“Suppose you have two apples in your pocket. Someone took one apple from you. How many apples do you have left?
- Two.
- Think hard.
Pinocchio frowned - he thought so well.
- Two…
- Why?
- I will not give the apple to Nect, even though he is fighting!
A. N. Tolstoy. The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio
Lend-lease supplies. The second material on Lend-Lease deliveries clearly hit many VO readers with a sickle in one place. It is not for nothing that 460 comments were made to him, more than to the article - the cry from the heart "Don't touch Stalin." And what tricks did the commentators resort to to prove the unprovable in principle. One wrote that "The message of the Soviet government …", published in the newspaper "Pravda", the organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), "propaganda material" and therefore is not a source. Someone wrote that we could buy something there from other countries. And, of course, there were a lot of people who sang hosanna to Mongolian horses despite the words of their beloved Stalin that World War II is a "war of motors". I was even more surprised by the bizarre calculations by many commentators who tried to use them to downplay the importance of the supply. Although, it would seem, there is already a simple afrimetics at the kindergarten level: Pinocchio had two apples, Pierrot gave him two more. And that will be? There will be EXACTLY HALF, but not a third of this total number of apples. Because two and two are FOUR! So it is with supplies! And it is obvious that for a number of indicators, if we compare what was produced during the war and what was delivered, we will have 50 and more percent. But our people are cunning, they add up the supply data with what is produced, and are looking for a percentage of this total amount. The result is a third! The technique is typical for Soviet propaganda ("and they also hang blacks!"), But it does not work today. It would be more correct to add pre-war stocks to the ones produced during the war years, wouldn't it? But then from the pre-war stocks it is necessary to deduct everything that was lost at the beginning of the war. And this is no longer the history of Lend-Lease, but the history of the Second World War in full. And, as you know, in our country there was prepared a fundamental multivolume work "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" in 12 volumes, and there, in theory, all this should have been, but … what is not, that is not. About the quality of this work, by the way, on "VO" has already been told, as well as about what this research, in theory, should have been. But, unfortunately, it never happened. So you don't need to deal with casuistry, as well as demonstrate your illiteracy to the whole world, but you just need to think a little. It is clear that it is a pity to part with the thought, inspired from childhood, that “we are great, we are powerful, more sun, higher than clouds,” but we will have to. Moreover, the greatness of a nation is not at all determined by the number of those killed in the war, nor by the amount of weapons it produces. The USSR had much more of it in 1991 than in 1941, and nevertheless, all this iron did not save it from death. It is important to learn from the past in order to adequately respond to the challenges of today, and trying to make the past better than it is is an absurd undertaking. Well, now let's turn to more specific subjects, namely, to the issue of lend-lease payment.
As many as three routes of military assistance
However, let us first recall some interesting details. For example, there was not one supply route, but three at once: Pacific, Trans-Iranian and Arctic. In total, they gave 93.5% of all supplies. However, none of them was completely safe. Moreover, the same planes, which flew through Alaska and Siberia on their own, very often perished simply because of drunkenness, both from our side and from the American side. Well, because of the weather conditions, of course. And again, no one was preparing for such a large-scale transportation. Neither we nor our allies were ready for them. Ports were not equipped, there were no piers, cranes, warehouses, railways. The same Vladivostok is four times the size of Murmansk and almost five times more than Arkhangelsk handled cargo, although the fact that convoys stopped sending us along the northern route in 1943 is the most shouting. Yes, they stopped there, but they sharply increased supplies in other directions. By the way, there was practically nothing to supply from the very beginning. The entire US Army had 330 tanks at the beginning of the war, why should we send it? And these are all just quantitative indicators, we can not even talk about qualitative ones: duralumin aircraft are in any case better than wooden ones, this should be obvious even to a layman.
What did you pay in gold for?
Now let's get back to the issue of payment. Let me remind you that in the "Communication of the Soviet Government …", printed in "Pravda", deliveries from Great Britain are indicated for the period from June 1941 to June 11, 1944, but in the end they continued in May 1945. Why since June? Apparently, negotiations on supplies began literally immediately after the German attack on the USSR. In total, four million tons of military supplies were delivered to our country, including food and various medicines. It is believed that the total cost of weapons supplied from Great Britain to the USSR was 308 million pounds, and food and raw materials were another 120 million pounds. According to the Anglo-Soviet agreement of June 27, 1942, all military assistance provided by Great Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was completely free. COMPLETELY FREE, I emphasize. But it must be borne in mind that before this date, that is, from June 22, 1941 to June 27, 1942, that is, in fact, exactly one year, the USSR paid for all supplies from Great Britain, paying for them both in gold and at the expense of its foreign exchange reserves. … The cost of all these supplies for this period of time today can be estimated at 55 tons of gold, which was transported from the USSR to England by the ships of the British Navy. One of these "golden ships" - the British cruiser "Edinburgh", which carried 5500 kg of gold, was sunk on May 2, 1942 during its transportation.
Unique operation
As you know, during a unique operation at the bottom of the Barents Sea in 1981, 431 gold bars weighing 5129.3 kg were raised. Then the gold was divided in accordance with the agreement of the parties and the property rights to the cargo in the following relation: 1/3 went to Great Britain, 2/3 went to the USSR. Rescuers were paid 45% of the value of all the gold they saved. Five years later, in September 1986, the lifting operation was continued. Since the day, 29 ingots weighing 345.3 kg have been removed. Nevertheless, five 60 kg ingots remained in the depths of the Barents Sea. The divers simply could not find them in the dark through a rusted ship filled with a thick layer of fuel oil. Since the Soviet press reported that the ship was transporting gold in payment for Lend-Lease, the idea that Lend-Lease was paid for in gold was firmly rooted in the minds of Soviet inhabitants. Ignorant people still think so, but in fact, "Edinburgh's gold", as well as all other gold that came from the USSR to England from June 22, 1941 to June 27, 1942, has nothing to do with Lend-Lease deliveries. … This is the most common trade, when people pay for the goods they have purchased. We emphasize once again - deliveries from England to the USSR during this time are not Lend-Lease!
Once again to the question of sources
In order not to repeat myself and again not to refer to Pravda, I would like to inform you that the “Resolution …” indicated in it was then published in the following edition: “Foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. - T.2: Documents and materials January 1 - December 31, 1944. - M: OGIZ, Gospolitizdat, 1946. - P.142-147. Any reader of "VO" can find this book on the net and look at these pages. All the figures given from the article are in it. That is, we are talking about the fact that all this information was in the USSR. However, as I have already noted, there was freedom of speech and freedom not to use it! In the same newspaper Pravda, dated April 5, 1942, in the editorial on the victory in the Battle of the Ice, there is not a word about the fact that the Teutonic knights drowned in the lake. Not a single one! Pravda is not lying! But on the other hand, all the others (and no one bothered them in this) simply excitedly told how they drowned, and how many of them, worthless, there were thousands. And some, including even completely new textbooks for the school, still repeat this nonsense. It was also with information about Lend-Lease. For people who know and for the same West, whose opinion the USSR valued, we had all the necessary information. But "out there somewhere." And for the "commoners" there was a massive flow of information in which the truth was lost like a needle in a haystack. And it didn't hurt, you could use it. By the way, even the comments of the readers of "VO" speak about this. Well, at that time, no one would have published such material with links even to Gospolitizdat! No wonder no one used them even in memoirs!
For the price of the 1944 gold standard
But we continue to consider the issue of pricing and payment. After England, let's look at supplies from the United States, and here it turns out that aid under the lend-lease of the USSR corresponds to no less than 50,000 tons of gold (based on the gold standard of 1944, which is almost twice as much as the current total gold reserves of all the leading countries of the world (including the USA itself). Moreover, under the terms of the lend-lease agreement, the USSR was not supposed to pay for US supplies during the war years, as well as pay for materials consumed during the war. equipment that simply could not be returned back - for example, equipment for refineries - the amount of payment for all of this was to be determined only after the end of the war.
We give them, they … us
By the way, it is very interesting that the total tonnage of Lend-Lease aid sent from the USA to the USSR roughly corresponded to the total shipments of grain from the USSR to the USA from 1930 to 1940 inclusive (up to there are 19.5 million tons of grain, worth 200 million dollars). That is, at first we fed them, and received them in exchange for bread and fur of pedigree horses, tractors, machines and factories, and then … then they supplied us with everything that we badly needed during the war years. Such is the very close economic relationship between our countries, which, by the way, even today, despite all the sanctions for a number of trade indicators, exceeds 50% of the sales volume. Although in general for Russia as a whole, the United States in terms of the total volume of trade is only partner number 6 with a share of only 4.2%. As, by the way, in the 30s! But then it was not so for tractors, but now… for titanium. Well, progress is evident.
Well, about how the USSR, and then Russia, paid for the lend-lease, you will learn from the next part.
P. S. I usually don't trust the material published in the "live magazines" too much. But this one seemed very interesting to me. And since the respected public who reads "VO" usually does not bother reading such publications as "Questions of History", "USA and Canada", "History of Russian State and Law", "Motherland" and "VIZH", I strongly recommended to read the material from here.
