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Horowitz off target The Guardian Communist Party of Australia May 12, 2010  www.cpa.org.au, cpa@cpa.org.au , guardian@cpa.org.au Anthony Horowitz’ series Foyle’s War, about a democratically-minded and very principled copper on the South Coast of Britain during WW2, earned a lot of credibility through its frank depiction of the prevalence of the forces of appeasement in that country, especially in the early part of the War. It was refreshing to see a modern series written from an anti-fascist perspective. However, in the first episode of the latest series of Foyle’s War, entitled The Russian House and shown last week, Horowitz blotted his copybook big time. He chose to present the Russians captured by the Allies while fighting for the Nazis as the good guys! He portrayed their being returned to the USSR to face the consequences of their treachery as a scandal. In Horowitz’ version, the British government conspired with the dreaded Stalin to send the captured Russians back to the USSR, because “there were 20,000 British POWs still in Russian hands”. These could only have been British POWs held in German POW camps liberated by the Red Army. Horowitz implies heavily that the USSR held up the return of these troops in order to blackmail the British government into returning the Russian collaborators. But the British authorities actually went to considerable pains to disrupt and prevent the return of Soviet citizens to the USSR. However, in 1945, the mind of the public was still filled with the ideals of the anti-fascist coalition. The Red Army was viewed – particularly in Britain – with awe and respect. Quislings, collaborators and other pro-Nazi elements were scorned as “scum”. It was the task of the Cold War, which Winston Churchill launched, to change that attitude and make the public ready to accept the concept of war with the USSR. There is not a hint in Horowitz’ program as to what these Russian prisoners had been doing, fighting for the Nazis. But we know what they had been doing: these anti-Soviet recruits to the Nazi cause became members of punitive detachments to hunt down and destroy Russian partisans; they made excellent (efficient and ruthless) concentration camp guards, and of course they were eager scouts for the German army. I met a Russian émigré once whose hatred of the USSR was very evident. He claimed to be very well informed about the history of the Soviet Union, citing as proof “My grandfather owned three villages”. Not houses or farms, you’ll notice, but three entire villages. His family had obviously been rich (very rich) kulaks, accustomed to copping a hefty share of everything the poor peasants who lived in the three villages had produced. The Revolution had put a stop to that and taken away his family’s privileges. And he hated it (and Communism) for that reason. The remnants of the kulaks, and of other previously privileged feudal strata, such as the White Cossacks, and the sons of the Tsarist officer corps who had fought tenaciously against the Revolution, still survived in the USSR when the Nazis invaded. Nursing their grievances (real or imagined), despising Communists and Jews (whom they viewed as more or less the same thing) and contemptuous of poor peasants and factory workers (but not so much of rich peasants or kulaks), these anti-Soviet hangovers were prone to revive a belief that had been popular in Russian middle and upper class circles during the First World War: that Germany was invincible and that what Russia needed was a touch of “German discipline”. In other words, those whose class position put them on the side against the Revolution and Socialism welcomed the Nazis as allies, which in fact they were. They joined in the killing of their own people. The Soviet Union, let us never forget, lost 26 million people – most of them civilians – in the War. The Axis troops – Germany and its fascist allies – in Russia were encouraged to regard the Soviet people as subhuman. The Germans in particular (there were also Hungarian, Finnish and Italian troops in the invading force) massacred men, women and children and then proudly posed for photographs among the bodies of their victims. Commonly, the inhabitants of captured villages were herded wholesale into the barn or church, which was then set on fire. Any who managed to break out were indiscriminately gunned down. The people who helped the Nazis bring down this horror on their fellow citizens were naturally regarded as the worst kind of war criminals. And not just by Russians. Collaborators and quislings were universally despised by the people who supported the Allied cause. In occupied Germany, just after the War, while the British government tried to help refugee Russian fascists to escape, British officers in the field tended to look on these traitors as vermin, deserving of whatever punishment was waiting for them. Horowitz’ portrayal of the armed White Guard terrorist cell operating from “the Russian House” as some sort of James Bond-style secret agents defending truth and justice is a shameful and rather ludicrous example of rewriting history. Many White Guard Russian émigré groups worked with and for the Nazis throughout the 30s. They were not the good guys. This lapse on the part of Foyle’s War is unfortunate, but serves to remind us that even the informed and otherwise astute can fall for Cold War propaganda, if it is presented in the right way. We must always ask ourselves, does this article, program, film or whatever, support the interests of the working class as a whole, or the interests of the capitalist ruling class? Maligning the USSR’s incredible efforts against Fascism in WW2 unquestionably serves the interests of the anti-socialist, exploiting class. The preceding article was published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue of May 12, 2010. The Guardian, Editorial, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, Sydney NSW 2010, Australia  Communist Party of Australia, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, Sydney NSW 2010, Australia General Secretary: Dr Hannah Middleton Phone (02) 9699 8844 Fax: (02) 9699 9833 Email CPA cpa@cpa.org.au The Guardian guardian@cpa.org.au Subscription rates are available on request. |