- anteontem
How did the USSR - a country considered a second-rate industrial power, economically inferior to Germany, the USA and the UK - shape its victory over the armies of Hitler's regime, and secure its place among the winners?
While protagonists, witnesses and historians recognize the value of the Red Army, it is much more uncommon to focus on the achievements of the Soviet economy, often a symbol of mismanagement and inefficiency. And yet, while the 1945 victory was a military one, it was also, and perhaps above all, an economic and industrial one. It is this little-known paradox that we intend to shed light on. Between 1941 and 1945, the country wavered, set itself in motion and restructured itself: politically, economically, industrially and socially.
Archives - of combat, of propaganda, of civilians - and historians will analyze the economic strategy deployed by the USSR to defeat Nazi Germany, explaining how the USSR, which was expected to lose, succeeded in mobilizing its people and its resources as no nation had yet done, to the point of halting the inexorable advance of Hitler's troops.
While protagonists, witnesses and historians recognize the value of the Red Army, it is much more uncommon to focus on the achievements of the Soviet economy, often a symbol of mismanagement and inefficiency. And yet, while the 1945 victory was a military one, it was also, and perhaps above all, an economic and industrial one. It is this little-known paradox that we intend to shed light on. Between 1941 and 1945, the country wavered, set itself in motion and restructured itself: politically, economically, industrially and socially.
Archives - of combat, of propaganda, of civilians - and historians will analyze the economic strategy deployed by the USSR to defeat Nazi Germany, explaining how the USSR, which was expected to lose, succeeded in mobilizing its people and its resources as no nation had yet done, to the point of halting the inexorable advance of Hitler's troops.
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00:00Factories on trains.
00:14On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by the Army of the Third Reich.
00:20Hundreds of trains, loaded with machines and workers, made their way east, far from the
00:30fighting.
00:36The Nazi invasion, Operation Barbarossa, relied on surprise and speed, what the Germans called
00:44Blitzkrieg or Lightning War.
00:47The Red Army was crushed.
00:53Ukraine and Belarus, the wealthiest industrial and agricultural states in the USSR, were under
00:59threat from German troops.
01:05Most of the USSR's economy lay in the western part of the country.
01:10The Soviet Union was fighting for its survival.
01:17How could it hope to keep fighting when the plants that made artillery, tanks and munitions
01:23risked falling into enemy hands?
01:36Stalin took a bold and radical decision.
01:40To dismantle, evacuate and reinstall his war industries away from the front.
01:46To stop them from falling into Nazi hands.
01:49The Soviet Union was both an amazing feat and a mystery.
01:53How in a matter of months were they able to uproot and move weapons manufacturers, steelworks,
01:59and stocks of raw materials?
02:01How was the Soviet war economy able to reorganize and rebuild itself to finally produce more arms
02:08than Germany?
02:13In a matter of weeks, the Soviet people, laborers, engineers, technicians, women, youngsters and
02:19children were mobilized in factories for the war effort.
02:31In late 1941, six months after the start of the German invasion and the evacuated plants, production
02:37resumed.
02:52So the good news for the Red Army is that we're most of the way up Table Mountain in terms
02:59of reaching that high plateau of war production, thousands of aircraft and tanks a month, tens
03:08of thousands of guns, millions of rifles and shells are becoming available.
03:15And so the acute shortage of military equipment has gone.
03:24In June 1942, a year after the start of their offensive, the Germans launched
03:29a second blitzkrieg, southwards, in the direction of Baku and its oil fields.
03:40The Red Army was pushed back 400 kilometers.
03:44The important cities of Sebastopol, Varanez and Rostov fell into enemy hands.
03:52Once again, Armament's plants were evacuated, some for the second time.
03:59The German army set its sights on Stalingrad, but still, the USSR refused to collapse.
04:07And by the time you get into the summer and autumn of 1942, I mean, the Soviet army is still retreating.
04:18It's still being carved up by the German army, especially in the south.
04:24But it's no longer desperately short of munitions.
04:29The remarkable thing about the Soviet economy after the impact of Barbarossa is that in 1942,
04:35it began to revive, or at least certainly the war economic part began to revive to an extraordinary degree,
04:43so that by the end of the year, the Soviets were outproducing for Germans in aircraft, in tanks, in other weapons.
04:51It was on the playing field of production that the USSR would earn its first victory against Germany.
05:01The Third Reich seemed like an industrial Goliath, but the Soviet David proved to be more than a match.
05:08Engineer versus engineer, factory versus factory, production methods made all the difference.
05:15Do you know what?
05:16Do you know, especially the full capability of thehãs.
05:19You know, for the size of the Russian army andiß-com
05:27The new version is explained to the surface of the release of the Soyuzov.
05:31The new version of the Russian army andiß-com
05:34The new version was used to be thrown into a circuit, a circuit of the重点,
05:40The new version of the Volga-com, the J Erfahrung, which was released into a circuit of the Meta-0,
05:43The new version of the Russian army andiß-com, the new version of the
05:45The oil is produced in the moving form.
06:00One of the critical things for the Soviet war effort was mass production.
06:03The process of production had to be broken down and simplified,
06:07partly because much of the workforce was basically semi-skilled.
06:12They had to be told what to do,
06:14this had to be relatively simple quite a lot of the workforce couldn't even
06:18read instructions so it had to be simplified and that meant conveyor belt
06:23production it meant flow production things which they had learned actually
06:28from American engineers who'd been invited to the Soviet Union in the 1920s
06:33and early 30s to help with the development of Soviet industry now they
06:38adopted if like a kind of Soviet version of Fordism
06:50so if you look at war production around the world in World War two the two
06:56countries that really cracked mass production were just were Russia and
07:00America and in Britain and Germany you have elements of this but it's still not
07:07really fully developed and one of the things that mass production enabled was
07:12enormous increases in productivity
07:22there's no question the mass production of Soviet equipment in 1942 1943 was a key
07:29factor in turning the tide against the German invaders
07:37in July 1942 the build-up to the Battle of Stalingrad began as German troops
07:44approached the city
07:48the Soviet writer and journalist Vasily Grossman was an eyewitness he wrote in
07:54his novel life and fate two hammers one to the north one to the south each
08:01composed of millions of tons of metal and flesh awaited the signal
08:06mass production mass destruction Stalin refused to evacuate the population
08:35to rain was bought over house by house by house for months
08:40Soviet industry was now able to supply the red army with arms munitions and tanks
08:48the soldiers of the German army lacked weapons fuel and food the military and
08:57industrial balance of power between the Third Reich and the USSR had reversed
09:02now the Soviets are producing very large quantities of equipment it means that they can actually build up very large reserve forces as they do and without that the encirclement of Stalingrad the defeat of the German army in Stalingrad might not have happened
09:04the price of munitions you know that the ruble cost of making a gun or a tank or a plane
09:11you know it fell by money and that the ruble cost of making a gun or a tank or a plane
09:17you know it fell by multiples at the same time as the price of food was rising by multiples so you think of the divergence there you have those two streams again
09:32and it's an enormous change in relative prices and costs and costs by 1942 a loaf of bread
09:39a loaf of bread is value to a starving population of food and it fell by multiples and it fell by multiples at the same time as the price of food was rising by multiples
09:45so you think of the divergence there you have those two streams again and it's an enormous change in relative prices and costs
09:51by 1942 a loaf of bread its value to a starving population is immense whereas weapons have become cheap and abundant
10:06the downside was that to produce the bread they had to keep millions of workers in very low productivity agriculture
10:14whereas a much smaller number of workers could produce much larger quantities of munitions
10:21it's like you know two completely different economic systems that work in the same country
10:31on the regime's propaganda posters faces hollowed
10:37all for the front never had a slogan been so close to reality
10:44the war ate up all resources money raw materials labor and food
11:02a two-headed economic monster reared its head
11:05on one side the war economy which reached record heights of production
11:10on the other the civilian economy totally devastated and getting by on the leftovers
11:19this strict focus on the war effort caused famine on the home front
11:29most people's daily food intake was reduced to a famine diet
11:34with the soviet system of rationing depending on your level in the production chain
11:41so managers and engineers had a bigger ration than trained workers who in turn had a bigger ration than untrained workers and so on
11:52so life consisted in trying to survive and finding better conditions by bargaining
12:03selling the few belongings people may have kept with them
12:07finding a post in the farming sector where people ate a little better
12:13but overall famine reigned in the USSR
12:16at plant 20 in chelyabinsk the trade union leader who was also the plant's doctor wrote
12:31we have an increase in the number of vitamin deficiencies and edemas caused by lack of protein resulting in a high death rate
12:46notably among single workers living in dormitories
12:49if steps are not taken rapidly to improve the food of isolated workers and people with serious deficiencies
13:01the labour situation will be disastrous
13:11starvation became a problem with the impossibility of collecting the harvest
13:18in the western borderlands in the autumn of 1941
13:23and then in 1942 having to run agriculture in a reduced territory
13:29having lost some of the most important grain surplus areas
13:35using a farming population that then consisted largely of women and old people
13:41without chemical fertilizers it was a really disastrous situation
13:45I mean agricultural production fell by two thirds from 1940 to 1942
13:48from 1940 to 1942
13:51from 1940 to 1942
13:55was between now
13:59and so on
14:00thank you
14:02who do you make this affordable
14:05and why you're giving people were making this soup
14:06you were working with us
14:07to ask you
14:08who do you make this beautiful
14:12and why you make people eat?
14:14There are plenty of people on this planet!
14:15You must ask N師y,
14:16You're asked to come to a doctor!
14:17We have a familia.
14:18He's not allowed to do all his family.
14:19But there are no one.
14:21No one is allowed to do all his family.
14:21There is no one who lives in the world.
14:23When they die, they are in a country.
14:26Now they are being interrupted by the world.
14:29It is being punished!
14:44For many Soviet civilians, during the war, the factory, the place they worked at, became
14:58more than just a factory.
15:01It became, for many of them, a way of life.
15:03It was where they got their food, it was where they got company, it's where they often slept.
15:11And it separated them off, really, from the civilians around them, many of whom were very
15:15badly hit by the collapse of food supply and the shortage of civilian goods.
15:21The factory became, for Soviet workers, a real hub.
15:26When you look at the Soviet economy in this period, in 1942, I think is the danger time.
15:46It's an economy where the army is retreating, the capital stock is shrinking, not only because
15:54of invasion, but because it's not being replaced.
15:57Even in the territory that the Soviets still control, there is zero net investment.
16:06And that's because, although some factories are being built or rebuilt, stocks are continually
16:12dwindling.
16:14And people are starving.
16:15The population is shrinking again, not only because of the invasion, but because people
16:19are dying faster than they're being replaced.
16:24And so, if you put those things together, I think then you can say, this was an economy
16:28that was genuinely close to collapse.
16:32And then the question becomes, well, what was it that kept it going?
16:37And here, I think you do have to switch away from the economics of production and crude numbers
16:42and think about motivations.
16:53After all, the Soviet economy and the German economy, particularly in industry, were about
16:57roughly the same size.
16:58You have these two great military forces opposing each other.
17:02What makes the difference that accounts for victory on one side and defeat on the other?
17:07It has, at some point, to be a question of psychological and moral factors and feelings.
17:37One of the real puzzles about the Soviet war economy is, is how the Soviet people put
17:42up with it.
17:43I mean, they put up the conditions that nobody in Germany or in Britain or the United States
17:47would have put up with for a minute.
17:50One of the political skills shown by Stalin and the party leaders during the war was to make
18:04certain concessions and allow a number of local initiatives to see the day.
18:15For example, in the Kolkhoz economy, several million Kolkhoz members were able to increase their
18:25own plot of land.
18:28And this led to the creation of a black marsh, which in turn guaranteed increased supplies
18:35of food to small towns.
18:36In the countryside, farmers began dreaming about a return to working their land for themselves.
19:02And this led to the war.
19:07Religion was no longer banned.
19:10Religious weddings were once again authorized.
19:15Stalin relied on the Orthodox Church to revive Russian patriotism.
19:23For artists like the poetess Anna Akhmatova and the composer Dmitry Shostakovich, censure was
19:34relaxed.
19:35Leonid Trauburg and Grigory Kocenciv, future directors of the film Simple People, could write
19:42their screenplay with a temporary breath of individual freedom.
19:46What a입니다.
19:47And these women were Pelligory Kocenciv, they hosted them all.
19:48Thoseculеспособments are the same.
19:49They captured people every day and every員 and every laborer plays their own.
19:51And every lady does only their own.
19:52They've got the same.
19:53They've got the same.
19:54They've got the same.
19:55They've got the same.
19:56They've got the same.
19:57And then they've got the same.
19:58And then they've got the same.
19:59And they've got the same as a rocket.
20:01The war, shortages, dispersion and evacuation from the centres of power enabled filmmakers,
20:29writers of all kinds, people working in the cultural world and the media,
20:34to find, not exactly breaches, but space in which they could express themselves,
20:42not in counter-narratives, but in ways that didn't exactly toe the party line.
20:50The historian Mikhail Gefter, one of the major Russian historians of the Perestroika period,
21:01developed the idea of a kind of spontaneous de-Stalinisation of minds,
21:09based around members of the armed forces, but also those on the home front,
21:16who suddenly became conscious of their own responsibilities,
21:22of their own role to play in support of the country.
21:26In February 1943, at Stalingrad, the German army found itself surrounded,
21:41and surrendered to the Red Army.
21:56Alexander Wirth was there to witness it.
22:01At the bottom of the trenches, there still lay frozen green Germans,
22:05and frozen grey Russians, and frozen fragments of human shapes,
22:10and there were helmets, Russian and German, lying among the brick debris.
22:15How anyone could have survived here was hard to imagine.
22:26Soviet troops began a march westwards to recapture land lost to the Germans.
22:36One of the problems about waging total war on a huge scale,
22:40and the Second World War was a total war waged on a huge scale,
22:43with armies in millions and millions.
22:46The critical factor is making sure that they're supplied,
22:49that they have adequate food, adequate weapons,
22:52adequate ammunition, adequate explosives, and so on.
22:55You had to be able to move things from the factories of front line.
22:58You had to be able to feed armies,
23:02and to make sure that they would keep fighting.
23:05Logistics was at the core of that.
23:08Stalingrad was a particular example, I think, in logistics.
23:13For the German side, it became increasingly difficult,
23:16as the weather got worse,
23:17to take things all the way to the Stalingrad front.
23:21The Soviets made sure that the railways went up to the Stalingrad front,
23:27and at the end, they were sending 50% more trains and supplies
23:31through to the Stalingrad front than the Germans.
23:34After Stalingrad, the USSR dominated Germany both industrially and militarily.
23:50It counted twice as many soldiers, four times as many guns,
23:54and six times more tanks than the Third Reich.
23:57This reversal of the situation was down to the sacrifice of its soldiers,
24:04the endurance of its civilian population,
24:07and the talent of its engineers.
24:10But Stalin's great patriotic war was also a world war.
24:18The Soviet Union could also count on material aid from its allies,
24:22Great Britain, and more importantly, the United States.
24:32In November 1941, Washington promised Moscow it would give aid for free.
24:38Deliveries began immediately.
24:41Supply convoys took the northern route via the Arctic Ocean and Arkhangelsk,
24:46the southern route via Iran and the Caspian Sea,
24:49or via Vladivostok in the Russian Far East.
24:53The aid program was called Lend-Lease and would continue until the end of the war.
25:01Lend-Lease added to the resources available,
25:07something like 5% in 1942,
25:1110% in 1943 and 1944,
25:15and I'm not sure whether these percentages sound large or small.
25:21To me, they're quite large,
25:23in the sense of an increment of national resources
25:27arriving from outside in a year.
25:31But also, at a moment when the margin of survival was very small,
25:37they added to that margin.
25:40So just the sheer volume of Allied aid was important,
25:45and it took some of the pressure off the Soviet war effort.
25:49U.S. aid completed the Red Army's military material.
26:01The renowned Katusha rocket launchers,
26:03nicknamed Stalin's Organ by German troops,
26:06were often mounted on American Studebaker trucks.
26:13After the tanks and aircraft delivered in 1942,
26:16came trucks, jeeps, fuel, clothing, machines,
26:22and concentrated and canned foodstuffs in 1943.
26:27Soldiers wouldn't have survived at the front without corned beef,
26:34which was actually often pork tushanka
26:37in American cans with labels in Cyrillic.
26:40Soldiers wouldn't have survived at the front without corned beef, which was actually often
26:52pork tushanka in American cans with labels in Cyrillic.
26:58At one point, there were so many of these cans that the soldiers were able to give some
27:03to people on the home front.
27:06You don't fight a war with money, you fight a war with resources.
27:09So when we look at the Soviet war economy, we can see where the resources came from.
27:14They came out of the war factories, bread from farms, army rations from Lend-Lease, soldiers
27:24came from the factory and from the bench, put on uniform and went out to fight.
27:31But all these things have a monetary counterpart, which has to be controlled in order to keep
27:37the war economy from breaking down.
27:47So if you look at the Soviet budget that paid for the war, some of it came from the normal
27:55taxes that were levered in peacetime.
27:57But the problem was that in wartime, civilian economic activity was lower, so fewer taxes
28:03were raised.
28:04So they also borrowed money from their own population.
28:11You should think of that as borrowing in quote marks, because borrowing really was no different
28:16from taxes.
28:17It just meant that the Soviet worker, at the end of the week, picking up wages, was told,
28:24we're keeping back part of your wages because that's your subscription to the war loan.
28:28Congratulations, you've acquired a war loan.
28:31In 1943, resources were readily available.
28:42The Soviet war economy reached its peak.
28:47In 1943, at Kursk in July, then Kharkiv in August, the Red Army was able to gather together
28:53huge concentrations of tanks and claim victory.
28:57Soviet generals could now launch vast combined operations with armored divisions, artillery,
29:14and aviation.
29:19The influx of guns and shells helped artillery divisions to break defenses, destroy resistance
29:26points, and support ground troops.
29:32The Red Army's victories were very costly in human lives and material.
29:38But material remained simple and could easily be repaired and reconditioned.
29:47The tank is repaired far from the field of war.
29:50The Red Army's construction is better than the rest of the war.
29:52In 15 days, the tank was fought on the front of the border.
29:59In these days, the crew destroyed two Tiger, one medium-sized tank, and 300 soldiers and officers.
30:10The unrighteous one will again raise the enemy.
30:13What you didn't really need was what the Germans had, you know, the Tiger tank, which was, you know,
30:22huge and expensive, demanding and skilled labor, and too complex, really, to operate on the battlefield.
30:27What you needed were lots of simple, standard T-34 tanks, which did what you wanted them to do.
30:33The T-34 was a robust, simple, agile, yet strongly armored tank.
30:47Its engine had limited reliability, but that suited the lifetime of a tank in active service.
30:53The key to mass production, of course, is to have standard models, you know, not to have, you know, 10 different aircrafts or 15 different tanks.
31:09By 1943-1944, you know, the Germans had 40 or 50 different makes of aircraft, whereas, you know, in the Soviet Union, you know,
31:19they concentrated just on a standard range of three or four aircraft and produced those in very large quantities.
31:26And it's quantity production that allows you to organize your factory in a particular way,
31:32to simplify the processes of production, just as the Americans did during the Second World War.
31:39And it sold out, and it took us the pilot.
31:42You know, the pilot is done so, what happened?
31:44You are done, and it's done so, what's the pilot?
31:46Ah!
31:46Ah!
31:47Ah!
31:48Ah!
31:48Ah!
31:49Ah!
31:49Oh!
31:50Ah!
31:51The pilot's in the sixth line is the post-c'coop.
31:52Ah!
31:53Ah!
31:54Ah!
31:55Ah!
31:56Ah!
31:57Ah!
31:58Ah!
31:59Ah!
32:00Ah!
32:01Ah!
32:02Ah!
32:03Ah!
32:04Ah!
32:05Ah!
32:06Ah!
32:07Ah!
32:08Ah!
32:09Ah!
32:09Kharkiv, Mariupol, Smolensk, Kyiv.
32:20By late 1943 the Soviets had recaptured two-thirds of their territory lost to the Germans.
32:36The retaking of Kyiv was in November 1943, and that meant that half of Ukraine was already
32:42recaptured and that reconstruction could start.
32:45The regime's priority was the re-industrialization and re-Sovietization of the recaptured republics,
32:52both from a symbolic point of view and because these republics, notably Ukraine, Belarus and
32:57the Baltic states, were historically the most industrialized in the USSR.
33:01So then came the question, in Kharkiv and Kyiv, for example, of do we bring back the evacuated
33:08plants and their machines, or should we take advantage of the destruction to build from
33:13scratch and give these republics, which are in such need, the best Soviet mechanical construction
33:18possible?
33:19And that was the choice that was taken.
33:25Some evacuated plants remained where they were in Siberia, Kazakhstan or the Urals.
33:32Their equipment was worn out, but they would contribute to the economic rise of these Soviet
33:37republics in remote areas and cut off from greater Russia.
33:46Others and their families nonetheless made their way back to their home regions.
33:56Of course, when victory was finally in sight, I think a great many Soviet citizens who'd willingly
34:02worked and fought, wanted to win this war, thought that, you know, they would be rewarded
34:10in some way for the fighting and the working that they'd done.
34:15Somehow or other, the system would relax.
34:17The communism would be less terroristic, but somehow or other, there'd be a better future,
34:22more consumer goods.
34:24Somehow or other, you know, they would be treated better by the regime because of what they'd contributed.
34:33They were wrong.
34:34Society was once again in Stalin's hands, putting an end to dreams of freedom.
34:46The regime resumed its systematic, centralized brutality.
34:59Once again, all decisions on the production volumes of wheat fields, armaments plants and toothbrush
35:05factories were made in Moscow and included in five-year plans.
35:12Once again, the individual vanished into the masses.
35:16The touching and joyful singularity of simple people annoyed the powers that be who decided
35:44to ban the movie.
35:49We don't see enough of the party.
35:54So what do we see?
35:56We see society.
35:57A society that has taken itself in hand, decides its fate, shows solidarity and acts in a single
36:05direction.
36:07But it isn't controlled and led by the party.
36:09And that, in 1945, it might have been okay in 1943, but not in 1945, was seen as totally
36:17unacceptable.
36:18It went against ideological injunctions, that was the problem.
36:25It went against ideological expectations.
36:29So it was considered sufficiently reproachful of the regime for the movie not only to be
36:33reworked, but to be completely banned.
36:44The party was not supposed to meddle in politics.
36:50Politics was confined to those who managed and controlled things, and that was the party.
36:57So the party should run the country, and society should obey and follow orders.
37:02The party should run the country, and it will be our holiday, and when it comes to war, we will feel that it will be our holiday.
37:27The title is absolutely magnificent, simple people, not in the sense of
37:57simpletons, but of just being ordinary people, simple people, and it's thanks to these
38:05simple people, to their bravery, their enthusiasm, their resilience, and their solidarity, that
38:11victory is won.
38:12And in 1945, this went completely against the official party line, because it was at that
38:20moment that Stalin was attributing himself with all the merit for victory.
38:27The last battle was fought in Berlin in April 1945.
38:40The Red Army had liberated Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria.
38:48The disproportion of ground forces was staggering.
38:54The USSR could boast two and a half million soldiers, 6,250 tanks, and 41,000 guns, compared
39:03to one million soldiers, 1,500 tanks, and 9,300 guns for the Germans.
39:15The Third Reich collapsed.
39:18The United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain would divide up the world.
39:27At the end of the war for Stalin, and, of course, for other communist leaders in the Soviet Union, the war
39:41had been clearly a test of the communist system, and it had come through.
39:46If the Soviet Union had defeated in 1941, 1942, the communist system would have been undone, and that would have been the end of it.
39:54But they do reach victory in 1945, comprehensive victory in 1945, and I think, for Stalin, it seems to prove his point.
40:02You know, in the end, you know, in the end, you know, a proletarian state can defeat a capitalist state.
40:14Stalin was the big winner of the great patriotic war.
40:19The USSR extended its grip on the countries of Eastern Europe.
40:23The regime was stronger than ever, and entirely focused on the personality of its dictator.
40:28The victory was massive, the figures mind-boggling, the units were counted in millions, millions of tons of armaments produced, millions of square kilometers gained, millions dead.
40:50The people of the USSR were the biggest losers of World War II.
40:55The Soviet victory in World War II was extremely costly.
41:0426, 27 million war dead.
41:07That's roughly one in eight of the pre-war population.
41:11We have fairly precise figures.
41:15More than 10 million dead out of the 34 million men mobilized.
41:20Also, 11 million direct civilian losses.
41:25And 5 million indirect civilian losses.
41:29Either due to mortality on the home front, or to a deficit of births.
41:35That's the overall loss of life.
41:3926 to 27 million.
41:42But the number of direct victims is 21 million.
41:4610 million soldiers and 11 million civilians.
41:49One can't explain courage.
41:56That of the Soviet people was immense.
42:01But victory wasn't theirs.
42:04In 1945, the simple people who had survived still went hungry.
42:10still lived in inhuman conditions and still worked under the yoke of a regime that had no pity for its people.
42:20If you start the clock in 1905, there's a trauma of the 1905 revolution, which was a real trauma for Russia.
42:31The trauma of World War I, of the Civil War, which in many ways was worse than World War I.
42:37A famine at the end of the Civil War, then there's Stalinist industrialization, a famine in 1932 as a direct consequence of Stalin's agricultural policies and the all-out modernization that Stalin imposed upon the Soviet Union.
42:56In 1937, there's more bloodletting with the Great Terror, so the more weight you place upon the pre-war traumas, the less value you place on the trauma of World War II.
43:12You know, there is a kind of balancing act there.
43:14You know that in 1945, things were terrible, but they were terrible as a product of all of these multiple shocks.
43:30I have learned how faces fall, how terror can escape from lowered eyes,
43:37how suffering can etch cruel pages of cuneiform marks upon the cheeks.
43:46I know how dark or ash-blonde strands of hair can suddenly turn white.
43:53I've learned to recognize the fading smiles on submissive lips.
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