Black soldiers of World War II. What is the monument like now?

One of the honored foreign guests who arrived in Russia on May 9, 2015 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War was Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. He arrived not only as the head of this South African state, but also as the current chairman of the African Union. “Evil tongues” from among the liberal-minded public immediately remembered the “dictatorship” of Robert Mugabe, the poverty of the country he ruled, and did not fail to ask the question: “Does Zimbabwe really lay claim to the role of a victorious country?” Leaving outside the scope of the article a discussion of the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe and the figure of Mr. Mugabe personally, the question about the role of the “Dark Continent” in the victory over fascism cannot but be answered positively. Yes, Zimbabwe and many other African countries, which were then colonies of European states, made their contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies. There is nothing shameful or funny in the fact that Africans celebrate Victory Day. Moreover, Robert Mugabe attended the parade in Moscow not only as the head of a particular state, but also as the chairman of the African Union - that is, a representative of the African continent as a whole.

The Second World War began much earlier for Africa than for the Soviet Union and European countries in general. It was on the African continent that the first aggressive war unleashed by the fascists began - the attack of fascist Italy on sovereign Ethiopia (then the country was called Abyssinia) in 1935. As is known, at the end of the 19th century, Italy had already made attempts to colonize Ethiopia. Italo-Ethiopian War 1895-1896 ended in the defeat of the Italian troops. In the famous Battle of Adua, Italian troops suffered a crushing defeat. Through the mediation of the Russian Empire, the signing of a peace treaty was organized on October 26, 1896 in Addis Ababa. In accordance with the peace treaty, Italy recognized the political sovereignty of Ethiopia and paid indemnity to the country. This was the first case of not only the total defeat of a European power in a colonial war, but also the payment of indemnity to an African state. Naturally, revanchist sentiments, mixed with a sense of revenge for such a humiliating insult inflicted by Ethiopia, became widespread among the Italian political and military elite for many years. Only forty years later, the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini decided to attack Abyssinia, which by that time was the only independent state on the African continent, besides Liberia created by African-American repatriates.

Attack on Ethiopia: Second Italo-Ethiopian War

The fascist leadership of Italy saw in the aggressive war against Ethiopia not only revenge for the shameful defeat at Adua and the lost first Italo-Ethiopian war, but also a possible step towards the creation of a large Italian colony in Northeast Africa, which would unite Italian Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Since Italy still did not have the strength to compete with Great Britain or France on the African continent, and wanted to increase its colonial possessions, Rome had no choice but to return to the old idea of ​​​​capturing Ethiopia. Moreover, militarily, Italy in 1935 was very different from Italy in 1895. The fascist government managed to significantly increase the military power of the Italian state, rearm ground units, aviation and navy, form and train quite numerous colonial troops recruited from residents of North African and East African colonies - Libya, Eritrea and Somalia. The European powers actually refused to assist Ethiopia in repelling Italian aggression. Thus, in 1935, European countries refused to sell weapons to the Ethiopian army, while at the same time not supporting the Soviet Union’s proposal to introduce an embargo on the supply of oil and petroleum products to Italy. Direct support for Italian fascism in the war of conquest against Ethiopia was provided by Hitler's Germany, Austria, and Hungary.

Indirectly, Italy’s aggressive actions were supported by the countries that later became the basis of the “anti-Hiller coalition” - the USA, Great Britain and France. The United States was guided solely by its own economic interests, so supplies of equipment, oil and metal to Italy from the United States were never stopped. Great Britain did not prohibit the passage of Italian ships through the Suez Canal, which was controlled by the British, and therefore actually contributed to the strengthening of the Italian naval group in the Red Sea. France transferred to Italy a section of Somali territory from which the attack on Ethiopia was carried out - in return, Paris hoped to receive Italian approval on the issue of Tunisia.

A large and well-armed group of Italian troops with a total number of 400 thousand troops was concentrated against Ethiopia. The group included 9 divisions of the Italian regular army (seven infantry divisions, one alpine and one motorized division), 6 divisions of the fascist police, and units of the Italian colonial troops. The group was armed with 6,000 machine guns, 700 artillery pieces, 150 tankettes and 150 aircraft. The commander-in-chief of the group until November 1935 was General Emilio de Bono, and from November 1935 it was Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio. The Italian army was opposed by the armed forces of Ethiopia, whose numbers ranged from 350 to 760 thousand troops. Despite comparable numbers, the Ethiopian army was significantly inferior in both training and weapons. The Ethiopian army had only 200 obsolete artillery pieces, about 50 anti-aircraft guns, 5 light tanks and 12 air force biplanes, of which only 3 biplanes could fly.
On October 3, 1935, at 5 a.m., Italy began a war of aggression against Ethiopia. From the territory of the Italian colonies in East Africa, Eritrea and Somalia, units of Italian ground forces under the command of Marshal Emilio de Bono crossed the Ethiopian border. The Italian air force began bombing the city of Adua - the same one where the Italians suffered a crushing defeat in the first Italo-Ethiopian War. Thus began the second Italo-Ethiopian War, which became one of the first heralds of the Second World War. At about 10 a.m., Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie ordered the general mobilization of the country's male population. Despite the manifold superiority of the Italian army, the Ethiopians managed to organize fairly effective resistance to the aggressor. The second Italo-Ethiopian war knows many examples of heroism and courage shown by Ethiopian soldiers. Thus, the city of Abbi-Addi was captured by the Italians, but then, as a result of a four-day assault, it was liberated by a unit of the Ethiopian army. During the battle at Abbi Addi, the Italians lost several tanks, disabled by Ethiopian troops.

The weakness of the Italian army was explained by the low moral readiness of Italian soldiers for war, flourishing corruption and embezzlement in the armed forces and organizations related to the supply of uniforms and food. It was the failures of the Italian army that forced Mussolini to remove the commander in chief. In violation of the Geneva Convention of 1925, the Italian army began to use chemicals in Ethiopia. Ultimately, by the spring of 1936, there was already a clear turning point in the course of hostilities. The finale of the company was the battle of Mai-Chou, which is north of Lake Ashenge. Here the 31,000-strong Ethiopian army faced 125,000-strong Italian troops armed with 210 artillery pieces, 276 tanks and several hundred air force aircraft. The power superiority of the Italians was manifold.

On March 31, 1936, a battle began, in which Ethiopian troops initially even managed to push back the Italians a little. But then enemy artillery came into play, and the Italian Air Force began to strike the positions of the Ethiopian troops. On April 2, Italian troops launched a counteroffensive and managed to destroy with artillery fire almost the entire Ethiopian Imperial Guard - the pride and core of the country's armed forces. Haile Selassie's car was captured by the Italians. In fact, the Ethiopian army was completely defeated. The Emperor of Ethiopia made a call for help to the world community, which, however, was not heard by any major European power. Only volunteers from India, Egypt, the Union of South Africa and the United States of America arrived to help the fighting Ethiopian army. There were also Italian anti-fascists in the Ethiopian army, including Domenico Rolla, Ilio Barontini and Anton Ukmar, nicknamed the “three apostles” by the Ethiopians.

By the end of April 1936, Italian troops managed to suppress the resistance of the last regular units of the Ethiopian army. On May 2, Emperor Haile Selassie evacuated to Djibouti, and on May 5, Italian troops entered the capital, Addis Ababa. On May 8, 1936, Harar was occupied. Italy announced the annexation of Ethiopia, and on May 9, 1936, Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia. On June 1, 1936, the colony of Italian East Africa was created consisting of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Italian Somalia. However, the Italian occupation forces were never able to fully establish control over the territory of Ethiopia. A large-scale guerrilla war began in the country, the conduct of which was facilitated by the mountainous landscape and climatic conditions of Ethiopia, which made it difficult for the Italian troops to live. The guerrilla forces were commanded by representatives of the traditional Ethiopian nobility and former military leaders who retained control over certain areas of the country. In the west of Ethiopia, the Black Lions guerrilla group was created, in the vicinity of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway line, the Fikre Mariam detachment operated, and in the north-east of the province of Harar, the Nasibu race detachment operated. Until the end of December 1936, battles continued in the provinces of Gojam, Wollega and Ilubabar, where Italian troops were confronted by troops under the command of Ras Imru. In the spring of 1937, an anti-Italian uprising began in Wollo and Tigre, and in August 1937 in the province of Gojam. At the same time, Ethiopian partisans launched attacks against the Italian fascist administration in Addis Ababa. Thus, on February 19, 1937, an assassination attempt was made on A. Graziani, in retaliation for which Italian troops killed about 30 thousand local residents in just a few days. The guerrilla war on the territory of Italian-occupied Ethiopia continued until 1941. The Italian occupation of Ethiopia was put to an end by Great Britain after the official start of World War II. On December 2, 1940, the order was given to begin preparations for the offensive of British troops into Ethiopia.

In January 1941, British troops invaded Ethiopia from three directions at once - from Kenya through Italian Somalia, from Aden through British Somalia and from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. On January 31, 1941, the British defeated the Italian troops of General Frusha, launched an attack on Harar in March and occupied this strategically important Ethiopian city on March 25. Italian troops were unable to resist the strong British army. On April 4, fighting began in the vicinity of Addis Ababa, and on April 6, 1941, Addis Ababa was taken by Ethiopian troops. On May 5, 1941, Emperor Haile Selassie returned to the country. Fascist Italy suffered another defeat in Ethiopia - this time from British troops and the Ethiopian partisan resistance units that helped them. In total, during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 275,000 Ethiopian army and militia personnel died, 181,000 Ethiopians were executed or died in Italian concentration camps, and about 300,000 more people died from starvation caused by the war and devastation.

African Queen's Soldiers

If Ethiopia fought the Italian fascists for its independence, being a sovereign state before the invasion of Mussolini's troops in 1935, then many African countries that were colonies of Great Britain, France or Belgium became suppliers of human resources for the armies of countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition. Among all the African colonies of the European countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition, the most numerous contingents of troops were deployed by the British colonies in East, West and South Africa. In East Africa, Britain ruled the territories of modern Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, as well as parts of Somalia and island territories.

On the territory of the East African colonies of Great Britain, back in 1902, a regiment of the Royal African Rifles was created, which included six battalions, differing in the place of their recruitment. The first and second battalions were recruited in Nyasaland (Malawi), the third in Kenya, the fourth and fifth in Uganda, and the sixth in Somaliland. In 1910, the Ugandan and Somaliland battalions were disbanded in order to save money. By the time the Second World War began, two East African infantry brigades were created on the basis of the Royal African Rifles regiment. The first brigade was intended to defend the coast of East Africa from a possible landing of German and Italian troops, the second - for operations in the depths of the African continent. In addition, the Somali Camel Corps was formed in British Somalia, and in 1942-1943. - two infantry battalions staffed by Somali soldiers - “askari”.

By the end of July 1940, two more East African infantry brigades had been created. During the five years of World War II, a total of 43 infantry battalions, an armored car regiment, transport, engineering and communications units of the Royal African Rifles were created. Private and non-commissioned officer positions in the units of the Royal African Rifles were staffed by Africans - Kenyans, Ugandans, Nyasalanders, Tanzanians. The officer positions were held by career officers of the British Army. The Royal African Rifles took part in combat operations against Italian troops in East Africa, against French collaborators in Madagascar, and against Japanese troops in Burma. Fighting alongside the Royal African Rifles were the Rhodesian African Rifles - a military unit with British officers and black privates, formed in 1940 in Rhodesia and in 1945 transferred to Southeast Asia - to Burma, where they had to fight the Japanese armed forces, occupied this British colony in Indochina. The rank and file and non-commissioned officers of the Rhodesian African Rifles were recruited precisely from fellow countrymen of Robert Mugabe - future citizens of the sovereign state of Zimbabwe, and at the time of the events in question - residents of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia.

Soldiers of the Royal African Rifles regiment in Ethiopia. 1941

In the West African colonies of Great Britain by the beginning of the twentieth century. The West African Border Troops were formed, staffed by the native populations of Nigeria, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Sierra Leone and the Gambia. During World War II, the 81st and 82nd West African Infantry Divisions were formed on the basis of the West African Border Troops. Units of West African troops took part in hostilities in Italian Somalia and Ethiopia, and fought against the Japanese in Burma. The British command believed that African soldiers, accustomed to the tropical and equatorial climate, would be able to fight more effectively in the jungles of Indochina against Japanese units than troops recruited in Europe. It should be noted that the East African and West African units of the British colonial troops honorably completed the combat missions assigned to them. Tens of thousands of Africans - residents of British colonies - died on the fronts of World War II, fighting Italian, German and Japanese fascists.

The glorious and sad story of the Senegalese riflemen

Since in France political power after the Nazi invasion of the country was in the hands of collaborationists of the Vichy government, the country's armed forces split. Some remained loyal to the Vichy government, while others sided with the French Resistance. The disengagement also affected the French colonies. By April 1, 1940, there were 179,000 Senegalese riflemen serving in the French army - soldiers, sergeants and junior officers of colonial units formed in the French colonies in West and Central Africa. Senegalese shooters is a general name. In fact, people not only from Senegal served in the French colonial forces, but also from Mali, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Togo, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, and Congo. When the French army tried to repel the Nazis' advance into France, the troops fighting on the European fronts included up to 40,000 troops from the West African colonies. After the collaborators actually surrendered their own country, tens of thousands of Senegalese riflemen found themselves in Hitler's captivity. The most famous Senegalese prisoner of war was the young lieutenant Leopold Sédar Senghor, a native of Senegal, poet and philosopher, who later became the president of the country and the ideologist of Negritude. Sedar Senghor was able to escape from captivity and join the ranks of the Maquis partisans. In memory of the Senegalese riflemen who fought on distant European soil, he wrote a poem of the same name.

Captured Senegalese riflemen

On the side of the troops of “Fighting France” under the command of Charles de Gaulle, from the beginning of their participation in the war on the side of the Allies, the 19th corps of colonial troops, three battalions of the French African Corps, two camps of Moroccan Gumiers, three regiments of Moroccan spagi, a Tunisian battalion, five Algerian infantry battalions and two battalions of the Foreign Legion. In 1944, Senegalese riflemen took part in the landing of anti-Hitler coalition troops in Provence and liberated French territory from the Nazi invaders. The anniversary of the landing in Provence is a memorable date in modern Senegal and is celebrated as a public holiday in memory of the thousands of Senegalese soldiers who died on the fronts of World War II. At a certain point, Senegalese riflemen made up up to 70% of the personnel of the “Fighting France” troops controlled by General Charles de Gaulle. Units staffed by African soldiers fought on the European front, in particular they were the first to enter Lyon, liberating it from the Nazi invaders.
However, the history of the participation of Senegalese riflemen in World War II on the side of “Fighting France” was overshadowed by the tragic events in the Tiara military camp. The tragedy was heralded by a conflict between the French command and the Senegalese riflemen, which broke out in Europe. The French command, under pressure from the Anglo-American allies, decided to demobilize the Senegalese riflemen and deport them to the African colonies. At the same time, African soldiers were paid three to four times less than European soldiers. Many received no salary at all. This outraged the Senegalese shooters, and even in Versailles, the Africans tried to express dissatisfaction, but were dispersed by the French unit, which opened fire on yesterday’s war heroes. Nine Senegalese riflemen were seriously wounded. After arriving in Senegal, the demobilized soldiers were housed in the Thiaroy camp outside Dakar. There, the Senegalese riflemen waited for the payment of the promised salary, but the pleasant payday never came. On November 30, 1944, the Senegalese took a French officer hostage, but soon released him, believing the commanders' promises that his salary would be paid soon. However, instead of payment, the camp of the demobilized soldiers was shelled from artillery guns. Between 24 and 35 Senegalese shooters were killed, 49 people were arrested and sent to prison for 2-3 years. This is how the French command paid back the African soldiers who risked their lives on the fronts of distant Europe. In 1988, Senegalese director Sembène Ousmane made a film dedicated to the events in the Thiaroy military camp.

The Moroccan Gumiers, units of colonial troops recruited in Morocco, primarily from representatives of local Berber tribes, also fought on the side of the “Fighting France” troops. In 1940, Gumer units took part in hostilities against Italian troops in Libya. In 1942-1943. Moroccan Gumiers fought on Tunisian territory. After the landing of Allied forces in Sicily, the Moroccan Gumiers from the fourth camp were assigned to the 1st American Infantry Division. Some of the Gumiers took part in the liberation of the island of Corsica, then, in November 1943, units of the Gumiers were sent to liberate mainland Italy from fascist troops. In May 1944, the Gumiers took part in the crossing of the Avrunki Mountains. It was in the mountains that the Moroccan soldiers showed their best side, since they acted in their native elements - the Berber tribes live in Morocco in the Atlas Mountains and are well adapted to high mountain crossings.

At the end of 1944, Gumer units fought in France, and on March 20-25, 1945, Moroccan units were the first to break into German territory from the Siegfried Line. After the end of hostilities in Europe, the Moroccan Gumiers, like the Senegalese riflemen, were hastily withdrawn from French territory to Morocco. There are numerous publications about the looting and violence committed by soldiers of the Moroccan units of the French army during the fighting on Italian territory. At least 22 thousand Moroccan residents took part in the fighting of World War II; the losses of Moroccan units, with a constant strength of 12 thousand people, amounted to 8,018 military personnel. 1,625 military personnel died on the battlefield, 7.5 thousand Moroccan soldiers were wounded during the fighting.

The Belgians took revenge on Hitler in Africa

Little Belgium was practically unable to provide full resistance to the Nazi occupiers in Europe. However, in Africa, under the control of Belgium there were impressive territories - the colony of the Belgian Congo, as well as Rwanda and Burundi, which were German possessions before the defeat of Germany in the First World War, and then placed under the control of the Belgian administration. On the territory of Belgium's African possessions, units of colonial troops called “Force Publique” - “Public Forces” - were stationed. When Belgium capitulated on May 28, 1940, the colonial administration in the Belgian Congo took the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. Force Publique troops became part of the anti-Hitler coalition forces. Units of Belgian colonial troops took part in the defeat of the Italian army in Ethiopia. During the fighting on Ethiopian soil, 500 soldiers of the Belgian colonial troops died, while the Congolese soldiers of Belgium managed to capture 9 generals and about 150 thousand officers, sergeants and privates of the Italian army.

In 1942, units of the Force Publique were, by order of the British command, transferred to Nigeria, where the landing of Nazi troops was expected and the British command sought to improve the defense of the coast by attracting Belgian colonial units. In addition, the British feared a possible invasion of Nigeria from neighboring French colonies, which were under the control of the Vichy government. The number of the Belgian expeditionary force sent to Nigeria amounted to 13 thousand African soldiers and sergeants under the command of European officers. When the French authorities in the African colonies went over to the side of “Fighting France,” the Belgian expeditionary force was transferred from Nigeria to Egypt, where it remained until 1944, serving as the strategic reserve of the British command. By 1945, more than 40 thousand people served as part of the Belgian colonial forces in Africa, united in three brigades, auxiliary and police units, medical units, and marine police. The Force Publique medical unit saw action against Japanese forces in Burma, where it was part of the British Army's 11th East African Infantry Division.

South African contribution to the Victory

A separate and very interesting page in the “African history” of World War II is the participation of troops of the Union of South Africa (SA, now South Africa). At the time of the outbreak of World War II, the Union of South Africa was a British dominion and was formally governed by the British Queen. Meanwhile, the majority of the country's white population were Boers - descendants of Dutch and German colonists who still had vivid memories of the Anglo-Boer Wars. A significant part of the Boers adhered to right-wing radical positions and openly sympathized with Nazi Germany, in which they saw an ethnically and ideologically related state. But the status of the British Dominion did not allow the Union of South Africa to refrain from entering the war after Great Britain began hostilities against Germany. Boer nationalists hoped that South African troops would not have to fight outside the country, especially since before the war the size of the army of the Union of South Africa was small. By September 1939, only 3,353 soldiers and officers served in the South African armed forces, and 14,631 people were in the reserve - the Civilian Active Forces. The mobilization readiness of the South African Army was complicated by the limited size of the mobilization reserve.

South African soldiers in Ethiopia

The state's racial policy did not allow representatives of African peoples living in the Union of South Africa to be recruited for military service. Only white Europeans could perform military service, but their numbers in South Africa were limited and not all of them could be mobilized into the active army. Universal conscription was never introduced in the country due to protests from the Boer population, who did not want to fight Germany. The South African command had to find other ways to solve the problem of recruiting army units. In particular, the admission to military service of “coloreds” was allowed - Indians, Malays and descendants of mixed marriages, who were accepted into motor transport and engineer units. The Native Military Corps was formed from representatives of African peoples, which was also engaged in construction and sapper work. However, the main principle of the South African regime was observed throughout the country's participation in World War II - black soldiers were never allowed to participate in hostilities against Europeans. However, the combat units of the Union of South Africa had to take part in real hostilities.

The South African Army saw action in North and East Africa. Units of the ground forces and air force of the Union of South Africa played a key role in the defeat of Italian troops in Ethiopia in 1940-1941. In 1942, South African troops took part in the fighting in Madagascar - against the troops of Vichy France. In North Africa, the 1st South African Infantry Division took part in the Second Battle of El Alamein. The 2nd South African Infantry Division saw action in North Africa in 1942, but on 21 June 1942 two of the division's brigades were surrounded and captured at Tobruk. As for the South African Third Infantry Division, it did not directly participate in the hostilities, but acted as a territorial defense unit and reserve training for the warring First and Second Infantry Divisions. In 1942, the 7th Motorized Brigade, part of the Third Infantry Division, took part in the defeat of Vichy troops in Madagascar.

South African soldiers also fought in Europe. So, in 1944-1945. The 6th Armored Division of the South African Army fought in Italy. The air force of the Union of South Africa participated in landmark air battles over East and North Africa, fought in the skies over Italy and the Balkan Peninsula, and bombed Romanian oil fields in Ploiesti. During the Warsaw Uprising, it was the South African Air Force planes that dropped food and ammunition to the rebels. There are also examples of combat cooperation between South African aviation and the Soviet army: during the Lvov-Sandomierz operation, South African Air Force aircraft carried out reconnaissance flights over enemy territory and transmitted the information received to the Soviet military command. The total number of participants in World War II from among the citizens of the Union of South Africa reaches 334 thousand people, among them 211 thousand military personnel of European origin, 77 thousand Africans and 46 thousand Indians and Asians. As for the losses of the South African army in World War II, they reach 9 thousand people who died in battles with German and Italian troops in North and East Africa and on the European front.

The armed forces of Southern Rhodesia, which had much in common with the South African army, also fought on the side of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. The Southern Rhodesian Air Force was formed in 1939 and in the first year of the war it was mainly engaged in combat training of pilots - both its own and the air forces of other states participating in the anti-Hitler coalition. The pilots and technicians of the Southern Rhodesian Air Force were absorbed into the British Royal Air Force. In total, Rhodesia trained approximately 2,000 air force pilots. Rhodesian pilots served in three squadrons. The 237th Fighter Squadron fought in the skies over Egypt, Ethiopia and Europe, the 266th Fighter Squadron fought in air battles for Britain and in the skies over European countries. The 44th Bomb Squadron fought in the skies over European countries. One in five members of the Southern Rhodesian Air Force lost their lives in action in World War II. In total, 26 thousand soldiers, sergeants and officers recruited on the territory of Southern Rhodesia took part in the Second World War - both from among the European population of the colony and from representatives of the African peoples living on its territory.

African countries at the Great Victory Parade in Moscow on May 9, 2015 were represented not only by the President of Zimbabwe and Chairman of the African Union Robert Mugabe, but also by the President of the Republic of South Africa Jacob Zuma and the President of Egypt Abdul-Fattah Khalil al-Sisi. There are long-standing friendly relations between the Russian Federation and many African countries. Currently, the development of economic, cultural, and political ties between Russia and the countries of the African continent is once again becoming relevant. And the memory of the great war, the victory over Nazi Germany, which the Soviet Union, other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, and even Africans from the colonial troops brought closer to the best of their ability, will contribute to the further rapprochement of Russia with African states. Moreover, in the end, it was the results of the Second World War that almost all former colonies of European powers on the African continent owe their political independence.

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Today we celebrate the “Day of the Unknown Soldier” for the first time. Although it would be more correct to call it “Day of Remembrance of the Unknown Soldier”.
By and large, there should be no unknown soldiers. The war is not considered over until the last soldier is buried. The remains of dead soldiers are still being found. And not only in the places of past battles, but also in the places of current battles in Ukraine.
My grandfather died as an “unknown soldier” during the defense of Stalingrad.
During the Great Patriotic War, 4.4 million military personnel went missing. During the war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, 417 of our soldiers were captured (130 were released before the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan).
Recently, a monument to Afghan soldiers was unveiled in the military glory park near our house. Many of those present said: “if only there was no war”!

The idea to create the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial appeared in France after the end of the First World War. After World War II, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier monument was created in Poland. And in the USSR - the victorious country! - there was nothing like that.

In December 1966, they were preparing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the battle under the walls of Moscow. During construction in Zelenograd, near Moscow, workers came across a mass grave of soldiers. One of the fighters is wearing a well-preserved uniform with the insignia of a private. He had no documents - he fell like an unknown hero.
The remains of this soldier were placed in a coffin, which was installed on a gun carriage on December 3, and the solemn procession headed for Moscow. The Unknown Soldier was buried in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin wall.
On May 8, 1967, the architectural ensemble “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” was opened at the burial site and the “eternal flame” was lit.
“Your name is unknown, your feat is immortal!” – everyone knows these words now.

During my childhood, I regularly watched the then popular television program of the writer S.S. Smirnov about the unknown soldiers of the Great Patriotic War.
Often, at the request of my parents and friends, I sang the song “In the field, along the steep bank, past the huts. A soldier walked in a gray overcoat of a private. The soldier walked, not knowing any barriers, the soldier walked, losing friends. It often happened that the soldier walked forward without stopping.”
Another popular song was: “Standing over the mountain Alyosha, Alyosha, Alyosha. A Russian soldier stands over Mount Alyosha in Bulgaria.”
And who is the “16th Republic” of the Soviet Union with now?

I recently watched the American film "Fury". Anyone who is not familiar with the history of World War II can conclude that Europe was liberated exclusively by American soldiers. In the film, Brad Pitt's character demands that a recruit shoot a German prisoner of war begging for mercy, and as a result kills himself. American soldiers buy German girls “for a chocolate bar”, and at the same time cannot understand “why the Germans do not surrender.”

In the new American film Interstellar, school teachers convince students that the Apollo flight to the Moon was staged in order to provoke the USSR into spending money on the lunar race and thereby ruin it.

The world is ruled by Her Majesty LIES!
When diplomats say they do not want a new Cold War, it means that a Second Cold War has already begun.
The lies of politicians and journalists are simply sickening. There is no hope left that common sense will prevail. Nobody cares about the truth anymore; all that matters is what is consistent with the policy being pursued. If it doesn’t correspond, then they will try to ignore the truth.

The situation with Malaysian Boeing is an example of boundless hypocrisy!
Well, politicians don’t want to tell the truth. Give them at least some facts, politicians will not recognize the truth if it is not profitable for them now. They each have their own truth. Everyone is fighting for a place in the sun in all unacceptable ways.

France doesn’t want to fulfill the terms of the contract and transfer the Mistral to Russia, and that’s all. You see, “the conditions are not ripe.”
And this is a Western civilized state governed by the rule of law, where there seems to be a cult of compliance with contractual relations. But the agreement on the construction of the Mistrals was, if I’m not mistaken, part of the general agreement regarding Libya. We were deceived both in Libya and in the Mistrals!
Let's see what the “independent” European court will say when Russia applies for payment of the penalty.

Is politics really more important than law even in a country like France?!
What kind of rule of law is this if politics is stronger than the rule of law?!

What is this – this same politician? Opportunistic adherence to one's pragmatic interests?

Humanistic values ​​of European civilization - yes. But if in this life there is nothing to die for, if the main value is your own life, then in order to preserve this life you can commit any meanness, any crime, even killing another. Hence death - “it’s not with me, it’s with someone else.”

The world is again divided into friends and strangers. The “Axis of Evil” is being built again: Russia, North Korea, Iran, Vietnam...
Now Russia is actually in a state of undeclared war. Only a completely stupid person does not see the international oil conspiracy, which is also directed against Russia. It’s no longer a secret that manipulation of oil prices is part of a “conspiracy theory” with the goal of undermining the Russian economy and destroying it, just as the USSR was destroyed in its time.

I recently read that our “partners” are ready to fight until the last Ukrainian soldier. Some unknown armies without identification marks are fighting. Either they are private armies, belonging to no one knows, or volunteers, or terrorists. All have approximately the same shape. How they distinguish their own from strangers, one can only guess.

They want to make not only the Unknown Soldier, but the entire Great Patriotic War in Ukraine unknown. They propose to delete even the phrase “Great Patriotic War” from history textbooks. But whoever forgets the lessons of history is doomed to repeat them.

As a child, I vacationed in a Ukrainian village near the city of Bila Tserkva. In his youth he served in the navy together with Ukrainians, including in Sevastopol. I like Ukrainians. But I hate politicians who build their careers on the bones of ordinary people.

I can’t watch or listen to how children are dying from shelling in Donetsk. The Nazis did not fire at besieged Leningrad the way the Ukrainian brothers fire at their native Donetsk!

The information and economic war is in full swing. Cyberwar has already begun. However, judging by the revelations of Edward Snowden, it never ended. Recently it was reported that the Americans have developed a new computer virus, also directed against Russia, allowing one to view Internet correspondence and listen to telephone conversations of leading operators.
Who is he, the “unknown soldier” leading the cyber war?

Many felt uneasy when Minister of Revolution Shoigu spoke about measures in case of mobilization. NATO's power is 30 times greater than Russia's armed forces. Will Russia use nuclear weapons to defend itself? Hardly. Because the use of nuclear weapons is suicidal. In such a war there can be neither winners nor losers.
But then why do we need so many expensive nuclear missiles that will never be used?
Does a loaded gun really have to fire?

Our people will survive in any war, unless they are betrayed by politicians, as Khrushchev betrayed in 1954, transferring Crimea to Ukraine, as the leaders betrayed in 1991, collapsing the USSR.

Recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted that economic sanctions against Russia are aimed at changing the political regime in the country.
Do our “partners” want to make life better for ordinary Russians as a result of regime change? Not sure. For them, we are more like “white natives” who need to be civilized by forcing us to work for ourselves.

What will happen to Russia when the West declares an embargo on the sale of Russian oil as economic sanctions?

How can you fight for the market with those who have a printing press (the Fed) behind them, and they will print as much money as they want?!

No, they don’t want to see Russians as part of the “golden billion”!

If something similar to what is happening now in Ferguson and other US cities happened in Russia, it would be called a violation of human rights, a crime of the ruling regime, and even a revolution. And if this happens in the USA, then it is called democracy.
“The powerful are always to blame for the powerless.”

Indeed, a “new Middle Ages” is coming.
Previously, the media wrote: “the opinion of the editors may not coincide with the opinion of the author of the publication.” Now, if your position does not coincide with the editorial policy, no one will publish your opinion. It is advised not to even touch on certain topics. If you decide to publish something that does not meet the “editorial policy,” your blog will simply be deleted.

Because of the lies of politicians, political scientists and journalists, television has turned into a zombie box!
These people without honor, without conscience, without morality and their so-called “double standards” led to the loss of moral guidelines, to the loss of the distinction between good and evil. What is possible for some is not allowed for others; whoever is stronger is right.

Politicians swear like market women. All civilized rules and diplomatic decency have been forgotten. Ideas about honor, conscience, and decency have been lost. The hypocrisy is off the charts!

Politicians have an understandable sense of superiority over others. But is a leader always smarter than his people? The experience of George W. Bush suggests that this is not always the case.

The job of politicians is to negotiate. And if they cannot agree, then they are not doing their job and they need to hire other politicians. But no one admits to being unsuitable for their position. They themselves cannot live normally, and they do not allow others to live normally.

Gentlemen of politics! Well, let us live in peace!!
If you want to fight, please put sovereignty in your hands and go to the front line. Fight with yourself. But ordinary people do not want to fight, neither for you nor for your policies.
Do not deceive either people or yourself - no one wants to die for your personal interests and geopolitical games.

Gentlemen of politics, do not be deceived - you do not express the interests of the people. Ordinary people do not want to die either for the property of the oligarchs or for your geopolitics.

How long can you torture people?!

I personally support the proposal of the leader of the Lugansk Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, to challenge the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to a duel. Let them measure their strength as in the good old days, and not throw human lives into the millstones of war. Why should people die for oligarchs who are getting rich?!

Politicians build their careers on the suffering of ordinary citizens.
Elites fight, and children die.
It will all end in revolution again!

It is sad to think that global politics is a struggle between two (or several) ambitions, a struggle on which, perhaps, the fate of humanity depends.
If presidents want to fight, let them choose weapons and fight each other. But ordinary people want to live in peace.

Presidents are not the whole country!
Politicians come and go, but the people remain.

According to Plotnitsky, the duel between him and the President of Ukraine should “put an end to the war.”
“If you still want to shed the blood of yours and our soldiers, their wives, mothers, old people and children, then prove that you are ready to shed your own blood - accept my challenge,” concluded Plotnitsky.

“Let’s follow the example of the ancient Slavic leaders and glorious Cossack chieftains and fight in a duel. Whoever wins dictates his terms to the opposite side. Why incite mutual hatred and destroy people, economies, cities? Both you and we will have to heal these wounds for decades! Isn’t it better to put an end to all differences in a fair fight?” - Plotnitsky addressed Poroshenko.

“Personally, what outrages me most is when those who call themselves guardians of the rule of law call for the shooting of innocent people.
- The innocent always suffer.
- Bastards, bastards! After all, it is obvious to everyone that with these bombings they are only trying to strengthen their power.
- They have always killed and will continue to kill unwanted people. And above all, those who claim power, be it power over the minds or souls of people.
- But I am outraged that at the same time they have the audacity to declare that they defend democracy and freedom, cynically speculating on these concepts. They shout that they care about the interests of the people, and at the same time they shoot these very people.
- Is it possible to restore order at such a cost?
- What to do if there is nothing left and you have to solve the problem this way?
- There is no problem whose solution would justify killing a person.
- And the war?
- War is a sign of intellectual impotence or deceit of rulers. In this way, they solve the problem of increasing their own rating at the expense of other people's lives. The rulers who start a war do not love their people, if they love anyone at all. After all, a politician, like any person, is ultimately ruled by either hatred or love.
In war, people are sent to kill, justifying it in the interests of the state. At the same time, the soldiers are assured that “God is with us” and that, they say, they are under the protection of the law. In this way, the rulers want to save the killers from remorse. After all, they are not the ones who kill! And it’s not them who have to die.”
(from my novel “Stranger Strange Incomprehensible Extraordinary Stranger” on the New Russian Literature website

In your opinion, how to avoid the WAR OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER?

P.S. I dedicate this post to the memory of my grandfather!

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

The first memorial in honor of the unknown soldier was built at the very beginning of the 1920s in France. In Paris, near the Arc de Triomphe, the remains of one of the countless French infantrymen who remained lying on the fields of the First World War were buried with all due military honors. There, at the monument, the Eternal Flame was lit for the first time. Soon after this, similar burials appeared in the UK, near Westminster Abbey, and in the USA, at Arlington Cemetery. On the first of them were the words: “Soldier of the Great War, whose name is known to God.” The second memorial appeared only eleven years later, in 1932. It also read: “Here lies in honor the American soldier whose name is known only to God.”

The tradition of erecting a monument to a nameless hero could only have arisen in the era of the world wars of the 20th century. In the previous century, with its cult of Napoleon and ideas about war as an opportunity to demonstrate personal valor, no one could imagine that long-range artillery firing “across the area”, dense machine-gun fire, the use of poisonous gases and other modern means of warfare would deprive the very idea of ​​meaning individual heroism. New military doctrines operate with human masses, which means that the heroism of a new war can only be mass. Like death, which is inextricably linked with the idea of ​​heroism, it is also massive.

By the way, in the USSR in the interwar decades they did not yet understand this and looked at the Eternal Flame in Paris with bewilderment, as if it were a bourgeois whim. In the Land of Soviets itself, the mythology of the Civil War developed around heroes with big names and biographies - popular favorites, legendary army commanders and “people's marshals”. Those of them who survived the period of repression in the Red Army in the mid-30s never learned to fight in a new way: Semyon Budyonny and Kliment Voroshilov could still personally lead an attack on the enemy (which, by the way, Voroshilov did during the fighting for Leningrad, having been wounded by the Germans and earning a contemptuous reproach from Stalin), but they could not afford to abandon dashing cavalry raids in favor of strategic maneuvering by masses of troops.

With your hands held high

We are embarrassed to write about the instability of our troops in the initial period of the war. And the troops... not only retreated, but also fled and fell into panic.

G.K. Zhukov

We analyzed losses during the retreat. Most of them fell on the missing, the smaller part - on the wounded and killed (mainly commanders, communists and Komsomol members). Based on the analysis of losses, we built party-political work to increase the stability of the division in defense. If in the days of the first week we allocated 6 hours for defense work and 2 hours for study, then in subsequent weeks the ratio was the opposite.

From the memoirs of General A.V. Gorbatov about the events of October-November 1941

Russian offensive tactics: a three-minute fire raid, then a pause, after which an infantry attack shouting “hurray” in deeply echeloned combat formations (up to 12 waves) without support from heavy weapons fire, even in cases where attacks are made from long distances. Hence the incredibly large losses of the Russians.

From the diary of German General Franz Halder, July 1941

Rise of the masses

It can be said with almost certainty that no cultured Westerner will ever understand the character and soul of the Russians. Knowledge of the Russian character can serve as the key to understanding the fighting qualities of the Russian soldier, his advantages and methods of fighting on the battlefield... You can never say in advance what a Russian will do: as a rule, he veers from one extreme to the other. His nature is as unusual and complex as this huge and incomprehensible country itself. It is difficult to imagine the limits of his patience and endurance; he is unusually brave and brave and yet at times shows cowardice. There were cases when Russian units, having selflessly repelled all German attacks, unexpectedly fled in front of small assault groups. Sometimes Russian infantry battalions were thrown into confusion after the first shots, and the next day the same units fought with fanatical tenacity.

To some extent, the high fighting qualities of the Russians are reduced by their lack of intelligence and natural laziness. However, during the war, the Russians constantly improved, and their senior commanders and staffs received a lot of useful information from studying the experience of combat operations of their troops and the German army... Junior and often middle-level commanders still suffered from sluggishness and inability to make independent decisions - due to severe disciplinary sanctions they were afraid to take responsibility... The herd instinct among soldiers is so great that an individual fighter always strives to merge with the “crowd.” Russian soldiers and junior commanders instinctively knew that if they were left to their own devices, they would die. In this instinct one can see the roots of both panic and the greatest heroism and self-sacrifice.

Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, "Tank battles 1939-1945."

The rest was a matter of time. As soon as the moral factor came into play, as soon as the Red Army felt the taste of its first victories, the fate of Hitler's Germany was sealed. Undoubtedly, the Soviet troops still had to learn many bitter lessons from the enemy, but the advantage in human resources, as well as a meaningful readiness to fight, gave the mass heroism of the Red Army and Red Navy a different character compared to the first stage of the war. Now they were driven not by despair, but by faith in future victory.

Heroes with a name

One can doubt the official Soviet version of the events of the history of the Great Patriotic War. One can consider the level of training of our pilots in 1941 to be so low that supposedly they could not have achieved anything more worthwhile than a ground ramming of a concentration of enemy troops. It can be assumed that the Soviet saboteurs operating in the near German rear in the winter of 1941 were caught not by Wehrmacht soldiers, but by local peasants who collaborated with them. You can argue until you're hoarse what happens to the human body when it falls on top of a firing heavy machine gun. But one thing is obvious - the names of Nikolai Gastello, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Alexander Matrosov and others would never have taken root in the mass consciousness of Soviet people (especially those who themselves went through the war), if they had not embodied something very important - perhaps precisely that helped the Red Army withstand the onslaught of the Nazis in 1941 and 1942 and reach Berlin in 1945.

Captain Nikolai Gastello died on the fifth day of the war. His feat became the personification of that critical situation when the enemy had to be fought with any available means, in conditions of his overwhelming technical superiority. Gastello served in bomber aviation, participated in the battles at Khalkhin Gol and in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. He made his first flight during the Great Patriotic War on June 22 at 5 am. His regiment suffered very heavy losses in the very first hours, and already on June 24, the remaining aircraft and crews were consolidated into two squadrons. Gastello became the commander of the second of them. On June 26, his plane, as part of a flight of three aircraft, took off to strike a concentration of German troops advancing on Minsk. After bombing along the highway, the planes turned east. At this moment, Gastello decided to shoot a column of German troops moving along a country road. During the attack, his plane was shot down, and the captain decided to ram ground targets. His entire crew died along with him: lieutenants A.A. Burdenyuk, G.N. Skorobogaty, senior sergeant A.A. Kalinin.

A month after his death, Captain Nikolai Frantsevich Gastello, born in 1908, commander of the 2nd aviation squadron of the 42nd long-range bomber aviation division of the 3rd bomber aviation corps of the long-range bomber aviation, was posthumously nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin . Its crew members were awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. It is believed that during the Great Patriotic War, many Soviet pilots repeated Gastello’s feat.

About martyrdom Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became known in January 1942 from the publication of the war correspondent of the Pravda newspaper Pyotr Lidov entitled “Tanya”. In the article itself, Zoya’s name was not yet mentioned; it was established later. It was also later discovered that in November 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, as part of a group, was sent to the Vereisky district of the Moscow region, where German units were stationed. Zoya, contrary to popular belief, was not a partisan, but served in military unit 9903, which organized the dispatch of saboteurs behind enemy lines. In late November, Zoya was captured while attempting to set fire to buildings in the village of Petrishchevo. According to some sources, she was noticed by a sentry, according to others, she was betrayed by a member of her group, Vasily Klubkov, who had also been captured by the Germans shortly before. During interrogation, she identified herself as Tanya and denied to the end that she belonged to the sabotage detachment. The Germans beat her all night, and the next morning they hanged her in front of the villagers.

The feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became an expression of the highest fortitude of the Soviet spirit. The eighteen-year-old girl did not die in the heat of battle, not surrounded by her comrades, and her death had no tactical significance for the success of the Soviet troops near Moscow. Zoya found herself in territory captured by the enemy and died at the hands of the executioners. But, having accepted martyrdom, she won a moral victory over them. Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923, was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on February 16, 1942. She became the first woman to receive a Gold Star during the Great Patriotic War.

Feat Alexandra Matrosova symbolized something else - the desire to help his comrades at the cost of his life, to bring victory closer, which after the defeat of Nazi troops at Stalingrad seemed inevitable. Sailors fought since November 1942 as part of the Kalinin Front, in the 2nd separate rifle battalion of the 91st separate Siberian volunteer brigade named after Stalin (later the 254th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 56th Guards Rifle Division). On February 27, 1943, Matrosov’s battalion entered battle near the village of Pleten in the Pskov region. The approaches to the village were covered by three German bunkers. The fighters managed to destroy two of them, but the machine gun installed in the third did not allow the fighters to launch an attack. Sailors, approaching the bunker, tried to destroy the machine-gun crew with grenades, and when this failed, he closed the embrasure with his own body, allowing the Red Army soldiers to capture the village.

Alexander Matveevich Matrosov, born in 1924, was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on June 19, 1943. His name was assigned to the 254th Guards Regiment, and he himself was forever included in the lists of the 1st company of this unit. The feat of Alexander Matrosov for propaganda purposes was timed to coincide with February 23, 1943. It is believed that Matrosov was not the first Red Army soldier to cover a machine-gun embrasure with his chest, and after his death, the same feat was repeated by about 300 more soldiers, whose names were not so widely known.

In the December days of 1966, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the defeat of German troops near Moscow, the ashes of the Unknown Soldier, brought from the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway, where particularly fierce battles for the capital took place in 1941, were solemnly buried in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin walls.

On the eve of the celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the Victory, May 8, 1967, the architectural ensemble “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” was opened at the burial site. The authors of the project are architects D.I. Burdin, V.A. Klimov, Yu.A. Rabaev, sculptor - N.V. Tomsky. The center of the ensemble is a bronze star placed in the middle of a mirror-polished black square framed by a red granite platform. The Eternal Flame of Glory bursts out of the star, delivered to Moscow from Leningrad, where it was ignited from the flames blazing on the Champs of Mars.

The inscription “To those who fell for the Motherland” is carved on the granite wall. 1941-1945". On the right, along the Kremlin wall, blocks of dark red porphyry are placed in a row; under them, in urns, soil is stored, delivered from the hero cities - Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk, Volgograd, Sevastopol, Odessa, Kerch, Novorossiysk, Murmansk, Tula, Smolensk, and also from the Brest Fortress. Each block bears the name of the city and an embossed image of the Gold Star medal. The tombstone of the monument is topped with a three-dimensional bronze emblem depicting a soldier’s helmet, a battle flag and a laurel branch.

Words are engraved on the granite slab of the tombstone.

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER IS THE MOST FAMOUS SOLDIER OF THE SECOND WORLD

One of the most pressing issues in the history of World War II is the cost of defeats and victories of the USSR. This price includes many components: colossal, incalculable damage was caused to the material and spiritual culture of the people. But the main “unit of measurement” is human lives. Both soldiers of the Red Army and civilians, including unborn generations.

The scale of such a price has not yet been calculated, but the further wartime goes from us, the more impressive and bitter it is. For not all sacrifices were necessary and justified. The most terrible and irrefutable result of the war lies in the monstrous fact to which we are all witnesses: hundreds of thousands of fallen people still remain unburied or unknown. And this is provided that thousands of volunteers have been involved in the voluntary movement to search for and bury fallen soldiers for more than half a century. At the origins of this extremely painful problem, many factors intertwine and interact: moral and ethical, political, economic, historical and cultural - both objective, global, and subjective, even random. And the burden of responsibility that the Soviet state could not and did not want to take upon itself was taken upon itself by society.

The search movement is a social movement of citizens of our country, voluntarily and free of charge engaged in the discovery and burial of the remains of fallen soldiers who were not buried during the war, establishing the front-line fates of soldiers who were considered missing, returning their names and exploits from obscurity, perpetuating their memory, restoring the progress of military events.

The fate of the search movement has become an integral part of the history of our country, although it arose spontaneously - as an amateur, voluntary popular movement, in which representatives of all generations, from war veterans to schoolchildren, participated and continue to participate. The search movement has its own history of formation, its own stages of development. Gradually it acquired its own legal basis. Now it is included in state programs for the patriotic education of youth.

The search movement is a unique phenomenon that no other country in the world has known. The movement originated in the first post-war years, but for almost half a century it was hushed up by the communist authorities, in fact it was banned. In the post-war years, the country, destroyed by the war, devoted all its efforts to restoring the national economy.

There were not enough funds and strength (and perhaps even political courage) to bury all the fallen Soviet soldiers, whose remains continued to decay in the vast expanses that were the theater of military operations, from the Arctic to Kalmykia. Vast areas remained mined for a long time, and local residents were afraid to visit such places.

M.S. Gorbachev as a child witnessed a scene that was not uncommon in those years: “At the end of February - beginning of March 1943, when the snow melted, I and other children, in search of trophies, wandered into a distant forest belt between Privolny and the neighboring village of Belaya Glina. There we came across the remains of Red Army soldiers who fought their last battle here in the summer of 1942. It is impossible to describe it: rotted and chewed up bodies, skulls in rusted steel helmets, bleached hand bones from rotten tunics, clutching rifles. There is also a light machine gun, grenades, and heaps of spent cartridges. So they lay, unburied, in the dirty slurry of trenches and craters, looking at us with the black gaping holes of their eye sockets. We were petrified... We returned home shocked.”1

Work on the search, establishing the names and fates of war participants provides the opportunity for “meetings” with an unlimited number of historical sources. Studying them can shed light both on specific events and on many of the fates of front-line soldiers2. This is precisely the most important goal of the search work, especially in view of the sad statistics of those who, having been mobilized to the front, did not return from the war and died (disappeared) nameless (missing in action).

In the country of victorious socialism, the families of the missing, exhausted by war deprivations and post-war years of hunger, did not even receive a survivor's pension from the state. And after the Victory, the logic of the communist government and its bureaucratic apparatus remained repressive: what if he surrendered?! The words “missing” carried a stigma for many years...

The author’s personal archive contains correspondence with the families of those warriors whose remains were discovered during search expeditions and whose relatives were found. A letter received in 1991 from G.M. Demakov, the son of the Red Army soldier Mikhail Romanovich Demakov, born in 1913, a native of the village of Osetra, Darovsky district, Kirov region, who went missing in August 1942, is quite typical:

“I was born on June 23, 1941, I turned 50 years old, and all these years I felt awkward. I remembered my father only on Victory Day. But the entry “missing” haunted me. You have removed the shadow from my soul. Thank you for this. Of course, I would like to know more about my father, otherwise in the 50 years of my life - two letters from the front and one pre-war group photograph of my father, which has turned yellow with time and is difficult to make out.

We lived hard, survived with great difficulty. They ate grass, and for an extra clover head, for example, I got hit on a soft spot more than once,

but still survived. Mom never got married, although they proposed, she didn’t marry because of us...”3.

From a legal point of view, a missing person is a person whose “unknown absence is certified in court. If within a certain period, despite all the measures taken, it was not possible to determine whether the missing person is alive or dead, then the court declares him dead. Recognition as missing and deceased entails legal consequences (transfer of rights and responsibilities to heirs, assignment of pensions to family members, etc.)”4.

However, the practice of establishing the fate of a missing soldier through going to court in the USSR, and then in Russia, did not become widespread. And only the discovery by search teams of the remains of a soldier in a rifle cell, dugout or chain of soldiers who went on the attack with weapons in their hands in the former no man's land, the bodies of pilots in the wreckage of aircraft at a depth of 6-7 meters, their identification by direct or indirect data is correct basis for "rehabilitation". And then for re-registration: transfer from the category of “missing” to “dead”.

Almost half a century after the end of the war, a decree of the President of the USSR was issued on February 8, 1991 “On additional measures to perpetuate the memory of Soviet citizens who died defending the Motherland in the pre-war years and during the Great Patriotic War, as well as those who performed their international duty.” The missing servicemen were finally equal in status to the dead5.

An important confirmation of state recognition of the search movement in Russia was the law of January 14, 1993 “On perpetuating the memory of fallen defenders of the Fatherland,” which regulates search work carried out by public organizations6.

And finally, in accordance with the decree of the President of Russia dated January 22, 2006 No. 37 “Issues of perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland,” the federal executive body entrusted with powers in this area was determined for the first time - the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation7.

Today, already in the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of families around the world know nothing about their relatives who disappeared during wars. Not long ago, the “Missing” conference took place in Geneva (Switzerland). The focus of the conference participants was the fate of families who have lost someone close to them. According to S. Martin, director of the International Committee of the Red Cross Project on Missing Persons, “the feeling of anxiety does not subside for many years after the end of the war. And often such families are not able to continue normal life and regain strength... As a rule, the warring parties are not inclined to jointly search for the missing. The reason for this lies not so much in inability as in reluctance. As one expert noted,

When the circumstances under which people died are revealed, the terrible details of the military actions are also revealed.”8

According to official data, the number of missing Soviet soldiers is from 3 to 4 million9.

A calculation carried out by the author using the “Books of Memory” published in Russia revealed in some regions a terrifying ratio of the number of missing soldiers to the total number of those who did not return from the war: in the Kostroma region, about 52,000 (more than 45%) are listed as missing in action10, in Tula-90,696 (50.04%) p, in Moscow -174,945 (52.1%)12, in Moscow -184,591 (49.5%)13.

Some of the “missing” were hastily buried between battles in mass graves, the inscriptions on which were later lost. Many soldiers and commanders died and were left lying in places of mass death - in “cauldrons” or during breakthroughs from encirclements. Some of them are in enemy captivity and at the stages of transportation to prisoner of war camps. Due to the lack of documents about the fact of death, they were registered as missing.

The colossal number of missing front-line soldiers was determined by two factors: the lack of reliable means of identifying fallen servicemen and the impossibility of a systematic, complete accounting of irretrievable losses of personnel in the Red Army in a combat situation.

Order No. 856 of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council of August 14, 1925 introduced instructions for the use of medallions with personal information about Red Army soldiers14. It says:

"1. Medallions with personal information about military personnel are assigned to facilitate personal accounting when issuing certificates to the public about all Red Army military personnel located in the theater of military operations.

2. The medallion consists of the medallion itself (metal), a piece of parchment in it with brief information about the soldier and a braid for wearing the medallion on the chest...

5. The medallion is kept, like the service record book, in the hands of the serviceman, and at inspections, servicemen must have medallions on their chests.

6. When hiking, the medallion is always worn on the chest.

7. When a serviceman is transferred from one unit (institution) to another, the serviceman keeps the medallion with him and only changes the parchment piece in the new unit.

8. If a medallion is lost, a serviceman, upon his application, is immediately issued a new one.

9. The medallion belongs to service items, items of equipment and is an item that does not expire.

10. Commanding officers and inspectors are obliged to check the presence of medallions on military personnel when they visit units and institutions”15.

The medallion of the 1925 model was made of tin in the form of a flat box measuring 50 x 33 x 4 mm with a braid for wearing on the chest. It contained a special form (insert), printed on paper. When this type of medallion was used during combat operations, it turned out that it was not airtight: the parchment sheet quickly became unusable. When, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR K.E. Voroshilov No. 180 of August 25, 1937, over 500 orders were canceled as “signed by enemies of the people,” among them was the order of the RVS No. 85616. As a result, the use of medallions was stopped.

The experience of the war with Finland forced me to return to medallions. By order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR S.K. Timoshenko No. 138 of March 15, 194117 introduced the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in wartime.” According to the regulations, new medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a parchment paper liner. The order was supplemented by “Instructions on the procedure for using medallions with brief information about the military personnel of the Red Army.” It says:

"1. To facilitate the accounting of losses of Red Army personnel, in wartime, each serviceman is provided with a medallion with an inserted parchment sheet containing information about the serviceman...

3. The following information is entered on the insert sheet: last name, first name, patronymic; military rank; year of birth; place of birth: republic, region, city, district, village council, village; family address; how RVC is mobilized; blood group.

Note: it is strictly prohibited to indicate the name of the military unit and the position of the serviceman on the insert sheets.

4. Filling out the insert sheet and making changes to it is the responsibility of the unit commander.

5. Medallions are worn in a special pocket of the trouser belt on the right side...”18

Section 3 of the “Regulations on Personal Accounting...” - “Assignment of medallions with information about military personnel” - says:

“To account for the losses of personnel in wartime and in order to instill skills in storing medallions in peacetime, each serviceman, from the moment of his arrival at the unit, is issued a medallion with an insert sheet in two copies, which is recorded in the clothing certificate and stored with him until he is transferred to the reserve...

The medallion insert is filled out in two copies. One copy of the medallion insert for those killed or died from wounds is taken out and stored at the unit headquarters or medical institution, and the second copy, inserted into the medallion, remains with the person killed or died from wounds. Teams,

dressed to clean up the battlefield, take out one copy of the medallion insert from the dead man and transfer it to the headquarters of the unit whose order they cleared the battlefield. The death of a serviceman is reported by the unit to which the medallion insert removed from the killed person was transferred by the commands after clearing the battlefield, regardless of which unit the serviceman belonged to. The inserts taken from medallions from killed servicemen are kept by unit commanders at the unit headquarters, based on them they compile lists according to Form No. 2 and send them to division headquarters”19.

The “Regulations on Personal Accounting...” established the procedure for accounting for losses. It was emphasized that the commander of a regiment (individual unit) bears full responsibility for the accurate recording of losses in the regiment and for the timely reporting of losses to division headquarters.

In particular, the missing were to be counted for 15 days as “temporarily retired.” Unit and subunit commanders were obliged to take all measures to clarify the fate of the missing. After the 15-day period, they should have been included in the list of irretrievable losses, and units should have been excluded from the lists with a report to the command. After 45 days, relatives had to be notified about them. If the fate of the missing serviceman subsequently becomes clear, then it was necessary to immediately provide additional information about him - both to the command and to the RVK or relatives20.

According to the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 138, the chief quartermaster of the Red Army was supposed to supply the troops with medallions and loose leaves by May 1, 1941. The quartermasters carried out this order to some extent: the search engines were able to find and read medallion forms with a completion date of May-June 1941.

According to statistics derived by us from many years of experience in search work, when the remains of the dead are discovered, medallions are found in approximately every 10th warrior, and on average three or four out of ten medallions can be read. Thus, it is possible to establish a name from a medallion only for three or four out of 100 fallen servicemen.

There are several explanations for this circumstance.

By the day of Germany’s attack on the USSR, it was not possible to fully provide all the personnel of the Red Army with medallions. And their production during the war was associated with great difficulties. So, on December 17, 1941, the head of the department for staffing the headquarters of the Leningrad Front, brigade quartermaster Vasiliev, reported to the member of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, divisional commissar V.A. Kuznetsov: “Further production of medallions and supply of military units has been stopped due to lack of electricity. To fulfill orders for medallions, I ask for your order to supply electricity to the Plastics Factory - 250 kilowatts and the Kultprom artel - 250 kilowatt-hours"21.

Unlike the metal personal identification marks (die Erkennungsmarke)22 adopted by the German armed forces, Soviet medallions were not sufficiently reliable and airtight. Their prolonged exposure to air, water, or soil led to significant and sometimes complete destruction of the paper insert or fading of the text. At the same time, the oval aluminum plate-token of a killed German soldier during burial was broken into two parts (each with the same code) at the location of the slot. One half remained on the neck or in the pocket of the deceased, and the other was transported to Germany, to the Wehrmacht Information Bureau for War Losses and Prisoners of War, later renamed the “German Service (WASt).” All personal data about military personnel and lists of issued identification marks were stored there.

It was persistently and strictly instilled in every German soldier that the absence of a personal badge could lead to grave injustice against his relatives, since in this case he could become “missing in action” for his family. If a dead German soldier is found with a whole tag, this means that he is not counted as dead and, therefore, is considered missing.

Among the Red Army soldiers, the attitude towards the safety of medallions and notes was often careless: someone did not screw the lid tightly, someone put a needle or metal pen nibs inside for temporary storage - and the note “oxidized”, someone did not fill out the form. And it also happened that the note - probably out of superstition - was thrown away immediately after receiving the medallion.

The soldier’s medallion was the only “identity document” for privates and sergeants until the order of the People’s Commissar of Defense of the USSR I.V. Stalin No. 330 of October 7, 1941 “On the introduction of the Red Army book in wartime in the rear and at the front.” It said:

“...Red Army soldiers and junior commanders found themselves at the front without documents proving their identity, and our division, which should be a closed fortress, inaccessible to the penetration of unauthorized persons, in fact turned into a passage yard. The enemy took advantage of this disorder and sent his people dressed in our uniforms to some parts of the Red Army. In one of the divisions of the North-Western Front, a group of 7 such people, sent by the enemy for espionage and sabotage purposes, was discovered and shot. Further, there can be no doubt that many people hanging out in the rear of divisions and armies, dressed in Red Army uniforms, are enemy agents passing on information about our units, the fight against which is impossible due to the lack of documents among the Red Army soldiers so that they can distinguish their own people from enemy agents. And finally, the absence of documents in the hands of the person leaving for

the front of replenishment and departure from the front for the evacuation of sick and wounded soldiers and junior commanders made it impossible for supply authorities to check their provision of uniforms, weapons, equipment and other types of allowances. In order to correct the mistake, ensure units from the penetration of enemy elements and streamline the accounting of Red Army personnel, I order:

1. Immediately introduce in all units and institutions of the Red Army, both in the rear and at the front, a Red Army book with a photographic card of the owner, according to the announced model.

2. The Red Army book should be considered the only document identifying the Red Army soldier and junior commander. In the Red Army book, record the serviceman's military service and the allowances he receives from the military department (weapons, equipment and uniforms)...

5. Check the availability of Red Army books among Red Army soldiers and junior commanders: in units in the rear - daily during the morning inspection, in combat units - at the first opportunity, at the discretion of company commanders, but at least once every 3 days.

6. Every Red Army soldier and junior commander should have a Red Army book with him. Red Army soldiers and junior commanders who do not have Red Army records should be detained as suspicious and sent to military commandant's offices to determine their identity...

12. The Chief Quartermaster of the Red Army, within 15 days, must produce and provide the active army and internal districts with Red Army books of the type approved by me, and also give instructions to the troops on the procedure for producing photographic cards.

13. Inspectors of military branches and services, as well as all direct superiors, when visiting subordinate units, check that Red Army soldiers and junior commanders have Red Army books and that they are maintained correctly.”23.

Situations often arose when Red Army soldiers lacked both medallions and Red Army books. Thus, in the report “On the results of verification of the implementation of NKO Order No. 13 8-41 on the accounting of personal losses in units of the 9th Guards Red Banner Division” dated May 28, 1942 it was stated: “Order No. 138 is in all parts, list forms and There are no notices, they are printed on the spot. The division is not provided with medallions at this time. Not all soldiers are equipped with Red Army books without photographs. In the 28th Guards. And 100 fighters don’t have books”24.

Once again, the medallions were canceled by order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR Stalin No. 376 of November 17, 1942 “On the removal of medallions from the supply of the Red Army”25. It stated: “With the introduction, by order of the NKO USSR No. 330 of October 7, 1941, of the Red Army book,

holding all the necessary data about the fighter, there is no need to duplicate this information in the medallion.”

In accordance with this order, the Red Army book began to be considered the only document identifying the Red Army soldier and junior commander. Red Army records were confiscated from those killed and those who died from wounds and transferred to the headquarters of the unit or medical institution, where, on their basis, lists of personnel losses were compiled. And the deceased became “nameless.”

On the other hand, the abolition of medallions was formally motivated by the introduction of Red Army books as an identification document for servicemen. However, this document did not ensure proper safety of the records made in them, and could not always be used to identify the dead.

As a result, the dead men were missing medallions and any documents, which later made it impossible to establish their identity. It is quite obvious that the abolition of medallions led to an increase in the number of “missing people”.

Wartime documents are more eloquent than any reasoning on this subject, such as, for example, an act drawn up on March 28, 1943:

“We, the undersigned, are the chief of staff of the 105th OIAB, Captain Kopa-nev D.A., assistant deputy. The company commander for political affairs, foreman Gordeev and senior sergeant Nazarov, drew up this act on the following.

On this date, in the territory liberated from the enemy in the area of ​​the village. In Stenino and Zhary, Yukhnovsky district, unburied corpses of 10 military personnel were discovered; there were no documents with them. Based on the insignia, it was established that of them there was one lieutenant, one senior sergeant, one sergeant and seven Red Army soldiers, whose corpses were buried - the road leading from the village. Stenino, Yukhnovsky district, Smolensk region in the village. It's hot. From the village Stenino 1-1.5 km in the forest from the right side of the road, 20 meters away, there is a pillar with a metal star. This is what this act is based on.”26

In fact, the act was drawn up about the presence of one of many options for “missing in action” in combat conditions. That is why information from at least one soldier’s medallion, discovered by search engines during the exhumation of unburied remains or unknown mass graves, is so important today. Indeed, sometimes, thanks to just one name from a correctly filled out and relatively well-preserved medallion, it is then possible, using documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, to establish the names of the remaining soldiers who died in this battle and to find out the circumstances of their death.

This tragic situation was significantly aggravated by numerous violations, and sometimes outright non-compliance with the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased Red Army personnel.”

Army in wartime,” introduced by order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 138. The indifference of officials to a soldier's death sometimes crossed all boundaries. And this happened not only in 1941-1942, when retreat could be justified.

An urgent need to restore order in accounting for losses arose even at the level of the Guards armies. Thus, the order to the troops of the 10th Guards Co-Army No. 0167 dated August 29, 1943 “On shortcomings in recording personal losses” stated:

“Conducted in units of the 22nd and 56th Guards. The inspection revealed a clearly unsatisfactory state of accounting and reporting of personal losses of personnel. The following main shortcomings have been identified:

1. There was no accounting of personal losses during combat operations in units. The main accountants - company clerks - were used in battle as fighters and, naturally, were not involved in accounting. Most of them were out of action.

2. Late accounting led to the fact that in units of the 22nd Guards. SD turned out to be hundreds of missing people; for the huge number of dead, the days and places of death and burial points have not been established.

3. Burial books are not kept in the units; diagrams of the location of mass graves were not drawn up.

4. The sending of registered lists of irretrievable losses to the Center and notifications F. No. 4 to the district military registration and enlistment offices is delayed due to difficulties in establishing the addresses of relatives of the dead, the timing and place of their death, etc. Notifications for the dead are drawn up carelessly.

5. Personnel who dropped out during the fighting are not excluded by unit orders from the beginning of the August operation until the day of inspection on August 22, 1943 (62nd and 67th Guards Regiments, 22nd Guards Infantry Division, 256th Guards Infantry Division). joint venture 56th Guards SD), in 65th Guards. joint losses are not completely excluded. The losses are not reflected in the personnel books.

These shortcomings were the result of not only inattention, but also direct neglect on the part of formation and unit commanders and chiefs of staff to record losses, despite the exceptional importance of establishing an accurate record of personnel for solving combat missions.

I order:

1. By 09/05/43, the commanders of formations and units must accurately determine the irretrievable losses in the personnel of the units, report for all losses to the Center and army headquarters and complete sending notifications under F. No. 4 to the dead.

2. Take urgent measures to clarify the circumstances under which hundreds of people went missing and carry out a thorough search for the missing.

3. Immediately restore the burial register in all parts, draw up diagrams of mass graves and put cemeteries and mass graves in proper order.

4. Commanders of formations should conduct an investigation into the untimely exclusion from units of personnel who withdrew during combat operations.

5. Prohibit the use of company clerks as fighters and teach them to keep records of losses during battle..,”27.

Only towards the end of October 1943, after repeated orders and punishments, did responsible persons at the level of divisions that were part of the 10th Guards Army retroactively document the losses for the month of August.

But even in the case of timely burial of those killed in battle, they could fall into the category of missing persons, because due to failures in the accounting system, buried soldiers in many cases turned out to be nameless, their families had no opportunity to find out about their fate, the place of death and burial. And then the wording of the notice sent to the family from the military registration and enlistment office - “In the battles for the socialist Motherland, faithful to the military oath, showing heroism and courage, died (date), was buried (dash)” - without indicating a specific burial place, became equivalent to the standard wording: “disappeared without lead." One of the tragic paradoxes of the Great Patriotic War...

Millions of defenders fell on foreign soil, in different countries of Europe, when, having endured all the hardships of the front, they already foresaw an imminent Victory. But they were not spared the cup of posthumous obscurity. More than 2.5 million Soviet soldiers who died during the victorious “Stalinist strikes” are buried on the territory of 24 European states. Of these, more than 80% are listed in cemeteries as “unknown”28.

The Red Army's losses in offensive operations in Europe were large. But since the battlefield remained behind her, they managed to collect the bodies and bury them, and they managed to more or less establish a system for recording losses. The trouble now was different: the impossibility of making long-term grave markers and inscriptions on them. There simply were no materials: the rank, surname and date of death were written on plywood plates with a chemical pencil or charcoal. After several months, or even after heavy rains, nothing remained of the inscription.

And when at the end of 1945-1946. local authorities, together with representatives of the command of the Soviet army units stationed nearby, were engaged in the reburial of the remains of fallen soldiers in specially designated military cemeteries; most of the graves were already unmarked. There was one, albeit weak, consolation: the families received notifications from the military registration and enlistment offices indicating the place of death and burial.

In 2002, the Department of External Relations of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, in response to a request addressed to the military attache at the Russian Embassy in Austria about the burial place of Guard Sergeant Polichev Sergei Sergeevich (died in April 1945) responded: “The fact of the loss of data on the burial place of the deceased serviceman may be explained by the fact that at the end of 1945 - beginning

1946 By order of the State Committee for Civil War No. 0160 dated October 15, 1945, the remains of dead Soviet military personnel were massively reburied from field burial sites to garrison cemeteries at the points of deployment of Soviet troops. The reporting documents on the reburials indicated that there were a large number of graves that did not allow identification of the military personnel buried in them due to the lack of nameplates or the inability to read the names and surnames indicated on them, since the inscriptions were made with unstable writing media”29.

But when, years and decades later, based on the funeral data, relatives tried to find graves through the Red Cross, they were not always successful, at best, not immediately. A typical example is the “posthumous fate” of Lieutenant Yakov Timofeevich Limans-kosh, born in 189630.

Truly, the most famous soldier of World War II was the Unknown Soldier...

This painful fact of our life today does not fit well with the stereotypes of public consciousness. According to surveys conducted by the Institute of Comprehensive Social Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1998-2004, the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, regardless of gender, education, profession and place of residence, continue to be primarily proud of the national Victory in the Great Patriotic War31. And at the same time, in the territory of the former USSR there is currently not a single region where work to identify and bury the remains of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who gave their lives in the fight for the independence of our Fatherland has been fully completed.

The national search movement as a practical (and only recently - scientific) problem sprouted from the mournful seeds of the people's misfortune: families who gave their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, sisters to defend the Motherland, not only did not receive them after the hard-won Victory, but even they did not know what land they fell into, expelling the fascist aggressor and finishing him off on his own land.

The mission of correcting this historical injustice was placed on the shoulders of individual enthusiasts of their own free will, who, at their own peril and risk, began “cleaning up former battlefields.” They cleared the still mined forests and fields of unburied corpses, burying them on their own. War veterans helped them. Then their children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren of the front generation got involved. During many years of search expeditions in the territory of the former USSR, more than 10 thousand fallen soldiers were identified through joint efforts32. Hundreds of thousands of front-line destinies of those who did not return from the war were established by volunteer searchers and immortalized in the regional “Books of Memory”.

The energy of the national movement gradually removes the burden of uncertainty and suspicion, returns a good name and honor to those who did not “disappear”, but fell with weapons in their hands in their combat positions or in other cruel, inevitable circumstances of the hard times of war. That is why mass graves and memorial cemeteries created as a result of search work are so significant, where families whose children did not know a reliable father’s shoulder come to worship.

Returning the names of all those who have disappeared is an impossible task. But for now it is possible to reveal one front-line fate, another and another - volunteer search engines will do their holy work.

Notes

1 Gorbachev M.S. Life and reforms. Book 1. M., 1995. P. 50-51.

2 Kharitonov A. On the history of the search for missing persons // Fur die Lebenden der toten gedenken (In the name of the living, remember the dead). Dresden, 2003. pp. 76-85; Petrov V.N., Shkapa N.A. Methodological recommendations for military archeology (for search work at the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War). M., 2006; Ivlev I.I. The memory is preserved by you: Methodology for processing and analyzing documentary materials about the fate of military personnel in order to prepare a regional Book of Memory. Tyumen, 2008.

3 Sadovnikov S.I. A search that became destiny. M., 2003. pp. 222-223.

4 Military encyclopedic dictionary. T. 2. M., 2001. P. 39.

6 Gazette of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation. 1993. No. 7. Art. 245.

8 Missing Relatives // Awake! New York, 2003. Vol. 84. No. 24.

9 Gavrilov Yu. Sergei Ivanov supported the search engines // Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 2006. 20 Sep. P.6; It's him. Find and immortalize // Russian newspaper 2006. December 22.

10 Book of Memory. Kostroma region. T. 7. Yaroslavl, 1995. P. 554.

11 Book of Memory, 1941-1945. Tula region. T. 15. Tula, 2000. P. 57.

12 Book of Memory of the fallen, deceased and missing soldiers in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. T. 29. Part 3. M., 2005. pp. 672-673.

13 Book of Memory of those killed and missing in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. T. 2-15. M., 1993-1995.

14 RGVA. F. 4. Op. 12. D. 48. JI. 34; Guide to search and exhumation work. 3rd ed. M., 1997. pp. 29-30.

15 RGVA. F. 4. Op. 3. D. 2576. JI. 348; Guide to search and exhumation work. P. 29; Missing...memory? // Military historical magazine. 1998. No. 1. P. 70; Sadovnikov S.I. On the problem of establishing the names and fates of the fallen defenders of the Fatherland // Archaeographic Yearbook for 2000. M., 2001. pp. 155-156.

16 RGVA. F. 4. Op. 12. D. 82. L. 182-185.

17 TsAMO RF. F. 2. Op. 920266. D. 2. L. 441-446; RGVA. F. 4. Op. 12. D. 97. L. 263; Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. T. 13 (2-1). M., 1994. pp. 258-261.

18 RGVA. F. 4. Op. 15. D. 23. L. 719-720; Buslaev A.A., Mazur K.A., Shumeiko Yu.I. Unpaid debt // Military Historical Journal. 1992. No. 9. P. 28.

19 RGVA. F. 4 Op. 12. D. 97. L. 275; Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. T. 13 (2-1). M., 1994. P. 260.

20 RGVA. F. 4 On. 12. D. 97. JI. 270; Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. T. 13 (2-1). M., 1994. P. 259.

21 Buslaev A.A., Mazur K.A., Shumeiko Yu.I. Decree. op. P. 30.

22 Schwanebach B.E. A Guide to German Military Translation. M. 1943. S. 44-45; Schliht A., Angolia J. R. Die deutsche Wehrmacht. 1993. Band 1: Das Heer. Stuttgart, 1993. S. 411.

23 TsAMO RF. F. 2. On. 920266. D. 2. L. 840-842; RGVA. F. 4. Op. 12. D. 99. JI. 274-277; USSR in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: Brief chronicle. M., 1970. P. 98; Konasov V.B., Tereshchuk A.B. A new approach to accounting for irretrievable losses during the Great Patriotic War // Questions of history. 1990. No. 6. P. 185-186.

24 TsAMO RF. F. 58. Op. 818883. D. 1114. L. 58.

25 TsAMO RF. F. 2. Op. 920266. D. 5. L. 495; Russian Archive: The Great Patriotic War: Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. T. 13 (2-2). M., 1997.

P. 368; Kleymenov A.N. Out of memory // Military Historical Journal. 1990. No. 4. P. 4; Konasov V.B., Sudakov V.V. On the history of the issue of personal losses of Red Army personnel during the Great Patriotic War and perpetuating the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland // Until the last soldier is buried: Essays and documents. Vologda; M., 1997. P. 4.

26 TsAMO RF. F. 58. Op. 18001. D. 91. L. 126.

27 TsAMO RF. F. 1473. Op. 2. D. 7. L. 44-44ob.

30 See: Simonov A.I., Simonov A.A., Karpenko S.V. The case of Yakov Limansky // New Historical Bulletin. 2009. No. 4(22). pp. 165, 167.

31 Russian identity in conditions of transformation: experience of sociological analysis. M., 2005. P. 15.

32 Names from soldiers' medallions. T. 1-3. Kazan, 2005-2008.

V.A. Khokhlov

THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR IN MODERN RUSSIAN CINEMA: CONTINUATION IN THE FANTASY FUTURE

“Our task was to show the Germans as bad as possible... Because the Germans didn’t fight like that with machine guns, well, they never fought like that. Thanks to this, they won the war, because they had tactical units built around machine guns, very competently.”1 At the press conference, the smiling director with the provocative surname Samokhvalov made a striking disclaimer: “Thanks to this, they won the war.” “They” are the Germans, if anyone still doesn’t believe their eyes. Oshwor-

A series of documentary photographs for Victory Day in the Second World War 1941-1945. A selection of 95 rare photographs of military equipment and participants in the Second World War. A unique photo from the scenes of events of 1941-1945, military actions in the history of black and white photography. We look at online documentary photos of the Second World War 1941-1945.

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