Remembering Stalingrad

 Nalini Taneja

HISTORY is being rewritten today and not just in our country. The erstwhile socialist world is busy re writing its past too, and negating its recent socialist heritage. Although we live in a world where memories of Hitler’s Germany and the resistance against fascist regimes and armies is part of the life experience of a generation that is still alive, and the French resistance is eulogized in texts on European history as one heroic defense of democracy against totalitarianism, the battle at Stalingrad has been reduced to a military conflict that Soviet forces won. Most school texts reproduce the Cold War version in which the German forces were defeated by the severe Russian winter, or by bad strategy on the part of the German generals in command, or simply bad luck, Some texts even go so far as to say that Soviet soldiers when pushed to a corner preferred to be shot by Germans rather than face their own “ruthless” political leadership.

Liberal scholarship has barely touched this well entrenched story because the Russian winter is simply substituted for superior military craft on the part of Russian generals, and of how the German generals were outwitted at moments that proved to be vital later, or at best they pay some tribute to the raw courage of the Russian soldier who was open to the patriotic appeals of the Soviet leadership. They base themselves totally on the propaganda posters and leaflets of the time to show the primordial appeal of nationalism as the only inspiring sentiment which can produce such heroism. Such an interpretation of course fails not only to explain why the French and English forces did not respond to the nationalist appeals in the same fashion, but also deliberately obfuscates the real motives and causes of the conflict and the larger political context of which this battle was a heroic episode.

Sadly enough even Russia today celebrates it as nothing more than an exhibition of exemplary patriotism and defense of motherland, as all reports of the recent celebrations in Russia show.

DEFENCE OF INTERNATIONALISM

At such a political juncture, for those of us in the Left, it is important that we remember it with the due respect that it deserves. The victory of the Soviet people at Stalingrad sixty years ago, in the first week of February, was simply the most important single event in the history of the struggle against fascism in Europe, and for the defense of democracy as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Socialism and internationalism, and the core values of human civilization, were at the heart of the battle for Stalingrad, as never before and perhaps never again since then. The Soviet soldier fought and died then simply so that the rest of the world may live in peace, that the horror of fascism may pass, and that working people everywhere may live on to create a better world. The battle for Stalingrad remains simply the greatest battle of the twentieth century.

It was on February 2, 1943 that field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered on behalf of the German army to concede victory to the Soviet forces at Stalingrad, a victory that proved to be the turning point in the war against fascist Germany.

Stalingrad was a long urban strip strung out along the west bank of the Volga. Hitler was determined to capture it, as it was a major manufacturing centre and the key to the communications system of southern Russia. And then it was named after Stalin himself. The Germans had taken 80 per cent of the city and were pushing the Red Army to the Volga River. Nevertheless, the 62nd Army held the German advance in Stalingrad. Every single factory, building and street was fought for in virtual hand to hand combat. More than 2 million died during the 200 days of fighting for control of the city between the Red Army and German soldiers. At one key battle for control of a factory, there were more casualties than during the entire campaign in France the previous year. Official Russian military historians estimate that 1,100,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the campaign to defend the city, all this in a span of six months.

COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REICH

As one Communist commentator states so aptly, “in this most costly of military engagements, the Nazi army suffered not only its first major defeat, but one that essentially paved the way for the collapse of the Third Reich.” It became an immediate source of inspiration for every antifascist and anticapitalist armed movement in the world during those days. A worldwide, from Mao's Red Army and the freedom movement in India  to the French Resistance. The Soviet Union became a symbol of working-class power and the socialist nerve centre for a whole new generation fighting for national liberation and social emancipation. This sense that the world may yet be saved for the working people of this world found expression in the works of various painters, sculptors, novelists and poets, including Pablo Neruda who wrote "Nuevo Canto de Amor a Stalingrad" in honour of the victorious Soviet people and the 1943 eighth symphony of the great Soviet composer, Shostakovich.

It is simply impossible to view the former Soviet Union as without its connection with Marxism. The collective ownership of the means of production, which characterized the state from its inception in 1917, provides the key not only to the Soviet military achievements in battle but also to the motivations of the Soviet soldier. The defense of socialism, their recently won dignity and livelihoods were major elements in the Soviet people’s dedication in war against fascism. It was clear to leftists the world over and to the participants in battle that they were fighting to save not just Russia or the Soviet Union, but the entire mankind and what was at stake was not merely the future of Russia or even that of ‘socialism in one country’, but the very future of human civilization, poised towards fascist horror just then. This sentiment was not the outcome of patriotic appeals or war propaganda, but of the experience of socialism in their own context, and of where they had moved from the days of the serf grandfathers. There was an overriding sentiment of internationalism, regardless of whether it meant emancipation of those enchained in the east or west, north or south, and irrespective of differences of gender, creed, race and colour. Appeals to patriotism, devoid of this highest emotion of internationalism, had not prevented Russian generals in the past from deserting the campaigns of the Tsarist era during World war I, and it had been the Bolshevik appeal for end to the imperialist war that had won the day against the entire range of political leadership in 1917.

In fact the Soviet peasant and soldier who had seen the whole range of wars and suffered heavily under them since 1917 October revolution, followed by Civil War and Allied Intervention to defeat the revolution, were among the most anti war people in the world as World war II broke out. A whole generation was trained in the ideology of peace and resistance to war. It is this generation trained in peace that won the battle of Stalingrad for Europe and for the rest of the world colonized by the imperialist powers.  The heroic resistance at Stalingrad, and also the help that the USSR gave to countries fighting against colonialism and imperialism, from Vietnam to Cuba, can only be explained in the context of the primacy of socialist ideology and the institutional roots of the Soviet regime. The battle at Stalingrad remains a glorious chapter in the fight for socialism and the spirit of internationalism, and we must remember that it is on the strength of the dimensions of human sacrifice involved in it that the battle continues to be known as “Battle of Stalingrad” long after the city itself has been renamed Volgagrad.

ACTIVISM OF IMPERIALISTS  & FASCISTS

Today war again looms large at the behest of the imperialist forces led once again by a right wing regime, in the US this time, and fascists of all varieties are on the resurgence all over the world, not least in India. The axis of US and Israel represent a similar bid at world hegemony for the most reactionary and anti-people regimes, again the garb of protecting civilization and again in the name of superiority for certain cultures and religions. Only the Muslims have become substituted for Jews, and clash of civilizations has become the catch phrase to displace Aryan superiority. Democracy and people’s livelihoods and dignity are under threat today as never before since the days of Hitler, and again to quote our communist commentator, whose short piece was available on internet without proper reference, “when it finally comes time to confront the Nazis of our epoch, we must learn to fight as heroically as a previous generation did.”