The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 7 The Resistance against the Nazi occupation in Russia did not differ at all from the nationalist pattern that characterised all occupied countries. In Stalinist propaganda, Nazism was a product of the entire history of the German people, a people to be destroyed in the name of Holy Mother Russia . The illusions of revolutionary fraternisation with the uniformed German proletarians sent to fight, which still lingered in the memories and expectations of some Russian officers and soldiers, were considered a betrayal punishable by death. The Orthodox Holy Synod resumed its functions, and there was constant reference made to the great generals of the tsarist past, as well as the reintroduction of epaulettes and ranks into the army, which the Bolsheviks had abolished. The singing of the Internationale was replaced by a patriotic anthem. Patriotic war and defeatism ...

Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Page 6 In June 1941, Germany launched its attack on Russia, taking by surprise the army and the air force, much of which was destroyed on the ground, because Stalin had refused to believe the reports that Hitler intended to break the 1939 Pact. From that moment onwards, the war on the eastern front took on massive dimensions and was waged with unprecedented violence. In her essay Le front Germano-Soviétique (1941-1945): Une apocalypse européenne [in A. Aglan and R. Frank, La Guerre-monde , 2015], Masha Cerovic writes that about fourteen million soldiers lost their lives ; more precisely, nine million Soviets, four million Germans, and almost one million among their allies . It is calculated that the Russian population paid a price of over twenty million human lives, including the fallen and those who died of illness and starvation: hundreds of thousands of them were partisans, executed without pity. A hug...