Oh those Russians!

‘Oh those Russians!’ In the raspy voice of Bobby Ferral is how one of the most iconic songs of the German-based pop group Boney M, ‘Rasputin,’ ends. Written by the group’s creator Frank Farina, the song is about Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, widely considered a mystical healer and a close friend and advisor of Tsar Nicholas II and his family during the early years of the 20th century.

What of ‘those Russians’ though? The song paints Rasputin as a playboy toughie who, following legend whose base in truth is unclear, is supposed to have taken some killing, poisoned and later shot in the head. The story is hardly representative of Russian or Russians, so the phrase is essentially a caricature.  

The song was released in 1978. Forty four years later, I heard the phrase again, but it had nothing to do with Russian palace intrigue or some Russian playboy-thug masquerading as a mystic. At the time I was the Director of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute and had occasion to discuss collaborative work with relevant UN agencies.

It was a tense time on account of political upheaval and also anxieties associated with the controversial policy of the government headed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on fertilizer. There was talk of the agriculture sector being destroyed leading to famine. The discussion left out the rhetoric, recognized realities and focused on what can be done. It was a fruitful and open discussion on various aspects related to agriculture, productivity, and food availability, security and sovereignty,  

The senior official who spoke with us accompanied us as we left the building. During the friendly chit-chat prior to our departure, mention was made of the evolving situation in Ukraine, the inevitable rise in oil and fertiliser prices, and the impact on countries like Sri Lanka.  

‘Oh those Russians!’  

That’s what the lady said, essentially painting Russia as a villain and everyone else as benign, innocent, well-intentioned saints.

My response: ’Just the Russians? How about NATO?’  

She immediately replied, ‘yes, of course.’  The gut reaction, ‘Oh those Russians,’ which clearly demonstrates a lack of appreciation of the relevant complexities and machinations of global power politics, not to mention political economy should not detract from the excellent work she does. It does, however, echo a general perception of Russia carefully crafted over many decades: Russia is the Evil Empire.  And it was scripted long before ‘Ukraine’ and long before the Cold War.

There are facts, however, that might make people stop and reexamine ‘received truths’ about 20th century history, facts that might make people think twice about 'Oh those Russians.'

Who suffered the greatest losses in securing the victory of the Entente Powers over those of the Central Powers led by Germany? Well, it’s ‘Oh those Russians,’ to the tune of 1.7 million dead and almost 5 million wounded. And the US losses? Of the 2 million soldiers who reached France, 116,000 died and 204,000 were wounded.

And World War II? Even Churchill, a war criminal long before he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and certainly no friend of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin or Communism, acknowledged that it was the Soviet army that tore the guts out of the German military machine.

The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of casualties (20-27 million). Of these 11.4 million were soldiers, 10 million civilian deaths due to military activity and an additional 8 million to 9 million deaths due to famine and disease. China lost 15-20 million, Germany 6-7.4 million and Poland 5.9-6 million. The USA lost 291,557.

While the crafted narrative would have us believe that the war would not have ended if the USA had not dropped atomic bombs on Iwo Jima and Nagasaki, the truth is that Japan had already lost the war and was about to surrender. The deployment of Soviet forces pulled out from Europe after the fall of Germany effectively sealed Japan’s fate. The bombs need not have been dropped.  But that was Truman’s USA and not the USA of Roosevelt.

The USA did play a key role in Japan’s defeat. Here’s the gist:

In late 1944 US Air Force general Curtis ‘Demon’ LeMay bombed Japanese civilians with a ferocity never seen before. In March 1945 LeMay sent 334 planes over Tokyo carrying incendiary bombs consisting of napalm, thermite, white phosphorus and many other kinds of inflammable material designed to kill civilians. Tokyo burned and how! Eighty thousand civilians were killed.  By the time the war was over, the US Air Force had firebombed over 100 Japanese cities killing more than a million civilians. Robert McNamara who was in LeMay's staff and would later serve as the US Secretary of Defence under John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson was of the opinion that had the United States lost the war, they would all have been tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.

Back to ‘Oh those Russians’: John F Kennedy acknowledged, ‘No nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War.’  

What ‘Oh those Russians’ really did since the invasion of Ukraine last year and will do in the future, the numbers of the dead categorised by nation etc., we will one day know. In the chronicles of the two world wars the ‘Oh those Russians’ have been largely absented. Today, with regard to Ukraine, NATO wants to absent itself from the story.

Let us not speculate about the possible outcome of historiography, by histories and fiction-spinners (and we know that the Western media has perfected that art, BBC and Channel 4 included!). Since we began this with a song, let us end with a story about music.

One in three of the population of 2.5 million people living in Leningrad perished during the 900 days when Germany besieged that city. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik, in ‘The Concise Untold History of the United States,’ describes that horror thus:

‘The incessant bombing, the cold, starvation, eating soups made of glue from wallpaper, or rats, to fellow human beings went on to a far greater extent than officially admitted. Such was the pride that many civilians refused to evacuate the city when given the chance. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony in honour of this sacrifice. It was called 'The Leningrad.' The orchestra continued to play throughout the siege, until most of the members had dropped from starvation. The Germans never took Leningrad.’

‘Oh those Russians,’ takes quite a different meaning, doesn’t it? 

Dmitri Shostakovich in a fireman's uniform in Leningrad during the siege in 1941. | TASS