Catherine Merridale > Quotes

“The gentleness, the sentimentality, of many Soviet troops toward small children in Prussia was noted at the time. A woman with a baby, local people learned, was practically immune to rape. But even sentimental troops, the men who kept their pockets full of sweets for hungry German kids, worried about their families back home. It was a long time since any had seen their children.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945

“Assisted by Samuel Collins, the tsar embarked on a series of scientific and alchemical experiments, to conduct which he imported a range of new devices – phials, metals, lenses and measuring instruments – from the German lands. These were exotica in their own right, and since they had no native Russian names, many were called by their original German ones, beginning a long tradition of importing German scientific terms into the Russian language.”
― Catherine Merridale, Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

“Rape was not the only crime that Soviet soldiers would commit on their sweep through Prussia. Towns were burned, officials murdered, and columns of refugees were strafed and shelled as they fled west towards Berlin. But of the violent crimes, rape was the most prevalent. One reason was that women far outnumbered men among German civilians, and probably in the entire surviving population, since so few soldiers were left. However, other pressures were at work as well. Rape is a common instrument of war, a chillingly familiar accompaniment to conquest and military occupation. The atrocities in East Prussia could be compared to others, such as those in Bosnia or Bangladesh.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“The history of Lenin’s train is not exclusively the property of the Soviets. In part, it is a parable about great-power intrigue, and one rule there is that great powers almost always get things wrong.”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“The men knew that their own conduct was turning brutal. “I have to say that the war has changed me a lot,” Aronov wrote. “War does not make people tender. On the contrary, it makes them reserved, rather coarse, and very cruel. That’s a fact.”4”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945

“The last blow fell in 1947, when Stalin ordered that the streets of Soviet cities should be cleared of beggars, many of whom were amputees. Maimed veterans who had chosen urban life were herded back into trains, this time bound for the north, and especially for an island on the far side of Lake Ladoga, Valaam. Stalin’s unwilling lepers often died in exile.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“An oppressed class which does not strive to learn the use of weapons [the Russian word, oruzhiia, contains another wonderful long r], to practice the use of weapons, to own weapons, deserves to be mistreated … The demand for disarmament in the present-day world is nothing but an expression of despair.”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“Tank crews were bound together by the threat of a collective death. After the infantry, whose service was almost guaranteed to end in invalidity or death – or, as they would quip, in ‘the department of health [zdravotdel] or the department of the earth [zemotdel]’ – armoured and mechanized troops faced the most certain danger. Of the 403,272 tank men (including a small number of tank women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic soldiers knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew – or those, at least, who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself – would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armoured coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply ‘boiling up’; the tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. ‘Have you burned yet?’ was a common question for tank men to ask each other when they met for the first time.”
― catherine merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“As modern tyrannies are swept away (and every honest heart delights), the quick-thinking servants of the world’s great powers still proffer plans to intervene, to jostle, scheme and sponsor factions that they barely understand.”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“the sound of tramping feet beat out a requiem for the old world - but no one could be sure where it might lead”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“The idea that the boys will soon be back or that the enemy will be destroyed with surgical precision... serves to foster a confident, even optimistic mood at times when gloom might be more natural.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“Sometimes a scoundrel is useful to our party precisely because he is a scoundrel. V. I. Lenin”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“Kerensky he dismissed in yet another snappy line, describing him as ‘a balalaika on which they play to deceive the workers and peasants’.”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“The fate of one, P. M. Gavrilov, who was among the very few survivors of the battle of Brest in 1941, would prove the quality of Soviet justice. Gavrilov was a real hero. Although he had been wounded, and although certain that he would die, he fought to his last bullet, saving one grenade to hurl at the enemy as he passed out from loss of blood. His courage so impressed the Wehrmacht (which was seldom given to sentimental acts) that German soldiers carried his almost lifeless body to a dressing station, whence he was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. It was for this act of ‘surrender’ that he stood accused after the liberation of his German camp in May 1945. His next home was a camp again, this time a Soviet one. In all, about 1.8 million prisoners like him would end up in the hands of SMERSh.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“One thing that army and civilian worlds did share was propaganda. There was no escape from the lectures and slogans. Every soldier was taught that he was privileged to serve in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, a mouthful that the state abbreviated to its Russian initials, RKKA.13 Recruits were also told that they were the standard-bearers of the future and the heirs of a heroic past. Whatever it was called upon to do, this was an army that would muster under banners colored red with martyrs’ blood.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945

“The promise of a golden future and the fear that enemies were gathering to subvert it formed the carrot and stick of the Stalinist dictatorship.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“By October, too nearly ninety million people, 45 percent of the prewar population, found themselves trapped in territory that the enemy controlled”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“Of the 403,272 tank soldiers (including a small number of women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic troops knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew—or those at least who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself—would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armored coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply “boiling up.” The tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. “Have you burned yet?” was a question tank men often asked each other when they met for the first time. A dark joke from this stage in the war has a politruk informing a young man that almost every tank man in his group has died that day. “I’m sorry,” the young man replies. “I’ll make sure that I burn tomorrow.”
― Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

“Human dignity is something one need not look for in the world of capitalists. V. I. Lenin”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“Like many compositions of its kind - all muscles, square jaws and sunshine - it is stronger on the socialism than the reality”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train