THE QUESTION OF WHAT TO DO NEXT BURNED IN THE minds of everyone concerned with Leningrad’s defense. It burned in the mind of Andrei Zhdanov. It glowed in the angry eyes of Marshal Zhukov. It flamed in the stout heart of Party Secretary Kuznetsov. And it curled and circled through the crafty mind of Iosif Stalin.
But the motivations of these men were not necessarily the same. Zhdanov’s fate was tied to that of Leningrad. He must and would fight to the end for the northern capital. Zhukov was the emergency commander, sent in at the last moment to do the impossible. He would do it, sacrificing anything and anyone to that end. Then he would go on to the next emergency. Party Secretary Kuznetsov was bound to Zhdanov. He sank or was saved depending on Leningrad’s future. Stalin was something else again. His motives were never clear, never simple, and he was surrounded in the Kremlin by men for whom intrigue and plot and ambition were more important than any city or any battle.
No one knew at this point whether Leningrad could or would be saved. Some, certainly, thought that it should not be saved. But of this there was no sign in the streets of the city, where youngsters appeared with pails of whitewash and began to paint over the street signs and blank out the house numbers. The city was preparing for street fighting, and if the Germans broke in there was to be no aid from the signposts. The Nazis would, it was hoped, lose themselves in the maze of avenues and buildings.
The city had been divided into six sectors for block-by-block defense, taking into account the water barriers and bridges of the city. A special staff for internal defense had been established. Street barricades were thrown up—not merely paving blocks and timbers, but jungles of ferroconcrete, railroad iron, steel tubing, capable of halting tanks and standing up under air bombardment.
There were three main areas. The northern sector extended from the Finnish Gulf to Murino, Vesely PÖselok, Ruchyi Station and the metallurgical factory. It was bordered on the east by the north bank of the Neva and the Malaya Neva and included the Petrograd side and Aptekarsky island. The eastern sector adjoined the northern sector and extended to Rybatskoye. It included the city region on the north bank of the Neva. The southwestern sector covered the area from the Finnish Gulf to the south bank of the Neva.
The principal barrier around the city was the Circle Railroad. A second interior line was set up from the coaling docks to Alekseyevka, Avtovo, Slobodka, Alexandrovskoye, the village of Nikolayev, Farforovy Station, Volodarsky, and the Lomonosov factory.
To the south the defense region consisted of three sectors—the Kirov, Moscow and Volodarsky; to the north—the Coastal and the Vyborg; and to the southwest the Gatchina.
The city sewer department laid out an underground system through the great Leningrad conduits. Far below the pavement, safe from bombardment, communications lines and supply routes were set up through which ammunition and reinforcements could swiftly be rushed from one threatened area to another.
Special “extermination” points were built into manholes and sewer openings for directing fire at oncoming German tanks. In the ground floors of corner buildings ferroconcrete pillboxes were nested inside the structures, and supports were installed so that if the upper stories were wrecked strongpoints on the ground floor could continue to operate.
The bridges were plotted, and Colonel Bychevsky had special orders to be prepared to destroy them the moment they were threatened by German attack.
Every section of the city was directed to form new groups of Volunteers —150 in all, composed of 600 persons each. These got the designation of Workers Battalions.
Each Workers Battalion sector was defended by 8 reinforced machine-gun nests, 46 ordinary machine-gun points, 10 antitank positions, 2 76-mm gun posts and 13 mortar positions. Their barricades were specified to be 8 feet high and 12 feet thick. Each sector was to be protected with about 11.43 miles of barricades.
The task of coordinating construction of the city’s defenses was placed in the hands of the NKVD, the internal police, on August 29. The police with their labor battalions had already been deeply involved. Now they had full responsibility, mobilizing not only prison labor, their own special construction forces, but the army of ordinary citizenry. More than 475,000 citizens, one-third of the city’s able-bodied citizens, were put to work in ensuing months. The statistics of work accomplished and human beings engaged are staggering. In September a daily average of 99,540 persons worked on fortifications. In October the figure was 113,300. As late as January, 1942, 12,000 were still at work.1
Everyone lent a hand. On September 3 the Military Council of the Leningrad Front mobilized 5,000 persons from each city region—a total of 80,000 persons for defense work within the city. They built 17,000 embrasures in buildings and houses, constructed 4,126 pillboxes and firing points and 17 miles of defensive barricades.
Even schoolchildren built fortifications. More than a thousand came from the Smolny region, 350 from the Moscow region. There was no end to the labor poured into this work by youngsters, by old men and women, by middle-aged spinsters and teen-age youths. More than 480 miles of antitank barriers were constructed, 17,874 miles of trench systems, and 420 miles of barbed-wire barricades. More than 5,000 wood-and-earth and concrete pillboxes were set up.
The Yegorev factory turned out 1,750 steel “hedgehogs” to bar tanks from the city. It tested them by dropping 1 ½-ton blocks on the frames from a height of 25 feet. Not all of the hedgehogs passed the test. The same plant specialized in building “Voroshilov hotels” for the reception of the Nazis. These were steel-frame pillboxes in which antitank guns and artillery were installed.
Every effort was made to provide the newly formed Workers Battalions with weapons. But the shortages were intense. Old guns, flintlocks and muzzle-loaders, were taken from museum walls. Even so, in the Volodarsky region the Workers Battalions had only 772 rifles, 3 machine guns, 16 submachine guns and 3 mortars. In the Red Guard region there were 992 rifles, 15 machine guns and 2 mortars available.
Each factory had its fighting detachments. The Bolshevik factory battalion numbered 584 men, that of the factory named for Lenin 412, the Proletarian locomotive works 201, the October car works 356. In the Volodarsky region there were 3,500 workers in 5 battalions. By September 1 the city had 79 Workers Battalions with 40,000 fighters.
Another two People’s Volunteer divisions and three mortar battalions were formed for internal city defense. Despite the shortage of arms, 4,000 rifles were found for an antiair corps, and some additional guns were distributed to factories for the defense of their grounds if the Germans broke through.
The city hoped to muster 26 rifle divisions and 6 tank battalions for the final battle, street by street. It had about 1,205 guns, or approximately 30 per mile of front, and 85 antiaircraft batteries. There were 50 antitank batteries.
The Party concentrated every ounce of strength on stiffening the fighting ranks of those defending Leningrad. On September 9, 300 experienced Party workers were sent to the front “at the disposition of the command.” Three days later 3,000 Communists and Komsomols were mobilized to serve as front-line political officers. The next day 500 more were drafted to serve with the inner-line defenses.
A mass meeting of 2,500 youngsters was held September 14 at the Tauride Palace. Old workers who had fought the White Guards spoke. So did Vsevolod Vishnevsky, who exclaimed: “Forward, comrades! Forward, youth! Forward, Leningraders! We will conquer!” The youngsters swore an oath to die before surrendering Leningrad, and hundreds marched straight from the assembly to the front. Rifles were passed out to them as they formed up outside the palace. Vishnevsky’s speech was recorded and played to troops in the battle zone.
On September 15, fifty-two top Party leaders were sent from civilian posts to fighting duty. The calls for Communists to take front-line positions came, hour by hour. There was no time for preparation. Secretary A. A. Kuznetsov called in Party worker A. A. Trakhachev and said he must have 200 trained artillerymen in 24 hours. The next day the “artillerymen” went off to their units. Five hundred Communists were mobilized for combat political work on an hour’s notice.
Controls on movement of population, already strict, had been tightened. Since August 24 all movement in the city between the hours of 10 P.M. and 5 A.M. had been forbidden. The highways leading into the city were barricaded. On September 18 three interior lines were set up on the south and southwest approaches to the city. Special Komandaturas prevented people from coming in or out of the city without full identification. The number of police in the city had been radically increased. There had been 36 police commands, with personnel of 352. Now the figure was 2,321. Special police posts had been set up in 1,250 institutions and factories and 80 special rooftop observation posts.
The Workers Battalions were placed on twenty-four-hour call. They slept in their factories or offices. The Military Council was trying to arm them with whatever came to hand—grenades, Molotov cocktails, reconditioned arms. Improvised antitank guns had been mounted on streetcar platforms, trucks and buses.
Machine-gun posts were set up in areas where German paratroops might drop—the Haymarket, Theater Square, Vorovsky, Commune, Trud, Vos-staniya, Plekhanov, the Champs de Mars, Palace Square, Isskustvo, Diktatur, Narva, Revolution, Leo Tolstoy squares, the park named for May 1, the Tauride Palace gardens, the Volkov Cemetery, Lenin Park, the Botanical Gardens, Chelyuskintsev Park and the Smolensk Cemetery. Similar precautions were taken on the outskirts of the city at such places as Porokhove, Rzhevka, Piskarevsky, Grazhdanka, Lesnoi and Kolomyagi.
As Red Army troops fell back into the city, they would take over command of the interior barriers now manned by NKVD troops.
In the ensuing street battles the workers’ formations and all the general population were expected to take part. They would be commanded by the chief of each sector.
The task of the Baltic Fleet was to support the city with its naval guns and the guns mounted in land batteries. It was especially to guard against amphibious landings from the Gulf of Finland.
When Admiral Panteleyev came into Leningrad from Kronstadt after an absence of a week, he found the streets transformed—everywhere there were hedgehogs of railroad iron, concrete blocks and pillboxes. In the squares stood batteries of antiaircraft or antitank guns. Normal traffic had disappeared.
From the Neva most of the serviceable warships of the Baltic Fleet directed a ceaseless cannonade against the Germans in the suburbs.
The Germans now were within range of the guns of the cruiser Gorky and the battleship October Revolution (the former Petropavlovsk). The Marat was beginning to bring them under fire. As he returned to Kronstadt, passing through Avtovo, Panteleyev recognized the deep whine of 180-mm shells from the Maxim Gorky, which was stationed near the grain terminal of the commercial port. He heard, too, the guns of the Marat, which was at the entrance of the Sea Canal and was now opening up with its 12-inch guns.
The Germans had begun a propaganda drive, designed to create the impression that Leningrad was about to fall. Hitler congratulated von Leeb on his great success in the Leningrad campaign. General Jodl, Chief of Staff, flew to Helsinki to award Marshal Mannerheim the Iron Cross for the Finnish victories. He also promised to send the Finns 15,000 tons of wheat.
On September 6 the High Command of the Wehrmacht began to discuss the fall of Leningrad in its communiqués. “The encirclement of Leningrad is progressing,” the communiqué said. A special press conference of foreign correspondents was called in Berlin. They were told that all the Soviet troops in the Leningrad area had been drawn into a noose and faced either starvation or extermination. The Germans had decided, it was said, not to storm the city simply for reasons of prestige. They had no desire to suffer unnecessary losses. If Leningrad did not surrender, it would suffer the fate of Warsaw and Rotterdam—total destruction by air and artillery bombardment.
The Germans appeared to believe their own propaganda. Hitler approved a directive dated September 6 for the mounting of his offensive against Moscow. It called for Army Group Nord to transfer not later than September 15 its Panzer and mechanized divisions and its dive bombers to the Moscow front.
Hitler insisted that von Leeb draw the tightest kind of circle around Leningrad. Secretly, the Fuhrer instructed von Leeb that the city’s capitulation was not to be accepted. The population was to die with the doomed city. Random shelling of civilian objectives was authorized. If the populace tried to escape the iron ring, they were to be shot down.
No hint of this brutal decision was made public.
Thousands of German leaflets rained down on Leningrad. Most residents feared even to pick them up lest they be seized and shot by the special “destroyer” battalions of workers, chargéd with maintaining internal defense. But by word of mouth the message of the leaflets spread. They were addressed to the women of Leningrad and they said: “Take every opportunity to convince your husbands, sons and friends of the senselessness of struggling against the German Army. Only by ending the battle of Leningrad can you save your lives.” Leaflets directed to the Soviet troops proclaimed: “Beat the Political Commissars—throw a brick in their snouts.”
Haider, always a skeptic where the operations of Army Group Nord were concerned, now reflected the optimism that was felt in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters. On September 12 he made the entry:
“Leningrad: Very good progress. The enemy begins to soften on the front of Reinhardt’s corps. It would appear that the population does not want to take a hand in defense. The Commander in Chief Nord [von Leeb] vehemently wants to keep Reinhardt’s corps.”
The next day, the thirteenth, he laconically noted that he had agreed to let von Leeb keep the armored corps for the continuance of the drive on Leningrad, and two days later he reported that the “assault on Leningrad had made good progress.”
It had, indeed, made good progress. There was some truth in the German belief that not all Leningraders were prepared to defend their city to the last. One Soviet officer was convinced that the path into Leningrad lay practically open. Had the Nazis simply thrust forward, they would have brushed aside the weakening front-line units and won the day. Kochetov, who was quite ready to see the worst in his fellow citizens, was suffused in pessimism. According to his account Soviet secret police uncovered not only German spies, sympathizers and agents but individuals who were forming “fighting groups” which would lead an uprising in Leningrad to coincide with the culminating storm of the city by the Germans.
What about the city’s ability to defend itself once the Germans broke in—if they broke in?
Kochetov, like the other Leningraders, could observe the hundreds of machine-gun posts, the antitank traps, the embrasures built into the buildings, the internal-defense preparations. The general view, he thought, was that there were “not too few, not too many” of these pillboxes. Were there enough? Could the city rely on them? That was the question. It is apparent from Kochetov that not everyone did. He insists that he and his friends did believe that the city’s defenses would hold. Others had their doubts— among them Stalin, as was evident in Admiral Kuznetsov’s curious discussion with him in the Kremlin September 13 about preparing the Baltic Fleet for destruction.
On the evening of the thirteenth Admiral Tributs returned to Kronstadt from his daily session at Smolny considerably earlier than usual. He had met the new front commander, Marshal Zhukov, and he had new orders. Admiral Panteleyev found Tributs unusually gloomy when he arrived at the Kronstadt staff dock on the Italian Pond across from the headquarters building. He felt immediately that something serious had happened. Tributs listened inattentively to the routine reports and then called his chief of operations, his chief of rear services, and Panteleyev into his office.
All knew that Leningrad was being prepared for street battle, that every house, every building, every square was to be defended. They knew of the staff of internal defense which had been formed, and they knew that every possible measure was being taken for saving the city.
The three officers waited with pencils and notebooks in hand for Tributs’ orders.
“The situation at the front is critical,” Tributs said. “A terrible battle is under way. Leningrad will be defended to the last possibility. But everything is possible. If the Fascists break into the city, troikas have been set up at all institutions and military objectives to destroy everything that might fall into the enemy’s hands. AH bridges, factories, institutions, are to be mined. If the enemy breaks into the city, he will die in its ruins.”
A long pause followed. The Admiral wiped the perspiration from his brow and continued:
“The Stavka demands that not one ship, not one supply dump, not one cannon in Kronstadt fall into enemy hands. If the situation demands, all are to be destroyed. The staff and the rear services must immediately draft a plan for mining every ship, fort and warehouse. Before the ships are scuttled the personnel must be taken ashore, formed into ranks and marched to the front.”
Tributs told his associates to carry out the orders immediately.2 Panteleyev admitted that the announcement stunned him. “All kinds of unpleasant thoughts arose in my mind,” he said.
The task of working up the plans, placing the mines, establishing the order in which crews would be removed from the doomed ships and of handling their actual destruction, was placed in the hands of what Panteleyev called “especially firm, dedicated Communists” for it was a matter which required great political strength. There had to be the most careful precautions to see that no catastrophes occurred such as the premature blowing up of some of the ships. While Panteleyev had no doubt about the steadfastness of the Communist organization in the fleet, nevertheless the strictest vigilance would be required of every Party man.
Late in the evening while the orders for scuttling were being typed up, General Mitrofan I. Moskalenko, chief of rear services, came into Pantele-yev’s office. He sat down on an old sofa, pushing aside an ashtray and a roll of maps, and waited for Panteleyev to get off the telephone.
“Tell me,” Moskalenko said, “what does it take to get rid of this old divan? It must be a hundred years old. It’s good for nothing but the rubbish heap.”
The two men sat and talked about refurnishing the staff headquarters while they waited for the typists to bring them their lists of military objectives, broken down into categories: “To be scuttled,” “To be blown up,” “To be set afire.”
One sailor selected to assist in mining warehouses at the naval docks never forgot the hopeless gesture with which his commanding officer gave the squad its orders to place bombs under all the warehouses of the military port. Depth bombs. They were to be wired together so that a single thrust of the plunger would send the whole port up in one tremendous explosion.
The sailors went to work setting out the bombs while the port workers continued to move supplies in and out, keeping a fearful eye on the terrible business at hand.
The first intimation Colonel Bychevsky had that the destruction of the city was contemplated came when he was called back from the front late on the evening of September 15. He had worked all day in the Pulkovo region, where the situation was unbelievably serious. The Germans had cut the front of the Forty-second Army by reaching the Strelna-Leningrad highway, and two Nazi divisions were attacking toward Strelna and Volodar-sky. The 21st NKVD Division under Colonel M. D. Panchenko had fallen back into Ligovo.
Bychevsky was received immediately by General Khozin, who asked, “Are the Leningrad bridges mined? Where are your plans and maps? Give me a report on all this in the morning.”
To be called back in the evening when the reports weren’t needed until morning didn’t seem natural to Bychevsky. He knew Khozin well. He noted in Khozin’s voice something that sounded like alarm. Bychevsky was deeply troubled.
In the morning of the sixteenth he was back at Khozin’s office and laid before Khozin the plans which had been drafted for blowing up the Leningrad bridges. He pointed out how he would get electric power to detonate the explosives and the command arrangements for touching off the chargés.
“Where are the explosives?” Khozin demanded.
“The Military Council thought it was not appropriate to put them under the bridges,” Bychevsky replied.
Khozin ordered him to rework his plans and submit them within twenty-four hours, including the placing of chargés in the galleries which already had been prepared under the bridges. Khozin asked for precise details on time, men and materials needed to put the plan into action.
It was apparent to Bychevsky that Khozin was speaking under orders. It seemed that the matter was not merely one of mining the bridges.
“What supplies of explosives do we have available?” Khozin asked.
“The supply in the city is limited to some tens of tons,” Bychevsky said. “But the Party committee is taking measures to increase production. We are having serious difficulty with TNT, which is essential for antitank mines in the fighting zone.”
“I am talking not about the operational area,” Khozin said, “but about the operational rear.”
What kind of “operational rear” did Khozin mean? Bychevsky decided to put the question.
“You are talking about the city of Leningrad, Comrade General?”
“Yes,” said Khozin, “in a certain case.”
The next day, the seventeenth, the “certain case” became clear. The Military Council ordered that forty tons of explosives from the army engineers’ supplies be turned over to “regional troikas.” The heads of the troikas were the first secretaries of the Party organizations in the Kirov, Moscow, Volo-darsky and Lenin regions.
During the day the explosives were passed out to the troikas. They had orders to blow up every important object in their districts if the Germans broke into the city in strength.
Each regional troika issued a sealed packet to the subordinate troikas which had been set up in the big factories, institutions and buildings in its area. There were 141 of these lesser troikas. None of the lower echelons knew the exact contents of the sealed packet. They knew it was to be opened only if the Germans broke into the city in strength. Some, certainly, knew the contents more precisely—orders to blow up the buildings and march out to fight a final battle with the Nazis.
In each institution a close, armed, dedicated group of Communists was formed to carry out whatever order was given. These groups knew that one duty was to destroy the city by demolishing every large building, every bridge, every factory, every important objective within the limits of Leningrad.
At the Izhorsk factory, for example, which had continued to operate under Nazi shelling even though it was virtually on the front line, explosive chargés and detonators were set under the cranes and presses. In the great petroleum reservoir a cylinder of hydrogen had been placed. At a signal the hydrogen could be released into the oil, touching off an explosion of tremendous force.
At the Kirov works the troika was headed by the regional Party Secretary Yefremov. He directed the placing of explosive chargés under the blast furnaces, the rolling mills and the railroad viaduct under which the great KV tanks rolled as they emerged from the works and headed directly to the front just up the streetcar line at the seventh station stop from the factory.
The whole territory south of the Circle Railroad had been cleared of institutions and factories. Some twenty-one factories had been evacuated to the “rear” of the city—to the Vyborg and Petrograd sides and to Vasilevsky Island. All of these evacuated plants were ready to be blown up at the touch of the plunger. The Izhorsk plant—what could be moved of it—had been shipped out. More than 110,000 residents of the Narva, Moscow and Neva Gates areas had been evacuated. This region was to be a no-man’s land.
Would the signal be given?
The night of the sixteenth-seventeenth was the most alarming Leningrad had experienced, especially in the southern areas adjacent to the fiercest battles.
At 15 minutes to 11 P.M. G. F. Badayev, secretary of the Moscow region, called by telephone to all the directors of factories and big institutions in his region. This night, he warned, the Germans might break into the city from the south. He ordered the Workers Battalions, with all fighting equipment, to man the barricades.
Similar orders went to all factories and institutions in the Narva and Neva Gates regions.
“At thirty minutes past midnight we went into our positions,” M. Stra-shenkov, a commander of a Workers Battalion at the Kirov works, jotted in his diary. “They are not far from the factory. Two pillboxes have been completed. One is half finished and a fourth hasn’t been started.”
All Communists, all Young Communists, all “non-Party activists” in the city were put on alarm and ordered to sleep at their posts.
The Workers Battalions at the great Elektrosila factory, the Bolshevik factory, the Izhorsk works, were on No. i Alert.
The threat to the Elektrosila plant became so great—the Germans were only about 2½ miles away—that all personnel were evacuated and a force of 1,100 workers occupied a perimeter defense system of pillboxes and trenches, in expectation of a Nazi breakthrough.
That morning the leading article in Leningradskaya Pravda was headlined: “Leningrad—To Be or Not to Be?”
Four days later, the night of the twentieth-twenty-first, Bychevsky was again called to Smolny in the early hours before dawn. He was handed an urgent order to prepare the central Leningrad rail system and all its approaches for destruction. He was appalled. Destruction of the rail network meant the end. He tried to get some explanation from General Khozin. Khozin coldly told him, “I’m occupied. Carry out the order.” His only comfort was that his old friend General P. P. Yevstigneyev, chief of intelligence, didn’t seem to think that the plan would have to be carried out.
Rumors and hints that Leningrad was being prepared for destruction raced through the city despite every effort to keep the enterprise secret. Too many knew. The plans were too alarming. Word spread. Aleksandr Rozen heard of it almost as soon as the orders were given. He lived in a big apartment house midway between the Leningrad Post Office and the Central Telegraph—two prime objectives of Nazi bombing, two buildings doomed to destruction. Not until years later when he read General Bychevsky’s memoirs did he know the whole story—that orders had been given to destroy the whole rail network. “But what I had already learned that night was more than sufficient,” he grimly noted.
Everyone waited. They waited for the signal to blow up the city. But it did not come.
Had the Germans broken in, Leningrad would have been destroyed.
That clearly was Stalin’s intention: destroy the city of revolution and march out to final battle with the Nazis. This was the plan—if the lines did not hold.
Moscow had been burned to thwart Napoleon. An even more Dantesque catastrophe awaited Adolf Hitler if his jack-booted troops and his snub-snouted Panzers burst through the Narva Gates.
There would be no victory parade past the Winter Palace, no reviewing stand in Palace Square, no ceremonial banquet in the Hotel Astoria. All this—all that symbolized imperial Russia, all that had been created by Peter and Catherine, the Alexanders and the Nicholases,3 all that had been built by Lenin’s workers and those who had slaved for Stalin—all this was doomed to a twentieth-century Gotterdammerung. Hitler would have no chance to erase the hated cradle of Marxism from the earth. It would be erased by its creators.
1 900, pp. 82–83. These figures may be slightly inflated. Other sources place the September 1 figure at 38,000, that of September 10 at 43,000, of September 20 at 66,000 and of October 1 at 90,000 {Leningrad v VOV, p. 79).
2 The formal order of the Leningrad Command apparently was dated September 15. (Leningrad v VOV, p. 155.)
3 Perhaps not all of imperial Petersburg was doomed. Party Secretary Kuznetsov visited Peterhof September 8 to oversee the packing of its treasures. He categorically forbade that the buildings be mined. (Bychevsky, op. cit., p. 83.) Machine-gun nests were set up on the roof of the Winter Palace to fire into Palace Square in case of a Nazi paratroop attempt. They were ordered removed in late September by the Leningrad Command. Similar installations at other historic sites were also removed in order not to give the Germans an excuse for attacking them. (S. Varshavsky, Podvig Ermitazha, Leningrad, 1965, p. 64.)