Stalin at the microphone — 'brothers and sisters'

During the first eleven days of Barbarossa, Joseph Stalin shuts himself away in silence. The scale of the disaster — the front broken through, cities lost, hundreds of thousands of prisoners — and, perhaps, the collapse of his certainties (he had refused to believe in the attack) leave him prostrate; according to several testimonies, he withdrew to his dacha, fearing even that he might be arrested by his own Politburo.

The USSR is voiceless at the summit at the worst possible moment. Yet the people, disoriented, need a direction. Stalin finally takes the helm again: he creates the State Defence Committee (GKO) and resolves to address the population directly — he who almost never speaks on the radio.

On 3 July, he must choose the register of this momentous address: deliver a classic martial and ideological speech, exalting the Party and socialism; on the contrary adopt a patriotic and fraternal tone, calling for the defence of the Russian motherland beyond ideology; or play down the disaster so as not to demoralize. The tone set will shape the mobilization of an entire people.