Stalin. Part 19: War
Germany attacked the USSR on Sunday at 4 o'clock in the morning without a declaration of war, contrary to the non-aggression pact. The obvious to the Soviet side must become indisputable for the whole world: the aggressor is Hitler, the Soviet Union defends its territory. Only in this case can one count on the help of the West. A tragic retreat into the interior of the country began.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18
Germany attacked the USSR on Sunday at 4 o'clock in the morning without a declaration of war, contrary to the non-aggression pact. Our troops were ordered to “attack enemy forces and destroy them in areas where they violated the Soviet border. Until further notice, do not cross the border. The obvious to the Soviet side must become indisputable for the whole world: the aggressor is Hitler, the Soviet Union defends its territory. Only in this case can one count on the help of the West. A tragic retreat into the interior of the country began.
1. “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours"
These words of Stalin in Molotov's speech about the beginning of the war sound like a spell, like a message from the inevitable future. Stalin himself refused to speak. Some committed "researchers" are pleased to think that the political leader of the USSR was numb with horror. Thinking systematically, it is easy to understand that only those for whom there is a factor of surprise can be subject to fear and panic. A static sense of threat in the olfactory vector excludes surprise as such.
It is important to note that Stalin's radio appearances were rare. In 1939, his voice sounded on the air only once. Each such performance was perceived as extraordinary and could easily spread panic.
Molotov's speech
According to eyewitnesses, in the first days of the war, Stalin looked strange, as if he was numb. Those who saw Koba in Siberian exile would easily recognize this condition, systemically defined as olfactory melancholy. It has nothing to do with panic, as some “historians” describe “through themselves”, who were not close at that time, not only in the Kremlin, but even in Kuntsevo, where, in their opinion, Stalin “sat out”.
Those who really knew and saw Stalin in action (V. M. Molotov, G. K. Zhukov, A. I. Mikoyan, and others) did not doubt: no matter how numb the Boss seemed, he does not waste a second, it is necessary wait. When patience ran out, members of the Politburo went to the Kuntsevo dacha to ask Stalin to head the State Defense Committee.
"Why did you come?" - asked Stalin who entered. He was sitting in a small dining room alone, he had a kind of alien. Some even thought that the Master was afraid of arrest. In fact, it was really hard for Stalin, who in those days of a colossal external threat “deep in his sense of smell,” to realize what else these people smelling of fear want from him. Why did they come? After all, he already, in a sense, heads the State Defense Committee. He is this very state defense is.
Stalin's "complete prostration" in the first days of the war (an expression of falling to an inanimate level in the sense of smell) worked as a counterbalance to the general panic horror and forced the leaders to take responsibility in the catastrophically complicated conditions of the outbreak of the war. It required the most severe ranking of the pack, condemned by the enemies to total destruction. The doomed could not have had another supreme commander. 2. "Brothers and sisters…"
Minsk fell on June 29. Stalin waited in vain for information from the People's Commissariat of Defense. Without waiting, I went to the People's Commissariat myself. Zhukov reported that he had no connection with the front. Stalin pounced on him, not shy of expression. “Who is this chief of staff, who is confused and does not command anyone? Lenin left us a great legacy, and we … pissed him out. According to A. Mikoyan, it was scary to look at Zhukov. The urethral leader can respond to such a decrease in rank with only one answer - victory.
Stalin left for Kuntsevo, outwardly completely detached from what was happening. He did his job, as he once did in Tsaritsyn: under war conditions he arranged both the People's Commissariat of Defense and his entourage. Communication with the troops will be restored, G. K. Zhukov will forever remain in history as the Marshal of Victory, and to begin with, the members of the Politburo, abandoning suicidal thoughts about changing the leader, will come to ask him to lead them and the country.
By preventing the country's suicide in the first weeks of the war, Stalin could afford to speak to the people. On July 3, 1941, at 6 o'clock in the morning, the "voice of war" Yuri Levitan announced: the chairman of the State Defense Committee Stalin will speak. Millions of people held their breath. A quiet, well-known muffled voice with a Georgian accent forced to listen:
Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Soldiers of our army and navy!
I am addressing you, my friends!..
You could hear how painfully Stalin overcomes his non-verbalism, how he drinks water, trying to push words out. Fate wanted him to do the impossible - to become the leader of these people, ensuring his own and their survival. Well, if it is necessary to save the life of the country, he will speak. Through thick and thin.
Stalin's stingy words, selected with amazing accuracy, acquired meaning for every listener and set the direction for widespread propaganda work to form a single collective worldview necessary to resist the colossal force of the enemy. Outwardly emotionless, but filled with political meanings, Stalin tried to dispel the panic, allay the anxiety caused by the first news of the war and the uncertainty of the reports. Holy war
It was necessary to mobilize people to repel the enemy. The worst thing has already happened. To survive, we will fight back to the last bullet, to the last fighter. In senses, Stalin refers to the collective unconscious, expressed by the urethral-muscular mentality. He emphasizes the division into "we" and "they", their powerful heroic and insidious arrogant enemies. He clearly formulates the task of the moment: we must win or perish. In his speech, Stalin explains to the people the strategy of waging war: to defend every inch of land, to send everything valuable to the rear when retreating, and if impossible, to destroy.
Stalin's speech gave a new direction to Soviet propaganda. The motives for the fatefulness of the war, which began to be called the Great Patriotic War, were strengthened, although in Stalin's speech these two epithets are used separately. The main task of propaganda was to change the forms of social reaction, to reforge everyone's fear for their lives into nationwide indignation at the encroachment on the life of the whole country, into "noble rage." These semantic series were carried by the main song of that time - "The Holy War", which was first sung on June 24, 1941. Olfactory meanings were expressed by the intelligible oral word of visual agitation. Translated into oral propaganda, quotations from the speeches of Stalin and Molotov became the basis for the first wartime posters.
The Stalinist strategy of the first days of the war bore fruit: in the evening of June 22, Great Britain and soon after it and the United States announced support for the USSR in the war against Germany, and an anti-Hitler coalition began to form. And even if this was not the help that our people counted on, the feeling that we were not alone saved many from suicidal panic.
With each step deeper into Soviet territory, the German troops were bogged down in their impending disaster. The skin calculations, which turned out to be correct for the European "tour" of the Germans, did not work on the Eurasian urethral landscape of Russia. The enemy had to use colossal forces to maintain the initiative. By August 1941, Hitler was forced to change the direction of the main attack. Moscow turned out to be not as important as the industrial fuel regions: Crimea, Caucasus, Donbass. The Russian off-road has made its own adjustments to the calculations of the Germans, gasoline was sorely lacking.
It was impossible to calculate the completely irrational, sacrificial defense of the Russians, who prefer death to defeat and captivity. Ahead was winter, in which Hitler, raving in a blitzkrieg, was not going to enter. Ahead was what would later be called the mass heroism of the Soviet people. Stubborn defense with the transition to a counteroffensive allowed the USSR to gather and transfer reserves, to evacuate factories inland, where people worked the same way as at the front, continuously, in three shifts, not earning a living for themselves, but giving their labor to preserve the whole - the country. The transfer of all accumulated funds of enterprises to the budget kept the ruble from inflation.
Continue reading.
Other parts:
Stalin. Part 1: Olfactory Providence over Holy Russia
Stalin. Part 2: Furious Koba
Stalin. Part 3: Unity of opposites
Stalin. Part 4: From Permafrost to April Theses
Stalin. Part 5: How Koba became Stalin
Stalin. Part 6: Deputy. on emergency matters
Stalin. Part 7: Ranking or the Best Disaster Cure
Stalin. Part 8: Time to Collect Stones
Stalin. Part 9: USSR and Lenin's testament
Stalin. Part 10: Die for the Future or Live Now
Stalin. Part 11: Leaderless
Stalin. Part 12: We and They
Stalin. Part 13: From plow and torch to tractors and collective farms
Stalin. Part 14: Soviet Elite Mass Culture
Stalin. Part 15: The last decade before the war. Death of Hope
Stalin. Part 16: The last decade before the war. Underground temple
Stalin. Part 17: Beloved Leader of the Soviet People
Stalin. Part 18: On the eve of the invasion
Stalin. Part 19: War
Stalin. Part 20: By Martial Law
Stalin. Part 21: Stalingrad. Kill the German!
Stalin. Part 22: Political Race. Tehran-Yalta
Stalin. Part 23: Berlin is taken. What's next?
Stalin. Part 24: Under the Seal of Silence
Stalin. Part 25: After the War
Stalin. Part 26: The Last Five Year Plan
Stalin. Part 27: Be part of the whole
