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Mark Solonin: The Number of Partisans in Belarus Exceeded One In Other Soviet Territory

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Mark Solonin: The Number of Partisans in Belarus Exceeded One In Other Soviet Territory

It's not a version, but a reliable historical fact.

In the interview to Radio Svaboda Russian independent historian Mark Solonin explains reason of the catastrophe of the year 1942; he tells how many military men were shot dead by military tribunals, and states that the thesis "The USSR was preparing the attack against Germany in June 1941", is not a version, but a reliable historical fact.

The ratio of "gone missing" against one murdered equaled to 10-11 persons on some fronts.

- You have been studying the history of World War II in archives of Russia and other countries for years. You have increasingly focused on first months after the war with Germany started. What did cause the catastrophe when millions of Soviet soldiers appeared to have been taken captive?

- Wholesale desertion caused the military catastrophe in the summerof 1941. Wholesale surrender, insubordination, transformation of the army into an armed crowd, which soon became just an unarmed crowd driven by the Nazis to camps. This is confirmed by documents, facts. It's not a value judgment, it's the conclusion grounded on numerous documents and facts. It drastically differs from that written by the Soviet historiography.

If we seek reasons why it all happened, it lies behind the military history I deal with. But it can be noted that there is nothing surprising. People have the instinct of self-preservation, they strive to save their lives. One cannot argue that such wholesale desertion and surrender is something unique in the military history. On the contrary. We see that the armies of slaves have always fought like this. That was nearly the way armies of the Persians and the Greeks, or the Macedonians fought.

- But how was that process stopped in the Soviet army? Was that an objective process or Soviet commanders made specific decisions?

- There was no specific turning point. The process took two years. It is worth paying attention to one of the quantitative indicators - the structure of casualties, the ratio between the murdered and those who surrendered or deserted. This ratio becomes "normal" only in the second half of 1943. And in the summer of 1941 the proportion was reversed. The ratio of "gone missing" against one murdered equaled to 10-11 persons on some fronts. What did promote such a turning point?

First of all, it happened because the Soviet authorities, Comrade Stalin, managed to restrain the situation due to the brutal terror both on the front and in the rear.

In August 1941 famous Order No. 270 was adopted, it was signed by Stalin and marshals; it was prescribed to destroy all who are surrendered by all means. Families of ordinary soldiers who surrendered were deprived of the state's allowance, which meant starvation during the war. Families of commanders were subject to arrest. During the war the Soviet military tribunals killed 2.3 million people, 2/3 of them were civilians. 212 thousand people were shot dead.

The second reason is that the established occupation regime left people no chance for survival.

The number of partisans in Belarus exceeded that in other occupied Soviet territory.

- The partisan movement issue is the most acute, especially in recent years. The major part of the population participated in the partisan movement. How is it possible to assess the efficiency of this movement?

- Historian is attached to archives, and all that he can say is based on the availability of certain documents. The history of the partisan movement is the most classified part of the history of war. Most of funds associated with the partisan movement are in archives of the KGB, the MIA; there is no way to get into it. They mostly do not included in military archives. Therefore, it is difficult to find a more confusing part of the history of war covered with a systematic lie. I am not an expert in this issue, but I have read a lot from qualified historians.

By the winter of 1941-42 years the partisan movement was completely destroyed in almost all occupied territory of the USSR, including Belarus. One can argue whether it was partisans from the local population, or Special Forces units of the NKVD; in any case, they were destroyed until the winter.

The revival of the partisan movement began only in 1942. And only in 1944, a few months before the liberation of Belarus, the number of partisans equaled to hundreds of thousands. The number of partisans in Belarus exceeded that in other occupied Soviet territory.

Their increase was breathtaking, and the movement could no longer include Special Forces units of the NKVD. Locals made up the major part of the people's partisan movement. But ways which caused them to live in forests are a different story. And it's better to stay away from it, at least, because there is no weighty documentary evidence.

The Choice Was Such: To Fight Against Auschwitz For Kolyma, Or Fight For Auschwitz Against Kolyma.

- In today's Russian and in the whole post-Soviet society, there are many myths, far from reality. One such myth is the role of allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. I think I will not be mistaken if I say that today, most Russians, and possibly Belarusians, are confident that the USSR, in fact, alone defeated Germany. Is it possible to assess the role, for example, of the contribution of various countries to the anti-Hitler coalition, in percentage terms?

- This is the mosty important question related to the history of the war. As the first thing we should do is to name who led the war, with whom, what for and against what.

The Second World War is a war that was unleashed by two similar, totalitarian, dictatorial regimes. The war of Hitler and Stalin could not be a war of good against evil. It was a war of two evils. At the time of the beginning of this war, Stalin's regime was incomparably more bloody, terrorist, which destroyed its own citizens in hundreds of thousands and millions, taking into account the camps, the Holodomor. The Hitler regime in terms of the scale of repression against its own population did not approach the Stalinist level by two orders of magnitude.

If there was any relative "good" in the war with certain reservations, then these were the Western allies, the United States and Britain. This is what you need to have in your head when we are discussing the history of the war, since this makes it possible to understand the situation in which the simplest man from Belarus, Ukraine, from anywhere found himself. He was thrown into the war, where he had to fight against Auschwitz for the Kolyma. He could still go to the other side, sign up for the Vlasovites, and fight for Auschwitz against Kolyma. There was no third option.

As for the pure military aspect, it’s clear we will never be able to establish percentage. As I wrote many times, the Soviet Union would have never defeated the fascists alone, that it would have been wrecked. There’s no need to discuss the issue what would have changed there by 1943 – there just would have been no war before 1943. And it would have taken much more time and incomparably many more victims from the Anglo-American allies to defeat Germany, if the Soviet Union hadn’t taken over the military actions against the land troops of Germany.

The war on the sea was completely taken over by the Anglo-American allies, and they won it by smashing the German navy. The production of submarines alone required twice as much resources from Germany as the production of all tanks during the war. The war on the sea was a colossal resource that Germany was forced to take away from the eastern front and sink on the bottom of the Atlantic.

The war in the air was completely won by the Western allies. The famous phrase: "10 thousand antiaircraft guns were looking into the sky of Germany". These resources are greater than all field guns on the eastern front.

The German economy was destroyed by the strategic bombing of the Western allies. The Red Army took over and accomplished the task of destroying three-quarters of the land army of Germany. Plus, the USA throughout the war was the main rear base for Britain and the Soviet Union. So, this is impossible to calculate the exact percentage, but the scale, I think, is clear.

- The current Russian power tends to justify its aggressive policy of the day, the annexation of the Crimea, the aggression in Ukraine, by the value of victory. How did it happen that all these “We Can Repeat It”, all this “victory madness” so easily rooted in the Russian society?

- What happened to the Russian population since 2014, since the annexation of the Crimea - I did not expect this, although there were no illusions. The success of this attempt went beyond the predictable. Why did it succeed? People for two generations purposefully formed a completely fantastic idea of what the Second World War was. Plus, military veterans, with rare exceptions, passed away long ago .

A new generation has appeared to listen to the beautiful tales, the people who glue an obscene picture and “We Can Repeat” sign on their second-hand Opel, for whom the history of the war is some kind of a computer shooter. Plus, the propaganda for 25 hours a day.

Of course, the government took a long way to this - but the result achieved by it surprised me.

- I would like to know your attitude as a professional historian: what do you think about the version set forth in the book “Ice Breaker” by Victor Suvorov, that the USSR prepared to attack Germany in July 1941?

- My attitude is well known. It's not a “version” since long ago. It is a scientifically established truth that is well-substantiated, documented, confirmed by facts and evidence.

The indisputable fact is that Stalin was preparing for war, preparing an offensive operation at the western Soviet borders. You can call it an attack on Germany, but it will not be very accurate. And this operation was to begin in the summer of 1941, in mid-July. And at a time when preparation for this invasion into Europe was in full swing, Hitler outstripped Comrade Stalin by one step.

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