Ivan's War - Catherine Merridale

"Whenever people think that they will have to fight a war, they start to imagine what it will be like"

This is the fist line of Merridale's book and, if you were writing a synopsis about it, this isn't a bad place to start. War is ultimately a story of people after all. During the Second World War, every nation's soldiers were characterised by a stereotype for good or ill that was used as shorthand both by themselves and usually those on the opposite side; the British soldier was Tommy, an American Joe (regardless of his actual first name). Germans were universally known as Fritz. The Russian infantryman was Ivan. Ivan Ivanovich to give him his full title.

The Red Army was probably the most diverse conglomeration that saw action during what they refer to as the Great Patriotic War; conscripts from the Urals and Siberia rubbed shoulders with Poles, Tatars, Cossacks, Ukrainians, Georgians, Muscovites and half a hundred other satellite nations. Conscripts, volunteers, the sweepings of the Gulag, forced servicemen from liberated countries, commissars and officers, all had their part to play in what became the largest military force known to mankind since Antiquity; a veritable Juggernaut of men and steel that rolled over everything in it's path on the march to Berlin.

Or at least that's the popular view. Where Merridale scores is her ability to coax stories and reminiscences from men who in the most part are trying very hard to forget them. Because of this talent and the time devoted to it we are presented with something long overdue; the opinions and feelings of soldiers from other nations during war are well known and a matter of public record - but the Soviet soldier was silent. Stalinism and then general communism expected, nay, demanded, nothing less. The greatest myth of the New Soviet Man was that he didn't have a voice of his own. Well, this book gives the lie to that assumption. Whilst there are the normal periods of Stalinist reticence (how could there be otherwise? that was all these men knew) there are more patches that reveal the true men under the bluff shroud.

Merridale guides us through every moment of life on the Eastern Front from the crushing defeats of scared and confused Ivans in the first days of Operation Barbarossa, to the tough, hardy force that kicked in the gates of Germany and then proceeded to wreak absolute havoc. But she never loses sight of her original statement and thus we are neatly brought full circle by the last lines.

"They don't talk very much. They don't seem to need to. Sometimes they just stand and weep."

8 and 3/4's out of 10