Reasons for the defeat of the Red Army in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War

Chapter 3. The state of the Red Army on the eve of the war

Speaking about the state of the Red Army, it is worth starting with the experience of combat operations, since it is this factor that is largely decisive in characterizing the effectiveness of any army. The Red Army had very little experience in modern warfare. Her only major experience was the Civil War, but it bore little resemblance to modern warfare. After this there was a war in Spain, but the peculiar and limited nature of the fighting was interpreted one-sidedly. For example, based on the results of this war, they came to the conclusion that the existence of large armored formations was inappropriate. In 1938-1939 There were also successful battles against the Japanese at Lake Khasan and on the Khalkhin Gol River, but they also were not similar to the big war that began in 1941. Lessons were learned from the winter war in Finland, but they were not put into practice widely enough. 1

In the summer of 1941, Soviet military leaders demonstrated their inability to control large military formations in real conditions and their disregard for all rules of warfare. Troops, contrary to the requirements of the regulations, often deployed and operated on wide fronts, in arbitrary directions, without interaction with each other. As a rule, during an offensive, forces were scattered, and counterattacks were delivered frontally against an entrenched enemy and without taking into account the terrain. At the same time, commanders and headquarters of divisions, and sometimes regiments, were often separated from the advancing troops, control posts were poorly equipped, there were insufficient means of communication, and they were used ineptly. 2

Platoon, company and battalion commanders usually went on the attack ahead of their units, did not see their battle formations and could not lead them. This entailed large losses of command personnel and disorganization of battle control.

The defense was built on the principle of a cordon line on a wide front, without proper depth, without taking into account enemy tactics, the nature of the terrain and the importance of the areas being defended. The operational formation of armies was almost always single-echelon; forces and assets in formations were also distributed evenly along the front. The joints and flanks were poorly secured. During defensive operations, there was no broad maneuver of forces and means at the expense of other, less active sectors of the front and reserves. The withdrawal of troops from one defensive line to another was, as a rule, forced by the situation and carried out under strong fire from enemy artillery, tanks and aircraft. Advance preparation of lines and organization of sustainable defense in the army and military rear areas was rarely carried out. As a result, the Soviet units, in the event of a forced withdrawal, were unable to gain a foothold on the new line.

There was almost no reconnaissance, both ground and air. Headquarters rarely assigned troops tasks to conduct reconnaissance in battle. Even the data received by intelligence officers often remained unused, since lower headquarters did not report them to higher ones, and the latter could not draw proper conclusions based on them and inform other lower headquarters and neighbors. Therefore, there were extremely rare cases when the commander made a decision having more or less accurate information about the enemy. 3

Communications became a particularly sore issue from the first day of the war. Soviet military leaders provided leadership with the help of messengers and communications delegates, marshals explored the theater of military operations in search of commanders of fronts and armies. Accustomed to leading their units by telephone, without leaving headquarters, the Red commanders found themselves completely helpless in the field.

As for tank units, until 1943 only the vehicles of company and battalion commanders, i.e., were radio-equipped. one tank out of ten. Therefore, the Germans sought to knock out tanks with antennas first, and their loss greatly complicated the conduct of a proper battle. The optics were also inferior to the German ones, which, coupled with a small overview, after the destruction of vehicles with radios of company and battalion commanders, turned the tanks into vulnerable targets.

The experience of the tankers also left much to be desired. Tankers were mainly horsemen and infantrymen who had absolutely no shooting, driving or control skills. Only five hours were allotted for practical training for a tank driver, and many had only 1.5 - 2 hours of driving practice, 1 while in the Wehrmacht - at least 50 hours. As a result, due to the inexperience of the crews during forced marches, frequent breakdowns occurred that no one could fix. In the short breaks between battles, officers had to teach tank crews the most basic skills, such as driving a combat vehicle and firing a cannon.

Soviet armored vehicles were used without reconnaissance of the area, without the support of artillery, infantry, and aviation, without taking into account its combat capabilities and purpose. The combat regulations provided for only one type of combat for tank units, both offensive and defensive - attack. Shooting from a spot in defense was allowed in exceptional cases. Therefore, light tanks went into oncoming battles or under targeted fire from anti-tank artillery.

As a result, the mechanized corps were unable to solve the tasks assigned to them and were defeated in the very first days of the war. This forced Headquarters to make a decision on July 15 to disband the mechanized corps, which lasted until September 1941. Tank divisions were transferred to the subordination of army commanders, and motorized divisions were reorganized into rifle divisions, which was supposed to ultimately increase their combat effectiveness. 2

Now we should characterize the state of aviation in somewhat more detail. During the period 01.01 - 20.06.1941, units of the Red Army Air Force received only 706 aircraft from the aviation industry. Deliveries of new types of vehicles amounted to only 11 Yak - 1, 55 MiG - 1 and MiG - 3 and one Pe - 2, and almost half of the vehicles arrived in units in June 1941. Of those available by June 1941 in the Red Army Air Force 106 fully formed fighter aviation regiments were supposed to re-equip 22 regiments with new aviation equipment during 1941. Of this number, only eight were completely rearmed by the beginning of the war. The situation with the re-equipment of bomber aviation was even worse, since a new type of bomber - Pe-2 - began to arrive in units only in March 1941. By 06/22/1941, of the 82 high-speed bomber aviation regiments available in the Air Force, it was completely re-equipped with the new aviation equipment was only one regiment and two regiments that were in the stage of rearmament. 3

The situation with aircraft communications was as follows: all bombers were equipped with short-wave radio stations RSB or RSB-bis, which had a rated communication range in telephony mode of up to 300 km, in telegraphy mode - up to 600-700 km. These stations were considered to meet the requirements placed on them and existed until the end of the war. Until 1940, fighters were not equipped with radio stations at all. Only with the start of production of new types of fighters did they begin to install RSI-3 type stations on them at the rate of one per 15 aircraft, the rest were equipped only with radio receivers.

The decrease in the level of combat training in the Air Force on the eve of the Great Patriotic War occurred mainly due to the newly formed aviation units, staffed with young flight personnel. Thus, in the Leningrad Military District Air Force, 60% of the flight personnel were graduates of the fall of 1940. Flight training was reduced mainly to airfield flights, limited air combat, partly to shooting at cones and route flights in the area of ​​airfields.

In general, as of June 22, 1941, in the Air Force, about 10% of the entire flight personnel of combat units had been retrained for new types of aircraft. As for the level of training, by June 1941 it was as follows: 95% of the total number of aircraft crews of the border districts passed tests for flights in simple weather conditions, but in difficult weather conditions less than 18% of the crews were prepared for combat operations; at night in simple weather conditions - 19%, in complex ones - 0.8%. 1

Thus, the level of training of the flight personnel made it possible to conduct combat operations mainly in simple weather conditions and on older types of aircraft. The lack of theoretical knowledge could, to some extent, be compensated by rich practice, but even here everything was extremely bad, since the majority of Soviet aviation commanders were promoted “to the top” literally a few months before the start of the war. Thus, out of 16 district air force commanders, only two had experience in this position from one to two years, five - from six months to a year, and the rest - less than six months. The latter category included 53 of 58 air division commanders and 120 of 244 regiment commanders.

One of the reasons for the failures of the Soviet Armed Forces at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War is considered to be the repression to which the command staff was subjected in 1937-1938. At the same time, many researchers pay attention to 2 main factors: 1) during the repressions, a significant part of the officer corps was destroyed, as a result of which the army was left without experienced commanders by 1941, 2) Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Yakir and other representatives of the senior command staff were geniuses commanders, whose elimination was an irreparable loss. This issue is interesting for research, so we will dwell on it in more detail.

Taking into account the central apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Defense, military educational institutions, rear institutions, intelligence agencies, as well as command personnel in reserve, in just the first 10 months of 1937, 13,811 commanding officers were dismissed from the Red Army, of which 3,776 people were arrested. . In 1938, 7,718 people were dismissed by directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the People's Commissar of Defense. 2

Along with clearing the army of hostile elements, part of the command staff was dismissed for unjustified reasons. After reinstatement in the party and the discovery that the dismissal was unfounded, 6,650 people were returned to the Red Army, mainly captains, senior lieutenants, lieutenants and their equals, constituting 62% of this number. In place of those dismissed, 8,154 people from the reserves, 2,572 people from one-year students, and 4,000 people from the reserve political personnel joined the army, which covered the number of those dismissed.

The dismissal in 1939 is due to natural attrition and the cleansing of the army from drunkards, whom the People's Commissar of Defense, by his order of December 28, 1938, demands to be mercilessly expelled from the Red Army.

Thus, in 1937-1938. About 40 thousand officers were actually fired from the Red Army. However, not all of them can be considered victims of repression. The fact that not all the officers dismissed from the Red Army were shot is eloquently evidenced by the number of complaints, petitions and applications considered by the Shchadenko commission - about 30 thousand. To be able to file a complaint, you must remain alive.

Now let's take a closer look at the issue of the shortage of command personnel before the war. At this time, there was a sharp increase in the size of the Red Army, associated with its transfer to a cadre basis in 1935-1939, as well as with the introduction of universal conscription in 1939. At the same time, tens of thousands of new officer positions were created that needed to be filled. If in 1937 the army had 206 thousand commanding personnel on staff, then by June 15, 1941, the total number of command and command personnel was 439,143 people according to the list.

Thus, in quantitative terms, the impact of repression on the command and control personnel of the Red Army turns out to be very insignificant, and the resulting shortage was caused by a sharp increase in the size of the army.

As for the qualitative composition of the officer corps, repression was not imposed, and could not be imposed due to the insignificance of its scale compared to the total mass of the officer corps, it had a visible impact on the educational level. A slight drop in the proportion of officers with secondary military education in 1938-1939. is explained not by repression, but by a significant influx into the army of officers from the reserve, from super-conscripts, and especially officers who graduated from junior lieutenant courses. At the same time, in the pre-war years there was a steady trend towards an increase in the percentage of officers with an academic education. In 1941, this percentage was the highest during the entire interwar period and was equal to 7.1%. Before the repressions, in 1936 this figure was 6.6. The calculations show that during the period of repression there was a steady increase in the number of command personnel with secondary and higher military education. Thus, in 1936 there were 13 thousand command personnel with academic education, in 1939 - after the actual end of the repressions - 23 thousand, in 1941 - 28 thousand officers. 125, 156 and 206 thousand military personnel respectively had military education in the scope of a military school. 1

The Soviet generals suffered the most from the repressions, but at the same time, objectively, their educational level increased. In the first half of the 30s. the proportion of people in this category with higher military education ranged from 30 to 40%. Before the start of the repressions, 29% had an academic education, in 1938 there were already 38%, and in 1941 52% of military leaders had a higher military education.

Thus, the repressions did not reduce the educational level of the categories of officers affected by them; they influenced the level of education of senior and middle officers who were promoted to higher positions.

Now let us dwell on the consequences of the repressions of the senior command staff. There are various differences of opinion among Russian historians on this issue, but the latest research, on which we relied in this work, indicates the following: those who died as a result of repression were replaced mainly by people of the same generation, but others with different experiences. So the repressed Ya. B. Gamarnik, V. M. Primakov, M. N. Tukhachevsky, I. F. Fedko, N. E. Yakir were born in 1893-1897, and in the same years, in 1894-1897- m, G. K. Zhukov, I. S. Konev, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. K. Rokossovsky, F. I. Tolbukhin were born. But the former, with the exception of only Tukhachevsky, who fought for several months as a second lieutenant, did not participate in the First World War, and the latter (except for Tolbukhin, who graduated from the ensign school) began their combat career as ordinary soldiers. 2

Further, the first found themselves soon after the revolution in the highest leadership positions (although they were then only 21 to 25 years old) - no doubt for ideological, not military reasons - and the second, slowly climbing the official ladder, acquired real ability to control troops.

So, the Red Army had little experience in modern warfare. Her only major experience was the Civil War, but it bore little resemblance to modern warfare. After this there was a war in Spain, in 1938-1939. There were also successful battles against the Japanese at Lake Khasan and on the Khalkhin Gol River, but they also were not similar to the big war that began in 1941. Lessons were learned from the winter war in Finland, but they were not put into practice widely enough. The lack of combat experience had a negative impact on the actions of commanders. Reconnaissance, both ground and aerial, was almost non-existent, and even the data obtained by reconnaissance officers often remained unused. Communications were a problematic issue; Soviet military leaders exercised leadership with the help of messengers and communications delegates. In tank units, only the vehicles of company and battalion commanders were radio-equipped. The training of tank driver mechanics was insufficient, only five hours were allotted for it, and many had only 1.5 - 2 hours of driving practice. The combat regulations provided for only one type of combat for tank units, both offensive and defensive - attack. In aviation, the arrival of new types of aircraft was slow, and pilot experience was also limited. As for the repressions, their impact on the combat effectiveness of the Red Army was not catastrophic, but the decline in the general level of soldiers and officers was associated with a sharp increase in the number of the Red Army and the massive recruitment of recruits into its ranks.

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100 years of the creation of the Red Army and the RKKF (Soviet Army and Navy)!

Dedicated to the blessed memory of G. A. Sokolova...

“Russia is our fatherland: its fate in both glory and humiliation is equally memorable for us,” the father of Russian history Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin once wrote.

The events of the summer of 1941 can hardly be attributed to the glorious pages of our history. Rather tragic, but in this tragedy, in addition to the bitterness of defeat, there was something even more bitter - panic and demoralization of the army. This phenomenon was not exactly hidden in the Soviet historiography of the war - its scale was too great for this - but it was mentioned as if in passing, reluctantly, they say, yes, there was panic, but there were those who heroically fulfilled their duty... And then the story went on about the heroism of the brave. This is understandable - talking about heroes, even lost battles, is much more instructive and interesting than about those who, abandoning their positions and weapons, ran aimlessly... But without this story, without considering this phenomenon, its causes and consequences, we will never we will not be able to fully understand what happened in the fateful June 1941. Therefore, the time has come to lift the veil of secrecy from one of the most bitter pages of our history.

The suddenness that never happened

One of the main reasons that Soviet historiography explained the unsuccessful start of the war was the notorious “suddenness of the attack.” We will dwell on this issue in detail, because it was precisely the surprise of the attack in Soviet historiography that was considered almost the only reason for those facts of panic that were reluctantly admitted.

You can trace the evolution of this version from 1941 to the present day. For the first time, none other than Comrade Stalin himself spoke about the surprise of the attack as one of the reasons for the defeat of the Soviet Army in border battles. Speaking about the reasons for the failures of the Red Army, he stated:

“Of no small importance here was the fact that fascist Germany unexpectedly and treacherously violated the non-aggression pact concluded in 1939 between it and the USSR... She thereby achieved some advantageous position for her troops...” However, after some time, the reason for the success of the German attack began to be seen in the activities of... Comrade Stalin himself. Stalin's successor at the head of the Soviet state, N.S. Khrushchev, from the rostrum of the 20th Party Congress denounced the departed leader, considering the thesis of surprise as an attempt at self-justification for Stalin:

The real reasons for the success of the Germans, according to Khrushchev, were "carelessness and ignorance of obvious facts" from Stalin himself.

But after Khrushchev left power, the thesis of “suddenness” again returned to the place of the main factor in the success of the German army in the summer of 1941, while “miscalculations of the Soviet leadership and Stalin personally” took one of the first places as the reasons for the Germans achieving surprise.

In numerous journalistic articles and historical studies of the late Soviet period, theses appeared that Stalin “did not believe in the possibility of an attack on the USSR” or “was afraid of Hitler,” etc. In general, the thesis about the “suddenness” of the German attack turned out to be very tenacious.

However, the publication at the very end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century of many documents and uncensored memoirs allows us not only to be critical of him, but also to completely reject him.

Let's look at the situation based on what we know now. In the fall of 1939, the Soviet leadership decided on the country's neutrality in the outbreak of World War II. This decision had obvious advantages (they were described in detail by Soviet historiography, so we will not consider them here), but there were also very serious disadvantages, the main one of which was an extremely unfavorable situation for the Soviet Army in the event of a conflict with Germany.

Having started the war, the Germans carried out full mobilization and staffed the army according to wartime levels. After the end of the Polish Campaign and the Winter War, the Soviet armed forces returned to peacetime conditions. To bring them into combat readiness, it was necessary to mobilize, concentrate and deploy according to pre-developed plans. All this takes time, and the Germans get a significant head start - their troops are already mobilized, and they need much less time to concentrate and deploy than Soviet troops, thanks to the presence of a more developed transport infrastructure and shorter distances.

Initially, the Soviet leadership believed that it had sufficient time, but the rapid defeat of the French army and the British expeditionary force by the Germans dramatically changed the situation. The starting point, apparently, was the Berlin negotiations between the USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov and the Nazi leadership. It was after them that Hitler signed his Directive No. 18, known as Plan Barbarossa. The Soviet leadership also began to assume the possibility of worst-case scenarios.

In January 1941, at the General Staff of the Red Army, with active interest from the country's political leadership, a series of staff games on maps was held with the participation of the army's senior command staff. It is noteworthy that all the games were dedicated to the possible development of events on the Soviet-German line of contact. As a result of this event, significant personnel changes were made in the highest echelon of the army.

In the spring of 1941, foreign intelligence of the USSR began to inform the Soviet military and political leadership about Germany's intention to solve all problems in relations with the USSR by military means. Of course, the information was very fragmentary, unreliable, and sometimes chaotic, but quite definite conclusions were drawn from it.

Apparently, at the end of March, war began to be considered quite likely; in April-May, under the guise of “Big training camps,” about 800 thousand reservists were called up into the troops - i.e., hidden mobilization began. At the same time, the transfer of troops from the rear to the border districts began - that is, the hidden concentration of Soviet troops.

No later than May 15, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army submitted to Stalin considerations on the possible conduct of a war with Germany. This document, published in the 90s of the 20th century, shows that at least the military leadership of the USSR perceived the war with Germany in the summer of 1941 as a very likely event. Modern historians suggest that the presented document was not approved by Stalin, but no later than the 20th of May, the General Staff of the Red Army issues directives to border districts to develop precise plans for covering the state border by May 25, 1941.

On June 19, the People's Commissariat of Defense gave the order to disperse aviation and camouflage field airfields.

At the same time, an order is given to move district headquarters to specially equipped command posts.

On June 21, the Politburo decides on the appointment of front commanders, and on the same day in the evening the People's Commissariat of Defense issues Directive No. 1 on the dispersal of aviation, the occupation of firing points of border fortified areas, etc.

Documents show that the Soviet leadership expected war at the end of June or beginning of July 1941 and was not at all mistaken in its calculations.

As M. Meltyukhov's research shows, as a result of partial mobilization and transfer of troops from the rear districts, the Soviet command was able to concentrate forces comparable to the invading army on the western border.

As we see, the Germans have only a slight advantage in personnel.

Thus, the currently published documents allow us to assert that the German attack was not unexpected for the Soviet military and political leadership; it was expected and prepared for. We do not undertake to evaluate the quality of this preparation, the adequacy and thoughtfulness of the decisions made, but the very fact of their adoption does not allow us to talk about the “suddenness” of the war for the top leadership of the USSR.

And the beginning of the war does not cause panic or distraction among the Soviet leadership. Directives No. 2 and No. 3, clearly arising from pre-war plans, were promptly sent to the troops; representatives of the Supreme Command - G. K. Zhukov, G. I. Kulik, K. A. Meretskov - went to the troops to coordinate the actions of the troops and assist the front commanders, the first reports from the fronts were encouraging, but... But soon the situation worsened sharply, and one of the reasons for this was the panic that began among the troops.

Panic as it was

As we mentioned above, this phenomenon was practically not considered in Soviet historiography. Only sometimes it was mentioned: “yes, there was panic, but...”, followed by a story about the courage of those who did not succumb to panic. Only isolated mentions in memoirs and documents published today have brought to us a description of the terrible tragedy.

From the memoirs of Marshal of the Soviet Union K.K. Rokossovsky:

“There have been cases when even entire units that came under a sudden flank attack by a small group of enemy tanks and aircraft were panicked... Fear of encirclement and fear of imaginary enemy parachute landings were a real scourge for a long time. And only where there were strong cadres of command and political personnel, people in any situation fought confidently, providing an organized rebuff to the enemy.

As an example, I will give an incident that took place in the area occupied by the building. During the day, a general was brought to the corps command post without a weapon, in a torn jacket, exhausted and exhausted, who said that, following the instructions of the front headquarters to the headquarters of the 5th Army to clarify the situation, he saw to the west of Rivne rushing headlong to the east, one after another cars with our soldiers. In a word, the general sensed the panic and, in order to find out the reason that gave rise to it, decided to detain one of the cars. In the end he succeeded. There were up to 20 people in the car. Instead of answering questions about where they were running and what unit they were in, the general was dragged into the back of the truck and began to be interrogated in unison. Then, without hesitation, he was declared a saboteur in disguise, his documents and weapons were taken away, and he was immediately sentenced to death. Having contrived, the general jumped out as he walked and rolled off the road into the thick rye. I reached our checkpoint through the forest.

Cases of shelling of persons trying to detain alarmists also occurred in other areas. Those fleeing from the front did this, apparently, out of fear that they would not be returned back. They themselves explained their behavior for various reasons: their parts died and they were left alone; having escaped from the encirclement, they were attacked by paratroopers who had landed in the rear; before reaching the unit, they were fired at in the forest by “cuckoos”, and the like.

A very typical case was the suicide of an officer of one of the regiments of the 20th TD. The words of his posthumous note are etched in my memory. “The feeling of fear that haunts me that I might not survive in battle,” it said, “forced me to commit suicide.”

Cases of cowardice and instability took various forms. What they have acquired more than an isolated character, worried the command and political staff, party and Komsomol organizations, forced them to take emergency measures to prevent these phenomena.”.

From the memoirs of Lieutenant General Popel:

“When there were fifteen to twenty kilometers left before Yavorov, in a narrow passage between broken trucks and overturned carts, my Emka collided nose-to-nose with a headquarters vehicle. It's impossible to miss each other. I went out onto the road. Behind the oncoming car, tractors were dragging howitzers.

I was interested in what part it was and where it should go. A major with a carefully curled hussar mustache and a small round captain jumped out of the car. Introduced themselves: regiment commander, chief of staff.

- What task?

The major hesitated:

- We save materiel...

- So how do you save? Did you receive such an order?

- We have no one to receive orders from - the corps headquarters remained in Yavorov, and there were already fascists there. So we decided to save the equipment. It will come in handy at the old border...

For the second time in just an hour and a half I heard about the old border. The idea of ​​it as a line to which one could retreat and then give battle was firmly lodged in the brains of many Red Army soldiers and commanders. This thought reconciled with the retreat from the new state border. - I noted in my notebook - it will be necessary to warn political workers about this at the first opportunity.

As for the howitzer regiment, it became clear to me: the artillerymen abandoned their firing positions without permission. I ordered to stop, contact the nearest headquarters of the rifle unit and turn the guns to the north.

The mustachioed major was in no hurry to carry out the order. I had to threaten:

“If you try to “save materiel” again, you will go to court.”.

From the interrogation protocol of the former commander of the Western Front, Army General D. G. Pavlov:

“...Lithuanian units were deployed that did not want to fight. After the first pressure on the left wing of the Baltic states, the Lithuanian units shot their commanders and fled...".

From the memoirs of Army General A.V. Gorbatov: “During that period of the war, especially in the first month, one could often hear: “We have been bypassed,” “We are surrounded,” “Parachutists have been dropped in our rear,” etc. Not only soldiers, but also commanders who had not been fired upon were overly susceptible to such facts as are common in modern warfare; many were inclined to believe exaggerated and often simply ridiculous rumors.

Not reaching three kilometers to the front line of the defense, I saw a general disorderly retreat along the highway of the three thousandth regiment. Confused commanders of various ranks walked in the midst of the soldiers. Enemy shells occasionally exploded on the field, causing no harm. Getting off the car, I shouted loudly: “Stop, stop, stop!” - and after everyone stopped, I commanded: “Everyone turn around.” Turning the people to face the enemy, I gave the command: “Get down!” After that, I ordered the commanders to come to me. I began to find out the reason for the departure. Some answered that they had received a command transmitted through the chain, others answered: “We see that everyone is leaving, we also began to leave.” A voice was heard from a group of soldiers lying nearby: “Look what kind of fire the Germans opened, but our artillery is silent.” Others echoed this remark.

It became clear to me that the first reason for the withdrawal was the impact of artillery fire on the unexamined soldiers, the second reason was the provocative transmission of an order to withdraw that was not given by the senior commander. The main reason was the weakness of the commanders, who were unable to stop the panic and themselves submitted to the elements of retreat.

Soon we began to catch up with scattered groups going east, towards the Liozno and Rudnya stations. Stopping them, I shamed them, scolded them, ordered them to return, watched them reluctantly return, and again caught up with the next groups. I will not hide that in a number of cases, driving up to the head of a large group, I got out of the car and ordered those who were riding ahead on horseback to dismount. In relation to the oldest, I sometimes overstepped the boundaries of what was permitted. I scolded myself greatly, I even felt remorse, but sometimes kind words are powerless.”.

Alexander Vasilyevich Gorbatov was deputy commander of the 25th Rifle Corps of the Red Army. Recently published documents describe the tragic fate of this connection:

“On July 10–20 of this year, units of the 25th Rifle Corps, occupying defenses in the area of ​​the city of Vitebsk, Surazh-Vitebsky, shamefully fled, opened the way for the enemy to advance to the East, and subsequently, being surrounded, lost most of their personnel and equipment.

By 17.00 on the same day, Major General Chestokhvalov reported that enemy mechanical units had broken through in the Vitebsk area and were moving along the Vitebsk-Surazh highway, “the headquarters is surrounded.” He ordered the corps units to retreat to the east, abandoning the units of the 134th Infantry Division that were in defense on the western bank of the Western Dvina to their own devices.

After corps commander Chestokhvalov ordered a retreat, a panicked flight to the east began. The first to flee were the corps headquarters and the 2nd echelon of the headquarters of the 134th Infantry Division, headed by the chief of staff of the division, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny, who had been absent from the command post since July 9 - “lagged behind” and only arrived in the village of Prudniki by the time of departure on July 12.”(For the full text of the document, see the Appendix.)

The result was the capture by the enemy of most of the fighters of the three divisions that were part of the corps, including General Chestokhvalov himself.

The 25th Rifle Corps was not the only Red Army formation to flee the battlefield:

“On July 6, the 199th Infantry Division was defeated at New Miropol, suffering heavy losses in men and equipment. In connection with this, a special department of the South-Western Front carried out an investigation, which resulted in the following: on July 3, the commander of the South-Western Front ordered the 199th Infantry Division to occupy and firmly hold the southern front of the Novograd-Volyn fortified area by the morning of July 5. The division command carried out this order belatedly. Units of the division took up defensive positions later than the specified period; in addition, food for the soldiers was not organized during the march. People, especially the 617th Infantry Regiment, arrived in the defense area exhausted. After occupying the defense area, the division command did not conduct reconnaissance of the enemy forces and did not take measures to blow up the bridge across the river. An incident occurred in this sector of the defense, which gave the enemy the opportunity to transfer tanks and motorized infantry. Due to the fact that the command did not establish contact between the division headquarters and the regiments, on July 6, the 617th and 584th rifle regiments acted without any leadership from the division command. During the panic that created in the units during the enemy's attack, the command was unable to prevent the flight that had begun. The division headquarters fled. Division commander Alekseev, deputy. The commander for political affairs, Korzhev, and the division chief of staff, German, abandoned their regiments and fled to the rear with the remnants of the headquarters.”

“Units of the 199th Infantry Division were found in Olshany (40 km southeast of Bila Tserkva).”

A modern historian is forced to state: “In 6 days, the connection covered a distance of 300 km, 50 (!!!) km a day. This is a pace that exceeds the standards for a forced march of a rifle division. The unpleasant word “escape” begs to be on the tongue.”.

From the Gomel regional party committee they reported to the Kremlin: “...demoralizing behavior very significant numbers of command personnel: the departure of commanders from the front under the pretext of accompanying evacuated families, group flight from the unit has a corrupting effect on the population and sows panic in the rear.”.

Other examples can be given from other fronts and directions where the same phenomena occurred, but the above quotes are enough to understand that the panic of the first weeks of the war was massive and affected hundreds of thousands of people. The panic was massive and became one of the reasons for the crushing defeat of the Red Army in the border battle - of course, superiority in organization, technology, and level of command gave Hitler’s troops significant advantages, but they could have been at least partially compensated by the courage and perseverance of the Red Army soldiers, but alas - in the summer of 1941 Only a few showed courage and perseverance.

We can note a number of important features of the phenomenon we are considering:

Mechanized (tank) units, sailors and NKVD troops were least susceptible to panic. While working on the topic, the author was unable to find a single mention of panic among the soldiers of the NKVD border troops;

In second place in terms of durability are the Air Force, artillery and cavalry;

The least resistant was the “queen of the fields” - the infantry.

Not only and not so much the recently mobilized reservists, but also the personnel units of the Red Army were subject to panic. And this in itself is of particular interest. From military history we know that personnel units that have undergone good military training in peacetime, staffed with the most optimal peacetime conscript soldiers in terms of their age and psychological characteristics, are, as a rule, the most resistant in battle. And the commanders of the mass armies tried to use this feature.

Thus, during the American Civil War, the command of the northern states, forming a large volunteer army, deliberately left a few personnel units untouched, using them as the most reliable and trained reserves at decisive moments of battles.

Before the First World War, the French military command deliberately did not include reservists in peacetime cadres, believing that this could undermine their "elan vital" - fighting spirit.

And the strategy of the parties at the beginning of the First World War was designed for quick strikes, using the strength and morale of the army personnel. Therefore, the panicky behavior of the personnel units of the Red Army is at least not typical for military history.

It is important to note that panic gripped not only the rank and file, but also the command staff. Moreover, the Soviet leadership believed that it was the command staff that became the source of panic, which was directly stated to the troops in the USSR State Defense Committee decree No. GOKO-169ss dated July 16, 1941, which spoke about bringing 9 top generals of the Western Front to trial by military tribunal, including the front commander, Army General D. G. Pavlov.

The same motive can be traced in the order introducing the institution of military commissars (introduced on the same day), and in order No. 270, which actually undermined the foundations of unity of command and required subordinates to control the activities of commanders:

“To oblige every serviceman, regardless of his official position, to demand from a superior commander, if part of him is surrounded, to fight to the last opportunity in order to get through to his own, and if such a commander or part of the Red Army soldiers, instead of organizing a rebuff to the enemy, prefer to surrender - destroy them by all means, both ground and air, and the families of the Red Army soldiers who surrendered are deprived of state benefits and assistance.”.

The Soviet leadership had some reasons for concern - in total, 86 Soviet generals were captured during the war years, 72 of them in 1941. The same number - 74 generals died on the battlefield, 4 military leaders, not wanting to surrender, shot themselves in a hopeless situation. Another 3 shot themselves in the forehead, unable to withstand the burden of responsibility and the shock of failure.

However, that generals - history has preserved for us a mention of the panicking Marshal of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the war, Marshal Kulik was appointed as the representative of the Headquarters on the Western Front. Arriving at the troops, the commander was by no means a model of cheerfulness:

“Unexpectedly, Marshal of the Soviet Union G.N. Kulik arrives at the checkpoint. He is wearing dusty overalls and a cap. Looks tired. I report on the position of the troops and the measures taken to repel enemy attacks.

Kulik listens, then spreads his hands and says vaguely: “Yes.” Apparently, when flying out of Moscow, he did not expect to encounter such a serious situation here.

At noon the marshal left our command post. As he said goodbye, he told me to try to do something.

I looked after Kulik’s car as it departed, still not understanding why he had come.

Having met and talked with Kulik in peacetime, I considered him a strong-willed, energetic person. But when immediate danger loomed over the Motherland and special self-control and fortitude were required from everyone, it seemed to me that Kulik lost his nerve.”.

Finding himself surrounded, the marshal changed into peasant clothes and crossed the front line alone. He was not trusted with more responsible posts, but even in less responsible ones he behaved in such a way that he became the subject of a special order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief himself:

“Kulik, upon his arrival in the city of Kerch on November 12, 1941, not only did not take decisive measures on the spot against the panicky mood of the command of the Crimean troops, but with his defeatist behavior in Kerch only increased panic and demoralization among the command of the Crimean troops.

This behavior of Kulik is not accidental, since his similar defeatist behavior also took place during the unauthorized surrender of the city of Rostov in November 1941, without the sanction of Headquarters and contrary to the orders of Headquarters.

Kulik’s crime is that he did not use the available opportunities to protect Kerch and Rostov, did not organize their defense and behaved like a coward, frightened by the Germans, like a defeatist who had lost his perspective and did not believe in our victory over the German invaders.”.

The Marshal of the USSR sowing panic and defeatism is a unique case in military history.

One of the main results of the panic was the catastrophic losses of the Red Army. According to the commission of S.V. Krivosheev, in the third quarter of 1941, the Red Army irretrievably lost 2,067,801 people, which amounted to 75.34% of the total number of troops that entered the battle, and our army suffered most of these losses as prisoners. In total, 2,335,482 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were captured in 1941, which is more than half of the number of prisoners of war during all the years of the war, and most of these people were captured in the first weeks of the war. For every one killed in June-August 1941, there were 4 prisoners. And here it is not so important whether the fighter raised his hands himself or, running away in panic, became easy prey for the soldiers of the victorious Wehrmacht, there was only one end - a camp behind barbed wire...

The second mystery associated with panic, silence about the reasons

As we mentioned above, Soviet historiography of the war tried to avoid the topic of the 1941 panic. The issue was covered somewhat more widely in fiction - just recall such works as “The Living and the Dead”, “War in the Western Direction”, “Green Gate”, where the topic of interest to us was touched upon, and sometimes discussed in great detail. The main reason for the panic voiced in the literature remained the same notorious “suddenness”. This is how the main character of the novel “The Living and the Dead,” brigade commander Serpilin, explains the reasons for the panic.

“Yes, there are a lot of alarmists,” he agreed. - What do you want from people? They are even scared in battle, but without a fight they are twice as scared! Where does it start? He’s walking along the road in his rear - and there’s a tank coming at him! He rushed at another - and another one at him! He lay down on the ground - and on him from the sky! So much for the alarmists! But we need to look at this soberly: nine out of ten are not alarmists for life. Give them a break, put them in order, then put them in normal combat conditions, and they will do their job. And so, of course, your eyes are on a dime, your lips are trembling, there is little joy from this, you just look and think: if only they could all pass through your positions as quickly as possible. No, they go and go. It’s good, of course, that they are coming, they will still fight, but our situation is difficult!”

This explanation was simple and understandable to the common man, but it does not explain the facts we cited above. Both the 25th Rifle Corps and the 199th Rifle Division met the enemy not in the forest or on the road, but in pre-prepared positions (199th Infantry Division - even in a fortified area!) and fled from the first contact with the enemy. The Germans could take individual units by surprise, but not the entire Red Army on all active fronts.

General A.V. Gorbatov, excerpts from whose memoirs we cited above, tried to understand in his own way the reasons for what happened:

“To me, who had just returned to the army, all this seemed like a bad dream. I couldn't believe what my eyes saw. I tried to drive away the obsessive thought: “Did 1937-1938 really undermine the soldiers’ faith in their commanders so much that they still wonder if they are being commanded by “enemies of the people”?” No, this can't be true. Or rather, something else is true: inexperienced and untested commanders timidly and ineptly take on the fulfillment of their high responsibilities.”.

The general himself explained the low quality of commanders as the consequences of the repressions of 1937–1938.

This version at first glance looks more logical. She explains the panic by the inexperience of the commanders (which, in turn, has its own reasons), who simply were unable to cope with the troops entrusted to them. But why did the commanders themselves panic? Career military personnel, those for whom defending the Fatherland is the meaning of life, who have chosen for themselves a difficult but honorable profession - to defend the Motherland? In addition, we have already noted above that different types of Red Army troops were susceptible to panic to varying degrees. The level of training of commanders was approximately the same, but tank and mechanized units, even with illiterate and incompetent leadership, showed steadfastness and courage in battle even in hopeless situations, and infantry divisions abandoned positions and retreated in disorder.

No, and this reason cannot satisfy us.

And yet, why haven’t Soviet historians, over almost half a century of studying the Great Patriotic War, offered us an adequate version? After all, despite all the shortcomings and problems of Soviet historical science, it still illuminated many aspects of the war. But the topic of the mass panic of 1941 was never approached. Why? But without an answer to this question, we cannot understand another one - how was the Soviet leadership able to cope with the phenomenon of mass panic? Why were divisions hastily formed from mobilized reservists already in the fall of 1941 able to stop the Germans, thwarting plans to capture Moscow and Leningrad? Did Soviet commanders really so quickly gain combat experience and the ability to work with personnel, while the Germans lost the art of surprise attacks? No, we know that such changes have not occurred. But to understand how the Soviet leadership managed to cope with the panic, we must know its real causes, and for this we need to delve into the social country of the Soviets. Why social? Because it is necessary to remember the ancient axiom of military science - it is not weapons that fight, it is people who fight. And if war is only a continuation of politics by other means, then the army is only a reflection of the society that it is called upon to protect. Therefore, the key to the riddle lies in the history of Soviet society in the 20-30s of the 20th century.

We will destroy the old world...

It is no coincidence that we used a line from the Bolshevik party anthem in the title of this subsection. The fact is that the word “peace” in the old Russian language, which was spoken in the Russian Empire, meant not only peace as the state of the absence of war, and not only peace as the Universe, but also peace in the meaning of “society”. In our time, only in church language has the concept of “secular” survived - that is, non-church. Therefore, now a line from the party anthem sounds simply apocalyptic, but at the time of its writing, or rather, translation into Russian, it had a different and very specific meaning - it was about the destruction of the old society and the creation of a new society. Let's look at how the Bolsheviks implemented their plans.

As a result of the Civil War, the country suffered large losses in population: entire regions were separated - Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, part of the Russian lands themselves were captured by neighbors (Western Belarus, Bessarabia, etc.), millions of people ended up in foreign lands as a result of emigration, millions died of hunger, hundreds of thousands became victims of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary terror. In general, experts estimate the country’s human losses as a result of the revolution and the Civil War at 10–15 million people, i.e., about 10% of the population of the Russian Empire in 1913.

However, as unexpected as it may sound, there have been no significant changes in Russian society. The social structure changed, the Apparatus replaced the former titled and service elite, and the top leadership found itself in the hands of revolutionaries. The old elite found itself deprived of political rights and property, but at that moment the question of its physical destruction was not yet raised. Moreover, with the introduction of the NEP, a significant part of the former trading class was able to regain their property and resume business activities. A significant part of the old specialists retained their posts (there were simply no others), and not only retained them, but forced the new government to take them into account. The peasantry, having got rid of the landowners and becoming virtually a monopoly owner of the land, retained their usual way of life...

The power of the Bolshevik leadership rested on a compromise - society recognized the new government, and it, in turn, tried to avoid drastic social changes.

This “humility” of the authorities was caused by two reasons - on the one hand, the authorities simply did not feel strong enough to transform society, on the other, there was a desperate debate in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party on the issue of the further development of the country, revolution and society. We will not consider in detail the course of this struggle; it is quite well covered by our modern historians; we will only point out that as a result of a brutal and uncompromising battle, I.V. Stalin and his supporters gained the upper hand. The paradigm that this group advocated was the transformation of the Soviet state into a springboard for a new socialist society, and then the gradual expansion of this beachhead to the size of the entire globe. The basic principles of this society were reflected in the Constitution of the USSR of 1936, which represented a kind of application for the code of a new, socialist era, a powerful ideological and legislative argument in the arsenal of the builders of world communion.

It is noteworthy that for the first time, Stalin publicly announced a number of the main provisions of the new Constitution not at a party congress or conference, but in an interview with the head of one of the largest American newspaper associations, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Roy William Howard on May 1, 1936. Thus, from the very beginning, the main theses of the new constitution were voiced not only for the Soviet (Stalin’s interview was reprinted four days later by all leading Soviet newspapers), but also for the Western audience.

The purpose of the new Constitution was no secret for Soviet society either - secret documents of the NKVD, noting the sentiments of citizens, recorded the following review of the new basic law - “con The Constitution was written not for us, but for the international proletariat.”.

The creation of such a document had a historical precedent in the past, during the era of the establishment of the ideas of liberalism in Europe. Then such a document, which became a kind of quintessence of the doctrine of the Great French Revolution, became the famous Napoleonic Code. There is a lot in common between the historical destinies of these documents - both of them were created as a summation of the revolutionary processes, both bore the imprint of the personality of the creators - dictators who came to power during the revolutionary processes, and the international significance of both documents was no less than the internal one, both documents left a deep mark on history - the Napoleonic Code, in a modified form, still serves as the basis for the civil legislation of most European states, and the concept of a social state, which is now so widespread in Western Europe, originates from the Stalinist Constitution. It is no coincidence that it was during the development and adoption of the Constitution of the USSR that one of the most notable works in world historiography dedicated to the French emperor was created and published in the Soviet Union - “Napoleon” by Academician E. V. Tarle. And apparently, it is not by chance that the “Father of Nations” himself shows interest in this work, highly appreciating this work.

But before moving on to building a new society, the Bolsheviks needed to destroy the old society that they inherited from the Russian Empire. To destroy, of course, not in the physical sense (although terror was one of the important tools of social engineering), but to destroy as a structure, destroy stereotypes of behavior, a system of values, social relations, and then build a “new world” in the cleared place.

A number of targeted blows were dealt to the old society.

Strike one - the peasantry

The largest part of society that preserved the traditional way of life and, accordingly, traditional values ​​was the peasantry, which, according to some estimates, constituted up to 80% of the country's population. It was against him that the Bolsheviks dealt the main blow, starting forced collectivization.

In the works of modern historical publicists and some historians, whose goal is to justify the actions of the Stalinist regime, the economic aspect is put forward as the most important aspect of collectivization - increasing the production of marketable grain. Thus, the famous modern historian M.I. Meltyukhov writes: “The implementation of forced industrialization depended on a stable supply of food to the population, which required a state monopoly not only in the grain market, but throughout agriculture. This problem was called upon to be solved by collectivization, which began in 1929, which sharply increased the marketability of agriculture by reducing the standard of living in the countryside.”.

Just like that - due to a decrease in living standards. Below we will see what statements about a “stable food supply” are worth and what is hidden behind the words “declining living standards in the countryside.”

The all-out attack on the peasantry began with the fact that the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held on November 10–17, 1929, decided to switch to the policy of “elimination of the kulaks as a class on the basis of complete collectivization.” Specific mechanisms for implementing this decision were developed by a commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, created on December 5 of the same year, under the chairmanship of the People's Commissar of Agriculture Ya. A. Yakovlev (Epstein).

“First, in areas of complete collectivization, on the basis of resolutions of village assemblies and local congresses of Soviets, expropriate all means of production of dispossessed peasant farms and transfer them to the indivisible fund of collective farms.

Secondly, by decree of village assemblies and village councils, expel and evict those peasants who will actively resist the establishment of new orders.

Thirdly, to include into the collective farms as labor force and without granting suffrage those dispossessed peasants who agree to submit and voluntarily perform the duties of collective farm members.”.

In this resolution, attention is immediately drawn to the prevalence of ideological criteria over economic ones. Not only the kulaks, but also everyone who resisted the establishment of the new order had to be subjected to repression. Meanwhile, for “conscious” kulaks who were ready to promote collectivization, the opportunity remained to fulfill the duties of collective farm members without the right to vote.

Another important aspect is that collectivization in the party document is only a means of combating the kulaks, who in 1926–1927 were more than three times larger than the collective farms in terms of the amount of commercial grain they produced. That is, collectivization at first should have led to a decrease in the amount of marketable grain and agricultural products in the country. (Whether this is true or not, we will see below.)

Rural communists (of which by 1929 there were 340 thousand people in 25 million peasant households) did not enjoy the trust of the party leadership. To implement the collectivization program, significant forces of party cadres from the cities were sent to the countryside. After the XV Party Congress, 11 thousand party workers were sent to the villages for temporary and permanent work. After the November plenum of 1929, another 27 thousand party members were sent to the village (they were called “25-thousanders”), who were to become chairmen of the newly formed collective farms. During 1930, about 180 thousand urban communists and “conscious workers” were sent to the countryside for a period of several months.

It is noteworthy that the adherents of the collective farm system began their activities not even with dispossession, but with the struggle against religion. As a modern communist historian notes, “They saw in the religiosity of the peasants a manifestation of wild superstitions and tried to direct believers to the “true path” by closing churches, mosques or other places of religious worship. To prove the absurdity of religion, posted citizens often mocked people’s faith by removing crosses from churches or committing other sacrileges.”.

Although the economic criteria of the kulak were quite precisely formulated in the resolution of the Central Committee, party emissaries in the countryside were guided not so much by the economic situation of the peasant as by his ideological orientation. For peasants who did not meet the formal definitions of a kulak, but disagreed with the collectivization policy, a special term was even coined - “subkulak” or “kulak collaborator”, to whom the same measures were applied as to kulaks.

Collectivization was carried out at an accelerated pace. So, if by the beginning of 1929 the level of collectivization was 7.6%, then by February 20, 1930 this figure reached 50%.

What did this process look like on the ground? Consider eyewitness accounts:

“We called a meeting. Without any explanation, they began to say that you must now sign up for the collective farm, every single one of you. But the peasant knows nothing and thinks - where am I going to write? So they didn’t sign up. They began to intimidate with weapons, but still no one began to sign, because no one knew where. Then the chairman of the village council, there was also the secretary of the district committee and another party member, began to threaten: “Whoever does not go to the collective farm, we will put him by the river and shoot him with a machine gun,” and then they began to vote for the collective farm; but they didn’t say so - “who is against the collective farm”, but “who is against the Soviet regime.” Of course, no one will go against Soviet power.". This is how the communists acted in the countryside - with deception and threats. We can agree with the Soviet researcher Yu. V. Emelyanov that the communists sent to the village felt “like white colonialists who find themselves in lands inhabited by savages.”

It cannot be said that the peasantry passively tolerated such bullying. Finding themselves on the verge of death, the peasants took up arms in a desperate attempt, if not to ward off disaster, then at least to die with honor. “Thousands of people took part in armed uprisings. Thus, in the Siberian region, from January to March 1930 alone, 65 mass peasant uprisings were registered. In the Middle Volga region during the year there were 718 group and mass protests of peasants, in the Central Black Earth region - 1170.”.

Contrary to the ideological guidelines of the communists, the middle and poor peasant strata almost everywhere took part in the mass protests. The peasantry was united in defending their traditional way of life, which caused extreme concern among party members. “I am extremely concerned by the fact that during these performances we were actually left with a very thin layer of village activists, and the masses of farm laborers and poor peasants, who should have been our support, were not seen; they stood at best on the sidelines, and in many places even in the forefront of all events,”- wrote the responsible party worker of the Ukrainian SSR.

The uprisings were suppressed with extreme cruelty - special detachments of party workers were created to fight them, units of the OGPU and even the Red Army were involved. Participants in the uprisings were arrested and imprisoned.

It cannot be said that peasant resistance was meaningless. Frightened by the scale of the “All-Union Jacquerie,” the Soviet leadership took a “step back” - on March 2, 1930, I. Stalin’s article “Dizziness from Success” appeared in Pravda, which condemned the most odious actions of the local authorities. The pace of collectivization slowed down, more than half of the already created collective farms collapsed miserably - by May 1, 1930, the level of collectivization had dropped to 23.4%. But the concession on the part of the authorities was nothing more than a tactical move; from November 1930, the party launched a new offensive against the peasantry, and by mid-1931 the level of collectivization again amounted to 52.7%, and a year later it reached 62.6%.

How many peasants were subjected to repression during these years? In historical literature and near-historical journalism, different numbers are mentioned. The limiting value can be considered the number of 15 million people repressed during collectivization, indicated by A.I. Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago”. However, the author in his work did not provide any statistical or documentary data to support his calculations.

Professor V.N. Zemskov gives more reasonable figures in his study. According to his data, in 1930–1931, 381,173 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to special settlements, and in 1932–1940 another 2,176,000 people were added to them. Thus, the total number of repressed people was about 4 million people. In reality, this figure was even higher, since it did not take into account those dispossessed in the third category - those sent to a special settlement within the borders of their region or region, as well as the number of those who died on the way to exile. That is, we can talk about approximately 5–6 million peasants who suffered during collectivization. Is it a lot or a little? According to the results of the 1926 census, the rural population of the USSR was 120,713,801 people. Since not everyone who lives in the countryside is a peasant, we can estimate the size of the Soviet peasantry at approximately 100 million people. According to our calculations (of course, very approximate), during collectivization, every twentieth peasant was subjected to repression. It should be taken into account that the main blow was dealt to the most economical, hardworking, educated peasants - it was through their labor that they achieved a level of well-being that allowed them to be registered as “kulaks.”

The level of professional training in the field of agriculture of the newly minted collective farm leaders was, to put it mildly, very low.

“I grew up in the city and had no idea about farming. Devoted to Soviet power with all my soul, I quickly advanced and took a high place in the district committee as a major party worker. Last spring, the district committee received a complaint that the peasants of one village refused to go into the field and sow the land. I was sent to find out this matter and arrange the sowing. I came from the city as a representative of the authorities, called the peasants and asked:

- What's the matter? Why don't you sow the fields?

“There is no sowing,” I hear.

- Show me the barns.

The barn gates were opened. I look - mountains of bags.

- And what's that? - I ask.

- Millet.

- Tomorrow, at first light, take it out of here into the field and sow it! - sounded my command.

The men grinned and looked at each other.

- OK. No sooner said than done! - someone responded cheerfully. - Get to work, guys!

Having signed the papers on the distribution of millet to the peasants, I calmly went to bed. I woke up late, had breakfast and went to the barns to find out if they were open? And the barn is already empty, everything has been taken out under a broom. I'm scheduling another meeting in the evening. The people gather, happy and tipsy, somewhere an accordion is playing, ditties are being sung. “Why are they walking?” - I am perplexed. Finally the men came, laughing.

- Well, did you sow millet? - I ask.

- Everything is fine! - they answer. - Give orders, what to sow tomorrow?

- What do you have in the second barn?

- Flour! Let's sow it tomorrow! - the drunk man laughs.

“Don’t laugh,” I say, “they don’t sow flour!”

- Why don’t they sow? Since we sowed porridge today, it means that tomorrow we will sow flour.

It hit me like a blow to the head:

- How did you sow the porridge? Is millet really porridge?

- Did you think - sowing? Stripped grain is porridge, and you ordered it to be sown in the ground...” The author deliberately did not shorten such a long quotation so that the reader could at least for a moment imagine what was happening in the village then. In addition to the tragic curiosity of sowing porridge (tragic, because for the author of the memoirs it ended in arrest on charges of sabotage), this passage well shows the psychology of a communist in relation to the peasants. Pay attention to the moment when the author of the memoirs first felt something was wrong: this is the appearance of fun in the village. Contrary to the bravura slogans “life has become better, life has become more fun,” for a communist, the joy of the peasants is an alarming signal.

Now let’s try to answer the question: could the policy of collectivization achieve the economic goals that were declared at its inception? Let us recall that as a result of collectivization, kulak farms, which in 1929 supplied more marketable grain than collective farms, were liquidated, the most competent and hardworking peasants were sent to special settlements, new farms were headed by “ideologically savvy” communists who understood little about agricultural production - 25 -thousanders. Could these measures have resulted in an increase in agricultural production? Any sane person will answer this: of course not.

The situation was aggravated by another factor: not wanting to give their livestock to the common farm, peasants began to slaughter them en masse, which led to a general reduction in the country's food supply. Writer Oleg Volkov recalled those times: “Throughout the villages, men, hiding from each other, hastily and stupidly slaughtered their livestock. Without need or calculation, as it is, it doesn’t matter, they say, they will take it away or punish you for it. They ate meat to their heart's content, as never before in peasant life. They didn’t salt for the future, not hoping to live on. Another, succumbing to the craze, slaughtered the family's wet nurse - the only cow, a purebred heifer raised with great difficulty. It was like they were in a frenzy or waiting for the Last Judgment".

In numbers it looked like this: “In January and February 1930 alone, 14 million head of cattle were slaughtered. During 1928–1934, the number of horses in the country decreased from 32 million to 15.5 million, cattle - from 60 million to 33.5 million, pigs - from 22 to 11.5 million, sheep from 97.3 million to 32 .9 million".

Despite loud slogans about the “iron horse that will replace the peasant horse,” collectivization was not ensured by the development of agricultural technology. Thus, in 1932, agriculture was provided with machines by only 19%, and MTS served only 34% of collective farms. And where they were, the area under cultivation was also declining. “Having visited my village, I myself became convinced that the real life of peasants has become more difficult, people are more silent, and it is not immediately possible to get a peasant you know from childhood to talk, and certainly only face to face. In the fall, so much was taken from the village for obligatory deliveries that there was very little left for subsistence. I saw that the farms were “reduced”, everyone was resettled in the village, and the distant fields of the farmers were overgrown with bushes. Despite the appearance of MTS with tractors, they did not have time to sow and cultivate the previous wedge, and even more so did not have time to harvest the crop,” - Vice Admiral B.F. Petrov recalled the mid-30s.

As a result, the economic result of collectivization was a decrease in agricultural production in the country, which, with the growth of the urban population, could not but lead to difficulties in providing food. The new management system turned out to be much less effective than the previous one. And the very implementation of collectivization led to a collapse in food production and, as a consequence, to the famine of the early 30s.

This famine was not recognized by government statistics, and therefore some Stalinist historians still dispute its scale. Demographers estimate, based on a comparison of the 1926 and 1939 census results, that the number of deaths from famine in 1932–1933 ranged from 4.5 to 5.5 million people. The country has never known such terrible population losses in peacetime. This is what lies behind the euphemism of historians - “a decline in the living standards of peasants.”

However, maybe the townspeople are starting to live better? We remember that modern Soviet historians believe that the goal of collectivization was a stable supply of food to cities and an increase in the production of marketable grain. Reality shows that both of these tasks were not solved - collectivization provoked a general decrease in agricultural production, and a card system had to be introduced in cities (this was in peacetime), which was canceled only in 1934. But even after the abolition of cards, “Stalinist abundance” came only in cities classified in the first supply category (and there were very few of them). In other places the food situation was much worse.

Here, for example, is data on the food supply of aviation plant No. 126 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, i.e., one of the most important industrial facilities of the second five-year plan:

“There was no white bread at all. The demand for black bread was 25 tons/day, but only 16–18 were baked, which led to the formation of huge queues. The list of products that factory workers only remembered in July is amazing: pasta has not been on sale since March 1, fresh fish since June 1(and this is in a city located on a deep river! - A.M.) , sugar from June 10, “and it is not known when it will be.” Regarding flour and milk, there is only information that they are not on sale, without indicating how long ago”.

Contrary to the claims of Soviet propagandists that collectivization ended the threat of famine from crop failures, the crop failure of 1936–1937 provoked further food difficulties.

“Since January 1, 1937, food and flour, as well as oats and barley, disappeared from stores in our city, but we put up with this situation, we have to endure difficulties, but in relation to bread, it’s a nightmare. In order to get 2 kilograms of bread, we need to stand in line at the bread store from 9 o’clock in the evening and wait until 7 o’clock in the morning until it opens, and then with great effort we can get 2 kilograms of bread. If you arrive at any bread store at 4 o’clock in the morning, there will be a queue around them,” - A resident of the city of Novozybkov, Western Region, wrote to M.I. Kalinin.

“...Bread is sold in small quantities, so that more than half of the population is left without bread every day. The queues increase daily and stand around the clock waiting for bread, and if any citizen decides to receive bread today, he will receive it 2 days later. And this phenomenon exists in a number of areas of the Azov-Black Sea region,” - The secretary of the city council from the south of Russia echoes him.

In addition to problems with ensuring the supply of bread to the cities, problems arose with the import of grain abroad, which was an important source of financing for industrialization. American historian Gleb Baraev analyzed the volumes of Soviet grain exports based on figures published in the collections “Foreign Trade of the USSR”:

(by year in thousands of tons)

Thus, it can be noted that even after the record harvest for the Soviet collective farm in 1937, the volumes of grain exports were more than two times lower than those in 1930, when grain harvested on the eve of collectivization was exported abroad. Subsequently, despite the expansion of the technical equipment of agriculture, the expansion of arable land at the expense of virgin lands, etc., the USSR was unable to provide itself with food and since the 1960s has acted on the world market as one of the major importers of grain. Such was the economic “efficiency” of the collective farm system.

Meanwhile, neither I. Stalin nor other representatives of the top party leadership considered collectivization a failure. On the contrary, they viewed it as one of the greatest achievements. The answer lies in the fact that the social meaning of the transformations that took place was much more significant and important for the narrow leadership than the economic one. The transformation of the peasantry from the “class of petty bourgeois owners” into collective workers on the land was the main thing. Instead of the keepers of traditional values ​​and the traditional way of life, a new layer of society appeared with the Soviet way of life and Soviet values. Of course, changes in mass consciousness could not happen so quickly, but from a Marxist point of view, the sphere of mass consciousness is only a “superstructure” over the economic base, and since the basis has been changed, then a change in value systems was a matter of time.

Collectivization of the peasantry was a prerequisite for building a new society. It is no coincidence that the resolution of the VII Congress of Soviets of the USSR, which served as the basis for the development of a new Constitution, emphasized: “The peasantry, collectivized by more than 75%, turned into a multimillion-dollar organized mass”. Stalin called this "organized mass" "a completely new peasantry" fundamentally different in its motivation and in its position from the previous one. We will see later whether he was right or not, but for now let us turn to considering other actions of the “builders of the new society.”

Strike two. Special food

If the peasantry was the guardian of the values ​​of traditional society in the countryside, then in the cities this role was played by representatives of the technical intelligentsia. Russian engineers. A Russian engineer is not just a person with a diploma from a higher educational institution, he is a bearer of a special, now completely disappeared Russian technical culture, which included not only the technical part itself, but also the culture of people management, the culture of everyday life and was a harmonious part of the old society .

The attitude of the Bolsheviks towards the Russian engineering corps was twofold - on the one hand, engineers (“specialists” - in the terminology of the 20s) were considered “servants of the bourgeoisie”, “class enemies of the proletariat”, but on the other hand, their services were needed because they could be replaced there were none of them, and without qualified management and engineering personnel, any production would have collapsed. At first, the rational aspect prevailed over the class aspect.

However, at the end of the 20s the situation changed dramatically. A real persecution of “specialists” began throughout the country, which received the name “special food” in historical literature.

From the outside, this looks paradoxical - the state sets the task of accelerating the development of industry, there are few engineering personnel in the country, their role in the country is increasing, and, in an amicable way, the state should, on the contrary, show increased attention to these people. But for the Soviet leaders, the main thing was that in these conditions not only the technical, but also the social role of the technical intelligentsia increased. And since this layer was in no hurry to become socialist, but, on the contrary, stubbornly adhered to its traditions, the authorities saw this as a threat to the social task - building a new society. The authorities in this area were strongly supported by the apparatus, which saw the increasing role of engineers as a threat to its monopoly position in the management and distribution of material goods.

The first blow to the old engineering corps was the so-called Shakhty case - a case concocted by the OGPU about “sabotage by specialists” in the city of Shakhty. It was followed by a much larger affair of the Industrial Party. Historians loyal to the Stalinist regime usually point out that the total number of engineers killed and repressed in these cases was small. But what they usually don't say is that these cases served as the basis for a massive propaganda campaign against the old engineering corps, launched throughout the country with the full might of the communist propaganda apparatus.

The main goal of this campaign was the elimination of the engineering corps as a single corporation, playing not only a technical, but also a social role, firstly, as management personnel, and secondly, as guardians of the cultural layer of traditional society, having their own point of view on the path of development of the country and society.

The method of dealing with the engineering corps was strikingly different from those applied to the peasantry - in any case, there was no one to replace valuable specialists, so they tried to use even convicted engineers in their specialty, organizing the so-called “sharashkas” under the control of the NKVD. The main thing was not the physical extermination of specialists, but their moral humiliation and discredit. As M. Yu. Mukhin notes in his study on the history of the domestic aviation industry, “The press in those years was full of numerous “anti-Spetsov” publications. Articles devoted to exposing the latest “pest” appeared regularly. In prominent places, on the front pages, materials were published with biting headlines “On the intelligence of Gosrybtrest engineer Kolesov” and “Machinist Lebedev wiped the nose of the specialists,” etc.”. In the second half of the 20s, cases of workers beating specialists and even directors became more frequent; they did not even stop at killing “pests.”

The authorities fully supported this campaign, which by the early 1930s had become universal. At each enterprise, working commissions were created “to eliminate sabotage.”

In modern historical journalism, the point of view has become somewhat widespread that individual facts of sabotage actually took place, and therefore the fight against sabotage cannot be considered as a social phenomenon. However, none of these authors dared to confirm the thesis of Soviet propaganda about the massive and universal nature of sabotage; objective analysis shows that in most cases the consequences of defects and low production standards were taken for “sabotage.”

It is also important to note this aspect: in the Soviet ideological guidelines of the 20-30s, sabotage was associated almost exclusively with “specialists” - those who, from the point of view of Soviet ideologists, could do harm for class reasons. However, as historians note, often the campaign to accuse the “specialists” of sabotage took place as part of covering up the workers’ faults. M. Yu. Mukhin cites in his study a characteristic episode of that time:

“So, during an inspection of the fuselage of one of the aircraft under construction, a rejector noticed double holes in the rivets - a defect that threatened the aircraft with disaster in flight. It turned out that the workers who made this defect covered up the extra holes and inserted fake rivets. When they were confronted, they began to write complaints to all authorities, accusing the master and their administration of all mortal sins. Proceedings and commissions began. The situation was aggravated by the fact that one of the marriage makers was an old Bolshevik. Even when the workers were proven guilty, they continued to repeat in different voices: “It’s not my fault in the marriage, but the master’s fault, the master is a bad organizer.”.

The campaign against the specialists was not a manifestation of “local initiative”, but had its source in the position of the country’s top leadership, which is confirmed by the frank statements of one of Stalin’s closest associates, V. M. Molotov. Speaking about the arrest of A.N. Tupolev, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks noted that these people (engineers. - A. M.) “The Soviet state really needs it, but in their hearts they are against it, and through personal connections they carried out dangerous and corrupting work, and even if they didn’t do it, they breathed it. Yes, they couldn’t do otherwise. A significant part of our Russian intelligentsia was closely connected with the wealthy peasantry, who have pro-kulak sentiments, the country is a peasant one... The same Tupolev could become a dangerous enemy. He has great connections with the intelligentsia that is hostile to us... The Tupolevs - they were a very serious issue for us.”.

It is noteworthy that in this statement Molotov links the repression of the technical intelligentsia with the struggle against the peasantry. At the same time, for a member of the Politburo it does not matter at all whether people like Tupolev carried out “dangerous and corrupting work” or did not due to their position in production and their origin - these people were dangerous, and the Soviet government actively fought against them.

The use by the state of a wide range of measures - from propaganda to repressive - led to the destruction of the old engineering corps, the loss of traditions of production management, and the loss of “specialists” of their place in society.

What did this lead to in the context of industrialization? Moreover, from the very beginning, Soviet industry began to be plagued by such vices as a low level of production culture and production discipline, which had the most negative impact on the quality of products.

“Labor discipline is low. Workers drink, and sometimes it’s very healthy when they show up to work, especially after pay, drunk,”- it was reported in a report on one of the aircraft factories. “We went around three-quarters of the workplaces... at any machine you open the table - there is a bun, dirty rags, etc. There is wire lying on the machines, scraps like a pig's... A number of machines are broken due to the fact that they are treated disgracefully...”- echoes the commission from another plant.

And this happened in the “elite” aviation industry - the most prestigious branch of the Soviet military-industrial complex of the 30s, the development of which was given priority attention by the state. It’s even scary to imagine what happened at the less controlled factories.

The defects we mentioned were characteristic of Soviet industry until the very end of its existence, and in many ways they are the reason for the technical and technological backwardness of our country with which we are currently dealing. This is the result of the social policy of the Soviet leadership in the field of regulation of industrial relations.

Another consequence of “special food” was the flourishing of various forms of technical quackery in the pre-war USSR. This phenomenon is still waiting to be described by historical science, so we will talk about it in the most general terms, since its influence on the development of the USSR in the 30s was quite significant.

Its essence was that numerous and varied charlatans tried to offer incompetent but “ideologically savvy” Soviet leaders alternative forms of solving complex technical problems. The level of qualification of the “red directors” did not allow one to immediately understand the absurdity of the proposed projects, and the charlatans responded to the competent conclusions of specialists with accusations of sabotage and “overwriting” on the part of “bourgeois engineers.”

The scale of this phenomenon was colossal. Under the leadership of charlatans, entire organizations were created dedicated to the creation of all kinds of “miracle weapons”, on the maintenance of which huge amounts of money were spent. The effect of their activities was, as a rule, negligible, and sometimes caused significant harm, since much more promising developments carried out by honest specialists were curtailed.

To present a clear picture to the reader, we will give several examples of the most prominent charlatans of that time. In 1921, a Special Technical Bureau (Ostekhbyuro) was created in Petrograd under the leadership of engineer Bekauri. This organization was involved in the development of a wide variety of naval weapons - from mines and torpedoes to remote-controlled torpedo boats. No money was spared on it (in some years the budget of the Ostekhbyuro exceeded the budget of all the Red Army Navy), but the only thing its employees succeeded in was “rubbing points” at the leadership and in intrigues against competitors. It’s amazing, but of all the samples of “miracle weapons” that the bureau’s specialists were developing, only one (!!!) was put into service. As a result, according to modern historians, in the development of mine-torpedo and mine-sweeping anti-submarine weapons, the Soviet Navy lagged significantly behind foreign fleets, remaining at the level of the First World War. The Navy leadership saw the reasons for such a disastrous situation precisely in the activities of the Ostekhburo, but until 1938 they could not do anything. Only in the late 30s did the competent authorities become interested in the activities of this office, as a result of which a significant part of the management of the Ostekhburo was repressed, and the bureau itself was transformed into a regular research institute.

Another outstanding technical adventurer of that time was L. V. Kurchevsky. Being a talented inventor and no less talented adventurer, he, without a higher technical education, in 1916 headed the design bureau of the Moscow military-industrial committee. Under the new government, Kurchevsky headed a laboratory created specifically for him at the Commission for Inventions. True, in 1924 the adventurer was convicted “of embezzlement of government property,” but thanks to high patronage he got away unscathed and returned to his activities. In 1930, he became the chief designer of OKB-1 at the GAU, and since 1934 he headed his own structure - the Office of the Commissioner for Special Works. The work of this structure was personally supervised by Deputy People's Commissar of Defense M. N. Tukhachevsky. Taking advantage of his patronage, Kurchevsky launched extensive activities in the creation and production of so-called dynamo-reactive (recoilless) artillery guns. He planned to install his miracle guns on tanks, planes, ships, and submarines. The problem was that Kurchevsky’s guns were inferior to traditional artillery systems in all respects except light weight, and in terms of their performance they turned out to be unsuitable for use in the army.

This is how attempts to use Kurchevsky guns in aviation ended.

On December 26, 1938, the head of the NIP AV Air Force, Colonel Shevchenko, wrote a letter to the head of the Special Department: “I am reporting some data on the state of the Air Force’s aviation armament... What reasons, in my opinion, led to the fact that we still do not have large-caliber machine guns in the Air Force’s arsenal and are significantly behind in this regard compared to the advanced capitalist armies: The work of enemies of the people before 1936, in terms of large-caliber weapons for aviation, came down to the fact that they were working on unusable Kurchevsky “DRP” type guns. No live projectile was given for this gun, so it was very difficult to judge its qualities. When in 1934 the 4th Department of the Air Force Research Institute raised the question of the unsuitability of this gun, Tukhachevsky, Efimov and others convened workers of the Air Force Research Institute, invited Kurchevsky, Grokhovsky and a number of others, including Zakhader, Zheleznyakov, Bulin, and staged something similar to a trial above us, they gave Kurchevsky the opportunity to present the arguments and curses he wanted, without allowing anyone to speak out... It was necessary to organize large year-long experiments within the squadron for comprehensive testing of these guns, in order to provide the authorities with results at the beginning of 1936 that showed the obvious unsuitability of this guns. And only in 1936 these works were stopped.”

A quote from the document gives a clear idea of ​​both the miracle guns themselves and the methods by which Kurchevsky imposed his inventions.

A lot of money was spent on the creation and production of small batches of these guns, but the result was zero. The end of Kurchevsky was the same as that of many other charlatans - after the arrest of Tukhachevsky, the designer, deprived of high patronage, was arrested by the NKVD and died in the camps.

Another outstanding adventurer was A. N. Asafov, who worked in the same Ostekhburo. Asafov - “a person with great aplomb, but meager special education”, his main trump card was considered to be his many years of work in the design bureau under the leadership of the creator of the first Russian submarines, I. G. Bubnov.

It was he who proposed building a series of large (“cruising”) submarines for the Soviet fleet and presented the finished project. Experts claim that the basis for the “squadron boat IV series” (this designation was given to Asafov’s submarine) was the design of the 950-ton Bubnov submarine, developed back in 1914–1915. Of course, over the past decade and a half, Bubnov’s drawings have become hopelessly outdated, but Asafov neglected this obvious fact, which led to the failure of the project as a whole.

The project caused sharp criticism from the command of the submarine forces of the Baltic Fleet and shipbuilding engineers. However, the adventurer managed to receive patronage not just anywhere, but in the OGPU, and the construction of boats began.

The Navy command had difficulty in getting these ships studied by a competent commission, which found that their combat qualities corresponded to the level... of the beginning of the First World War, and these ships did not represent any real value for the Red Army Navy. Emergency measures to improve the submarines already under construction made it possible to use them only as training ones. The creation of these monsters cost the Soviet state 19 million rubles (in 1926–1927 prices), which corresponded to the price of about six much more modern and efficient Shch-class submarines.

The construction of three submarine cruisers was not Asafov’s only “contribution” to Soviet shipbuilding. Without waiting for the completion of work on the P series boats, he puts forward a new project - this time a small submarine that can be transported by rail in an unassembled form. The tests of these boats (the first version of the “M” type boats) completely failed, the fleet refused to accept ships that were completely uncombatable, and the patronage of the competent authorities gave way to their professional interest in the activities of the inventor.

Thus, in the 20-30s, various kinds of charlatans (we have mentioned only the largest) squandered significant funds from the country’s budget (the exact amount of which has yet to be assessed by historians). The very funds that were obtained from the robbery of the peasantry and the Church, which the Russian people paid for with their sweat, with their lives. Of course, charlatanism was not the goal of the Soviet leadership and was, in the end, almost completely destroyed by the repressive machine of the Soviet state, but this phenomenon itself would have been impossible if not for the purposeful fight against the old engineering corps, “special medicine.”

Strike three. Case "Spring"

In the 1920s, there was another area of ​​the country’s life where representatives of the old society played a very important role. We are talking about the Armed Forces. Although the Armed Forces of the Soviet state were officially called the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), former tsarist officers, or, in the terminology of that time, military experts, actually played a huge role in its formation. The former commander-in-chief of the armed forces of southern Russia, General Denikin, assessed the role of military experts in the creation of the Red Army:

“The Red Army was created solely by the intelligence and experience of the old tsarist generals. The participation in this work of commissars Trotsky and Podvoisky, comrades Aralov, Antonov, Stalin and many others was at first purely fictitious. They played only the role of overseers... All bodies of the central military command were headed by specialist generals - the General Staff was especially widely represented - who worked under the unremitting control of the communists. Almost all fronts and most of the red armies were headed by senior commanders of the old army..."

Indeed, if we look at the history of the Civil War, we can note that the military successes of the Reds began only after the creation of the regular Red Army (instead of the essentially volunteer Red Guard) and forced mobilization. This process has gone very far. Suffice it to say that at the culmination of Denikin’s offensive on Moscow, on the key sector of the front near Kromy, the Red Army included a greater number of former tsarist generals than in the volunteer army of General Mai-Maevsky!

According to modern historians, by the end of the Civil War, about 75 thousand former generals served in the Red Army and as military specialists. Naturally, these people did not inspire confidence in the new leadership of the country, and a significant part of them were dismissed from the Armed Forces during the reduction of the army in the 20s.

However, by the end of the 20s, former generals and officers still made up a significant part of the command staff of the Red Army. A particularly important role was played by career officers who managed to receive a professional military, or even higher military education, even before the First World War and who were, in fact, the only professionals of this kind in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces.

Modern researchers note that the former tsarist officers did not represent a single group, based on political or social criteria. However, two aspects can be identified that are common to most representatives of this group: work motivation and cultural level.

Rarely were any former generals an ardent supporter of the communist idea. And the main motivations for serving in the Red Army for them were a sense of professional honor and patriotism. It is not for nothing that in the Soviet film “Officers” the famous words “There is such a profession - to defend the Motherland” are uttered by a former tsarist officer. Let us note that this motivation was fundamentally at odds with the ideology of the world revolution, which could not but cause concern among the communist authorities. A characteristic dialogue revealing this contradiction occurred during the interrogation of the arrested naval officer Georgy Nikolaevich Chetvertukhin:

“- In the name of what have you, a former officer and nobleman, served the Soviet government since its proclamation, although it deprived you of all your previous privileges?

- This is not a simple question. I am a career military man who dedicated my life to defending the Fatherland... I had a real opportunity to go to the other side of the barricades, but I didn’t. During the years of devastation and chaos, when an external enemy threatened my Motherland, and Lenin addressed everyone with the appeal “The Socialist Fatherland is in danger!”, I responded to this call, realizing that for the Bolsheviks there was also a concept of the Motherland. And this was the bridge that connected me with them. I began to honestly serve the Soviet government.

- Yes, but Karl Marx teaches that proletarians have no fatherland!

- It is possible that Karl Marx, a representative of a people who lost their fatherland almost 2000 years ago and were scattered across many countries, has lost the concept of Homeland for himself and believes that it is where life is good. It is possible, although I doubt that the proletarians also lost this concept, but for me, Chetvertukhin, the concept of the Motherland has been preserved, and by it I mean a sense of responsibility towards it, love for its centuries-old history and the culture of its people, for its identity, shrines , the surrounding nature".

In this dialogue we see the answer to the source of suspicion and distrust that the Soviet government felt towards its former officers - they were devoted to their country, but not to the cause of the world revolution.

Former officers served to defend the Motherland, but were by no means eager to “carry freedom to the world with bayonets.” And therefore they all came under suspicion from the punishing sword of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

“In the Red Army, mainly in higher institutions, a significant number of former career officers serve. This category of military experts is, by its former and social status, the most alien to Soviet power... All of them are waiting for the fall of Soviet power.”, - a modern historian quotes a document from the NKVD of those years.

In 1930, the Soviet leadership moved from suspicions and individual actions to mass repressions against the former. As part of the “Spring” case, more than 3,000 former generals and military personnel of the Red Army were arrested. The figure at first glance seems insignificant, but we remind the reader that in 1928 the strength of the Red Army was 529 thousand people, of which 48 thousand were officers. Thus, no less than every sixteenth person was subjected to repression. Moreover, as noted above, the main blow was dealt to the top leadership of the army, to the most competent and experienced part of the officer corps.

What made the country's leadership resort to such radical measures? In our opinion, the answer lies in two factors: firstly, in the detente of the international situation in the early 30s - in the conditions of the global economic crisis, the “imperialist powers” ​​clearly had no time to attack the USSR, therefore, the need for military specialists weakened. Secondly, at this time, as we mentioned above, massive collectivization was underway throughout the country. Moreover, precisely in 1930 there was a peak of peasant uprisings (including armed ones) against collective farms. Obviously, the Soviet leadership feared that these actions might find support in the army, and hastened to deprive the peasantry of potential military leaders.

Researchers note the relative “softness” of the repressions of 1930 - most of those arrested received short (by Soviet standards) prison sentences, many later returned to continue serving. Such softness can be explained by only one thing - there were no other military specialists of this level at the disposal of the Soviet government, and there was nowhere to get them for the next ten years.

But even such “soft” repressions caused serious damage to the combat capability of the Red Army, expressed primarily in a weakening of the level of staff work and personnel training.

According to modern historian M.E. Morozov, the true reason for the failures of the Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War was “the unsatisfactory quality of training of military personnel in the USSR throughout the entire interwar period. The roots of this situation were hidden in the loss of continuity with the old military school.".

That continuity that in the last pre-war and war years the Soviet leadership will try to restore. Modern historian A. Isaev, noting the successes of military development in the 30s, writes: “The caste of people whose profession is to defend the Motherland has been recreated”. This would have been truly a success if this same caste had not been purposefully destroyed in the early 30s.

Strike four. The domes rolled like heads...

Strictly speaking, the struggle of the Soviet government against the Church did not stop for a single day in the period from 1917 to 1991. However, it was carried out using different methods and with different intensity. Thus, after the bloody excesses of the Civil War, the 20s look relatively calm - during this period, the authorities placed their main emphasis on splitting the Church from within and its self-discrediting. With the active participation of the OGPU bodies, renovationist and living church schisms are created in the church. The main measure against clergy during this period was exile. (Although the authorities also did not forget about the arrests.)

The declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, published in 1927, although it caused an ambiguous reaction from the clergy, its result was the recognition by the state of the canonical synod of the Russian Orthodox Church as a legally operating religious organization (before that, the authorities recognized only the renovationist “synod”).

It is obvious that, moving in 1929 to implement plans for the accelerated transformation of society, the Soviet leadership could not help but begin hostile actions against the Church, which was the core institution of traditional Russian society. The Bolsheviks acted decisively, as always. According to a modern church historian, “these years in terms of the ferocity of the persecution of the Orthodox Church are comparable only to the bloody events of 1922, and in scale they far surpassed them”.

These persecutions began with a directive letter from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On measures to strengthen anti-religious work,” signed by the Secretary of the Party Central Committee L. M. Kaganovich. It is no coincidence that we draw the reader’s attention to the signatory of the letter. The fact is that among some historical publicists there is a myth about the supposedly benevolent attitude of J.V. Stalin towards the Russian Church. These authors attribute all the persecution of the Church to the internationalists, who, until the war itself, did not give the leader of the peoples the opportunity to show their true attitude towards the Church. The facts starkly contradict this myth. Under the letter is the signature of one of Stalin’s most faithful comrades, who never acted against the will of the leader.

In this document, the clergy was declared by L. M. Kaganovich to be a political opponent of the CPSU(b), carrying out the task of mobilizing all “reactionary and illiterate elements” for a “counter-offensive on the activities of the Soviet government and the Communist Party.”

In furtherance of party instructions, on April 8, 1929, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution “On Religious Associations,” according to which religious communities were only allowed to “worship” within the walls of “houses of prayer”; all educational and charitable activities were strictly prohibited. Private religious instruction, permitted by the 1918 decree “On the separation of Church from state and school from Church,” could now exist only as the right of parents to teach religion to their children.

In the same year, the XIV All-Russian Congress of Soviets changed Article 4 of the Constitution, the new version of which spoke of “freedom of religious confession and anti-religious propaganda.”

Mass closures and destruction of churches began throughout the country. So, if in 1928 354 churches were closed in the RSFSR, then in 1929 there were already 1119, i.e. three times more, and 322 churches were not only closed, but also destroyed. If on January 1, 1930, there were 224 parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Moscow, then two years later there were only 87 of them left.

The closure of churches took place at the “requests of the workers” inspired from below under ridiculous urban planning pretexts - “blocking the passage of pedestrians,” or even simply for no reason. The new rulers even hated the church buildings themselves, which testified to God in their appearance. And explosions thundered across the country - ancient churches were mercilessly destroyed. Bells were melted down into non-ferrous metal, icons, liturgical books (including handwritten ones that were several centuries old) were burned and buried. Church utensils were melted down.

In essence, this was the destruction of the historical heritage and wealth of the country. Moreover, wealth is not only spiritual, but also material. Modern Stalinist historians, who love to talk about the necessary sacrifices in the name of industrialization, for some reason do not consider how much this self-criticism cost the state. But the simplest calculation shows that the destruction of a capital stone building, which was the majority of the destroyed temples, requires considerable costs. The adaptation of church buildings for “national economic purposes” also required considerable expenses.

They did not disdain simply pogroms of churches. For these purposes, they used units of the “Komsomol light cavalry” or members of the Union of Militant Atheists. These thugs broke into the church during services, beat the clergy and parishioners, robbed and damaged church property, and often set church buildings on fire. Moreover, any attempt to resist the hooligans was considered by the Soviet authorities as “counter-revolutionary activity” and was punished accordingly.

Mass arrests of clergy and active believers began. In conditions of famine and the introduction of a food rationing system in the country, the “disenfranchised” (and all clergy were automatically included in them) did not receive food cards, and alms became their only source of livelihood. The authorities extended their persecution even to the children of clergy - according to the instructions of the People's Commissariat for Education, they could only receive a primary 4-grade education.

The persecution of Christians in the USSR reached such a scale that it caused an international reaction. Their condemnation was made by the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Pius XI.

Along with the repressive bodies, the Union of Militant Atheists, headed by Emelyan Yaroslavsky (Gubelman), a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, became an important weapon of the authorities in the fight against the Church. By 1932, this organization had 5.7 million members (mainly Komsomol youth), controlled anti-religious museums and exhibitions, and massively published brochures, books and magazines with anti-religious content. The state spent a lot of money on the maintenance of this “voluntary” society, which, from the point of view of the country’s national interests, could have been spent much more wisely.

In May 1932, this Union adopted the so-called godless five-year plan - in fact, a five-year plan for the destruction of religion in the Soviet state.

In the first year, close all theological schools (the Renovationists still had them, but the Patriarchal Orthodox Church no longer had them for a long time).

In the second, carry out a massive closure of churches, ban the publication of religious works and the manufacture of religious objects.

In the third - to expel all clergymen abroad (which was in fact a very threatening euphemism - the fact is that in the criminal legislation of the USSR then in force, expulsion abroad was a form capital punishment along with execution).

In the fourth - close the remaining temples of all religions.

Fifthly, to consolidate the achieved successes, by May 1, 1937, “the name of God must be forgotten throughout the entire territory of the USSR.”

It is noteworthy that this plan relies on repressive and administrative measures that can be expected from the state, and not from a public organization, which the SBB formally was. Without a doubt, such plans could not be created or made public without the sanction of the highest party leadership and I. Stalin personally. And like any “Stalinist task,” these plans were accepted for immediate execution.

However, it should be noted that in the 30s the “successes” of the godless army were very small (compared, of course, with the funds allocated). Thus, the 1937 population census showed that 57% of the population aged 16 years and older consider themselves believers and, which especially worried the country’s leadership, among the “peers of October”, young people aged 20 to 29 years, there were 44 of them, 4 %. This caused a sharp reaction from the authorities, which resulted in frenzied terror against the clergy in 1937.

Strike five. A shot into the past...

The Bolsheviks understood well that the basis of the old society was not only the people themselves, but historical memory. And in addition to social engineering, they declared a real war on the past - Russian history. Many modern researchers underestimate the importance of this topic, viewing it either as “excesses on the ground” or as something of little significance. Just think, some historical monument was demolished, these people reason, but the tractor plant that was built - yes, this is important, this is the main thing.

Meanwhile, the Soviet leadership paid great attention to the fight against Russian history. The decision on the fate of other historical monuments was made at the level of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. And the all-powerful Soviet dictator I. Stalin found the time and opportunity to familiarize himself with history courses in educational institutions and personally edited them, obviously considering this work to be as important as making decisions on the production of tanks or the construction of factories.

The first blow was struck on April 12, 1918, when, signed by Lenin, Lunacharsky and Stalin, Decree on the removal of monuments erected in honor of the tsars and their servants, and the development of projects for monuments to the Russian socialist revolution (“On Monuments of the Republic”). According to this decree “monuments erected in honor of kings and their servants and of no historical or artistic interest are subject to removal from squares and streets and partly transferred to warehouses, partly used for utilitarian purposes.” Evaluate, reader, the spring of 1918, the Soviet Republic is surrounded by fronts, it would seem that the Council of People's Commissars should have many more important things to do, but no, they found time.

The massacre of monuments began throughout the country. Monuments to sovereigns, generals, and statesmen were destroyed. By the end of 1918, monuments to Alexander II, Alexander III, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, General M.D. Skobelev, etc. were demolished in Moscow. The leaders of the Soviet state and the “leader of the world proletariat” himself took a personal part in the demolition of the monuments.

The scale of destruction was colossal. Thus, in 1940, a special commission of the USSR Academy of Architecture stated that in the capital of the Soviet Union for the years 1917–1940 “50 percent of architectural and historical monuments of national architecture were destroyed”. At the same time, the commission considered only those objects that were officially assigned the status of a monument. How many were not given this status?

Geographical names were living evidence of the history of Russia - cities, streets, settlements, etc. In the 20s and 30s, according to the instructions of the Soviet leadership, a total renaming began. The ancient names that carried historical meaning disappeared, but the names of Bolshevik leaders, figures of the world revolutionary movement, etc. appeared on the map of the country. Thus, the historical geography of Russia was erased. The Bolsheviks easily renamed entire cities, naming them in honor of “their loved ones.” This is how Kalinin, Molotov, Stalino, Ordzhonikidze, Kirov, etc. appeared on the map of the USSR.

Unfortunately, most of these renamings that disfigure ours and our cities have survived to our time. The campaign to return historical names to streets and cities, which began in the 90s of the 20th century, has begun to decline... It is interesting that one of the most common and, admittedly, reasonable motives against the return of old names these days is the motive of financial savings - each renaming costs to the state at a pretty penny. One can imagine the costs required by the massive change in the names of settlements and their parts in the 20s and 30s. But in the fight against Russian history, the Bolsheviks were not afraid of expenses.

In 1919, history teaching was stopped in educational institutions of the USSR. "Eight or nine years ago,- the prominent fighter against historical science M.N. Pokrovsky wrote with satisfaction in 1927, - history was almost completely expelled from our school - a phenomenon characteristic of more than one of our revolutions. Children and teenagers were exclusively interested in modernity...”

This subject was deleted from the curriculum and replaced by the study of the history of the party and the world liberation movement. At the end of this process, the Soviet leadership carried out reprisals against domestic historical science. On November 5, 1929, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a decision was made to criminally prosecute employees of the USSR Academy of Sciences on completely ridiculous charges. Let us draw the reader's attention to the fact that the initiative to reprisal historians did not come from the state security agencies, as one might expect, but from the country's top leadership. Carrying out the decision of the leadership, the OGPU authorities concocted an entire “Academic Case” (Case of Historians), within the framework of which the arrests of outstanding domestic scientists were carried out. In total, 4 academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences were arrested in this case (S. F. Platonov, E. V. Tarle, N. P. Likhachev and M. K. Lyubavsky), 9 corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, including S. F. Rozhdestvensky, D.N. Egorov, Yu.V. Gauthier, A.I. Yakovlev, and more than 100 scientists of lower rank. The vast majority of them were historians. The names of S. F. Platonov, E. V. Tarle, M. K. Lyubavsky speak for themselves.

On February 10, 1931, the troika of OGPU PP in the Leningrad Military District sentenced the first batch of those arrested in the “Academic Case”: 29 people were sentenced to death, 53 to imprisonment in a correctional labor camp for a period of 3 to 10 years, two to deportation for 2 years. The troika's decision was revised by the OGPU collegium on May 10, 1931. Capital punishment was retained in relation to the former A. S. Putilov, A. A. Kovanko, V. F. Puzitsky, Y. P. Kupriyanov, P. I. Zisserman, Yu. A. Verzhbitsky. 10 people were sentenced to death, replaced by imprisonment in a camp for 10 years, 8 - to imprisonment in a camp for 10 years, 3 - to imprisonment in a camp for 10 years, replaced by deportation for the same period, 3 - to imprisonment in a camp for 3 of the year. During the investigation, 43 people were released.

The sentencing of those arrested who were classified as members of the “leadership group” was delayed. It was passed by the OGPU board on August 8, 1931 - 18 people were sentenced to deportation to remote places of the USSR for a period of 5 years. Among them were academicians Platonov, Tarle, Likhachev, Lyubavsky. Five people were sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in a camp, 4 - to 3 years of imprisonment in a camp, one - to deportation to Western Siberia for 3 years. The flower of Russian historical science was destroyed...

The teaching of history as an academic subject was restored in the USSR only in 1934. Such a break was necessary for the Bolshevik leadership to destroy the traditions of teaching the history of the Fatherland, because in 1934 a completely different history began to be studied in educational institutions.

The decision to restore history teaching was made at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on March 20, 1934. By the same decree, the top leadership of the USSR approved a group of authors to create a school textbook on the history of the USSR. Perhaps for the first time in Russian history, a school textbook was approved by the country's top leadership. In the same 1934, three members of the Politburo - Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov - personally read and reviewed the outlines of new school textbooks proposed by the teams of authors. For our topic, it is very important to look at what shortcomings our leaders found in the draft textbook presented to them.

According to senior reviewers, the writing team “I didn’t complete the task and didn’t even understand my task. She took notes Russian history, but not history of the USSR, that is, the history of Rus', but without the history of the peoples that became part of the USSR.” Neither was underlined in the outline. “the annexationist-colonialist role of Russian tsarism”, nor “the counter-revolutionary role of Russian tsarism in foreign policy”.

This difference between Russian history and the history of the USSR is the main thing for understanding what kind of history began to be taught in Soviet schools and other educational institutions. The main thing was that the historical path of Russia as a national state of the Russian people, created by the Russian people, was denied. Now, according to the leaders, the Russian people were supposed to take the place in their country of only one of several “brotherly peoples” (many of which were only artificially created at that time), and in the future - with the expansion of the USSR to the world's borders - the role of the Russians was supposed to be decrease even more.

Contrary to the opinion of some publicists and researchers that, starting from 1934, the Soviet government began to be guided in domestic and foreign policy by the national interests of the country, in reality, Soviet leaders at that time became preoccupied with the problem... of the destruction of Russian historical monuments. So, at this time, as many as three members of the Politburo - Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich - paid attention to the fate of such a wonderful monument to the history of Russia as the Moscow Sukharev Tower.

The initial decision of the authorities to demolish the monument, motivated by “concern for the development of street traffic,” caused protests from scientists and urban planners. In response to these protests, on September 18, 1933, Stalin sent a handwritten letter to Kaganovich, in which he wrote: "We(Stalin and Voroshilov, - A. M) studied the issue of the Sukharev Tower and came to the conclusion that it must be demolished. Architects who object to demolition are blind and hopeless.".

Speaking to communist architects, Lazar Kaganovich spoke about the demolition of the monument: “We continue to have a fierce class struggle in architecture... An example can be taken at least from the facts of recent days - the protest of a group of old architects against the demolition of the Sukharev Tower. I don’t go into the essence of these arguments, but it’s typical that not a single church that has failed will be dealt with without a protest being written about it. It is clear that these protests are not caused by concern for the protection of ancient monuments, but by political motives...". Truly, whoever is in pain talks about it. In reality, it was the activity of the Soviet leadership in demolishing monuments of Russian history that was caused by political motives.

In that terrible year, not only the Sukharev Tower perished. On the Borodino field, the “monument to the royal satraps” was blown up - the main monument in honor of the battle in which the fate of Russia was decided. In Leningrad, a temple-monument in honor of the sailors who died in the Russian-Japanese War was destroyed, in Kostroma - a monument to Ivan Susanin... etc.

We are ours, we will build a new world...

Unfortunately, the topic of creating a new Soviet society has not yet attracted the attention of historians. This time period turned out to be too saturated with events in domestic and foreign political life, and historians simply did not get around to studying changes in society. Only recently have studies begun to appear on the lives of people of that time and social relations. Therefore, when analyzing that era, we are forced to resort to such unreliable sources as memoirs, notes, legal documents, analysis of works of art, etc.

It is important to note that from the very beginning, the Soviet leadership paid much less attention to the creation of a new society than to the destruction of the old one. And this is not a matter of lack of energy or lack of understanding of the importance of the task. It’s just that, according to Marxist teaching, social relations were only a derivative of socio-economic relations, with the change of which, according to the party leaders, society would inevitably change. On the other hand, although the social transformation of society was task No. 1 for the Kremlin leadership, numerous problems of domestic and foreign policy of the 30s also required immediate solutions, so there were often simply no resources and forces left to build a new society.

Nevertheless, it is possible to identify the main features of the new Soviet man and Soviet society. The worldview of the new Soviet man was based on the “three pillars” - atheism, internationalism and collectivism.

Internationalism. The fundamentally new character of the society was enshrined in its name. The word “Soviet” did not have any connection with the historically established ethnonym, and it was not an ethnonym in the strict sense of the word, since it denoted not nationality, but ideological orientation. National self-identification - this cornerstone of a traditional society - faded into the background here, but, contrary to popular beliefs, it was not completely destroyed; at the initial stage it was preserved and gradually emasculated. In their dreams, apologists for world communi- cation pictured a society of people completely devoid of national characteristics.

Collectivism. One of the important features of the new society was universally enforced collectivism. The cult of the collective was caused not so much by the needs of management (it is easier to manage a collective than by individuals), but rather it was a tool of social engineering. Building a communist society according to the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” required not only an increase in production volumes, but also the education in people of self-limitation of needs. For obvious reasons, the Bolsheviks could not take advantage of the vast experience of Christian asceticism, and they had to “reinvent the wheel.” If in Christianity self-restraint is a form of serving God, then for Soviet people service to the collective became an idol. According to the new one, the individual did not exist on its own, but had value only as a member of a particular group. The ideology built a hierarchy of collectives from the smallest - a unit or brigade - to a huge one, including workers from all over the globe. A conscious member of the new society had to completely subordinate his interests to the interests of the collective and realize his abilities only within the framework of this collective. People began to be taught to join a team from an early age, and the very name of the leaders of children's and youth groups (pioneer leader, Komsomol leader) killed any thought about the independence of its members.

The most important, from our point of view, feature of the consciousness of the new Soviet man was atheism. The cultivation of conscious atheism and fight against God - and a Soviet atheist is not just an unbeliever, but a conscious fighter against religion - could not but lead to changes in the moral sphere of social life. Let us remind the reader that the system of moral foundations of a religious society consists of three levels:

1. The moral law formulated by God and expressed by the conscience of man. Moreover, although conscience is a property of every person, by his nature, it, like any other part of a person, needs development, without which conscience atrophies or takes on ugly forms. The religious paradigm includes the development of conscience; moreover, it places this task at one of the first places in the spiritual development of a person.

2. Moral. Morality is formed by society and, accordingly, reflects the state of this society. In a religious, highly moral society, morality approaches moral laws, but still differs from them. In some ways moral standards are stricter than moral standards, in others they are softer. It is important that moral standards are created by people, and “what one person created can always be broken by another.”

3. Legal. Here the state acts as the source of norms and fixes them in the form of legislative acts. Legal norms may or may not be a reflection of moral norms.

In the Soviet type of worldview, the moral level was abolished and was actually identified with the moral. In order to be convinced of this, it is enough to open the Great Soviet Encyclopedia to the article “morality” and see that this article consists of one line with the following content: “morality” - see the article “Morality”.

But the very process of forming moral norms in Soviet society could not be left to chance; it was placed under the strict control of the ideological bodies of the party. The latter in their work were guided not by the realities of life, but by ideas about an ideal communist society and class consciousness.

As a result, the moral norms of Soviet society turned out to be difficult to implement not only for the bearers of traditional, Christian morality, but also for the Soviet people themselves.

Subsequently, this led to the formation by society of its own moral system and the emergence of the so-called double morality in late Soviet society.

The main problem was that the grassroots morality, which was created by society in addition to that imposed by the regime, was also not based on moral Christian norms, about which a significant part of the Soviet people, due to the fight against religion carried out by the authorities, had the most approximate idea. As a result, one of the sources of the lower, second morality of Soviet society was the laws and ideas of the criminal world. This is scary in itself, but even more terrible is that it did not cause rejection or rejection from society. However, at the end of the 30s these processes were just beginning.

War and Peace

As a result, the process of social transformation of Russian society by the end of the 30s of the 20th century was very far from completion. In fact, in the USSR there were two societies - the new Soviet and the old “unfinished” traditional. At the same time, the new society was just beginning to form, and the old one was in the process of destruction, so a significant part of the citizens of the USSR were in an intermediate state between the two societies. Let's explain what this means. As is known, members of society are bound together by written and unwritten norms of public morality and behavioral stereotypes, but thanks to the efforts of the Soviet government, the traditional foundations of society were largely blurred, and the moral principles of the new society imposed by the authorities had not yet had time to strengthen. Moreover, those few who remained faithful to the traditions and principles of the old society, already because of this were in opposition to the authorities and did not consider it theirs.

It is interesting that this division of society in the Country of Soviets was noticed by employees of the White Guard organization EMRO based on communication with captured Red Army soldiers during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939–1940. Analyzing the attitude of military personnel to the Soviet government, they came to the conclusion that the party apparatus (among the prisoners there were representatives exclusively of the lower apparatus) was “unconditionally loyal to the Soviet government and Stalin,” that “The ranks of special forces, pilots, tank crews and partly artillerymen, among whom there is a high percentage of communists, are also devoted to Soviet power... They fought very well and often, when surrounded, preferred to commit suicide rather than surrender.”

The Red Army “masses,” according to the representatives of the EMRO who worked with them, were “not deeply corrupted by Soviet propaganda and upbringing” and, in general, remained the same as their fathers and grandfathers were.

Let us explain the difference described above. We know that until September 1, 1939, when a new law on universal conscription was adopted, the Red Army was staffed exclusively by “ideologically savvy” conscripts, and selection for technical troops - tank and especially aviation - was extremely strict.

On the other hand, a significant part of the inhabitants of the Country of Soviets were completely in limbo with violated behavioral stereotypes - having no ready-made solutions, not knowing at all how to behave in a given situation.

Thus, before the war, the population of the USSR consisted of three main groups:

New Soviet Society;

Old traditional Russian society;

Those who are restless are those who have already stopped living as their fathers and grandfathers lived, but did not begin to live in a new way.

How did this division affect the reflection of society - the army? To begin with, we note that the distribution of representatives of different social groups among different branches of the military was uneven. The development of aviation and mechanized troops was considered a priority in the 1930s. Personnel for them underwent special selection, not only traditional medical or educational, but also ideological. As an example of the criteria for such selection, we can cite an excerpt from the order of the Main Directorate of the Red Army on the selection of military personnel for tank crews:

"1. Select for the crew military personnel who are infinitely devoted to our Motherland, the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government, fearless, decisive, possessing an iron character, people capable of exploits and self-sacrifice, who will never, under any circumstances, surrender the tank to the enemy.

2. Select crews primarily from workers in industry, transport and agriculture, as well as students from industrial universities and technical schools. Select people who speak Russian well (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians).

3. The crew must consist of communists, Komsomol members and non-party Bolsheviks, brought up in the spirit of hatred of the enemy and an unyielding will to win.”.

Following the tank troops and aviation, conscripts were selected for the NKVD troops, cavalry, and artillery, but everyone who did not pass such selection was sent to recruit the infantry. “It turns out that the youth of our country come to this difficult service in the infantry after dropping out of manning aviation, artillery, tank units, cavalry, engineering units, local security units, etc. The result is a weak, undersized fighter.”, - stated the Soviet general in December 1940.

Thus, the best representatives of the new Soviet society were grouped in elite, selected troops, representatives of the old, traditional society, considered unreliable, were often sent to auxiliary units, and the bulk of the infantry were representatives of the “swamp”.

Social division was also reflected in relations between military personnel. If in the elite troops good commanders managed to put together strong and even friendly teams, then in the infantry everything was different - the Red Army soldiers avoided each other, and there was often some alienation from the command and especially from the political composition. This gave rise to an atmosphere of mutual distrust, which did not at all contribute to strengthening the steadfastness of the troops.

Since Soviet and traditional societies were based on different value systems, their perception of the war was different. Below we will consider in detail the features of this perception in each of the groups, but for now we will point out that this difference, generated by the difference in worldview, itself was dangerous, because it did not allow the emergence of a unified understanding of such an event as war. People dressed in the same uniform, standing in the same formation, perceived the war completely differently, which did not allow them to achieve unanimity, a single fighting spirit - a necessary condition for successful combat.

State Soviet society was described by Konstantin Simonov on the first pages of his famous novel “The Living and the Dead”:

“It would seem that everyone had been waiting for war for a long time, and yet at the last minute it fell out of the blue; Obviously, it is generally impossible to fully prepare for such a huge misfortune.”.

Among the younger generation, the prevailing idea was that the coming war was primarily a class and revolutionary war. The enemy was viewed precisely from this point of view - as an ideological enemy, hence such names of enemies as White Finns and White Poles. Therefore, the soldiers of the imperialist powers were seen, first of all, as “class brothers” who needed liberation, and, moreover, were waiting for it. It was in this spirit that Nikolai Shpanov’s novel “The First Strike,” which was popular in those years, was written. In accordance with this paradigm, the war was supposed to be short-lived and take place “with little bloodshed and on foreign territory.”

In January 1941, the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Zaporozhets, wrote a voluminous memo addressed to the People's Commissar of Defense, in which, characterizing the mood of the Red Army soldiers, he noted:

“There is a deeply rooted harmful prejudice that in the event of war, the population of the countries at war with us will necessarily and almost completely rebel against their bourgeoisie, and all that remains for the Red Army to do is to march through the enemy’s country in a triumphal march and establish Soviet power.”.

At the beginning of the war, these sentiments flourished:

“One of the tank crews asked the German proletariat whether it had rebelled against fascism. There was heated debate about the timing of the war. They laughed at the one who said “six months” and called him a man of little faith.”

“Of course, they argued about the fate of Germany, about how soon the German working class would overthrow Hitler; about how quickly, in the event of a German attack on the Soviet Union, German soldiers - “workers and peasants in soldier's greatcoats” - would turn their weapons against their class enemies. Yes, exactly how quickly, and not in general - whether they are turned or not. They argued about this even in June and July 1941 (emphasis mine. - A. M.)».

As is known, the “German workers in soldier’s greatcoats” did not show any signs of “class solidarity.”

There was another important aspect. As we already mentioned above, one of the bases of the Soviet era was atheism, and in those years, as a rule, militant atheism. An important difference between atheism and almost any religion is the purely biological understanding of such a phenomenon as death. Meanwhile, war and death are inseparable concepts, and one of the necessary components of a soldier’s moral and psychological preparation for war and battle was preparation for death. If we turn to the history of the Russian pre-revolutionary army, we will see that the theme of death in battle, death for the sovereign, was one of the main ones in the then, in modern terms, political and educational work. The easiest way to see this is if you look at the lyrics of Russian military songs. The basic principle of attitude towards death is clearly expressed in a soldier’s song of the mid-19th century - “The only one worthy of life is the one who is always ready to die.” Death in battle was considered probable, moreover, almost inevitable. A soldier of the tsarist army went into battle to die:

"We bravely face the enemy for the Russian Tsar to death let's go forward, not sparing our lives"(song of the Pavlovsk cadet school).

“For the Tsar and for Russia we are ready die» (soldier's song).

“March forward! Death waiting for us! Pour the spell..."(song of the Alexandria Hussars Regiment).

"Under him will die a careless dragoon who laid down his head in battle"(song of the 12th Starodubovsky Dragoon Regiment).

"Kol will kill on a battlefield, so they will be buried with glory, but without glory, and forcibly, everyone will someday will die» (song of the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment).

Such songs (we have given only a small fraction) accustomed soldiers to the idea of ​​the possibility of death in battle, taught them not to be afraid of death, and prepared them for it. The basis of this preparation was the Orthodox teaching about death and the afterlife. A warrior of the Russian army fought for faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, and death in battle was considered not only as a military feat, but also as a religious feat.

We see something completely different in the educational work of the pre-war Soviet Army. Bravery and contempt for danger were considered as civic virtues, integral qualities of the Soviet man, but... we will not see the theme of death, including death in battle, in Soviet pre-war songs.

Such military songs as: “If there is war tomorrow”, “The regiments walked across the steppe with loud glory”, “Stalin’s battle” (“We take victory after victory”), “Air march”, “March of tankers” (“Armor is strong”) , “Over Zbruch”, “Katyusha”, “Take us, Suomi-beauty”, “Into the battle for Stalin” - are full of optimism, thoughts about the impending victory and never once consider the possibility of the hero’s death in battle.

Moreover, even the old songs of the Civil War period, in which the theme of death in battle was one of the main ones, were slightly changed in the 30s, clearing the theme of death to the side. For example, in the song:

Chapaev the hero walked around the Urals,
He rushed like a falcon to fight with the regiments.
Forward, comrades, don’t you dare retreat!
The Chapaevites were bravely accustomed to dying.

The word “to die” was replaced by “to win”, and in this version the song was preserved in most sources.

If death was present in the song, it was the death of the enemy - “samurai flew to the ground” or “We bring victory to the Motherland and death to its enemies.”

This charge of optimism, of course, impressed Soviet youth, but did not prepare them for the main thing - a serious war, where they can and will kill. The reason for this approach is clear - the ideology of atheism perceives death as the final point, non-existence, behind which only the memory of a person can be preserved, but not the person himself.

At the same time, every Red Army soldier, receiving military weapons in his hands and learning military affairs “in a real way,” one way or another came to thoughts about his own possible death. And here official, ideological preparation could not help him in any way, leaving a person alone with his fears... We find an example of how the fear of death takes possession of a person’s soul and dooms him to panic and death in the book of front-line writer Boris Vasiliev “A the dawns here are quiet...":

“And Galya didn’t even remember about this lead. Another thing stood before my eyes: Sonya’s gray, pointed face, her half-closed, dead eyes and her tunic hardened with blood. And... two holes on the chest. Narrow as a blade. She didn’t think about Sonya or death - she physically, to the point of nausea, felt the knife penetrating the tissue, heard the crunch of torn flesh, felt the heavy smell of blood. She always lived in the imaginary world more actively than in the real one, and now she would like to forget it, cross it out - but she could not. And this gave birth to a dull, cast-iron horror, and she walked under the yoke of this horror, no longer understanding anything.

Fedot Evgrafych, of course, did not know about this. He didn’t know that his fighter, with whom he was now weighing life and death with equal weights, had already been killed. Killed before reaching the Germans, without ever firing at the enemy..."

For the remnants of Russian traditional society, the beginning of Germany's war against the communist USSR became a kind of temptation, a temptation. In their propaganda, the Nazis constantly emphasized that they were not fighting against Russia, but against the “yoke of the Jews and communists,” and many people asked the question: is it necessary to defend Soviet power? The same power that diligently and methodically destroyed the old society.

Such doubts arose among many, and not only among older people - the young tanker Arsenty Rodkin recalled: “To be honest, I didn’t want to fight, and if it were possible not to fight, I wouldn’t fight, because it was not in my interests to defend this Soviet power.”.

It is now well known that for the German side, the motive of “saving Russia from the Jews and communists” was only a propaganda move aimed at weakening the ability of the Soviet state to defend itself, and the Russian anti-Bolshevik liberation movement was not part of the Germans’ plans. But then…

Then this was clear only to a few, among whom was the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Bishop Sergius (Stargorodsky). Already on June 22, 1941, he addressed an appeal to the flock, calling on the Orthodox to defend the Fatherland. The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church well understood the doubts experienced by hundreds of thousands of Orthodox people throughout the country. Unlike the internationalists, he had no illusions about the behavior of “German workers in soldiers’ greatcoats,” he knew about the true, pagan background of German Nazism and knew how it would turn out for the Russians.

But the Metropolitan’s message was not broadcast on the radio, and the majority of Orthodox soldiers in the ranks of the Red Army in June 1941 remained unaware of its contents and were forced to fight temptation alone.

For the representatives of the “swamp”, the test of war turned out to be the most difficult. At the moment when a person was required to exert all his spiritual and physical forces, they, who did not have a solid value system, turned out to be the most vulnerable to panic moods and became their main source.

To summarize, the beginning of the war came as a shock to all ideological groups of the population of the USSR (and the personnel of the Red Army), representatives of two polar value systems - communists and traditionalists - found themselves at a loss (and for various reasons), and the “swamp”, which did not have a strong ideological anchor, became a generator of panic that engulfed the army like wildfire.

Where there were few representatives of the “swamp” - in the tank forces, aviation and other elite branches of the military - mass panic did not arise (although isolated cases are noted by sources). This is what allowed the Soviet mechanized formations to inflict a series of desperate counterattacks on the Germans. In an environment of general collapse, incompetent leadership, and without infantry support, Soviet tankers could not achieve even partial success, but their attacks were able to disrupt the plans of the German command, albeit not by much, but they slowed down the pace of the German offensive, gaining a small but significant amount of time for the country. And no less important than their military significance, with their desperate bravery they saved the honor of their generation. And in the Russian mass consciousness, the generation that met the war on the border remained in memory as a generation of dead but not conquered fighters, and not crowds of prisoners of war, although the latter were four times larger.

Having examined the causes of the panic, we reveal the secret of the silence of Soviet history about the causes of this phenomenon. As we see, the cause of this catastrophic phenomenon was not “suddenness” or the mistakes of individuals (even Stalin himself), but the entire course towards the transformation of society, pursued by the Soviet leadership since the late 20s and which constituted the main meaning of its activities. To admit that it was the main direction of the social policy of the Communist Party that became (unintentionally, of course) the reason for the instability of the Red Army and the catastrophic defeats of 1941 - Soviet historians could not do this.

Overcoming

The results of the border battle shocked the all-powerful Soviet dictator. Realizing the scale of the defeat, Stalin left Moscow and locked himself in his dacha in Kuntsevo for two days. (Contrary to popular myth, this did not happen at the start of the war - June 22, but precisely after the end of the border battle - June 29.) The leader had something to think about. The main blow for him was not so much the military failures, but precisely this panic and the moral instability of the Red Army he had raised, and the entire system of Soviet society. It was obvious that the emerging Soviet society could not stand the test of resilience in an emergency situation.

And in this situation, the communist leader found a very non-trivial solution, unexpected for everyone - from Hitler’s leadership to the citizens of the Soviet Union. Stalin decides to do what only yesterday seemed impossible - to conclude peace between the new Soviet and the unfinished Russian society. He understands that only by uniting all forces against an external enemy can this invasion be repelled.

But this decision also meant at least a temporary abandonment of activities to build a new Soviet society and the destruction of traditional society. The leader understood that in order to achieve agreement it would be necessary to make serious concessions to Russian society. And these concessions could seriously complicate, if not make impossible, the final victory of communism in the USSR. However, Stalin quite logically reasoned that if he did not take the step he had planned, then with a high degree of probability the Land of Soviets would fall under the blow of an external enemy.

A solution has been found. The leader returned to the Kremlin, and on July 3, 1941, the whole country, clinging to the black dishes of radio horns, heard Stalin’s most unexpected speech. Since this speech is programmatic for an entire period of Russian history and very important for our topic, we will consider its text in detail.

Let's start with the appeal. After the traditional “comrades” and “citizens”, it sounded unexpected - brothers and sisters. This familiar Orthodox address was addressed to people with whom the Soviet authorities had hitherto spoken almost exclusively in the language of interrogations.

Further, Stalin called the war itself against the Germans Domestic. For the modern reader, the phrase “patriotic war” brings to mind the continuation - 1812. But Stalin’s contemporaries remembered that the Second Patriotic War was called the First World War in Tsarist Russia.

It is noteworthy that in this speech Stalin used the word “Motherland” 7 times and mentioned the words “Bolshevik” and “party” only once each.

Both the modern pro-communist historian Yu. V. Emelyanov and the church historian Fr. Vladislav Tsypin noted the presence in Stalin’s speech of textual borrowings from the appeal to the believers of Metropolitan Sergius written on June 22.

Thus, Stalin’s speech on July 3 was not just the leader’s first address to the people after the start of the military confrontation with Hitler’s Germany, but the proclamation of a new program - to achieve a compromise and alliance between Soviet and Russian society.

Stalin's speech on July 3, 1941 was an important milestone in Russian history. For the first time, the communist government was forced not only to recognize the right of Russian society to exist, but also to turn to it for assistance, to conclude a kind of “pact of civil consent” in the name of victory over the external enemy.

An important milestone is the leader's public speeches dedicated to such a date as the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution. Speaking to the troops on Red Square on November 7, 1941, Stalin, on the one hand, recalled the victory in the Civil War, which was supposed to inspire the Soviet part of society, and on the other hand, he called on the soldiers to be inspired “by the courage of the great ancestors - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov”. These names could hardly inspire an “ideologically savvy” Komsomol member, but they were dear to the heart of every Russian person.

Concessions to traditionalists continued - at the end of 1942, the institution of military commissars was abolished in the army, at the same time a historical form was introduced, similar to the form of the Russian Imperial Army during the First World War, in 1943 the Soviet state recognized the right of the Orthodox Church to legal existence, a patriarch was elected, the activities of the union of militant atheists were suspended, in 1944 a reform of family law and the education system took place, and during these transformations the emphasis was placed on continuity with historical Russia (at least in external forms).

Stalin's new platform made possible cooperation between polar ideological groups - communists and traditionalists, which confused the cards for the political leadership of Germany, which in its propaganda relied precisely on the existence of two societies in our country. The main line of German propaganda - “we are fighting not with the Russians, but with the Bolsheviks” - was opposed to a course towards national unity and reconciliation.

However, the new political platform of the Soviet leadership, although it became the basis of public consent and created the basis for overcoming the split in society, was not the only measure taken to combat panic. In addition to the carrot, the Bolsheviks were not slow to use the stick.

On July 16, 1941, the institution of military commissars with very broad powers was introduced in the army, which actually abolished the principle of unity of command. The reason for this step was the lack of confidence on the part of the political leadership in the command staff of the Red Army. The usual stereotype was at work - since things were bad, there was “betrayal” on the part of “enemies of the people.” And the enemies were immediately found; on the same day, by decree of the State Defense Committee, the command of the Western Front, led by Army General Pavlov, was put on trial for “cowardice, disgrace to the rank of commander, inaction of the authorities, collapse of command and control, surrender of weapons to the enemy without a fight and unauthorized abandonment of combat positions.” 9 the generals were shot.

A month later, on August 16, 1941, Order No. 270 was issued, calling for a decisive fight against manifestations of panic, abandonment of positions, surrender and desertion. The document prescribed strict punishments not only for those who surrendered and deserters, but also for members of their families. Let us note that by issuing such orders at the highest level, the Soviet leadership indicated the scale of the phenomenon, once again confirming that the panic was not isolated.

In addition to carrots and sticks, conclusions were also drawn regarding the troop training system. Moreover, they were made both at the level of senior military leadership and at the level of command staff. The officers who hastily prepared new units in the rear, recruited from reservists and mobilized, knew that their enemy was not only the German, their enemy was also “General Fear” advancing in front of the German army. Fans of military history are well aware of Alexander Bek’s book “Volokolamsk Highway”. It clearly and in detail shows how an officer of Panfilov’s division prepares his battalion for battle, and he considers his first enemy not so much the enemy as fear, which can put the soldiers to flight. The very awareness of panic as a threat forced Soviet commanders to look differently at priorities in troop training.

And in the “snow-white fields near Moscow”, Soviet troops did the impossible - they inflicted the first defeat of the German ground army in World War II. "General Fear" was defeated.

To summarize: the panic of the summer of 1941, which played such a disastrous role at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, was a consequence of complex processes of social transformation of society carried out by the Soviet leadership in an attempt to realize a communist utopia. However, at a critical moment, J.V. Stalin was able to make the only right decision, radically change the policy of the Soviet state and create the opportunity to unite all forces to repel external aggression.

As the further course of events showed, the course of not only the military, but also the social history of our country has radically changed. Serious concessions made by the Soviet leadership to Russian traditional society made it possible to preserve the values ​​of this society in the conditions of a socialist state and thereby actually thwarted plans to create a society of a fundamentally new type - socialist.

The panic of 1941 became a clear confirmation of the gospel truth - If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand (Mark 3.24). Then a solution was found, isn’t this a lesson for our society, torn apart by social, ideological and other contradictions and conflicts?

Application

The Naked Truth of War

GVP to the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR

On July 10–20 of this year, units of the 25th Rifle Corps, occupying defenses in the area of ​​the city of Vitebsk, Surazh-Vitebsky, shamefully fled, opened the way for the enemy to advance to the east, and subsequently, being surrounded, lost most of their personnel and equipment.

The investigation carried out in connection with this established the following:

At the end of June 1941, the 25th infantry regiment, consisting of the 127th, 134th and 162nd infantry regiments, was transferred from the city of Stalino - Donbass to the area of ​​​​the city of Kyiv, where it arrived by July 1st.

From Kyiv, by order of the commander of the 19th Army, the corps was transferred to the Smolensk region to occupy the defense along the Western Dvina River in the area of ​​​​the city of Vitebsk and the city of Surazh-Vitebsky, stretching about 70 kilometers.

Loading and dispatch of parts by rail from Kyiv took place on July 2–4. There was no guidance for the loading and movement of units; as a result, the arrival of the echelons was not coordinated with the upcoming execution of combat missions, and therefore the arriving units were introduced into battle without an organized concentration.

On July 11, in the area where the corps was located there were: 442nd Capt., 263rd Division. baht communications, 515th, 738th joint venture and 410th battalion of the 134th infantry regiment, 501st infantry regiment of the 162nd infantry regiment, 1st infantry battalion and a howitzer artillery regiment division of the 127th infantry regiment.

Somewhat to the right of the corps headquarters in the area of ​​the village of Prudniki, the headquarters of the 134th Infantry Division was located, which included two battalions of the 629th Infantry Division, two battalions of the 738th Infantry Division, a communications battalion, and anti-aircraft artillery. division, one howitzer artillery division. shelf.

By order of Shtakor, two battalions of the 501st rifle regiment of the 162nd infantry division took up defense on the western bank of the Western Dvina River, north of the city of Vitebsk. Units of the 134th Infantry Division, consisting of 2 battalions of the 629th Infantry Division and one battalion of the 738th Infantry Division, took up defense along the western bank of the Western Dvina in the area of ​​the village of Prudniki, between the cities of Vitebsk and Surazh-Vitebsky. The remaining units were located on the eastern bank of the Western Dvina River.

On the afternoon of July 11, in the defense sector occupied by two battalions of the 501st rifle regiment, enemy motorized mechanized units of unknown numbers (there was no reconnaissance) broke through the Western Dvina onto the Vitebsk-Smolensk and Vitebsk-Surazh highways.

The indicated two battalions of the 501st rifle regiment, without proper leadership, fled in panic. Seized by the panic of the “encirclement,” the corps headquarters began to change its location on the night of July 12.

By 16.00 on July 12, the corps commander, Major General Chestokhvalov, with a group of staff commanders and a communications battalion, abandoning some of the vehicles, arrived at the 134th Infantry Division checkpoint in the village of Prudniki.

Their arrival immediately brought panic to units of the division, as those who arrived, including Chestokhvalov himself, spoke in panic about the losses allegedly inflicted by the Germans on units of the 162nd Infantry Division, their bombing from the air, etc.

By 17.00 on the same day, Major General Chestokhvalov reported that enemy mechanical units had broken through in the Vitebsk area and were moving along the Vitebsk-Surazh highway, “the headquarters is surrounded.” He ordered the corps units to retreat to the east, abandoning the units of the 134th Infantry Division that were in defense on the western bank of the Western Dvina to their own devices. Only the commander of the 134th infantry regiment, brigade commander Bazarov, and the division commissar Kuznetsov, contrary to the instructions of the corps commander, remained in place in the area of ​​​​the village of Prudniki and led the units of the 629th and 728th infantry regiments that were on the defensive, helping them cross back across the Western Dvina River, and then leave the encirclement.

After corps commander Chestokhvalov ordered a retreat, a panicked flight to the east began. The first to flee were the corps headquarters and the 2nd echelon of the headquarters of the 134th Infantry Division, headed by the chief of staff of the division, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny, who had been absent from the command post since July 9 - “fell behind” and only arrived in the village of Prudniki by the time of the withdrawal on July 12.

Cars without leadership rushed east in panic to the town of Yanovichi. The stampede of the headquarters commanders had a disastrous effect on the units and local Soviet bodies, which abandoned everything and fled to the east, not yet seeing any enemy or even hearing fire.

On July 13, the corps headquarters stopped at the town of Yanovichi, but on July 14 it moved to the forest near the village of Ponizovye, abandoning all control of the corps units and losing contact with army headquarters.

Following the example of the corps headquarters, military units scattered, without offering any resistance to the enemy, abandoning material and equipment.

On July 14, fearing to move further without cover and protection, corps commander Chestokhvalov singled out several commanders and ordered the gathering of at least a small group of troops scattered in a circle along country roads in order to organize a further retreat to the east under their cover.

By the end of the day on July 14, the following were concentrated in the forest: the 515th infantry regiment, the 410th infantry regiment, a battalion of the 738th infantry regiment of the 134th infantry regiment, two divisions of the 567th infantry regiment of the 127th infantry regiment, one battalion of the 395th infantry regiment of the 162nd SD and small units of other units, about 4,000 people in total, armed with rifles, machine guns, grenades, artillery, mortars with reserves of ammunition.

At the corps headquarters were: 1) corps commander, Major General Chestokhvalov; 2) military commissar, brigade commissar Kofanov; 3) head of the political department, regimental commissar Lavrentyev; 4) chief of staff Colonel Vinogradov; 5) assistant chief of staff Colonel Stulov; 6) head of the special department, senior lieutenant of state security Bogatko and others, about 30 people.

From the headquarters of the 134th Infantry Division - the head of the political department, battalion commissar Khrustalev, the chief of artillery, Lieutenant Colonel Glushkov, and others. On the evening of July 14, the chief of staff of the 134th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny, came running into the forest here, dressed in civilian clothes and without a personal weapon.

Corps commander Chestokhvalov made a decision: without waiting for the rest of the corps to approach, continue to retreat to the east, advancing only through forests and only at night, without coming into contact with the enemy, categorically prohibiting shooting at the Germans.

The cowardice of the corps command reached the extreme. By order of the corps commander, Colonel Vinogradov tried to shoot the driver of one of the convoy's vehicles, who accidentally blew his whistle from a short circuit. Immediately he personally beat the signal horns in all vehicles so that an accidental horn would not be repeated and would not reveal to the enemy the location of the headquarters column. This is how we moved on July 14, 15 and 16. Having walked 60–70 kilometers, we concentrated in the forest near the village of Bukine.

On July 16, in this forest, corps commander Chestokhvalov held a meeting of command staff and ordered to abandon all property, leaving only what was carried with them. The following items were thrown: personal belongings of the commanders, two walkie-talkies, lubricants, a lot of gas masks, machine-gun discs and boxes, documents, part of the convoy, horses and other property.

Here Chestokhvalov announced a further retreat route to the east towards the village of Ovsyankino. The movement from Bukine was planned in two columns at 20.00 on July 16, and a column of 10-12 passenger cars from the corps headquarters, along with an armored security car, was supposed to move at the tail of the right column. A cavalry detachment of 25 people was sent at 18.00 for reconnaissance along the intended route.

However, the corps commander did not wait for the reconnaissance results, changed his previous decision and at 19.00 ordered the columns to move along the intended route, and he and the column of staff vehicles left the units behind and drove off in the direction of the village of Ovsyankino.

Upon entering the village of Rypshevo at 23.00, the headquarters column was met with shouts of “Stop!” and the indiscriminate shooting of a small detachment of German reconnaissance; according to eyewitnesses, there were about 10 scouts.

The chief of staff of the corps, Colonel Vinogradov, who led the convoy in the first car, drove through without stopping the car and jumped out of the village. The corps commander, Major General Chestokhvalov, who was following him in the second car, stopped the car, threw down his personal weapon, raised his hands and went to the Germans.

The head of the engineering service of the corps headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Yegorov, who was in the car with him, jumped out of the car and rushed in the other direction, through the gardens into the forest. The rest of the commanders and political workers of the corps headquarters did the same; both the shooter of the armored car and the drivers following in their cars abandoned their cars, documents and everything they had, and ran into the bushes without firing a single shot.

Colonel Vinogradov, having driven 1–1.5 km beyond the village, was afraid to go further, abandoned the car and with the driver went into the forest, and from there he made his way single-handedly towards the Red Army units from the so-called encirclement.

Commissars Kofanov and Lavrentiev, colonels Vinogradov and Stulov and other staff commanders who fled from the vehicles, knowing that corps units were moving along this road and could be ambushed by the Germans, did not warn the unit commanders about this.

On July 17, when the units approached the indicated place, the Germans, having pulled up their forces, met them with heavy fire. The commanders of the formations, on their own initiative, entered into a battle that lasted 2–3 hours, losing 130 people killed and wounded, and, under the cover of artillery from the 410th and 567th paws, withdrew their units back into the forest.

On July 18, a group of 12–13 corps headquarters commanders, who fled near the village of Rypshevo from German intelligence, under the leadership of the assistant chief of corps staff, Lieutenant Colonel Stulov, approached the corps units located in the forest. These units were headed by the assistant chief of staff of the 134th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny, and the head of the political department of the division, Khrustalev.

Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny turned to Stulov and the commanders of the corps headquarters who were with him with a proposal to join the units and lead the leadership in removing them from encirclement.

Colonel Stulov and the commanders of the corps headquarters who were with him rejected this proposal and stated that it would be easier for them to get to the side of the Soviet troops with a smaller group, and after a couple of days they left alone.

Being surrounded and under the influence of cowardice, some commanders and political workers, in order to hide their belonging to the command staff of the Red Army, tore off their insignia and buttonholes, exchanged their military uniforms for civilian suits, and some of them even destroyed personal and party documents.

The head of the political department of the corps, regimental commissar Lavrentiev, destroyed his party card, exchanged his command uniform for a torn suit of a “prisoner”, grew his beard, hung his knapsack over his shoulders and, like a coward and a slacker, followed the units for several days, doing nothing, demoralizing the personnel with his appearance view.

When they offered him military uniform, he refused and went east alone in his “prisoner” costume.

Brigade commissar Kofanov, Colonel Stulov, and the head of the special department of the corps, senior state security lieutenant Bogatko, also made their way in single file. The latter, together with his typist, dressed in costumes of collective farmers, posing as “refugees”, made their way to the city of Vyazma.

Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny, who led units of the 134th Infantry Division after the escape of the corps headquarters workers, despite the presence of a sufficient number of firepower and people, continuing the criminal “tactics” of the command of the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division, led units only at night and only through forests.

Fearing that the sound of the carts would not reveal the location of the division’s units, and faced with the difficulties of night movements, Svetlichny on July 19 of this year ordered carts, horses, and other property to be abandoned in the forest as “unnecessary.”

On the same day, he divided the remaining units into three detachments: the 1st detachment - from the 515th rifle regiment with a battery of regimental artillery and artillery of the 410th paws under the command of Captain Tsulai; 2nd detachment - from the 378th joint venture with regimental artillery and a division of the 567th battalion, detachment commander Captain Solovtsev.

The 3rd detachment included the rest of the division with two batteries of the 410th battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny.

By order of Svetlichny, on the night of July 20, the detachments set out along the route he had planned to the east: the 1st and 2nd detachments in the left column under the overall command of the division artillery chief, Lieutenant Colonel Glushkov, and the 3rd detachment under the leadership of Svetlichny on the right. No reconnaissance or communication between the detachments was organized during the movement.

Having covered 10–12 kilometers, the right column, noticing a rocket fired by the enemy ahead, turned back to its original position on Svetlichny’s orders. Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny himself left the units. Panic and flight began.

All day on July 20, units of the 3rd detachment were without leadership and without communication with the 1st and 2nd detachments. Only in the evening Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny appeared from the forest and single soldiers and commanders from the 1st and 2nd detachments began to approach without weapons.

Upon investigation, it turned out that while moving on the night of July 20, the leaders of the 1st and 2nd detachments, hearing the noise of engines in the distance, considered them to be enemy tanks. In fright, the chief of artillery of the 134th division, Lieutenant Colonel Glushkov, ordered the detachments’ equipment to be abandoned, and the people to escape as best they could.

On July 21, a group of fighters was allocated, one gun was handed to Glushkov and he was ordered to pick up the material he had left behind. However, this time he chickened out, abandoned the people and horses, and disappeared into the forest and never approached the units again.

As a result of the criminal cowardice of Lieutenant Colonels Svetlichny and Glushkov, on the night of July 20 of this year, units of the 134th Infantry Division, which were surrounded, lost: about 2,000 personnel (who fled from the 1st and 2nd detachments), some of them ended up in captivity to the enemy; two battalions of artillery, two batteries of regimental artillery, many artillery shells, more than 10 machine guns, about 100 horses and weapons were left to the Germans.

On July 27 of this year, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlichny with a small group of 60–70 people broke through to the side of the Red Army units, leaving surrounded by 1000 personnel, wounded and the remains of the property of the 134th Infantry Division, which was led by the head of the 5th department of headquarters of the 134th Infantry Division, captain Barinov, and was with them in the forest until the arrival of Lieutenant General Boldin, under whose leadership they left the encirclement on August 11.

For the crimes committed, I consider it necessary to bring to court a military tribunal:

1. Former commander of the 25th Infantry Brigade, Major General Chestokhvalov, as a traitor to the Motherland in absentia;

2. Chief of Staff of the Corps, Colonel Vinogradov;

3. Assistant Chief of Staff of the Corps, Colonel Stulov;

4. Military commissar of the corps, brigade commissar Kofanov;

5. The head of the political department of the corps, regimental commissar Lavrentiev - for their cowardice, inaction, panicked flight from units and the prohibition of units to resist;

6. Chief of Staff of the 134th Infantry Division Svetlichny;

7. The chief of artillery of the division, Lieutenant Colonel Glushkov, for their cowardice, prohibiting units from coming into contact with the enemy and leaving the division’s material part to the enemy.

Chief Military Prosecutor

Publication by N. Geets

TsAMO. F. 913, op. 11309, no. 70, no. 160–165.

In this paragraph we will look at organizational changes in the Red Army in 1939 - 1941, in other words, in the period between the beginning of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War. We will analyze the overall result of the fighting of the Red Army during the Polish and Finnish campaigns, as well as those problems in the Red Army that were identified during these hostilities.

By the beginning of 1939, the territory of the Soviet Union was divided into 16 military-administrative units. After the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was so unexpected for European politicians, the Soviet Union de facto found itself in September as one of the participants in the beginning of a new world war. The years of reforms in the Red Army logically found their meaning in the use of this army for the purpose of restoring the imperial project and returning once-lost lands.

Back on January 15, 1939, People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union K.E. Voroshilov issues order No. 07, which authorizes the formation of the 16th Rifle Corps of the Minsk Army Group (AG) in the Belarusian Special Military District. This group included troops located on the territory of Mogilev and Minsk. At the same time, the composition of the Vitebsk and Bobruisk AG changed, and the 23rd Rifle Corps was allocated to the district administration. According to the decision of the Main Military Council (GVS) of the Red Army adopted on July 5 and the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 0030 issued on the same day, a Front Group Directorate was created in Chita to direct and unite the actions of the 1st, 2nd OKA, ZabVO and 57th USC , and according to the decision of the GVS adopted on July 15 and the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 0036 of July 19, the 57th USC was reorganized into the 1st AG. On July 15, the GVS announced that it recognizes “it is appropriate to unite the leadership of the troops located in the Pskov direction, to form an army group command in the LVO system, with this command located in the city of Novgorod.” After this, on August 13, 1939, the People's Commissar of Defense issued order No. 0129 on the formation of the Novgorod AG.

On September 7, 1939, when the Polish campaign of the Wehrmacht was already in its seventh day in Europe, opening the Second World War, the mobilization deployment of the Red Army began. It led to the fact that the Minsk, Bobruisk and Vitebsk AG BOVO were renamed respectively into the departments of the 11th, 4th and 3rd armies. In addition, a Cavalry Mechanized Group was created using the personnel of the KalVO Directorate, and the 10th Army Directorate was formed on the basis of the Moscow Military District Directorate. Changes and restructuring affected many other parts of the Red Army. The field directorates BOVO and KOVO, assigned on September 11, 1939 to participate in the Polish campaign, which were essentially front directorates, were already on September 26, by order of Marshal Voroshilovaz number 0053, renamed into the directorates of the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts. At the same time, to control troops in the territories of the two indicated districts, the BVO and KVO departments were organized, which were subordinate to the Military Councils of the corresponding fronts. Thus, at the initial stage of the Second World War, serious organizational changes took place in the Soviet army related to the redistribution of internal management responsibilities, with the need to find a better system of coordination between various army authorities in war conditions.

It should be noted that the fighting of the Red Army on the fields of Poland did not proceed smoothly. Despite the extremely deplorable situation of the Polish troops, who found themselves in a state of war on two fronts, they put up a worthy rebuff to the Red Army. The actions of the Red Army were negatively affected by the problem of inexperience of junior command staff and career officers, already identified in the previous chapter. It had an effect, although in the situation of the war with Poland it was not yet so noticeable, the insufficient rearmament of the Soviet Troops.

The completion of the Polish campaign of the Red Army and the expansion of the territory of the USSR at the expense of the former lands of the Russian Empire (the return of which Stalin sought) led to a large-scale reorganization of military-territorial structures in the BSSR and the Ukrainian SSR. In accordance with the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 0057 of October 11, 1939, the troops located on the territory of the BSSR were subordinated to the Belorussian Front, and the Smolensk region was transferred to the KalVO. Previously, the Nikolaev, Odessa, Nikolaev, Chernigov, Kirovograd regions and the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which were located within the boundaries of the KOVO, were excluded from its composition. At the same time, the Zhitomir, Kiev, Vinnitsa, Kamenets-Podolsk regions and the entire territory of Western Ukraine were included in the Ukrainian Front. The Odessa Military District (ODVO) was formed on the territory of Odessa, Nikolaev, Kirovograd, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye regions, Moldavian and Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. In addition, the MVO transferred the Tambov region to the ORVO, and the HVO included the Chernigov, Kharkov, Poltava, Sumy, Voroshilovograd, and Stalin regions and excluded the Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye regions and the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. At the same time, the strengthening of the BVO and KVO departments was cancelled.

In addition to the Polish Company that we have already identified, in which the Red Army participated, which, although with some difficulties (given the obvious advantage in its favor), achieved victory, there was another source of tension in the foreign policy of the USSR, which could channel the military activity of the Red Army. In 1939 The Soviet Union demanded that Finland transfer the territories bordering Leningrad in exchange for sparsely populated territories in the north, or rather, invited the Finnish government to consider a request to move the border from a line 30 kilometers from Leningrad (heavy artillery firing range) to a place that is safe for the USSR distance. It is necessary to understand that Finland, which was once part of the Russian Empire, just like Poland, was a priority direction in the foreign policy of the USSR. Despite attempts to diplomatically resolve the conflict that arose, the leadership of the USSR received a reason to go into a state of war with the Finnish state and the Red Army crossed the border on November 30, 1939. The Finns’ excellent knowledge of their territory, the widespread use of ski units and snipers, and most importantly, the early (two months before the start of the Red Army’s actions) full mobilization led to numerous losses among the Red Army soldiers (330 thousand people, including killed and missing -- 95,348 people). However, the triple numerical and technical superiority of the Red Army of the Soviet Union led Finland to defeat. On February 12, 1940, the Mannerheim Line was broken. The losses, amounting to approximately 26 thousand people killed and 45 thousand wounded, were also excessively large for the 200 thousand Finnish army.

At this stage, a number of Western powers viewed the USSR as a country fighting in World War II on the side of Germany, which is especially surprising considering that Finland had pursued an exclusively pro-German policy since 1935. The USSR was expelled from the League of Nations as an aggressor; the never realized possibility of sending volunteers to Finland was declared.

During the Soviet-Finnish War, the commanders of the Red Army had to solve the problem of improving the structure of command and control. Due to the fact that a front-line command to direct operations in Finland was not created, overall leadership was initially entrusted to the commander of the LVO troops, Army Commander 2nd Rank K-A. Meretskova. The extremely slow advance of the Red Army troops at the beginning of the Finnish operation determined that on December 9, the Headquarters of the Main Command was formed, which took over the leadership of the troops. Subsequently, by directive of the People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Voroshilov numbered 0977/op dated January 7, 1940, to direct their actions on the basis of the LVO command and control The Directorate of the North-Western Front was created.

A new stage of organizational changes in the structure of command and control of the Red Army began in June 1940, during a period of military calm for the USSR. In general, it can be noted that in the period from 1939 to the first half of 1941, the military-territorial structures of the Red Army were replenished with 2 military districts and one front, and by June 1941, 16 military districts and one front were stationed on the territory of the USSR. In mid-June 1941, the deployment of 4 more front-line directorates began in the Western Theater of Operations, which brought the number of front-line directorates to 5 out of 8, provided for by the mobilization deployment scheme of the Red Army. Accordingly, the number of army departments increased sharply from 8 at the beginning of 1939 to 27 by June 1941.

Thus, we can come to the conclusion that 1939 - 1941 became an important stage in the development of the organizational structure of the Red Army, as well as in improving practical skills for participation in hostilities. The course was continued to improve the organizational system of leadership of various army units, their interaction and coordination. The Red Army gained experience in participating in hostilities in Poland and Finland. However, it should be noted that these campaigns against obviously weaker opponents, despite the difficulties that arose during their course, did not allow the leadership of the Soviet army to react quickly enough to the existing problems, which would subsequently lead to the difficult first stage of the Great Patriotic War. The insufficiently high pace of rearmament, the relatively weak level of training of career officers, constant changes in the administration of the army - all this constituted a wide problem layer, for which there was little time to solve it.

Lately, in online battles, I have come across a lot of speculation on the question: “Why did the Red Army lose the border battle of 1941 so badly?” At the same time, most of my opponents appeal to the book by M. Solonin, famous in certain circles, “June 23 “M Day”. In this book, Solonin, dumping on readers a huge number of figures from various sources, paints an apocalyptic picture of the defeat of the gigantic Red Army by a small but remote Wehrmacht. In order not to be accused of falsifying facts, when writing this article I used only Solonin’s book itself and some sources on the basis of which Solonin wrote his “Day of M”, and to which he periodically refers in the text of his book, namely:

"1941 - lessons and conclusions."

B. Müller-Hillebrand. "German Land Army 1933-1945".

F. Halder. "War Diary".

Here I would like to make a small reservation - B. Müller-Hillebrandt is a Wehrmacht major general who not only studied, but saw what was happening with his own eyes. I should also note that in Western historiography it is customary to consider his works as a model of historical research and almost a textbook on the history of the Second World War (this point of view is to a certain extent shared by our modern historians). As for Halder, in the period 1938 - 1942 he served as chief of the general staff of the German ground forces. His book is a diary that the author kept during the period indicated above.

Let's try to figure out what forces collided in the border battles in the period from June 22 to July 10, 1941. First, let's look at what the armed forces of Germany and the USSR were like at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, the number of German armed forces was 7,234 thousand people. (Müller–Hillebrandt) including:

1. Active army - 3.8 million people.

2. Reserve Army – 1.2 million people.

3. Air Force - 1.68 million people.

4. SS troops - 0.15 million people.

Solonin agrees with the above figures.

The strength of the USSR Armed Forces as of June 22, 1941 was 5.6 million people, which, by analogy with Germany, also included the USSR Air Force and Navy. (“1941 - lessons and conclusions”), Solonin admits this data. In total, at the beginning of the Second World War, the strength of the USSR Armed Forces was only 77.4% of the German Armed Forces.

But we are not interested in the number of armed forces in general, but in the number of armed forces on the Soviet-German front. Soviet historiography traditionally indicates the following ratio of 150 Wehrmacht divisions + 40 German satellite divisions against 170 divisions and 2 brigades of the Red Army. Those. approximately 190 divisions versus 171.

In terms of the size of the Red Army, Solonin generally confirms the data of official historiography, recalling only the presence of another 77 reserve divisions of the USSR High Command in the Western theater of military operations. Solonin admits, however, that during the border battle, i.e. from June 22 to July 10, 1941, these divisions were not used in battles - they were too far from the border. But Solonin considers Germany’s forces to be categorically overestimated. Here is what Solonin writes: “In fact, in fact, as part of three army groups (“North”, “Center”, “South”) the following were concentrated on the western border of the Soviet Union: 84 infantry divisions, 17 tank and 14 motorized divisions (in total “84 infantry divisions” we also included 4 light infantry, 1 cavalry and 2 mountain rifle divisions; the total number of 14 motorized divisions included SS troops corresponding to 5 “calculated divisions”). In total - 115 divisions."

At the same time, Solonin does not bother himself with any explanations of how these 115 divisions were counted. What do German generals write about this?

Halder, in his report to the Fuhrer dated June 20, 1941 on readiness for Barbarossa: The general composition of the forces:

1. Infantry divisions - 103 (including 2 mountain infantry and 4 light divisions)

2. Tank divisions - 19

3. Motorized divisions - 14

4. Cavalry divisions - 1

5. Special units - 5 (3 security and 2 infantry divisions)

Total - 141 divisional formations

Müller-Hillebrandt, in his book “German Land Army 1933-1945” gives the following figures for forces in the East:

1. In army groups (i.e. “North”, “Center” “South” - author’s note) - 120.16 divisions - 76 infantry, 13.16 motorized, 17 tank, 9 security, 1 cavalry, 4 light , 1st Mountain Rifle Division - the “tail” of 0.16 divisions arose due to the presence of formations that were not consolidated into divisions.

2. The OKH has 14 divisions behind the front of the army groups. (12 infantry, 1 mountain rifle and 1 police)

3. The Civil Code reserve includes 14 divisions. (11 infantry, 1 motorized and 2 tank)

4. In Finland - 3 divisions (2 mountain rifle, 1 motorized, another 1 infantry arrived at the end of June, but we will not count it)

And in total - 152.16 divisions, out of 208 divisions formed by the Wehrmacht. These include 99 infantry, 15.16 motorized, 19 tank, 4 light, 4 mountain rifle, 9 security, 1 police and 1 cavalry divisions, including SS divisions.

Let's try to understand the discrepancies between Halder and Müller-Hillebrandt's data. Obviously, Halder does not include the Finnish group (3 divisions), 6 security divisions and 1 SS police division in his forces. In addition, if you count the formations indicated by Halder, for some reason you get 142 divisions. Taking into account the fact that Finland (and, accordingly, the German divisions on its territory) entered the war on June 25, 1941, and the presence of 9 security and 1 police divisions on the eastern front is confirmed by numerous historians, we have to admit that Müller-Hillebrandt’s assessment is still more accurate.

Where do such discrepancies come from - 115 divisions for Solonin versus 141-152.16 divisions, which German generals write about? This is quite difficult to understand. Before the attack on the USSR, the German army had a clearly defined echelon formation. The first, shock echelon - army groups "North", "Center" "South" - included 120 divisions, incl. 3.5 motorized SS divisions. The second echelon - the operational reserve, so to speak - was located directly behind the fronts of the army groups and consisted of 14 divisions. The third echelon is the reserve of the main command, which also includes 14 divisions. And, separately, a Finnish group consisting of three divisions. Solonin does not take into account the second and third echelons, does not take into account the grouping in Finland. But even the desired 115 divisions do not work out - there are 120 of them. At the same time, formally Solonin is not lying - remember him: “In fact, in fact, as part of three army groups (“North”, “Center”, “South”)...” He simply does not mention that in addition to army groups in the East there were other forces. You can argue for as long as you like whether the exclusion of the above forces is legal, but if the German generals list 141-152 divisions for the attack on the USSR, and Solonin believes that there were only 115 of them, Solonin should have at least condescended to explain. But there are no explanations - and this gives reason to suspect Solonin of banal manipulation of facts.

But perhaps these divisions were not combat-ready and had a significant shortage of personnel? Let's try to figure it out.

Have you noticed such an interesting formation of Hitler’s army - the “Reserve Army”? The fact is that in Germany it was not customary to send conscripts directly to combat units. The reserve army is an analogue of our training, where future soldiers had to master all the intricacies of military science. The training of a Wehrmacht soldier looked like this - 8 weeks in the reserve army, then another 2 months in the active army. In the active army, they tried to assign secondary tasks to newcomers - so that the soldiers could adapt to real front-line conditions - and only after two months did a trained recruit begin to be considered a full-fledged combat unit. It should be understood that the replenishment of Wehrmacht losses and the formation of new divisions was carried out by trained soldiers who had (at least) basic training.

“Yaroslavna’s Lament” of the German generals (which began, if my memory serves me right, from the end of 41) that “recruits had to be thrown into the thick of it, without preliminary adaptation, and this led to unnecessary losses” should not be understood as “they were given a Schmeisser and thrown under tracks of Soviet tanks” and how “they were taught the soldier’s craft, but were not given time to get used to it at the front” - there is some difference, don’t you think?

Thus, it can be argued that all Wehrmacht soldiers who were in the active army by June 22, 1941 were trained and prepared fighters.

Now let's try to determine how complete these 152-plus divisions were. Unfortunately, I don’t have data on the personnel of each division, so we’ll try to calculate it differently. First, let's answer the question - how many troops, in the opinion of German generals, fought on the territory of the USSR in June-July 1941? According to Müller-Hillebrandt, of the 3.8 million active army, 3.3 million people were concentrated for operations in the East. If we look at Halder’s “War Diary”, we will find that he defines the total number of the active army as 2.5 million people. In fact, the figures are 3.3 million people. and 2.5 million people do not strongly contradict each other, since in addition to the divisions themselves in the Wehrmacht (as in any other army), there were a sufficient number of units listed in the active army but essentially non-combat (builders, military doctors, etc., etc. ). Probably 3.3 million Müller-Hillebrandt includes both combat and non-combat units, and 2.5 million people. Galdera - only combat units. So we will not be much mistaken if we assume the number of Wehrmacht and SS combat units on the eastern front at the level of 2.5 million people.

Now let’s calculate the staff strength of the 152 German divisions indicated by Müller-Hillebrandt. This is not difficult to do - during the reorganization before the attack on the USSR, numerous “waves” of German divisions were declared unacceptable and the Wehrmacht tried to switch to a single infantry division of 16,859 people. The tank division included 16,952 people, the motorized division - 14,029 people, the mountain division - 14,000 people, and the light division - 11,000 people. I don’t know the staffing numbers of security, police and cavalry divisions, so let’s take the minimum – 10 thousand people. each. Having made some simple calculations, we get a staffing level of 2,431,809 people. All this together suggests that the 152 German divisions deployed in the East had a strength of 2.5 million people. the active army, which Halder constantly mentions, is the 2.432 million people we calculated. the regular strength of 152 German divisions.

Now let's try to deal with the Red Army. The 170 divisions of the border military districts included 103 infantry, 40 tank, 20 motorized and 7 cavalry divisions. Official Soviet historiography complains about the understaffing of these units. Solonin writes, referring to data from the book “1941 - Lessons and Conclusions”: “In 99 rifle divisions of the western districts (including the Leningrad Military District), the number of personnel (with a staff of 14.5 thousand people) was increased to: 21 divisions - 14 thousand, 72 divisions - 12 thousand, and 6 divisions - 11 thousand people." Let's believe Solonin. For further calculations, let’s take the actual strength of the remaining “unvalued” 4 infantry divisions of the Red Army in peacetime (6 thousand people). We get the actual strength of 103 of our infantry divisions - 1,258,143 thousand people. Since there were 2 more brigades of unknown size to me, let’s add another 10 thousand people, we get 1,268,143 thousand people. Solonin writes nothing more about the actual strength of the Red Army in the border military districts. Well, let’s do it for him, guided by the same source (“1941 - lessons and conclusions”) from which Solonin takes data on the infantry divisions of the Red Army. If Solonin believes this source, we will believe him too :))

60 tank and motorized divisions of the Red Army were concentrated in 20 mechanized corps, and “1941 - lessons and conclusions” gives the number of each mechanized corps at the beginning of the war, as well as the total actual number of personnel of the mechanized corps - 510 thousand people. The mechanized corps were staffed with personnel from 43% to 90% of the regular strength, and on average about 71%. The actual strength of the 7 cavalry divisions is unknown to me, but there is evidence that their peacetime states were almost no different from their wartime states. Which, in general, is not surprising, since a cavalryman is not an infantryman, it is simply impossible to quickly prepare him. So I take them according to the staffing level, 9,000 people. It turns out – 63 thousand people. cavalry. And in total:

1,268,143 + 510,000 + 63,000 = 1,841,212 people.

At the same time, the average actual strength of the Red Army infantry division is approximately 12,215 people, tank or motorized - 8,500 people each.

It turns out interesting. 2.4 million people “small” Wehrmacht against 1.8 million people. "huge" Red Army. But how correct is this comparison? Maybe the Wehrmacht units were scattered at such a distance that they simply could not all conduct combat operations together?

First, let's look at the disposition of the Red Army. To do this, again, we will use the book “1941 - Lessons and Conclusions.” It provides the following information about the disposition of the Red Army (the book lists only distances and divisions, I will immediately add numbers based on the calculations made above):

First echelon - (0-50 km from the border) - 53 rifle, 3 cavalry divisions and 2 brigades - approximately 684.4 thousand people.

Second echelon - (50-100 km from the state border) - 13 rifle, 3 cavalry, 24 tank and 12 motorized divisions - approximately 491.8 thousand people.

The third echelon was located at a distance from 100 to 400 or more km from the state border - 37 rifle, 1 cavalry, 16 tank, 8 motorized divisions - approximately 665 thousand people.

I did not calculate the number of echelons very correctly, since it is calculated based on the average number of divisions. That is, for example, infantry divisions had from 6 to 14 thousand people. actual composition, I consider the average - 12,225 people. But still, this error for the general calculation is relatively small - I think no more than plus or minus 50-70 thousand people. to the echelon.

I do not know at what distance from the state border the reserves of the OKH and the Wehrmacht Civil Code were located. But, if my memory serves me correctly, from Warsaw to Berlin there are not even 600 km, and from Warsaw to the then Soviet-German border - no more than 100 km, so it is almost impossible to imagine that these forces were located further than 400 km from the state border. Müller-Hillebrandt points out that exactly 1 (one) division was stationed on the territory of Germany proper (excluding the eastern border) in 41. Consequently, 152 German divisions were echeloned in a depth not exceeding, but rather even less than, 170 divisions of the Red Army. Common sense also speaks for this - the command of the German Armed Forces did not suffer from idiocy and would not place reserves far from the theater of military operations. Müller-Hillebrandt writes: “Out of the available 208 divisions, according to the plan, 152 divisions were initially allocated to conduct the campaign against the Soviet Union (including the Finnish front). In quantitative terms, they made up about 75% of the active army, but in fact it was a significantly larger part of the combat power, since the remaining 56 divisions, as a rule, did not represent full-fledged formations... The efforts of the OKH were aimed at concentrating all available forces on the decisive theater of war ... without regard to the difficulties and threats that this could result in in other theaters of war.”

As I wrote above, 3 echelons are clearly visible in the formation of the German army. Let us now recalculate the number of divisions of these echelons into their strength. The first echelon - directly army groups "North", "Center" "South" with SS divisions plus 3 divisions located in Finland - this is 1,954.1 thousand people. Second echelon - OKH reserves - 226.3 thousand people. And finally, the third echelon - the reserve of the Civil Code - 233.4 thousand people.

Well, it's time to draw conclusions. The first echelon of the Red Army covering armies took fire on the first day of the war. The second echelon could very quickly come to his aid. True, except for the 13 rifle divisions, for which it was difficult to walk 50-100 km on foot in a day. Solonin, by the way, writes that the speed of movement of a rifle division in peacetime is 20 km per day. Consider for yourself... The third echelon had practically no chance of entering the battle in a reasonable time (this is especially true for 37 rifle divisions 100-400 km from the state border). Hence…

The overall balance of forces in the border battle was 1/1.3 in favor of the Wehrmacht. But on June 22, 1941, 1,954.1 thousand people. The first echelon of the Wehrmacht hit 684.4 thousand people. the first echelon of the Red Army cover armies. The ratio is -1/2.85 in favor of the Germans. With the introduction of the second echelon of the Red Army cover armies (491.2 thousand people), this ratio could improve to 1/1.66 in favor of the Germans (if we compare only with the first German echelon), or 1/1.87 (if we count the first and the second echelon of the Germans), but here we need to take into account the losses that the Red Army divisions suffered by the time the second echelon divisions arrived. After all, before receiving reinforcements, they were forced to fight one against three. Especially considering that for many units located directly on the border, the war began with massive artillery and air raids, which destroyed most of the personnel even before the Red Army soldiers could fire the first shot at the enemy.

Thus, the main forces of our border military districts fought with an enemy twice or even three times superior in number!

And this is not counting the German satellites. At the same time, Müller-Hellebrandt writes that on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht was directly subordinate to 4 divisions and 6 brigades (i.e. approximately 7 divisions) of the Romanian army (the number of other Romanian forces that entered the war under the leadership of the Romanian command Müller-Hellebrandt , unfortunately, does not lead). And on June 25, a certain number of Finnish divisions entered the war...

But that's not all. The fact is that the composition of 1.8 million people. The first strategic echelon of the Red Army had 802 thousand recruits, drafted and assigned to units in May-June 1941. These fighters can in no way be considered equal to Wehrmacht soldiers - the period of their stay in units ranges from 0 to 7 weeks. Their German counterparts were undergoing training in the reserve army at this time. Those. these 802 thousand people. in terms of training level they approximately corresponded to the German reserve army, which was not included in the active forces of Germany at all

On June 22, 1941, at 4 o’clock in the morning, Nazi Germany treacherously invaded the USSR without declaring war. This attack ended the chain of aggressive actions of Nazi Germany, which, thanks to the connivance and incitement of the Western powers, grossly violated the elementary norms of international law, resorted to predatory seizures and monstrous atrocities in the occupied countries.

In accordance with the Barbarossa plan, the fascist offensive began on a wide front by several groups in different directions. An army was stationed in the north "Norway", advancing on Murmansk and Kandalaksha; an army group was advancing from East Prussia to the Baltic states and Leningrad "North"; the most powerful army group "Center" had the goal of defeating the Red Army units in Belarus, capturing Vitebsk-Smolensk and taking Moscow on the move; army group "South" was concentrated from Lublin to the mouth of the Danube and led an attack on Kyiv - Donbass. The Nazis' plans boiled down to delivering a surprise attack in these directions, destroying border and military units, breaking through deep into the rear, and capturing Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and the most important industrial centers in the southern regions of the country.

The command of the German army expected to end the war in 6-8 weeks.

190 enemy divisions, about 5.5 million soldiers, up to 50 thousand guns and mortars, 4,300 tanks, almost 5 thousand aircraft and about 200 warships were thrown into the offensive against the Soviet Union.

The war began in extremely favorable conditions for Germany. Before the attack on the USSR, Germany captured almost all of Western Europe, whose economy worked for the Nazis. Therefore, Germany had a powerful material and technical base.

Germany's military products were supplied by 6,500 of the largest enterprises in Western Europe. More than 3 million foreign workers were involved in the war industry. In Western European countries, the Nazis looted a lot of weapons, military equipment, trucks, carriages and locomotives. The military-economic resources of Germany and its allies significantly exceeded those of the USSR. Germany fully mobilized its army, as well as the armies of its allies. Most of the German army was concentrated near the borders of the Soviet Union. In addition, imperialist Japan threatened an attack from the East, which diverted a significant part of the Soviet Armed Forces to defend the country's eastern borders. In theses of the CPSU Central Committee "50 years of the Great October Socialist Revolution" An analysis of the reasons for the temporary failures of the Red Army in the initial period of the war is given. They are due to the fact that the Nazis used temporary advantages:

• militarization of the economy and all life in Germany;
• long preparation for a war of conquest and more than two years of experience in conducting military operations in the West;
• superiority in weapons and numbers of troops concentrated in advance in border zones.

They had the economic and military resources of almost all of Western Europe at their disposal. Miscalculations in determining the possible timing of Hitler Germany’s attack on our country and the associated omissions in preparation for repelling the first blows played a role. There was reliable information about the concentration of German troops near the borders of the USSR and Germany’s preparations for an attack on our country. However, the troops of the western military districts were not brought to a state of full combat readiness.

All these reasons put the Soviet country in a difficult situation. However, the enormous difficulties of the initial period of the war did not break the fighting spirit of the Red Army or shake the fortitude of the Soviet people. From the first days of the attack, it became clear that the plan for a lightning war had collapsed. Accustomed to easy victories over Western countries, whose governments treacherously surrendered their people to be torn to pieces by the occupiers, the Nazis met stubborn resistance from the Soviet Armed Forces, border guards and the entire Soviet people. The war lasted 1418 days. Groups of border guards fought bravely on the border. The garrison of the Brest Fortress covered itself with unfading glory. The defense of the fortress was led by Captain I. N. Zubachev, regimental commissar E. M. Fomin, Major P. M. Gavrilov and others. On June 22, 1941, at 4:25 a.m., fighter pilot I. I. Ivanov made the first ram. (In total, about 200 rams were carried out during the war). On June 26, the crew of Captain N.F. Gastello (A.A. Burdenyuk, G.N. Skorobogatiy, A.A. Kalinin) crashed into a column of enemy troops on a burning plane. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers from the first days of the war showed examples of courage and heroism.

lasted two months Battle of Smolensk. Born here near Smolensk soviet guard. The battle in the Smolensk region delayed the enemy's advance until mid-September 1941.
During the Battle of Smolensk, the Red Army thwarted the enemy's plans. The delay of the enemy offensive in the central direction was the first strategic success of the Soviet troops.

The Communist Party became the leading and directing force for the country's defense and preparation for the destruction of Hitler's troops. From the first days of the war, the party took emergency measures to organize resistance to the aggressor; a huge amount of work was carried out to reorganize all work on a military basis, turning the country into a single military camp.

“To wage a war for real,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “a strong, organized rear is needed. The best army, the people most devoted to the cause of the revolution will be immediately exterminated by the enemy if they are not sufficiently armed, supplied with food, and trained” (Lenin V.I. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 35, p. 408).

These Leninist instructions formed the basis for organizing the fight against the enemy. On June 22, 1941, on behalf of the Soviet government, V. M. Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, spoke on the radio with a message about the “robbery” attack of Nazi Germany and a call to fight the enemy. On the same day, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was adopted on the introduction of martial law on the European territory of the USSR, as well as a Decree on the mobilization of a number of ages in 14 military districts. On June 23, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on the tasks of party and Soviet organizations in war conditions. On June 24, the Evacuation Council was formed, and on June 27, the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the procedure for the removal and placement of human contingents and valuable property” determined the procedure for the evacuation of productive forces and the population to the eastern regions. In the directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 29, 1941, the most important tasks for mobilizing all forces and means to defeat the enemy were outlined to party and Soviet organizations in the front-line regions.

“...In the war imposed on us with fascist Germany,” this document said, “the question of life and death of the Soviet state is being decided, whether the peoples of the Soviet Union should be free or fall into enslavement.” The Central Committee and the Soviet government called for realizing the full depth of the danger, reorganizing all work on a war footing, organizing comprehensive assistance to the front, increasing the production of weapons, ammunition, tanks, aircraft in every possible way, and in the event of a forced withdrawal of the Red Army, removing all valuable property, and destroying what cannot be removed. , in enemy-occupied areas to organize partisan detachments. On July 3, the main provisions of the directive were outlined in a speech by J.V. Stalin on the radio. The directive determined the nature of the war, the degree of threat and danger, set the tasks of transforming the country into a single combat camp, comprehensively strengthening the Armed Forces, restructuring the work of the rear on a military scale, and mobilizing all forces to repel the enemy. On June 30, 1941, an emergency body was created to quickly mobilize all the country’s forces and resources to repel and defeat the enemy - State Defense Committee (GKO) led by I.V. Stalin. All power in the country, state, military and economic leadership was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee. It united the activities of all state and military institutions, party, trade union and Komsomol organizations.

In war conditions, the restructuring of the entire economy on a war footing was of paramount importance. At the end of June it was approved “Mobilization national economic plan for the third quarter of 1941.”, and on August 16 “Military-economic plan for the IV quarter of 1941 and 1942 for the regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia" In just five months of 1941, over 1,360 large military enterprises were relocated and about 10 million people were evacuated. Even according to the admission of bourgeois experts evacuation of industry in the second half of 1941 and early 1942 and its deployment in the East should be considered among the most amazing feats of the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war. The evacuated Kramatorsk plant was launched 12 days after arriving at the site, Zaporozhye - after 20. By the end of 1941, the Urals were producing 62% of cast iron and 50% of steel. In scope and significance this was equal to the largest battles of wartime. The restructuring of the national economy on a war footing was completed by mid-1942.

The party carried out a lot of organizational work in the army. In accordance with the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on July 16, 1941 “On the reorganization of political propaganda bodies and the introduction of the institution of military commissars”. From July 16 in the Army, and from July 20 in the Navy, the institution of military commissars was introduced. During the second half of 1941, up to 1.5 million communists and more than 2 million Komsomol members were mobilized into the army (up to 40% of the total strength of the party was sent to the active army). Prominent party leaders L. I. Brezhnev, A. A. Zhdanov, A. S. Shcherbakov, M. A. Suslov and others were sent to party work in the active army.

On August 8, 1941, J.V. Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces of the USSR. In order to concentrate all the functions of managing military operations, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was formed. Hundreds of thousands of communists and Komsomol members went to the front. About 300 thousand of the best representatives of the working class and intelligentsia of Moscow and Leningrad joined the ranks of the people's militia.

Meanwhile, the enemy stubbornly rushed towards Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa, Sevastopol and other important industrial centers of the country. An important place in the plans of fascist Germany was occupied by the calculation of the international isolation of the USSR. However, from the first days of the war, an anti-Hitler coalition began to take shape. Already on June 22, 1941, the British government announced its support for the USSR in the fight against fascism, and on July 12 it signed an agreement on joint actions against fascist Germany. On August 2, 1941, US President F. Roosevelt announced economic support for the Soviet Union. On September 29, 1941, the conference of representatives of the three powers(USSR, USA and England), at which a plan for Anglo-American assistance in the fight against the enemy was developed. Hitler's plan to isolate the USSR internationally failed. On January 1, 1942, a declaration of 26 states was signed in Washington anti-Hitler coalition about using all the resources of these countries to fight against the German bloc. However, the Allies were in no hurry to provide effective assistance aimed at defeating fascism, trying to weaken the warring parties.

By October, the Nazi invaders, despite the heroic resistance of our troops, managed to approach Moscow from three sides, while simultaneously launching an offensive on the Don, in the Crimea, near Leningrad. Odessa and Sevastopol defended themselves heroically. On September 30, 1941, the German command launched the first, and in November - the second general offensive against Moscow. The Nazis managed to occupy Klin, Yakhroma, Naro-Fominsk, Istra and other cities in the Moscow region. Soviet troops conducted a heroic defense of the capital, showing examples of courage and heroism. The 316th Infantry Division of General Panfilov fought to the death in fierce battles. A partisan movement developed behind enemy lines. About 10 thousand partisans fought near Moscow alone. On December 5-6, 1941, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive near Moscow. At the same time, offensive operations were launched on the Western, Kalinin and Southwestern fronts. The powerful offensive of Soviet troops in the winter of 1941/42 drove the Nazis back in a number of places to a distance of up to 400 km from the capital and was their first major defeat in the Second World War.

Main result Moscow battle was that the strategic initiative had been wrested from the hands of the enemy and the plan for a lightning war had failed. The defeat of the Germans near Moscow was a decisive turn in the military operations of the Red Army and had a great influence on the entire further course of the war.

By the spring of 1942, military production had been established in the eastern regions of the country. By the middle of the year, most of the evacuated enterprises were set up in new locations. The transition of the country's economy to a war footing was basically completed. In the deep rear - in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the Urals - there were over 10 thousand industrial construction projects.

Instead of the men who went to the front, women and youth came to the machines. Despite very difficult living conditions, Soviet people worked selflessly to ensure victory at the front. We worked one and a half to two shifts to restore industry and supply the front with everything necessary. The All-Union Socialist Competition developed widely, the winners of which were awarded a challenge Red Banner of the State Defense Committee. Agricultural workers organized above-plan plantings for the defense fund in 1942. The collective farm peasantry supplied the front and rear with food and industrial raw materials.

The situation in the temporarily occupied areas of the country was extremely difficult. The Nazis plundered cities and villages and abused the civilian population. German officials were appointed at the enterprises to supervise the work. The best lands were selected for farms for German soldiers. In all occupied settlements, German garrisons were maintained at the expense of the population. However, the economic and social policies of the fascists, which they tried to implement in the occupied territories, immediately failed. Soviet people, brought up on the ideas of the Communist Party, believed in the victory of the Soviet country and did not succumb to Hitler’s provocations and demagoguery.

Winter offensive of the Red Army in 1941/42 dealt a powerful blow to Nazi Germany and its military machine, but Hitler’s army was still strong. Soviet troops fought stubborn defensive battles.

In this situation, the nationwide struggle of the Soviet people behind enemy lines, especially partisan movement.

Thousands of Soviet people joined partisan detachments. Guerrilla warfare developed widely in Ukraine, Belarus and the Smolensk region, Crimea and a number of other places. In cities and villages temporarily occupied by the enemy, underground party and Komsomol organizations operated. In accordance with the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated July 18, 1941. “On the organization of the fight in the rear of German troops” 3,500 partisan detachments and groups, 32 underground regional committees, 805 city and district party committees, 5,429 primary party organizations, 10 regional, 210 inter-district city and 45 thousand primary Komsomol organizations were created. To coordinate the actions of partisan detachments and underground groups with units of the Red Army, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on May 30, 1942, a central headquarters of the partisan movement. Headquarters for the leadership of the partisan movement were formed in Belarus, Ukraine and other republics and regions occupied by the enemy.

After the defeat near Moscow and the winter offensive of our troops, the Nazi command was preparing a new major offensive with the goal of capturing all the southern regions of the country (Crimea, North Caucasus, Don) right up to the Volga, capturing Stalingrad and separating Transcaucasia from the center of the country. This posed an extremely serious threat to our country.

By the summer of 1942, the international situation had changed, characterized by the strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition. In May - June 1942, agreements were concluded between the USSR, England and the USA on an alliance in the war against Germany and on post-war cooperation. In particular, an agreement was reached on the opening in 1942 in Europe second front against Germany, which would significantly speed up the defeat of fascism. But the Allies delayed its opening in every possible way. Taking advantage of this, the fascist command transferred divisions from the Western Front to the Eastern Front. By the spring of 1942, Hitler's army had 237 divisions, massive aviation, tanks, artillery and other types of equipment for a new offensive.

Intensified Leningrad blockade, exposed to artillery fire almost daily. In May, the Kerch Strait was captured. On July 3, the Supreme Command ordered the heroic defenders of Sevastopol to leave the city after a 250-day defense, since it was not possible to hold Crimea. As a result of the defeat of Soviet troops in the region of Kharkov and the Don, the enemy reached the Volga. The Stalingrad Front, created in July, took on powerful enemy attacks. Retreating with heavy fighting, our troops inflicted enormous damage on the enemy. In parallel, there was a fascist offensive in the North Caucasus, where Stavropol, Krasnodar, and Maykop were occupied. In the Mozdok area, the Nazi offensive was suspended.

The main battles took place on the Volga. The enemy sought to capture Stalingrad at any cost. The heroic defense of the city was one of the brightest pages of the Patriotic War. The working class, women, old people, teenagers - the entire population rose to defend Stalingrad. Despite the mortal danger, workers at the tractor factory sent tanks to the front lines every day. In September, battles broke out in the city for every street, for every house.

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