Morale in Moscow

Smooth and open before the Nazi armies last week lay the road to Moscow--only about 225 miles more of it compared to 400 they had already covered. But were the Muscovites downhearted? Confounding outside observers, who a month ago predicted that the whole Soviet system would shiver and collapse like a card-house at the breath of modern war, U.S. newsmen in Moscow and a handful of U.S. citizens who got out of Russia by the Trans-Siberian Railway painted a far different picture.

The people of Moscow, they said, were going about their business as calmly as Londoners, organizing an effective blackout for their as-yet-unbombed city. Last week the only signs of war in Moscow were a few people with gas masks, reservists (better equipped than in the Finnish war) walking to the stations with their families,* fewer autos and taxis. Streetcars, trolley-busses and the Metro were running as usual.

The queues that used to form in front of banks, food and kerosene stores were gone, and though ration cards were issued for food, clothing and manufactured goods, Moscow's stores were generally better stocked than they had been before the war began. Furthermore, rationing only applied in Moscow and Leningrad. It seemed obvious that the Soviet Government had released some of its reputedly enormous food reserve.

Civilian morale in Russia had two great advantages. Russia's very vastness and lack of communications kept bad news at the front from spreading easily to the rest of the nation; and Russian communiques kept the results of the fighting in a convenient haze. In World War I soldiers back from the front told people in the villages and cities how badly things were going. In this war virtually no one had yet come back from the front.

So the Government filled its brave people full of tales of Russian heroism and held out no false promises of military aid from Britain or the U.S. The papers dropped dialectics, merely talked of the "fatherland's war" against foreign invaders.

Without panic Muscovites went about organizing air-raid shelters and A.R.P. units, but the shelters themselves were scarce and hastily thrown together at ground level, offering little real protection. For Soviet higher-ups was reserved Moscow's only safe shelter, the 100-foot-deep Kirovskaya Metro station.

Hub of the Communist universe, Moscow might be expected to have the highest morale. From the smaller cities there was little word, from farming villages (where anti-Stalin feeling is strongest) none. But along the Trans-Siberian Railway travelers saw much the same sights that they had seen in Moscow: swift, purposeful mobilization, ample food. They also saw an average of three trains an hour clanking westward with materials for the front.

Almost daily through the week came reports that the Soviet Government and foreign embassies had been evacuated from Moscow. Usually they were denied, but at week's end U.S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt admitted that he was keeping only a skeleton staff with him in Moscow, that the rest of the staff had been moved to Kazan, 450 miles east, the longtime Tatar capital near the upper Volga some 400 miles west of the Urals. It looked as if far Kazan would be the next Soviet capital if Moscow was evacuated.

In London, Russian Ambassador Ivan Maisky declared: "Should Moscow fall, a catastrophe which I do not believe will occur, we will fight on, supplied by . . . factories and growing industries hidden in the Urals." But the fall of Moscow would be a disaster that could not be concealed from the people or glossed over. Then Russian morale would face a stiffer test.

* Many were singing the latest Moscow hit: "Gotta fight. Gotta rush Hitler right over into the Atlantic."

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