Stalin's Wars and Stalin's Guerrillas

Stalin’s Wars

Geoffrey Roberts

Yale, $35

This book is marketed as a “provocative reassessment” of Stalin’s military and political leadership during and after WWII. While “provocative” may overstate the case, this is indeed an excellent new history of WWII as seen through the prism of Josef Stalin. 

The blow-by-blow accounts of Big Three summits provide enough detail and background to be interesting but not tedious, offering fascinating insights into the personalities of Truman, Churchill and Roosevelt, especially vis-a-vis Stalin. And there are well-documented and reasoned assessments of everything from the Katyn massacre, to the defense of Moscow, to the victory at Stalingrad. Roberts is masterfully judicious in his choice of which documents, telegrams, correspondence or first-hand accounts to present, always seeming to come up with some perfect morsel over which others have glossed. 

In the end, Roberts comes to the  conclusion that the correct image of Stalin is not one filtered over the decades, through Khrushchev et al, but rather one more in line with the contemporaneous view of the dictator during his lifetime – as a military leader who deserved praise for the unparalleled achievement of winning the Great Patriotic War: “To make so many mistakes and to rise from the depths of such defeat to go on to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare.”

Stalin’s Guerrillas

Soviet Partisans in World War II

Kenneth Slepyan 

Kansas, $34.95

“The Soviet partisans,” Slepyan writes, “were the heirs to a long line of irregular warriors in Russian history, the most recent examples of which were the Red partisans from the Civil War. They were surrounded by the rich historical mythology of the Cossacks’ ‘utopian’ military communities and rough egalitarianism of peasant uprisings, which, in popular culture and memory, envisioned freedom from outside authority and control, social justice, and deliverance from noble oppression.”

The  partisans were mustered by Stalin’s July 3, 1941 speech – his first public address after the Nazi invasion. The people behind the lines should, he said, form “diversionist groups... to foment guerrilla warfare.”

One problem was that guerrilla warfare training had been ended in the army in 1936, since it made a paranoid regime nervous. Civil War partisans were mercilessly purged, their knowledge cast aside. Nonetheless, by the end of 1941, there were some 30,000 partisans active in the war effort, disrupting German supply lines, blowing up bridges, or assassinating SS officers. 

But, from the beginning, there was a dangerous tension between the Stalin regime, bent on totalitarian control, and the partisans, who required independence, flexibility and local control in order to survive, to be effective. As Slepyan quotes John Erickson, the partisans embodied an “organized dissidence.”

A good story requires a central, unavoidable tension and this one serves Slepyan well. It also helps that his book is not a dry recounting of the partisans’ battles or movements, but a social history, a description of how these irregular forces lived and fought, how they defined themselves and their place in their society.

Stalin and the Soviet regime needed and idolized the partisans. After all, what better legitimization of the regime than that citizens fight of their own free will to defend or restore it? But, as Slepyan shows, partisans’ real life was rarely as it was portrayed in propaganda films or novels. Nor were they always fighting towards coordinated ends. For their part, the partisans, having transformed themselves into autonomous military and political units, would find it hard to reassimilate to a totalitarian society.

This chapter in Soviet history tells us much about what Russian society was and is become, and Slepyan retells it with care and insight.

Make Mine Vodka

Susan Waggoner & Robert Markel

Harry Abrams, $19.95

This bright and breezy book of 250+ vodka cocktails also sports an introduction to vodka history and extended notes on making infusions. Hard-backed and thick-paged, this will survive many a bartender spill and would make a nice present for a vodkaphile.

Night of Denial

Ivan Bunin

Northwestern, $24.95

Some months ago in this column, we praised Graham Hettlinger’s superb translations of Bunin (The Elagin Affair and Other Stories). This new collection, translated by Robert Bowie, is equally astonishing. And a much broader collection of the Nobel laureate’s work to boot. As if that were not enough, there are nearly 200 pages at the end of the volume with copious notes on the stories, a biographical afterword by Bowie, and a fun chapter, “On Translating Bunin.” 

Quiet Flows the Don

A digital remastering of the 1957 epic film, with English subtitles. The original international release of the film cut it to just over 100 minutes. This is the full director’s cut: 330 minutes. As rich and multi-storied as the novel, this is the Russian Gone with the Wind, a tale of love and civil war, pride and deceit. Filmed on location, it has an authentic feel and many memorable scenes. A must see. (Kino, $27.97)

Brother 

One of the most popular Russian films of recent years, Brother is now out on DVD in an official release with English subtitles. And these help, because Danila, the Dostoyevskian protagonist searching for fulfillment in post-Soviet Petersburg, has a tendency to mumble. Wonderfully acted, with a brooding mood worthy of St. Petersburg, this is a very entertaining, if violent, gangster film. (Kino, $17.47)

Animated Soviet Propaganda

This four-DVD release gathers together what may be some of the most ideologically garish cartoons of the 20th century. And yet, if you look past that and revel in the method and artistry of these animators, artists and directors, you will be amazed. In fact, these films often display rather daring artistic expression for their times – apparently permissible if the anti-Americanism was sufficiently rabid. (Jove, $89)