Stalin Story – A Controversial Read

News about Stalin still has the power to ignite interest and controversy.

A story I wrote for the Sunday Telegraph that was published a few days ago has elicited great interest in Britain, Russia and around the world.

Emails that have found their way to me have cast me both as a ‘bourgeois’ anti-communist representative of the Capitalist press and the story a ‘rehash’ of Stalinist propaganda.

Fascinating stuff for what I thought was just a good read….

First a couple of links to the story from the Russian press, followed by the story itself:

http://www.newsru.com/russia/20oct2008/stalinunedali.html

http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/32132

Stalin 'planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact'

Stalin was 'prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border to deter Hitler's aggression just before the Second World War'

By Nick Holdsworth in Moscow
Last Updated: 1:14AM BST 19 Oct 2008

Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.

Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler's pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany's other neighbours.

The offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, two weeks before war broke out in 1939.

The new documents, copies of which have been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Stalin's generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome.

But the British and French side - briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals - did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries, came on August 23 - just a week before Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby sparking the outbreak of the war. But it would never have happened if Stalin's offer of a western alliance had been accepted, according to retired Russian foreign intelligence service Major General Lev Sotskov, who sorted the 700 pages of declassified documents.

"This was the final chance to slay the wolf, even after [British Conservative prime minister Neville] Chamberlain and the French had given up Czechoslovakia to German aggression the previous year in the Munich Agreement," said Gen Sotskov, 75.

The Soviet offer - made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov - would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany's borders in the event of war in the west, declassified minutes of the meeting show.

But Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, who lead the British delegation, told his Soviet counterparts that he authorised only to talk, not to make deals.

"Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany - double the number Hitler had at the time," said Gen Sotskov, who joined the Soviet intelligence service in 1956. "This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks."

When asked what forces Britain itself could deploy in the west against possible Nazi aggression, Admiral Drax said there were just 16 combat ready divisions, leaving the Soviets bewildered by Britain's lack of preparation for the looming conflict.

The Soviet attempt to secure an anti-Nazi alliance involving the British and the French is well known. But the extent to which Moscow was prepared to go has never before been revealed.

Simon Sebag Montefiore, best selling author of Young Stalin and Stalin: The Court of The Red Tsar, said it was apparent there were details in the declassified documents that were not known to western historians.

"The detail of Stalin's offer underlines what is known; that the British and French may have lost a colossal opportunity in 1939 to prevent the German aggression which unleashed the Second World War. It shows that Stalin may have been more serious than we realised in offering this alliance."

Professor Donald Cameron Watt, author of How War Came - widely seen as the definitive account of the last 12 months before war began - said the details were new, but said he was sceptical about the claim that they were spelled out during the meetings.

"There was no mention of this in any of the three contemporaneous diaries, two British and one French - including that of Drax," he said. "I don't myself believe the Russians were serious."

The declassified archives - which cover the period from early 1938 until the outbreak of war in September 1939 - reveal that the Kremlin had known of the unprecedented pressure Britain and France put on Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler by surrendering the ethnic German Sudetenland region in 1938.

"At every stage of the appeasement process, from the earliest top secret meetings between the British and French, we understood exactly and in detail what was going on," Gen Sotskov said.

"It was clear that appeasement would not stop with Czechoslovakia's surrender of the Sudetenland and that neither the British nor the French would lift a finger when Hitler dismembered the rest of the country."

Stalin's sources, Gen Sotskov says, were Soviet foreign intelligence agents in Europe, but not London. "The documents do not reveal precisely who the agents were, but they were probably in Paris or Rome."

Shortly before the notorious Munich Agreement of 1938 - in which Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, effectively gave Hitler the go-ahead to annexe the Sudetenland - Czechoslovakia's President Eduard Benes was told in no uncertain terms not to invoke his country's military treaty with the Soviet Union in the face of further German aggression.

"Chamberlain knew that Czechoslovakia had been given up for lost the day he returned from Munich in September 1938 waving a piece of paper with Hitler's signature on it," Gen Sotksov said.

The top secret discussions between the Anglo-French military delegation and the Soviets in August 1939 - five months after the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia - suggest both desperation and impotence of the western powers in the face of Nazi aggression.

Poland, whose territory the vast Russian army would have had to cross to confront Germany, was firmly against such an alliance. Britain was doubtful about the efficacy of any Soviet forces because only the previous year, Stalin had purged thousands of top Red Army commanders.

The documents will be used by Russian historians to help explain and justify Stalin's controversial pact with Hitler, which remains infamous as an example of diplomatic expediency.

"It was clear that the Soviet Union stood alone and had to turn to Germany and sign a non-aggression pact to gain some time to prepare ourselves for the conflict that was clearly coming," said Gen Sotskov.

A desperate attempt by the French on August 21 to revive the talks was rebuffed, as secret Soviet-Nazi talks were already well advanced.

It was only two years later, following Hitler's Blitzkreig attack on Russia in June 1941, that the alliance with the West which Stalin had sought finally came about - by which time France, Poland and much of the rest of Europe were already under German occupation.

Rural Poverty Reduction Project in Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan Documentary Film

The work of a cost-effective and innovative European Union-funded poverty reduction project in rural Kyrgyzstan is being turned into a film by the Turin, Italy-based European Training Foundation.

My involvement, as script-writer and location assistant, recently took me to Kochkor, a small village situated high on a narrow mountain plain, where the above photos were taken.

Here are a couple of stories I wrote for the ETF some months back about the project during an earlier visit:

CHOLPON, KYRGYZSTAN – Taalaikul Sadbakasova is equally at home milking her cows or teaching a class of sometimes boisterous little girls and boys at the village kindergarten she heads.

Today she is just as comfortable running a stall at the weekly market where she sells home-produced butter, yoghurt, sour cream, kefir, milk and other dairy products.

It was not always that way. Until last year Mrs Sadbakasova, a 42 year old graduate of Bishkek’s KZHPI women’s teaching college, was content to run the Cholpon village ‘Buchur’ pre-school and use the milk from her smallholding for family needs.

A native of what was in Soviet times a rural ‘kholkoz’ collective farm in Kyrgyzstan’s mountainous south-eastern Naryn region, where the majestic Tien Shan range rises like a massive edifice that divides the small central Asian state from China, Mrs Sadbakasova was interested in her professional development as a pre-school teacher but thought little about the family farm.

Then one day a publicity campaign offering free, European Training Foundation-backed agricultural business development training caught her eye.

The project – part of a poverty reduction project using skills upgrading to help the rural poor develop small businesses to improve their living standards – was run via a local vocational training school in district centre Kochkor.

Even better, the practically-based training was delivered not a long bus ride 25 kilometres eastwards on the old silk road in Kochkor but right on her doorstep: the project trainers would come to Cholpon.

“Straight away I knew that was what I wanted and signed up without a second thought,” Mrs Sadbakasova, a slender black-haired woman said, flashing a smile that lit up her face.

No stranger to western donor-backed programmes – she has benefited from several teacher-training projects over the past few years – Mrs Sadbakasova is clearly a self-motivated and energetic woman.

Married to farmer Talantbek Busurmankulov – who she also signed up for the ETF-initiative – she has two sons of 12 and 15 years old and has long been involved in village activities. Last year with regional government financial support, she founded a women and children’s educational NGO ‘Naristekyt’ to help improve the educational programme at her kindergarten.

Post-Soviet privatisation and agricultural reforms in Kyrgyzstan had given every rural resident of a collective farm a piece of land commensurate with the size of their ‘kholkoz’ and its population.

Although Soviet central planning allowed for a complex of agronomical, veterinary and technical support for farmers, division of labour and bureaucratic structures meant few people had the knowledge or skills required to run their own farms.

Market reforms meant they could buy those skills in – but cost and a rapid exodus of the best experts to better paid jobs, other regions or countries soon meant that even the most basic knowledge of good animal husbandry, crop development and product manufacturing and marketing were lost.

“I had been longing for such a course – I’d had ideas about doing more with our farm produce but didn’t know how to go about it. This course gave me that chance – I learned such a lot there,” said Mrs Sadbakasova, who like most farmers in the region speaks only Kyrgyz.

Although she grew up and went to college in Soviet times – she graduated in 1990 – her Russian language skills have atrophied through lack of use.

“We all took such a lot from this course – particularly veterinary knowledge,” Mr Sadbakasova said as we sat talking in a kindergarten classroom, the smell of freshly baked ‘lavash’ – flat unleavened bread – wafting through from the one-story building’s kitchen as the couple of dozen three and four-year olds played outside on the first warm day of March.

“Our small farms were fine but we did not always know how to medically treat our cattle, horses and other livestock. We had no idea how to expand our businesses, to develop marketing to make knew products.”

An integral part of the modular five-month long course that piloted last year with 32 students from Cholpon divided into two groups, was the development of a business plan and provision of state bank loans of up to 20,000 Som (400 Euros).

Mrs Sadbakasova knew what she wanted to do: buy a cow so she could produce more milk for the various dairy lines she had in mind and – ultimately – move into the lucrative value-added ice-cream business.

The ETF scheme gave her the necessary know-how to manufacture dairy products on a small scale – and the contacts and backing to raise the necessary state food quality certificates and hygiene approvals.

Mother nature gave her the rest: she bought a pregnant heifer for 18,000 Som and spent the rest on top grade fodder.

The heifer gave birth to a female calf that within a year will be ready for mating and will become another source of milk.

“The first cow is already pregnant again and by the summer I should have plenty of milk and be ready to start producing ice-cream,” Mrs Sadbakasova said, her face aglow with her radiant smile.

A couple of minutes away from the kindergarten down on her family small-holding – the farmyard recently concreted to make it easier to keep clean and sanitary – Mrs Sadbakasova shows off her milking skills. No factory farming here – everything is still done by hand.

With just one more payment to go after a profitable year to repay the 20,000 Som credit she is confident she will raise the additional 100,000 (2,000 Euros) credit she needs to buy a 100 litre capacity electric powered ice-cream making machine from Bishkek.

The big capacity freezer is ready.

The 22% interest state Ail Bank now charges (up from 15% last year and a sign of the global credit crunch) does not worry her.

All that Mrs Sadbakasova needs is some warm sunshine, hungry customers and a business that promises to bring both profit and pleasure – the first local ice-cream maker in her village – will be ready for its grand opening.

KOCHKOR, KYRGYZSTAN – Bank manager Ulan Kydyraliev knows how to tackle rural poverty in this remote mountainous region four hours drive from Bishkek: give farmers small loans.

A key stakeholder in a pioneering European Training Foundation-backed poverty reduction scheme, Mr Kydyraliev, 44, understands that it is not as simple as merely throwing money at the problem.

His loans come with a catch – the farmers have to sign up to take short but intensive agricultural skills development courses that include drawing up business plans.

Taught through a novel outreach programme developed at a vocational education and training school, the five-month long courses are designed to equip small farmers to move beyond subsistence and into profit.

Teaching new veterinary techniques, optimum livestock feeding schedules, superior crop development or basic food processing and marketing techniques can bring swift and substantial benefits.

“The project helps these people improve their farming techniques and businesses,” Mr Kydyraliev, Kochor branch manager of state Ail Bank said.

“We now have very few good agricultural and veterinary specialists in this region – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ‘kholkoz’ collective farm system many of the best left,” he said.

“We need to create a new generation of experts. We are pleased with the results – the farmers have increased their profits and we have had no defaults in repayments.”

Providing credit lines to participants in the project – launched last year in a pilot involving 32 students divided into two training groups involved in arable and livestock farming – is a safe bet, he admitted.

The students were all farmers with some experience a bank consultant helped them created tailored business plans.

The loans were small – a maximum of 20,000 Som (400 Euro) – and although no special terms were given, the 15% interest charged compares very favourably with rates of up to 32% charged by commercial banks for similar unsecured credit.

As a stakeholder in an 80,000 Euro project that involved a foreign donor, regional administration officials, village government heads, adult learners and a key regional VET school, the bank role is probably the most traditional one.

Not so that of Kochkor’s VET school No 15, lead institution for the project.

Eduarda Castel Branco, the ETF’s Mozambique-born expert responsible for the three-country poverty reduction project – which has been running since early 2007 in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan – credits it with breaking the mould.

“VET schools have a very strange mission in post-Soviet countries,” Ms Castel Branco, a fluent Russian speaker, said.

“They are more about social assistance than education. Passive not participatory, their main function to train young people according to state orders under out-dated curricula with little or nothing for the wider population.”

At a time when demand for skills-based, flexible market responsive training has probably never been greater in emerging economies such as Kyrgyzstan’s VET schools are crying out to be used as open centres for learning.

Addressing that challenge – as a way to tackling the wider issues of rural poverty – is a key component of the ETF project.

“Responding to local needs and local questions cannot be done without changes in the VET school approach too,” said Ms Castel Branco, whose work has involved her in education and training projects in countries as diverse as Russia, Jordan, Benin, Angola and Togo.

In this the ETF was fortunate in finding a VET school head with the experience, drive and attitude that was an exact fit.

Although Mr Tilemishov, 62, formally retired as head of school No. 15 last December (2007), he continues to lead the poverty reduction project.

With 18 years experience at school principal – and before that as boss of a local state freight truck repair and maintenance depot and a stint as a regional Communist party political instructor to his credit – Mr Tilemishov, who also farms a three hectare plot of land himself, brings a wealth of experience and local connections to the job.

“Until this project came along we did not think about what professional skills might be needed beyond the training we provided. We did not think about whether they would be in demand,” he admitted.

All that changed when, with central government VET agency approval, school No. 15 began working with the ETF.

A student-centred approach meant that Mr Tilemishov and his staff had to design the modular-based curriculum around the demands of the students, not the school.

So they took the lessons to the learners and provided largely practical training down on the farm for their busy students. Traditional ‘talk and chalk’ classes were ditched in favour of group seminars run as question and answer and discussion sessions.

The learning curve was as steep – if not steeper – for the VET school teachers than for the small farmers.

“We took advice from the student group and changed the study plan accordingly. That had never happened before,” Mr Tilemishov said.

The course addressed crucial issues, such as how to swiftly run a blood test on an animal to determine its health, methods for growing top quality cereal crops, effective ways to fatten up livestock or produce rich, creamy milk.

The results are impressive. Average incomes have more than doubled to 70 Euro a month.

A few dozen better educated farmers earning more money in a region with a population of 59,000 – nearly half of which are involved in agricultural – may not sound like much, but the Kochkor scheme can become an agent for change.

Peer review seminars with the graduates of the Tajik and Kazakh projects and Kyrgyzstan’s still strong system of clan and village social assistance will help spread the new techniques.

And a further 60 students will be trained this year.

“We would like to see such training groups in every village,” said Roza Adysheva, deputy head of the regional administration

“This sort of training could be organised by our own government structures; if such an approach were applied across the country it would have a major impact on the Kyrgyz economy.”