THE CITY IN THE RING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 166, 28 August 1942, Page 10

THE CITY IN THE RING

| Wea Mistory Repeat Itself At Stalingrad ?

|(Written for "The

Listener" by

A.

M.R.

to Stalingrad. What has been done once can be done again, say the Russians. That is why. ‘For, ‘endangered as the Soviet system is today, it has been harder pressed’ before. In 1918 particularly. Then the foreign foe was nearly as near to Leningrad as now; and only forbearing to scoop it up because the dissensions and murders and raids between its rival "Revolutionary Governments of -Russia" seemed to make it more valuable untaken than occupied. The Ukraine S TALIN has gone

‘right up to Rostov was ‘in German hands. Anti-Bolshevist Cossacks held ‘the North Caucasus and were striking northward. Names like Tula, Orel, and Kursk were familiar then as to-day, where the White generals were pushing on toward Moscow. One. Winston Churchill was becoming as interested as now in sending soldiers and supplies to. Murmansk and Archangelsk. And in Siberia the.Czech and Slovak regiments that had in 1915 deserted Austria en masse, crossing No Man’s Land singing to greet their Slavic brothers, were, under fear of being "repatriated" (i.e., sent home to be shot), beginning to sweep Sibéria clean of "Reds" as far westward as the Volga itself. At Wits’ End In the strip of Russia remaining between the tidal flood of enemies and the Northern forests and swamps, Lenin -pummelling a very new New Order into form against apathy, ignorance, in‘competence, and even active revolt within the Party itself-was at his wits’ end. Trotsky was flying hither and thither organising a Red army into existence out of "radish officers" (i.e., exTsarist Staff still White at heart) and out of the peasant rank and file that was hurriedly voting for peace and home with its feet. But all would be waste effort and worse unless both New Army and New Order could be fed. Casting round for someone to send to the South to hold what harvest land remained and gather in its crops, Lenin’s eye rested speculatively on the rather stolid and indeed almost benevolent features of Josef Djugashvili. A grand fellow in a scrap, a faithful, humble, unambitious henchman among all those brilliant quarrelling Jews, he thought, but has he the ability? Not long before, when someone had objected that

the "Junior Cabinet Post" of Commissar of Nationalities needed an active and intelligent man, Lenin had laughed. "No intelligence is needed. That’s why we put our ‘Man of Iron’ there." Stalin it was, nevertheless, who was sent to save the wheat. That meant first saving Tsaritsin, the strategic: communications town in the neck of land where the Don and Volga elbows nearly touched. And Tsaritsin was nearly lost already. Arriving with:two armoured cars and one hundred or so Red Guards, the Georgian in the private’s uniform with the title of "Military Dictator of the North Caucasus" found pubs and cafés open, music, dancing, promenading and flirtation in the public gardens, white buttonholes in the streets — in short .general public rejoicing at the near prospect of being captured by the Cossacks. Even the garrisons and the Unions were fearful or disaffected. None Too Soon Somewhere behind him came an army of sorts-Klementi Voroshilov, a provincial locksmith of no military~ experience, at the head of fifteen hundred Donetz miners armed with old sporting guns and pitchforks and mine tools. But the Cossacks would arrive first. So by nothing but his own sheer will power and the terror by night of his small forces, the new Commissar must turn Tsaritsin the gay and welcoming into Stalingrad the grim and impregnable. The cafés had their doors closed, the churches their bell towers, the people their mouths. Armed sentries stood in the street corners, G.P.U recruits examined all antecedents and passports. It was none too soon. Within a fortnight Tsaritsin was indeed "The City in the Ring" as one student, dramati repelling Cossacks in these thrilling (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) days, dramatised the whole siege for the stage later on. Shells hurtled round the ammunition factories day and night. Sirens shrieked at every sign of attack. And machine guns chattered so fiercely that the enemy hesitated before what was indeed a barely-defended town, What Voroshilov Said That was Voroshilov’s big chance. His mob burst through. And the first big danger, the danger of a rising within joining the attackers without was over. Stalin in fact, rightly or wrongly, arrested the whole military staff on principle-the principle that ex-Tsarist officers, always pessimistically poring over maps, were no good anyhow. So Stalin shut them up in a prison hulk on the Volga, and made Comrade Voro; shilov, enthusiastic but untried, commander instead, His new officers, "some little more than boy scouts" (comments Stephen Graham) won the loyalty and valour of the workers. So, when in the fateful month of August the great attack began-but let Voroshilov himself tell the tale: "Those were great days of trial. The enemy front, turned into a horseshoe with the flanks resting on the Volga, pushed closer every day. By a well planned manoeuvre they were pressing our exhausted troops who had already suffered great losses. The position indeed became catastrophic. (But) you should have seen Comrade Stalin then-calm as usual, deep in thought, no sleep for days on end . . ." In short the Steel bent nearly to breaking point, then, as the Cossacks’ grip slackened, sprang back and hurled them over the Don. Tsaritsin was saved. And so the Revolution got its wheat. "That Georgian Cockroach" There is another view of the situation it is only right to point out — Trotsky’s. He had ordered the town to be evacuated, so that Simbirsk might be defended, But that "Georgian cockroach" had simply scrawled "Take No Notice" across all Trotsky’s telegrams. Marshal Tukhachevski said years later that this insubordination prolonged the civil war by two years; but then he has been liquidated. Anyhow Lenin, under Trotsky’s pressure, recalled Stalin after the victory. Their trains passed. Trotsky, from the Imperial train in which he travelled like a Tsar, loftily upbraided the tousled uncouth Asiatic, in his everlasting uncleaned khaki tunic with the button missing, standing below on the track. Stalin, very subdued, asked only that his proletarian military "setup" at Tsaritsin be not destroyed. "Stupid and negligible,’ snorted the Organiser of Victory, sinking back among the Imperial cushions as the two trains passed on, "But he’s destroying the Revolution." However this is old stuff. The question now is whether history. can repeat itself and whether the defence of Tsaritsin (now Stalingrad) can again save the wheat and the Revolution,