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MILITARY HISTORY
УДК 94(47)«1939/1940»
V.O. Levashko
Rumors in Leningrad and Leningrad region in the period of the
Soviet-Finnish War
Слухи в Ленинграде и Ленинградской области в период советско-финляндской войны
This article analyses the alternative information, which was distributed among the population of Leningrad and Leningrad region before and during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 years.
В статье даётся анализ альтернативной информации, которая распространялась среди населения Ленинграда и Ленинградской области в преддверии и в ходе советско-финляндской войны 1939-1940 гг.
Key words: population, rumor , gossip, information, war.
Ключевые слова: население, слух, сплетня, информация, война.
In the last ten years national historical science keeps paying large attention to the problems of the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. A lot of researches give a thorough characteristic of the political and military part of this conflict [1; 2; 3; 13; 15]. However it should be noted that the authors of these researches analyze mainly the problems of combat readiness and military activity of the armies and fleets [5; 18; 19]. There is almost nobody who apply to the study of moral standards of soldiers or civil residents of the front-line areas. This article is an attempt to show the influence of rumors on the morale of Leningrad and Leningrad region citizens in 1939-1940.
The first rumors connected with the Soviet-Finnish relationships were noted some days before the military conflict. The were reasoned by the mistrust of considerable part of population to the official mass-media information. Against the background of growing aggressive and thought out Soviet propaganda against Finland, a lot of people were sure the war has already started. Thus, the worker of the bakery “Gari” in Leningrad region told her friends: “There are 2000 Soviet soldiers killed on the Estonian border and Finland has declared war on The USSR. The war is going on that's why our husbands do not come back”. In the same region the director of the company “Transtorgpit” Kantsel'son told his stuff: “We
© Levashko V.O., 2015
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have already had some fights against Finland, but there is nothing about it in the newspapers. I saw the train with wounded on the Moscow railway station, it has arrived from Petrozavodsk.” A worker of the kolkhos “Punyani-Tyakht” in Strugokrasnenskii region spread rumors that the war between The USSR and Estonia can't be avoided applying to the letters from her brother who lived in Estonia [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 107].
Those who spread such rumors often applied to the correspondence with their relatives who beared arms. Thus the worker of the meat processing plant in Pskov, Elkina, applied to her husband's letters: «Our Army is located on the Finnish border in bad conditions. The wounded are sent to Leningrad. The Red Army is exposed to raids of the Finns» [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 109]. It should be noticed that such rumors benefited to the official propaganda bacause they underlined the tensions of Soviet-Finnish relationships, convinced both civil and military parts of population that the conflict can't be avoided and should be resolved by miltary means. Finland was represented as an agressive side both in rumors and in the propaganda.
New sources of rumors appeared with the beginning of military conflict. They were the Army and the Fleet, the opposing side and everybody who was involved into the military action.
The plot of the rumors was defined by the charcter of military action and that propagandistic idea which was chosen in order to influence each other. With the beginning of military action Finnish mass-media, as expected, started the global propagandistic war. Its aim was to create negative information background which was supposed to obstruct the work of political departments of The USSR and to benefit to the decline of the morale of civil and military people [ 17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 125126].
The opinion of the Finnish side penetrated to Leningrad through listening to Finnish radio broadcasts [10. Op. 6s. D. 849. L. 14] and through the contacts with the Finnish population of the Northwest, which from the very beginning opposited the policy of The USSR Government [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 107-109].
But the most actual and survivable rumors appeared in the army and fleet environment and were connected with taking part in the military activity. The chracter of those gossip can be described by the rumor which was widely spread both in the Army and Fleet and Leningrad. The rumor had it that Soviet airplanes bombed Soviet ships during the operation on taking the islands in the Gulf of Finland on the 30th of November, 1939. The reason for this rumor was the incident when the pilots of the 12th squadron did not make sure that there was an enemy under and opened fire on the island which was already taken by our Army. The pilot Chertkov opened fire on the group of Red Army soldiers [11. Op. 2. D. 68. L. 47] and the bomber SB of the 57th air regiment run
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by the pilots Asadov and Maralin bombed by mistake our destroyer [14, p. 350]. These mistakes were caused by the problems of comunication, but it did not interested those who spread rumors. The rumor about the planes bombed their own army kept on spreading and acquired more and more details. The last time this rumor was noticed on the 19th of January, 1940. The Red Navy Man Khlebnikov told his friends that a Soviet plane bombed his ship, then moved to the frontline and bomb land-forces until our aviation made it land [9. Op. 7с. D. 52с. L. 198].
All in all, in the first days of the war rumors and gossip did not influence Soviet people. Against the background of the successful attack people considered that they received enough of information from official sources.
The situation started to get worse in the beginning of December,
1939. As the Soviet attack was getting slower, the character of official information was changing. Instead of the large number of detailed messages there appeared the small number short ones. Finally to the 15th of January, 1940, the official information was just that there was nothing new on the front-line and the articles-refutations [7].
The affect of such articles was more negative because the considerable part of population interpreted them as “There is no smoke without fire”. Giving the description of that articles' influence on the morale of civil and military parts of the population we can apply to the letter of the second lieutenant M. V. Teterin to his wife from the 27th of December, 1939 [8, p. 195]. This letter shows that despite the combat losses, the Red Army men were still assured in the victory with the help of Soviet power. The author of the letter also believed Soviet mass-media. The fact that such tendency were widely spread among the soldiers can be proved also by the letter of the commander of a platoon Sergei Brovin to his colleague Mikhail Vilinov from the 28th of January,
1940. He wrote: “... The chances to survive here are low. But the fate may give me one. Ir is hard to fight with them... But I hope the victory will be ours...” [6]. In the same period of time a lot of Red Army men and commanders got critical about the official information. There was, for example, the report of the lieutenant Shpinev where he described the official information about taking the village Keviniemi by Soviet Army as a fraud and misleading, because the village was under the Finnish control when that information was published. The same source tells us that rumor had it that the Soviet Aviation had only three planes in order and only 5 trained pilots including Vodop'yanov “who, of course, won't be allowed here” [20, p. 153]. In conditions of lack of the detailed and objective information, the role and the significance of rumors grew up. Such rumors can be divided into several types.
The first one is the rumors from the front-line. Rumor had it that there were Finnish defenses of 5-7 floors height, that they were covered
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with rubber or steel chain. The projectiles bounced off such defense and exploded nearby [16, p. 172]. “Though Finland is small our Army bears large losses and will bear yet more. They have mostly natural defenses: made of stone or granite. Our projectiles can't damage them. The newspapers say we have 2 thousand dead and 7 thousand wounded, but we have more truly” - people in Leningrad talked like this [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 115]. The rumors also reported of the brutality of Finnish soldiers. The Red Army men called them “shyutskorovtsy” [4, p. 20].
Also the rumors appeared in the rearward. Political officials noted wide spread of the defeatist rumors there as well. There was a well-known rumor that the direction to stop the war with Finland was issued because there were 3500 of frostbitten among the 7000 of wounded. There was also a rumor popular among the citizens of Kronshtadt. They talked about a Major who lost both of his legs in fight. His wife left him and his daughter drove her out, gave up study and took care of him [10. Op. 6 s. D. 849. L. 70-131]. Sometimes those who spread rumors found a mare's nest. Thus, the worker of the Uglov limy plant, Zhukova, started a rumor that their colleagues Borisov and Udilin were dead and Kashevarov was badly wounded. However the wifes of those men flatly denied this “information” applying to the letters from their “dead” husbands [20. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 123-124].
Another source of rumors was the Finnish part of the population of Leningrad region. They painfully perceived the war and were glad to Finnish successes. Thus, the information reports noted the following incidents:
A certain Vikhlyainen of Finnish nation, the worker of the Oktyabr'skaya Railways, asserted that fighting with Finland the soldiers of the Red Army and its tanks drowned in swamps.
The resident of the village Gakkovo, the Konnovskii Country Council of Kingisepp lotusi region said: “When they took the island Sursari, the Red Army men came into a house, heard the noise under the floor and threw three grenades. That's what the Soviet Army do!” There's no doubt that such information was received from Finnish radio broadcasts. They were popular among the Finnish part of Leningrad region population. However the rest part of population of this region had doubts also. Ivanov, the guard of the Os'misk RK CPSU(b) said: “There are innocent people killed in the Finnish front-line as long as in the rearward the directors-scallywags have no risks. They earn 800 rubles as long as the Red Army men earn only 8 rubles.” Semenova, the cleaner of the Os'minsk primary school, asserted that the Finnish army was supported by a large number of Swedish volunteers, so the could defeat the communists in a short future. Egorov, the accountant of the kolkhoz “Pushkino” of the same region noted: “The position of our army is bad. If there was Trotskii governing, he would not let things go this way”.
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Nikolaeva, the worker of the kolkhoz “Stal'” of Kengisep region, said: “The Bolsheviks send the soldiers in Finland for fighting and make them starve. The Red Army men would better fight bolsheviks instead of the Finns” [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 61].
There was a variety of rumors in the rearwards connected with the assurance that betrayal and enemies of the people activity were the reason of failures:
The Red Navy man Rozhnov claimed that he he heard in Leningrad that the commander of the Baltic Fleet Tributs was unmasked as an “enemy of the people” [10. Op. 6с. D. 849. L. 131].
“Rumor has it that there's a sabotage made top by commanders. The Red Army soldiers were equipped with greatcoats and boots. Many of them were frostbitten,” - said the typist of the Kingissep region Executive Committee, Alik.
“The Commander of the front-line on the Finnish border happened to be an enemy of the people so Voroshilov himself is ruling the front”, -told his colleagues the supply manager of the gang “Krasnyi shveinik” of Vsevolozhsk region.
A part of such statements was connected with the disbelief to the official mass-media.
One of the company “Zagotles” workers heard that 10 Finnish planes were shot down and noted: “They do not say how many of our planes were shot down.”
Often the lack of official information provoked people to make their own conclusions. “I've heard Budennyi betrayed and yielded a lot of Red Army men prisoner. I stood on the platform and saw the echelon full of Red Army soldiers, but they were not wounded. They must have been sent to Moscow. There must be something wrong there, but they do not tell us. My relative from Donbass wrote me that there was something wrong there, so I think that they take those soldiers to Donbass.” This statement shows that its author, Mariya Zhuravleva, even did not clearly understand where Donbass is located, but the tone of her words represents the decline of the loyalty to official mass-media [17. Op. 5. D. 4530. L. 116].
Leningrad was also a source of rumors. It was caused both by the closeness of the front-line and the lack of official information, it provoked people to make their own conclusions out of what they saw.
The mechanism of spreading rumors and their source are represented by the case on the repair ship “Hammer & Sickle”. On the 7th of February, 1940, the turner Timopheev came back to the ship. He was asked about the life of Leningrad citizens and the news from the frontline. He answered that everything was okay in Leningrad and there was nothing new in the front-line. He also mentioned Leningrad rumors and retold them though he told that they hardly are true. To the question of
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where he heard them Timopheev answered quite typical for that time: “I've heard it from women in the queue” [9. Op. 7s. D. 52 s. L. 19]. He was not the only one who applied to this significant source of information in The USSR.
The period from the end of December, 1939, to the 12th of February, 1940 can be accounted as a period of top-activity of the rumors. The second Soviet attack on the line of Mannerheim changed the situation. The successes of the Red Army together with the improvement of informational background contributed to it. Starting from the 15th of February and to the end of the war there was o information about any rumors in cities, regions, Army and Fleet.
As a conclusion let us make some notes. As it was mentioned above, the rumors had great influence on the morale of Leningrad and Leningrad region people in 1939-1940. All in all the were of defeatist nature and influenced the people negatively.
There are three kinds of rumors that appeared and penetrated to the Navy in the period of the Soviet-Finnish war:
The rumors which appeared in the military and navy surrounding, aimed to explain the failures of the Soviet army. For this purpose, they exaggerated the military potential of the enemy and absolutised the failures of The Red Army.
Another kind of rumors appeared in Leningrad and countryside of the Northwestern region. People were ready to believe any alternative information as soon as they did not get official reports. The rumors spread widely and acquired various details. However it should be noted that the rumors of countryside were of tougher nature. It was connected with the whole emotional background of Soviet countryside of that period.
One more type of rumors is Finnish disinformation which was spread through the Finnish mass-media and radio broadcasts of some Western countries. Considering the last ones let us note that they used both the techniques of “double standards” and “partial truth”. These rumors were spread by the Finnish part of the population of Leningrad region, who negatively perceived the war and those intellectuals who had the access to western sources of information.
Such wide spread of rumors and gossips in the period of the Soviet-Finnish war was reasoned by the lack of full official information in the Soviet mass-media. Let us mention also partial loss of confidence to the official sources of information though it was not absolute.
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