Soviet heroes 'written out of war'

Filipp Bobkov, who joined the Red Army in 1942 when he was just 16, and who later became a KGB general, has claimed the West wrote the Russian armed forces out of the history of the war, which cost an estimated 20 million Soviet lives and devastated large areas of the country.

Scottish veterans have backed their former comrade-in-arms, and blamed the Cold War for the downplaying of the USSR’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

In an interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Bobkov, said: "The role the Soviet Army played in liberating Europe from the Nazis was deliberately played down in the postwar years as well as during the Second World War. This could be seen in the delayed opening of the Second Front, in inconsistent and often superficial coverage of the events on the Eastern, or Soviet front.

"Our allies, particularly, Great Britain and Churchill personally, sought to show that the main role in the victory belonged to them alone, and to Britain in particular. "

Bobkov, originally from the Kirovgrad area of Ukraine, was 15 when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. He was evacuated to the north of Russia to avoid being caught up by the onslaught. He joined the Red Army in 1943 at the age of 16 and took part in the ferocious battles in Western Russia and Belarus. By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of lieutenant, and commanded a platoon fighting the Germans in Latvia.

After the war, he joined Soviet intelligence and rose within the ranks of the KGB. He served as a senior director of the organisation under the last four Soviet leaders, from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev. He became deputy chairman of the KGB in 1985, and since the collapse of the USSR has been an adviser to the business community in post-Soviet Russia.

Railing against Western amnesia, he said: "We liberated Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, most of Yugoslavia, Poland, and some of Greece, Germany, Denmark, and northern Norway.

"The Soviet Army lost about 69,000 soldiers in Romania, 600,000 in Poland, 8,000 in Yugoslavia, over 140,000 in Hungary, about 26,000 in Austria, and 102,000 in Germany."

The Soviets and the Western Allies were frequently at odds over when the British and Americans would launch an invasion of Nazi-occupied mainland Europe. Stalin urged that the invasion should be launched as early as possible so that the Germans would be forced to split their resources between the Eastern and Western fronts.

The Russians were angry about delays in launching the ‘Second Front’, and suspected the West of wanting to allow the Germans to completely wear out the Soviet Army.

He said: "The real second front was not opened until after the [1943] Tehran Conference. Then the Anglo-American troops landed in Normandy in 1944. It was at the time when the Allies realised that we could liberate Europe without them."

He contrasted the failure to open the Second Front with Stalin’s willingness to change the timing of Soviet attacks to relieve pressure on the Western Allies during the Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive in the West.

Bobkov also criticised the West for failing to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz and the concentration camps, and claimed that the fact that the Red Army liberated the camps was overlooked.

"People tend to forget, for example, that Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz. You remember how the Allies bombed the Third Reich territories? They virtually razed Dresden to the ground. Why didn't they drop bombs on the railway leading to Auschwitz, knowing that people were being sent to Auschwitz along that particular railway to be killed? "

Commemorations of the end of the end of the Second World War are major events in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The war killed a quarter of the population of Ukraine and of Belarus. Veterans are revered, and satire about the war, such as the British Dad’s Army comedy, is unthinkable. Few families were left unscathed, including that of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, whose father - a soldier captured by the Nazis - was an inmate at Auschwitz.

Scottish veterans say they agree the Soviet role in the conflict has been played down. They recalled that Britons thought highly of the efforts made by the Russians during the war years, but that feelings changed with the onset of the Cold War.

Neil Griffiths, spokesman for the Royal British Legion Scotland, said: "He’s got a point. It is very hard to argue that the Soviets were given the credit they were due for their sacrifices and sheer heroism. There is no doubt that we owe them a tremendous debt of honour that we should never forget.

And then things changed after 1945 when people didn’t think quite the same of the Russians, which was very sad."

Gerard DeGroot, Professor of Modern History at St Andrews University, agreed that the Soviet role was underplayed during the Cold War, but claimed that recent books and films, such as Enemy at the Gates starring Jude Law - which focused on the Battle of Stalingrad - were making up for decades of neglect.

He said: "Growing up in the United States, I barely knew that the Soviet Union was even on our side in the war, let alone that they played such an important role. Films such as the Longest Day gave the impression that the D-Day landings broke the back of the German army and it was all over after then, which was wrong, of course.

"It’s better than it was. There has been a lot of popular history writing and films, such as the Jude Law film, which are redressing the balance."