War with Japan

Author: Tamara Eidelman
Translator: Nora Favorov
Russian Life: Jul/Aug 2005
Department: Russian Calendar
Page: 22   ( 4) pages

Summary: The last thing Russians wanted after finishing the war with Hitler was another war. But three months later, in August 1945, they got one anyway, when Stalin joined the war against Japan, taking the Kuriles and Sakhalin as spoils.

If there was one thing the people of the Soviet Union did not want to do in August of 1945, it was enter into a new war.

It had been three months since victory over Germany, and everyone wanted to believe that this would be the start of a wonderful new life — that soldiers would return from war, that wounds, both physical and emotional, would gradually heal, and that everything would be just fine. But as usual, ordinary people did not have any say in the matter. The only way they could express their feelings was using the official formulations handed down from above.

On August 2, the kolkhozniki (collective farm workers) of Moscow Region issued a statement "to all kolkhozniki and tractor station workers, to all agricultural specialists of the Soviet Union," sharing their joy at the end of the war and their desire to do the best work possible:

"We have decided to hoe our potatoes two or three times; we managed to cover our entire patch during our first weeding, and half of it has even had a second going-over. We will weed our vegetable patches as many times as are needed."

It is hard to believe that ordinary peasants would not weed their vegetables as many times as needed in any event, but in the surreal atmosphere of the Stalin era, even such things had to be determined at a higher level....