In what ways were the lives of people in the USSR affected by the Second World War?

The war was a demographic disaster for the USSR.  Stalin claimed in 1946 that there had been 7 million Soviet deaths in WWII.  In 1956 Khruschev revised the figure upwards to 20 million.  In the 1980s, the Gorbachev government opened up the archives and researchers re-estimated the number of war dead at 26.6 million, two thirds of whom were civilians.  Some Russian historians have suggested that there were 27 million Soviet military dead out of a total 43 million in the USSR as a whole. 

The economy was ruined.  As a result the 1946 Five-Year Plan focussed entirely on Industry, leaving living standards appalling.  It took Soviet agriculture nearly a decade to get back to pre-war levels. 

The psychological trauma of the war was incalculable: 40 years after the war, in 1981, Soviet war veteran and poet Yuri Levitansky wrote: “I don’t still dwell on that past war, the war still dwells inside of me”.  It is telling that, in 1948, the state began removing from the public eye those of those of the 2.5m permanently disabled veterans who had no one to care for them, sending them to converted sanatoria in remote northern regions. 

Having said that, the USSR had achieved a decisive victory over the Nazi invasion of their country, and its people had been set free from Nazi rule.  This was a cause of genuine rejoicing -- war orphans and widows expressed gratitude to the state and spoke of "necessary sacrifices for the Motherland".  Victory Day is still one of the most important public holidays for Russian citizens. 

The war strengthened loyalty to Stalin and the Communist party amongst the Soviet people, who were very proud of their country’s new superpower status.  In the long term, however, the USSR’s refusal to allow freedom to the ‘Iron Curtain’ countries of Eastern Europe after the war was a cause of the Cold War, which over the next 40 years would reduce them to poverty. 

Civilians

The people of Russian Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, and of West Russia, were immediately negatively affected by the Nazi invasion of in 1941.  Many were killed by the advancing Nazis, or in resistance attacks on German supply lines. 

The people of Leningrad were perhaps worst affected of all, where maybe as many as 1.5 million civilians died in a siege which lasted 29 months.  At Stalingrad the citizens, forbidden to leave, were trapped for 6 months in a war zone which destroyed the city, killing 45,000 civilians and more than a million Soviet soldiers. 

For millions of others, they suffered ‘scorched earth’ tactics as the Soviet army retreated in 1941, brutal oppression under Nazi occupation, and then more ‘scorched earth’ tactics as the Nazis retreated in 1943-44.  The domestic economy was ruined for decades; gross household consumption, 264bn roubles in 1940, fell to 150bn in 1944.  More than 1,700 towns and 40,000 miles of railway track were destroyed, 5 million houses levelled, and 25 million people were made homeless. 

All this happened, moreover, against the background of an escalation of Stalin’s Terror.  Alongside exhortations to glorify the ‘Great Leader’, the ‘Generalissimo’, and appeals to nationalism – which actually seem to have found a willing and determined audience – there was harsh censorship and the suppression of bad news: the Soviet media never admitted defeats or major losses, instead blaming setbacks on traitors, spies, or weak commanders (many of whom were later purged).  Propaganda made it clear that any doubt or criticism was treasonous.  Even in private conversations, people had to be cautious—denouncing others as ‘defeatists’ or ‘traitors’ was encouraged, leading to arrests and executions.  In total, more than 2½ million Soviet citizens were convicted by military tribunals, including nearly 1½ million deserters and draft-dodgers, and more than 175,000 people executed for espionage, treason, desertion or ‘defeatism’. 

Villagers

Rural area in the western USSR, still recovering from collectivisation, were devastated; 70,000 villages and 100,000 kolkhozy were razed under Stalin’s ‘scorched earth’ policy which forced them to destroy their land and crops and undergo the chaos of evacuation with their machinery and livestock, amid retreating Soviet troops, and with the Nazis closing in behind.  When they arrived in the Urals, most of them found that their animals were requisitioned to feed the Army. 

You also have to realise that 60% of the 34 million soldiers who fought in the Red Army were peasants.  The impact on the agricultural workforce was huge, and the old, sick and 12-16-yearold children were roped in to take their place. 

Labour in rural USSR was measured in trudodni – ‘workdays’.  A minimum requirement of 150 trudodni a year was imposed in cotton-growing areas, 120 in others; the AVERAGE in 1943 was 338 for men of working age (women 244; aged 135; children 100).  The punishment for failing to meet the minimum was 6 months in a Machine Tractor Station and a 25% pay cut for a first offence (although it seems that – given that many of the people remaining were infirm – this was not ruthlessly applied).  In 1942 the peasants received 800g grain and 220g potatoes per trudoden (ie the equivalent of 1 rouble per day, at a time when 1kg grain on the black-market cost 54 roubles, and a litre of milk 38 roubles). 

Meanwhile, all horses & tractors were requisitioned by the Army.  Commented Russian-British political economist Alec Nove (1985):

Bare statistics do not begin to show how hard life was for Soviet peasantry.  Mobilized, manual labor predominated.  People lived in holes in the ground, even put themselves into harness and pulled a plough.”

In such circumstances, whilst the large state-owned Sovkhozy managed to maintain pre-war production levels, overall agricultural production fell about 20%.  It is a testimony to the workforce that it did not collapse altogether

You will sometimes see it suggested that, although there were shortages, “sufficient rations were squeezed out to feed tens of millions of workers and soldiers”.  That may be true, but the peasants who produced the food were not a priority to receive it, and increasing malnutrition ended up in a string of devastating famines in 1945-46. 

Workers

Factory workers were affected by the war when Stalin ordered factories were to be moved to the East away from the advancing German army – in July-November 1941, 1,523 industrial enterprises were removed to eastern regions (Urals, West Siberia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan), of which 90% were large-scale enterprises employing 100-500 people.  A further150 enterprises were evacuated from Leningrad and Stalingrad in 1942-43. 

… and therefore more than 6 million people had to go with them.  An October 1940 decree authorized the compulsory transfer of engineers, technicians, and skilled workers to war work.  A decree in December 1941 forbade workers in war industries to leave their jobs for the duration of the war.  And in September 1942 another decree extended this to transport personnel and all workers in areas near the front. 

Posters and radio broadcasts demanded that every citizen work tirelessly for the war effort.  Slogans like “Everything for the Front! Everything for Victory!” pushed workers into exhausting 12-16 hours shifts.  The average working week rose to over 70 hours a week and the pressure to exceed quotas was relentless.  At the same time, rations fell dramatically; by December 1945, 80 million people in the USSR were subject to some degree of rationing, yet if you didn’t ‘do your part’ your rations were reduced so as to encourage others to work harder.  Malnourishment and extreme cold led to accidents and inefficiency, and production levels dropped.  Those who succeeded were praised, but those who failed were labelled ‘saboteurs’ and sent to labour camps. 

Soldiers

The experience of the 34 million soldiers who served in the Red Army was even worse. 

Soldiers were supposed to go into battle shouting “For Stalin! For the Motherland!”, and propaganda framed Stalin as a military genius … but his purges had decimated the officer corps, so the quality of leadership was poor, and – insisting on controlling strategy – his early blunders led to huge Soviet losses in 1941-42.  The Red Army suffered some of the highest casualties of any force in WWII.  Many frontline soldiers went into battle with little training, and in the early stages of the war they were sometimes sent into combat without proper weapons or winter clothing. 

Some soldiers described the front as a ‘meat grinder’ where entire units were wiped out in days.  The sheer brutality – witnessing comrades killed by artillery, freezing to death in foxholes, or being burned alive by Nazi flamethrowers – left many psychologically shattered. 

However, Stalin's Order No.  227 ("Not One Step Back") forbade them to retreat and – in case they should think of doing so – from 1942 the NKVD fielded ‘blocking detachments’, ordered to shoot retreating soldiers, and to arrest and execute suspected deserters and ‘cowards.’

Shtrafbats (Punishment battalions) made up of prisoners and ‘traitors’ were forced into suicidal attacks; survivors were sometimes "forgiven" and allowed to return to regular units. 

Red Army soldiers suffered from lice, dysentery, and malnutrition.  In the harsh winters, frostbite led to amputations, and starving soldiers ate leather belts or boiled grass to survive in besieged cities like Leningrad.  Yet letters from soldiers at the front were heavily censored; complaints about hunger, exhaustion, or doubts about victory were removed, and expressing despair could result in imprisonment. 

And if you were captured?  3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war died in Nazi captivity as a result of deliberate mistreatment and atrocities and – while returning Red Army veterans were celebrated as war heroes – former Soviet POWs were labelled traitors, and many upon their return were sent to the Gulag or execution. 

Nationalities

Another group which suffered inordinately were the many racial groups in the USSR, as Stalin used the war as an opportunity to break up ethnic communities. 

It is easy to forget that the USSR’s war did not start with Hitler’s invasion in 1941, but in September 1939 when – as Germany’s ally – the USSR invaded and conquered eastern Poland.  The NKVD carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions of resistance fighters such as the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.  The NKVD also executed 22,000 Polish political prisoners in 1940–1941 (the Katyn massacre). 

Then, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin ordered the NKVD to “remove” the political prisoners in the USSR’s occupied territories rather than allow them to fall into German hands; the NKVD killed maybe 40,000 people – mainly Poles and Ukrainians – in dozens of prisons over the course of eight days. 

As the war progressed, some ethnic republics (eg the Chechen-Ingush SSR) were dissolved completely, and minority languages were banned in education and public life.  The Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks – and especially the Volga Germans – were accused of disloyalty and suffered mass deportations to Siberia and Central Asia, often in cattle wagons with minimal food or water, leading to extremely high mortality.  Survivors lived in barracks or tents with little medical care.  The TV Channel France24 estimates that 1.2 million people were exiled in this way. 

Ethnic minority individuals who fought in the Red Army faced discrimination and suspicion; some were given the most dangerous tasks, others relegated to labour duties. 

Some ethnic groups, such as Poles, Ukrainians and Baltic peoples, were occupied by the Nazis during the war.  Some collaborated with the Nazis, either voluntarily or under duress, though others formed pro-Soviet partisan forces.  After the war, however, Stalin conducted mass-purges of entire ethnic groups whatever. 

The Church

One group which benefited from the War was the Orthodox Church. 

The Soviet Union had persecuted religion before the war, but in 1941 Metropolitan Sergeii asked permission to hold a collection for a column of tanks, opening the door to Stalin reversing his policy to rally national unity.  By the Informal Concordat of 1943, the Orthodox Church was conceded the right to exist, in return for unconditional support, and a promise to narrow the church's mission purely to the spiritual, with no social or political dimension at all.  In this way, the war won for the Russian church a legal, as opposed to an underground, existence; and while Soviet propaganda depicted the Russian Orthodox Church as a symbol of patriotism, the number of bishops increased, 15,000 closed churches reopened, and a sort of Soviet ‘Bible Belt’ grew up in western Russia (which still exists). 

American historian William Fletcher commented (1985): “In all these respects, World War II was the single most important event in the twentieth century for the history of religion in the USSR”.