—— Red Army Sniper ——xiiThe NKVD is repeatedly presented as a harmless troop of
angelic moral heroes, when in reality, the agency was a Stalinist
organisation of ferocious terror directly responsible for the deaths
of 3,000,000 Soviet citizens and foreigners. The NKVD was like the
German SS: both practised the systematic destruction of anyone
deemed an enemy of the state. This includes the Katyn massacre in
which the NKVD murdered tens of thousands of Polish soldiers.
Moreover, although the secretservice arm of the NKVD, Smersh,
was notorious for its brutality, the reader encounters virtually no
criticism of its activities. It was where Nikolaev served.
The killing of Nazis is glamorised as a sport for ‘real men’.
Nazis are portrayed as dumb animals walking in a straight line
to the slaughterhouse, unaware of their destiny. Idioms like
‘exterminators of the Nazi scum’ are used as synonyms for the
Russian snipers. These propaganda slogans reveal a biographer
whose recollections are in perfect alignment with the Stalinist goal
of reducing any opponent to an inhuman object.
Although the German snipers facing the Russians were
proverbial aces flown in from Berlin and equipped with superior
technology like telephone lines to their foxholes, they are
nevertheless presented as inferior to the Soviets. Conversely, the
Russian NKVD sniper brings down the enemy aircraft by a single
shot from his MosinNagant rifle.
This exaggerated patriotism is no less strong when it concerns
the author’s own actions. In a single ambush, he recollects killing
eleven Nazis one after the other, including two colonels and a
general who had just arrived from Berlin to inspect the front line.
The pathos continues to build as his first action after this event is
to inform his beloved mother of how he is fulfilling his duty to his
country and family as an obedient son.
The management of truth is in direct relation to the auto
biographical memories, which cast the Russian soldier as the moral
hero. This is a man committed to serving his country whatever
the cost to his personal comfort or life. According to Nikolaev,
Russian snipers went into action without a supply of food or water