The 900 Days (52 page)

⁴
The wildest kind of rumors circulated in Leningrad over Voroshilov’s removal. One story was that Stalin, personally, had come to Leningrad and ordered Voroshilov to surrender the city. Voroshilov, in anger, hit Stalin in the face. The story, of course, was apocryphal. (Konstantinov,
op. cit
., p. 125.)

⁵
The date is also given as September 16 (Barbashin,
op. cit
., p. 70) and September 21
(Istoriya VOVSS
, Vol. II, p. 90).

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.”