Remembering the Red Army

many was celebrated earlier this month in Moscow in the presence of a staggering number of world leaders, including the presidents of the United States and China. The celebration that received considerable publicity in the west hardly created a ripple in our part of the world except some of our senior citizens perhaps recalled how the Nazi's fierce resistance in fighting a rearguard action against the collective military might of nineteen nations changed the shape of things in South Asia by hastening the freedom of India -- the jewel in the British Crown.

Even in its present fractious state, the Russians seldom dispute the glory of this war and their nostalgia of it is at its gripping best. President Putin of the Russian Federation, however, soon learned that not everybody shared his country's enthusiasm over the celebration. The presidents of two Baltic states turned down Russia's invitation to come participate in the festivities. They did not seem to have appreciated Russia's monopolisation of the credit for the fight against the Nazis, and at least one of them, the Lithuanian president, pointed out that the Russians were not the only people to have waged war against the Nazis.

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That could be empirically true. But while the allied troops in the Normandy landing faced only 58 German divisions, the Soviet Union and the Red Army under Josef Stalin had to overcome 228 crack German divisions in their march to the Reichstag. So it would be unfair to steal Putin's thunder, for in spite of what one reads in the history book and in spite of what one sees on the American silver screen, it was really the grit, determination, resilience, and fighting ability of the Red Army under Josef Stalin that played the overwhelming role in the defeat of the Third Reich.

Yet, curiously one does not come across Stalin's name often these days, although there is no shortage of good publications on him. His moniker recently popped up in one of those delightful BBC documentaries depicting a maverick globetrotter desperately searching for Stalin's Russia in a desolate Siberian village steeped in misery. For the viewers the documentary ended with the punchline: Things were different in Stalin's time when there was order and discipline.

That's what the old Soviet Union was really about: order and discipline and, of course, the simple securities of life like having enough food to eat, enough clothes to wear, and enough heating in the long winter. And in the middle of it all was the fearsome image of a ruthless dictator shrouded in mystique. The corpulent Georgian, with his huge moustache and ravenous appetite, Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. Significantly, he was the principal architect of the allied victory in the Second World War.

Much of what the world knew of Stalin came from the campaign that Leon Trotsky, his ideological opponent, orchestrated in the 1930s, described Stalin as a talentless, primitive, and murderous bureaucratic mediocrity. But as Stalin's biographer points out in his fine book, Stalin: A Biography, Josef Stalin is recognised as one of the 20th century's outstanding politicians.

Evil and strange? Cruel and cunning? There is no denying any of these attributes. But as his biographer points out, Stalin was exceptional, gifted, complex, and subtle. The Russians are told by the detractors that Stalin wasn't such a great military strategist, that, like Hitler, he made a series of blunders and that the Soviet Union achieved its great victory "in spite of him."

However Stalin might have been deficient -- and he certainly had no dearth of deficiencies -- the Russians owe the dogged defence of their fatherland in its most critical hour to this irascible old codger, grudgingly tolerated by the nobles like Churchill and Roosevelt throughout their alliance.

The images of a millionaire flashing by in an expensive German car, a blonde cover girl in a fur coat clinging to the steering wheel, or a Russian oligarch occupying a whole suite in a luxurious hotel -- all would have been unthinkable in Stalin's day. But a number of Russians still cherish his memory. His name is still held with a certain awe throughout the length and breadth of Russia. And globally, he is still the best regarded Russian leader since Catherine the Great.

Part of his appeal is possibly due to his humble origin. He was born in 1878 to a drunken cobbler in an unhappy Georgian home. He trained as a priest, experimented in romantic poetry, and subsequently embraced Marxism.

He catapulted Russia to a lofty height by being the first to send a human being into space. It is a tragedy to see what a terrible mess has been made of his great country by his unworthy successors. Russia today is snubbed even by its invited guests due to the role Russia assumed in Europe after winning its great patriotic war.

All these years later, there is not even an iota of appreciation for Russia's role in saving the west from the Nazi holocaust.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.