[lit-ideas] Re: Bet you didn't know Stanislav saved the world...
- From: "Judith Evans" <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 17:31:23 +0100
(Andy Amago)
> Soviets, as militarily-oriented as they were, either never took
> our bait or never baited us to the point of disaster, as when
> Kruschev blinked first. I wonder if it's because they
> experienced first hand the devastation of horrendous war on
> their soil.
Yes -- they mever forgot:
>>>>>>>>>
Civilian casualties in the USSR have been placed roughly at 2,500,000
killed. The loss of population (including both military and civilian
casualties) caused directly or indirectly by the war has been stated at
20,000,000.
>>>>>>>>>>
the defenders of Leningrad fought German soldiers with their bare hands,
ate rats (as they had no other food)... when I was there, a strip of bare
land marked the resistance. But it is Stalingrad (Volgograd) that has
passed into memory and popular history:
>>>>>>>>>>>
On August 23, 1942, precisely at 18:00, one thousand airplanes began to
drop incendiary bombs on Stalingrad. In that city of 600,000 people, there
were many wooden buildings, gas tanks and fuel tanks for industries.
Stalingrad was heavily hit by air attack; one raid of 600 planes started
vast fires and killed 40,000 civilians.
On August 23, the Wehrmacht was in the Stalingrad suburbs, German tanks
reached the Volga river. At that time, the Soviet 62nd Army was not in the
city yet. The first attacks of the German panzers were taken by a single
division of NKVD and some workers from the city tractor factory.
When the Germans entered Stalingrad, they saw nothing but ruins. But
surprisingly, there was life in those ruins, and that life didn't even
think about surrender. The word "surrender" was not even in the vocabulary
of Russian soldiers and civilians trapped in the city. Thousands of micro
battles erupted all over the streets of what used to be a city just weeks
ago. Everybody was fighting, everything was exploding, everywhere was
death. Wehrmacht met the toughest resistance in those ruins, and Stalingrad
came into the history of WWII as one of the worst experiences for the
German army.
>>>>
>Maybe that's why they were so militarily-oriented
> in the first place, but we will never know.
I'd have said Russia's military orientation preceded the Bolshevik coup,
but would have to look a few things up before saying that deifinitely.
What is true is this: the Russians as a whole did not want war. Here more
or less every little village contains a memorial listing a startling number
of its people killed in WWI, but in Russia, more or less every family lost
someone to WWII.
Judy Evans
jaye@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Andy Amago
> Sent: 23 May 2004 16:03
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Bet you didn't know Stanislav saved the
> world...
>
> A.A. Thanks, Eric. I did not know this. It's funny how the
> Soviets, as militarily-oriented as they were, either never took
> our bait or never baited us to the point of disaster, as when
> Kruschev blinked first. I wonder if it's because they
> experienced first hand the devastation of horrendous war on
> their soil. Maybe that's why they were so militarily-oriented
> in the first place, but we will never know.
>
>
>
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