Talk:Soviet propaganda during World War II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I removed 90% of the article.

It is author's personal logic based on some newspaper clipping. See policy: wikipedia:No original research; it is inadmiassible in wikipedia. Please start from published scholar work. mikka (t) 16:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 You've got to be kidding me? 2 Removed text 2.1 "The strict discipline" 2.2 Literature 2.3 Propaganda during the battle of Stalingrad

[edit] You've got to be kidding me?

According to the AfD it was a unanimous vote to Keep, I see no reason that you have deleted 99.9% of the entire document! I am reverting the article back to how it was, then it can be decided in which way is best to clean it up. Piecraft 12:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

It is your problem that you don't see the difference between an encyclopedic article and original research. All unreferenced speculations will stay removed. Meanwhile I strongly recommend you to read the policy wikipedia:No original research. The decision to keep has nothing to do with the fact that the text is 100% ungrounded speculation between chaotic seletion of paper clippings. I am not challenging facts, I am challenging interpretations, which are wild author's fantasy IMO. The burden of proof of the sources is on the author. mikka (t) 16:11, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed text

I have copied the removed text here - hopefully we can find some proper citations for at least parts of it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 01:28, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "The strict discipline"

After the defeat at Rostov the leading article of "Pravda" on July 28 was disposed to explain this event as the lack of the Second Front while enumerating nine infantry divisions and two armoured divisions arrived to the USSR "from France and Holland" recently. However on July 29 apparently something had occurred in the supreme levels of authority for on July 30 "Pravda" wrote:

"The military iron self-control is the basis of the military organization. There is no efficient army without a discipline. The Soviet warriors! Not a step back! - this is a call of the homeland. But there is nothing more harmful than to think that if the territory of the USSR is vast, one can retreat farther and farther, that one can give up if only the plot of the Soviet land to the sworn enemy without a maximum efforts, that one can leave this or that town without fighting to the last... The enemy is not so strong as some frightened scaremongers could expect".

The next words sounded more resolutely:

"The Soviet warriors ought to be ready rather to die heroically than to go back on the perfomance of their duty to the homeland". Apparently a gentle hint at the Soviet army of that time could be also seen in the leading article:

"Lenin said during the civil war: "The one who doesn't completely and selflessly help the Red Army, who doesn't keep order and discipline with all his might, is a traitor and betrayer... Comrade Stalin said at the eighth congress of the party... that we would either create a real "strictly disciplined" Workers' and Peasants' Army and defend the republic, or we would be done for".

Moreover, the "Red Star" wrote in the same day:

"It isn't a time for the Red Army to stand for the faint-hearted in its ranks. A coward and a traitor can't hope to mercy... Each commander and political worker by the power given him by the state should provide a such order when even the idea of retreat without an order would be impossible... Not a step back! - this is a behest of the homeland".

On August 1 the "Red Star" added a gloomy detail to the history about twenty-eight guardsmen who died in the battle of Moscow, which hasn't been made known before:

"Let's remember how 28... guardsmen-heroes have dealt with the one contemptible coward. Not being arranged with, the guardsmen shot at the traitor simultaneously and in this sacred volley their resoluteness not to get off from the line, to fight to the last, had sounded". The newspaper also reminded of the hero of the civil war Schors, who had a rule: "A soldier who disengaged without an order of commander is to be shot as for the treachery".

Apparently being leaned on these new measures of the "strict discipline" against "traitors" and "cowards", some political workers of the Red Army have went too far in their actions during the next week. Thus on August 9 the leading article of the "Red Star" said that it's necessary to make distinctions in the end between the incorrigible cowards and those who couldn't stand no longer:

"If you see an obvious enemy: the defeatist, coward or the alarmist... of course it's no use agitating. One must deal with the traitors of the homeland mercilessly. But sometimes there are also those, who need to be given moral support opportunely... and they will take themselves in hand..."

The second part of the same article as if predicted the liquidation of the peoples' commissariat in the form it had existed to this day: "Those comrades who think that in the battle a political worker should act the same way that a commander, are deeply mistaken. They say there is no time to persuade people, only an order should be given, and those who doesn't carry out an order for some reason or other, are to be punished on the spot. Each serviceman is highly responsible for the failure to carry out of the order of the senior commander at the battle-field. But the task of the commissar, the task of the political worker first of all is to prevent any of these incidents". This article thus not only sounded the alarm concerning to the ruthless spreading of the "strict discipline" but also exposed a new relations between the commander and commissar. However a charge of that kind can be traced back much earlier, in the order, signed by Kliment Voroshilov and by secretary of the Leningrad Party cell Zhdanov on July 14: "...some panic-mongers and cowards not only make absence without leave... but also sow the seeds of dissension among the upright and steady soldiers. The commanders and political workers neither stop the panic nor organize and lead their units, and much more reinforce the disorganization and panic by their shameful behaviour".

[edit] Literature

Several writers and poets have also propagandize in their works, e.g. Anna Akhmatova in her "Courage". On June 23, 1942 the famous story "The Science of Hatred" was published by Mikhail Sholokhov. Also the Soviet guerillas in German rear services exchanged an unnecessary pistol for the bundle of the press-cutting articles by Ehrenburg. In July "The Russian People", a play by the "officer's" poet Konstantin Simonov, was published in "Pravda". Among the other poets, such as Semyon Kirsanov or Yevgeniy Dolmatovskiy, a "soldier's" poet Alexey Surkov played an important role. His poem "I Hate!" was published on August 12 in the "Red Star". During the defeat at Lugansk a poem "Kill Him!" by Simonov was also published in the same newspaper, however his most famous poem was "Wait for Me". The best works of that kind also include those by Boris Pasternak, e.g.:

"Do you steel remember that dryness in throat,

When rattling the nude force of evil,

They have been bawling and singing towards us,

And the autumn have made the strides of trials?"

[edit] Propaganda during the battle of Stalingrad

In the beginning of September, 1942 the Soviet newspapers compared Stalingrad to Werden. On September 22 the "Red Star" published a detailed article on tactics of combats for every house and even for every floor and room. The phrases "the heroic Stalingrad" and "the heroic defenders of Stalingrad" became very popular. The spirit of battle and the severe situation during it were described by Simonov, Grossman, Kriger and by many other Soviet writers and journalists. In the end of Septemebr a comparison to Werden was deemed absurd.