Impact of the Second World War

Model answer

People starved: by November 1941 the bread ration for office workers and dependants was only 125 grams a day, and about 800,000 civilians died, mostly from hunger and cold. The city also had no heating, electricity or running water in the bitter winter of 1941-42.

Model answer

Interpretation A presents Stalin as a great war leader who was responsible for the victory. It stresses his enormous effort - he knew every front and the output of every tank factory and worked through the night - and argues that although he made mistakes in 1941, he learned from them and by the time of Stalingrad listened to his commanders. It also says his decision to stay in Moscow in October 1941 gave the whole nation courage, and concludes that the people won 'under his leadership'.

Interpretation B is much more critical. It argues that the USSR won 'in spite of Stalin as much as because of him'. Instead of excusing his mistakes, B treats them as serious failures: he had destroyed the army's best officers in the purges, ignored the warnings of attack, and caused disasters such as Kiev, where his refusal to allow retreat led to more than half a million men being captured. B says he was slow to trust his generals and gives the credit for victory to ordinary soldiers and workers and to commanders such as Zhukov rather than to Stalin.

Model answer

Interpretation A is convincing about the effects of the war on Soviet power. Soviet industry in the Urals and Siberia did out-produce Germany - in 1942 the USSR built about 24,000 tanks to Germany's 9,000 - and in May 1945 the Red Army captured Berlin. By then the USSR controlled much of eastern Europe and was treated as a great power by Britain and the USA at Yalta. Stalin's prestige had never been higher: he became Marshal in 1943 and Generalissimo in June 1945. However, A is a Party official's victory speech made under Stalin, and its claim that 'all the peoples of the Union' stood united is false: some Soviet citizens had collaborated with the Germans, such as those who joined Vlasov's army, and whole peoples such as the Chechens and Crimean Tatars had been deported. A also says nothing about the cost of the war.

Interpretation B is more convincing about the effects on the Soviet people. Around 27 million Soviet citizens died, most of them civilians. Soviet figures show about 1,700 towns and 70,000 villages destroyed and about 25 million people homeless, and the grain harvest of 1945 was still only about half that of 1940, so hunger continued. B is accurate that about half a million Chechens and Ingush and about 190,000 Crimean Tatars were deported in 1944, and that prisoners returning from German camps were screened by the NKVD and many sent to labour camps. B even accepts A's point that victory strengthened Stalin's dictatorship.

Overall, B is more convincing. A is right that the war made the USSR and Stalin stronger and more respected, but B includes this while also giving the evidence of the enormous human and economic cost, which A ignores. My knowledge of the deaths, the destruction, the deportations and the treatment of returning prisoners supports B's view that by 1945 the Soviet people were victorious but exhausted.

Model answer

Terror and repression helped Stalin keep control, especially in the crisis of 1941-42. The NKVD watched soldiers and civilians alike. Order No. 270 of August 1941 declared that soldiers who surrendered were traitors and threatened the families of captured officers, and Order No. 227 of July 1942, 'Not a step back!', placed blocking detachments behind the front line and sent those who retreated to penal battalions. Generals were made scapegoats: General Pavlov was shot in July 1941. On the home front, workers in war industries who left their jobs were punished as deserters. Whole peoples accused of disloyalty were deported, including the Volga Germans in 1941 and the Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars in 1944, and in 1943 the SMERSH counter-intelligence organisation was set up to hunt for spies and traitors.

Patriotism and propaganda were also very important. The war was presented as the 'Great Patriotic War', a defence of the motherland rather than of communism. Stalin addressed the people as 'brothers and sisters' in his broadcast of 3 July 1941, and his decision to stay in Moscow in October 1941 and to review the parade of 7 November gave people confidence. Propaganda praised Russian heroes such as Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov, and posters such as 'The Motherland Calls!' urged people to fight. In 1943 Stalin allowed the Orthodox Church more freedom, and in 1944 a new national anthem replaced the Internationale. Above all, the brutality of the German occupation turned millions against the invaders, so patriotic propaganda matched what people felt.

Overall, patriotism and propaganda were the more important reason. Terror was important in the panic of 1941-42 and in dealing with groups Stalin did not trust, but terror alone could not have made millions of soldiers and workers endure such enormous losses for four years. The fact that Stalin changed his own policies - reopening churches, praising Russia's past and restoring officers' ranks - shows that he knew loyalty to the homeland mattered more than fear. The two worked together, but it was patriotism, strengthened by anger at the invaders and by victory from Stalingrad onwards, that held the country together.