On 23 February 1942 Joseph Stalin, as People’s Commissar of Defence and Chairman of the State Defence Committee of the USSR, issued his “order of the day”. This was almost exactly 80 years before Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine. Stalin’s order was addressed to “comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political workers, guerrillas-men and women”. Eight months earlier, he noted, “fascist Germany treacherously attacked our country, crudely violating a treaty of non-aggression”.
The enemy, he recalled, had “expected that at the very first blow the Red Army would be routed and would lose the ability to resist. But the enemy badly miscalculated.” Because of the suddenness of the attack, the “Red Army was forced to retreat and evacuate part of our territory”, but even as it did so, “it wore down the enemy forces and dealt them heavy blows”. Then, as the war progressed, it was able to refresh and gain in strength. In particular it “defeated the German fascist troops which threatened to encircle the Soviet capital”. With the initial German assaults blunted, a significant moment had arrived.
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