I found this travelogue of Danish author Hans Scherfig’s 1950 trip to the USSR. I think it will be of interest to people here so I have translated it. The illustrations are by Scherfig himself.

In chapter 11 we learn about the revolutionary history of Stalingrad and about Stalin’s role in the defence of Tsaritsyn. Scherfig does not have kind words for Trotsky’s leadership skills. We also get a reminder that capital has waged an unrelenting war of intervention against the USSR ever since the revolution. The ongoing reconstruction of Stalingrad is explained. The delegation visits a tractor factory before enjoying more overwhelming society hospitality back at the hotel.

Travels in the Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Chapter 11

The King of England has presented the city of Stalingrad with a brand-new knight’s sword, which we saw at the museum. We also saw a shield of red plush with gold trim, which the Emperor of Ethiopia has donated. I do not know whether Denmark has given anything as well, but other Western allies have sent bronze plaques and embroidered table doilies. But it was not these objects that made the strongest impression here at the museum, where the battles for Stalingrad are illustrated in a very vivid manner. It is not only the last battle, but also the battles of the Civil War, that have been brought to life. It was always a contested city, a key position for the transport of provisions from south to north. It is no accident that Stalin’s name is tied to this city; already in August 1918 he personally led the defense of Tsaritsyn, as the city was then called, against General Krasnov’s superior Cossack army. The Red Army at Tsaritsyn was commanded by specialists, former tsarist officers for whose technical competence Trotsky had a weakness. Trotsky never recognized the principle fundamental to the relationship between Lenin’s party and the masses; he harbored a deep distrust of the creative capacity of ordinary workers and believed that the workers had to be led by middle-class intellectuals.

It was on that occasion that the fundamental disagreement between Stalin and Trotsky on the army first emerged. The professional officers appointed by Trotsky were unreliable or openly counter-revolutionary; the best might suffice for ordinary warfare, but they were useless for political war. The Soviet government only controlled one-sixth of Russian territory at the time. Krasnov’s army closed on Tsaritsyn in a horseshoe, its two horns touching the Volga. If Tsaritsyn fell, the starving Russia would be cut off from the southern grain belt and Baku’s oil.

New construction in Stalingrad, May 1950

Stalin came to Tsaritsyn as commissar for food supplies. He found the city’s defense disorganized and confused. The city swarmed with counter-revolutionaries; Trotsky’s friend, Nosovich[1], who was to lead the military operations, had gone over to the enemy. From the revolutionary defense council, chaired by Lenin, Stalin now received instructions to restore order, consolidate the various forces into regular military units, appoint competent commanders, and weed out the undisciplined. Stalin cleaned house. He did not share Trotsky’s distrust of the workers. He established a revolutionary war council with men such as Kaganovich[2] and Voroshilov [3]. Voroshilov had just arrived in Tsaritsyn with an army of workers from the Donets basin, whom he had led to the city under constant fighting. He was a worker himself and had worked at an ammunition factory in Tsaritsyn in 1915; he had no military training, his military career began during the battle for Tsaritsyn.

General Krasnov, once confident of victory, was defeated and driven back to the Don. From 1918 to 1920 the Central Committee kept sending Stalin from one front to the next, wherever the revolution was in danger. He secured the Red Army a Bolshevik leadership instead of Trotsky’s specialists, and placed revolutionary workers and peasants such as Voroshilov, Frunze [4], Timoshenko[5], Budyonny[6] and others at the head of the army. In the museum at Stalingrad we saw Budyonny’s worn sabre displayed beside the English king’s pageant sword.

In the summer of 1919 General Wrangel’s Caucasian army advanced into Tsaritsyn, but was driven out again in January 1920. From the east, Kolchak’s army pushed almost to the Volga. Denikin’s troops advanced from the Donets basin toward Moscow. Yudenich’s forces advanced from Estonia toward Petrograd. The Czechs stood in Siberia. The British attacked from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The French landed troops in Odessa. The Japanese occupied Vladivostok. Pilsudski’s Polish hordes invaded Ukraine and Belarus. Such was the interventionist war immediately after the First World War. Krasnov, Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin, Wrangel were all defeated. The foreign troops were driven back. The first military assault of International capital on the Soviet Union ended in collapse. In their documentary book, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, the Americans Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn have demonstrated how this international interventionary war has since been continued in changing forms as a permanent secret war. This ought to be remembered when Western politicians cry out for open borders and free access for spies and saboteurs to the Soviet Union.

Fascism is capitalism unmasked; in the phenomenon of Hitler it bore a particularly magnificent flower. Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union was the second open military intervention of capitalism. It collapsed at Stalingrad. “At Stalingrad the sun set over the German-fascist army,” said Stalin in his speech on the 6th of November 1943 on the occasion of the revolution’s 26th anniversary.

Now Stalingrad is being rebuilt. The architects had wanted to move the city to avoid the work of clearing the ruins, but the people want the city rebuilt where it was. The people who now live in cellars intend to remain there until they can move up to the floor they lived on before the building was destroyed. The city they would not abandon while bombs and rockets and shells rained down upon them, they will not abandon now; Stalingrad will stay where it was.

Many thousands of new buildings have already been constructed in Stalingrad. Schools, hospitals, clubhouses, palaces of culture, theatres, concert halls, libraries, kindergartens seem to take precedence over residential buildings. Still, you see whole new neighbourhoods of new, large housing blocks. Buildings of ten to fifteen storeys are common. They build well and solidly and rather lavishly; you might have expected makeshift barracks and cramped flats in a city where many people still live in huts and dugouts, but evidently they would rather remain a little longer in the dugouts and then get something truly good, instead of making interim housing. In the city centre there will only be public buildings in the future, furnished with great splendour. The residential quarters are mostly built down toward the Volga, and the high clay banks will become marble terraces with gardens and colonnades. Trees are being planted everywhere.

But first and foremost, they have rebuilt industry. Every major factory in Stalingrad is running again. You find power plants, machine shops, tractor works, tool factories, steel mills, ball-bearing plants. There are large canneries, where, among other things, sterlet and caviar from the Volga are packed in tins. There are shoe factories, there are chemical works, there are oil refineries and sawmills.

In our small, tall bus we drove out to the Stalin Works, which lies as an independent city by the river. These colossal tractor factories date from the time of the First Five-Year Plan. They did not stop a single day during the war and the battle for Stalingrad. They were bombed and shelled without cease. Every window was shattered, the roofs had caved in, yet the work went on. In the end the front cut straight through the factory. The Germans occupied one end; at the other, work went on while the Germans were held at bay.

For hours we walked kilometre after kilometre through the vast factory halls. We traced the genesis of the tractors from the furnaces where white-hot steel poured from the smelters, from the rollers that shaped the glowing metal, from the terrible hammers that crashed down upon red steel plates, sending sparks flying about our ears. We were engulfed by the roar of punch presses and cutting machines, deafened by giant steam hammers, drop hammers, stamping presses and drills, blinded by welding arcs, molten iron and bursting sparks. Small motor carts, driven by young laughing girls, darted ceaselessly around us; the noise was so overwhelming we could not hear their horns. Then we reached quieter sections, where metal parts slid along conveyor belts and were clipped together in rapid succession. We learned that a tractor is put together from 3,000 separate metal pieces. A third of the workers were women. The walls bore posters and inscriptions, propaganda for safety devices and hygiene, appeals for peace — peace-mongering, I suppose they would call it in Denmark — charts and tables and statistics on production and the output of the various departments and shifts. Finally we reached a conveyor belt where the finished tractors could be made out, and the last thing to happen was a man climbing aboard, starting the engine, switching on the lights, and driving the new tractor out into the open air, where long lines of them waited to be loaded onto freight cars. We were told that production already exceeded pre-war levels.

Later we drove to the factory club house, an impressive palace on the Volga with a terrace leading down to the shore, containing everything a Soviet worker requires of his club: theatre, concert halls, lecture halls, library, gymnasiums, ateliers, hobby workshops, restaurant, etc. The very people we had seen blackened and sweating in the factory now spend their after-work hours here living a club life that in the West is reserved solely for wealthy English gentlemen.

It was late evening when we left the tractor workers’ house of culture. While the more robust members of our delegation headed for an open-air cinema, Kirkeby and I walked through the streets of Stalingrad, where the lights had come on and people were out promenading, just as in the other Russian cities we had seen, ordinary, well-dressed, cheerful folk. And you wondered how many of them were still living in dugouts.

It grew chilly. A wind was blowing from the steppe and the river, and we seated ourselves in the hotel restaurant and ordered tea. We did not have the energy to face the substantial midnight meal they had intended for us. The waiter was distressed by our lack of appetite, and only after lengthy negotiations in several languages did he consent to let us off with a few hot dishes, a bit of Ukrainian sausage, caviar and green cucumbers, sour cream and pancakes and a couple of desserts with the tea. There were many people in the restaurant. A jazz band was playing, though whether this was the authentic democracy-promoting jazz that friends back in Denmark treat as practically the grand magisterium, I couldn’t say; either way, people were dancing to it seemingly effortlessly. At a neighbouring table three female teachers sat quietly sharing a bottle of red champagne. On the other side sat a married couple with three children eating a substantial meal; now and then the parents would take a dance while the children kept on eating. We recognised some Canadians whom we had met in Moscow; another foreign delegation occupied a long table.

We were exhausted and withdrew to our rooms, weighed down by that last heavy cream cake. For a while I stood on the balcony and looked down at the street, where people were still swarming about as though it was the day before Christmas Eve. The street was ablaze with light. The full moon had risen over the steppe on the other side of the Volga. From a loudspeaker mounted on a lamppost right outside our balcony, the popular song from the film “Circus”  was being sung at great volume: Shiroka strana moya rodnaya — vast is my beloved land.

We have seen only very little of this vast land. Only this morning we were in Moscow, sitting and drinking tea and eating yogurt before we were driven to the airfield. The day before yesterday we were in green Kiev. We have had to set our watches forward, but we have only been in a very small part of this realm. The steppe beyond the river stretches deep into Asia, not ending until somewhere near Mongolia. — Shiroka strana moya rodnaya — — From inside the room, Kirkeby is cursing the loudspeaker, and I shut the balcony doors against the noise and against the night air the hotel maid warned us about.

Original Danish text

Rejse i Sovjetunionen

  • Hans Scherfig, 1950

XI.

Den engelske konge har foræret byen Stalingrad et helt nyt riddersværd, som vi så på museet. Vi så også et skjold af rødt plys med guldkanter, som Etiopiens kejser har skænket. Jeg ved ikke, om Danmark også har giver noger, men andre vestlige allierede har sendt bronceplatter og broderede lyseduge. Det var imidlertid ikke disse genstande, som gjorde det stærkeste indtryk her på museet, hvor kampene om Stalingrad er illustreret på en meget anskuelig måde. Det er ikke bare den sidste kamp, men også borgerkrigens kampe, der er anskueliggjort. Det var altid en omstridt by, en nøglestilling for transporten af levnedsmidler fra syd til nord. Det er ikke tilfældigt, at Stalins navn er knyttet til denne by; allerede i august 1918 ledede han personlig forsvaret af Tsaritsyn, som byen dengang hed, mod general Krasnovs overlegne kosakhær. Den røde hær i Tsaritsyn var ledet af specialister, tidligere tsar-officerer, for hvis sagkundskab Trotskij havde en svaghed. Trotskij anerkendte aldrig det princip, der var grundlæggende for forholdet mellem Lenins parti og masserne; han nærede en dyb mistillid til de almindelige arbejderes skabende evne og mente, at arbejderne måtte føres af middelstandens intellektuelle.

Det var ved denne lejlighed, at den principielle uoverensstemmelse mellem Stalin og Trotskij angående hæren først kom til udtryk. De professionelle officerer, som Trotskij havde udnævnt, var upålidelige eller direkte kontrarevolutionære; de bedste af dem var brugelige i en almindelig militær krig, men var uegnede til en politisk krig. Sovjetregeringen var på det tidspunkt kun herre over en sjettedel af det russiske område. Krasnovs hær rykkede mod Tsaritsyn i hesteskoform, og hærens to spidser nåede frem til Volga. Hvis Tsaritsyn faldt, ville det hungrende Rusland blive afskåret fra forsyninger fra sydens korndistrikter og Bakus olie.

Stalin kom til Tsaritsyn som kommissær for levnedsmiddelforsyningen. Han fandt byens forsvar desorganiseret og forvirret. Byen vrimlede med kontrarevolutionære, Trotskijs ven, Nosovitj, der skulle lede de militære operationer, løb over til fjenden. Fra det revolutionære forsvarsråd, hvis formand var Lenin, fik Stalin nu instruks om at genoprette ordenen, samle de forskellige styrker til regulære militære enheder, udnævne egnede ledere og fjerne de udisciplinerede. Stalin ryddede op. Han havde ikke Trotskijs mistillid til arbejderne. Han oprettede et revolutionært krigsråd med mænd som Kaganovitj og Vorosjilov. Vorosjilov var netop kommet til Tsaritsyn med en hær af arbejdere fra Donets-bækkenet, som han under stadige kampe havde ført til byen. Han selv var arbejder og havde i 1915 arbejdet ved en ammunitionsfabrik i Tsaritsyn, nogen militær uddannelse havde han ikke, hans militære løbebane begyndte under kampen om Tsaritsyn.

Den sejrsikre general Krasnov blev slået og drevet tilbage til Don. Mellem 1918 og 1920 blev Stalin stadig af centralkomitéen sendt fra den ene front til den anden, til det sted, hvor revolutionen var i fare. Han sikrede den røde hær en bolsjevikisk ledelse i stedet for Trotskijs specialister og bragte revolutionere arbejdere og bønder som Vorosjilov, Frunze, Timosjenko, Budjonnyj og andre i spidsen for hæren. I museet i Stalingrad så vi Budjonnyjs slidte krumsabel ved siden af den engelske konges teatersværd.

I sommeren 1919 rykkede general Wrangels kaukasiske hær ind i Tsaritsyn, men blev fordrevet igen i januar 1920. Koltjaks armé nåede fra øst næsten til Volga. Denikins tropper rykkede frem fra Donetsbækkenet mod Moskva. Judenitjs styrker rykkede fra Estland mod Petrograd. Tjekerne stod i Sibirien. Englænderne angreb fra Murmansk og Arkangelsk. Franskmændene landsatre tropper i Odessa. Japanerne besatte Vladivostok. Pilsudskis polske paner invaderede Ukraine og Hviderusland. Sådan var interventionskrigen umiddelbart efter den første verdenskrig. Krasnov, Koltjak, Judenitj, Denikin, Wrangel blev alle slåer. De udenlandske tropper blev drevet tilbage. Den internationale kapitals første militære overfald på Sovjetunionen endte med sammebrud. Amerikanerne Michael Sayers og Albert E. Kahn har i deres dokumentariske bog, The great conspiracy against Russia påvist, hvordan denne internationale interventionskrig siden er blevet fortsat under skiftende former som en permanent hemmelig krig. Det bør erindres, når vestens politikere råber på åbne grænser og fri adgang for spioner og sabotører til Sovjetunionen.

Fascismen er kapitalismen uden maske; med fænomenet Hitler satte den sig en særlig pragtfuld blomst. Hitlers overfald på Sovjetunionen var kapitalismens anden åbenlyse militære intervention. Den brød sammen ved Stalingrad. »Ved Stalingrad gik solen ned over den tysk-fascistiske hær«, sagde Stalin i sin tale den 6. november 1943 i anledning af revolutionens 26-årsdag.

Nu bygger man Stalingrad op igen. Arkitekterne havde ønsket at flytte byen for at spare rydningsarbejdet, men befolkningen vil have byen genopbygget der, hvor den var. De mennesker, som nu bor i kældere, agter at blive der, indtil de kan rykke op i den etage, de beboede, før huset blev ødelagt. Den by, man ikke ville forlade, da bomber og raketter og granater regnede ned over dem, vil man heller ikke forlade nu, Stalingrad skal være, hvor den var.

Der er allerede rejst mange tusind nye bygninger i Stalingrad. Skoler, hospitaler, klubhuse, kulturpaladser, teatre, koncertsale, biblioteker, børnehaver synes at gå forud for beboelseshuse. Man ser dog hele kvarterer af nye store boligblokke. Huse på 10-15 etager er almindelige. Der bygges godt og solidt og temmelig ødselt; man kunne vente husvildebarakker og skrabede lejligheder i en by, hvor mange mennesker endnu bor i hytter og huler, men man vil åbenbart hellere blive lidt længere i hulerne og så få noget rigtigt godt, fremfor at lave interimistiske boliger. I byens centrum vil der fremtidig kun være offentlige bygninger, som udstyres med stor pragt. Boligkvartererne bygges fortrinsvis ned mod Volga, og de høje lerede brinker bliver til marmorterrasser med haver og søjlegange. Alle vegne plantes der træer.

Men først og fremmest har man genopbygget industrien. Alle Stalingrads vigtigste fabrikker er i gang. Der findes kraftværker, maskinværksteder, traktor-fabrikker, værktøjsfabriker, stålværker, kuglelejefabriker. Der er store konservesfabriker, hvor bl.a. støren og kaviaren fra Volga pakkes i dåser. Det er skotøjsfabriker, der er kemiske fabriker, der er ofieraffinaderier og savværker.

I vores lille høje rutebil kørte vi ud til Stalinværkerne, der ligger som en selvstændig by ved floden. Disse vældige traktorfabriker stammer fra den første femårsplans tid. Under krigen og kampen om Stalingrad standsede de ikke een dag. De blev til stadighed bombarderet og beskudt. Alle ruder var knust, tagene var styrtet sammen, men arbejdet fortsatte. Tilsidst gik fronten tvars igennem fabriken. Tyskerne holdt den ene ende besat, i den anden ende arbejdede man stadig, samtidig med at man holdt tyskerne stangen.

I flere timer vandrede vi kilometer efter kilometer gennem de mægtige fabrikshaller. Vi fulgte traktorernes tilblivelse fra steder, hvor hvidglødende stål flød ud af smelteovne, hvor det hede metal blev valset, hvor skrækkelige hamre faldt bragende ned på røde stålplader, så gnisterne føg os om ørerne. Vi oplevede larmen fra standsemaskiner og skæreapparater, vi blev døvet af kæmpe-damphamre og rambukke og prægepresser og boremaskiner, vi blev blændet af svejseflammer og flydende jern og sprudlende gnister. Små motor-transportvogne, ført af unge lattermilde piger susede ustandselig om os; larmen var så stor, at vi ikke kunne høre deres tudehorn. Så kom vi til mildere afdelinger, hvor forskellige metaldele kom glidende på samlebånd og blev hæfter til hinanden i hurtigt tempo. Vi fik at vide, at en traktor bliver føjet sammen af 3000 forskellige stykker metal. En trediedel af arbejderne var kvinder. På væggene var der plakater og inskriptioner, propaganda for sikkerhedsanordninger og hygiejne, opråb om fred — fredshetz ville man vel kalde det i Danmark — kurver og tabeller og statistiker angående produktionen og de forskellige afdelingers og sjaks præstationer. Omsider nåede vi frem til et samlebånd, hvor man kunne skelne de færdige traktorer, og det sidste, det skete, var, at en mand kravlede op og startede motoren og tændte lanternerne og kjørte den nye traktor ud i det fri, hvor lange rækker ventede på at blive læsset på godsvogne. Man fortalte os, at produktionen allerede nu er større end før krigen.

Senere kørte vi til fabrikens klubhus, et vældigt palads ved Volga med terrasse ned til stranden, indeholdende alt det, som en sovjetarbejder kræver af sin klub: teater, koncertsale, foredragssale, bibliotek, gymnastiksale, atelierer, hobbyværksteder, restaurant osv. De mennesker, som vi havde set sorte og svedige i fabriken, fører her efter arbejdstiden et klubliv, som det i vesten kun er velhavende engelske gentlemen beskåret.

Det var sent om aftenen, da vi forlod traktorarbejdernes kulturhus. Og mens de mere hårdføre i delegationen begav sig til en friluftsbiograf, spadserede Kirkeby og jeg i Stalingrads gader, hvor lygterne nu var tændt, og hvor folk promenerede som i de andre russiske byer, vi havde set, almindelige, velklædre, muntre mennesker. Og man tænkte på, hvor mange af dem, der mon boede i huler.

Det blev køligt. Det blæste fra steppen og floden, og vi satte os i hotellets restaurant og bestilte te. Vi orkede ikke at gå i gang med det solide midnats-måltid, som man havde tiltænkt os. Tjeneren var bekymret over vores appetitIøshed og gik først efter lange forhandlinger på flere sprog med til at lade os slippe med nogle få varme retter, lidt ukrainsk pølse, kaviar og grønne agurker, sur fløde og pandekager og et par desserter til teen. Der var mange mennesker i restaurationen. Et jazzorkester spillede, men om det var den ægte demokratibefordrende jazz, som venner i Danmark betragter som noget i retning af det store magisterium, kunne jeg ikke afgøre, folk dansede i hvert fald til det tilsyneladende ubesværet. Ved et nabobord sad tre lærerinder og delte i al stilfærdighed en flaske rød champagne. På den anden side sad et ægtepar med tre børn og spiste et solidt måltid, engang imellem tog forældrene sig en dans, mens børnene spiste videre. Vi genkendte nogle kanadiere, som vi havde truffet i Moskva, en anden udenlandsk delegation optog et langt bord.

Vi var dødtrætte og trak os tilbage til vores værelser tyngede af den sidste svære cremekage. Jeg stod lidt på altanen og så ned på gaden, hvor folk stadig myldrede, som om det var dagen før juleaften. Gaden strålede af lys. Fuldmånen var stået op over steppen på den anden side Volga. Fra en højttaler, der var anbragt på en lysmast lige uden for vores altan, blev der sunget med stor styrke den populære sang fra filmen »Cirkus«: Sjiroká straná mojá rodnája — vidtstrakt er mit kære land.

Vi har kun set ganske lidt af dette vidtstrakte land. Endnu i morges var vi i Moskva og sad og drak te og spiste jogurt, før vi blev kørt til flyvepladsen. I forgårs var vi i det grønne Kijev. Vi har måttet stille urene frem, men vi har kun været i en ganske lille del af dette rige. Steppen på den anden side floden strækker sig langt ind i Asien, den ender først et sted i nærheden af Mongoliet. — Sjiroká straná mojá rodnája — — Inde fra værelset bander Kirkeby over højttaleren, og jeg lukker altandørene for støjen og for den natteluft, som stuepigen på hotellet har advaret imod.

  1. Anatoliĭ Leonidovich Nosovich (1878-1968). Tsarist colonel and anti-communist infiltrator. Sabotaged the defence of Tsaritsyn as commander of the North Caucasus military district. Arrested by Stalin in June 1918 but released again after pressure from Trotsky. Following his release he continued to sabotage the war effort until he defected to the whites in October 1918. ↩︎

  2. Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (1893-1991), Soviet politician and close ally of Stalin. Last surviving old Bolchevik. ↩︎

  3. Kliment Yefremovich “Klim” Voroshilov (1881-1969), Soviet military officer who fought with distinction in the battle of Tsaritsyn where he also befriended Stalin. Marshal of the Soviet Union from 1935. ↩︎

  4. Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (1885-1925), Soviet revolutionary, politician, army officer and military theorist. ↩︎

  5. Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (1895-1970), Soviet military commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and one of the most prominent Red Army commanders during the Second World War. ↩︎

  6. Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (1883-1973), Russian and Soviet cavalryman, military commander during the Russian Civil War, Polish–Soviet War and World War II. ↩︎