and panic-mongers. Our people should be fearless in their struggle and should
selflessly fight our patriotic war of liberation against the Fascist enslavers...
After a reference to Lenin, Stalin said:
We must immediately put our whole production on a war footing, and place
everything at the service of the Front and the organisation of the enemy's rout... The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages... We must organise every kind of help for the Red Army, make sure that its ranks are constantly
renewed, and that it is supplied with everything it needs. We must organise the
rapid transport of troops and equipment, and help to the wounded.
... All enterprises must intensify their work and produce more and more military
equipment of every kind... A merciless struggle must be undertaken against all
deserters and panic-mongers... We must destroy spies, diversionists and enemy
paratroopers... Military tribunals should immediately try anyone who, through
panic or cowardice, is interfering with our defence, regardless of position or rank...
And then came the famous "scorched-earth" instructions:
Whenever units of the Red Army are forced to retreat, all railway rolling stock must be driven away. The enemy must not be left a single engine, or a single railway
truck, and not a pound of bread nor a pint of oil. The kolkhozniki must drive away all their livestock, hand their grain reserves to the State organs for evacuation to the rear... All valuable property, whether grain, fuel or non-ferrous metals, which
cannot be evacuated, must be destroyed.
Then followed the "partisan war" instructions:
In the occupied territories partisan units must be formed... There must be
diversionist groups for fighting enemy units, for spreading the partisan war
everywhere, for blowing up and destroying roads and bridges and telephone and
telegraph wires; for setting fire to forests, enemy stores and road convoys. In the occupied areas intolerable conditions must be created for the enemy and his
accomplices, who must be persecuted and destroyed at every step...
This war, Stalin continued, was not an ordinary war between two armies; it was a war of the entire Soviet people against the German-Fascist troops. The purpose of this all-people war was not only to destroy the threat hanging over the Soviet Union, but also to help all the nations of Europe groaning under the German yoke. In this war the Soviet people
would have faithful allies in the peoples of Europe and America, including the German people enslaved by their ringleaders ... the Soviet people's struggle for the freedom of their country would be merged with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence and their democratic freedoms:
In this connection the historic statement of Mr Churchill on Britain's help to the Soviet Union and the statement by the United States Government on its willingness to help our country can only meet with a feeling of gratitude in the hearts of our people, and are highly indicative.
And then came the conclusion:
Comrades, our forces are immeasurably large. The insolent enemy must soon
become aware of this. Together with the Red Army, many thousands of workers,
kolkhozniki and intellectuals are going to the war. Millions more will rise. The workers of Moscow and Leningrad have already begun to form an opolcheniye
(home guard) of many thousands in support of the Red Army. Such opolcheniye
forces must be constituted in every town threatened with invasion...
A State Defence Committee has been formed to deal with the rapid mobilisation of
all the country's resources; all the power and authority of the State are vested in it.
[The members of this Committee, presided over by Stalin, were Molotov (Deputy
Chairman), Voroshilov, Malenkov and Beria, a fact not mentioned in the 1961 History, which merely states that Stalin was Chairman.]
This State Defence Committee has embarked upon its work, and it calls upon the
whole people to rally round the Party of Lenin and Stalin, and round the Soviet
Government for the selfless support of the Red Army and Navy, for the routing of
the enemy, for our victory...
All the strength of the people must be used to smash the enemy. Onward, to victory!
The effect of this speech, addressed to a nervous, and often frightened and bewildered people, was very important. Until then there had been something artificial in the
adulation of Stalin; his name was associated not only with the stupendous effort of the Five-Year Plans, but also with the ruthless methods employed in the collectivisation campaign and, worse still, with the terror of the Purges.
The Soviet people now felt that they had a leader to look to. In his relatively short broadcast Stalin not only created the hope, if not yet the certainty, of victory, but he laid down, in short significant sentences, the whole programme of wartime conduct for a
whole nation. He also appealed to the national pride, to the patriotic instincts of the Russian people. It was a great pull-yourselves-together speech, a blood-sweat-and-tears speech, with Churchill's post-Dunkirk speech as its only parallel.
An admirable description of the effect of Stalin's speech is to be found in Konstantin Simonov's famous novel, The Living and the Dead; here the speech was listened to in a field hospitaclass="underline"
Stalin spoke in a toneless, slow voice, with a strong Georgian accent. Once or twice, during his speech, you could hear a glass click as he drank water. His voice was low and soft, and might have seemed perfectly calm, but for his heavy, tired breathing, and that water he kept drinking during the speech...
There was a discrepancy between that even voice and the tragic situation of which he spoke; and in this discrepancy there was strength. People were not surprised. It was what they were expecting from Stalin.
They loved him in different ways, wholeheartedly, or with reservations; admiring
him and yet fearing him; and some did not like him at all. But nobody doubted his courage and his iron will. And now was a time when these two qualities were needed more than anything else in the man who stood at the head of a country at war.
Stalin did not describe the situation as tragic; such a word would have been hard to imagine as coming from him; but the things of which he spoke— opolcheniye,
partisans, occupied territories, meant the end of illusions... The truth he told was a bitter truth, but at last it was uttered, and people felt that they stood more firmly on the ground...
And the very fact that Stalin should have talked about the unhappy beginning of a vast and terrible war without changing his vocabulary, and that he should have
spoken in his almost usual way about the great but not insuperable difficulties that would have to be overcome— this, too, suggested not weakness, but great strength.