. However, the subsequent battle of Prokhorovka signaled a switch to offensive operations where the universal 1:3 ratio indicted losses among the attackers that reached the old levels of 1941. Of course, with a certain typical Soviet disregard for human life is a factor not be neglected here, As Zhukov would demonstrate with the ill-illuminated frontal assault on the Seelower Höhen and later famously tell Eisenhower “We sent troops into a minefield as if there were no minefield. The losses are similar if we attack positions defended by machine-guns instead of minefields.” The fatalism of the assault troops under these conditions is the hardest to dissect and, unfortunately, a part of war that does not feature prominently in veterans’ stories. Like aging men everywhere, they filter out the sheer brutality and panic of combat.
It is possible to reconstruct the effect of wartime indoctrination by political commissars on the troops, as they gathered around a little red flag on the pre-1939 border. The animosity of the ‘liberated’ Poles and Ukrainians came as a surprise to many. The sight of the neat German houses or even the well-stocked individual farms that dotted the countryside around Bucharest raised more alarming questions. The answer as to why any people who had it so well would choose to invade the motherland could be conveniently lost in the clouds of Hitler’s warped Realpolitik, but the divide between the agricultural wealth of the West and the much deplored kolkhoz would oft awaken the unfulfilled ambition of a private farm on the rich soil of the Ukraine.
The Balkan stirred up an emotion that the Baltics could not: the sense of crossing the line between the world that the Red Army had rightfully wrestled from the German invaders and the capitalist world, where its reason to exist was a lot vaguer. All tough some countries were former Axis allies, they did not feature on the mental map of Europe as the dim corners of “the Beast’s Lair”. This matter is dealt with lightly, as any justification occurred post-war. Stavka would reorientate the compass of several Soviet armies another abrupt time by sending them across half a dozen time zones to Manchuria.
Cleaning the skeletons out of the closet is the third layer in the narrative. The voices of the past speak here, too, but they can no longer speak for the present. This is the level of the inferno shaped by the merciless Stalinist Empire, a place glimpsed from the outside by few and discussed by fewer, where Merridale guides us past unsung heroes such as the shtrafniki, the minefield fodder whose rehabilitation depended on the shedding of their own blood. Most infamously, the many atoned for the sins of the few. Contrary to the popular myth, the welcome extended by Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists was not an expression of enthusiasm but of caution. As the Polish fable goes, the cat only helped the bird out of the turd to eat it. Still, large Cossack formations took to the steppes in German service, Estonian SS-volunteers made a last stand in the ruins of Berlin and most nationalities between Oder and Dnepr were represented in the Vlasov Army. This proved ample justification for the NKVD to organize the deportation of entire ethnic minorities to the barren interior; it would equally prove good training to repatriate all Soviet POWs as traitors to the Gulags. How does oral history fit in here? Just as military comradeship was not as plentiful as propaganda proclaimed, so racism was not absent among the ethnic Russian conscripts.
Conversely, anti-Semitism was relatively rare, which makes the official Soviet stand on the Holocaust all the more deplorable. Arguably, the western Soviet Union had witnessed an amount of suffering that was hard to surpass, but The Einsatzgruppen had operated on these lands and Babi Yar near Kiev has become a symbol of the ‘wild’ extermination of the European Jews (one of the interviewees’ father was executed in the ravine). So it is awkward to stress the multi-national nature of the Majdanek concentration camp to guarantee that Soviet martyrdom reigned supreme in the post-war memory.
Well, the collected stories cited are legion. They have one thing in common: sad or happy in nature, they leave a Western reader with a bitter taste in the mouth. We do not have a perfect record of reintegrating our troops into society. We can reconstruct disfigured faces and replace missing limbs with high-tech prosthetics, but we cannot heal their mental scars. We can offer them a good education and employment, but an honest reappraisal of the wars they fought in is only possible after a lifetime’s worth of political debate. This is why the voices of veterans come only in old age, when only a minority is left to speak. Nevertheless, “Ivan” had seen a better world, only to return to the old world to face the continued oppression in the name of the collective, with little to help him build a new life.
February 1, 2013
This book is an astounding examination of the Red Army during World War II.
Ms. Merridale examines the prelude: the purges of the officer corps in the late 1930’s, the invasion of Poland and the attack on Finland. She examines in detail the disastrous first years of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. She bases many of her findings on the now newly opened archives and interviews with surviving veterans. But she does not stop there, and realizes the limitations of these; veterans and letters home will not usually speak of executions of Soviet soldiers by their own or of mass rapes.
The Red Army was ruthless in many, many ways and not only to the enemy. In all its battlefield encounters with the Wehrmacht (and the Finnish army) they inevitably lost far more men – either killed or taken prisoner – until the bitter end with the fall of Berlin. This loss of life meant little to the commanders and certainly not to Stalin. But it did to the front-line soldiers – whether he was a regular conscripted recruit or a Gulag prisoner who was designated to take part in a suicidal frontal assault. Ms. Merridale suggests that the Red Army replenished itself twice during the war. Recruits of 1941 seldom lasted more than one or two years, if that.
What united them was “fear”, of both the enemy and their own government; and an intense hatred of the invading enemy – Germany. This undying hatred is completely understandable, but it was manipulated as well by the Stalinists’.
The cult of Stalin usurped the glory away from the common soldier. When the tide started to change after the victory at Stalingrad – it was not merely the Red Army and it’s woebegone soldiers who were responsible, but also the government with it communist mantra and an overseeing Stalin.
Throughout all this we come away with a vivid picture of a both brutal regime and army. Many soldiers would witness or hear of executions of so-called “shirkers, cowards...”. In a speech by Stalin during the war: “After the war, our own people will not forget the ones who honourably served their homeland... [so far so good, but he continues later]... But the names of the coward, the panic monger and the traitor will be pronounced with hatred”.
There are several moving quotations from Red Army soldiers. Here is one: “I thought I was a good-hearted person, but it seems that a human being can hide within himself for a long time the qualities that surface only at a time like this”. Ms. Merridale explores many of these dark qualities that arise, as the soldier said, at a time of war. The Soviet Union and now Russia, do not want to go that route. They have successfully blocked any attempt to reveal the barbarity of their side, such as the mass rape of women of all ages in Hungary and Germany. To this day they have cloaked the Red Army with an aura of saintliness – even avoiding discussion of the tremendous disasters of the first years of the war. Ms. Merridale delves into all of this history.
This is an eloquently written book and I learnt much about the Red Army and its soldiers – and the epochal event of those years. This book takes us into the cauldron of this awful war, where the Soviets peoples were bravely fighting for their very existence. This book is better than many others I have read on the Soviet perspective of the war years.
Ms. Merridale examines the prelude: the purges of the officer corps in the late 1930’s, the invasion of Poland and the attack on Finland. She examines in detail the disastrous first years of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. She bases many of her findings on the now newly opened archives and interviews with surviving veterans. But she does not stop there, and realizes the limitations of these; veterans and letters home will not usually speak of executions of Soviet soldiers by their own or of mass rapes.
The Red Army was ruthless in many, many ways and not only to the enemy. In all its battlefield encounters with the Wehrmacht (and the Finnish army) they inevitably lost far more men – either killed or taken prisoner – until the bitter end with the fall of Berlin. This loss of life meant little to the commanders and certainly not to Stalin. But it did to the front-line soldiers – whether he was a regular conscripted recruit or a Gulag prisoner who was designated to take part in a suicidal frontal assault. Ms. Merridale suggests that the Red Army replenished itself twice during the war. Recruits of 1941 seldom lasted more than one or two years, if that.
What united them was “fear”, of both the enemy and their own government; and an intense hatred of the invading enemy – Germany. This undying hatred is completely understandable, but it was manipulated as well by the Stalinists’.
The cult of Stalin usurped the glory away from the common soldier. When the tide started to change after the victory at Stalingrad – it was not merely the Red Army and it’s woebegone soldiers who were responsible, but also the government with it communist mantra and an overseeing Stalin.
Throughout all this we come away with a vivid picture of a both brutal regime and army. Many soldiers would witness or hear of executions of so-called “shirkers, cowards...”. In a speech by Stalin during the war: “After the war, our own people will not forget the ones who honourably served their homeland... [so far so good, but he continues later]... But the names of the coward, the panic monger and the traitor will be pronounced with hatred”.
There are several moving quotations from Red Army soldiers. Here is one: “I thought I was a good-hearted person, but it seems that a human being can hide within himself for a long time the qualities that surface only at a time like this”. Ms. Merridale explores many of these dark qualities that arise, as the soldier said, at a time of war. The Soviet Union and now Russia, do not want to go that route. They have successfully blocked any attempt to reveal the barbarity of their side, such as the mass rape of women of all ages in Hungary and Germany. To this day they have cloaked the Red Army with an aura of saintliness – even avoiding discussion of the tremendous disasters of the first years of the war. Ms. Merridale delves into all of this history.
This is an eloquently written book and I learnt much about the Red Army and its soldiers – and the epochal event of those years. This book takes us into the cauldron of this awful war, where the Soviets peoples were bravely fighting for their very existence. This book is better than many others I have read on the Soviet perspective of the war years.
August 13, 2016
Before reading Ivan’s War I thought I knew a bit about how tough life in the Red Army could be. I’ve read Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, and watched Jude Law run into the same city on screen, armed only with a handful of bullets and his steely desire to become an A-list action hero. As I knew it, Russian soldiers fought hard, died in droves and existed as cogs in a callous engine of destruction that chewed them up for fuel. This was all true, but by the time I had finished this book I realised I had severely underestimated exactly how bad the average ‘Ivan’ had it - life in the Russian Army during World War Two was immeasurably cheaper, harsher and more dangerous than I could ever have imagined.
Ivan’s War is a fascinating, often horrifying exploration of the human mincing-machine that was the Red Army. Catherine Merridale tells an amazingly well researched story about the men and women who fought and died (and so, so many died) under Stalin’s banner. Like so many histories of World War II, the scale of death and obliteration is often beyond comprehension. Again and again entire units of men are cut down in their hundreds, leaving a handful of traumatised survivors who are sent to new formations where they resume their endless death lottery. Hundreds of thousands of lives are thrown away in blunders, senseless human wave attacks and for political considerations. It is, quite honestly, overwhelming just to read about it.
What sets this book apart from other histories is its perspective - Merridale looks at the war from the viewpoint of the average conscript and explores beyond the battles-and-tactics focus of many other works. She explores the culture of Red Army soldiers, their practices, beliefs, and the ways they motivated themselves to fight when they faced terrifying odds of being killed or maimed. Her focus always comes back to the individual soldier’s needs, fears and hopes, painting a vivid picture of the living human beings who fought and suffered while ending Hitler’s genocidal ambitions. Discussing these matters naturally involves detailing vast amounts of courage and self-sacrifice, but this is no propaganda piece - Merridale doesn’t shy away from discussing the awful war crimes that many Red Army soldiers committed.
This is a compelling, readable history and if you’re interested in this era you shouldn’t pass it by. Ivan’s War and its focus on the individual, human aspect of soldiers on the Russian side of World War Two powerfully provides a new perspective on how awful the war really was.
Ivan’s War is a fascinating, often horrifying exploration of the human mincing-machine that was the Red Army. Catherine Merridale tells an amazingly well researched story about the men and women who fought and died (and so, so many died) under Stalin’s banner. Like so many histories of World War II, the scale of death and obliteration is often beyond comprehension. Again and again entire units of men are cut down in their hundreds, leaving a handful of traumatised survivors who are sent to new formations where they resume their endless death lottery. Hundreds of thousands of lives are thrown away in blunders, senseless human wave attacks and for political considerations. It is, quite honestly, overwhelming just to read about it.
What sets this book apart from other histories is its perspective - Merridale looks at the war from the viewpoint of the average conscript and explores beyond the battles-and-tactics focus of many other works. She explores the culture of Red Army soldiers, their practices, beliefs, and the ways they motivated themselves to fight when they faced terrifying odds of being killed or maimed. Her focus always comes back to the individual soldier’s needs, fears and hopes, painting a vivid picture of the living human beings who fought and suffered while ending Hitler’s genocidal ambitions. Discussing these matters naturally involves detailing vast amounts of courage and self-sacrifice, but this is no propaganda piece - Merridale doesn’t shy away from discussing the awful war crimes that many Red Army soldiers committed.
This is a compelling, readable history and if you’re interested in this era you shouldn’t pass it by. Ivan’s War and its focus on the individual, human aspect of soldiers on the Russian side of World War Two powerfully provides a new perspective on how awful the war really was.
December 3, 2012
Red army, white death. I want a daughter with lips as red as blood. I want a son with translucent skin view-finding the reals of my backyard. The frozen over graveyard. Mother Russia ran into a door knob when the Fatherland had too much to drink and said let's conquer our neighbors today, tomorrow the world. The deserters walked off with the door. The only knobs with issued guns shot the deserters. There was a fairytale about Ivan, the Russian soldier with a stout heart. War as anatomically correct as a Ken doll as the myth goes. Stalin was famous for punch lining rape as "A bit of fun with a woman". When I told my sister about this she busted out with an awesome impersonation of Bilbo Baggins from the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring. "It was just a bit of fun!" (For the lame person this is when he defends to Gandalf putting on the one ring for his disappearing trick at this 111th birthday party.) You know how Frodo and Bilbo whine on and on about how they can't wait to get back to mushroom shortcuts and good tilled earth, only to carry on incessantly about missing stopping every five miles to eat at some Elven mansion when they get home? The Red Army soldiers had a sick version of that. As long as they were fighting they didn't notice the desecrated earth, didn't feel the bounds of Soviet slavery, the kicking and screaming baby in the hostage belly. What the hell were they fighting for, anyway? The moral of the story is that they were fighting to defend against Hitler for Stalin's right to enslave them instead. I don't agree that it was in particular a Jewish issue. They were not, after all, the first Soviet scapegoats. It would have been next Ukrainians, Uzbeks, on and on and on. Much like how Hitler also wanted to exterminate Slavs. Dictators are evil dicks to all people. Who knew? I cannot wholly respect any account that focuses on the victim to understand when it is all about the killer. Ask what all is dying and then ask why they were complicit. Why didn't anyone fight Stalin? If your lives are robbed for absolutely nothing what is the point? Is it a tale with some kind of a point, or an ending? Catherine Merridale interviewed former Red Army soldiers through a fog from decade of government imposed memories. Many would give accounts that were from famous novels about the war. Go to sleep and I will tell you a bed time story.
I liked her approach of weaving their observations with unreliable (and censored) letters from the times with documented facts, as well as word from the opposing side (as they were well placed to witness the ins and outs of their goings on). (I guess it is an historians approach. I've probably been reading too many from the diary of... accounts of life events to be struck by this at all). I appreciated a lot that Merridale didn't put too much focus on the huge numbers of rapes from the Red Army. The number of abortions and adoptions of the time would certainly indicate that it happened. But who was keeping track? Nine rapes for one eighty year old woman? It is difficult to get a clear picture of something that happened so long ago without assembly lining it. Six million troops from Soviet countries out at one time. No one had more dead than Russia. I still am struck, the same as I am for everything else that I have read, by an image of survivors as those who were just plain lucky, or could have someone else to step on, someone else to die in their place. So much as communism for the people. This I already knew.
What did I learn that I didn't already know? Quite a bit. There was a lot that I probably could have figured out on my own. I didn't know that the Red Army had to dig trenches with their own helmets. I could have figured out that they had twelve hour days of mandatory ideology training and precious little real battle training. I knew that families of those suspected for treason would face the gulag too. I didn't know that any who died in battle were declared as deserters and their families went to prison. That is a bridge too far, man! I don't think I can read too much about Stalinism that some new bit of information will not disgust me anew. I didn't know that the Molotov cocktail was a Finnish invention named because they heard Molotov's broadcasts on their radio. They would throw them onto Soviet tanks and the men inside would burn to a crisp. I can imagine another pearl like Stalin's views on rape about how there were more meat suits to burn in their place if millions of the six million troops were to be killed.
The Red Army died. They lived... They lived to step on others, if they were lucky. They lived to come to cold beds. If they were women they came home to snickers and innuendo about what they did on the front. I keep writing about what I already knew. This is a good book about looking past what you could have figured out to imagine possible other stories in the carnage. One thirteen year old boy was "adopted" by a regiment. I liked how some would adopt stray dogs. If their commanders made them get rid of the dogs the villagers would pay them in booze with the expectation of selling them off to the next bunch. I loved the picture included of the grimly smiling soldiers with their wildly smiling fox like dog. I can just imagine those deserters who would dress as women in an attempt to evade "justice". There must have been millions of stories for all the official history robbed them of their homecoming. Stalin wouldn't allow them to feel their victory in defeating the Germans. They didn't have anything to come home to. I believe that they didn't really want to remember what happened. I didn't know of any of my grandfather's stories from the Korean war until reading his trial transcripts after he had died. I heard plenty of creepy (like Juvie back then) military school stories about "rolling queers". Merridale tries to root out what it was like for the Red Army on the front. Their German counterparts kept brothels of captured Soviet women. The official history would have it that they didn't touch their own penises. History now tells of mass rape. What was it like on sides of brutality? Meat on the outside and meat on the inside. I feel an iron curtain clanging on that like the prison bars in every episode ever made of every Law and Order series. I don't know how to make a theme out of cruel history other than winners and losers in stepping on piles of bodies. They defeated the Germans. If Stalin is right that there's another lump of tastes like chicken on the conveyor belt.
I had a moment when I felt really stupid. Last September I read a comic book about the Bosnian war called Bosnian Flat Dog. There was stuff about ice cream in it that confused the crap out of me. I should have known that it had to do with Soviet mass production. The first sign of the communist dream coming to fruition was mass produced ice cream in many fruit flavors. Duh! So dumb, Mars. I can stuff my head with all of these facts and it is no use when I try to make sense in some kind of context. I appreciated in this book that the crappy situation they were in when "wives" on the front gave up the social constructs of the times to get by. Maybe it was a kind of stolen freedom of them, before "real life" came again. Maybe they thought they were fighting for a just cause, defeating Hitler, and everything they suffered wasn't going to be nothing. Merridale wanted to know how this army who had pretty much nothing managed to win. Stalin was right about the meat. That was it. Damn it. It's the big bad wolf.
I liked her approach of weaving their observations with unreliable (and censored) letters from the times with documented facts, as well as word from the opposing side (as they were well placed to witness the ins and outs of their goings on). (I guess it is an historians approach. I've probably been reading too many from the diary of... accounts of life events to be struck by this at all). I appreciated a lot that Merridale didn't put too much focus on the huge numbers of rapes from the Red Army. The number of abortions and adoptions of the time would certainly indicate that it happened. But who was keeping track? Nine rapes for one eighty year old woman? It is difficult to get a clear picture of something that happened so long ago without assembly lining it. Six million troops from Soviet countries out at one time. No one had more dead than Russia. I still am struck, the same as I am for everything else that I have read, by an image of survivors as those who were just plain lucky, or could have someone else to step on, someone else to die in their place. So much as communism for the people. This I already knew.
What did I learn that I didn't already know? Quite a bit. There was a lot that I probably could have figured out on my own. I didn't know that the Red Army had to dig trenches with their own helmets. I could have figured out that they had twelve hour days of mandatory ideology training and precious little real battle training. I knew that families of those suspected for treason would face the gulag too. I didn't know that any who died in battle were declared as deserters and their families went to prison. That is a bridge too far, man! I don't think I can read too much about Stalinism that some new bit of information will not disgust me anew. I didn't know that the Molotov cocktail was a Finnish invention named because they heard Molotov's broadcasts on their radio. They would throw them onto Soviet tanks and the men inside would burn to a crisp. I can imagine another pearl like Stalin's views on rape about how there were more meat suits to burn in their place if millions of the six million troops were to be killed.
The Red Army died. They lived... They lived to step on others, if they were lucky. They lived to come to cold beds. If they were women they came home to snickers and innuendo about what they did on the front. I keep writing about what I already knew. This is a good book about looking past what you could have figured out to imagine possible other stories in the carnage. One thirteen year old boy was "adopted" by a regiment. I liked how some would adopt stray dogs. If their commanders made them get rid of the dogs the villagers would pay them in booze with the expectation of selling them off to the next bunch. I loved the picture included of the grimly smiling soldiers with their wildly smiling fox like dog. I can just imagine those deserters who would dress as women in an attempt to evade "justice". There must have been millions of stories for all the official history robbed them of their homecoming. Stalin wouldn't allow them to feel their victory in defeating the Germans. They didn't have anything to come home to. I believe that they didn't really want to remember what happened. I didn't know of any of my grandfather's stories from the Korean war until reading his trial transcripts after he had died. I heard plenty of creepy (like Juvie back then) military school stories about "rolling queers". Merridale tries to root out what it was like for the Red Army on the front. Their German counterparts kept brothels of captured Soviet women. The official history would have it that they didn't touch their own penises. History now tells of mass rape. What was it like on sides of brutality? Meat on the outside and meat on the inside. I feel an iron curtain clanging on that like the prison bars in every episode ever made of every Law and Order series. I don't know how to make a theme out of cruel history other than winners and losers in stepping on piles of bodies. They defeated the Germans. If Stalin is right that there's another lump of tastes like chicken on the conveyor belt.
I had a moment when I felt really stupid. Last September I read a comic book about the Bosnian war called Bosnian Flat Dog. There was stuff about ice cream in it that confused the crap out of me. I should have known that it had to do with Soviet mass production. The first sign of the communist dream coming to fruition was mass produced ice cream in many fruit flavors. Duh! So dumb, Mars. I can stuff my head with all of these facts and it is no use when I try to make sense in some kind of context. I appreciated in this book that the crappy situation they were in when "wives" on the front gave up the social constructs of the times to get by. Maybe it was a kind of stolen freedom of them, before "real life" came again. Maybe they thought they were fighting for a just cause, defeating Hitler, and everything they suffered wasn't going to be nothing. Merridale wanted to know how this army who had pretty much nothing managed to win. Stalin was right about the meat. That was it. Damn it. It's the big bad wolf.
August 11, 2011
In this book the author attempts to look at the life of the Russian soldier of WW2 fame – ‘Ivan’. We get to see the Russian soldier fighting his way from the terrible early days of 1941 to the end of the war, not a pretty sight! The author uses numerous first-hand accounts to tell her story, overall not a bad book if you’re interested in the subject.
August 15, 2018
দ্বিতীয় বিশ্বযুদ্ধে রুশ জাতির আত্মত্যাগ নজিরবিহীন। স্রেফ মৃতের সংখ্যা ২ কোটি ৭০ লক্ষ। আহত আর পংগু গুণে শেষ করা যাবে না, যেমন অসম্ভব এতিম বিধবা আর সন্তানহারার হিসেব মেলানো। মলোটোভ-রিবেনট্রপ চুক্তি ভেঙে একচল্লিশের জুনে হিটলার যেদিন আক্রমণ করে বসলো ইউক্রেন আর বেলারুশ, সোভিয়েত নেতৃত্ব তথা রুশ জনগণ তখন নিদারুন অপ্রস্তুত। অকটোবর বিপ্লব আর লাল-সাদা গৃহযুদ্ধের স্মৃতি তখনও দগদগে। ত্রিশের দশকে বলপূর্বক কায়েম করা যৌথখামার ব্যবস্থা, অতঃপর দুর্ভিক্ষ আর স্তালিনের মহাত্রাসের রাজত্ব, লাখো মানুষের গুলাগ নির্বাসন অথবা লুবিয়াংকায় মাথার পেছনে ছোট একটি বুলেট - এসবই তখন রুশ জাতিকে করে রেখেছে পর্যুদস্ত, স্বগৃহে অবরুদ্ধ।
প্যান্জার বাহিনী সব তছনছ করে আচমকা পৌঁছে গেল মস্কোর দোড়গোড়ায়। সীমাহীন অব্যবস্থা আর রাজনৈতিক হস্তক্ষেপ আর কেজিবির পূর্বসূরী এনকেভিডির ক্ষমাহীন অফিসারদের দৌরাত্ম্যের ফলাফল দাঁড়ালো রুশ জাতির স্বয়ং অস্তিত্বের সংকট। এমনকি সরকার আর প্রশাসন যন্ত্রও অনেকটাই সরিয়ে নেয়া হয়েছিল হাজার মাইল দূরে ভলগার পারে, মস্কো যদি খসে পড়ে হিটলারের হাতে? কিভাবে যুদ্ধের মোড় ঘুরে গেল স্তালিনগ্রাদের নরক-প্রান্তরে, কুর্স্কের ট্যাংক যুদ্ধে ধ্বসে গেলো হিটলারের দম্ভ, এরপরের দুই বছরের ইতিহাস শুধু স্বদেশকে মুক্ত করাই নয়, অতঃপর পূর্ব ইউরোপ জয়ের কাহিনী, এবং অবশেষে রেড আর্মির বার্লিনে প্রবেশ, হিটলারের আত্মহত্যা এবং ইউরোপের দ্বিখণ্ডীকরণ।
বিশ্বযুদ্ধের এই "ম্যাক্রো" গল্প অনেকবার বলা হয়েছে। তবে নানা প্রতিকূলতার কারণে যে গল্পটি পৃথিবীর কাছে অনুপুঙ্খ তুলে ধরা হয়নি, অন্তত সুপরিকল্পিত গবেষণালব্ধ ইতিহাস হিসেবে ইংরেজি ভাষায় - সেটি হলো সাধারণ সৈনিকের গল্প। বহু বছরের সাধনায়, অসাধারণ দক্ষতায় এই শূন্যতা পূরণ করেছেন রুশবিশারদ ক্যাথরিন মেরিডেল। প্রাইভেট ইভান কি চোখে দেখেছিল এই যুদ্ধকে? কি ছিল তার পরিবার পরিচয়, তার শিক্ষাদীক্ষা আর জীবনচিন্তা? যুদ্ধ ময়দানে সাধারণ সৈন্যের ট্যুর অফ ডিউটির গড় দৈর্ঘ্য ছিল মাত্র তিন সপ্তাহ। এরপর হয় বুলেট বা শেলে বিদ্ধ হয়ে মৃত্যু অথবা গুরুতর আঘাতে ময়দান থেকে অব্যাহতি। এত সন্নিকটে মৃত্যু, প্রতিটি মুহূর্তে। কিভাবে মৃত্যুভয়কে জয় করে এগিয়ে গিয়েছিল সোভিয়েত সৈন্য, কিসের আশায়, কি অনুপ্রেরণায়, যেখানে আপন সরকারই হয়তো কোন ক্ষেত্রে নাৎসি বাহিনীর মত নির্দয়?
সাধারণ সৈনিকের যুদ্ধ অভিজ্ঞতা, তার বহির্জগৎ আর মনোজগতের বিশদ বিশ্লেষণ এই বইয়ের অন্যতম শ্রেষ্ঠ অর্জন। দেশপ্রেম, পরিবার, সোভিয়েত রাষ্ট্রের সাথে সম্পর্ক, স্তালিনের কাল্ট, ধর্ম বা অধর্মজ্ঞান, ভবিষ্যত ভাবনা, প্রেম সেক্স মৃত্যু, ফ্রন্টের গান আর কবিতা - প্রতিটি বিষয়কে তিনি তুলে ধরেছেন। আবার সৈনিকের ট্রেনিং (বা তার অভাব), মিলিটারি হার্ডওয়ের রপ্ত করার তৃপ্তি, ছোট ইউনিটে সৈনিকদের সম্পর্ক, নাৎসিদের কাছে প্রথমে বুকভাঙা পরাজয় এবং পরে উপুর্যপরি টানা দুই বছর বিজয়ের অভিজ্ঞতা, রুশ দেশের গন্ডি পেরিয়ে ভিনদেশে পদার্পণ, ভিনদেশের মানুষ আর সমাজ, সর্বোপরি ঘৃণিত পুঁজিবাদী ব্যবস্থার প্রকৃত বাস্তবতা স্বচক্ষে দর্শন - এসবের মাধ্যমে ইভানকে নতুন করে জীবন দিয়েছেন মেরিডেল।
গ্লানির অধ্যায় এড়িয়ে যাননি তিনি। ১৯৪৫ সালে জার্মানি প্রবেশ করে আনুমানিক কয়েক লক্ষ জার্মান নারী ধর্ষণ করেছিল সোভিয়েত সৈন্যরা। ব্যাপক স্কেলে এই গণধর্ষণ পাক হানাদারদের কুকীর্তিকে স্মরণ করিয়ে দেয়। মেরিডেল এই ভয়াল ইতিহাসের কিছুই বাদ দেননি। কোন মোটিভেশন আর কোন প্রশ্রয় থেকে গণধর্ষণ সংঘটিত হয়েছিল, সে সবের ভেতরেও গেছেন তিনি। আর একদম শেষে আছে ইভানের স্বপ্নভঙ্গের করুণগাঁথা। অকথ্য আত্মত্যাগের মাধ্যমে রোদিনা-মাত বা মাতৃভূমির অস্তিত্ব টিকিয়ে রাখলো সৈন্যেরা। দেশের জন্যে, নিজের জন্যে কত আশা তাদের। কিন্তু যুদ্ধ থেকে ফিরে এসে কি পেয়েছিল? তার জন্যে কি উপহার তৈরী করে রেখেছিল শেষযুগের স্তালিন সরকার? বলাই বাহুল্য কষ্ট কমেনি ইভানের, যদিও বুক জুড়ে মেডেল আর রিবনের কোন অভাব ছিল না। জীবদ্দশায় তো সোভিয়েত ইউনিয়নের অবলুপ্তিও দেখে যেতে হলো।
যুদ্ধ, রাশিয়া, বা বিংশ শতাব্দীর রক্তাক্ত ইতিহাস নিয়ে যার বিন্দুমাত্র আগ্রহও আছে তার জন্যে এই বই অবশ্যপাঠ্য। সাড়ে তিনশো পাতার অঢেল ঐশ্বর্যের ছিটেফোঁটাও এহেন রিভিউয়ে তুলে ধরা অসম্ভব। তবে মেরিডেল পড়ে পাঠক ঋদ্ধ হবেন, এতটুকু নিশ্চিত। তার গবেষণা যেমন গভীর, তার গদ্য তেমন মসৃণ। আর এই কাহিনীর জন্যে যা সবচেয়ে বেশি দরকার ছিল, সৈন্যের সাথে একাত্ম্য হতে পারার ক্ষমতা, তার অন্তর্জগৎ আর পারিপার্শ্বিকতা সার্বিকভাবে কল্পনা করে সহমর্মিতার সাথে পাঠকের কাছে পরিবেশন করা, এসব একদমই সহজ কথা নয়। হারিয়ে যাওয়া সাবল্টার্নের ন্যারেটিভকে সফলভাবে পুনরুদ্ধার করতে পারা, উপেক্ষিত সৈনিকের কণ্ঠকে আরেকবার বিস্মৃতির অতল থেকে তুলে আনাতেই মেরিডেলের সকল স্বার্থকতা।
প্যান্জার বাহিনী সব তছনছ করে আচমকা পৌঁছে গেল মস্কোর দোড়গোড়ায়। সীমাহীন অব্যবস্থা আর রাজনৈতিক হস্তক্ষেপ আর কেজিবির পূর্বসূরী এনকেভিডির ক্ষমাহীন অফিসারদের দৌরাত্ম্যের ফলাফল দাঁড়ালো রুশ জাতির স্বয়ং অস্তিত্বের সংকট। এমনকি সরকার আর প্রশাসন যন্ত্রও অনেকটাই সরিয়ে নেয়া হয়েছিল হাজার মাইল দূরে ভলগার পারে, মস্কো যদি খসে পড়ে হিটলারের হাতে? কিভাবে যুদ্ধের মোড় ঘুরে গেল স্তালিনগ্রাদের নরক-প্রান্তরে, কুর্স্কের ট্যাংক যুদ্ধে ধ্বসে গেলো হিটলারের দম্ভ, এরপরের দুই বছরের ইতিহাস শুধু স্বদেশকে মুক্ত করাই নয়, অতঃপর পূর্ব ইউরোপ জয়ের কাহিনী, এবং অবশেষে রেড আর্মির বার্লিনে প্রবেশ, হিটলারের আত্মহত্যা এবং ইউরোপের দ্বিখণ্ডীকরণ।
বিশ্বযুদ্ধের এই "ম্যাক্রো" গল্প অনেকবার বলা হয়েছে। তবে নানা প্রতিকূলতার কারণে যে গল্পটি পৃথিবীর কাছে অনুপুঙ্খ তুলে ধরা হয়নি, অন্তত সুপরিকল্পিত গবেষণালব্ধ ইতিহাস হিসেবে ইংরেজি ভাষায় - সেটি হলো সাধারণ সৈনিকের গল্প। বহু বছরের সাধনায়, অসাধারণ দক্ষতায় এই শূন্যতা পূরণ করেছেন রুশবিশারদ ক্যাথরিন মেরিডেল। প্রাইভেট ইভান কি চোখে দেখেছিল এই যুদ্ধকে? কি ছিল তার পরিবার পরিচয়, তার শিক্ষাদীক্ষা আর জীবনচিন্তা? যুদ্ধ ময়দানে সাধারণ সৈন্যের ট্যুর অফ ডিউটির গড় দৈর্ঘ্য ছিল মাত্র তিন সপ্তাহ। এরপর হয় বুলেট বা শেলে বিদ্ধ হয়ে মৃত্যু অথবা গুরুতর আঘাতে ময়দান থেকে অব্যাহতি। এত সন্নিকটে মৃত্যু, প্রতিটি মুহূর্তে। কিভাবে মৃত্যুভয়কে জয় করে এগিয়ে গিয়েছিল সোভিয়েত সৈন্য, কিসের আশায়, কি অনুপ্রেরণায়, যেখানে আপন সরকারই হয়তো কোন ক্ষেত্রে নাৎসি বাহিনীর মত নির্দয়?
সাধারণ সৈনিকের যুদ্ধ অভিজ্ঞতা, তার বহির্জগৎ আর মনোজগতের বিশদ বিশ্লেষণ এই বইয়ের অন্যতম শ্রেষ্ঠ অর্জন। দেশপ্রেম, পরিবার, সোভিয়েত রাষ্ট্রের সাথে সম্পর্ক, স্তালিনের কাল্ট, ধর্ম বা অধর্মজ্ঞান, ভবিষ্যত ভাবনা, প্রেম সেক্স মৃত্যু, ফ্রন্টের গান আর কবিতা - প্রতিটি বিষয়কে তিনি তুলে ধরেছেন। আবার সৈনিকের ট্রেনিং (বা তার অভাব), মিলিটারি হার্ডওয়ের রপ্ত করার তৃপ্তি, ছোট ইউনিটে সৈনিকদের সম্পর্ক, নাৎসিদের কাছে প্রথমে বুকভাঙা পরাজয় এবং পরে উপুর্যপরি টানা দুই বছর বিজয়ের অভিজ্ঞতা, রুশ দেশের গন্ডি পেরিয়ে ভিনদেশে পদার্পণ, ভিনদেশের মানুষ আর সমাজ, সর্বোপরি ঘৃণিত পুঁজিবাদী ব্যবস্থার প্রকৃত বাস্তবতা স্বচক্ষে দর্শন - এসবের মাধ্যমে ইভানকে নতুন করে জীবন দিয়েছেন মেরিডেল।
গ্লানির অধ্যায় এড়িয়ে যাননি তিনি। ১৯৪৫ সালে জার্মানি প্রবেশ করে আনুমানিক কয়েক লক্ষ জার্মান নারী ধর্ষণ করেছিল সোভিয়েত সৈন্যরা। ব্যাপক স্কেলে এই গণধর্ষণ পাক হানাদারদের কুকীর্তিকে স্মরণ করিয়ে দেয়। মেরিডেল এই ভয়াল ইতিহাসের কিছুই বাদ দেননি। কোন মোটিভেশন আর কোন প্রশ্রয় থেকে গণধর্ষণ সংঘটিত হয়েছিল, সে সবের ভেতরেও গেছেন তিনি। আর একদম শেষে আছে ইভানের স্বপ্নভঙ্গের করুণগাঁথা। অকথ্য আত্মত্যাগের মাধ্যমে রোদিনা-মাত বা মাতৃভূমির অস্তিত্ব টিকিয়ে রাখলো সৈন্যেরা। দেশের জন্যে, নিজের জন্যে কত আশা তাদের। কিন্তু যুদ্ধ থেকে ফিরে এসে কি পেয়েছিল? তার জন্যে কি উপহার তৈরী করে রেখেছিল শেষযুগের স্তালিন সরকার? বলাই বাহুল্য কষ্ট কমেনি ইভানের, যদিও বুক জুড়ে মেডেল আর রিবনের কোন অভাব ছিল না। জীবদ্দশায় তো সোভিয়েত ইউনিয়নের অবলুপ্তিও দেখে যেতে হলো।
যুদ্ধ, রাশিয়া, বা বিংশ শতাব্দীর রক্তাক্ত ইতিহাস নিয়ে যার বিন্দুমাত্র আগ্রহও আছে তার জন্যে এই বই অবশ্যপাঠ্য। সাড়ে তিনশো পাতার অঢেল ঐশ্বর্যের ছিটেফোঁটাও এহেন রিভিউয়ে তুলে ধরা অসম্ভব। তবে মেরিডেল পড়ে পাঠক ঋদ্ধ হবেন, এতটুকু নিশ্চিত। তার গবেষণা যেমন গভীর, তার গদ্য তেমন মসৃণ। আর এই কাহিনীর জন্যে যা সবচেয়ে বেশি দরকার ছিল, সৈন্যের সাথে একাত্ম্য হতে পারার ক্ষমতা, তার অন্তর্জগৎ আর পারিপার্শ্বিকতা সার্বিকভাবে কল্পনা করে সহমর্মিতার সাথে পাঠকের কাছে পরিবেশন করা, এসব একদমই সহজ কথা নয়। হারিয়ে যাওয়া সাবল্টার্নের ন্যারেটিভকে সফলভাবে পুনরুদ্ধার করতে পারা, উপেক্ষিত সৈনিকের কণ্ঠকে আরেকবার বিস্মৃতির অতল থেকে তুলে আনাতেই মেরিডেলের সকল স্বার্থকতা।
August 5, 2022
A 16 hour unabridged audiobook.
Easily worth 4 stars, almost a 5. What did Soviet soldiers eat, wear, think about, dream of, etc. This book captures that expertly. It was a pleasure to listen to.
Easily worth 4 stars, almost a 5. What did Soviet soldiers eat, wear, think about, dream of, etc. This book captures that expertly. It was a pleasure to listen to.
March 17, 2023
For me, this was a truly unique read on the Russian Front. Very few works on the Eastern Front take a close look at the soldiers that fought it. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which was the lack of access to such individuals. This work shows the divisions of the Soviet Army that are normally unseen in overview histories of the war. This is the same for any works of any nation, but most of the other countries have better views of the common soldiers due to the, mostly, open access to those sources.
An excellent read and one I would highly recommend to others.
An excellent read and one I would highly recommend to others.
October 27, 2011
This is (yet another) of those "it might not be for everybody" books. In fact, I imagine those who don't care for history might find it "dull". Personally, I found it fascinating. An essential addition to any WWII buff's reading-list. If you know anything about WWII & the USSR it is usually thru sterilized US-based history (which often over-glorifies D-Day and minimalizes the USSR role) or it is thru the "traditional" USSR lens of the Patriotic War filled w/ heroic, selfless sacrifice for the Motherland.
There's nothing inherently "wrong" w/ the USSR "lens" per se, but it falls dramatically short of tapping into the raw emotions and real feelings of the USSR foot soldier in WWII. Why did they fight and die in such large numbers? What were their real feelings about the war? About Stalin? About fighting and dying for Stalin? Series/books like "Band of Brothers", "The War" and "The Pacific" have brought this "personalization of war" to the forefront from the US soldiers' perspective, but little is known in this regard about the men known as "Ivan" - the USSR army.
This book is meticulously researched, taps into a wealth of previously inaccessible knowledge and delves deeply into the mindset, lifestyle and daily brutality of the USSR foot soldier - from the early "hopeless" days of 1941 until the "glorious" conquest of Berlin in 1945. It pulls no punches. The USSR foot-soldier is laid bare in all his raw human nature - good and bad. USSR "myths" are exposed and realities are brought to light. It's hard to imagine what could motivate men (and women) to fight for someone like Stalin. But they do. And they die - in the millions. Some is by force, some is b/c of patriotism, some is b/c of the uncertainty of what else to do when living in such times.
The author does a great job of exposing the brutality, contradictions, emotions and all-around "humanity" of the USSR foot soldier - even when he is at his most inhumane.
One thing is for certain - being the USSR army 1939-1945 (and after) would've sucked. Big time. Definitely worth reading if you like history, WWII or Russian history. If you don't really care that much or are just starting into the "WWII" genre, this one might not be for you.
There's nothing inherently "wrong" w/ the USSR "lens" per se, but it falls dramatically short of tapping into the raw emotions and real feelings of the USSR foot soldier in WWII. Why did they fight and die in such large numbers? What were their real feelings about the war? About Stalin? About fighting and dying for Stalin? Series/books like "Band of Brothers", "The War" and "The Pacific" have brought this "personalization of war" to the forefront from the US soldiers' perspective, but little is known in this regard about the men known as "Ivan" - the USSR army.
This book is meticulously researched, taps into a wealth of previously inaccessible knowledge and delves deeply into the mindset, lifestyle and daily brutality of the USSR foot soldier - from the early "hopeless" days of 1941 until the "glorious" conquest of Berlin in 1945. It pulls no punches. The USSR foot-soldier is laid bare in all his raw human nature - good and bad. USSR "myths" are exposed and realities are brought to light. It's hard to imagine what could motivate men (and women) to fight for someone like Stalin. But they do. And they die - in the millions. Some is by force, some is b/c of patriotism, some is b/c of the uncertainty of what else to do when living in such times.
The author does a great job of exposing the brutality, contradictions, emotions and all-around "humanity" of the USSR foot soldier - even when he is at his most inhumane.
One thing is for certain - being the USSR army 1939-1945 (and after) would've sucked. Big time. Definitely worth reading if you like history, WWII or Russian history. If you don't really care that much or are just starting into the "WWII" genre, this one might not be for you.
Read
May 8, 2014Most books about WW2 at some point include a description of the Red Army as it sweeps westward across Europe. These tend towards the exotic - much mention of cossacks with whips, shaggy ponies pulling sleds side by side with tanks, etc. This one is almost totally - and refreshingly - devoid of that kind of thing. Which isn't to say the Red Army wasn't brutal and weird, but Merridale focuses on experiences that seem to have been the norm, in as much as there was any. There's a broad social context from before the war and also details of the day to day of the war at the front. She doesn't shy away from the war crimes on either side of the front - the brutal treatment the USSR meted out to it's own troops, and those troops conduct with regard to civilians and POW's.
What I found fascinating though is that she tries to get at the mindsets and ideologies behind the actions, personal and collective, mass rape and massacre as well as patriotism and camaraderie. I don't know if it's necessarily an unqualified success - there are still gaps, still things people did not, and will never, talk about, but the attempt is invaluable. My grandfather marched from some long lost hamlet near Kazan to Berlin and back (well, as far as Kiev) when he was 17. I've never been able to square the mild, sardonic man I remember with cossacks and massacres, though I know it happened, and I know he was there. This is one of the few history books I've read that have managed to go at least some way to bridging that gap. Excellent social history, the individual action and reaction in extraordinary circumstances, building up to history person by person.
What I found fascinating though is that she tries to get at the mindsets and ideologies behind the actions, personal and collective, mass rape and massacre as well as patriotism and camaraderie. I don't know if it's necessarily an unqualified success - there are still gaps, still things people did not, and will never, talk about, but the attempt is invaluable. My grandfather marched from some long lost hamlet near Kazan to Berlin and back (well, as far as Kiev) when he was 17. I've never been able to square the mild, sardonic man I remember with cossacks and massacres, though I know it happened, and I know he was there. This is one of the few history books I've read that have managed to go at least some way to bridging that gap. Excellent social history, the individual action and reaction in extraordinary circumstances, building up to history person by person.
October 30, 2016
I forced myself to finish reading this book. Several times I wondered if I was wasting my time. First, this book is not well written. The content is shallow. Second, the author gave a very biased account, probably out of her hatred of all things Soviet. I would estimate 80% of the book talk negatively about the Red Army and the rest is neutral. The book hardly mentions anything positive about the Red Army. I’m not saying that the Red Army is perfect (far from it), but the author’s biased opinions in this book are just astonishing.
If you are predisposed against the Soviets, you might like this book. Otherwise, you probably feel this book is an insult to the memories of the tremendous sacrifice the Soviet people made during WW2. At the time when no one else could challenge Hitler’s army, it was the Red Army that stopped German forces, turned the tide, and eventually destroyed over 80% of the Nazi forces.
If you are interested in a book about WW2 in Europe that is not clouded by anti-Soviet propaganda, I would strongly recommend “Russia’s War” (by Richard Overy, a British historian) which is well written and gives a balanced account.
If you are predisposed against the Soviets, you might like this book. Otherwise, you probably feel this book is an insult to the memories of the tremendous sacrifice the Soviet people made during WW2. At the time when no one else could challenge Hitler’s army, it was the Red Army that stopped German forces, turned the tide, and eventually destroyed over 80% of the Nazi forces.
If you are interested in a book about WW2 in Europe that is not clouded by anti-Soviet propaganda, I would strongly recommend “Russia’s War” (by Richard Overy, a British historian) which is well written and gives a balanced account.
April 27, 2017
Interesting and at the same time terrifying work. Absolutely breaks the heart to read about all those lives that were so easily expanded. This is due to the fact that at the beginning of the war it was a broken and an unprofessional army. More then that, even later on the soviet leadership thought of them merely as pawns and never as real people.
Merridale did a great job in combining both personal experiences and actual history. A great plus is that although she does sees and is able to convince us that the Red army was made of heroes that helped save the world, she doesn't hide the fact that this was also an army that committed an outrages amounts of crimes. Both against civilians and is own men. What will later on will become the basis to the iron curtain.
Merridale did a great job in combining both personal experiences and actual history. A great plus is that although she does sees and is able to convince us that the Red army was made of heroes that helped save the world, she doesn't hide the fact that this was also an army that committed an outrages amounts of crimes. Both against civilians and is own men. What will later on will become the basis to the iron curtain.
January 9, 2018
The Eastern Front of the Second World War -- certainly the decisive theatre of the European war -- is seldom covered in popular histories of the war that are published in the West, and is usually given a cursory treatment on the rare occasion that it is. Even among the small minority in the United States who know what side their own country was on during the war, few would be able to relate much about this most crucial, and most brutal of conflicts.Catherine Merridale's book, admittedly a popular history although an especially well-researched one, aims to take the same approach to the Red Army of World War Two as Stephen Ambrose's numerous books did to the U.S. Army of that era. Like Ambrose's books, it is a good, approachable introduction to the subject, and its extensive citations provide the basis for more thorough learning. I absolutely recommend it.
The most astonishing thing about the whole story of the Red Army in World War Two is the magnitude of the trauma endured by not just the Army but by all of Soviet society, particularly in the first year of the war, and especially coming, as it did, on the heels of Stalin's lethal mismanagement and brutal repression, which would have made the 1930s a traumatic enough time for the Soviet people. The degree of death, destruction and sudden dislocation is such that only in post-apocalyptic novels does one tend to get the same gut impression. That the Red Army was able to transcend this, and also to triumph in the face of the mind-boggling incompetence and leadership failures inherent in the Soviet system of government, is a testament to human resilience and to the unsurpassed foulness of the Nazi regime that managed to be far worse on both counts.
The most astonishing thing about the whole story of the Red Army in World War Two is the magnitude of the trauma endured by not just the Army but by all of Soviet society, particularly in the first year of the war, and especially coming, as it did, on the heels of Stalin's lethal mismanagement and brutal repression, which would have made the 1930s a traumatic enough time for the Soviet people. The degree of death, destruction and sudden dislocation is such that only in post-apocalyptic novels does one tend to get the same gut impression. That the Red Army was able to transcend this, and also to triumph in the face of the mind-boggling incompetence and leadership failures inherent in the Soviet system of government, is a testament to human resilience and to the unsurpassed foulness of the Nazi regime that managed to be far worse on both counts.
April 2, 2008
The mind reels at the fathomless suffering of the foot soldier in the Soviet army during WWII as well as their capacity to survive any hardship - short of murder - and privation - short of death by starvation - that man can devise. It added immensely to the understanding that I am developing of the nearly boundless suffering that the Soviet people endured from the Bolshevik Rev through the death of Stalin. Unimaginable.
July 25, 2016
-Muy interesante aunque hay peros.-
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Acercamiento al soldado soviético durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial (recurriendo a momentos anteriores para explicar unas cuantas cosas importantes), a sus vivencias, costumbres, tácticas, organización y mil aspectos más, desarrollado en paralelo al transcurso de la propia guerra.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Acercamiento al soldado soviético durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial (recurriendo a momentos anteriores para explicar unas cuantas cosas importantes), a sus vivencias, costumbres, tácticas, organización y mil aspectos más, desarrollado en paralelo al transcurso de la propia guerra.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
April 28, 2011
Horrible, I could not get past the propaganda.
February 11, 2016
Not a well written piece. Forced myself to 50% on a Kindle version and then skipped to the last chapter. While the author did a great amount of research in archives and conducted many oral interviews with veterans, she ultimately failed to create an enjoyable and interesting writing from these sources. I feel like she tried to grasp too many things at once, not going into details where she should have and basically repeating herself where she shouldn't have. She used many excerpts from letters but each time only for a few short sentences. She also failed to create a narrative we can follow trough the book. It was organized in a chronological order, which doesn't really serve a purpose if you are writing about common people's experience in short 5-8 years. This book was a missed opportunity.
April 1, 2021
I learned a lot about the Red Army of World War 2, I felt really bad for soldiers before Barbarossa since the conditions in the army was awful. The commanders ordered human wave attacks that killed thousands of Red Army soldiers a time and killed anyone who disobeyed orders. It also didn't help that Stalin "removed" all of his top generals during the purge, which meant the Red Army was left with it's best commanders gone. The only top commanders now were Georgy Zhukov, Vasily Chuikov, Kliment Voroshilov and others. In total, the Red Army suffered more than 27,000,000 casualties, the most out of all the countries that participated in WW2.
December 20, 2021
A well written, often moving account of the Soviet soldiers experience of war and memory of the fighting, including why despite having sent so many men into battle, we have so few first-hand accounts.
November 24, 2023
I need to stop listening to such depressing books
March 20, 2011
Based on the author's interviews with actual participants of the Great Partiotic War.
I'm glad I read Ivan's War, it provides some insight into life on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. But only a very shallow insight. It becomes very apparent that the author might not have an historical background, she also seems to have very little understanding of (or interest in) the war or military history. If Merridale were more knowledgable she might have produced an product similar to Stephen Abrose's works.
However, her interviews are often squandered by her lack of knowledge on the topic at hand. As I would read, the interviewee would brush on a topic that would seem fascinating--and then continue on to some other part of his or her story. The author just didn't dig deeper into these topics. A good interviewer would have known what to look for, and what questions to ask in order to draw out important details about life on the Russian side of the Eastern Front. From what I remember, the author has a journalistic background--therefore, it appears that the lack of follow through is mostly due to a lack of understanding about the topic.
As I read the book, I kept thinking how much better this could have been if she brought a military historian with her on the interviews (or even just the first several interviews) for the purpose of pointing out information of deeper importance.
Overall, its good but a bit shallow.
I'm glad I read Ivan's War, it provides some insight into life on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. But only a very shallow insight. It becomes very apparent that the author might not have an historical background, she also seems to have very little understanding of (or interest in) the war or military history. If Merridale were more knowledgable she might have produced an product similar to Stephen Abrose's works.
However, her interviews are often squandered by her lack of knowledge on the topic at hand. As I would read, the interviewee would brush on a topic that would seem fascinating--and then continue on to some other part of his or her story. The author just didn't dig deeper into these topics. A good interviewer would have known what to look for, and what questions to ask in order to draw out important details about life on the Russian side of the Eastern Front. From what I remember, the author has a journalistic background--therefore, it appears that the lack of follow through is mostly due to a lack of understanding about the topic.
As I read the book, I kept thinking how much better this could have been if she brought a military historian with her on the interviews (or even just the first several interviews) for the purpose of pointing out information of deeper importance.
Overall, its good but a bit shallow.
October 30, 2020
Thank you Catherine Merridale, absolutely enthralling. The author is a British social historian and her outsider status both as British and as a woman is also interesting. And has also renewed my desires to read equivalently well researched books on places/times where the author is an outsider and I am at least partly insider to add that extra dimension! Must be some out there - perhaps a book on British massacres in Africa by a Peruvian historian.
It has been a strangely comforting read alongside the current Brexit and Covid pandemic. I hope the comfort lies less in the contrast of world chaos in the comfort of a warm home, and more in the work and effort the author has made to listen to people who lived through it and dig through the archives to recover something of the souls of individuals without praise or blame. Loved the photos sprinkled through the book.
For a brilliant review just see Mariel who has put the time in to write the kind of review the book deserves.
It has been a strangely comforting read alongside the current Brexit and Covid pandemic. I hope the comfort lies less in the contrast of world chaos in the comfort of a warm home, and more in the work and effort the author has made to listen to people who lived through it and dig through the archives to recover something of the souls of individuals without praise or blame. Loved the photos sprinkled through the book.
For a brilliant review just see Mariel who has put the time in to write the kind of review the book deserves.
February 26, 2010
This book is incredible. The history is harrowing but the stories are amazing, really detailed. Nothing is glossed over, as history has tended to do with a lot related to this particular subject area. It's well written, the quotations from soldiers and from their letters are excellent. Such an important document.
November 16, 2025
4.5 stars. This book was far more engaging than I expected. Dotted with accounts from Soviet veterans of The Great Patriotic War (WWII), this book paints a complex picture of the memory that the war left on society. Merridale casts light on both the glorious sacrifice these people made as well as problems within the Red Army and Soviet society.
Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has created a cult of memory around the Great Patriotic War. An account like Merridale's, which shows the sacrifice and the societal problems largely caused by government neglect of soldiers and veterans, dispels some of this mysticism that Putin has constructed to glorify the past and stir up Russians to war.
These accounts also offer insight into Russian military culture today and how the Kremlin has waged its renewed campaign in Ukraine since 2022.
I highly recommend - I did not expect to finish so quickly, however it was a very interesting read.
Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has created a cult of memory around the Great Patriotic War. An account like Merridale's, which shows the sacrifice and the societal problems largely caused by government neglect of soldiers and veterans, dispels some of this mysticism that Putin has constructed to glorify the past and stir up Russians to war.
These accounts also offer insight into Russian military culture today and how the Kremlin has waged its renewed campaign in Ukraine since 2022.
I highly recommend - I did not expect to finish so quickly, however it was a very interesting read.
November 3, 2024
3.5 stars rounded up
The rats, the dysentery, the smell of sour vodka and the hunger. Always the hunger. Another day in the life of a Soviet soldier.
This book is not a military history or a history of the Soviet Union during WW2. Rather, it is the story of the common soldiers. Told through the eyes of many different first hand accounts. Catherine Merridale spoke to soldiers that were still alive after the Berlin Wall came down. She was also fortunate to be researching for this book during the short window the Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990. She had access to living veterans, countless letters and the archives. The story she tells is very grim and dark but that was the reality.
I thought it was fascinating that as the soldiers entered Hungary and Northern Prussia, they realized all of the lies Stalin had told them about capitalism. These soldiers were peasant farmers, and they came across farms, farming equipment etc like they had never seen in Mother Russia. They were flabbergasted as to why the Germans had any desire to go East since they had so much more than the Soviet peasants.
Lots of interesting facts sprinkled throughout the text. Worth the read if you are interested in WW2 and specifically the Soviet Union and what it was really
like for the common soldiers in the ground.
Don’t expect a happy ending though.
The rats, the dysentery, the smell of sour vodka and the hunger. Always the hunger. Another day in the life of a Soviet soldier.
This book is not a military history or a history of the Soviet Union during WW2. Rather, it is the story of the common soldiers. Told through the eyes of many different first hand accounts. Catherine Merridale spoke to soldiers that were still alive after the Berlin Wall came down. She was also fortunate to be researching for this book during the short window the Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990. She had access to living veterans, countless letters and the archives. The story she tells is very grim and dark but that was the reality.
I thought it was fascinating that as the soldiers entered Hungary and Northern Prussia, they realized all of the lies Stalin had told them about capitalism. These soldiers were peasant farmers, and they came across farms, farming equipment etc like they had never seen in Mother Russia. They were flabbergasted as to why the Germans had any desire to go East since they had so much more than the Soviet peasants.
Lots of interesting facts sprinkled throughout the text. Worth the read if you are interested in WW2 and specifically the Soviet Union and what it was really
like for the common soldiers in the ground.
Don’t expect a happy ending though.
Read
August 14, 2020DNF
I am really NOT a non fiction reader. I forget about my reading preferences every time I read an exciting review about a book I consider as an interesting reading opportunity. I should have known better. Nothing to do with the book itself, only with me, a non-fiction-reader-who-tries-it-again-and-again.
I am really NOT a non fiction reader. I forget about my reading preferences every time I read an exciting review about a book I consider as an interesting reading opportunity. I should have known better. Nothing to do with the book itself, only with me, a non-fiction-reader-who-tries-it-again-and-again.
December 9, 2024
To była naprawdę długa, ale warta poświęconego czasu przeprawa.
May 26, 2020
Very easy to read history of the Red Army SOLDIERS and partisans. Not a military history of the Eastern Front with intricate battle plans. A story of what life.....and death...and carnage...and throwing an invading army out of your Country and revenge entailed.
The author did a magnificent job of research and interviews with WWII Red Army survivors. It is the last few pages of the book that she discusses what I was searching for. Combat veterans rarely, if ever, discuss their experiences in war. The same goes for other jobs...Police being one....Veterans at Kursk told her story after story, omitting the horror. Instead of tagging the vets with some psychological malady, she attributed that to their resilience!!! I found that to be excellent!
From personal experience as a criminal defense attorney, where we were robotic with heavy caseloads, what the author misses is that if you tell stories of stressful experiences, you soon realize that someone who was not there experiencing it will never truly comprehend it.
Just a wonderful contribution to WWII history.
The author did a magnificent job of research and interviews with WWII Red Army survivors. It is the last few pages of the book that she discusses what I was searching for. Combat veterans rarely, if ever, discuss their experiences in war. The same goes for other jobs...Police being one....Veterans at Kursk told her story after story, omitting the horror. Instead of tagging the vets with some psychological malady, she attributed that to their resilience!!! I found that to be excellent!
From personal experience as a criminal defense attorney, where we were robotic with heavy caseloads, what the author misses is that if you tell stories of stressful experiences, you soon realize that someone who was not there experiencing it will never truly comprehend it.
Just a wonderful contribution to WWII history.
May 18, 2021
Incoming review
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