Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (39 page)

108
Being Soviet

facts. You could still see the ship and the captain was sitting in the
lifeboat.’
^{132
Another Soviet veteran of the convoys told me how funny it}
had been to see the British sailors sitting in their lifeboats having abandoned ship when they saw a torpedo approaching: it missed.
¹³³

These memories almost certainly serve as narratives about personal
wartime heroism and they may have been shaped by subsequent years of Soviet propaganda. Nonetheless, together with the complaints of British sailors and the contemporary reports in the Soviet archives, they suggest that some individuals shared the party’s negative assessment of the wartime convoyers. Conscious of the silence of the official press and aware of the barely disguised disdain of local officials, many residents treated the convoyers with calculated coldness. This frosty reception even caused concern amongst a visiting Moscow report writer who feared it was creating a negative impression of the USSR.
^{134
The foreign}
sailors, as active foreign servicemen bringing foreign technology to aid the Soviet Union, challenged both the wartime Official Soviet Identity and the
raison d’etre
of the Stalin years as a whole. Soviet civilization did not need to rely on their ‘gifts’ of technology. The negative reactions they faced demonstrate the extent to which Soviet values and Soviet honour had infused the thinking of many residents of the Arctic ports. The convoyers represented something profoundly un-Soviet at a moment of great collective patriotism and, as such, were to be avoided.

Comrades-at-arms

However, the visiting sailors were not universally treated as social out-
casts. Their physical presence in Arctic Russia, like the presence of Lend Lease goods, offered local residents the chance to form their own impressions of, and relationships with, individuals from the outside world. As a result, many of these relationships were more complex than the official denunciations of the dangerous aliens. The convoyers experienced friendship and intimacy, as well as rejection and distrust, during their time in Arctic Russia. The behaviour of those individuals who found a common language with the visitors demonstrates the

^{132
Int. Nikolai Vasil’evich, Arkhangel’sk, August 2004. See also: Suprun,}
Lend-Liz,

118.

^{133
Int. Respondent anonymous, Moscow, May 2004. For an admission from a}
convoy veteran that the call to abandon ship may occasionally have been pre-emptive, see R. Ransome Wallis,
Two Red Stripes: A Naval Surgeon at War
(London, 1973), 119.

^{134
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 135, ll. 44–5.}

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
109

‘tactics of the habitat’ in operation as they delicately walked the line
between Soviet and un-Soviet behaviour. A respect for comrades-at- arms, a desire for food, a passion for foreign music and film, and even love were the motivating factors that drove their actions. The relation- ships that emerged creatively renegotiated the official response of the local Soviet government.

When united by the pressures of battle, many Soviet and Anglo-
American servicemen established a bond of respect that superseded the mutual recriminations of cowardice and incompetence.
^135
Archie
Byrne, a Naval Gunner whose ship sank 170 miles from the Soviet coast remembers the moment he was rescued vividly: ‘As we came on deck we saw the flag on the stern, stopped, made the Russians stand back and saluted their flag in proper RN (Royal Navy) style, in appre- ciation of their rescue and saving our lives. Shouts. All stopped. The Captain and all the crew came and hugged us.’
^{136
This culture of}
‘comrades-at-arms’ was particularly prominent during the early period of the Arctic convoys. Robert Turley, a Hurricane pilot who visited in 1941, remembered that the pilots he had flown with treated him with great friendliness.
¹³⁷

Relations became more tense as the war went on. This was particu-
larly the case after Convoy PQ 17 was abandoned by its Royal Navy Escort, resulting in the loss of twenty-four of the thirty-three vessels and the cancellation of convoys for some time. However, a number of British and American signalmen served aboard the Soviet destroyers based in Murmansk and they often remember the ship’s crews as considerate hosts who defied the shortages of the time to obtain white bread and sugar for their guests.
^{138
Alone on the open sea, Soviet and}
British servicemen shared drunken nights and intense conversations in their confined quarters.
^{139
Igor Dmitrevich, himself a convoyer, wit-}
nessed the loss of an American tanker with only three survivors during PQ 16. His description of the spectacular sinking of the ship was related with great empathy and sadness. He claimed that a ‘true brotherhood’

^{135
Mem. The experience of being ‘comrades-in-arms’ also thawed American–}
Australian relations in the Pacifc during the war. E. D. Potts and A. Potts,
Yanks Down Under 1941–45
(Oxford, 1985), 68–72.

^{136
Mem. Tye,}
Real Cold War
, 20.

^{137
Int. Robert Turley, Oxford, September 2005.}

^{138
Mem. Tye,}
Real Cold War
, 104.

^{139
Mem. Ibid. 120–1.}

110
Being Soviet

was established between the sailors, which endures to this day.
^140
Such
stories, like those about the famous ‘Meeting at the Elbe’ in 1945, are susceptible to post-rationalization by those who wish to remember their youth in glowing terms. However, the evidence provided by the con- temporary Russian sources and the memoirs of the British sailors, suggests that they are not entirely the romantic storytelling of aged veterans.

The fellowship of the seas often evaporated on arrival in port. British
and American officers expressed dismay in the summer of 1942 that their ‘blood brothers’, with whom they had served side by side, were banned from the Inturist restaurant in Arkhangel’sk.
^{141
Under the}
microscope of life ashore, Red Navy sailors deployed another ‘tactic of the habitat’ and performed as they should to preserve Soviet honour. When the pressures of conflict threw them together, however, a mutual respect resulted, which endures to this day. The collapse of the USSR has resulted in a series of annual celebrations of the arrival of the first convoy in Murmansk. These events are somewhat unique in the Russian memorial calendar, which continues to place such a strong emphasis on the decisive Soviet contribution to victory. At the 1999 event Gordon Long, of the Russian Convoy Club, declared that, ‘There is no stronger seafaring friendship anywhere in the world!’
^{142
This comradeship with}
the seafaring Allies subtly negotiated the boundaries of Soviet beha- viour. Soviet sailors were not being ‘truthful’ at sea and ‘false’ in port. They were living as Soviet citizens in the different environments of the Soviet ‘habitat’.

Food, Friendship, and Love

The most widespread, and most contentious, relationships on land in
Arctic Russia were between the visiting convoyers and local girls. The female population of Arkhangel’sk and Murmansk could hardly fail to notice the colourful, curious, and wealthy foreign sailors. Many of them did not shun the company of the convoyers ashore as their male military counterparts did. Hundreds of wartime relationships were established, platonic and sexual, temporary and permanent. As one wartime Arkhangel’sk resident explained, ‘all the foreign sailors had Russian

^{140
Int. Igor Dmitrevich, Arkhangel’sk, August 2004.}

^{141
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1210, ll. 22–4.}

^{142
Poleznaia Gazeta}
(Severodvinsk), 07.09.2001.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
111

girlfriends’.
^{143
An August 1942 report by the director of the Interna-}
tional Club noted that 30 per cent of the 14,000 monthly visitors to the Arkhangel’sk International Club were Soviet citizens, ‘The mass of whom are young women invited by foreign sailors into the club.’
^{144
The floor thronged with Soviet girls at the regular dance evenings, some}
of whom became the permanent dancing partners of individual foreign sailors.
^{145
Young women hung around outside the club waiting for the}
foreign sailors to arrive, and requesting to be admitted as a guest. The foreign servicemen were enthusiastic hosts, sometimes entering and leaving the club several times in an evening to bring in more guests.
^{146
These casual acquaintances often developed into more serious rela-}
tionships. Lund and Ludlam, two survivors of PQ17, remembered that ‘the survivors who were not hospitalized had little to do with their time except to sit in the International Club or find themselves girl friends, and many found regular sleeping partners, as did some naval officers who “went native” and lived with girls ashore.’
^{147
A drug resistant form}
of VD infected up to 50 per cent of the Anglo-American shore crew at one point.
^{148
Even the staff of the International Club pursued intimate}
relationships with the foreign guests. In December 1942 three members of the club’s
aktiv
were removed for over-familiarity with the convoyers.
^{149
The same fate befell three full-time staff members in November 1943;}
Rait and Gorinova had attended private parties at the English Mission; Ruzskaia had developed a close relationship with a British officer, with whom she spoke on the phone and arranged regular ‘intimate

meetings’.
¹⁵⁰

The relationships between Soviet girls and the convoyers became a
major source of tension between the visiting sailors and the local Bolshevik administration. Wartime poems, such as Simonov’s
Wait for Me
, highlighted the concerns of Soviet combatants that their women should be faithful whilst they were at the front. Sexual purity both at home and under the German occupation was a key marker of a

^{143
Golubtsova,}
Voennaia liubov’
, 26. This was clearly something of an exaggeration.

^{144
GAAO f. 1649, op. 2, d. 2, l. 2.}

^145
Woodman,
Arctic Convoys,
180.

^{146
Inf. GAAO f. 1694, op. 2, d. 3, ll. 36–48.}

^{147
Mem. Lund and Ludlam,}
PQ 17,
182.

^{148
Mem. Ibid. 82. An early decision not to issue contraceptives was later revised,}
158.

^{149
GAAO f. 1649, op. 2, d. 4, l. 5.}

^{150
Ibid. l. 65.}