It's fascinating the way the word "Stalingrad" keeps finding its way into our cultural consciousness. In the last few years, we have heard the name in a variety of places, notably in Jean-Jacques Annaud's film Enemy at the Gates, even if it was hated by many purists. One typical critic called it "a hackneyed 'duel' movie, essentially an updated western complete with a ridiculously contrived love triangle, in which the battle itself is reduced to nothing more than a visually stimulating backdrop." But the film did serve to bring the name to public attention again. Sometimes the name reaches us in a literal sense, as in the case of the Soviet veterans of the battle who are leading a campaign to restore the city's famous name. The city, of course, has been Volgograd since the days of Khrushchev, when the appalling Stalin personality cult was erased, village by village, school by school, street by street. The desire to bring back the name "Stalingrad" seems motivated by equal parts nostalgia and a desire for historical accuracy. "We were raised under Stalin, studied under Stalin, lived with Stalin, fought for his name and for the Motherland, says one Anatoli Kozlov, who heads the campaign. "It was a big mistake of Khrushchevs to rename it, " say others. "It's not renaming, it's about restoring historical fact. Waterloo, Borodino, Pearl Harbor -- nobody could ever think of renaming those historical places. Can you imagine Pearl Harbor renamed?" The current Russian government has reacted with characteristic ambivalence. "The very fact that we are marking the anniversary of one of the most crucial battles of the Great Patriotic War does not mean we are giving the green light to renaming the city," says one official. The Putin government seems at this point unlikely to go that far for a number of reasons, including the current warm Russo-German relationship, fueled by Putin's personal Germanophilia. The recent 60th anniversary ceremonies, where both Soviet and German veterans toured the site as invited, welcome guests are indicative of the current relationship of the two countries-it would have been inconceivable only fifteen years ago. Throughout its life, the USSR never failed to exploit The Great Patriotic War, and in particular Stalingrad, for political advantage, and it took the collapse of Communism to arrange, finally, a perspective. For the rest of us, the reminders of Stalingrad tend to be more metaphorical. The name gets dragged out whenever, for political reasons, people want to invoke the specter of bloody house-to-house fighting. The comparisons are usually less apt than they are revelatory of the values of those who do the invoking. It's not unreasonable to wonder if people who look forward to more Stalingrads share Stalin's near-total indifference toward the lives of the civilian populations who live in the houses-to- houses. In this context, we hear that Yasser Arafat has gleefully called the April 2002 operation at Jenin, which resulted in about 55 Palestinian and 23 Israeli deaths, "the Stalingrad of Palestine." And the openly Stalinophilic Saddam Hussein has threatened to turn all of Baghdad into a "Mesopotamian Stalingrad" for invading American and British troops. In fact, the Stalingrad historian Antony Beevor has reminded us of "the pitiless treatment of civilians. In September 1942, there were about 50,000 civilians trapped in cellars, sewers and even shell-holes. At the end of the next January, when the battle ended, 10,000 were still alive - an astonishing survival rate, given the savagery of the conflict." This is what Stalingrad really means. Besides illustrating the cynicism of those who conjure it up, the modern Stalingrad scenario also depends on the essential goodwill of the attacking force. The other option in the scenario for the attacker -- as the Germans attempted unsuccessfully in Leningrad, the Soviets successfully in Konigsberg -- is simply to surround the city and either starve it or annihilate it with air and artillery until it surrenders. The defensive Stalingrad scenario depends on the attacker making the political and ethical decision not to use this tactic. However, the most apt Stalingrad comparison of all is also the most ironic. Antony Beevor wrote a London Times article a few years ago where he specifically compared the RussianChechen fighting in the ruins of Grozny in the nineties to the 1942-43 carnage on the Volga. "When Russian officers talk of turning Grozny into a huge bomb crater," said Beevor, "They seem to forget their own history. In 1942 the Luftwaffe's massive air raids on Stalingrad turned the city into the perfect killing ground where the Red Army was able to ambush its Wehrmacht attackers." Grozny became a similar tactical nightmare for the Russian attackers. The thousands of casualties the Russians took in the house-to-house rubble of Grozny point to the need for military planners to find ways to avoid the nightmarish, and increasingly familiar, Stalingrad scenario. Back to Table of Contents -- Against the Odds vol. 1 no. 4 Back to Against the Odds List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by LPS. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com * Buy this back issue or subscribe to Against the Odds direct from LPS.