CHAPTER 6
Twenty-eight years after the naming of the first Hero Cities of the Soviet Union, Novorossiisk eventually joined their ranks on 14 September 1973. On Heroes’ Square a wall was erected overnight to mark the award so that, by the next day, the words ‘Hero City’ were evident, made of cement at first, with a later inscription carved in granite. The national press reported a celebratory rally of thousands of workers in the town, with a special sitting of the town’s Communist Party Committee, the Gorkom. The country was reminded of the reason for the honour, while in the local newspaper, Novorossiiskii rabochii, a brief history of the campaign was provided by Georgii Sokolov, the authoritative memoirist of Malaia zemlia.1
The scholarly verdict in the West was less laudatory. Observing the noticeable escalation of the war cult at the beginning of the 1970s, Nina Tumarkin finds that ‘there is no question that Novorossiisk was given the honored title of hero city exclusively because of the Brezhnev connection’.2 It is indeed indisputable that Brezhnev was closely involved with the award at this specific time, in view of his letter of congratulations written on 15 September 1973, which was reported nationwide in Pravda the following day, the thirtieth anniversary of the liberation of Novorossiisk:
Dear Comrades!
Today is one of the most significant days in the history of the glorious town of Novorossiisk! Together with you, I feel sincere joy and pride in my links with the awarding to Novorossiisk of the supreme and honourable title of Hero City.
L.I. Brezhnev3
However, when interviewed, a former head of culture in Novorossiisk claimed that Brezhnev had needed some prompting from the town, which had sent delegations to Moscow over a period of five years prior to 1973 to lobby his aide, Viktor Golikov. They backed up the town’s claim to fame with a portfolio of historical evidence supplied by the Novorossiisk museum director, Evgeniia Makarovna. Personal contacts were apparently deemed crucial to manoeuvring through the minefield of Soviet politics, and Golikov would no doubt have felt sympathetic to the cause, being a native of Novorossiisk and former headmaster of School Number Seven, who in his political career worked alongside Brezhnev for nearly 30 years. In a newspaper interview shortly before his death, Golikov recalled: ‘I did everything for Novorossiisk that I considered useful and necessary.’4 It is likely that Brezhnev was not too hard to persuade of the utility of war memory in view of his close connection with the two towns made hero cities on the same day: both Novorossiisk and then Kerch’ had been liberated by the 18th Army in 1943. In his newspaper article, Sokolov stressed the pride of Novorossiisk in its connections with Brezhnev. The evidence therefore points to Novorossiisk’s having been honoured as a hero city mainly due to the Brezhnev connection, albeit in a slightly more complex way than has previously been assumed.5
Brezhnev had written his letter of congratulations from the Crimea and did not capitalise politically on his links with Novorossiisk by visiting the town that month. Neither had Brezhnev visited Novorossiisk when the town was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War (first class) in May 1966, less than two years after he had become leader of the Soviet Union. As the momentum of the war cult built up in the late 1960s, however, Brezhnev started to attend 18th Army veterans’ reunions in Moscow, notably on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Victory Day in 1970.6 However, although Brezhnev’s name had been associated with Novorossiisk in the national press from 1966, the town had to wait until September 1974 for Brezhnev to return to Novorossiisk and present personally the hero city’s gold star.
The official marking of the award of hero city status in both 1973 and 1974 enabled the town to celebrate the occasions in two different ways. While the festivities of September 1973 were devoted solely to the award, the events of 1974 focused on the person of Brezhnev himself, consolidating his position with regard to Novorossiisk both in the past and in the present, with more significant consequences for the future than simply the gold star he brought with him.
Brezhnev, accompanied by Golikov and two other aides, left for Novorossiisk on 6 September 1974 from Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport,7 with the tone of his visit to Malaia zemlia having been set in the national press. Articles in Izvestiia reminded readers of the significance of the campaign and the constant danger to those on the ground:
So what was Malaia zemlia, then? It was the landings; then standing in trenches nearly up to your knees in hot, spent cartridges, with the cold water of the Tsemes Bay behind you; it was when you could never retreat by even one step.8
The final line refers to Stalin’s infamous ‘Not one step back’ Order Number 227 of July 1942, intended to ensure that soldiers in the Red Army did not have the option to retreat. Those that did were often placed in penal battalions or even executed for cowardice. Establishing Brezhnev’s credentials under these testing conditions, the correspondent writes:
In the hottest days on Malaia zemlia, Colonel L.I. Brezhnev, Head of the Political Section of the 18th Army, was often to be seen. In the hardest days he was alongside the troops.9
According to TASS, Brezhnev flew from Moscow to Anapa, where he changed from an aeroplane to a helicopter for the final leg of his journey to Novorossiisk. His welcome committee at the aerodrome on the site of Malaia zemlia consisted of several veterans and the head of the neighbouring Stavropol’ Region, a certain Mikhail Gorbachev. The official reception over, the delegation proceeded straight to the stele of remembrance on the sea shore at Stanichka, where photographs show them walking to the shore where the landings had taken place.10
Photographs of Brezhnev, the monuments and crowds testify to the atmosphere of the occasion, where veterans wearing medals reportedly joined ‘tens of thousands’ of citizens on the newly cleaned streets to greet the general secretary. Brezhnev then visited significant monuments and sites in the Malaia zemlia hinterland near the village of Myskahko outside Novorossiisk, including the wine cellar in the main building of the communal vineyard, which had acted as the headquarters of the 83rd Marine Infantry Brigade and where Brezhnev had ‘once talked with the heroes of Malaia zemlia’.11
After planting a memorial tree in the so-called Dolina smerti (The Valley of Death) in Myskahko, Brezhnev’s historical tour ended back in the town centre with a visit to the monument to the Unknown Sailor and the laying of flowers at the eternal flame on Heroes’ Square.12
The following day, the official correspondent described further ‘tens of thousands’ of citizens carrying red flags and banners, all heading for the ‘Trud’ Stadium:
We are walking in a dense flood of people to the stadium on this notable day, 7 September 1974. [. . .] Workers from the cement factories and the port, sailors, builders and teachers [. . .] are carrying bouquets of bright flowers, grown on the rocky slopes of Tsemes Bay. The dress uniforms of officers and generals are sparkling with awards and medals.13
As Brezhnev mounted the podium in the stadium, he was apparently greeted with a standing ovation, captured by press photographers, before speaking at length to the assembled crowd and finally presenting the gold star to the town.14
In his speech, which was recorded for posterity,15 Brezhnev outlined in the literary tradition of socialist realism – Novorossiisk’s military and political past, emphasising the continuity of the devotion of its citizens to communism and the building of socialism. He praised the town’s role in 1905 in setting up the first Council of Deputies in the country; its loyalty during the 1917 revolution; the deliberate scuttling in 1918 of a squadron of ships rather than allowing them to fall into the hands of ‘Imperial Germany’; and the rout of the White Guards in 1920 which precipitated their flight from the country at the end of the civil war. Reminding the audience of the lasting impression made by the 1943 episode on all participants, Brezhnev noted the durability of memory, again invoking prime examples of Soviet history to enhance the status of the Malaia zemlia campaign:
If a man has been a direct participant in some important event or other of his times, an event which comes to be the most important turning point in world history, this remains in his consciousness for all his life. It is comparable with the October socialist revolution and the civil war for our party’s older generation.16
Further inflating local events, Brezhnev set them in the context of the strategic battle for the northern Caucasus with its rich supplies of oil. He also referred to the overall campaign in the Don region, thus expanding the significance of the ‘bastion’ of Novorossiisk and enabling a realistic comparison with Stalingrad, an uncontroversial example of a hero city.
Acknowledging creative artists in general, Brezhnev singled out the war correspondent Sergei Borzenko with poet Pavel Kogan for ‘their fighting, passionate words’; sculptors of monuments; and Dmitrii Shostakovich, composer of the Novorossiisk Chimes. Creative work was also evident throughout the visit. Local and national interests combined in the showing of the film Pamiat’ navsegda (Memory is Forever) in Novorossiisk’s ‘Moscow’ cinema, showing Brezhnev meeting 18th Army veterans. Furthermore, on the day of Brezhnev’s arrival, a group of workers was called to the cinema studios to film another documentary, Bitva za Novorossiisk (The Battle for Novorossiisk), presumably to add retrospective credence alongside other shots of Brezhnev’s visit. This artistic response to Brezhnev’s visit ensured its national coverage, incorporated two years later into documentaries marking the general secretary’s seventieth birthday.17 It is worth noting that, while photographs and sound recordings of Brezhnev’s visit provide a valuable record, they could have been staged or edited to a certain extent. The sheer number of similar images, however, indicates that press reports are widely accurate, if referring sometimes to obviously staged meetings with workers and veterans to guide the interpretation of readers.
The tone of Brezhnev’s speech and further meetings was not only military and retrospective, however. It was evident throughout the visit that not only war memory was at play, as Brezhnev also praised the role of local industry in the country’s economy: Novorossiisk apparently produced ‘one quarter of the national tonnage of cement’, while the port was ‘well-known internationally’. Visits were made to the growing port and the ‘Proletariat’ cement works, where Brezhnev was reportedly ‘welcomed everywhere by thousands of residents’. National and local journalists highlighted the postwar regeneration that had brought new life to the ruined town, with the vision of a prosperous future implied by the building of a new school and a maternity hospital with 200 beds.18
This new emphasis on the future appears to have left the townspeople with no little responsibility. According to the press, the response from Novorossiisk was to express a wish to work even harder to fulfil the tasks of the five-year plan,19 with a certain P. Belen’kin of the ‘October’ cement works promising ‘shock work’ tactics: ‘To the supreme award from the Motherland, the cement workers of our factory will respond with supreme productivity.’20 Belen’kin reminded readers of progress since the war: ‘Our factory lay in ruins. In 1948 the citizens of Novorossiisk decided to build a new cement factory on the site of the former one.’ By the following year, the new factory produced its first cement, in the context of a countrywide determination to rebuild factories and increase productivity: ‘We worked as excellently as we fought in the war.’ In this way the fight against the invader during the Great Patriotic War was likened in 1974 to the fight for socialism and the inherent economic productivity attributed to communist ideology. However, in a tacit acknowledgement of the benefits of capitalism and We stern investment, Brezhnev also visited the new Pepsi-Cola factory built with American finance.21 While the national media covered mainly the history behind the award of hero city status, the local emphasis was firmly on the present and even the future.
In the case of events of national interest taking place in Novorossiisk. such as Brezhnev’s visit, the official communiqués were written in Moscow, then telegraphed to Novorossiisk for minor ‘correction’ by local journalists.22 With TASS firmly in control, in what was standard practice at the time, no local interpretation or deviation from the official line was possible. Although the Novorossiisk press reproduced the TASS reports from Moscow during Brezhnev’s stay in Novorossiisk, local reporting after the visitors had left was in a different vein. In Novorossiisk it was possible to see the monuments on Malaia zemlia on a daily basis, which may have caused them to have less impact than when their photographs were seen in Moscow in Pravda or Izvestiia. In contrast, Brezhnev’s interest in the town’s postwar regeneration, housing and employment was of more interest locally than in the distant capital. However, official memory of the war and of Brezhnev’s role on Malaia zemlia remained identical. Brezhnev’s visit endorsed the new hero city, while the town professed particular thanks to the general secretary for its new status, thus promoting Brezhnev’s own growing cult of personality through his historical connection with the Malaia zemlia campaign.
For a few years after Brezhnev’s visit its memory lived on in Novorossiisk. A full account of the event was published the following year,23 while nationally the war cult increased to a climax with the publication of Brezhnev’s memoirs in 1978. The 1979 edition of Sokolov’s memoirs covered Brezhnev’s visit in depth in the final chapter, ‘Thirty Years Later’.24 Similarly, memoirists Grigor’ev, Savitskii and Grezin recalled 7 September 1974 in the Ratnyi podvig Novorossiiska series of memoirs.25 Grigor’ev described the mood in the stadium as Brezhnev appeared on the podium:
There we were in the stadium. Everyone was rooted to the spot in expectation. Suddenly a wave of animation swept through the stadium. Thousands of people stood up, as enthusiastic applause broke out.26
According to Sergei Kudryashov, there is always the danger that the experiences of memoirists become ‘fixed’, being ‘committed to memory, at later points in time’, so leading to biased recollections.27 Although this is noticeable when witnesses repeat the assertions of previous memoirists, in this case it is less likely, as these recollections are supported by photographs, newspaper reports and the testimony of others present at the time. However, these memoirs represent the final phase of adulation of Brezhnev both nationally and locally, as the war cult was dismantled centrally on Brezhnev’s death in 1982. By 1985, Sokolov had removed all references to Brezhnev’s visit, ‘forgetting’ this event, while expanding instead on the mood in the town when it was named a hero city in 1973.28 Although the visit of Brezhnev to Novorossiisk had caused the press and other media to reflect on the Malaia zemlia campaign for a time, its lasting repercussions did not become apparent until 25 years later, by which time many aspects of the visit had developed into local legend.