Frenchmen being thrown by the Germans out of Lorraine, and there were numerous
reports of "Famine in Paris". There were further suggestions of the Soviet Union not being really sympathetic to the Axis Powers; thus, on November 18, TASS denied a
German story that Hungary had joined the German-Italian-Japan axis "with the approval and encouragement of the Soviet Union". Then, as later, there were frequent accounts of German air-raids on England (Coventry, Manchester, etc.) and of the air blockade of
Britain, shipping losses, and so on.
One of the peculiarities of the Soviet-German Pact was that it provided for no "cultural"
contacts between the two countries, and one of the few manifestations of a heightened Russian interest in German Kultur was Eisenstein's production, on November 22, 1940, of the Walküre at the Bolshoi Theatre. A peculiarity of this Eisenstein production was his original and unconventional treatment of the Wagner opera—with pantomime effects
introduced, for instance, in Act I to illustrate Siegmund's narrative. Members of the German Embassy who attended the première referred to the "deliberate Jewish tricks"
with which Eisenstein had desecrated the Master's work. But, on the other hand,
Sieglinde was sung by Mme Spiller, who, according to Moscow gossip, was Molotov's
lady-friend —perhaps a subtle compliment to the Germans.
Nothing much happened in December. There were the usual celebrations of Constitution Day, and there were many self-congratulatory articles saying that, in 1938, the Soviet Union had a population of 170 million, in 1939 one of 183 million, and in 1940, one of 193 million, since the Baltic Republics had joined the USSR and Bessarabia and
Northern Bukovina had been freed from "the yoke of the Rumanian boyars".
The elections in the new Karelo-Finnish Republic, and in the Western Ukraine and
Belorussia later in December proved a "dazzling victory of the Stalin Bloc of Communist and Non-Party Candidates". The press also reported that at a Supreme Soviet election meeting at Czernowitz, the candidate, General G. K. Zhu-kov, Commander of the Special Kiev Military District, had declared to his voters: "Under the wise leadership of Comrade Stalin, our country has become the mightiest country in the world"—a statement
strangely contrasting with the much more cautious words General Zhukov was to use
only a few months later.
The press continued to deal in some detail with the situation in Britain, with Churchill's statement that the danger of an invasion was not over, with British victories in the Western Desert and with Italian defeats in Albania. There was also a report of some
particularly powerful new American bombers; altogether, much interest continued to be shown in American aid to Britain. Occasionally, there were also some more explicitly anti-Nazi items like this in Pravda of December 19: "Hungary: All Jews (except 3,500) Deprived of Voting Rights."
New Year 1941 was celebrated in Russia with the usual exuberance and in the customary holiday atmosphere, complete with the giant New Year parties for children, and
celebrations in millions of homes. The editorials in the press tried to sound highly reassuring. On December 31, 1940 Pravda wrote: "We can look back on 1940 with a feeling of deep satisfaction... As Comrade Kalinin said on November 6, our economic
progress resulted in an eleven per cent increase of production... Much was done in 1940
by the Party and the Government to increase the military might of the USSR and the
defensive strength and military preparedness of the people. There have been great
improvements in the training and education of the Army and Navy personnel, and
important work is being done in the military education of the civilian population, and of our young people in particular... In all fields our successes have been stupendous."
And after recalling once again the incorporation of new territories in the Soviet Union, the editorial concluded: " 1941 will be the fourth year of the third Stalinist Five-Year Plan. And as we enter 1941, which will be a year of an even more tremendous
development of our socialist economy, the Soviet people are looking into their future cheerfully and full of confidence."
Ironically, during the next few days, the Soviet press spoke more and more frequently of the possibility of a German invasion of England, largely on the strength of speculation in the British press. Was there here a touch of wishful thinking? Even in February and
March this motif was frequently to be found in the Russian papers.
Since the Molotov visit to Berlin and, even more so, since the middle of January, the Russians had, indeed, more and more cause for uneasiness, but they continued for as long as possible to hope that Germany was still not interested in the East. On January 7 a photograph—obviously old, and dating from September 1940—was published in Pravda showing a crowd of English children in a trench watching an Anglo-German dogfight in the sky. Would Hitler get bogged down in the West?
However, appearances had to be kept up. On January 11, Pravda announced "Another Victory of Soviet Foreign Policy": the signing of the Soviet-German Agreement on the State Frontier between the two countries, a frontier running from the Igorka river to the Baltic, mostly through "former Poland". There was a picture of Molotov and Schulenburg signing the agreement. The publication of the agreement was accompanied by a
communiqué on reciprocal property claims in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and on the repatriation of Germans from these countries; as well as on a new Mikoyan-Schnurre
economic agreement. All was well, Pravda suggested:
The present agreement, based on the Soviet-German agreement of February 11,
1940, covers the period from February 11, 1941 to August 1, 1942 and marks the
next stage in the economic programme approved by the Soviet and German
Governments. It provides for a much larger volume of trade than that provided for during the previous period. The USSR will send industrial raw materials, oil
products and foodstuffs, particularly grain... Germany will send us industrial
equipment. This new economic agreement of January 10, 1941 marks a great step
forward.
The exact volume and nature of this trade was kept dark at the time, and even today it remains one of the more obscure aspects of the last war. There are conflicting views as to the contribution these Russian supplies made to Germany's war economy. Certain
German studies have tended to exaggerate their importance, while the Russians have
tried, on the contrary, to minimise them. More recently Professor Friedensburg of the West German Deutsches Institut für Wirt Schaftsforschung published a detailed study on the subject. According to him, Germany received from the Soviet Union between January 1, 1940 and June 22, 1941 roughly the following deliveries: 1.5 million tons of grain, 100,000 tons of cotton, 2 million tons of petroleum products, 1.5 million tons of timber, 140,000 tons of manganese and 26,000 tons of chromium.
The last two items were of course of great importance to Germany's war industry at the time when the British blockade had deprived it of many of its customary sources of
supply. According to Friedensburg, Russia had not supplied them before the Soviet-
German Pact had come into force. He also claims that the Russians had resold to
Germany copper bought from the United States. On the other hand, the Russians seem to have received fairly little in return. According to the same author, German statistics for that period show a balance of 239 million Reichsmarks in the Russians' favour, while the Russian statistics for 1940 showed a balance of 380 million roubles also in their favour, a sum which the Hitler régime had never paid and which the author asserts the Russians themselves refrained from claiming after the war, suggesting that they found it more convenient to forget about it.