The 900 Days (23 page)

During the December, 1940, military seminars held in the Defense Commissariat every member of the Politburo attended some sessions, but Zhdanov was in constant attendance. Later on, staff members recollected that he was present at almost every meeting.

By February, 1941, Admiral Kuznetsov was filled with concern over Soviet policy, over the reliability of the Nazi-Soviet pact, over the growing possibility of a Nazi attack. He sought a private talk with Zhdanov and specifically asked him why he thought the Germans were moving troops to the east and whether they were not preparing for war.

Zhdanov held to his previous position. He insisted that Germany was in no condition to fight on two fronts. He cited the German experience of World War I and contended that this demonstrated clearly that Germany did not have the strength to conduct war in the east and the west at the same time. He cited the well-known views of Bismarck to back up his evaluation. As for German reconnaissance flights and troop movements, he suggested they were either precautionary measures by the Germans or a kind of psychological warfare, nothing more.

Kuznetsov pressed his points. He noted that the Germans were moving troops to Rumania and Finland and flying over Hangö and Polyarny. Zhdanov did not budge. Kuznetsov could not understand the Leningrad chief. Perhaps Zhdanov based his confidence on private knowledge of the enormous defense works which were being undertaken on the Western frontiers.
¹
Perhaps he knew something from Stalin which was top secret. Many Soviet general officers believed that Stalin had convinced himself Hitler would not attack Russia until he had finished with England. Whatever may have been his reasons, Zhdanov did not explain them. Kuznetsov never understood the basis for Zhdanov’s evaluation. That it remained unchanged up to the eve of war was, however, demonstrated by Zhdanov’s action in leaving Leningrad on June 19. It was not conceivable that he would have departed the northern capital at that moment had he believed German attack was imminent.

Zhdanov’s authority in Leningrad was very nearly as absolute as that of Stalin in Moscow—subject always, of course, to the
diktat
of Stalin.

This meant, in effect, that not the smallest detail of Leningrad business was transacted without Zhdanov’s approval. He had several capable assistants, headed by his principal deputy, Party Secretary A. A. Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, young, vigorous, energetic, kept the city at his fingertips. He was a competent deputy. But he was trained never to act without authority from above.

The totality of this prohibition on independent action became evident only in the emergency on the eve of the war. Because of the absence of Zhdanov from Leningrad, Secretary Kuznetsov found himself literally incapable of taking the normal steps which a deputy would be expected to carry out.

In his total subordination to Zhdanov he reproduced, in miniature, the total subordination of the members of the Politburo to Stalin’s dictatorship. In Leningrad no one challenged Zhdanov. In Moscow no one challenged Stalin. Out of this absolutism, medieval in concept, was to flow the principal source of the tragedy in Russia’s military ordeal, now beginning.

Without Stalin who was to lead? The Defense Commissariat was so much Stalin’s creature that Timoshenko and Zhukov could hardly be expected to give genuine shape and movement to an extraordinarily complex military effort. A new Stavka, or Supreme Command, was set up June 23, but it was nothing but a paper reorganization of the existing High Command. Of course, mobilization of the country’s manpower was fairly simple since, in general, it must follow predetermined lines. But strategy, tactics and diplomacy were another matter. New arrangements, new treaties were pressing. Yet Russia’s diplomats got no instructions for at least a week—clear evidence of the total paralysis of the decision-making apparatus.
²

Admiral Kuznetsov was a member of the Stavka and has given a picture of its “work” in the early days of the war. Stalin was not present at any meetings in June and probably not until nearly the middle of July.
³
Marshal Timoshenko, Defense Commissar, acted as chairman of the Stavka, but the role was only nominal. “It was not difficult to observe,” Kuznetsov recalled, “that the Defense Commissar was not prepared for the role that he had to play. Nor the members of the Stavka either.”

The function of the Stavka was not clear. It had little connection with reality. The members of the Stavka were not subordinate to Timoshenko. Instead of Timoshenko calling upon them for reports, they demanded that he report to them what he was doing. The Stavka’s deliberations concerned only land armies. Only once did Kuznetsov report on naval matters. That was when he advised the Stavka that the cruiser
Maxim Gorky
had been damaged by a mine and that Soviet forces had abandoned Libau. Zhdanov was a permanent member of the Stavka, but his post seems to have been more ceremonial than real.

The first clear-cut action to emerge from the Kremlin was a series of decrees dated June 27, 29 and 30. Those of June 27 and June 29 were general, designed to mobilize the resources of the country. But the wording was suggestive of the difficulty in which the uncertain leadership found itself. The decrees emphasized that despite the “serious threat” to the nation a number of Party, government and social organizations had not yet realized its gravity.

The next day, June 30, a decree was promulgated naming a Committee for State Defense, headed by Stalin. The members of this committee were Molotov, Marshal Voroshilov, Georgi Malenkov and Lavrenti Beria. There is no evidence that Stalin participated actively in their decisions. On June 27 the British Ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps, returned to Moscow from London with Lieutenant General F. N. Mason-Macfarlane and other military specialists for high-level discussions. To his surprise, he and his group were received by Molotov rather than Stalin.
⁴

The Committee for State Defense, in essence, was a junta. It was given all powers of state, and from what is apparent about Stalin’s condition it appears to have been a junta to run the state with or
’without
Stalin. Its membership is a prime clue as to what was happening within the Kremlin, who was in a position of power, who was not.

Voroshilov’s membership on the committee may be disregarded. At no time in his long career did Voroshilov display political initiative. He was Stalin’s crony and creature, and by July he had been sent off to take command in Leningrad. The active members of the junta were Molotov, Malenkov and Beria. Molotov’s role may have been equivocal. Those of Beria and Malenkov were not. These two men were not even full members of the Politburo, the highest political organ of the Communist Party. They were very junior. Indeed, they were among the newest
candidate
members of the Politburo—a very junior status, Beria had attained that stature only two years earlier when Stalin brought him up from Georgia to head the secret police. And Malenkov had been made a candidate member only in February, 1941, a scant four months previously. The core of the junta, thus, was Molotov, Beria and Malenkov, but the two junior members were in a position to outvote the senior one, Molotov.

How these two junior men were able to insinuate themselves into a position of such great influence is not precisely clear. But despite his junior status Beria controlled the police and was an extremely powerful man. The police had infiltrated the Red Army and held a major role in the Foreign Service, in the espionage service and in the Party itself. It is likely that the alliance of Beria and Malenkov, which came fully to light only after Stalin’s death in 1953, had already been forged. In a time of crisis the security forces in any country come to the fore. With Russia at war and in deathly peril, with Stalin incapable of conducting affairs, Beria and Malenkov turned matters to their personal advantage.

If the precise mechanism which they employed is not clear, one thing is plain. While Nazi Panzers ripped apart the country and Stalin was locked in his room in a state of nervous collapse, intrigue, plots and maneuvers held the day within the Kremlin. When the Florentine byplay was over, Zhdanov had lost his role as Stalin’s heir. He was dispatched back to Leningrad to link his personal fate with that of the northern capital, sink or swim.
⁵

It is more than possible that his colleagues saddled Zhdanov with responsibility for the incredible disaster of Soviet foreign policy, of which he had been a leading architect—for the gargantuan error in miscalculating Hitler’s appetites and psychology. The question may even be posed whether Malenkov and Beria—both of whom opposed putting Soviet forces on combat alert and both of whom (with Molotov) had full access to the intelligence warnings of the German attack—did not deliberately permit their country to drift into war with Germany out of some motive of intrigue or ambition. Kremlin politics bars nothing—nothing in the realm of possible goals, nothing in the realm of possible means. Malenkov and Beria may have seen a chance to seize the government and, possibly, negotiating behind Stalin’s back, to extricate Russia from the war by suing for peace with Germany. The cost would be enormous, but their hands would inherit the power.

Whatever the game, whatever the motive, with the creation of the junta the senior members of the Politburo were deliberately excluded from the inner circle. L. M. Kaganovich, A. A. Andreyev (long since forgotten, but in those days often spoken of as a possible successor to Stalin), Anastas Mikoyan, Kalinin, Khrushchev, and the candidate members, N. M. Shvernik, Nikolai Voznesensky and Aleksandr Shcherbakov—all were excluded.

But most notable was the exclusion of Zhdanov. Later on, all this would change. Stalin would resume his primacy. Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Bulganin and Voznesensky would be added to the State Defense Committee. It would cease to be a junta. But Zhdanov would never be named to the charmed circle.

¹
These works were, indeed, conceived on a vast scale. By spring of 1941 a force of 135,714 workers was engaged on the task, including 84 special construction battalions, 25 construction regiments, 201 engineer and sapper battalions, etc. However, by the outbreak of war fewer than 1,000 of 2,300 major artillery emplacements had been completed or equipped. (Review of N. A. Anfilov,
Nachalo Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny
, Moscow, 1963,
Voyenno-lstoricheskii Zhurnal
, No. 8, August, 1963, p. 84.)

²
Maisky in London was dumfounded at his inability to get any response from the Foreign Commissariat.

³
Marshal Andrei Grechko spent the first twelve days of war in the General Staff. It was his task to keep the operations map up to date—no easy matter. He reports that General Georgi K. Zhukov, then Chief of Staff, frequently came to the operations room, studied the map, then took it off to Stavka “to report to I. V. Stalin.” It does not seem likely, in fact, that Stalin participated in Stavka decisions during this period. (Grechko,
Voyenno-Istorischeskii Zhurnal
, No. 6, June, 1966, p. 12.) Incredible as it may seem, Admiral Kuznetsov in a new version of his memoirs published in 1968 insists that Stalin worked “energetically” on June 22 and 23 and that he saw him at a Kremlin meeting June 24,
(Oktyabr
, No. 8, August, 1968, p. 138.)

⁴
Stalin’s first quasi-public appearance was a radio broadcast July 3 at the unlikely hour of 6:30
A.M.
He received the British group July 12, his first meeting with nonintimates after the outbreak of war. (Cassidy,
op. cit
., pp. 57–66.)

⁵
Undoubtedly Zhdanov was severely handicapped by his absence from Moscow and Leningrad. By the time he got back from the Crimea the basic decisions probably had been made.

ON THE STREETS OF LENINGRAD THERE WAS EVERY SIGN that the people were rising in patriotic anger to meet the German threat. Troops paraded down Nevsky Prospekt, singing as only Russian soldiers can sing:

Mobilization points swarmed with volunteers—100,000 the first day, 212,000 within a week.
¹
Leningradskaya Pravda
patrioteered in every column. The leading Party workers were summoned to Smolny on Monday, June 23. Party Secretary Aleksei Kuznetsov ordered them within one hour to submit estimates of the number of workers needed for war production. Another Party Secretary, Ya. F. Kapustin, ordered all essential industry to go onto an eleven-hour day.

But behind the fa9ade of convention and cliche there were gaps in the accomplishment.

Not everyone put patriotism first. Some local Party organizations in the Leningrad area were very slow to turn over tractors and trucks, which were being mobilized for military use. Often they turned over machines which were decrepit or out of repair and held on to the best ones for themselves.

The first days were filled with rumor and alarm. The vagueness of the communiqués concealed the enormity of the disaster at the front. Yet that very vagueness gave rise to the most disquieting rumors.

Two days after the start of the war Ilya Brazhin, a correspondent, went to the October Station to catch a train for Murmansk. He had to wait in line five hours to buy a ticket. The station was calm but jammed with patient, resigned people, mostly women and children. When the train finally pulled up, it was filled within minutes. No one had any real idea of how the war was going. Some had heard rumors that Brest had fallen (Brest already lay a hundred miles behind the German lines, although a small fortress was still holding out). Others had heard that Helsinki had fallen (actually, war between Finland and Russia did not start until the next day, following savage bombing attacks, largely by Soviet naval planes, on bases from which German aircraft were operating).

Thousands of parents sent their children out of Leningrad in the first few days of war, most of them to summer camps west and southwest of the city —to Luga, Tolmachevo, Gatchina—points which were to be directly in the path of German advance. But, of course, no one supposed the enemy might get this close. The danger they feared was the kind of bombing London had suffered. Most of the children were sent off in large groups without their parents—a circumstance which complicated the task of re-evacuation when that became necessary. Within a few weeks thousands of these children (and many of their parents) would be lost in the advance of the German tanks. Many were killed during evacuation. One trainload of more than two thousand youngsters was bombed at Yedrovo with very heavy casualties. A similar incident occurred at Lychkovo. As parents heard rumors of the attacks, they pressed authorities for word of their children, many of whom they were never again to see.

The Leningrad authorities had decided at the end of June to remove 392,000 children from the city. They managed to send out 212,209 in one week, June 29-July 5, of whom 162,439 went into the nearby country and the remainder largely to Yaroslavl. At best estimates, about 115,000 children were re-evacuated from the path of German advance. But thousands fell into German hands.
²

No one in the early weeks could visualize what the war would bring. In many villages of the Leningrad region Party officials took no defense or evacuation precautions at all.

The great Nazi blitz of London was the horror which filled the minds of most Leningraders, official and unofficial. At any moment, they feared, the Luftwaffe might launch its attack. True, the first nights of the war were comparatively peaceful. No major Nazi attempt on the city was made. But the threat was omnipresent. German planes had been seen frequently in the vicinity of Leningrad, and the first alert had been sounded at 1:45
A.M.
, June 23. A group of twelve German JU-88’s flew over the Leningrad area, of which five were claimed to have been shot down.

By nightfall of the first day of war 14,000 air-raid workers had been assigned to posts. The Leningrad City Council quickly ordered the creation of 10,000 special fire-fighting units in factories, offices, stores and apartment houses. A twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock watch was established on the roofs of most buildings. Anything burnable was removed from 18,000 attics. The fire department built new concrete water-storage basins with a capacity of 220,000 cubic yards and installed 500 new water hydrants. It set up 156 fire-fighting platforms and 142 stationary fire reservoirs.

These were the facilities which played a major role in preventing destruction of the city by fire when the Luftwaffe offensive was launched in September.

Leningrad was not only the target of the German offensive. It was a great industrial city, making a major contribution to the Soviet war effort. It had 520 factories and 780,000 workers. It produced 91 percent of Soviet hydro-turbines, 82 percent of turbine generators, 58 percent of steam turbines, 100 percent of direct-current boilers, one-fifth of the country’s machine tools and 10 percent of the total Soviet industrial production. It made much high-quality paper, cloth, yarn, shoes and textiles. It was particularly important in specialized engineering and metalworking—the kinds of industry which had No. 1 priority in the war effort. The Kirov works, founded by the Putilov family, was the greatest machinery plant in the country. It turned out the new heavy KV tanks—60-ton monsters of whose existence the Germans did not dream. The same tanks were produced in the famous Izhorsk metallurgical combine. Other factories made armor plate, heavy artillery, signal equipment, radio transmitters, aircraft. The Baltic shipyards built and supplied the Soviet Fleet.

Typically, Moscow seemed more concerned about the security of these establishments than the defense of Leningrad. On Monday the twenty-third I. M. Zaltsman, director of the Kirov plant, was instructed by Moscow to proceed as quickly as possible to Chelyabinsk in the Urals and investigate whether production of the KV tank could be shifted to the Chelyabinsk tractor works. On Tuesday morning Zaltsman and his chief engineer, Z. Y. Kotin, landed in a special plane on the grounds of the Chelyabinsk factory. They inspected the tractor works, consulted the engineers and sent back their opinion within two days.
³

If, the Kirov men reported, their cadres of workers and special equipment were shipped to Chelyabinsk, the plant could within two or three months produce fifteen KV tanks a day. They opposed an immediate move, and Moscow acquiesced to their view—one in a lengthening train of miscalculations which within weeks was to bring Leningrad, and the whole nation with it, to the brink of disaster.

Instead, on June 25 Moscow ordered the Kirov plant to get the KV tanks into serial production immediately. Parts and sections were subcontracted to fourteen other Leningrad factories, and by July the plant, on a twenty-four-hour shift, had doubled production. It had cut assembly time for the KV to ten hours.

It was not until June 27 that Zhdanov got back into action in Leningrad.
⁴
He had been absent since June 19, and the war had been in progress for five days before he returned to take over the direction of the affairs of the city of which he was the leader. Meetings began immediately at Smolny and went on far into the night. Four thousand Party members were sent on that day to join military units to stiffen morale.

The great Smolny ensemble on the Neva embankment began to take on a shape and form which made it almost unrecognizable to visitors. Camouflage nets were strung over it and spattered with brown, green and gray paint. Many nets were sewn in the Leningrad theaters, and among the seamstresses was Galina^ Ulanova, the famed ballerina. From the air, it was hoped, the Germans would mistake the site for the Summer Gardens. When Lieutenant General A. V. Sukhomlin was driven there for the first time, he asked the sentry, “Am I at Smolny?” “Yes, this is Smolny,” the guard said impassively. Sukhomlin saw nothing familiar about the buildings. The needle spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress gave the camouflage command great difficulties. They had no time to erect a wooden scaffolding. Finally, an engineer clambered up the interior stonework to a height of three hundred feet and found a narrow window which gave onto an outside ladder leading to the top. A workman managed to scale the ladder and put up a rigging from which the spire could be covered.

The Admiralty tower presented even greater problems. An effort was made to drop a rigging onto it from one of the AA balloons. But after two weeks of failures amateur Alpinists, including a music teacher, Olga Fersova, were rounded up. They scaled the tower and splashed the gilded surfaces with dirty gray paint. (It took several years’ effort and enormous expense to remove the camouflage at the war’s end. Scientists experimented with various solvents, and fire towers tried to wash the paint off without success. Finally, Alpinists were called upon again and, protected by great nets, managed to remove the camouflage with chemical solvents.)

Whether the German planes were fooled by these efforts is hard to say, but Soviet airmen insisted loyally they could no longer recognize Smolny, the Winter Palace or the General Staff building.

On the last Friday in June Zhdanov called in one group after another. Workers from the City and District Party organizations were directed to organize a vast cooperative effort with the military. Factories were ordered to carry out four hours of military drill daily in addition to their eleven-hour working shift.

Zhdanov must have been aware by this time of the enormous losses in manpower being suffered on the Leningrad fronts—the virtual destruction of the Eleventh Army, the cruel damage to the Eighth and the melting away of the understrength Twenty-seventh Army. He ordered that a People’s Volunteer Corps be formed—a civilian army that would be given summary training and sent to the front or used as a security force in the rear. Later, other Russian cities adopted the device, but it originated in Leningrad.

The task was placed in the hands of L. M. Antyufeyev, a Party propaganda officer, and N. N. Nikitin, chairman of the Volunteer Air Society. It was decided to enroll 200,000 Volunteers aged eighteen to fifty. In its first days it was called the “Volunteers’ Army,” the “People’s Army” or the “Army for Destroying Fascism.” Later it got the formal name “The Popular Draft.” Major General A. I. Subbotin, one of the Leningrad Party secretaries, was named commander. Arms and officers were to be supplied by the regular army. No thought was given to uniforms.

Once Zhdanov got moving, he moved fast. On July 1—the day after the State Defense Committee, nominally headed by Stalin, was announced— Zhdanov set up his own Leningrad Defense Committee, headed by himself and including Party Secretaries Kuznetsov, Shtykov, Chairman N. V. Solovyev of the Regional Soviet and Mayor P. S. Popkov of the City Soviet. This became known as the “Big Five.” It was empowered to handle almost any operational question in the Leningrad area. Zhdanov set up “quartets"— four-man committees to handle regional and city industrial matters. Troikas were formed in each region of the city. Another troika was set up to handle questions relating to the Young Communists. Many other extraordinary dictatorial groups were also used by Zhdanov to speed the war effort.

The conversion of the city to military production went forward rapidly. By the beginning of July 5 factories had begun to produce artillery and 11 were turning out mortars, 12 were making tanks and armored cars, and 14 were producing flame-throwers. Mass production of grenades had begun in 13 plants, including a toy factory and a stove works. Antitank mines were being made by musical-instrument shops and perfume factories. By August one million Molotov cocktails had been turned out by Leningrad distilleries, filling their bottles with alcohol or gasoline.

But the production of materials for the front encountered ever-increasing difficulties as raw materials and semifinished products failed to be delivered to Leningrad, as factory workers were mobilized into the army, the People’s Volunteers and fortifications work, and as some factories began to be evacuated to the east.

Mobilization of the regular army went well in Leningrad. Two hours after mobilization was announced 91 percent of the men in the Moscow region had reported for duty, and within six hours 98.2 percent had shown up. In the first week of war 212,000 Leningraders signed up to volunteer for military duty, subject to acceptance and physical examination. The numbers ultimately enrolled in the People’s Volunteers are stated differently by different authorities, but it was between 160,000 and 200,000. By the end of enrollment the first day, June 30, 10,890 had signed up. By July 4 the number reached 77,413. In addition, about 90,000 (mostly underage youngsters) were enrolled in auxiliary police detachments.

The first topic which Zhdanov had raised on his return to Leningrad was fortifications. He told an assemblage at Smolny headquarters that “three-quarters of our effort” must be put into the rapid creation of a network of defense works around Leningrad.

This had also been on the mind of General Popov, the Leningrad commander, the moment he got back to Leningrad from the inspection tour he was making when war broke out. He ordered a secondary defense line built along the Luga River, about a hundred miles southwest of the city. He placed Colonel Bychevsky in chargé of this work and named General Konstantin P. Pyadyshev, deputy Leningrad commander, to head what would soon become the Luga Operating Group, a special army to defend the to-be-created line. The Military Council gave approval to the project June 25 at a meeting attended by General Popov, Military Council Member N. N. Klementyev, and Party Secretaries Kuznetsov and Shtykov.