Lend-lease Program through the Prism of Official and Ego Sources

Abstract

Discussions around various aspects of World War II in the world’s scientific space and memory field have continued throughout the postwar decades. Initially, they were determined by polar and antagonistic ideological paradigms, and after the end of the Cold War – the discovery and introduction into scientific circulation of previously classified sources, testing of avant-garde methods of scientific knowledge, the development of interpretive tools. In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union found itself virtually isolated, alone with the Axis bloc and their allies. It was difficult for the Soviet leadership to overcome the existing threats on its own, especially after the German attack. Only the realization by the Western Allies that Berlin’s aggressive course had become a global challenge made it possible to find a constructive way to join forces in the fight against a common enemy. One of the channels of cooperation between the states of the Anti-Hitler Coalition was the organization of supplies to the USSR of military equipment, ammunition, food, and materials necessary for the facilities of the Soviet military-industrial complex within the framework of the land lease program. Until recently, the problem of land lease was more in ideological discourse than in purely scientific. The currently available source base allows for an unbiased analysis of this phenomenon and elucidation of the place and role of foreign revenues to the USSR in strengthening its defense capabilities during the war against Germany and its allies. However, to this day, the researchers look out of focus, because of the perception of this phenomenon by veterans who fought on foreign military equipment, ate food from overseas. The authors of the article sees their task as combining these two dimensions of the lend-lease and finding out its impact not only on the scale of the large-scale armed confrontation, but also on the moral and psychological condition of the Red Army, for whom the war was an extremely difficult test.