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Why is the Russian Army So Cruel? (Part II)
On suffering and the 80th anniversary of Stalingrad
One of the most desperate moments of the siege of Stalingrad occurred in September of 1942 when a battery of female combatants was forced to take over an anti-aircraft position, lower the guns to the horizontal and fire nonstop at a phalanx of approaching German tanks. After holding out for a few heroic days they were slaughtered down to the last woman. Their passing at the time was barely noticed. For during the course of the half-year siege that turned the tide of World War II and saved the entire western world from fascism, over a million Soviets would be killed or maimed. Some would be blown to bits by the Luftwaffe’s incessant carpet bombing. Others would perish in the city’s sewers in hand-to-hand combat so loathsome that the Nazi’s dubbed the battle the rattenkrieg — the rat war.
The validity of the concept of victory at all costs remains profoundly plausible in the post-Soviet mind.
But what makes Stalingrad’s memory still germane during a new period of Russian misery is the way 13,000 of that million met their end. If we could somehow speak to these lost thousands they would tell us of brutal death not at the hands of the Nazis. Rather they would indict…
