09.09.2024
Almost eight decades separate us from the day of the Great Victory. It has forever entered the world annals and the historical memory of our country as the embodiment of courage, fortitude, and unity of the Soviet people. This is a feat that has never been equaled.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War did not foreshadow a victorious outcome for us. On the contrary, in the autumn of 1941, when the Wehrmacht was a couple of dozen kilometers from Red Square, the world was sure that the Soviet Union was doomed to military defeat and the subsequent political catastrophe. As the head of the Russian state Vladimir Putin noted, “the gigantic force of Soviet society, united by the desire to defend our native land, rose up against the powerful, armed to the teeth, cold-blooded Nazi invasion machine to take revenge on the enemy who had broken and trampled peaceful life, plans and hopes.” (Putin. 75 years of the Great Victory: shared responsibility before history and the future / President of Russia: official website. Moscow, 2020.)
So, what helped our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers to survive in that seemingly hopeless situation at the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War and to victoriously end it in Berlin?
For me, the answer to this question is obvious. And I think it is also understandable to everyone who is not ideologically blinded, who can see events and facts impartially, as they really are.
It is, first of all, an unprecedented transfer of the national economy to a war footing. The transfer was not only managerial and production, but also spatial. In a matter of months, dozens of factories were sent from territories threatened with Nazi occupation to the Urals, Siberia, and other regions. Shortly, the evacuated enterprises began to operate at full capacity.
Another thing was the promotion on the eve of and during the War to command posts in the Red Army of a new generation of military leaders who had proven their courage, devotion to their homeland, their readiness and ability to conduct military operations in modern conditions. Among them, there were many who began the Great Patriotic War as an ordinary officers and ended it as army and even as front commanders.
Finally, and this is what I consider to be the most important thing. It is the cohesion of society, the desire of the majority of people to do everything to defend the freedom and independence of the Motherland. Something that would seem difficult to expect from citizens of a state that had recently survived a revolution, a civil war, and the cataclysms of the formation of a new social order. We know for sure from documents that in their plans for war against the USSR, the Nazis counted on these factors working in their favor.
I am convinced that in order to achieve victory over the enemy, the strong, unshakable ideological and political cohesion of Soviet society, the patriotism of citizens were of equal, if not greater, significance than such material factors as the country's economic strength, the size and training of its army, the quantity and quality of weapons and military equipment.
And at the initial stage of the war, I believe that it was the spiritual attitude of the Soviet people that played a decisive role in the country's ability to hold out and gather strength. After all, we were up against the strongest army in the world at that time. The military industry of almost all of Europe was working for it. The Soviet Union fought alone, while soldiers and volunteer units from almost all European countries fought on the side of the invaders. I repeat, in those difficult conditions we did not collapse, we fought back primarily because we were superior to the fascist invaders and their accomplices ideologically and morally. I cannot help but note that history is repeating itself. Many of the states that were accomplices of the German fascists in their campaign against the USSR are today actively supporting the neo-Nazi Kiev regime, participate in anti-Russian sanctions, supply weapons and equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their war against our Motherland. We are once again faced with serious challenges and threats, and have new tasks in the field of information, propaganda, and education. And therefore, knowledge of how Victory was forged in this area has not only historical but also modern, relevant significance. It is necessary to turn to this experience again and again, to comprehensively analyze this phenomenon, which I would call the ideology of Victory.
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