WITH A HISS OF STEAM AND A SLOW FINAL TURN OF THE driving wheels the Red Arrow express came to a halt in the train shed of Leningrad’s October Station. A small delegation of officers had arrived a few minutes before, and now they stood on the platform, waiting for General Meretskov to emerge from the International sleeping car, the last car on the train. The hour was 11145 A.M., June 22. The usual Sunday morning bustle filled the station.
There had been little sleep for Meretskov during his night-long journey to the north. His mind was filled with deep worries. All day Saturday he had worked in the Defense Commissariat, sharing the rising concern of his colleagues over the threatening reports. At midevening he had been instructed to go immediately to Leningrad to act as the High Command liaison in carrying out urgent preparations for meeting a German attack which might come at any time, possibly within a few days.
Few Soviet commanders were more familiar than Meretskov with modern warfare. He had been a military adviser in Spain during the Civil War, along with men like Marshal Rodion Ya. Malinovsky (Comrade Malino), the artillery specialist; Marshal N. N. Voronov; Tank General A. I. Rodimtsev (Captain Pavlito); the Navy Commissar, Admiral Kuznetsov; and Generals P. I. Batov, Georgi M. Shtern and Dmitri G. Pavlov. Indeed, Meretskov, as “Comrade Petrovich,” had been an architect of the great Loyalist victory at Guadalajara.
Meretskov, an imposing, bulky man (his blond complexion, his wide Slavic face and his bearlike figure had looked almost comic in the beret and wide cape which he affected in Spain), had acquired a healthy respect for Nazi military power and the striking force of Nazi Panzers on the battlefield of Spain.
None knew better than he the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet Army. He knew, of course, as did every Red Army officer, the terrible toll taken by the purges of 1937–38. The roll of the victims was endless— three of the five Soviet marshals who at that time held this rank: M. N. Tukhachevsky, V. K. Bliicher and A. I. Yegorov; every officer who then commanded a military district, including such men as I. P. Uborevich and I. E. Yakir; two of the four fleet commanders, Admirals V. M. Orlov and M. V. Viktorov. Every commander of an army corps had been shot. Almost every division commander had been shot or sent to Siberia. Half the regimental commanders, members of military councils and chiefs of political work in the military districts had vanished. The majority of military commissars of corps, divisions and brigades had been removed. One-third of the regimental commissars had been lost. How many individuals did this total? Not Meretskov nor any surviving high officer could estimate the number. Certainly one-third to one-half of the 75,000 officers in the Red Army in J938 had been arrested. The percentages were far higher in upper ranks.
Among Meretskov’s companions in Spain the casualties were striking.1 The results could everywhere be seen. By the beginning of 1940 more than 70 percent of the divisional commanders, almost 70 percent of the regimental commanders and 60 percent of the political commissars were newly promoted. In the autumn of 1940 a tally of 225 regimental commanders disclosed not a single officer who had completed a course in a higher military institution. Only twenty-five had even been to military academies (high-school grade). The remainder of the two hundred had only finished courses for junior lieutenants. The results were appalling. In the army as a whole only 7 percent of the officers had had higher military education; 37 percent had never even had a course in a military institution.
When Lieutenant General S. A. Kalinin arrived at Novosibirsk in 1938 to take up his duties as commander of the Siberian Military District, he was astounded to be met by a captain, serving as acting commander. The captain was the highest-ranking man left in the command. The Chief of Political Administration, Captain V. V. Bogatkin, had arrived in Novosibirsk a few months earlier. On the very night of Bogatkin’s arrival two NKVD men called with orders for the arrest of the Siberian District Commander. Bogatkin put the NKVD men off, flew to Moscow the next day and at great personal risk got the orders for arrest withdrawn.
To be sure, some commanders had been returned from exile.2 Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, soon to become the hero of the defense of Moscow, had come back from Siberian exile, having successfully overturned false evidence, supposedly given by a Red Army Commander, Adolf Yushkevich, who had been dead for more than ten years at the time he allegedly gave his testimony. General A. V. Gorbatov, a magnificent commander, survived two years of physical torture by the NKVD and exile to one of the worst camps in the Far East. On March 5, 1941, at 2 A.M. he was released from prison. That very day he was named by Marshal Timoshenko to command the 25th Rifle Corps in the Ukraine. Timoshenko himself, now Defense Commissar, had been denounced as an “enemy of the people” in 1938 at the spring Communist Party conference in Kiev. It took intervention by Khrushchev to keep the Commissar from the black wagons of the secret police. As late as May, 1941, when General Leonid A. Govorov (who had been Meretskov’s chief of staff with the Seventh Army during the Finnish war and whose name soon would be inextricably linked with that of Leningrad) was appointed chief of the principal artillery school, the Academy named for Dzerzhinsky, the secret police put him on the list for arrest. The chargé was that he fought in the White Russian forces under Admiral Kolchak. In a sense, this was true. Govorov, a poor peasant lad in the Vyatka Gubernia, was impressed into the Kolchak army when his village was captured by the Whites in 1918, but at the first opportunity he led his comrades over to the Communist side. Personal action by Mikhail I. Kalinin, the Soviet President, spared Govorov from possible execution.
Marshal Ivan Bagramyan had a similar experience. In December, 1940, he was named deputy chief of staff to Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, then commander of the Kiev Military District. In January, 1941, he was summoned before the new District Commissar, Nikolai N. Vashugin, who coldly informed him that he had an “uncertain” past. Bagramyan was outraged. “What’s bad about my biography?” he demanded. “My father was a worker, my brothers, too, and I have always honestly served my country.”
Vashugin chargéd that Bagramyan had fought for the Dashnaks, the Armenian nationalist movement. Bagramyan managed to show that he led a local Communist uprising against the Dashoaks rather than the reverse.
On the very eve of war, in the first days of June, B. L. Vannikov,3 Commissar for Arms Production, was arrested, after an ugly dispute over weapons production that involved Stalin, Andrei Zhdanov and G. I. Kulik, then head of the Chief Artillery Administration. B. I. Sharurin, another Soviet arms specialist, narrowly escaped arrest. Kulik was an associate of Police Chief Beria. He was responsible for Vannikov’s arrest and was blamed by Red Army commanders for a variety of errors. Vannikov described him as “incompetent and light-minded.” Marshal Voronov, who worked with him on artillery matters, called him “disorganized.” Kulik’s style was called “Prison or a Medal.” If a subordinate pleased him, he got an award; if not, he went to jail. The constructors of the best Soviet tank, the 60-ton KV, blamed Kulik for endless delay in acting on their proposal to fit the machine with a diesel motor. Finally, at personal risk, they went ahead with a diesel-motored machine after General D. G. Pavlov (soon to be shot for the disaster which befell Soviet arms on the Western Front), who had seen tank warfare in Spain, warned that a gasoline-powered tank was nothing but a “flaming torch.”
It was not only officers who were caught up in these tragic events. Colonel D. A. Morozov, serving in the east in 1938, recalled going into a big grocery store. The wife of General Georgi Ye. Degtyarev4 was coming out, tears streaming from her eyes. “What’s happened?” he asked. “They won’t sell anything to me,” she replied. Her husband had been arrested as an “enemy of the people” a few days before. Morozov went into the store with her and bought the food she needed. He heard the clerks whispering, “There goes another. They’ll get him next.”
Now, as Meretskov well knew, the Soviet Army faced its most critical test. To say that it had not been affected and would not be affected by the tragic events of the past two or three years was ridiculous. The cream of the military cadres, the best and most experienced commanders, had been eliminated, and the morale of the remainder had suffered wounds which would require years in the healing—if, indeed, this generation was ever to recover.
Speaking long after these tragic events, Konstantin Simonov, the Russian novelist, who came to know the Red Army as did few other individuals, concluded that the performance of the Soviet Army against the Germans in World War II had to be examined through the “prism of the tragic events of 1937–38.”
“The matter is not only that in these years we lost a pleiad of major military leaders,” he said, “but that hundreds and thousands of honest people among the higher and middle echelons of commanders were subject to repression.
“The matter lies in the spirit of the people who remained to serve in the army, in the force of the blow that had been dealt against them. At the beginning of the war this process had not yet been finished, it was still going on. The army found itself not only in the most difficult of times incompletely rearmed but in a no less difficult period with its moral values, confidence and discipline incompletely restored after the destructive events of 1937–38.”
If thoughts of his martyred comrades and of the strength which they might have brought to the Soviet Army this moment passed through the mind of Meretskov, it would hardly be surprising.
And he had other food for thought. Leningrad was inextricably connected with his personal fortunes. He had commanded the Leningrad Military District in 1938, and he held this post at the outbreak of war with Finland November 30, 1939. It was upon his shoulders and the striking force of his Seventh Army that the task of bringing the Finns to terms had initially fallen.
The early period of the Finnish war had not gone well for the Russians— or for Meretskov. This was not exactly his fault. Plans for the Finnish campaign had originally been drafted in detail by the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Boris M. Shaposhnikov. They were based on careful estimates of Soviet capabilities and took into full account the strength of the Mannerheim Line and the righting potential of the Finnish Army. Shaposhnikov calculated (correctly) that the Red Army would meet strong and stubborn opposition from the Finns and that a major offensive would be required.
Stalin was furious when Shaposhnikov submitted his plan to the Supreme War Council. He said Shaposhnikov underestimated the Red Army and overvalued the Finns.
The Shaposhnikov plan was junked and the task was turned over to the Leningrad Military District, headed by General Meretskov. Acting quite possibly on Zhdanov’s advice, Stalin decided to set up a Finnish government in exile under the veteran Russian-Finnish Communist, Otto Kuusinen. Stalin was certain that a demonstration by Russian border troops and the propaganda of the Finnish “liberation” movement would bring the Finns to their knees. What Meretskov thought is not known. He was given two or three days to draw up a plan and then was sent into action.
Less than a month’s fighting demonstrated the unreality of Stalin’s conception. On January 7, 1940, Marshal Timoshenko took command of the Finnish front. Meretskov remained in chargé of the Seventh Army. He enlisted the cooperation of Zhdanov in developing a new and effective mine detector, capable of locating Finnish mines under the ice and snow. He also developed a better means of reducing Finnish concrete defenses, principally by point-blank fire of heavy-caliber 203-mm and 280-mm cannons. As an outgrowth of these activities he established a firm and—as it was to prove— an enduring friendship with Zhdanov.
With Timoshenko’s takeover new troops were brought in, Shaposhnikov’s original plans were put into motion, and on March 12, 1940, the war came to an end with the signing of a treaty which pushed the Soviet frontier about a hundred miles north of Leningrad and gave Russia what she had originally wanted, a thirty-year lease on the Hangö Peninsula (to guard the Gulf of Finland approaches to Leningrad) and a few minor territorial concessions.
Meretskov could consider himself fortunate. He came out of the bitter March, 1940, post-mortem by the Central Committee on the Finnish operations in fairly good order. Many had been sharply criticized, especially the Defense Commissar, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. L. Z. Mekhlis, Beria’s secret police crony, who was sent by Stalin to advise the Ninth Soviet Army, arrested many commanders and sought to shift the blame from himself but underwent some criticism as well.
A series of decisions flowed from the spring post-mortem, many of them useful and sound. Young commanders with battle experience in Spain, the Manchurian border war with the Japanese at Khalkin-Gol and the Finnish campaign were promoted to new responsibilities.5
The fact that Meretskov was given only three days to work out a plan for his offensive against Finland probably saved him from serious consequences. In any event, he was promoted to the rank of full general in June and became Chief of Staff in August, 1940.
Now, in the last minutes before his arrival in Leningrad, Meretskov could look back on the past two years and, speaking as a military man, find much for which to be thankful.
The defensive position of Leningrad, for example, was infinitely better, at least on paper, than it had been in 1939. Before 1939 the frontier had lain only twenty miles to the north. Leningrad had been within long-range artillery fire from the Finnish frontier. The sea approaches had been equally vulnerable. Finnish forts commanded the entrance to the Gulf of Finland from Hangö and the nearby shore. Soviet warships came in and out of the Kron-stadt base at their peril.
The situation along the Baltic littoral in 1939 was equally dangerous. Now, with the incorporation into the Soviet Union of the Baltic states, the frontiers had been pushed four hundred miles to the west. There was depth for maneuver, breathing space. Leningrad no longer lay open to attack by enemy planes based only a few minutes’ flight to the west or north.
The Baltic Fleet had new bases two and three hundred miles closer to the enemy.
Leningrad again might be regarded as a secure military bastion, the bastion Peter intended it to be.
Today—or so it might well seem to a military man like Meretskov— thanks to the foresight of Stalin and Zhdanov, Leningrad once more stood strong and powerful, a defensible position even under conditions of modern warfare.
But, to be sure, a thousand things must be done. Work on the fortifications must be speeded. Troops must be moved to the frontiers. Airports must be put in working order. Guns must be installed in forward positions. All of this must go ahead at fever pace because at any moment the German attack might start. Yet, at the same time, every effort—and these were the last words from Timoshenko and Zhukov before Meretskov took leave of them in the Defense Commissariat Saturday night—every effort must be made to avoid action which might provoke a German attack. In no case must fire be opened upon a German plane. And no unusual move—of any kind—was to be taken without prior consultation with Moscow.
How would Russia emerge from the crisis? How ought he to begin in order in the shortest possible time to bring the Leningrad Military District to the peak of fighting effectiveness? What steps had to be taken to strengthen the city’s defenses? And what had been happening along the troubled frontier as he traveled north through the long white night?
The questions chased around and around in Meretskov’s head as he watched the approaches of the October Station glide past the open window of his compartment. He rose and went to the corridor. An aide carried his briefcase and bag. The train came to a gentle stop, and Meretskov stepped onto the platform.
The Leningrad officers saluted. Meretskov was surprised to see that General Popov, the district commander, was not on hand—contrary to protocol. From the solemn faces of the welcoming delegates he could see that something had happened.
“Well?” Meretskov asked.
“It’s started,” one of them replied.
The group walked swiftly through the side entrance of the station to the military limousine which waited, its motor running. Meretskov took the customary seat of honor, next to the chauffeur. The others piled in back, two on jump seats. The car moved swiftly forward, circling the square and down the Nevsky Prospekt. The Prospekt was alive with pedestrians, going in and out of the great stores, sauntering down the street, basking in the warm sun. At the kiosks yellow daffodils and pink cherry blossoms were on sale. No one gave heed to the black Packard as it whirled past Eliseyev’s grocery store, past the bright-windowed shops of the Gostiny Dvor, past the clock tower of the City Hall, the circular fagade of the Kazan Cathedral, past the Admiralty, through Palace Square and on to Smolny Institute, the Party headquarters.
Here Meretskov and his colleagues listened to the government broadcast at noon which brought to the still peaceful city the news that Russia had been at war since 4 A.M.
The eloquent words of Molotov—"Our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten. We shall triumph"—still echoed from the loudspeakers when Meretskov sat down with the Leningrad Military Council. Absent was Andrei Zhdanov, the city’s boss, the master of every detail of Leningrad’s fate. Absent, too, was Lieutenant General Markian M. Popov and most of the top Leningrad commanders.6
Those who met in the council room to determine what first steps must be taken to secure Leningrad’s defense were: General Meretskov; A. A. Kuznetsov, Party Secretary and Zhdanov’s first deputy; Deputy Commander of the District, General K. P. Pyadyshev; Terenti F. Shtykov, a Leningrad Party secretary clÖsely identified with military and security questions; N. N. Klementyev, political officer for the Leningrad Military District (who had been in the field with Popov but returned ahead of him); and General D. N. Nikishev, Chief of Staff and the man who had taken such action as had been accomplished for the city’s defense.
Four major decisions were made that afternoon by the Military Council, and each was to play a vital role in Leningrad’s defense.
First, the Pskov-Ostrov fortifications 150 miles southwest of the city were to be completed immediately. Second, a new fortified line was to be built along the Luga River, about 120 miles southwest of the city from Lake Ilmen to the vicinity of Kingisepp. Third, the fortifications north of Leningrad, along the old (not the new) frontier with Finland, were to be put into full defensive order. Fourth, a new defense line was to be built in the Volkhov region, southeast of the city.
There was one notable feature about the decisions. Each was predicated upon the necessity of defending Leningrad in depth, of protecting the city against an encircling attack which might overrun the half-finished fortifications along the new frontiers to the west and to the north.
Thus on the very first day of war the acting commanders of the Leningrad front sought to correct what had suddenly smashed into their consciousness as the weakness inherent in the whole new concept of Leningrad’s defense. Because for so many years Leningrad had lived with a frontier only twenty miles to the north, because it had been obvious for so long that an enemy to the north might almost instantly overwhelm the city, almost all of the Leningrad defense precautions had been concentrated to the north.
The splitting off from the Leningrad Command of direct responsibility for defense of the Baltic littoral and the creation of the Special Baltic Military District were evidence of Leningrad’s preoccupation with the threat to the north. The Baltic Command was to provide a shield for the state frontiers, four hundred miles to the west. It was to protect the new states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from attack. It was to keep an aggressor from plunging through the littoral and jabbing deep into the Russian heartland.
Now on this afternoon of June 22 the Finnish frontier, however dangerous, was still quiet. It had not gone into action. But from the southwest the din and clatter of the German Panzers had already begun.
Leningrad had not one division, not one regiment, not one active military unit deployed to the south or southwest of the capital.
What if the Germans broke through those new frontiers so far west? What then?
All the decisions taken by the makeshift Leningrad Military Council were designed to cope with this new and unforeseen danger. From now on all powers connected with defense, with social order, with state security, were concentrated in the hands of the Military Council. It formed a junta with powers of life and death over Leningrad.
These first-hour decisions would go far to spell the difference between success and failure of the German drive to capture Leningrad.
1 Meretskov himself was named by Khrushchev among officers who had suffered from the purge, but whether this occurred on his return from Spain in 1937 or later is not certain. By 1938 Meretskov was in good standing and was made commander of the Leningrad Military District. Robert Conquest is mistaken in saying Meretskov was released from prison in 1939. (Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, New York, Macmillan, 1968, p. 486.)
2 But in October, 1941, and again in the summer of 1942 some of the Red Army officers still held in the camps were shot at Stalin’s order, perhaps in panic because of the disasters at the fronts. After his “interrogation” in 1938 Marshal Rokossovsky had no fingernails left on one of his hands.
3 Vannikov’s memoirs, first suppressed, now are being published in a highly tendentious version (Voprosy Istorii,No. 10, October, 1968, p. 116).
4 Degtyarev was released from camp in time to take his place in the Fifty-fourth Army, which defended the Leningrad supply route.
5 Following the April post-mortem into the Finnish campaign Marshal Timoshenko replaced Marshal Voroshilov as Defense Commissar. A special commission headed by Zhdanov and N. A. Voznesensky, Soviet Planning Chief and a close associate of Zhdanov’s, was set up by the Party Central Committee to seek to strengthen the army, improve its vigilance and fighting ability and heighten its political awareness, (jo Let Sovetskikh Vooruzhennykh Sil SSSR, p. 244.)
6 Colonel B. V. Bychevsky, chief of Leningrad engineering troops, in one context reports that Popov returned to his command post from a field trip about 10 A.M. Sunday. In another he speaks of getting orders from Popov on the General’s return June 23. Had Popov been in Leningrad, he certainly would have attended the Council, which did not meet before 1 P.M. The Leningrad Party history says he was not present and that General Pyadyshev presided in his place. (Na Zashchite Nevskoi Tverdyni, p. 16.)