Looking into the heart of Ivan: the WWII Red Army solider
Written: Jun 02 '07 (Updated Nov 30 '07)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Very well-researched; covers men with wide diversity of experiences; well written
Cons: Specialty topic of interest mainly to those interested in WWII, Russia or the Eastern bloc
The Bottom Line: Strongly recommended for WWII buffs. It gives real insight into the men (and some women) in the WWII Red Army. There is little discussion of battles and weaponry, however.
|
|
|
| e2holmes's Full Review: Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1... |
He stands larger than life, a gun grasped firmly in one hand, his strong jaw pointing slightly upward as he fixes his determined gaze somewhere off to the left. Ivan. The WW II Soviet soldier. Any visitor to the Soviet Union has seen him cast in bronze at war memorials or seen him in WWII era placards. To readers of WWII memoirs from German soldiers, he is the faceless infantryman who yells Uhrrah! en mass and launches himself with selfless sacrifice in endless waves against withering German fire. In war, soldiers are always turned into icons -- carefully polished symbols of patriotism and heroism ... (or evil if you are talking about the enemy). But real soldiers are individuals with reals hopes, desires, fears and heartbreak not bronze statues--even Ivan. In this incredibly well-researched book, Catherine Merridale seeks to find the real Ivans and tell their stories.
To understand these men (there are only a few women in the book), Merridale first introduces us to their world. These men and their parents experienced violence on an unprecedented scale. The civil war of 1918-1921, besides creating chaos, killed millions. In its wake were epidemics and a terrible famine. That famine was followed by an even more terrible famine, the famine of 1932-1933, when 7 million died. Then there was the restructuring of society after the civil war: collectivization, totalitarianism, and gulags for the land-owners, business-owners and intelligentsia. At the same time, the young soldiers grew up in a state that sought to remake souls--to remake youth into heroic communists. This last point is very important. Those born from 1921 on, were born into a state that saw as one of its great missions the education of youth and the lifting of people out of poverty. To be a "good Communist" was to devote oneself to the betterment of society, to be upstanding, moral, and clean, and to do heroic deeds. While there were these broad brush shared histories, the experience and views of the men were anything but uniform. Many men came from regions that did not want to be part of the Soviet Union--the Western Ukraine and the Balkans for example. Others served in punishment battalions as a way to do penance for their family's capitalist crimes--or for more mundane crimes. One of the strengths of Merridale's book is that she tells the stories and experiences of men from many different walks of life. Many were your idealist Muscovite, others were village boys for whom the army was a ticket to a new world, some came from the west and others from the far east. Their experiences as soldiers were also diverse: she tells the stories of men who fought on the front lines on the ground and in the tanks, of men who ended up behind the lines and worked as partisans, of men who survived the punishment battalions, of Jewish men, of ardent Communists, of non-political men, and of a few women.
Merridale, from England, is a Soviet historian. Her previous book, Night of Stone, was about how Soviet people dealt with death in the pre- and post-WWII eras. This book, Ivan's War, is based on extensive interviews of veterans, interviews with people (civilians) who lived through the major battles, letters from soldiers, and the archives that were opened up in the post-Soviet Union era. She clearly has much sympathy for the veterans and wants understand their experiences. Though this is a historical analysis, I did not find it dry at all. Part of it is that the experiences of these men and the civilians were so terrible and on such a enormous scale; each chapter goes from one incomprehensible hardship to the next. The book is organized chronologically: from the disastrous Winter War in Finland to the victorious invasion of Germany. Thematically, it is organized around three basic questions: Why did men fight, what did they think of their experience at the time and how did the war change them?
Why did men fight? When Merridale first posed this question, my reaction was, "Well, their country was invaded and if that weren't enough inducement, they would be shot if they didn't fight." She argues that it is actually very hard to get a person to sacrifice themselves, meaning to fight in a situation with death is almost certain like when rushing an entrenched position. When the heavy artillery starts falling, both patriotism--even strong patriotism--and fear are no match for the survival instinct. Panic is the result. British, German, and American armies created the ability to fight hard by creating not only honed skills but also very strong bonds within small groups--this intense loyalty and identification with the group is essential for the ability to fight and sacrifice one's life in spite of intense fear. What Merridale notes right off the bat is that the Red Army was not organized this way--at least for the first few years of the war. The traditional military structure had been replaced with an ideological structure. This was an army where men were supposed to fight for the international proletarian and to die for their fellow soldier, whoever he may be, because of "comradely friendliness". Developing tight-knit loyal teams was not the goal, for both ideological and paranoid reasons. Another reason for the lack of cohesive groups was that Soviet battle groups experienced severe losses. Loss of 80-90% of men in a combat group was very common. Thus for both political and death rate reasons, well-defined tight-knit fighting groups were discouraged. So what enabled these soldiers to fight with the bravery for which they are renown? Merridale makes the case that Brave Ivan is a) part of the revisionist myth of the Red Army soldier and b) resolve emerged across the majority of the army on in the latter part of the war. Through official reports from both sides, letters and interviews, she paints a bleak picture of the Red Army up to 1942 and shows that the Red Army was uniquely unsuccessful at getting men to fight. While Soviet media during this time told a tale of the brave soldier standing firm against the invader, men were deserting en mass, panicking, and refusing orders to shoot. Both the Finns and Germans were surprised by the chaos they encountered, notes Merridale. Much of the first half of the book is thus about what it was like to be in a disintegrating army--and how men reacted when they saw with their own eyes how terribly mismanaged the war was and how cheaply lives were treated. Hint, it sucks.
In the 2nd half of the book and the 2nd half of the war, the mood and behavior of the troops clearly changes. The army is reorganized under more traditional military not political leadership. Training and tactics improve. Men develop new resolve--but casualties are still very, very high which degrades the cohesiveness of fighting units. Instead of the bonds of group loyalty, it is another strong emotion--hatred--that enables men to rush the lines to certain death. Letters from the 2nd half of the war are very different than in the first half of the war; they are characterized by determination...and an unrelenting desire to kill the Fritzes and revenge all that has happened. Few letters seem to even talk about wanting to get home. Why is this interesting? Because it took 2-3 years and high levels loss of life (particularly civilian lives) before hatred and blinding desire for revenge were pervasive among the troops. A few of the German and American memoirs that I've read mention cases where blinding anger enables a soldier to rush through fire with no concern for his own life. This however seemed to be the exception--at least it was something worth remarking on in these memoirs. Both the Russian memoir I've read (The Tank Rider) and Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege mention how this type of rage was pervasive in the Red Army after 1942.
"I have to say that the war has changed me a lot. War does not make people tender. On the contrary, it makes them reserved, rather coarse, and very cruel." Letter from a Red Army soldier from Ivan's War
Part of the drive to understand the man in the Red Army in 1938-1945, it must be said, is to understand what happened in 1945 in Budapest and worse yet in East Prussia. War makes one cruel and inured to death and brutality, but even officers were alarmed and startled by what happened. War atrocities are nothing new. All major wars are have instances where women and girls are gang-raped and then shot or where a large group of civilians are executed. What was different about Budapest and East Prussia was the magnitude, extent, and commonness of these types of extreme brutalities and that they were accompanied by mutilation of the corpses. The reports from civilians all over these regions are chillingly similar: a white hot fury descended upon them that went house to house exacting revenge (the first half of Anthony Beevor's excellent book, The Battle of Berlin, is about the battles and horrors of East Prussia). Merridale spends a whole chapter, with the lovely title of "Despoil the Corpse", to understand what caused men spread across different battle groups and across large geographic regions, to do this. This was not an isolated event in one battle group. She attributes it to the terrible strain of war and loss into which was mixed hateful propaganda, implicit and explicit encouragement from above, and inadequate commitment to discipline from officers. It seemed to be a spasm of violence; after the soldiers passed farther into Germany, their behavior was less horrible. Most women were raped, but not gang-raped to death and rape in front of one's family was less common. Children and old people where not generally killed, and certainly not mutilated. Merridale says that in her interviews with veterans they were exasperated with this focus on rapes of German women. They spent years fighting in inhumane conditions--that is what defined their experience. Yes, the brutalities were terrible--not that any would admit to anything--but they had already become so inured to death and cruelty. The rapes and rampage of 1945 were, from their perspective, a brief, unmemorable and best forgotten part of their experience. The looting, however, that was a different story--all veterans seemed to remember that with great fondness.
This book is a must read for those interested in WWII--the overwhelming majority of which was fought on the Eastern Front. You won't learn about tactics, about troop movements, or about equipment. After reading this book however, you will see the person behind those nameless Red Army faces. This book also helps us grasp the enormity of sacrifice and suffering. 27 million died in the war of which 8 million were Red Army soldiers, but I think the losses are better summed up by another shocking statistic: 90% of men who turned 18 in 1939 died as soldiers in the war.
Related Reviews
Tank Rider A Russian WWII memoir
A Stranger to Myself A German WWII memoir
Stalingrad The movie
Stalingrad: the fateful siege Anthony Beevor's book
EHolmes
http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
e2holmes
|
|
Location: Seattle, WA
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
I'm a biologist with an interest in political history, European history, and film.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.