REPORT ON RUSSIA

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 3, 14 February 1944, Page 9

REPORT ON RUSSIA

O What is the explanation of Russia’s amazing military successes in the past year ? © How is Russia tackling the reconstruction problem in the areas she has reconquered ? © What is the mood of the Russian people after the ordeal of the last three years ? This article condensed from “ The Economist,” answers these questions as authoritatively as they can be answered on the information available. At the beginning of July last year the front line in Russia ran east of Orel, skirted Kursk from the west, then turned to the south-east, beyond Bielgorod and Kharkov, and formed a large bulge covering roughly the Donetz and ending close to the west of Rostov. The German line had been shortened by the retreat from the Caucasus and the Volga, and it seemed that the four months’ lull after the winter campaign had allowed the German High Command to replenish its reserves, regroup its armies, and complete the fortification of a defence zone built up during more than twenty months.

At the beginning of August, however, the Russians took Orel. The first break in the “ eastern wall ” was made. Violent fighting soon flared up all along the front from Smolensk southward. Then Kharkov fell, and after that the pace of the Russian offensive quickened. By the middle of January the Russians on the central sector, round the Pripet area, were well inside the 1939 Polish border. In the north there were signs of the Russians’ offensive power round Leningrad ; and in the south the western Ukraine was being bitterly contested in attack and counter-attack in the area round Vinnitsa and the northern part of the River Bug. What are the factors that have made this tremendous Russian offensive possible ? First there is the fact of Russian superiority in man-power. Not fewer than 300 divisions— 4,000,000 men—have been thrown into the battle. / The number of German divisions engaged on the eastern front has amounted, according to official Russian statements, to 212 divisions ; and the number of satellite divisions has fallen from 60 in 1942 to 25. Of the 16

Rumanian divisions (of very low fighting value) some were engaged in the Kuban and the rest in police duties behind the lines. The Finnish divisions were almost inactive last year. The loss of the other satellite forcesltalian and Hungarian—was again, according to Russian claims, made more than good by the addition of 33 German divisions to the 179 divisions used in the offensive of 1942. Last year, however, the German corps and divisions were very often merely nominal units ; and Russian reports have frequently spoken of “ detachments whipped together from auxiliary forces.” Even on the basis of nominal figures the Russian margin of superiority in man-power has been of the order of 50 per cent. ; actually it has been substantially larger. The other factor which has contributed to the continuous Russian attack has been a change in the technique of fighting. Reports have repeatedly suggested a considerable “ demodernization ” in the weapons employed by the enemy. Fewer tanks and fewer aeroplanes have been employed by the Germans than at any time before. On the Russian side the latest victories have been the triumph of the gun. The concentration of artillery fire on some sectors of the front has been described by Russian Commanders as ten times stronger than the concentration at Verdun in the last war. This is not to say that the tank and aeroplane have been absent from the battle. The Russians seem, in fact, to have attained at least equality in these weapons. But tanks and aircraft have been much less conspicuous than the gun. For the conquest of open steppe the Russian Command relied on the tank ; for the reduction of strong points and fortresses, on the gun ; and for the forcing of swamps and forests round Bryansk, on cavalry. * * * On August 22 last year the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree on “ immediate measures for the restoration of national economy in the districts liberated from German occupation.” The decree, which filled several closely-printed pages in the newspapers Pravda and

Izvestya, is in many respects a unique document. It marks the beginning of the “ journey back ” of the civilian population to the liberated areas. It also reveals something of the desolation and impoverishment which those areas have suffered through war and the German occupation. Their economic restoration has been centrally planned, and though the instructions say very little about the general principles on which the work of reconstruction is to be based, they provide an enormous amount of the most detailed and meticulous information about the first steps which are now to be taken. Strikingly the decree contains no hint about the restoration of the industrial life in the liberated towns. It deals almost exclusively with the rehabilitation of agriculture and railway transport, and with elementary tasks of housing and sanitation, without which no start can be made with reconstruction. The first chapter of the decree provided for the return of evacuated cattle to the collective farms in the provinces of Kalinin, Smolensk, Kursk, Orel, Voronezh, Rostov, Stalingrad, and Stavropol. The total number of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats to be re-evacuated was about 600,000 ; and in the last days of August an extraordinary and dramatic trek started from the remote interior of Russia, and even from Asia. Throughout September droves of cattle were moving steadily westward, and the trek was due to end on October 15. Shortage of transport accounted for the fact that the animals could not be carried by rail; they had to be driven on foot for hundreds of miles, sometimes for more than a thousand miles, as, for instance, from Kazakhstan to the district of Voronezh. The extent to which the returned animals will meet the needs of agriculture in the liberated areas can only be properly judged by comparing their total numbers with the pre-war numbers of cattle in the districts. The Orel district possessed 857,000 horned cattle in 1938 ; under the decree it received 21,000. The Smolensk district had 889,000 horned cattle and received 48,000 ; it had 394,000 horses and received 7,000.

The small numbers of cattle returned are probably due to the fact that the original evacuation from west to east was much less successful in agriculture than in industry. Most of the cattle remained in the west in 1941-42, only to be requisitioned by the Germans or to perish in the fighting.

What is perhaps more surprising is the relatively small number of tractors (5 to 10 per cent, of the pre-war stock in some districts) to be returned and the great emphasis played on supplying the farmers with horse-drawn ploughs. These other agricultural implements must be delivered by the People’s Commissariat for Armaments, which at the beginning of the war took over the factories producing agricultural implements, and converted them to production for war.

Similarly, the supply administration of the Red Army has been ordered to allocate from booty specified quantities of equipment to the reconstructed machine tractor stations in every liberated area —and thus to turn German swords into Russian ploughs. * * ♦ There is no evidence so far that any policy on the ways and means of reconstruction has crystallized in Russia. The new decree is hardly more than a short-term, though amazingly thorough, measure to meet the most urgent needs of the moment.

As the victory draws nearer, however, the pressure of economic facts calls for a broader formulation of Russia’s programme of reconstruction. This, in its turn, involves the linking-up of domestic economic issues with international problems. Russia will unavoidably need the aid of foreign economic resources in the rebuilding of its agriculture, and in the switching-over of its industries from

peace to war.

Indications so far suggest that two parallel lines of action are being contemplated in Moscow. One is directed toward economic co-operation with the Allies. This line of action has found its most distinct expression in the attitude of the Soviet delegation at the Food Conference at Hot Springs. The other is to shift at least a part of the burden of reconstruction on to the shoulders of the defeated enemy, by compelling him to pay reparations and indemnities for the damage done to Russia.

It is highly significant that Moscow has so’ far been the only Allied capital in which the demand for reparations has been firmly and unequivocally stated. An official Commissariat has for some time been preparing the list of Russia’s material losses and assessing their size in terms of finance. Ideological considerations, which in the past caused Russia to take a hostile attitude towards reparations under the Versailles Treaty, have now been discarded.

The case for reparations was recently stated by Professor Varga, the former chief economist of the Communist International, who bitterly criticized the Versailles reparations for more than twenty years.

Professor Varga now declares that Germany could easily have met its financial obligations after the last war and that the burden of reparations was a myth. At the same time, the Russian economic spokesman has raised the problem of reparations not only for Russia, but also for all the occupied nations. The question is still open whether Russia will ultimately put the stronger emphasis, in its reconstruction programme, on economic co-operation with the Allies or on reparations from

Germany.