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In her essay Economia di guerra e inquadramento della società in URSS (The War Economy and Social Control in the USSR), Rebecca Manley writes that initially the German advance in Russia was welcomed by the local population and threatened the legitimacy of the reigning power, while party leaders, officials, and factory managers often jumped ship, with the abandoned populace openly cursing them [A. Aglan and R. Frank, La guerra-mondo 1937-1947 (The World War 1937-1947), Einaudi, 2015-16]. Her account goes on to describe the government's gradual reassertion of control: The cost in human lives was increasing and shortages were continuing to worsen [...] it was only with the victory of Stalingrad that Stalin and the Soviet system recovered a central role in war propaganda. Overall, according to this author, the war years saw a surge of popular patriotism, even among those who had reason to distrust the State. The authorities in Moscow maintained order on the home front, something that those of the Tsarist Empire had failed to do.

The disorientation of non-Russian nationalities In the Russian countryside, and particularly in the three Baltic countries, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Belarus, many had anxiously waited for the Germans as saviours and liberators from the Russian yoke [István Deák, Europe on Trial, Hachette UK, 2015]. However, the peasants soon felt deceived by those in whom they had initially trusted, because the Germans did not dismantle the collective farms (the kolkhoz) into which their lands had been forcibly incorporated. The Germans conserved the kolkhoz, because they were afraid production would fall otherwise, and, on the contrary, increased forced requisitions. The Russian government did form assault groups, recruited among the detainees in the forced labour camps, but, in the main, these were anti-Bolshevik Russian nationalists, motivated by patriotism. In contrast, prisoners of subjugated nationalities, such as the Poles, Ukrainians, and Balts, often escaped to join the Germans. On the whole, releasing anti-Stalinist political prisoners to enrol them in the army was forbidden; indeed, as we have already seen [Internationalism, April 2026], standing orders were to shoot all prisoners in the event of a forced retreat due to the German advance.