To every historian’s despair

Today marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader who did much to build up his country’s nuclear arms and its control over the Warsaw Pact countries. He was a rather vain man, who had himself awarded many medals in later life. His diaries also reveal the extent of his vanity, for they are full of detail about his hair, weight, clothes etc. But they also show, according to one modern writer ‘a total lack of intellectual and spiritual interests’ - ‘to every historian’s despair’.

Brezhnev was born on 19 December 1906 in Kamianske, Ukraine, to a metalworker and his wife. He studied at the metallurgical institute in Dniprodzerzhynsk (now Kamianske). In 1928, he married Viktoria Petrovna, and they had two children. After graduating in 1935, he worked as an engineer and director of a technical school, but also he began to hold positions in the local branch of the Communist party. Having survived Stalin’s various purges, in 1939, he was appointed Party Secretary in Dnipropetrovsk, and put in charge of the city’s defence industries.

During the Second World War, Brezhnev served as a political commissar in the Red Army, progressing steadily to become a major general in 1943, and head of the political commissars on the Ukrainian front. On leaving the army in 1946, he returned to high level party positions, gaining national prominence in 1950 when elected as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Two years later he was in Moscow, serving under Stalin in the powerful Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

With Stalin’s death in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to First Secretary of the Central Committee, Brezhnev was sidelined, and posted to lower positions, first in the ministry of defence and then in the Central Committee of the Kazakh Republic. However, his administrative skills won him a recall to Moscow and membership of the Politburo. In 1960, he was promoted to the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, nominally head of state. In 1964, he resigned that post to become Kruschev’s assistant as Second Secretary. By this time, however, having been loyal to Khrushchev, Brezhnev had begun to side with those criticising his leadership, and may even have led to plot to remove him. Brezhnev took over as First Secretary (subsequently General Secretary) of the Communist Party later that same year.

Brezhnev’s early years as head of the Soviet Union were characterised by collective leadership: he left many affairs of state to colleagues, Aleksey Kosygin and Nikolay Podgorny, while he took charge of measures to control dissidence, through the Soviet Union, and travelled extensively aiming for more solidarity among the Union’s republics and its partners in East Europe. However, when Czechoslovakia tried to liberalise its Communist system in 1968, Brezhnev developed what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, justifying the invasion of Czechoslovakia by its Warsaw Pact partners. His leadership, in fact, would later be characterised by a massive build-up of nuclear arms, at a great cost to the country’s economy.

During the 1970s, Brezhnev sought to ease tensions with the West, especially the United States, while, at the same time, consolidating his own power base at home, diminishing the effect of collective leadership. He negotiated various weapons agreements with the US, culminating with SALT II in 1979 - although the US chose not to ratify it because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his latter years, Brezhnev’s vanity led to a growing personality cult (he was obsessed with being awarded medals); and there was a marked deterioration in his health. By early 1982, he was rarely appearing in public, and was no more than a figurehead with decisions being made in the Politburo without his presence. He died in November that year. Further information is available form Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Encyclopædia Britannica, Spartacus, or Country Studies (Library of Congress).

Although Brezhnev kept diaries, there have been no published editions in English (possibly not in Russian either). Their existence first came to light in the 1990s when Dmitri Volkogonov, a Russian historian who had been head of the Soviet military’s psychological warfare department, published extracts in a Russian magazine called Top Secret. The US magazine, Newsweek, ran a brief item about that article, which is worth quoting in full:

‘BREZHNEV: DIARY OF A DULLARD
BOMBS, SHMOMBS . . . what’s for lunch? Such were the thoughts that drove the leader of the Evil Empire at the height of the cold war. A newly published diary underlines the astonishingly pedestrian mind of Leonid Brezhnev, the burly Soviet leader derided by Russians for his senility and corruption. “Was home at the dacha. Had lunch - borscht with fresh cabbage. Rested in the yard, finished reading material. Watched hockey game - USSR-Sweden, 4-2,” Brezhnev recorded on April 10, 1977, just days after Moscow rejected an important U.S. arms-control proposal. Then came the most exciting part: “Watched evening news. Had dinner, went to bed.” Is it more - or less - scary to learn what the Soviet leader was really like? While Brezhnev faithfully recorded the monthly changes in his weight (ranging from 179 to 182 pounds), policy matters received only fleeting attention. “Talked to [Supreme Soviet Chairman Nikolai] Podgorny about soccer and hockey and a little bit about the constitution,” Brezhnev recorded months before a new Soviet Constitution was passed in 1977. The combined talents of Woody Allen and Nikolai Gogol probably couldn’t have produced a less significant historical document. The diary marks such high points of Brezhnev’s final years as a hunting trip on which he “killed 34 geese,” a visit to the circus and a game of dominoes with Podgorny. A more typical entry reads, “I didn't go anywhere. No one called. In the morning I had my hair cut, shaved and washed my hair.” Says historian Dmitry Volkogonov, who published excerpts from the diary in Top Secret weekly: “When I read this I was sorry for Brezhnev, but I was sorrier for the great nation he led.” ’

Volkogonov also makes mention of Brezhnev’s diaries in his biography of Lenin. This was translated into English, edited by Harold Shukman and published by The Free Press in 1994 as Lenin: A New Biography. Brezhnev wrote his diary every day, Volkogonov says, between ten and twenty lines, in a flowing, sweeping hand. And he gives a series of examples, as follows:

10 April 1077
‘Was at the dacha, had lunch. Borshch made with fresh cabbage Rested went outside read some papers. Watched hockey USR Sweden - USR won 4-2. Watched “programme vremya [Time]” Had dinner - sleep.’

21 January 1977
‘Rested at home for first half of the day lunched at home. Weight 85.200 Second half worked in Kremlin Signed PB [Politburo] minutes of 20 January. Bogolyubov reported . . .’

16 February 1977
‘Work at the house.’

18 March 1977
‘Exercise. Then talked to Chernenko. Then with C[omrades] Gromyko A.A., Andropov Ustinov - we read materials about Vance’s visit - Rang Pavlov G.S. on cost [next word started and crossed out] Read all kinds of material with Galya Dorishina Went to the circus.’

13 April 1977
‘Morning usual domestic chores. They took blood from a vein From 11 o’clock conversation with Daoud Question of one-to-one meeting dropped Had good rest - (lunch) Worked with Doroshina.’

14 April 1977
‘At home - Tolya washed my hair Weight 86.700 Talks with Podgorny about presenting me with Koms, card Presentation of Komsomol card No. 1 speech by Tyazhelnikov my speech Galya read serial from ‘pravda’ on limitation of strategic arms Who are the authors of this material Lunch and rest 2.30-4.10’

15 April 1977
‘Zavidovo 4 ducks - 33rd wild boar - 21- dragged’

22 April 1977
’86.400 Five o’clock meeting devoted to his [Lenin’s] birthday Talked with Grishin Gromyko Chernenko Doroshina

23-24 April 1977
‘Days off’

3 May 1977
‘Weight - 85.300. Talk with Ryabenko. Talk on phone with Storozhev? I know what he wants. Talk with Chernenko K.U.-? About PB agenda Tailors - gave the grey suit, got the leather double-breasted casual jacket Rang Yu.V. Andropov - he came and we chatted Worked with Doroshina’

3 June 1977
‘Received Chernenko - signed minutes worked with Galya Doroshina Rest - flew to Zavidovo - 5 boars.’

Volkogonov’s text (in the Lenin biography) continues: ‘And so it goes on [. . .] The diary meanders in this way for hundreds of pages. [. . .] The important point is that the Leninist system of the monopoly of power facilitated and even favoured the promotion of colourless, mediocre and semi-literate people, whose intellectual potential was only half-developed. Everyone knew it, and it suited almost everyone.’ He concludes: ‘Brezhnev’s pathetic diary only arouses one’s pity for the country.’

More recently, other writers have echoed Volkogonov’s assessment of Brezhnev’s diaries. Edwin Bacon, in his essay Reconsidering Brezhnev (found in Brezhnev Reconsidered, edited by Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, published by Palsgrave Macmillan in 2002), says: ‘The late Russian historian Dmitrii Volkogonov had access to the diaries of Leonid Brezhnev in the 1990s, and notes the mundanity of their content, and Brezhnev’s apparent obsession with minor, personal issues, rather than the great issues of state.’ Bacon quotes two extracts form Brezhnev’s diaries:

16 May 1976
‘Went nowhere - rang no one, likewise no one me - haircut, shaved and washed hair in the morning. Walked a bit during the day, then watched Central Army lose to Spartak (the lads played well) . . . 7 August. 19th day of holiday. Swam in sea 1.30 - massage pool 30 minutes. Washed head - with children’s soap . . .’

16 June 1977
’86.00 [kilograms]. 10 a.m. Supreme Soviet session. Appointment of Com. Brezhnev as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (a lot of congratulations).’

And, finally, Vladislav M. Zubok in his book A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), states: ‘Along with many young Communists of the 1930s, Brezhnev acquired the habit of keeping a diary to raise his intellectual level. The diary’s content, however, reveals a total lack of intellectual and spiritual interests. To every historian’s despair, Brezhnev recorded mostly routine and banal events of his private life.’

The general emptiness

‘This life is nomadic, cold, transient, disordered. We are getting used to just hoping for the best. That wheezing accordion underscores the general emptiness. The cold click of a rifle bolt. Wind outside the window. Dreams and drifting snow.’ This is from the diary of Ivan Chistyakov, a cultivated Muscovite who was conscripted into Stalin’s army of internal troops and sent to guard forced labourers in the remote far eastern region of the Soviet Union. The diary has been translated by Arch Tait and is just published in the UK by Granta as The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard.

Very little is known about Chistyakov. It is likely he was born at the very beginning of the 20th century. He lived in Moscow, not far from Sadovo-Kudrinkskaya Square on the inner ring road, and probably had some secondary education, may even have been an engineer. He took the tram to work, went to the theatre, played sport and enjoyed sketching - all details drawn from his later diary. During one of the extensive purges, he was expelled from the Communist Party in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

In 1935, Chistyakov was conscripted into the army, the internal troops, and sent to a so-called Gulag camp - Baikal-Amur Corrective Labour Camp or BAMLag - in the remote region around Svobodny, very roughly 5,000km east of Moscow and a 1,000 km north of Vladivostok. There he was given command of an armed guard platoon on a section of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railway being built with forced labour under the direction of GULag, the State Directorate of Camps of the NKVD (secret police). His platoon was charged with guarding the prisoners (zeks) on their way to work, patrolling the camp perimeter, and catching anyone trying to escape.

The prisoners built the railway in unbelievably severe geographical and climate conditions, in extremes of cold and rainstorms, laying track through untamed land, mountains, rivers, swamps, permafrost. Life was little better for the guards; and for Chistyakov it was a daily nightmare, the severe cold, the lack of a bathhouse, illness, terrible food. Early on, he confided in his diary that he was thinking of committing a minor offence to get himself a conviction. There is very little further information as to what actually happened to him. In 1937 he was arrested, only to be released the following year, and to meet his death during the first months of the war with Germany, in 1941, at the front in Tula Province.

According to Elkost, the international literary agency, ‘it is a miracle that Chistyakov’s diary somehow survived, that it did not fall into the hands of NKVD officials, that it was not discarded and destroyed, and that somebody managed to send it to Moscow.’ Since 1988, the diary has been held by the Memorial International Human Rights Centre in Moscow which collects documents, testimony, memoirs, and letters relevant to the history of political repression in the USSR. Elkost calls the diary a ‘unique historical testimony’ since there are few memoirs ‘written by people outside the barbed wire’. Elkost says it has sold the rights to publish the diary in more than half a dozen countries, as well as to Granta in the UK for worldwide English distribution. Indeed, Granta has just published The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard in the UK, as translated by Arch Tait, with an introduction by Irina Shcherbakova. The book can be previewed at Googlebooks or Amazon. 

Here are several extracts.

6 November 1935
‘The frost is really setting in. Minus 18. I’ve put on my felt boots, a very good invention. We go through another one of our farces, searching the zeks for knives etc. They are so indignant. People need to be able to slice bread, peel potatoes, chop firewood, don’t they? If they had any serious weapons, they certainly wouldn’t store them in the huts. Budnikova (Article 35) rightly protests, and very forcefully. I would have done the same.

I give them a talk in the evening. They listen silently, mistrustful of every word. There is tension whenever we are present. I decide to leave. Budnikova has a way of petulantly kicking off her shoes. They dream of having boots, glance at my leather coat and say, ‘Nice boots that would make up into.”

“I’ll nick silk stockings just for you, but only tell me yes or no,” a baby-faced zek serenades me sarcastically.’

10 November 1935
‘This life is nomadic, cold, transient, disordered. We are getting used to just hoping for the best. That wheezing accordion underscores the general emptiness. The cold click of a rifle bolt. Wind outside the window. Dreams and drifting snow. Accordion wailing, feet beating time. There’s heat from the stove, but as soon as it warms up one side, the other gets cold. A fleeting thought: am I really going to have to put up with this for long? Is life just one perpetual shambles? Why? I want to let everything go hang and just float downstream, but I’d probably get banged up myself. Come on, head, think of something and I’ll buy you a cap!

Alas, the days here are filled with longing and anger, sorrow and shame. Your work is slapdash and you just hope for good luck. It’s degrading. Nobody thinks of us as people; they think of us as platoon commanders and that’s it. Periodically someone calls you a representative of the USSR government. I ‘sadly look back at the life I have lived’ [a line from a popular ballad Sleigh Bells], and kick myself yet again. I have to get out of this place! Think of something, wise up!’

27 November 1935
‘This is how we live: in a cramped room furnished with a trestle bed and straw mattress, a regulation issue blanket, a table with only three out of four legs and a creaky stool with nails you have to hammer back in every day with a brick. A paraffin lamp with a broken glass chimney and lampshade made of newspaper. A shelf made from a plank covered with newspaper. Walls partly bare, partly papered with cement sacks. Sand trickles down from the ceiling and there are chinks in the window frames, door, and gaps in the walls. There’s a wood-burning stove, which, while lit, keeps one side of you warm. The side facing towards the stove is like the South Pole, the side facing away from it is like the North Pole. The amount of wood we burn would make a normal room as warm as a bathhouse, but ours is colder than a changing room.

Will they find me incompetent, not up to the job. and kick me out? Why should I be sacrificed like so many others? You become stultified, primitive, you turn into a bully and so on. You don’t feel you’re developing, either as a commander or a human being. You just get on with it.’

28 November 1935
‘It’s cold outside, it’s cold inside, and it’s cold and cheerless inside me. How can you do a job properly if you have no interest in it and no wish to do it? And why is that? Because you don’t have the bare necessities of life and culture. The top brass don’t even talk about these things. Today we are faced with the fact that there is no firewood. I have to order people about. I don’t need all this. Why does it always turn out this way?

My hands are stiff with cold. Why is no one looking after us commanders? What do all the brave words amount to? If we had even a hundredth of what Voroshilov promised here, on the railway, we would at least have a little hope. All the talk is of The Second Five-Year Plan, Maxim Gorky, Klim Voroshilov. The USSR has unparalleled aeroplanes, but here we don’t have even the bare minimum. Oh, hell! The only consolation is that it was even worse at the front. Some comfort! I sleep under two blankets, a leather coat and a sheepskin jacket.

I just can’t find my place here in the Baikal-Amur Mainline system, probably because it doesn’t exist. It’s different for peasants. They get something out of it, learn new tricks, find out things they didn’t know. All I’m going to learn here is how to be a slob, not give a damn, and not get caught.’

28 March 1936
‘Day greets me with a ray of sunlight on the wall, shining through a crack. I experience a moment of sheer joy, like that sunbeam, then BAM immediately crushes it and our life here falls into even starker contrast. A life of never knowing and . . . can’t come up with a name for it because everything here is just dreadful.

1 Squad have lost it, which is no surprise. They’re stuck out in the forest with none of the amenities human beings need to live, e.g., food for the soul or the mind. They’re out of touch with civilization and have food only for their stomachs, so they end up behaving like animals. Even wolves gather and play together. But us? It is forbidden for two commanders of the same educational level to serve together. What sort of policy is that? They shift you from one place to another saying you were getting too close. We have screwball superiors who couldn’t understand human psychology even if they were allowed to and just demoralize you. I’ll stick it out till autumn, and at the end of September, that’s it! Freedom or jail! I now have one idea for getting discharged - a report or speech at a meeting. I have seven months to think something up. I do want to see the Far East Region in the summer, then I’ll have savoured all the seasons.

Bystrykin, a platoon commander, has TB but doesn’t want to leave. Why? Because for him this life is perfect and he gets fed. For me, it would be hip, hip, hurray!

Golodnyak has arrived. Why have the top brass moved him here? Is it clemency or does he scare them? I got talking to a doctor in the canteen and learned an interesting fact. One of our doctors qualified as a bookkeeper but is said to ‘know about diseases’. How amusing.’

To Bataan and Back

‘Why do the American people at home parade and rejoice in the glory of “all out” war when these poor devils here daily watch the seas and skies for the aid of the US which now appears too late. I have held hope all along for something to happen to get this mess straightened out and, mind you, I still have hope, but the situation is desperate.’ This is from the diary of Thomas Dooley, aide-de-camp to General Wainwright, commander of the Allied forces in the Philippines, on the day the Japanese took Bataan, the last remaining American stronghold in the region. The quote is taken from To Bataan and Back: The World War II Diary of Major Thomas Dooley, being published today by Texas A&M University.

Dooley was born in McKinney, Texas, in 1913. He studied engineering at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) - thus he’s often referred to as a Texas Aggie. After graduating in 1935, he signed up early the following year for active duty as a second lieutenant with the US Army, heading a Civilian Conservation Corps for six months. A year with the 2nd Squadron of the 12th Cavalry was followed by jobs in the oil industry. In 1940, he was reactivated for duty, and soon joined the 26th Cavalry in the Philippines, arriving in May 1941.

Dooley was assigned as aide-de-camp to Major General Jonathan M. Wainwright, commander of the Philippine Division, south of Manila. Later in the year, though, Wainwright was named as commander of North Luzon Force, and moved his HQ to Stotsenburg. Early on, Dooley was awarded the Silver Star for actions during the bombing of Clark Field in the Luzon region. He continued to serve with Wainwright through the Corregidor and Bataan campaigns, but was captured and held as prisoner of war for over three years. Following his release, he was a witness to the surrender of the Japanese on board the USS Missouri.

In the midst of bombings, in April 1942, with the Japanese about to overrun the Allies on Corregidor (a small Philippine island off the coast of Bataan), Dooley help compile a list of 25 Aggies on the island, and the artillery commander held an Aggie Muster (a long-standing tradition of the university to pause for a moment and remember and honour the dead). Dooley told a journalist about the muster, and the resulting article received massive coverage in the US, thus forever connecting Dooley to the enduring Aggie tradition.

Dooley remained in the army for the rest of his career, receiving a Distinguished Service Medal, with roles ranging from a Combat Command at Fort Hood, Texas, to a three-year assignment overseeing Fire Support Elements in Naples, Italy; his final positions were Chief of Staff of the Armored Command and Deputy Post Commander at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He died in 2006. There is only limited information about Dooley available on the internet, but he is mentioned on the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets website, on a chat thread at Free Republic, and on the Wikipedia page about the Aggie Muster.

Indeed, it is partly (or even mostly) thanks to Tooley’s role in the Aggie Muster on Corregidor that his diaries came to light, and have now been published - today, in fact, by Texas A&M University Press, as To Bataan and Back: The World War II Diary of Major Thomas Dooley. They were transcribed and edited by Jerry C. Cooper who explains, in his introduction, how he had been seeking permission to use a speech given by Dooley about the muster to the Texas A&M campus, when he asked about the diaries. And, subsequently, the family sent him copies, and agreed to Cooper transcribing, and possibly, publishing them. Following Dooley’s death the six small notebook diaries were turned over to the Texas A&M University Archives.

Texas A&M University Press says: ‘[Tooley’s] journals reveal the inside story of the battles of Bataan and Corregidor and with it the capture, imprisonment, and struggle for survival of tens of thousands of American prisoners of war. Dooley’s journals - dutifully maintained even as he was a prisoner - are at once witty, articulate, stark, and often reflective.’

To Bataan and Back is very handsomely produced with a good number of photographs, maps, glossary and an index. Dooley writes his diary with some flare and humour, but, still, this is largely a book for those interested in the Pacific theatre of WWII. Cooper supplies useful context information in italics through the text (rather than using footnotes), and there is a foreword by Col. James Edwin Ray. Cooper also provides a few facts about Dooley’s life before and after the war, but a more detailed and considered biography would have been useful and interesting. 

Here are a few extracts from Dooley’s diaries - with many thanks to Texas A&M University Press.

11 December 1941
‘Another air raid today. No casualties and little damage done. Casualties on Monday’s raid have been totaled - 82 dead and about 110 wounded. 29 dead were civilians - poor little Carenderas that worked near Batchelors Building. We are getting Jap planes down though. Lots of them are being hit and the Japs toss out equipment to lighten the load so they can get as far back toward their base as possible. Quite a few have been brought down near here though. One plane shot down near Mabalacat (east of Stotsenburg) and Chaplain [Maj. John E] Duffy brought a gun from it to G-2 section. Workmanship crude but they still fire. He reported that natives had buried the pilot and said he was man of larger size than the Chaplain which indicates he was a German. Planes in today’s raid carried Swastika markings. The Nazis have planned and directed the execution of all this. It (especially Monday) was too methodical and timely. My appetite has doubled. For breakfast, even, which prior to “this” consisted of coffee and toast - now consists of fruit, coffee, toast, bacon + eggs and anything else within reach. Am still sleeping like a log when I hit the bunk.’

15 December 1941
‘My intentions are to keep some sort of running account of what goes on in this fracas. Not a diary nor a memorandum, but a cross between the two. I am one week late in getting this poop on the go - that is, it will be one week old in about four hours. My turn came up as Duty Officer from 12:00 midnight to 8:00 a.m. and the routine being very quiet tonight I can get this under way. Corporal Molina, Battery A, 24th Field Artillery (Philippine Scouts) is the Non-Commissioned Officer on duty and he has just shown me a copy of the radiogram signed by General MacArthur saying “a state of war exists between the US and the government of Germany, Japan and Italy”.’

8 April 1942
Bataan fell! [Dooley added this entry in the top margin after recording the event.]
‘A new day which I hope proves to be no worse than yesterday. The II Corps pulled back during the night to a line approximately thru Lumao. All Filipino troops have disintegrated except about one regiment. The I Corps will have to pull back to conform. They (the Nips) continue their bombing of the new areas. These must be some salvation for the Americans on Bataan. Why do the American people at home parade and rejoice in the glory of “all out” war when these poor devils here daily watch the seas and skies for the aid of the US which now appears too late. I have held hope all along for something to happen to get this mess straightened out and, mind you, I still have hope, but the situation is desperate. The reports all day are bad. I took report at 7:00 p.m. which means the end of Bataan. Col. [James V.] Collier called from G-3 Luzon Force and said that Philippine Army troops on right flank of II Corps line had fled and the Japs pouring thru. Proved to be double envelopment as Nips were also coming around II Corps left flank. Col. Irwin (G-3) and Col. Galbraith (G-4) went to Bataan this p.m. with plans for evacuation of certain units to “Rock.” During night Ordnance + Engineers busy destroying ammunition + other such few supplies as need be.

Gen. Wainwright in conference most of day with Chief of Staff Gen. Lewis Beebe (who is quite sound). Gen. Wainwright quite upset. Two days ago Gen. Funk came to “Rock” for Gen. Edward King to say he was going to capitulate. Gen. Wainwright gave two direct orders - one - do not surrender - two - attack with I Corps toward East. Later the second order was modified. Last night when things looked so bad and plans for evacuation of certain units were made and order was given to Gen. (I Corps) to make a frontal attack with his Corps and attack Olongapo. Went to bed about 1:00 p.m. Frank Hewlett, United Press, wanted me to wait up and see the Bataan episode, but I didn’t want to watch it. I feel sick when I think of it and feel that I should be there with them, but I started this war with the General (and before it) and will stay around ’til ordered differently.’

22 December 1942
‘Pretty day - sunshine - Inspection 1:00 p.m. by Jap Quartermaster general. Breakfast + dinner - no good. Supper better - some gabi today - bridge - Gen. Wainwright sent Xmas greetings to English + Dutch. Choir + octette practice. Thoughts of home at this time make me ache.’

17 January 1943
‘Been here 5 months today. Today is memorable in that we had tripe for supper (in the soup). B.P. went down and made the arrangements at the slaughter house where they are killing beef for the Japanese army. He got for us the heart, liver, and stomach of the beef. We had tripe at supper and promise of heart, liver, + kidney for breakfast. “Edible awful” is the term some applied to our meal. Other than that the day was uneventful with inspection and church in a.m. and bridge in p.m. A cold day.’

14 April 1943
‘Distribution of Corned beef from the Red Cross started today. For first month we will receive 3 oz. corned beef per day; 1# sugar per week. We will get 1/2# cocoa + 1# salt per month. The Corned beef is Argentine beef and is wonderful. This small amount of Red Cross real food is remarkably raising the morale of everyone.’

Nothing to fear from the Soviets

Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish statesman who successfully guided his country towards peaceful relations with its much bigger and more powerful neighbour, the Soviet Union, died 60 years ago today. His diaries have been published in Finnish, but no translation exists in English. However, a few translated extracts can be found in history or biography volumes, such as Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finnish Solution’, which, in fact, opens with a quotation from Paasikivi’s diary.

Johan Gustaf Hellsten was born in 1870 in the Häme region of central Finland, though he was brought up further south in Lahti. His mother died when he was four, and his father when he was 14, whereupon he was looked after by an aunt. He was educated at one of the first schools founded by the Fennomans (Finnish nationalist movement), and, in 1885, he Finnicised his name to Juho Kusti Paasikivi. He went on to study history at the Imperial Alexander University, focussing on Russian history and language, graduating in 1892, thereafter switching to law for postgraduate studies. Paasikivi achieved his masters in law in 1897 and, in the same year, married Anna Forsman. They had four children.

Paasikivi completed his doctoral thesis in 1902, and became an associate professor at the university. The following year, though, he was appointed director general at the state treasury of, what was still, the Grand Duchy of Finland, a position he kept until he resigned in 1914. From 1907 to 1913, with a short gap, he was also a Finnish Party member of parliament. Eschewing the direction of the Finnish Party politics, he took over as president of KOP bank, piloting the company, within the newly independent Finland over the next 20 years, to one of the country’s most successful. After the death of his wife, in 1931, he resigned his position at the bank, and returned to politics, as head of the right-wing National Coalition Party, successfully steering it away from radical right wing policies. In 1934, he married Allina Valve.

Having stepped down as chairman of the National Coalition Party, Paasikivi was persuaded to take the important diplomatic role of ambassador to Sweden. During the war years, he was brought into government as a kind of political adviser; and his negotiations with the Soviet Union (Finland and the Soviet Union were at war for much of the 1939-1944 period) brought him much respect both in Moscow and in Helsinki. Immediately after the war, in 1944, he was appointed prime minister. He brought a radically different kind of politics to the country, based on wanting a peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union. In 1946, he became Finland’s seventh president, holding that position until 1956. He died later that same year, on 14 December. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, National Biography of Finland or the University of Helsinki.

Paasikivi kept diaries for most of his life. These were edited by Yrjo Blomstedt and Matti Klinge and published in 1985 in two volumes as Paasikiven paivakirjat, 1944-1956 (Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1985). However, as far as I can tell, there is no English translation. A few snippets from the diaries appear in translation here and there, in biographies and/or history books, such as Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finnish Solution” by Jussi M. Hanhimaki (Kent State University Press, 1997).

Containing Coexistence is the first full-scale study of Finland’s role in Soviet-American relations during the onset of the cold war, says the publisher. For the book, Hanhimaki drew on a wide range of multinational source material, including newly released archival materials, employing a comparative approach interrelating American, British, Finnish, Russian, and Swedish perspectives. Containing Coexistence will be of interest, the publisher claims, to historians and political scientists as well as to any scholar interested in American and Soviet foreign policies during the cold war, post-World War II international relations, or twentieth-century European history.

The following extracts from Paasikivi’s diary are quoted below in the context of the Hanhimaki’s narrative.

[Opening paragraph]
‘When Juho Kusti Paasikivi sat down to write in his diary on September 2, 1944, he was angry. “Our foreign policy has not been led with brains, but with buttocks,” the seventy-four-year-old conservative banker, politician, and former prime minister complained. “We should never have joined this war,” he added, accusing both the wartime leaders and the newly appointed president, Marshall C. G. E. Mannerheim, of shortsightedness and incompetence in handling Finnish foreign policy. The worst sin, Paasikivi would argue repeatedly in private conversations and public speeches until his retirement from Finnish political life in early 1956, had been to ignore the geopolitical realities of Finland’s position, that is, the country’s proximity to the Soviet Union. Such neglect had, according to Paasikivi, led to such recent disasters as the 1939-40 Winter War and Finland’s cobelligerency with Nazi Germany in 1941-44. This, he added, had led Finland to the brink of collapse by the fall of 1944 when Soviet occupation appeared imminent.’

[Page 91]
‘Paasikivi was also annoyed by Kekkonen’s decision to launch an active run for the presidency, complaining frequently about Kekkonen’s “American style” of campaigning in late 1949 and early 1950. “A president’s most important qualities are not talent in speech writing and propaganda, but wisdom and experience,” Paasikivi sarcastically remarked in his diary. For Kekkonen, however, the 1950 presidential campaign was a good opportunity to make his name more widely known to the general Finnish public, which payed dividends six years later.’

[Page 136]
‘By late 1955 Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the leader of the Soviet Union. But despite Khrushchev’s eventual success the days of undisputed one-man rule were over as a new era dawned in Soviet history in the spring of 1953. “We shall see how this affects our relationship with the Soviet Union and our general position in the world,” President Paasikivi wrote in his diary on March 4, 1953. It was to have a major impact in both respects.’

[Page 164]
‘Relieved [. . . ] had not meant a shift in Soviet attitudes toward Finland, Paasikivi wrote in his diary on July 29, 1954, “This proves that our relations with the Soviet Union are still good and we have nothing to fear from the Soviets.”  At the same time, however, Paasikivi was concerned about “the loss of good will in the U.S.” toward Finland.’

[Page 174]
‘That Finland was left to fight its internal battles without outside interference became clear during the Kemi strikes of August 1949. In this lumber town located at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia the Communist-dominated lumberjacks’ union began a strike on August 18. President Paasikivi had no sympathy for and few illusions about this labor action. He interpreted it as a communist effort to bounce back from the losses they had suffered in Finnish internal politics since the spring of 1948. As Paasikivi noted in his diary on August 18, 1949, “The Communists seem to want to regain their position of power and become dominant in Finland.” Paasikivi, however, trusted the Fagerholm government, which controlled a large part of the labor movement through the Social Democratic party, to have the ability to neutralize the strikes. Accordingly, Prime Minister Fagerholm declared that the strike was illegal and authorized the local police to break up the picket lines. On the same day, however, a riot ensued between the strikers and the local police; shots were fired, and one striker was killed. Paasikivi ordered a general alert of the armed forces; the government sent army troops to Kemi and arrested twenty-two leading activists. Meanwhile, the violence propelled a series of sympathy strikes around the country by other Communist-dominated labor unions such as the harbor workers and many metal union workers.’

A giant of Japanese literature

Natsume Soseki, one of the greatest and most important novelists of modern Japan, died a century ago today - events celebrating this anniversary in Japan are ongoing, not least the unveiling of a Soseki android! By contrast he is little known in the West, although he did, in fact, spend two years in the UK, and, on returning to Japan, became a leading scholar in English literature. Two diaries he kept while in London were put on display recently as part of an exhibition of his life and works. However, there are no published editions of his 12 diaries, and only occasional references to them in various biographies.

So seki was born in the Edo region of Japan (now Tokyo) in 1867, but his parents, with five older children already, gave him up for adoption to a childless couple. That couple looked after him until they divorced, when Soseki was 9, and he was returned to his parents. His mother died a few years later. In 1884, he entered Tokyo Imperial University with the intention of studying to become architecture, but, encouraged by his friend Masaoka Shiki, he became increasingly interested in literature, switching to the English literature department in 1890. On graduating, he continued to study but also teaching part time. In 1895, he left Tokyo to teach in Ehime and then in Kumamoto. In 1896, he married Kyoko, who gave birth to their first daughter in 1899; they would have five more but one would die very young.

From 1900 to 1902, Soseki lived in London - one of the first government-sponsored scholars to be sent abroad - attending lectures at University College (UCL) and doing research that would lead later to his Japanese monographs (Theory of Literature in 1907, and Literary Criticism in 1909). From 1903 to 1907, he was back in Tokyo, teaching at the university; however, he was also writing poetry and literary sketches for magazines, and producing his first novels, such as I am a Cat, Little Master (Botchan), and Grass Pillow. His literary reputation grew rapidly, and by 1907 he was able to give up teaching and become a professional novelist.

The Embassy of Japan in London has this assessment of why Soseki is important in Japan today: ‘Many of the novels of Soseki analyse the human psychology in depth, such as jealousy and love, or loneliness and friendship, so they are applicable even today. At the same time, the very clear style of his prose is now considered the standard for the modern Japanese language. In addition, he pointed out the need for the Japanese people to establish a sense of “individualism”, while at the same time being critical of the tendency toward the superficial “Westernisation” (meaning modernisation) of Japanese society. Such assertions and criticisms are still considered relevant for Japanese society and its people today.’

In 1909, Soseki travelled to Manchuria and Korea. The following year he was hospitalised for the first time with stomach problems, but continued writing, completing one or two more works (such as Kokoro, Grass on the Wayside) each year until his death - on 9 December 1916. According to The Japan Times, events to celebrate this 100th anniversary have been ongoing in Japan throughout 1916 (a university has even unveiled a Soseki android!), and will continue in 2017 with celebrations for the 150th anniversary of his birth. Indeed, The Japan Times begins a long article on Soseki as follows: ‘Fascination twinned with veneration of Soseki is exceptionally high in Japan. The Asahi newspaper has been serializing installments of his novels on a daily basis for several years, while a new Soseki museum is scheduled to open next year in the Tokyo district of Shinjuku, where the writer once lived. On television, meanwhile, a drama series titled “Soseki’s Wife” has attempted to show the revered author from his spouse’s perspective. By a considerable margin, Soseki is the most analyzed Japanese author in modern literature. Hundreds upon hundreds of books have been written about him and thousands upon thousands of academic papers published.’

There is some further information about Soseki at Wikipedia, The New World Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica. Some translations of his works can be found at Internet Archive (Botchan, for example), and a 1957 translation of Kokoro can be read at ibiblio.

There appear to be twelve extant volumes of diaries kept by Soseki (see this librarians 1978 workshop report), and held by the Natsume Soseki Collection at Tohoku University Library. As far as I can tell, these have not been published in Japanese, and certainly not in translation. Donald Keene, writing in Rethinking Japan Vol 1: Literature, Visual Arts & Linguistics (Routledge, 2014), says he finds the diaries of Natsume Soseki ‘especially disagreeable’, but without further explanation.

In late 2013, UCL Library Services and Tohoku University Library held a collaborative exhibition in London - Natsume Sōseki, the Greatest Novelist in Modern Japan - to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of UK-Japan Academic Interaction. Some artefacts from this were then put on display by the Embassy of Japan in early 2014. Both exhibitions included the two diaries written in London - named as Diary of Drifting across the Sea and Diary from England in 1901. According to the Embassy of Japan: ‘These diaries are extremely important academic source materials, not only because they describe his student life but also because they contain a number of his unique thoughts on the difference between the Japanese and British societies from his own viewpoint of  civilisation theory.’

A brochure to accompany the UCL exhibition is freely available online, and contains photographs of the diaries, as well as translated quotes from each, as follows.

12 September 1900
‘When waking from a dream, I am far away from my familiar mountains. The vast and limitless ocean surrounds me.’

28 October 1900
‘Left Paris for London. There was a hard and bitter wind on board. I arrived at London in the evening.’

23 January 1901 [Queen Victoria had died the previous day]
‘Flags are hoisted at half-mast. All the town is in mourning. I, a foreign subject, also wear a black-necktie to show my respectful sympathy. “The new century has opened rather inauspiciously,” said the shopman off whom I bought a pair of black gloves this morning.’

Otherwise, various biographies of Soseki make occasional reference to his diaries.

The following two extracts are taken from Reflections in a Glass Door: memory and melancholy in the personal writings of Natsume Sōseki by Marvin Marcus (University of Hawaii Press, 2009).

18 July 1909
‘Oppressive heat. Daughters running all over the house, totally naked. Not a normal thing to do, the heat notwithstanding. The master of the house goes about writing his fiction, surrounded by barbarians.’

8 December 1911
‘This morning, my wife accuses me of being totally antisocial. “People come over for Hinakos wake, and you tell them not to bother, that they should just go home. Well, when I die, be sure not to plan any wake for me.” “But in that case the mice will come out in the middle of the night and gnaw at the tip of your nose.” “Fine with me - the pain would bring me back to life!” ’

And the following extract is taken from Chaos and Order in the Works of Natsume Soseki by Angela Yiu (University of Hawaii Press, 1998)

1911
‘I carried my manuscript with me as notes. My stomach has been troubling me since yesterday, but since this is the last of the lectures, I took some medication and tried to hold out. My lecture was followed by Honda Setsudos “The Fundamental Problems in Finance and Economics” and Ishibashi Hakuyo’s “The Revision of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” The series ended at twenty past eleven. (There were four thousand seven hundred or eight hundred people in the audience, including fifty women. Since it was so packed, admission was restricted three times, and after seven o’clock no one else was allowed in the hall.) Staying in the Shiunro, despite not having eaten anything, I vomited blood.’ [Subsequently, Soseki was hospitalised again]