Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas Page A

Stalin’s leadership in the Second World War.
    Generally taciturn, Konev explained to me in a few words the course of the campaign at Korsun’-Shevchen-kovsky, which had just been completed and which was compared in the Soviet Union with the one at Stalingrad. Not without exultation, he sketched a picture of Germany’s final catastrophe: refusing to surrender, some eighty, if not even one hundred, thousand Germans were forced into a narrow space, then tanks shattered their heavy equipment and machine-gun nests, while the Cossack cavalry finally finished them off. “We let the Cossacks cut up as long as they wished. They even hacked off the hands of those who raised them to surrender!” the Marshal recounted with a smile.
    I cannot say that at that moment I did not feel joy as well over the fate that had befallen the Germans. In my country too Nazism had, in the name of a superior race, inflicted a war devoid of all erstwhile humane considerations. And yet I had another feeling at the time—horror that it should be so, that it could not be otherwise.
    Sitting to the right of this extraordinary personality, I was eager to clarify certain questions that interested me in particular. First of all: Why were Voroshilov, Buděnny, and other high commanders with whom the Soviet Union entered the war shifted from their commanding positions?
    Konev replied: “Voroshilov is a man of inexhaustible courage. But—he was incapable of understanding modern warfare. His merits are enormous, but—the battle has to be won. During the Civil War, in which Voroshilov came to the fore, the Red Army had practically no planes or tanks against it, while in this war it is precisely these machines that are playing the vital role. Buděnny never knew much, and he never studied anything. He showed himself to be completely incompetent and permitted awful mistakes to be made. Shaposhnikov was and remains a technical staff officer.”
    â€œAnd Stalin?” I asked.
    Taking care not to show surprise at the question, Konev replied, after a little thought: “Stalin is universally gifted. He was brilliantly able to see the war as a whole, and this makes possible his successful direction.”
    He said nothing more, nothing that might sound like a stereotyped glorification of Stalin. He passed over in silence the purely military side of Stalin’s direction. Konev was an old Communist firmly devoted to the Government and to the Party, but, I would say, staunch in his views on military questions.
    Konev also presented us with gifts: for Tito, his personal binoculars, and for us, pistols. I kept mine until the Yugoslav authorities confiscated it at the time of my arrest in 1956.
    The front abounded in examples of the personal heroism and unyielding tenacity and initiative of the common soldiers. Russia was all last-ditch resistance and deprivation and will for ultimate victory. In those days Moscow, and we with it, abandoned itself childishly to “salutes”—fireworks that greeted victories behind which loomed fire and death, and also bitterness. For this was a joy too for Yugoslav fighters suffering the misfortune of their own country. It was as though nothing else existed in the Soviet Union except this gigantic, compelling effort of a limitless land and multimillioned people. I, too, saw only them, and in my bias identified the patriotism of the Russian people with the Soviet system, for it was the latter that was my dream and my struggle.

5
    It must have been about five o’clock in the afternoon, just as I had completed my lecture at the Panslavic Committee and had begun to answer questions, when someone whispered to me to finish immediately because of an important and pressing matter. Not only we Yugoslavs but also the Soviet officials had lent this lecture a more than usual importance. Molotov’s assistant, A. Lozovsky, had introduced me to a select audience. Obviously the Yugoslav