For forty-five years, I’d believed almost everything the BBC told me. And why shouldn’t I, after all, they were the good old BBC? Granted, I wasn’t totally sold on going to war with Iraq, but beyond that, I’d never really questioned any of their narratives.
With hindsight that was probably a huge mistake. But in my defense, when you’re servicing a mortgage and credit cards on a paid-by-the-mile job, it doesn’t leave too much time for questioning the mainstream media. But in 2008, in the city of Volgograd, my entire understanding of this world was suddenly rocked to its core.
Russia’s National Day, June 12th 2008, would be my final night in Volgograd, or as many locals still seem to call their beautiful city, Stalingrad. With new tyres fitted to the Triumph, the following morning I’d start riding east. Firstly towards Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, then onwards, hopefully unscathed by accident, black bears or bribe hungry police officers, along the Amur Highway across the wilds of Siberia into the eastern port city of Vladivostok.
That night, my new friends had wined and dined me at their own expense, before taking me out on a nighttime tour of Volgograd. Ruslan, Semyon and Ulyana were rightly proud of their city, at the centre of which, stands a single tree and a pair of crumbling buildings.
That solitary tree and two derelict buildings – Pavlov’s House and the Old Paper Mill - were the only things to remain standing after the Battle of Stalingrad - August 1942 to February 1943. Today, they stand as haunting reminders that two million lives were lost there during those fateful months, the bloodiest battle in military history and the battle that undoubtedly decided the outcome of World War II.
Pavlov’s House is the remains of an apartment building where for an entire month in the winter of 1942, opposing forces had fought hand to hand and floor by floor to gain advantage. The line of the street to the front of the house marks the perimeter of a thirty meter piece of ground stretching back to the River Volga. That tiny sliver of land was the only piece of Stalingrad that had remained under Russian control, and at its centre stands the pock marked shell of the Old Paper Mill.
Had this city been known by any other name, Russian forces would have certainly retreated across the Volga and formed a new defensive line on the eastern side of the wide flowing river. But this wasn’t just any Russian city, this was Stalingrad. Through either vanity or a a deep understanding of his people’s psyche, Stalin had ordered that the city that bore his name, could never be allowed to fall. And it didn’t fall. It was saved by his people, men women and children of all ages, people who would become known as The Heroes of Stalingrad.
Standing on the grassy bank, looking out towards the Old Paper Mill, Ulyana put a gentle hand on my shoulder and introduced me to the elephant that had been lurking in the room since our arrival. “It’s a shame that nobody learned any lessons from this destruction”. She'd certainly had a point.
Ulyana had then asked, why in the years following the end of that war, had the United States wanted to destroy Russia with its vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and I’d turned the question back on her: ”Why had Russia wanted to obliterate the West with its own vast arsenal of nuclear weapons?”
She’d laughed at my response and then turned me around and pointed towards the heavy traffic in the street behind us. ”In 1969, you put two men on the moon, and then brought them home safely. But forty years later, here in Russia, we’re still building our shitty Lada cars”. She’d been smiling as she'd said it, but it was clear that she’d also been deadly serious; ”so Geoff, do you really believe that Russia wanted to start a nuclear war, a war it could never possibly win, with America and the West?”
I’d never had much time for Conspiracy Theories. I’d always found them to be heavy on hearsay and light on facts, and had those elements been reversed then I suspect we wouldn’t even call them conspiracy theories, just history. But, with those two short sharp sentences, Ulyana had turned my forty-five years of world understanding directly on its head.
Were Smedley Butler and Dwight Eisenhower right? Was war simply a racket, even cold wars? And did we fail to guard against the rising power of the military industrial complex? Were the threats of annihilation by the USSR genuine? Or, had we simply been sold on that fear by our politicians and media in order to satisfy some undisclosed political agenda?
Overhearing our conversation and perhaps recognizing my rising level of discomfort, Semyon had jumped in with a practical observation of his own: ”The cold war was very good for us Geoff, because the tractor factory was working day and night producing tanks, and making tanks instead of tractors, the money we’d all made was much higher”.
Russia in general, and Volgograd in particular, had opened my eyes in many different ways, and what I’d discovered there began changing how I’d looked at the world around me, and more importantly, how that world was being reported by the media.
My friends in Volgograd, knowingly or not, became my teachers, and in my eyes, they are the new Heroes of Stalingrad.
Thanks for reading ….
Riding and smiling as always …. Geoff