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Stalin and the Betrayal of Leningrad
By John Barber
The 900-day siege of Leningrad created heroes as well as victims,
and gave the city a taste for independence. Dr John Barber
relives the city's struggle and explains why Stalin felt so
threatened by the former capital that he purged 2,000 of its
inhabitants.
Stalin and Leningrad
Stalin was always suspicious of Russia's former capital. Its huge
Stalin seized the
cultural, scientific and economic importance, its historical role as
opportunity presented
the cradle of the 1917 Revolution, its pre-eminent position in the
by Kirov's death to
history of the Russian intelligentsia - all produced a dangerous
purge Leningrad of
spirit of independence when viewed from the Kremlin. From
former oppositionists
1918 to 1926, moreover, it was the power base of Grigorii
Zinoviev, one of Stalin's main rivals to succeed Lenin.
After Zinoviev's downfall Stalin installed Sergei Kirov as first secretary of the Leningrad party, and
Trotsky's and Zinoviev's followers were ruthlessly purged. Though a loyal Stalinist, Kirov may well
also, in turn, have come to be seen as a threat. A popular figure and - unlike Stalin - a Russian, by the
early 1930s he was certainly seen by some in the Party as preferable to Stalin as leader. His
assassination in December 1934 has often been attributed to Stalin, though official investigations
under Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin failed to unearth conclusive evidence of this. What is
certain is that Stalin seized the opportunity presented by Kirov's death to purge Leningrad of former
oppositionists and members of the old ruling and professional classes - and also to appoint one of the
rising generation of Stalinist cadres, Andrei Zhdanov, as ruler of the USSR's second city.
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The coming of war
On 22nd June 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, aimed
Stalin expected Hitler
at destroying Bolshevism and annexing vast areas of the USSR
to turn eastwards - but
to the Third Reich. With the advantage of surprise the
only after Britain had
Wehrmacht inflicted massive losses on the Red Army, rapidly
been subdued
penetrating deep into Soviet territory. Historians agree that
blame for the USSR's disastrous unpreparedness for war must be laid at Stalin's door. But why did
this ultra-suspicious man fail to heed innumerable warnings of an imminent German attack?
The accusation by Solzhenitsyn and others that he trusted Hitler to keep to the terms of the Nazi-
Soviet Pact of August 1939 is unconvincing. So too is the theory advanced by revisionist German
historians, and most controversially by the Russian émigré Victor Suvorov, that Operation
Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike to forestall a planned Soviet offensive in summer 1941. Most of
the evidence indicates that Stalin indeed expected Hitler to turn eastwards - but only after Britain had
been subdued. To him it made no sense for Germany to fight on two fronts; so the USSR still had
time to prepare for war. What Stalin failed to recognise was that it was precisely this weakness that
gave Hitler every reason to crush the Soviet Union as soon as possible.
Leningrad's ordeal
The city on the Neva was one of the Germans' main strategic
News about
targets. Such was the speed of Army Group North's advance that
Leningrad's ordeal was
by the end of August they had reached Leningrad, and within
totally censored
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BBC - History - Stalin and the Betrayal of Leningrad Strona 3 z 5
days had cut off all land approaches to it. Did Hitler really intend,
as he promised, to raze it to the ground? Would ideological motives have taken precedence over the
benefits of gaining control of its huge productive capacity? Quite possibly, not least because Soviet
scorched earth policy would have left of little of value to the Germans.
Stalin, however, was determined to hold the city at all costs. The collapse of the Leningrad front
would make Moscow, whose outer defences the Wehrmacht was rapidly penetrating, still more
vulnerable; and its loss would deprive the Red Army of vital weapons and munitions. Georgii
Zhukov was dispatched to galvanise Leningrad's demoralised defenders. He did so with such effect
that Hitler abandoned the idea of taking the city by storm. Now the plan was to starve it into
surrender.
The result in winter 1941 - 2 was the worst famine ever in a developed society. Two and a half
million people were trapped in Leningrad. With low reserves of food and fuel, only a trickle of
supplies, and rations at starvation level, without heating or lighting, running water or drainage, and
exposed to one of the bitterest winters on record as well as to continual bombing and shelling, they
died in appalling numbers. By the time spring came, half a million people were dead. Altogether
around a third of the population would die during nearly 900 days of siege, a third would be
evacuated, and a third would remain.
Stalin has been accused of sacrificing Leningrad, of indifference to its population's fate, with some
justice. For him the needs of the Red Army had total priority. This is why the evacuation of civilians
by the ice road across Lake Ladoga was delayed for weeks. A large-scale air-lift of food into the city
could have saved many lives, though it would have diverted planes from the military campaign. And
while thousands were dying every day, news about Leningrad's ordeal was totally censored.
Nonetheless, the Soviet authorities got supplies through to the starving city, got people out, kept
morale from collapsing, and eventually lifted the siege. Some of the credit for this belongs to Stalin.
What is also certain is that Leningrad's fate would have been far worse had the city fallen to the
Nazis.
The Leningrad Affair
In the immediate aftermath of war, Leningrad's fortunes revived.
Stalin was well aware
Substantial resources were allocated to the huge task of restoring
of the distinctive ethos
the shattered infrastructure of the city and its surroundings. Its
that three years of
heroism was praised and a museum to commemorate the siege
relative autonomy from
opened. Zhdanov was recalled to Moscow to become, by 1946,
Moscow had fostered
the leading figure in the party hierarchy after Stalin himself. His
in Leningrad
former deputy, AA Kuznetsov, was also brought to Moscow as a
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secretary of the Party Central Committee. Another Leningrader, NA Voznesensky, was now in
charge of planning the Soviet economy and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers.
But Stalin was well aware of the distinctive ethos that three years of relative autonomy from
Moscow had fostered in Leningrad; and his suspicions were fed by two of the main contenders for
power, Lavrentii Beria and Georgii Malenkov. In 1946 Stalin gave Zhdanov the task of denouncing
two of Leningrad's leading writers, Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, as part of a vicious
campaign against 'bourgeois formalism' in Soviet culture known, unfairly, to history as the
Zhdanovshchina. In spring 1948 his son, a Central Committee official, was severely criticised for
ideological errors. There were signs that Zhdanov himself was falling from favour, when in August
he suffered a massive heart attack and died.
This tipped the balance in the Kremlin power struggle. Deprived of Zhdanov's protection,
Kuznetsov, Voznesensky, Leningrad's current leaders, PS Popkov and YF Lazutin, and former
Leningrad officials including MI Rodionov, prime minister of the Russian Republic, were arrested
on trumped-up charges in 1949. After long interrogations and brief secret trials, they were shot in
October 1950. The Leningrad party organisation was purged, and some 2,000 people imprisoned or
exiled. The siege museum was closed, to be reopened 40 years later. For many years Leningrad's
tragic and heroic wartime history would be barely acknowledged, and important aspects of what
happened remain unknown to this day.
The aging dictator
The leading victims of the Leningrad Affair were the highest
Within hours of Stalin's
ranking figures to be eliminated in Stalin's last years, but it was
death they had begun
only one of a series of purges of 'enemies of the people' within
demolishing their
the party and state apparatus, culminating in the 'Doctors' Plot' of
master's legacy
1953. While the scale of executions came nowhere near the 1937
- 9 Terror - he had no desire to see the purge spiral out of control as it had then - this was in many
ways the darkest period of the Stalin era.
Attributing this to the aging dictator's paranoia is part of the explanation. He was by now a sick man
- the enormous strain of leading the Soviet war effort had taken its toll, and he suffered a stroke in
autumn 1945. Stalin spent months each year at his dachas by the Black Sea. Even in Moscow he left
it to others to preside at the Council of Ministers or Secretariat of the Party Central Committee. The
day-to-day running of the party and state machine was increasingly in the hands of men like
Malenkov, Khrushchev, Beria and Bulganin. Stalin retained control through the continuous flow of
information, his monopoly of secret intelligence and his immense authority - in these years his cult
of the personality reached its apogee. He was all too aware of his failing powers, and this made him
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all the more likely to intervene, with potentially devastating effect, in the political process.
But not only this. The post-war Soviet Union faced major economic and social problems, soon in the
dangerous context of the Cold War. Labour productivity was low, living conditions for many
abysmal. There was a serious shortage of manpower (27 million had died in the war), and key areas
of science and technology lagged behind the West. The younger men around Stalin were beginning
to look for new solutions, as well, inevitably, as to think about the succession.
The dictator's response was to turn to tried and tested methods of the past - control, vigilance,
dogma, repression - to preserve what he had created and his own power. Had he lived longer, like his
admirer Mao Tse-Tung, he might well have plunged his country into a mass campaign to eliminate
all threats to the victory of Communism. Fortunately for the Soviet people fate intervened. On 1st
March 1953, Stalin suffered a massive stroke. Due in part to the deliberate inactivity of his closest
comrades, he died five days later at the age of 74. Within hours they had begun demolishing their
master's legacy. And among their first actions would be the reinvestigation of the Leningrad Affair,
leading to its denunciation as pure fabrication.
John Barber is a Fellow of King's College Cambridge and Senior Lecturer in Politics at
the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Soviet Historians in Crisis, 1928-32,
co-author (with Mark Harrison) of The Soviet Home Front, 1941-45: A Social and
Economic History of the USSR in World War II, co-editor (with Mark Harrison) of The
Soviet Defence-Industry Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev and co-editor (with Andrei
Dzeniskevich) of Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad (forthcoming). He is currently
writing a biography of Joseph Stalin.
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Russia ( ), by
Laurence Rees
Read on
The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury (Pan, 2000)
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy by Dmitrii Volkogonov, translated by Harold Shukman (Grove, 1991)
Stalin: The Man and His Era by Adam Ulam (1989)
Stalin by Edvard Radzinskii, translated by HT Willets (Sceptre, 1997)
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