It saddens me to see the gradual escalation of anti-American moods in Ukraine. I wonder why some of my fellow Ukrainians don’t bother to figure out where the wind is blowing and who can benefit from this.
Personally, I have a great deal of respect for Americans. Above all, I am very grateful to them. Why? Mostly, perhaps, because the Soviet Union could not have won the Second World War without the Allies, above all, the United States. I remember Nikita Khrushchev saying that Stalin had repeatedly emphasized that the USSR would have never won the war without the US. Molotov once observed that the question of the importance of America’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany had been deliberated by the Politburo.
Actually, I don’t care whether or not Stalin made this fact public. I am neither a politician nor a historian. I am an ordinary citizen of Ukraine, who has lived a rather long life and has a rather long memory.
Some foreigners with whom I have talked have been surprised to learn that people in the post-Soviet countries don’t know much about the history of the Second World War. I would reply with a bitter smile that they don’t even know the history of the Soviet-German War, except from Soviet and Communist Party history textbooks that were revised a dozen times.
A reminder of some facts is in order. The West recently marked the 65th anniversary of the British-American invasion of North Africa. It is a shame that this event passed unnoticed in my country, considering that from September 1940 until May 1943 the Allied forces fought the Wehrmacht in Africa, sustaining heavy losses and valiantly winning battles that resulted in victory, thus preventing countless German troops from being deployed to Russia. We remember the sacrifices and feats of arms of the Allies, particularly the US.
After the United States declared war on Japan and Germany in December 1941, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, American forces took part in the Pacific campaign. Suffering heavy losses, they managed to draw the huge Japanese army away from the Soviet border. By this time the Japanese had captured Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines and were threatening Australia. It is common knowledge that Stalin was horrified by the threat of Japan’s invasion in the east. When the Japanese ambassador was leaving Moscow, Stalin accompanied him to the railway terminal. As far as I know, this was the first and last time he ever did this.
During the first five days of the Second World War, starting on June 22, 1941, the Germans marched into Ukraine, covering a distance of 200 kilometers. Within two weeks they had established control over half of Ukraine. Even a schoolchild can figure out what would have happened to the Soviet Union if the Americans had not engaged the Japanese army in the east and stopped the formations led by Rommel, the Desert Fox, in Africa. By 1942 not only would the Germans have reached the Caucasus and the Volga River, they would also have behind the Urals.
Some German divisions were moved from the Soviet border in conjunction with the uprising in Yugoslavia. Many US and British pilots died during the bombing raids targeting the Wehrmacht in that country. This helped Tito survive and eventually hold back about as many German troops as during the siege of Stalingrad.
Allied air forces destroyed some 70 percent of German aircraft plants in Europe. It is not difficult to assume that otherwise the Luftwaffe would also have bombed Soviet territories. The losses sustained by the Allied air forces were huge. I bow my head in respect to all those who were killed in action.
Does the recognition of bravery under enemy fire on the part of soldiers from other armies belittle the valor that was displayed by our soldiers? I can foresee demagogical accusations that I am “belittling the feat of arms of Soviet soldiers.” I believe that the best recognition that can be given to surviving war veterans would be to award each one an apartment.
Great Britain, which courageously withstood the massive Luftwaffe air raids, thereby preventing a Nazi invasion, was also substantially helped by the US Air Force. But unlike us, the British remember this.
Almost every letter from the correspondence exchanged by Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, which was published a long time ago in our country, starts by listing materiel — tanks, aircraft, Studebaker trucks, etc. — which were supplied to the USSR. I knew war veterans who transported US aircraft and tanks through Afghanistan throughout the war. (Later, the USSR expressed its “gratitude” to Afghanistan for allowing this transit.)
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We were constantly told that the Soviet Union suffered the heaviest losses during the Second World War. True enough, but were these losses inflicted only by the enemy? According to military science, possible losses are estimated before every combat operation, however disgusting this may sound. We will never know the names and the exact number of those who perished, nor shall we bury them with due honors, like the Japanese or Germans do on former Soviet territory. The reason is that in 1942 ID tags were abolished (front-line men called them “death medallions”). Why? This was done to prevent Soviet citizens from ever learning the exact number of troops killed in action.
When the prominent Russian writer and war veteran Viktor Astafiev was asked in a lengthy interview on the eve of another Victory Day whether he considered Zhukov a great military leader, he resolutely replied in the negative, declaring that “Zhukov marched on Russian soldiers’ bones.” (Argumenty i fakty.) Instead, this war veteran regards General Manstein as a great military leader because he tried to preserve the life of every German soldier.
War veterans told me in detail about the so-called Kyiv Cauldron. Soviet troops could have been led out the encirclement by retreating through an open 40-kilometer corridor. But Stalin, criminal that he was, never ordered a retreat and the cauldron was closed. For many years the numbers of officers and men who had died senseless deaths in that encirclement or were captured were kept secret. This subject is discussed in the memoirs of the writer and former army officer L. Volynsky, who was taken prisoner in the Kyiv encirclement. A total of 600,000 officers and men surrendered despite Zhukov’s coded telegram threatening to destroy their families if they did.
There are many examples of how our troops were ordered to attack when an assault made no sense and meant nothing but slaughter. The ratio of Soviet and German losses is ten to one. Millions of lives cut short were the price of this victory.
Remember Stalin’s order to leave nothing but scorched earth behind when Soviet troops were retreating? What about the children, women, and old people who stayed behind? How could they survive?
This spring we marked the anniversary of Kyiv’s liberation with great pomp. But why were the assembled journalists or politicians not reminded that Soviet commander who proposed to cross the Dnipro in a place where losses could be kept to a minimum? Of course, no one cared because the crossing had to be completed by some Soviet holiday. The crossing was carried out as planned and the Dnipro ran red with blood.
There are thousands of such examples. Therefore, our heavier losses were the result of the political leadership’s truly cannibalistic attitude toward the people, and not just war hostilities.
I want historians to make public the number of Soviet soldiers who surrendered at the beginning of the war. At various periods the German Wehrmacht included a Kalmyk and a Turkmen division, Vlasov’s million-strong Russian army, the Ukrainian Galicia Division, and so on. During offensives, Soviet infantrymen dressed in threadbare overcoats were followed in the rear by SMERSH troops [acronym meaning Death to Spies: counterintelligence departments created in the Soviet army-Ed.] dressed in white fur coats and armed with submachine guns.
Did this mean that all Soviet soldiers were potential traitors? No, the war was a tragedy suffered by several nations, particularly Ukrainians, who found themselves between two enemies: brown fascism and red fascism. In 1941 millions of people in the USSR still vividly remembered the red terror of 1917-20, dekulakization, and industrialization, which had claimed countless lives, with hundreds of thousands arrested and shot, and the Holodomor. Let’s not forget the unprofessional and scandalous war with Finland. Finnish sources indicate that 400,000 Soviet troops were killed in action during the Soviet-Finnish War. Soviet losses were either kept secret or distorted in historical sources.
When the secret archives were gradually opened up and truthful data began to be published, historical documentaries started appearing in Russia and Ukraine. Recently, the STB Channel in Ukraine screened a Russian documentary series about the Second World War, based on declassified archival materials. Some idiots are now saying that history is being rewritten. Like parrots, we repeat this nonsense without bothering to think about it. The caveman’s sovok mentality and many lies have literally paralized some of my fellow countrymen, almost turning us into accomplices.
Knowledge of the truth is the first step to inner freedom and independent thought that will liberate us from the empty debates by opportunistic and lying politicians and journalists, which are being imposed on us. Knowledge is an opportunity to make a choice.
Speaking of “rewriting” history, about 10 years after the war Khrushchev demanded to know the exact number of Soviet partisans and then ordered that this figure be officially tripled. The phrase about every kilometer being awash in blood was edited out of the motion picture They Fought for Their Country, based on a story by Mikhail Sholokhov. We were able to see Aleksei German’s excellent movie Roadblocks only during the perestroika period. It contains many horrifying truths about the war.
So when was our history being rewritten?
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We know — and many people still remember — how insistently Joseph Stalin urged Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to open the second front. Articles published in Pravda at the time are packed with reproaches and reminders of our suffering, even though the entire civilized world regarded the Soviet Union as Hitler’s ally (until June 22, 1941) while Western Europe was bleeding. We should remember not only the USSR’s disgraceful conduct on the eve of the war but also the infamous conciliatory policy toward Hitler on the part of leading Western European countries, including Great Britain before Churchill came to power (allies of the Nazi state), which led to the war and the Nazi occupation of a number of countries. The photograph of Molotov posing with Ribbentrop in the Kremlin was carried by many Soviet and foreign newspapers.
Historians and journalists must remind Ukrainians of the joint Soviet-German military parade in Brest and Warsaw after the occupation of Poland, or of the scandalous fact that Soviet trainloads of grain and armaments were still heading for Germany under the Soviet- German treaty while the Luftwaffe was bombing Kyiv. The book by the historian Aleksandr Nekrich June 22, 1941 is an excellent read. After an exchange of warm embraces, one thug duped the other. The “wise” Stalin erred, despite the extremely effective performance of the Soviet strategic and tactical intelligence agencies.
I suggest that all those who would argue that the second front was not opened at once bear in mind everything that I have stated above, as well as the fact that American mothers did not have to send their sons to die for the sake of a criminal totalitarian state that was killing its own children.
Yet those American sons came to the USSR’s aid and died not only in massive bombing raids and other operations but also on board the ships of the North Atlantic convoys, delivering regular arms and materiel to Murmansk.
American mothers and wives worked with dedication in military factories that produced weapons, including for the Soviet Union, a country about which they had only a vague knowledge. (Soviet aircraft standing on airfields near the western border were destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war. The USSR’s surviving industrial potential only amounted to 15 percent.) From their rather small pockets they paid for the entire mighty flow of material support to the USSR.
During a conversation with Stalin, Sir Winston Churchill pointed out that he did not have as many soldiers as Russia but that Britain values each one’s life. He was stunned to hear Stalin’s reply: a leader who is always afraid of losses cannot win a war. This statement reflects the cynicism of Stalin and his regime.
Consider this: a country destroys its children on par with the enemy, while another country, located far across the ocean, helps save thousands of Ukrainians and other nations from inevitable death with its powerful support.
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The second front was finally opened. After so many complaints about Soviet losses, why did the Kremlin not allow the Red Army to relax a little? This was impossible. It was necessary to grab half of Europe ahead of the Americans and build a prison camp regime there under the KGB’s full control. Who can believe that Stalin was concerned about the fate of the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, etc. and their speedy liberation if he was slaughtering entire nations in his own state, including his fellow Georgians?
In my opinion, Stalin and Hitler are equally guilty of crimes against the civilian population of their countries. What makes Hitler any different from Stalin? While Hitler ordered the flooding of the Berlin subway, which served as a bomb shelter, killing 200,000 in the process, Stalin issued the scorched earth order.
What happened to war invalids in the USSR? From my childhood I remember seeing legless or armless cripples moving on wooden boards fitted with casters. One day all of them vanished from the streets. Years later, during a visit to Valaam Island, I found out that all those limbless invalids had been forcibly separated from their families and deported to this remote island in northern Russia and left there to die. The Russian writer Vladimir Soloukhin has written about the Soviet leadership’s grisly decision. It is eminently clear that people were destroyed by their own country and saved by faraway America.
I also want to know at least approximately how many Soviet officers and men died in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest, particularly on May 8, 9, and 10, when the act of capitulation was being signed.
The Russian writer and war veteran Grigorii Baklanov, reflecting on these unwarranted sacrifices, recalls this Soviet propaganda cliche: “Our fathers and grandfathers sacrificed their lives for Victory.” What is the meaning of sacrifice in this context? Did these people want to die?
For me, Victory Day is also a day of mourning for the soldiers of all countries who perished in battle as well as for those who were not supposed to die (I mean my country Ukraine) and those who were not destined to be born. Thus, on this date I feel immense gratitude to the American people.
But those of us who suffer from amnesia and a lack of conscience are allowing themselves to cast stones at the US, whose contribution to the defeat of Nazism is officially mentioned only briefly. This contribution is invaluable, but unfortunately we do not value it properly, sometimes because of lack of knowledge.
I believe that these negative feelings toward the US and Americans are a glaring injustice and sign of disrespect for one of God’s Commandments about the sin of forgetting “grace” — in other words, gratitude, which is an inalienable component of personal culture.
I am ashamed. I am ashamed of all of us, let alone journalists, diplomats, and politicians of all shades, some of whom are irredeemably ignorant, who are shamelessly spreading lies, serving God knows what country, and leading us astray. Others, who are seemingly better educated and cultured, are silent and avoid broaching unpopular subjects. Are they afraid to lose part of their electorate? If so, they may well lose Ukraine!
Now about our current realities: I have in front of me a large pile of documents with lists and names of programs, among them governmental ones subsidized by the United States. This data from Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs are by no means hidden or secret.
The distinguished American foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski once appeared on Ukraine’s 1+1 Channel to announce that only Israel and Egypt receive more material aid from the US than Ukraine. Why haven’t our media covered this statement on a large scope? Why are there so many people who know nothing about the constant channeling of US aid to Ukraine? I would also like to know where all this money is going, and into whose hands? Lack of information gives rise to conjectures.
I wouldn’t want to tire my readers or distract them from watching their soap operas, but one day I would like to continue my reflections on the subject of the US, Ukraine, the present day, and all of us.
Liudmyla Stelmakh is a journalist, writer, and vice-president of the Mykhailo and Yaroslav Stelmakh Foundation. Chapters from her book Mykyta za toboiu skuchyv (Mykyta Missed You) were first published in The Day. She is the host of the program Zolote runo (Golden Fleece) broadcast on the Kultura TV Channel.
