«Soldiers of the word»: Soviet war correspondents on the battles in East Prussia, 1944—1945
- DOI
- 10.5922/vestnikhum-2025-2-5
- Pages
- 61—73
Abstract
An attempt is made to examine the course of military operations in East Prussia from autumn 1944 to spring 1945 through the prism of publications by war correspondents in the central Soviet newspapers: Pravda, Izvestia, Krasnaya Zvezda, and Stalinsky Sokol. Frontline correspondents, being embedded within the active army, were chroniclers of the war, eyewitnesses to the events unfolding on the territory of the German province. These “soldiers of the word” contributed to maintaining the morale of Soviet troops, popularizing the combat experience of Red Army units, and showcasing examples of heroism among soldiers and officers. While fulfilling the ideological tasks assigned by the Soviet authorities and constrained by strict censorship, the war correspondents simultaneously infused their essays and reports with their personal war experiences, leaving for posterity an invaluable historical source. An analysis of the war journalists’ correspondence enables the identification of how perceptions were formed regarding the objectives set for the Soviet troops during the Gumbinnen and East Prussian offensive operations of the Red Army, the periodization of military actions, the role of specific branches of the armed forces, as well as the relationships between the advancing units and the local population. At the same time, this is also the history of the frontline correspondents themselves, who accompanied the active army throughout East Prussia.