CHAPTER 2

A Myth is Born: War Correspondence from Malaia zemlia

Море всегда неспокойно,

И берег тревожен крутой,

Сверкает во мгле освещенный

Кусочек земли дорогой,

Волна набегает и брызжет,

Ночной караван – под огнем.

Но берег к нам ближе и ближе,

К нему мы упорно плывем.

Плывем мы, – хоть падает в море

Близ нас не последний снаряд, –

Туда, где на склонах предгорья

Товарищи наши не спят.

Вот берег причальный и тропка,

Родные деревья в пыли,

Высокие гордые сопки –

Хранители ‘Малой земли’.¹

Paul Carell, the German historian of World War II on the Eastern Front, claims that it was Leonid Brezhnev who gave the beach-head of Malaia zemlia its popular name.² Although this may be understandable in view of Brezhnev’s strong link with the campaign, there is no other evidence to confirm Carell’s statement, nor does Brezhnev’s name feature in contemporaneous communiques from war correspondents. In contrast, N.V. Kolesov contends that the name of Malaia zemlia became widely known only after the liberation of Novorossiisk in September 1943, implying that it was familiar to a smaller circle of people even before then.

At that time, in the war years, the names of ‘Myskhako’ and ‘Malaia zemlia’ were known only to those who fought in the Caucasus. The first reports about the landings at Myskhako were published only after the liberation of Novorossiisk in September 1943.³

So who named this small area of recaptured Soviet territory and when did the name ‘Malaia zemlia’ first appear in popular Soviet consciousness?

With the notable exceptions of Vietnam and Iraq, war myths are rarely negative in the consciousness of those constructing or propagating them.⁴ A myth is more likely to be built in the aftermath of victory, with the benefit of hindsight and reflection enabling its positive positioning within the agreed national narrative of the war. Even the Allied retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 is mythologised as a positive event thanks to the patriotic fleet of small ships rushing to the rescue of the troops stranded on the beaches of northern France. A myth started during the actual event may help the participants make sense of a difficult situation. As in the case of the London Blitz, troops and civilians encouraged by a myth are motivated to fight on, when the only alternative would be to admit defeat.⁵ Similarly, evidence indicates that the myth of Malaia zemlia was articulated by the armed forces and formulated, if only locally, by journalists present on the beach-head even as the campaign was unfolding, only to be reinforced and relocated decades later within the national master-narrative of the war.

According to Jeffrey Brooks, the role of the war correspondent as part of the state propaganda machine was to promulgate the sole objective of ‘victory over the invaders’ by means of a holy, patriotic war.⁶ Widely considered to be a branch of politics, journalism was intended both to inspire the troops and to maintain discipline.⁷ However, all information disseminated by the media was controlled by the Soviet Information Bureau, Sovinformbiuro, which disseminated reports through TASS, the official state news agency.⁸ In the interests of public motivation and cohesion, reports were often far from truthful and barely credible in the case of Soviet losses, especially in the difficult early days of the war, when bad news was rarely reported in the press or on the radio.⁹ Only good news was encouraged, sometimes supported by photographs, helping to form positive memories for after the war. Konstantin Simonov describes the work in his memoirs:

Our job as war correspondents, as patriots and as writers was to find, in the mass of wartime actions, not that which spoke about the difficulties of today, but that which spoke about the promises of a better future, about the triumphant end.¹⁰

In this vein, war correspondents and the Soviet propaganda machine harvested examples of the self-sacrifice of heroes (such as the young ‘martyr’ Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia), who were immediately mytholo-gised in order to boost the morale of the people.¹¹ The Red Army may have been losing the larger campaigns, but successful small-scale exploits and occasional triumphs rendered the gloomy overall story more palatable.

Little journalistic licence was allowed under this climate of stringent censorship: indeed, a war correspondent had to be skilled in navigating ‘the treacherous waters of communication between the state and a largely mistrustful readership’.¹² The public was probably aware of some official deception, if not of the details of any omissions, while the journalists themselves were at risk of losing more than their jobs if they deviated from the official line. Out of public sight, however, negotiations often took place between correspondents anxious to publish the truth about Soviet losses and warn the public about the advancing enemy, and editors wishing to avoid too much criticism from the censor. In some rare cases the editors, as middlemen, sided with the journalists, publishing very occasionally without the censor’s approval.¹³ Although the regulation of writers was slightly relaxed during the war years, offering more independence for journalists than previously,¹⁴socialist realism continued to influence war correspondents, dictating the overall tone of newspaper articles.¹⁵

At the onset of war, civilian writers and poets were drafted in to work on military newspapers, with most holding army ranks, while others were enlisted from the armed forces.¹⁶ The most enduringly famous of the war correspondents on Malaia zemlia was Major (later Colonel) Sergei Borzenko, whose dispatches regularly appeared in the pages of the 18th Army’s weekly, newspaper, Znamia Rodiny. Although not of the same national stature as Il’ia Erenburg, Vasilii Grossman or Konstantin Simonov, well-known war correspondents for the national military paper Krasnaia zvezda, Borzenko took part in military action and was later named a Hero of the Soviet Union, going on to work for the national newspaper Pravda and to write his memoirs in the postwar period.¹⁷ When Novorossiisk was finally liberated in September 1943, an influx of reporters sent telegraphic dispatches back to Pravda and Izvestiia in Moscow, including Anatolii Sofronov, who would later write a fictional play about the Malaia zemlia campaign.¹⁸ Other correspondence from the front includes articles by army officers, notably Izvestiia’s Captain N. Petrov and Znamia Rodiny ‘special correspondents’, usually Captain A. Svetov and Senior Lieutenant (later Captain) Boris Miliavskii.

Memoirists Georgii Sokolov and Grigorii Bondar’ claim that the name ‘Malaia zemlia’ was used from the earliest days of the campaign.¹⁹ Similarly, A.F. Galatenko, the captain of a motor launch taking marine infantry from Gelendzhik across the bay to Myskhako during the earliest days of the landings, refers to ‘the battle for the small strip of shoreline reclaimed from the enemy, which [. . .] was still simply called the beach-head, but which a few days later came to be known as Malaia zemlia’.²⁰ Retrospective claims on memory are hard to evaluate, but it is possible that the name may have been used amongst the troops within the first few weeks of the February landings. However, wartime communiques still referred only to the ‘Novorossiisk front’. Even when the area of Malaia zemlia was under discussion, it was not named. This is the case in an article about enemy action, which appeared in The Times of London, filed by a special correspondent in Stockholm during the fierce fighting of April 1943:

Most of the aggressive air activity by the Axis is being directed at present against the Russian positions south of Novorossiisk and the adjacent bases on the Black Sea shore, so as to ease the strain on the garrison at Novorossiisk. This garrison has been fighting since March to prevent being hemmed in between the mountains and the Black Sea.²¹

In contrast, a letter written home from the front by a certain E.D. Goncharov in the weeks before his death on 4 May 1943 refers specifically to Malaia zemlia.²² Contemporaneous songs and poetry use the name,²³ while the first press report from the front mentioning Malaia zemlia appeared in newsprint, as Kolesov suggests, in the local pages of Znamia Rodiny in June 1943,²⁴ well into the seven-month campaign which had started with the tentative February landings. The name of ‘Malaia zemlia’ only became public thanks to the military press once there was good news to tell and victory was in sight, at least for the Soviet North Caucasian 18th Army, after the favourable conclusion of the critical April battles around Novorossiisk. The name ‘Malaia zemlia’ was not in general use, however, until after the liberation of the town in September 1943, when it appeared in only one article in Pravda concentrating on the specific location of the troops in and around the village of Myskhako just outside Novorossiisk.²⁵ Thus the myth of Malaia zemlia appears to have been born amongst the armed forces serving on the beach-head months before full knowledge of the nature of the campaign and its popular name had become widespread.

Such rapid myth creation was not exceptional during World War II. Winston Churchill’s famous lines, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’, epitomised the myth of the Battle of Britain at its height in the summer of 1940. Similarly, the London Blitz was so named almost before it began and, once started in earnest, was immediately mythologised ²⁶ Like the Blitz, the war myth around the siege of Leningrad (1941–44) concentrated on the community spirit o ordinary citizens and the continuation of family life in a key city under bombardment. Any similarities between London and Leningrad were superficial, however, as were the circumstances of the besieged Soviet city and the small Black Sea coastal strip outside Novorossiisk. Although bot were surrounded by German forces and with escape possible only across the water, the differences were more significant. The siege of Leningrad, the important second city of the Soviet Union, lasted four times longer tha the 225-day campaign on the provincial beach-head of Malaia zemlia. During that time, Leningrad was still occupied by a large number of it prewar population of civilians, whereas Malaia zemlia involved only troops mainly soldiers from the 18th Army and the marine infantry, ²⁷ as most of the citizens in and around Novorossiisk had been evacuated, interned or executed in 1942 as the enemy advanced on and then captured the town ²⁸

The myth of besieged Leningrad developed through local media during the actual event.²⁹ Radio played a large role in the dissemination of information and in boosting morale in addition to the newspapers,³⁰ whereas its use on Malaia zemlia was largely restricted to military purposes. Tr oops on Malaia zemlia had not only the army newspaper to hand, but also Polundra, a morale-boosting sheet of articles, cartoons and sketches. Produced by the Communist Party propaganda team in the caves and bunkers housing the military headquarters and field hospital, Polundra was credited as the brainchild of librarian Mariia Pedenko.³¹ A modest propaganda news-sheet, Novorossiiskii partizan, also appeared in print runs of up to 1,000. Published by the state’s Sovinformbiuro over 43 editions from November 1942 to September 1943, it was dropped from planes to resistance fighters on the ground, being passed from hand to hand by the partisans roaming the hills around the town.³²

The myth of the siege of Leningrad became widespread nationally even in its early days. By July 1943, around the time the name ‘Malaia zemlia’ was appearing regularly in the local military press, the city newspaper Leningradskaia pravda spoke about the ‘boevaia sem’ia’ (military family), indicative of the community spirit of Leningraders, all in it together, rather like Londoners in the Blitz.³³ The same article also makes it clear that the whole nation was aware of the struggle: ‘The whole Soviet people are carefully following our fight and work.’ It seems that the siege of Leningrad, started in September 1941, had already become a national myth well before Malaia zemlia was present in the popular consciousness. However, evidence suggests that Malaia zemlia was even further along the road to epic mythical status than Leningrad, as, even while the campaign was still being waged, future memory of it was being invoked. In an article of June 1943 referring already to ‘pamiat’ o Maloi zemle’ (memory of Malaia zemlia), the war correspondents Svetov and Miliavskii claim that the fruits of Malaia zemlia would inspire the memory of both civilians and veterans:

There will come the day when once again people here will drink wonderful juice from the fruit of the vineyards. And from the ‘Malaia zemlia’ glass people will become as drunk as former soldiers on their memories. This is not just a lovely dream. . . . Flowers will bloom in the gardens here. . . .] That is for tomorrow But today war is being waged on ‘Malaia zemlia’.³⁴

A myth normally involves memory of the past in the present. Here, in contrast, future memory of the present was invoked not merely as a hopeful dream, but as a quite detailed prediction along the socialist realist lines outlined by Clark, where there is ‘no collision . . ] between “is” (or “present”) and “ought to be” (or “epic past” – or future)’.³⁵ As an example of the blurring of time boundaries, and in an extreme statement unusual even for the Soviet Union, war dispatches firmly place Malaia zemlia within an historical continuum linking the difficult wartime present with a bright future in the aftermath of predicted victory Looking ahead to the future, while looking back to the war itself, Svetov and Miliavskii’s article smoothly spans the years, already nominating Malaia zemlia as the subject of a future war myth and analysing the process of potential myth making. In a similar, if even more exaggerated way, Winston Churchill skipped forward across the centuries just before the start of the Battle of Britain in 1940 to lay claim to the future myth, while continuing to motivate the country at a dark time in the war:

If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.

Unlike the normal situation in wartime papers, this Soviet article aligns itself with Churchill in stressing by implication the hardship of the battle at the time of writing, in contrast to the promised victory ahead. However, at virtually the same time, the focus of Leningraders after two years of siege was fixed on the present and the more immediate future. Articles on the awarding to civilians of medals for the defence of Leningrad, which could easily have been written in a similarly epic vein, made no mention of future memory or an historical continuum.³⁶ Indeed, in June and July 1943, Leningradskaia pravda took a different, less triumphant tone, pointing to struggles still to come and the serious lessons to be learned in the future from history:

It is not in the character of the defenders of Leningrad to give in to self-deception, reassure themselves about the achievement, to boast about their services in the past. No! We analyse the past seriously, absorb its experience and at the same time look ahead vigilantly. But ahead of us lie new trials, new difficulties, decisive battles with the enemy ³⁷

Both Soviet articles reveal the immediate problems of conflict rather more truthfully than would have been expected at the beginning of the war Furthermore, in an article about children finishing the academic year in June 1943, the same Leningrad paper gives only pragmatic details of everyday life, rather than taking the opportunity to elaborate on the memories of these children as adults in a utopian socialist future.³⁸ This omission reflects the overwhelming emphasis on survival in the present to the detriment of enforced ideology embracing the future.

The only 1943 article in Leningradskaia pravda to mention memory of the heroic past in the future attributes any success to Stalin’s ‘titanic will’ rather than to military prowess:

When future historians come to study this time, they will above all be amazed at the unity, the strength, the endurance of the citizens of Leningrad, whose thoughts and actions are permanently directed by the titanic will of that great genius - Stalin.³⁹

In contrast, one of the more popular songs about Malaia zemlia cited in Znamia Rodiny compared the troops to the giants more often found in classical legends:

CnoeM ace o Tex BenHKaHax

HTO xoflflT no Majiofi seujie’,

0 JIKWHX B 6opi>6e HeycTaHHHx

ITo KpenocTH paBHtix CKane⁴⁰

Let us sing of those giants

Who walk on ‘Malaia zemlia’,

Of people, not exhausted by battle,

As strong as a rock.

There is a marked difference between these verses in the attribution of success: to Stalin in the case of Leningrad, and to the military heroes on Malaia zemlia. Malaia zemlia, then, benefited more than Leningrad from its physical distance and political independence from Moscow as this poem fails to toe the party line. Mentions of Stalin in the press had decreased significantly during the months of defeat and retreat from November 1941 to the end of 1942. While Soviet forces were being pushed back, Stalin waited in the wings. At this stage in the war, more press columns were devoted to the generals, especially Georgii Zhukov the troops and even the correspondents themselves, in an overlapping of interests of the military and the journalists.⁴¹ Although censorship had increased with the onset of war, literary critics became gradually less demanding, such that there was more freedom and authority for journalists from the end of 1941 to 1943, as reflected in the song about Malaia zemlia, where the ‘giants’ of Malaia zemlia boast an exaggerated stature similar to that of Stalin himself. However, once the tide of the war had changed after the victory at Stalingrad, previous conditions were re-asserted as mentions and photographs of Stalin reappeared in the press with the re-establishment of his cult of personality towards the end of the war ⁴² This is reflected in the Leningradskaia pravda article of July 1943,⁴³ demonstrating the closeness of the second capital to the political influence of the centre, in comparison with the relative freedom of expression in the same month of Znamia Rodiny on the periphery, still to be reined back into the Stalin-centric fold.⁴⁴

Journalists were also able to privilege the role of the individual ove the state in the development of morale-boosting mythology in the first two years of the war. While not mentioning Stalin by name, Znamia Rodiny refers rather to the many individual communist heroes o Malaia zemlia, with the dedicated troops dubbe ‘dvazhdy kommunisty’ (‘doubly communists’) an ‘trizhdy partiinye’ (‘thrice party-minded’) linking their heroism with their political ideals as in socialist realism, though without reference to their political leader ⁴⁵ All the same Znamia Rodiny correspondents Svetov and Miliavskii make use o Soviet cliches in describing Malaia zemlia as ‘one of the most unforgettable pages in the history of the war’.⁴⁶ Articles an photographs of individual Malaia zemlia heroes in July and Augus 1943 appear to confirm the statement that ‘stories of its heroic defenders will pass down from generation to generation’ ⁴⁷ The oat taken by the troops before departure for Malaia zemlia was similarl invoked to place the heroes of the campaign in a genealogical continuum of strong Soviet men ⁴⁸

According to the military press, the great desire of the troops was to reunite their small beach-head with the rest of the country ⁴⁹ The trope of liberation and reunification was also incorporated into predictions for the not too distant future:

There will come the day when ‘the Small’ will merge with the large Soviet land. But it will always remain Small in the memory of the men who recaptured it from the Hun. Nor will it die in the memory of those who will benefit from its fruits, breathe its air live freely and happily beneath its sky ⁵⁰

Therefore, when Novorossiisk was finally liberated on 16 September 1943, Borzenko was able to write about the accomplishment of what had already been predicted by the embryonic myth, while diplomatically uniting Stalin’s image with that of communism by affirming that the victory had been achieved thanks to Stalin’s leadership and Lenin’ communist ideology:

The epic Malaia zemlia campaign is over. Everyone who stepped onto its shores was a hero. . . .] The burning Small Land was thirsting fo reunion with the Large Soviet land, and this time has come to pass. . . ] Malaia zemlia has been united with the mainland. Soldiers and sailors took off their caps and marched victoriously past the monument to V.I. Lenin, the name of Stalin on their lips.⁵¹

Furthermore, in the same article, Borzenko lauded the decisive role of the landing troops: ‘The Malaia zemlia landing troops played a large role.’ Although this judgment cannot be doubted, Borzenko was one of the commentators who, in the Brezhnev era, helped to build up the myth of Malaia zemlia by exaggerating this role and thereby the strategic significance of the military campaign in Novorossiisk.

A folkloric mechanism for the future construction of collective memory of the past was identified in romantic vein by Svetov and Miliavskii as early as July 1943 in the culmination of an article about a concert of poetry and songs on Malaia zemlia. These home-grown concerts were mainly staged outdoors on quieter evenings ⁵² unlike their more famous counterparts in Leningrad, which occasionally boasted the music of Shostakovich in its concert halls. Concluding the article, Svetov and Miliavskii employ socialist realist theory t extrapolate from the present situation to the future, drawing a paralle between the construction of the war myth and that of a memorial to the recent, but already – according to them – legendary events on Malaia zemlia

‘Malaia zemlia’ is one of the most glorious pages of the Great Patriotic War. Generations will remain grateful for the stories of steadfastness and selfless courage of its heroic defenders for the sake of the motherland. That is why the folk-tale, song and proverb transmitted from mouth to mouth are already carving a monument not made by hands to those unparalleled events taking place in our own age.⁵³

Recalling the troops’ songs and poems about Malaia zemlia, this memorial is not a monument physically created by human hands, but constructed by the more traditional, oral means of evolution of classical myths. In using the phrase ‘nerukotvornyi pamiat’ (‘a memorial not built by hands’), Svetov and Miliavskii invoke the classical literary source of Aleksandr Pushkin’s famous poem ‘Ia pamiatnik sebe vozdvig nerukotvornyi’ (‘I created a monument to myself not built by hands’), 1836, in which Pushkin predicts his own immortality thanks to the enduring legacy of his poetry. Pushkin’s poem recalls Gavriil Derzhavin’ ‘Pamiatnik’ (‘The monument’), 1796, while Derzhavin in turn refers back to Horace’s ‘Exegi monumentum’ (‘I have made a monument’), 23 BC ⁵⁴ Thus allusions to enduring remembrance of Malaia zemlia were made two months before the liberation of Novorossiisk in the context of the canon of traditional Russian poetry and the classical legends of ancient Rome, in a fashion typical of socialist realism both with its reference to ‘Great Time’ and the compression of time.

All three poems claim that the poet’s oeuvre builds an everlasting monument to himself, a creation that will outlast any physically constructed monument ⁵⁵ In using the expression ‘nerukotvornyi pamiat’’ during the Malaia zemlia campaign, the war correspondents are alread looking ahead to the future, according to the norms of Soviet culture when its memory will have attained mythical status on a par with the classical legends, while postulating a traditional mechanism rather tha textual mediation. Just as an historical continuum is an integral part of socialist realism, so a continuum of literary excellence connects Pushkin to Derzhavin and to Horace before them, effecting an implicit comparison between the mythical greatness of the exploits on Malaia zemlia with the feats of the classical heroes. It is also possible to read into the allusion a bold claim by the authors that their work is of a similarly high literary standard. In an interesting juxtaposition of folkloric and high culture and, despite its appearance in the printed press, the article concludes that the oral tradition of propagation, by ‘folk-tale, song and proverb’, is more enduring than any physical monument that may be erected in the future in memory of the dead. This claim can only be supported by a detailed study of the relative efficacy of the main methods for the propagation of memory considered in later chapters.

War correspondence from Malaia zemlia broadly followed the national guidelines on socialist realism, if marginally behind the trend with respect to the lauding of Stalin. By Victory Day the local Communist Party newspaper, Novorossiiskii rabochii (The Novorossiisk Worker), reflected the re-integration of Malaia zemlia with the Bol’shaia zemlia: it was completely at one with the national press with its large photograph of Stalin o the front page and full of official national and international news courtesy of the Soviet Information Bureau.⁵⁶ However, this was at the expense o the new-born mythical identity of Malaia zemlia, which was mentioned only briefly on an inside page two days later. It would have to wait until Brezhnev came to power to become a fully-fledged war myth.