Letters to the Editor
Nadonalism in Russia Czeslaw Jesman,
J. E. M. Arden
Sweeping the Streets John Jenkins,
.Rev. Nicolas Stacey
Malayan Independence Prince Chula of Thailand,
W. G. Scott
The 'Daily Express' and Security E. D. Pickering TV Apple Cart D. Caldwell Identifying the Prisoner G. W. R. Thornton Reponse de Crevecceur Anne-Marie Crevecteur Sea Power Desmond Wettern Ronald Knox Humphrey Bowman The Liberal Creed Richard S. Wainwright
NATIONALISM IN RUSSIA
SIR,—Mr. Geoffrey Barraclough in his review of Alexander Dallin's German Rule in Russia 1941-1945 tends to disparage those who thought in 1941 that Stalin's empire was a 'colossus with feet of clay' and assumes that Dallin's 'exact, dispassionate study' -would confute those who 'have convinced themselves that similar opportunities exist today.' Opportunities, presumably, to destroy this empire, currently held by Stalin's diadochi, by hitting at its most vulnerable points.
Futhcrmore, Mr. Barraclough has little patience with those 'who play with the idea of dabbling in the 'rational complexities of Russia's Western border- land.' He does not specify what exactly he means by this term but he says that 'Ukrainian nationalism proved a deception' (one is tempted to ask 'whom to?'); 'Byelorussian separatism was a myth. . .
It all reads as though we were back in halcyon days when Sir Laurence Olivier was an industrious and lovable engineer of the good old SS Droujba, Mr. Eric Ambler extolled the dedicated brilliance tor NKVD foreign operators, Mr. C. S. Forester spoke svith condign contempt about anti-Russian Baltic plotters, and had them foiled by Captain Horatio Hornblower, Professor Carr basked in the mellow glory of an undisputed sage, while the News Chronicle sco.tched the rumours of anti-Soviet fer- ment in the camps holding the Vlassov men through- out Britain as a tendentious fabrication if not a downright sedition by some meddlesome Central European Fifth Column : obviously they were simply pining to return to their Soviet Motherland.
Mr. Barraclough wonders : 'Is it really true that the Germans in 1941 had a rare opportunity to ap- peal to the population of the Soviet Union?'
In 1944-45 as an officer attached to the Russian Liaison Group of the Directorate of Military Liaison of the War Office I have heard conclusive and em- phatic answers in the affirmative to this query. I have heard them both from hundreds of unhappy officers and men of the ROA and Ostlegionen evacu- ated to Russia and death and slavery, and, which was perhaps much more convincing, from the Soviet officers, members of the Soviet Repatriation Mission operating in this country and in Norway in spring and summer qf 1945 under General Vasiliev.
Both categories of informants were unanimous in their conviction that all the Germans had to do to win Russia in 1941 and 1942, if not the Second World War, was to behave towards the population of the territories they captured in a reasonably decent fashion; instead they acted like brutes and criminal lunatics. It is an historical fact that in the summer of 1941 Hitler's legions were greeted with transports of joy by all and sundry under Soviet domination, irrespective of nationality and religion, while whole Soviet armies refused to fight them. Meanwhile the fast retreating Soviet survivors of the initial military disasters were sniped at not only by the Ukrainians and Byclorussians but by the Russian peasants them- selves.—Yours faithfully, CZdSLAW JdSMAN The .41/led Circle, London, W I
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