Life in Occupied Russia

Dora · #16

Magnum,
I enjoyed reading your comments about Kazakhstan under Stalin. As a Kazakh you have brought the immediacy of the people and the suffering of your homeland into sharp relief for us who can only read of those terrible events.

I also liked your term "historical necessity" describing Stalin, his arrival on the world stage, his rule and his legacy. In the U.S. we frequently use a similar term, perhaps you heard of it when you studied here, "the right man at the right time". It means pretty much the same as "historical necessity".

Also your statement about the "need" for a Stalin at the time of the German invasion is also "right on the money". I think a lessor man, a more deliberative, more cautious man would have lost his nerve or control over the military and the government and would have been replaced and this indecision, this disruption of command at the highest levels could have spelled desaster for the new U.S.S.R.
Dora

Benoit Douville · #17

Magnum,

I also agree like Dora with your comments about Stalin and you bring up a valid point that if the Soviet Union didn't have a dictatorship regime, it would have been tough to beat Nazi Germany but I still believe that Stalin was too brutal with POW, Minority like the Kasakhs and even with his Officers...

It is interesting to know that you got your Master Degree in Sociology in the U.S. in what University?

Regards

panzertruppe2001 · #18

Drobjatski Sergei wrote:Many became partisans or helped them, even if it was dangerous...people were afraid of germans. My grandmother survived the occupation, she lived in a vilage in present Belarus. She told, about germans, who came and were searching for men, weapons and food. They took all the food they wanted, because of that died my two aunts (her children). I know stories about soldiers rapeing women and killing young men, and ofcourse you know the story of khatyn... Let's just say: It was hard, very, very hard... :roll:

I always suppose that the Soviets were guilty of Katyn murder. Are there new investigations that change the guilty?

Panzertruppe2001

Drobjatski Sergei · #19

Khatyn is the village in present Belarus which was razed to the ground by fire and shells. It was burnt on a March morning in 1943. On a morning of that day there appeared, unexepectedly in Khatyn the SS soldiers of oberschturmbannführer Oscar Direlevanger. All villagers were driven or dragged into a large shed, the gate was barred and nailed and fire was set to the shed. 149 people were burnt alive and among them 76 children.

Niwre · #20

panzertruppe2001 wrote: I always suppose that the Soviets were guilty of Katyn murder. Are there new investigations that change the guilty?

No, you can't change the facts

. It was a russian crime. There are many studies which verify that.

magnum357 · #21

Niwre,
Drobjatskii Sergei,
Panzertuppe2001,

I think you guys are mixing up the two different geographical places: there is KHAtyn (Õàòûíü - in Russian) and there is KAtyn (Êàòûíü - in Russian). KHAtyn is in Belorussia (as Sergei correctly mentioned) and KAtyn is in Russia, under the town Smolensk.

In Belorussian KHAtyn village German soldiers did what Sergei described in his post.

In Russian KAtyn Russians (some say "supposedly Russians") shot several thousand Polish POW, mostly officers.

magnum357 · #22

Dora,

Thanks for your comments. Actually, we can also say "historical inevitability" about Stalin.
Once I've read a science fiction story that tells about one guy who gets back to the past and kills a dictator named Adler to erase him from the world history. But when he comes back to his time he finds out that all the historical documents, movies, etc. show another dictator named Hitler... and all people in the world know nothing about Adler as if he never existed. Quite amusing plot.

If not Hitler and Stalin, there would have been some other dictators...

magnum357 · #23

Benoit Douville,

There are very intersting documents on German and Soviet POW subject. One is the Soviet rules for how to treat POWs and the other is German instructions on treating POWs and especially Soviet POWs. The Soviet rules are very humane, and the German instruction is absolutely not humane. Both documents are in Russian, and this is why I am not posting them here.

About my MS in Sociology: I got it at Texas A&M University. The Aggieland.

Niwre · #24

magnum357 wrote:Niwre,
I think you guys are mixing up the two different geographical places: there is KHAtyn and there is KAtyn. KHAtyn is in Belorussia (as Sergei correctly mentioned) and KAtyn is in Russia, under the town Smolensk.

And I wondered, why Belorussia. In german Khatyn is Chatyn, so...

panzertruppe2001 · #25

magnum357 wrote:Niwre,
Drobjatskii Sergei,
Panzertuppe2001,

I think you guys are mixing up the two different geographical places: there is KHAtyn (Õàòûíü - in Russian) and there is KAtyn (Êàòûíü - in Russian). KHAtyn is in Belorussia (as Sergei correctly mentioned) and KAtyn is in Russia, under the town Smolensk.

In Belorussian KHAtyn village German soldiers did what Sergei described in his post.

In Russian KAtyn Russians (some say "supposedly Russians") shot several thousand Polish POW, mostly officers.

Thanks for the explanation. It is clear the matter

Panzertruppe2001

Drobjatski Sergei · #26

Magnum357, thanks for your help, your expanation is indeed clear.

bratello · #27

FEW GENERAL NOTES WHICH DO NOT NECESSARILY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, BUT MAY HELP NEVER THE LESS: 1) UP UNTIL JUNE 22, 1941, THE DAY WHEN GERMANY ATTACKED THE USSR, THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE SOVIET PRESS ABOUT THE TRUE NATURE OF THE NAZI STATE: THE USSR AND GERMANY WERE FRIENDS, IT WAS NOT ALLOWED TO PUBLICKLY CRITICIZE GERMANY, SO THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE RUSSIANS DID NOT CONSIDER GERMANS TO BE "BAD GUYS"; 2) HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF RUSSIAN AND UKRANIAN PEASANTS WELCOMED THE GERMANS: STALIN'S COLLECTIVIZATION WHICH STARTED IN 1927 (ONLY 14 YEARS EARLIER) LED TO MASS STARVATION. STALIN AND THE COMMIES WERE HATED--GERMANS WERE WELCOMED; 3) MOST OF RUSSIAN "INTELLIGENTSIA" (I.E. INTELLECTUAL ELITE) SPOKE GERMAN (THE "LINGUA FRANCA" OF THE EASTERN EUROPE) AND WERE "GERMANOPHILES". IN OCT. 1941 WHEN THE RUSSIAN GOVERMENT MOVED TO KUYBISHEV AND MOSCOW WAS EXPECTED TO FALL, THEY WERE IRONING THEIR SUNDAY BEST TO MEET THE "LIBERATORS". HOW MUCH WORSE THAN STALIN'S OGPU COULD THE GERMANS BE? 4) CONSIDER THIS: OF ALL OCCUPIED NATIONS THE RUSSIANS WERE MOST NUMEROUS TO SERVE ON THE GERMAN SIDE DURING WW2 (THERE ARE OBVIOUSLY MANY REASONS FOR THAT. AMONG THEM STALIN'S ATTITUDE TO RUSSIAN P.O.W., BUT STILL...); 5) AND A JOKE ON THE SUBJECT: A WW2 VETERAN AND A YOUNG RUSSIAN ARE DRINKING BEER IN A MOSCOW PUB. THE BEER IS LOUSY AND THE VETERAN SAYS SO. "DID YOU FIGHT GERMANS IN THE WAR?" ASK THE YOUNG GUY. "OF COURSE, I DID" SAYS THE MAN. "WELL, YOU FOUGHT TOO HARD, FOOL. WE COULD HAVE BEEN DRINKING A BETTER BEER NOW".

Marcus · #28

Please don't write in all CAPS, thanks.

/Marcus

Landser · #29

Bratelo wrote:

..5) AND A JOKE ON THE SUBJECT: A WW2 VETERAN AND A YOUNG RUSSIAN ARE DRINKING BEER IN A MOSCOW PUB. THE BEER IS LOUSY AND THE VETERAN SAYS SO. "DID YOU FIGHT GERMANS IN THE WAR?" ASK THE YOUNG GUY. "OF COURSE, I DID" SAYS THE MAN. "WELL, YOU FOUGHT TOO HARD, FOOL. WE COULD HAVE BEEN DRINKING A BETTER BEER NOW"

During the Yeltsin era I read in the Spiegel a quote from a Russian local paper in Rshev,about a similar incident.
It went like this:
There is this highly decorated war veteran (with all his medals wearing) begging on the side of a street in a lapidatet state, when several young ones passed him and
said the following to him. " Pop, you idiots messed it all up for us, 'we could be driving Mercedes' instead of being beggars now!"

Drobjatski Sergei · #30

Joke is a joke...
I think they would work as a slave at some faktory or mine instead of driving a "benz"...