The 900 Days (51 page)

Zhukov and his aides found Voroshilov, Zhdanov and Party Secretary Kuznetsov awaiting them at Smolny. The ceremonies were curt. After Zhukov had signed for the operational charts he went to the VC telephone and called Moscow. Marshal Vasilevsky was at the Moscow end of the line. Zhukov said, “I have taken over command. Report to the High Command that I propose to proceed more actively than my predecessor.” That was all. Voroshilov did not talk to Moscow. He left the room without a word.

Voroshilov called to his office his chief commanders—Generals A. A. Novikov, V. P. Sviridov, N. A. Bolotnikov, P. P. Yevstigneyev, and Colonels I. N. Kovalev and Bychevsky. He gloomily shook each man’s hand.

“Farewell, comrades,” he said. “They have called me to headquarters. . . .” Voroshilov paused and then continued: “Well, I’m old and it has to be! This isn’t the Civil War—it has to be fought in another way. . . . But don’t doubt for a minute that we are going to smash those Fascist bastards right here. . . . Their tongues are already hanging out for our city, but they will choke on their own blood.”

Within the hour Voroshilov and most of the staff which had been with him since he took over the Northwest Front had flown off to Moscow.

Voroshilov, almost certainly, expected to be shot on his arrival in Moscow. This was the fate which Stalin meted out to generals who were relieved of command. That this was his expectation is strongly hinted by Dmitri V. Pavlov, the State Defense Committee’s supply representative in Leningrad. In a tribute which emphasizes Voroshilov’s personal bravery and the risk to which he subjected his life, Pavlov stresses the shock of Voroshilov’s removal and the fact that Voroshilov did not know—nor did anyone—that he would ever again step foot in Leningrad.

Pavlov absolves Voroshilov of responsibility for the disasters which befell Leningrad from July to September. The fault lies elsewhere, he feels, and he urges the “deepest study and enlightenment” of this phase of the war.
⁴

One villain he singles out—as does almost every Soviet writer—the criminally inept and vicious “police” general, G. I. Kulik. Kulik had been put in command of the Fifty-fourth Army with orders to prevent the breakthrough to Mga and, then, to recapture Mga. He failed miserably. In part, the fault was sheer military illiteracy. In part, it was tardiness, bureaucracy, dilatory movement. Kulik, in Pavlov’s opinion (and that of many other commentators), could have saved the day. He lost it. But the legend of the “savior army,” the Fifty-fourth, lived on for weeks in Leningrad. The besieged residents expected again and again that the Fifty-fourth Army would drive through the German lines and free them. It never did. Kulik was removed from command of the Fifty-fourth in late September. But the damage had been done.

The arrival of Zhukov and the change in command did nothing to lessen the threat to Leningrad. On the twelfth the Germans had taken Krasnoye Selo, Peterhof, Strelna and the Duderhof Heights. They pounded in at Ligovo (Uritsk) on the thirteenth and managed to occupy a series of villages on the edge of Leningrad—Konstantinovka, Sosnovka and Finskoye Koirovo.

From the cupola of the Pulkovo observatory the whole battlefield could be seen. Kochetov and Mikhalev climbed the tower. Shells were landing nearby, and they did not stay long. But through the smoke and dust they could see Ligovo, Krasnoye Selo, Pushkin and Pavlovsk. Great naval shells burst in the distance, throwing columns of earth fifty and one hundred feet into the air. They saw little clusters of German tanks, here three, there five. And behind the tanks straggled long black lines—these were the German infantrymen. A battalion of Russian artillery nearby was firing on the tanks and the German infantry. It was stationed in an open field, and the grass around the guns was aflame from shell bursts. The sound of shells and the echo of explosions was constant. Overhead there was the drone of Messerschmitts, Heinkels and Junkers.

This was the night that Olga Berggolts stood guard duty with Nikolai Fomin, commandant of the “Tears of Socialism” building where she had lived so long. It was dead quiet on Ulitsa Rubinshtein, no traffic, not a vehicle moving. She could hear clearly the roar of distant cannon.

“The Germans have taken Strelna,” Fomin said. “They have broken through to Red Putilov.” He used the old name for the great Kirov works. It was a night of the full moon, about which the Nazis had warned, a night of wild rumors, including a persistent one that the Germans were about to use gas. The report about Red Putilov was correct. Nazi cycle detachments and light tanks had smashed through into Stachek Prospekt, right at the gates of the Putilov works, before being wiped out.

“The shame of it!” Fomin said suddenly. “The shame of it all ... to let them in . . .”

Fomin clambered up to the rooftop. Below at the entrance to the “Tears of Socialism” building Olga Berggolts and the porteress stood at their posts, clutching gasoline-filled bottles to hurl at Nazi tanks if they broke through to Ulitsa Rubinshtein.

The Germans were smashing again and again and again at the weakened Forty-second Army. By the fifteenth they had concentrated their 1st, 58th and 291st infantry divisions and their 36th Motorized Division against the faltering Forty-second. The Forty-second had already been given the last reserve division at the disposition of the Leningrad Command—the 10th Rifle Division. But still it could not hold on.

On the thirteenth, or possibly the fourteenth, Dmitri Shcheglov, the writer-turned-Volunteer officer, telephoned Party Secretary Kuznetsov and asked to see him urgently. Shcheglov’s unit of People’s Volunteers was holding a sector on the Neva and it had almost run out of ammunition. Kuznetsov asked Shcheglov to come to Smolny immediately. Despite the tension Shcheglov found the ground floor of Smolny quiet. But on the third floor where Kuznetsov had his offices there was bustle and many uniforms. Shcheglov gave Kuznetsov a quick report. Kuznetsov nodded, took notes, thanked him for the report and promised to see to the munitions. As Shcheglov rose to leave, an officer came in and said he had very urgent news. “Already?” Kuznetsov asked. “Exactly,” the officer said. “It’s beginning.”

“It” was the German storming of Leningrad.

Could any of the lines hold? Could the city be saved?

Zhukov had never been in a more foul mood—and he was not noted for easy temper.

Bychevsky was summoned to his presence on the fourteenth and gave him a general report on the fortifications. Zhukov listened in indifference, then suddenly interupted sharply: “Who are you?”

“Chief of the Engineering Corps of the front, Colonel Bychevsky.”

“I asked you who you are,” Zhukov snapped. “Where do you come from?”

His voice was angry, and his chin was thrust forward. His heavy, short figure loomed over the desk.

Bychevsky was baffled. He decided Zhukov wanted his biography and proceeded to outline his career briefly.

“You have taken Khrenov’s place,” Zhukov snapped. “O.K. And where is General Nazarov? I called for him.”

“General Nazarov,” Bychevsky explained, “worked in the staff of the Northwest Front Command and coordinated engineering matters between the two fronts. He has flown off with Marshal Voroshilov.”

“Coordination . . . flying away,” snapped Zhukov. “The hell with him. So go ahead and report.”

When Bychevsky had reported, Zhukov, accidentally or not accidentally, brushed Bychevsky’s papers on the floor. As Bychevsky picked them up, Zhukov glanced at them and asked about some locations for tanks. Bychevsky explained the tank groups were not real—they were mock-ups made by the Mariinsky Theater. He added that they had deceived the German reconnaissance.

“The fools!” Zhukov said. “Get another hundred of them tonight, and tomorrow morning put them in these two places near Srednyaya Rogatka— here and here.”

Bychevsky said the theater workmen couldn’t turn out a hundred fake tanks in one night.

Zhukov raised his head and looked Bychevsky up and down.

“If you don’t do it, I’ll have you court-martialed,” he said. “Who’s your commissar?”

“Colonel Mukha,” Bychevsky said.
(Mukha
means “fly” in Russian.)

“Mukha,” said Zhukov. “Very well, tell this Mukha that you’ll go together before the tribunal if you don’t carry out the order. I’ll check upon you tomorrow myself.”

Zhukov took the same tone with all the commanders. Colonel Korkodin, chief of operations, was packed off to Moscow after one brief talk with Zhukov. Two days after his arrival Zhukov fired Major General F. S. Ivanov, commander of the Forty-second Army, and within a week had removed the commander of the Eighth Army, Major General V. I. Shcherbakov and Commissar I. F. Chukhnov, the Eighth Army’s Military Council member.

On the afternoon of the fifteenth Zhukov rushed Fedyuninsky out to the Pulkovo Heights, a two-hundred-foot ridge which overlooks Leningrad from the southwest. Here was located the famous Pulkovo astronomical observatory. The Pulkovo Heights were defended by the 5th Division of People’s Volunteers, and their position had been gravely weakened by the loss of Krasnoye Selo.

The 708th Rifle Regiment and the 21st NKVD Division had been sent to reinforce the Pulkovo position, but the lines were not holding.

Fedyuninsky located the Forty-second Army staff in a reinforced concrete command post in the Pulkovo area. It was so close to the front that as Fedyuninsky hurried down the trench to the command post he heard bullets whining overhead.

He found Ivanov sitting in the dugout, holding his head with both hands. Fedyuninsky had known Ivanov before the war when both were studying at the Academy of the General Staff. They had been in the same classes. Then Ivanov had become deputy commander of the Kiev Special Military District.

Fedyuninsky remembered Ivanov as an energetic, spirited, enthusiastic man. Now Ivanov sat tired, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, dejected. He expressed no surprise at seeing Fedyuninsky, although they had not met for several years. He asked, apparently out of politeness, “What brings you here? I thought you were commanding a corps in the southwest.”

Fedyuninsky explained that he was deputy commander of the front and had come to learn the situation. He asked Ivanov to show him on the map where the lines were.

“I don’t know where they are,” Ivanov said, in despair. “I don’t know anything. . . .”

“Haven’t you any communications with your units?” Fedyuninsky asked.

“No,” Ivanov replied. “The fighting has been heavy today. I don’t know where they have gotten to. The communications have broken down.”

Fedyuninsky questioned Ivanov’s Chief of Staff and operations head. He quickly decided that only a miracle was keeping the Forty-second in action. He found that the Germans had occupied New and Old Panovo and had worked into Ligovo but apparently not yet in strength.

The worst of it was that between these positions and Leningrad there was little or nothing in the way of defense.

What to do? Before Fedyuninsky could think of anything a message called him back to Smolny. As he came out of the command post, machine-gun fire rattled strongly.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to change my command post again,” Ivanov said.

“No,” said Fedyuninsky firmly. “You may not retire from here. That’s an order by the deputy front commander.”

“Well,” Ivanov said sadly, “we’ll try to hang on.”

Back at Smolny, before Fedyuninsky could report, Zhukov said, “Don’t bother to report. I know all about it already. While you were coming back, Ivanov changed his command post again. He is now in the cellar of a school across from the Kirov factory.”

Zhukov was silent a moment, then spoke with decision: “Take over the Forty-second Army. And be quick about it.”

Serious as was the moment Fedyuninsky couldn’t help grinning. Zhukov noticed this.

“What are you snickering at?” he asked.

“It seems to me,” Fedyuninsky said, “that you didn’t express yourself quite accurately. How can you take over an army in such a condition? All I can do is take over the command.”

Party Secretary A. A. Kuznetsov wrote out the order, assigning Fedyuninsky to take Ivanov’s place.
⁵
Zhukov and Zhdanov signed it and, with his chief of staff, Major General L. S. Berezinsky, Fedyuninsky hurried back to the front. He found Ivanov in the new command post in the basement of a school. The room was thick with tobacco smoke and a violent argument was in progress between Ivanov and the members of his Military Council, N. V. Solovyev and N. N. Klementyev, as to what to do next. Since they had no communications with their troops the whole argument was theoretical.

Fedyuninsky strode up to the table.

“I’ve been named commander of the army,” he said. “The session of the Military Council is closed. You, Comrade Ivanov, have been called to Smolny.”

To close the council was simple, Fedyuninsky thought.

But what to do next was not at all simple.

¹
Karasev (p. 112) mistakenly calls it the 2nd Marines, others make it the 1st. (K. K. Kamalov,
Morskaya Fekhota v Boyakh Za Rodinu
, Moscow, 1966, p. 35.)

²
The order relieving Voroshilov and naming Zhukov apparently was dated September 11.
(Istoriya VOVSS
, Vol. II, p. 257; Karasev,
op. cit
., p. 5.)

³
L. Panteleyev thought the Smolny camouflage was silly and even stupid. He did not think the nets and the false towers, constructed of cardboard or plywood, fooled anyone. (Panteleyev,
Novy Mir
, No. 5, May, 1965, p. 163.)