Unknown Soldier. Anatoly fishermen

Drawing on the cover by I. Savchenkov

Drawings by N. Bugoslavskaya

PEOPLE'S PROJECT "ESTABLISHING THE FATES OF MISSING DEFENDERS OF THE FATHERLAND" https://proektnaroda.ru/

Volunteer project ARCHIVE BATTALION https://myveteran.ru/

Dear young reader!

You are holding a book in your hands, main character which he will go to the end, saving from oblivion the memory of the soldier of the Great Patriotic War. About the warrior who gave his life so that you and I could live, so that Hitler’s plan - to morally and physically destroy the Russian people - would be thwarted. Seryozha Krasheninnikov resurrects the feat of the unknown soldier, and it is as if he stands before us from the road dust of oblivion - in full growth.

Cases, like that what Anatoly Rybakov described are still happening today. Millions of Russian families still do not know where and how their loved one died, defending the Motherland from fascist invaders. Perhaps your family seven decades ago received a terse and terrible message “missing in action”...

In the work of Anatoly Rybakov, the hero alone fights for the memory of a soldier completely unknown to him, and in our time such caring people are united by the “People's Project “Establishing the Fates of Missing Defenders of the Fatherland”” (https://myveteran.ru/).

Thousands and thousands of requests for help to restore the military path loved one flock to the site and hotline"Immortal Regiment of Russia." In response, the volunteers of the “Archive Battalion” (https://proektnaroda.ru/) - the vanguard of the “People's Project” - are doing everything possible to ensure that there are as few “blank spots” in the fate of the defenders of the Fatherland as possible. They search for information on the Movement’s website (www.polkrf.ru), online resources of the Ministry of Defense “Feat of the People”, “Memory of the People”, OBD “Memorial”, send requests to archives and military registration and enlistment offices of Russia and abroad. Through their efforts, soldiers finally “returned from the battlefield” to many families.

The debt of memory knows no national boundaries. Volunteers of the “Immortal Regiment” brought back from oblivion more than 4,000 names of defenders of the Fatherland, buried as “unknown soldiers” on the memorials of Berlin and Vienna! These are soldiers who died during the liberation of the peoples of Europe from Nazism.

By volunteering to participate in the “People's Project” or simply preserving your family history associated with the Great Patriotic War, you are doing a great job - helping to preserve the truth about the feat of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Such stories become streams in the sea of our common, people's memory. And this binds all of us, residents of Russia, into one big family, united by common grief and joy, Feat and Victory.

Nikolay Zemtsov,

co-chairman of the All-Russian social movement"Immortal Regiment of Russia"

1

As a child, every summer I went to the small town of Koryukov, to visit my grandfather.

We went with him to swim in Koryukovka, a narrow, fast and deep river three kilometers from the city. We undressed on a hillock covered with sparse, yellow, trampled grass. From the state farm stables came the tart, pleasant smell of horses. The sound of hooves could be heard wooden flooring. Grandfather drove the horse into the water and swam next to him, grabbing the mane. His large head, with wet hair stuck together on his forehead, with a black gypsy beard, flashed in the white foam of a small breaker, next to the wildly squinting horse's eye. This is probably how the Pechenegs crossed the rivers.

I am the only grandson, and my grandfather loves me. I love him very much too. He filled my childhood with good memories. They still excite and touch me. Even now, when he touches me with his broad, strong hand, my heart aches.

I arrived in Koryukov on the twentieth of August, after the final exam. I got a B again. It became obvious that I would not go to university.

Grandfather was waiting for me on the platform. The same as I left it five years ago, when I was last in Koryukov. His short, thick beard had turned slightly gray, but his high-cheeked face was still marble white, and his brown eyes were as lively as before. The same worn-out dark suit with trousers tucked into boots. He wore boots both in winter and summer. He once taught me how to put on foot wraps. With a deft movement he twirled the footcloth and admired his work. Then he pulled on his boot, wincing not because the boot stung, but from the pleasure that it fit so well on his foot.

Feeling as if I was performing a comic circus act, I climbed onto the old chaise. But no one on the station square paid any attention to us. Grandfather fingered the reins in his hands. The horse shook its head and ran away at a vigorous trot.

We were driving along the new highway. At the entrance to Koryukov, the asphalt turned into a broken cobblestone road that was familiar to me. According to the grandfather, the city itself must pave the street, but the city does not have the funds.

– What is our income? Previously, the road passed through, people traded, the river was navigable, but it became shallow. There is only one stud farm left. There are horses! There are world celebrities. But the city has little benefit from this.

My grandfather was philosophical about my failure to get into university:

- You will enter next year, if you don’t get into the next one, you’ll get in after the army. And that's all.

And I was upset by the failure. Bad luck! "The role of lyrical landscape in the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin." Subject! After listening to my answer, the examiner stared at me and waited for me to continue. There was nothing for me to continue. I began to develop my own thoughts about Saltykov-Shchedrin. The examiner was not interested in them.

The same wooden houses with gardens and vegetable gardens, a market on the square, a store of the regional consumer union, a Baikal canteen, a school, the same centuries-old oak trees along the street.

The only thing new was the highway, which we found ourselves on again as we left the city for the stud farm. Here it was just under construction. Smoked hot asphalt; he was laid out by tanned guys in canvas mittens. Girls in T-shirts and kerchiefs pulled down over their foreheads were scattering gravel. Bulldozers cut away the soil with shiny knives. Excavator buckets dug into the ground. Mighty equipment, rumbling and clanging, advanced into space. On the side of the road there were residential trailers - evidence of camp life.

We handed over the chaise and horse to the stud farm and went back along the shore of Koryukovka. I remember how proud I was the first time I swam across it. Now I would cross it with one push from the shore. AND wooden bridge, from which I once jumped with my heart freezing with fear, hung just above the water.

On the path, still hard like summer, cracked in places from the heat, the first fallen leaves rustled underfoot. The sheaves in the field were turning yellow, a grasshopper was crackling, a lone tractor was kicking up the chill.

Previously, at this time I was leaving my grandfather, and the sadness of parting was then mixed with the joyful anticipation of Moscow. But now I had just arrived, and I didn’t want to go back.

I love my father and mother, I respect them. But something familiar broke, something changed in the house, even little things began to irritate me. For example, my mother’s address to women she knows in the masculine gender: “darling” instead of “sweetheart,” “dear” instead of “darling.” There was something unnatural and pretentious about it. As well as the fact that she dyed her beautiful, black and gray hair reddish-bronze. For what, for whom?

In the morning I woke up: my father, passing through the dining room where I sleep, clapped his flip-flops - shoes without backs. He had slammed them before, but then I didn’t wake up, but now I woke up from just the premonition of this slamming, and then I couldn’t fall asleep.

Each person has his own habits, perhaps not entirely pleasant; you have to put up with them, you have to get used to each other. And I couldn’t get used to it. Have I become crazy?

I became uninterested in talking about my father's and mother's work. About people I have heard about for many years, but have never seen. About some scoundrel Kreptyukov - a surname that I have hated since childhood; I was ready to strangle this Kreptyukov. Then it turned out that Kreptyukov should not be strangled, on the contrary, it was necessary to protect him; his place could be taken by a much worse Kreptyukov. Conflicts at work are inevitable, it’s stupid to talk about them all the time. I got up from the table and left. This offended the old people. But I couldn't help it.

All this was all the more surprising because we were, as they say, a friendly family. Quarrels, discord, scandals, divorces, courts and litigation - we did not have any of this and could not have had it. I never deceived my parents and I knew that they did not deceive me. What they hid from me, considering me small, I perceived condescendingly. This naive parental delusion is better than the snobbish frankness that some consider modern method education. I'm not a prude, but in some things there is a distance between children and parents, there is an area in which restraint should be observed; it does not interfere with friendship or trust. This is how it has always been in our family. And suddenly I wanted to leave the house, hide in some hole. Maybe I'm tired of exams? Having a hard time dealing with failure? The old people did not reproach me for anything, but I failed, I deceived their expectations. Eighteen years, and still sitting on their necks. I felt ashamed to even ask for a movie. Previously, there was a prospect - university. But I couldn’t achieve what tens of thousands of other kids who enter higher education every year achieve.

2

Old bent Viennese chairs in my grandfather's small house. The shriveled floorboards creak underfoot, the paint on them has peeled off in places, and its layers are visible - from dark brown to yellowish-white. There are photographs on the walls: a grandfather in a cavalry uniform holds a horse by the reins, the grandfather is a rider, next to him are two boys - jockeys, his sons, my uncles - also holding the reins of the horses, the famous trotters, broken by the grandfather.

What was new was an enlarged portrait of my grandmother, who had died three years earlier. In the portrait she is exactly as I remember her - gray-haired, personable, important, looking like a school principal. What at one time connected her with a simple horse owner, I don’t know. In that distant, fragmentary, vague thing that we call childhood memories and which, perhaps, is only our idea of it, there were conversations that because of their grandfather, the sons did not study, became horsemen, then cavalrymen and died in the war. And if they had received an education, as their grandmother wanted, their fate would probably have turned out differently. Since those years, I have retained sympathy for my grandfather, who was in no way to blame for the death of his sons, and hostility towards my grandmother, who brought such unfair and cruel accusations against him.

There's a bottle of port on the table, White bread, not at all the same as in Moscow, much tastier, and boiled sausage of an unknown type, also tasty, fresh, and butter with a tear, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. There is something special about these simple products of the regional food industry.

- Do you drink wine? - Grandfather asked.

- Yes, little by little.

“Young people drink heavily,” said grandfather, “they didn’t drink like that in my time.”

I referred to the large amount of information received modern man. And the associated heightened sensitivity, excitability and vulnerability.

Grandfather smiled and nodded his head, as if agreeing with me, although, most likely, he did not agree. But he rarely expressed his disagreement. He listened attentively, smiled, nodded his head, and then said something that, although delicately, refuted the interlocutor.

“I once drank at the fair,” said the grandfather, “my parent beat me up with the reins.”

He smiled, kind wrinkles gathering around his eyes.

- I wouldn't allow it!

“Savagery, of course,” grandfather readily agreed, “only formerly father was the head of the family. With us, until the father sits down at the table, no one dares to sit down until he gets up - and don’t even think about getting up. The first piece for him is the breadwinner, the worker. In the morning, the father was the first to go to the washbasin, followed by the eldest son, then the rest - this was observed. And now the wife runs off to work at first light, comes late, tired, angry: lunch, store, home... But she earns money herself! What kind of husband is her authority? She doesn’t show him respect, and neither do the children. So he stopped feeling his responsibility. I grabbed a three-ruble ruble and it was half a liter. He drinks and sets an example for his children.

In some ways, grandfather was right. But this is only one aspect of the problem, and perhaps not the most important one.

Having accurately guessed my thoughts, grandfather said:

– I don’t call for the whip and for house-building. How people lived before is their business. We are not responsible for our ancestors, we are responsible for our descendants.

Correct idea! Humanity is responsible first of all for its descendants!

“Hearts are being transplanted...” grandfather continued. “I’m seventy—I don’t complain about my heart, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke. And young people drink and smoke - so give them someone else’s heart at forty. And they won’t think about it: is it moral or immoral?

- And what do you think?

“I think it’s definitely immoral.” One hundred percent. A man is lying in the hospital and can’t wait for someone else to play the game. It's icy outside, and it's a big day for him: someone will break his bowler hat. Today they are transplanting hearts, tomorrow they will take on brains, then they will begin to make one perfect person out of two imperfect people. For example, a weak child prodigy will be transplanted with the heart of a healthy idiot, or, conversely, the brain of a prodigy will be transplanted into the idiot; They will, you know, screw up the geniuses, and the rest for spare parts.

“I have a writer friend,” I supported my grandfather’s thought, “who wants to write such a story.” Hearts from different animals were transplanted into a sick person. But he could not live with any such heart - he adopted the character of the beast from which he received the heart. The heart of a lion became bloodthirsty, a donkey - stubborn, a pig - a boor. In the end, he went to the doctor and said: “Give me back my heart, it may be sick, but it’s mine, human.”

I didn't tell the truth. I don't know any writers. I was going to write this story myself. But I was ashamed to admit to my grandfather that I was peeing. I haven't confessed to anyone yet.

“In general, a healthy heart is better than a big stomach...” Grandfather concluded the medical part of our conversation with such an old-fashioned joke and moved on to the business part: “What are you going to do?”

- I'll go to work. At the same time I will prepare for the exams.

“Workers are needed all around,” grandfather agreed, “they’re building a road over there, the Moscow-Poronsk highway.” Do you know Poronsk?

- I heard.

– The ancient city, churches, cathedrals. Aren't you into antiquity?

- Something doesn’t work.

– Nowadays antiquity is in fashion, even young people are addicted. Well, in this ancient Poronsk, foreigners come at every step. So they are building an international tourist center, and a highway leading to it. There are announcements all over the city: workers are needed, field travelers are paid. You earn money, then sit through the winter and study. And that's all.

3

So, this wonderful idea came to the mind of the grandfather, with his practical mind and wisdom. In general, he believed that I was being raised too domestically, hothouse and I needed to try life. It even seemed to me that he was pleased with my failure to enter the university. Maybe he's against it higher education? Follower of Rousseau? Believes that civilization is nothing good things to people didn't bring it? But he gave an education to his daughter – my mother. Grandpa just wants me to try life. And at the same time I would live with him and thereby brighten up his loneliness.

This suited me too.

No explanations with parents will be required. I will present them with a fait accompli. No one here knows me, and I will be spared the nickname “Krosh” - I’m pretty tired of it. I’ll work until December and return home with money. I have a driver’s license, an amateur one, they will exchange it for a professional one. As an exception: at school we studied car business and did an internship at a car depot. I will travel around the country with a detachment and prepare for exams. What to do in the field in the evening? Sit and read. This is not a clean, bright workshop where you spend eight hours in the same place. This is not a movie romance with ceremonial farewells at the station, speeches and orchestras. There was something very attractive about these trailers on the side of the road - the smoke of the fires, the nomadic life, long roads, hefty tanned guys in canvas mittens. And these girls with bare arms, with slender legs, in kerchiefs pulled down over his forehead. Something sweet and alarming pricked my heart.

But the advertisements have been up for a long time. Perhaps people have already been recruited. With the sole purpose of finding out the situation, I went to the station.

The trailers stood on the side of the road in a semicircle. Ropes were stretched between them, and clothes were dried on them. One end of the rope was tied to the Honor Board. Somewhat to the side there was a dining room under a large wooden canopy.

I climbed up the ladder into a trailer with a sign saying “Road Construction Department.”

In the trailer, the boss was sitting at the table. Behind the drawing board is a fashionable girl with one eye on the door. Now she glanced sideways at me.

“I’m talking about the announcement,” I turned to the boss.

- Documentation! – he answered briefly. He looked about thirty-five years old, a lean man with a frowning face, a preoccupied and categorical administrator.

I handed over my passport and driver's license.

“Amateur rights,” he noted.

– I’ll exchange them for professional ones.

– Haven’t worked anywhere yet?

- He worked as a mechanic.

He squinted in disbelief:

– Where did you work as a mechanic?

– At the car depot, in practice repairing cars.

He leafed through his passport and looked at his registration.

- Why did you come here?

- To grandpa.

- To the village for grandfather... Did you fail at the institute?

- I didn’t do it.

- Write an application: I ask you to enroll as an auxiliary worker. If you exchange your license, we’ll transfer it to your car.

Somewhat unexpected. After all, I only came to find out the situation.

– I would like to exchange my license first and get into the car right away.

- You will change with us. Let's write to the traffic police.

Clear! The boss is interested in labor force, especially in the auxiliaries. Nobody wants to go to physical work. It is only now that it is so delicately called - an auxiliary worker. Previously it was called a laborer.

I'm not afraid of physical work. I can, if necessary, turn the gravel with a shovel. But why did I do my internship at the car depot? I was smart enough to say:

– If you can’t get it into the car, take it to a mechanic for now. Why would I lose my qualifications?

The boss frowned in displeasure. He really wanted to hand me a shovel and a rake.

– We still need to check your qualifications.

- There is a probationary period for this.

- He knows everything! – the boss grinned, turning to the draftsman. Apparently, he has such a manner: to address not the interlocutor, but a third party.

The draftswoman did not answer. She glanced sideways at me again.

“Part-time mechanics, you won’t earn much,” the boss warned.

“I see,” I replied.

“And you’ll have to live in a trailer,” the boss continued, “the mechanisms work in two shifts—a mechanic should be on hand.”

I should live with my grandfather for a week. But life in a trailer also attracted me.

- You can do it in a trailer.

“Okay,” he frowned, “write a statement.”

I sat down and wrote a statement on the edge of the table: “Please enroll me as a repair mechanic, with further transfer to the car.”

Handing it to the boss, I asked:

– Which trailer will I live in?

- We saw him! – He turned to the draftsman again. - Give him a place to sleep! Work first, earn it.

With these words, he wrote in a sweeping manner on the corner of my statement: “Enroll from the twenty-third of August.”

Today is the twenty-second of August.

Only after leaving the trailer did I realize the absurd haste of my action. Where and why was I in a hurry? I didn’t have the courage to say: “I’ll think about it.” After all, I only came to find out the situation. Each person, deciding his fate, must weigh everything. But I showed weakness and succumbed to external circumstances. From the minute I entered the trailer, I immediately became eligible for work, and acted not as I needed, but as the site manager needed. It’s even surprising how I managed to fight off the shovel and rake. If he had pressed me a little harder, I would have agreed to a shovel and a rake. I was registered as a mechanic; I considered it a victory, but in fact it was a defeat. The head of the section offered me the worst option (laborer), so that later, having made an alleged concession, I would be hired as a simple mechanic, instead of being accepted as a driver. He cheated me, fooled me, cheated me. I didn't even ask what my salary would be! Time-based, but what kind of time-based? How much will I be paid? What will I earn here? It’s inconvenient, you see, to ask. Blockhead. Snob! People work for a salary, but you see, that doesn’t interest me.

And what about grandfather! I arrived yesterday, I'm leaving for work tomorrow. At least I could live with the old man for a week. He wanted it so much, we haven’t seen him for five years. It was damn inconvenient! Just awful.

I walked along the highway. Tanned guys in canvas mittens and girls in T-shirts with bare arms and slender legs also worked. The asphalt was smoking. Dump trucks drove in and out. It didn't seem as attractive to me as it did yesterday. Rough, unfamiliar, alien faces. In practice, we were schoolchildren, so why ask us? But don’t expect mercy here, no one will work hard for you. What kind of mechanic am I, really? I can tell the difference between a simple wrench and a socket wrench, a screwdriver and a chisel, and I can unscrew or screw it, whatever they show you. And if they assign independent work? They don’t wait here, come on here, there’s construction here. Dipped into history.

At home, I explained everything to my grandfather without mincing words. I came to find out the situation, and they immediately hired me.

“And you thought,” grandfather laughed, “there weren’t enough people.”

The first memorial in honor of the unknown soldier was built at the very beginning of the 1920s in France. In Paris, near Arc de Triomphe, with all due military honors, the remains of one of the countless French infantrymen left to lie on the fields of the First World War were buried. There, at the monument, it was first lit Eternal flame. Soon after this, similar burials appeared in the UK, near Westminster Abbey, and in the USA, at Arlington Cemetery. On the first of them were the words: “Soldier Great War whose name is known to God." The second memorial appeared only eleven years later, in 1932. It also read: “Here lies buried in honorable glory an American soldier whose name is known only to God.”

The tradition of erecting a monument to a nameless hero could only have arisen in the era of the world wars of the 20th century. In the previous century, with its cult of Napoleon and ideas about war as an opportunity to demonstrate personal valor, no one could imagine that long-range artillery firing “across the area”, dense machine-gun fire, the use of poisonous gases and others modern means waging war would deprive the very idea of individual heroism of meaning. New military doctrines operate with human masses, and therefore heroism new war can only be massive. Like death, which is inextricably linked with the idea of heroism, it is also massive.

By the way, in the USSR in the interwar decades they did not yet understand this and looked at the Eternal Flame in Paris with bewilderment, as if it were a bourgeois whim. In the Land of Soviets itself, mythology Civil War developed around heroes with big names and biographies - popular favorites, legendary army commanders and “people's marshals”. Those of them who survived the period of repression in the Red Army in the mid-30s never learned to fight in a new way: Semyon Budyonny and Kliment Voroshilov could still personally lead an attack on the enemy (which, by the way, Voroshilov did during the fighting for Leningrad, having been wounded by the Germans and earning a contemptuous reproach from Stalin), but they could not afford to abandon dashing cavalry raids in favor of strategic maneuvering by masses of troops.

With your hands held high

From the first days of the war, the Soviet propaganda machine began talking about the heroism of the Red Army units, valiantly holding back the advancing enemy. The version of why the German invasion achieved such amazing successes in a matter of weeks was formulated personally by Comrade Stalin in his famous address to Soviet citizens on July 3, 1941: “Despite the fact that the enemy’s best divisions and the best units of his aviation have already been defeated and found his grave on the battlefield, the enemy continues to push forward, throwing new forces to the front.” In Soviet historiography, the defeats and retreat of the Red Army of 1941-1942 were explained by anything: the surprise of the strike, the superiority of the enemy in the number and quality of troops, its greater preparedness for war, even the shortcomings of military planning on the part of the USSR - but not by the fact that actually took place, namely the moral unpreparedness of the Red Army soldiers and commanders for a war with Germany, for a new type of war.

We are embarrassed to write about the instability of our troops in initial period war. And the troops... not only retreated, but also fled and fell into panic.
G.K. Zhukov

Meanwhile, the reluctance of Soviet citizens to fight was explained by a whole complex of reasons, both ideological and psychological. Wehrmacht units that crossed the state border of the USSR rained down on Soviet cities and villages not only thousands of bombs and shells, but also a powerful information charge in order to discredit the existing political system in the country, to drive a wedge between state and party authorities and ordinary citizens. The efforts of Hitler’s propagandists were by no means completely useless - a significant part of the inhabitants of our country, especially from among the peasants, representatives of national regions only recently annexed to the USSR, in general, people who in one way or another suffered from the repressions of the 20-30s, did not see the point in to fight to the last “for the power of the Bolsheviks.” It is no secret that the Germans, especially in the western regions of the country, were often indeed looked upon as liberators.

We analyzed losses during the retreat. Most of them fell on the missing, the smaller part - on the wounded and killed (mainly commanders, communists and Komsomol members). Based on the analysis of losses, we built party-political work to increase the stability of the division in defense. If in the days of the first week we allocated 6 hours for defense work and 2 hours for study, then in subsequent weeks the ratio was the opposite.
From the memoirs of General A.V. Gorbatov about the events of October-November 1941

Important role Reasons of a military nature also played a role, only related, again, not to weapons, but to psychology. In the pre-war years, the Red Army soldiers were prepared for war in the old, linear manner - to advance in a chain and hold the defense with the entire front line. Such tactics tied the soldier to his place in the general formation, forced him to look up to his neighbors on the right and left, and deprived him of an operational vision of the battlefield and even a hint of initiative. As a result, not just individual Red Army soldiers and junior commanders, but also commanders of divisions and armies found themselves completely helpless in the face of the new tactics of the Germans, who professed maneuver warfare, who knew how to gather mobile mechanized units into a fist in order to cut through, encircle and defeat masses of troops stretched out in a line with relatively small forces. enemy.

Russian offensive tactics: a three-minute fire attack, then a pause, after which an infantry attack shouting “hurray” in deeply echeloned combat formations (up to 12 waves) without support from heavy weapons fire, even in cases where attacks are made from long distances. Hence the incredibly large losses of the Russians.
From the diary of German General Franz Halder, July 1941

Therefore, in the first months of the war, units of the Red Army were able to provide serious resistance only where positional - linear - tactics were dictated by the situation itself, primarily in the defense of large populated areas and other strongholds - Brest Fortress, Tallinn, Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa, Smolensk, Sevastopol. In all other cases, where there was room for maneuver, the Nazis constantly “outplayed” the Soviet commanders. Left behind enemy lines, without contact with headquarters, without support from their neighbors, the Red Army soldiers quickly lost the will to resist, fled or immediately surrendered - individually, in groups and entire military formations, with weapons, banners and commanders... So in the fall of 1941, After three or four months of fighting, the German armies found themselves at the walls of Moscow and Leningrad. A real threat of complete military defeat loomed over the USSR.

Rise of the masses

In this critical situation Three circumstances closely related to each other played a decisive role. Firstly, the German command, which developed the plan for the eastern campaign, underestimated the scale of the task facing it. The Nazis already had the experience of conquering Western European countries in a matter of weeks, but a hundred kilometers on the roads of France and the same hundred kilometers on Russian off-road roads are not at all the same thing, and from the then border of the USSR to Moscow, for example, it was 900 kilometers only in a straight line, not to mention the fact that constantly maneuvering armies had to cover much greater distances. All this had a deplorable effect on the combat readiness of German tank and motorized units when they eventually reached the distant approaches to Moscow. And if you consider that the Barbarossa plan provided for the delivery of full-scale strikes in three strategic directions at once, then it is not surprising that the Germans simply did not have enough strength in the fall of 1941 for the final decisive push towards Moscow. And these hundreds of kilometers were not covered with fanfare - despite the catastrophic situation Soviet troops, to encirclements, “cauldrons”, the death of entire divisions and even armies, Headquarters each time managed to close the hastily restored front line in front of the Germans and bring more and more people into battle, including the completely incapable people’s militia. Actually, the mass heroism of the Red Army soldiers of this period lay precisely in the fact that they took the battle in stunningly unequal, unfavorable conditions for themselves. And they died in the thousands, tens of thousands, but they helped buy the time the country needed to come to its senses.

It can be said with almost certainty that no cultured Westerner will ever understand the character and soul of the Russians. Knowledge of the Russian character can serve as the key to understanding the fighting qualities of the Russian soldier, his advantages and methods of fighting on the battlefield... You can never say in advance what a Russian will do: as a rule, he veers from one extreme to the other. His nature is as unusual and complex as this huge and incomprehensible country itself. It is difficult to imagine the limits of his patience and endurance; he is unusually brave and brave and yet at times shows cowardice. There were cases when Russian units, having selflessly repelled all German attacks, unexpectedly fled in front of small assault groups. Sometimes Russian infantry battalions were thrown into confusion after the first shots, and the next day the same units fought with fanatical tenacity.

Secondly, the Nazis’ propaganda campaign in the East failed because it came into conflict with their own developed doctrine of the complete destruction of “Slavic statehood.” It didn’t take much time for the population of Ukraine, Belarus, the western regions of Russia and other republics that were part of the USSR to understand what “ new order"The invaders bring them. Although there was cooperation with the Germans in the occupied territory, it did not become truly widespread. And most importantly, with their unjustified cruelty towards prisoners of war and civilians, their barbaric methods of warfare, the fascists provoked a massive response from the Soviet people, in which anger and fierce hatred predominated. What Stalin could not do at first, Hitler did - he made the citizens of the USSR realize what was happening not as a confrontation between two political systems, but as a sacred struggle for the right of their fatherland to live, forced the soldiers of the Red Army to fight not for fear, but for conscience. The mass feeling of fear, mass panic and confusion that helped the Nazis in the first months of the war, by the winter of 1941, turned into a readiness for mass heroism and self-sacrifice.

To some extent, the high fighting qualities of the Russians are reduced by their lack of intelligence and natural laziness. However, during the war, the Russians constantly improved, and their senior commanders and staffs received a lot of useful information from studying the experience of combat operations of their troops and the German army... Junior and often middle-level commanders still suffered from sluggishness and inability to make independent decisions - due to severe disciplinary sanctions they were afraid to take responsibility... The herd instinct among soldiers is so great that an individual fighter always strives to merge with the “crowd.” Russian soldiers and junior commanders instinctively knew that if they were left to their own devices, they would die. In this instinct one can see the roots of both panic and the greatest heroism and self-sacrifice.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, "Tank battles 1939-1945."

And thirdly, Soviet military leaders in these incredibly difficult conditions, they found the strength to resist general confusion and panic, constant pressure from Headquarters, and begin to master the basics of military science, buried under a heap of political slogans and party directives. It was necessary to start almost from scratch - from the rejection of linear defense tactics, from unprepared counterattacks and offensives, from the tactically incorrect use of infantry and tanks for wide frontal attacks. Even in the most difficult situations there were generals, such as the commander of the 5th Army M.I. Potapov, who led the defensive battles in Ukraine, or the commander of the 19th Army M.F. Lukin, who fought near Smolensk and Vyazma, who managed to gather around themselves everyone who could truly fight, to organize nodes of meaningful opposition to the enemy. Both mentioned generals were captured by the Germans in the same 1941, but there were others - K.K. Rokossovsky, M.E. Katukov, I.S. Konev, finally, G.K. Zhukov, who carried out the first successful offensive operation near Yelnya, and later stopped the Germans, first near Leningrad and then near Moscow. It was they who managed to reorganize during the battles, instill in those around them the idea of the need to use new tactics, and give the accumulated mass anger of the Red Army soldiers the form of thoughtful, effective military strikes.

The rest was a matter of time. As soon as the moral factor came into play, as soon as the Red Army felt the taste of its first victories, the fate of Hitler's Germany was sealed. Undoubtedly, the Soviet troops still had to learn many bitter lessons from the enemy, but the advantage in human resources, as well as a meaningful readiness to fight, gave the mass heroism of the Red Army and Red Navy a different character compared to the first stage of the war. Now they were driven not by despair, but by faith in future victory.

Heroes with a name

Against the backdrop of the mass deaths of hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, many of whom remain nameless to this day, several names stand out that have become truly legendary. We are talking about heroes whose exploits became famous throughout the country during the war years and whose fame in the post-war period was truly nationwide. Monuments were erected in their honor and memorial complexes. Streets and squares, mines and steamships, military units and pioneer squads were named after them. Songs were written about them and films were made. Over the course of fifty years, their images managed to acquire real monumentality, which even the “revelatory” publications in the press, a whole wave of which surged in the early 1990s, could do nothing about.

One can doubt the official Soviet version of the events of the history of the Great Patriotic War. One can consider the level of training of our pilots in 1941 to be so low that supposedly they could not have achieved anything more worthwhile than a ground ramming of a concentration of enemy troops. It can be assumed that the Soviet saboteurs operating in the near German rear in the winter of 1941 were caught not by Wehrmacht soldiers, but by local peasants who collaborated with them. You can argue until you're hoarse what happens to the human body when it falls on top of a firing heavy machine gun. But one thing is obvious - the names of Nikolai Gastello, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Alexander Matrosov and others would never have taken root in the mass consciousness of Soviet people (especially those who themselves went through the war), if they had not embodied something very important - perhaps precisely that helped the Red Army withstand the onslaught of the Nazis in 1941 and 1942 and reach Berlin in 1945.

Captain Nikolai Gastello died on the fifth day of the war. His feat became the personification of that critical situation when the enemy had to be fought with any available means, in conditions of his overwhelming technical superiority. Gastello served in bomber aviation, participated in the battles at Khalkhin Gol and in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. He made his first flight during the Great Patriotic War on June 22 at 5 am. His regiment suffered very heavy losses in the very first hours, and already on June 24, the remaining aircraft and crews were consolidated into two squadrons. Gastello became the commander of the second of them. On June 26, his plane, as part of a flight of three aircraft, took off to strike a concentration of German troops advancing on Minsk. After bombing along the highway, the planes turned east. At this moment, Gastello decided to shoot a column of German troops moving along a country road. During the attack, his plane was shot down, and the captain decided to ram ground targets. His entire crew died along with him: lieutenants A.A. Burdenyuk, G.N. Skorobogaty, senior sergeant A.A. Kalinin.

A month after his death, Captain Nikolai Frantsevich Gastello, born in 1908, commander of the 2nd aviation squadron of the 42nd long-range bomber aviation division of the 3rd bomber aviation corps of the long-range bomber aviation, was posthumously nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin . Its crew members were awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. It is believed that during the years of the Great Patriotic feat Gastello was repeated by many Soviet pilots.

About martyrdom of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became known in January 1942 from the publication of the war correspondent of the Pravda newspaper Pyotr Lidov entitled “Tanya”. In the article itself, Zoya’s name was not yet mentioned; it was established later. It was also later discovered that in November 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, as part of a group, was sent to the Vereisky district of the Moscow region, where German units were stationed. Zoya, contrary to popular belief, was not a partisan, but served in military unit 9903, which organized the dispatch of saboteurs behind enemy lines. In late November, Zoya was captured while attempting to set fire to buildings in the village of Petrishchevo. According to some sources, she was noticed by a sentry, according to others, she was betrayed by a member of her group, Vasily Klubkov, who had also been captured by the Germans shortly before. During interrogation, she identified herself as Tanya and denied to the end that she belonged to the sabotage detachment. The Germans beat her all night, and the next morning they hanged her in front of the villagers.

The feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became an expression of the highest steadfastness of the Soviet spirit. The eighteen-year-old girl did not die in the heat of battle, not surrounded by her comrades, and her death had no tactical significance for the success of the Soviet troops near Moscow. Zoya found herself in territory captured by the enemy and died at the hands of the executioners. But having accepted martyrdom, she won a moral victory over them. Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923, was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on February 16, 1942. She became the first woman to receive a Gold Star during the Great Patriotic War.

Feat Alexandra Matrosova symbolized something else - the desire to help his comrades at the cost of his life, to bring victory closer, which after the defeat of Nazi troops at Stalingrad seemed inevitable. Sailors fought since November 1942 as part of the Kalinin Front, in the 2nd separate rifle battalion of the 91st separate Siberian volunteer brigade named after Stalin (later the 254th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 56th Guards Rifle Division). On February 27, 1943, Matrosov’s battalion entered battle near the village of Pleten in the Pskov region. The approaches to the village were covered by three German bunkers. The fighters managed to destroy two of them, but the machine gun installed in the third did not allow the fighters to launch an attack. Sailors, approaching the bunker, tried to destroy the machine-gun crew with grenades, and when this failed, he closed the embrasure with his own body, allowing the Red Army soldiers to capture the village.

Alexander Matveevich Matrosov, born in 1924, was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on June 19, 1943. His name was assigned to the 254th Guards Regiment, and he himself was forever included in the lists of the 1st company of this unit. The feat of Alexander Matrosov for propaganda purposes was timed to coincide with February 23, 1943. It is believed that Matrosov was not the first Red Army soldier to cover a machine gun embrasure with his chest, and after his death the same feat was repeated by about 300 more soldiers, whose names were not so widely known.

In the December days of 1966, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the defeat of German troops near Moscow, the ashes of the Unknown Soldier, brought from the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway, where particularly fierce battles for the capital took place in 1941, were solemnly buried in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin walls.

On the eve of the celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the Victory, May 8, 1967, the architectural ensemble “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” was opened at the burial site. The authors of the project are architects D.I. Burdin, V.A. Klimov, Yu.A. Rabaev, sculptor - N.V. Tomsky. The center of the ensemble is a bronze star placed in the middle of a mirror-polished black square framed by a red granite platform. The Eternal Flame of Glory bursts out of the star, delivered to Moscow from Leningrad, where it was ignited from the flames blazing on the Champs of Mars.

The inscription “To those who fell for the Motherland” is carved on the granite wall. 1941-1945". On the right, along the Kremlin wall, blocks of dark red porphyry are placed in a row; under them, in urns, soil is stored, delivered from the hero cities - Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Volgograd, Sevastopol, Odessa, Kerch, Novorossiysk, Murmansk, Tula, Smolensk, and also from the Brest Fortress. Each block bears the name of the city and an embossed image of the Gold Star medal. The tombstone of the monument is topped with a voluminous bronze emblem depicting a soldier’s helmet, battle banner and a laurel branch.

Words are engraved on the granite slab of the tombstone.

In December 1966, on the 25th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi troops near Moscow, the ashes of the Unknown Soldier were transferred to the Alexander Garden from the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway - the site of bloody battles.

The eternal flame of glory, escaping from the middle of the bronze military star, was lit from the flames blazing on the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg. " Your name unknown, your feat is immortal” - inscribed on the granite slab of the tombstone.

On the right, along the Kremlin wall, urns are placed in a row, where the sacred land of the hero cities is kept.

President's website

FIGHTING AT THE CROSSROADS OF LENINGRAD AND LYALOVSKY HIGHWAYS

An unusual episode of the battle in 1941 was told in 1967 to the builders of Zelenograd who were helping to build the monument with the T-34 tank, a local forester, an eyewitness to the fierce battle at the 41st kilometer: “German armored vehicles were approaching along the highway from Chashnikov... Suddenly Our tank moved towards them. Having reached the intersection, the driver jumped into a ditch while moving, and a few seconds later the tank was hit. The second tank followed. History repeated itself: the driver jumped, the enemy shot, another tank blocked the highway. This formed a kind of barricade of destroyed tanks. The Germans were forced to look for a detour to the left

An excerpt from the memoirs of the commissar of the 219th howitzer regiment, Alexei Vasilyevich Penkov (see: Proceedings of the GZIKM, issue 1. Zelenograd, 1945, pp. 65-66): “By 13 o’clock the Germans, having concentrated superior forces of infantry, tanks and aviation, broke resistance from our neighbor on the left... and through the village of Matushkino tank units entered the Moscow-Leningrad highway, semi-surrounding our rifle units and began shelling firing positions with tank gun fire. Dozens of German dive bombers hung in the air. Communication with the regiment command post was disrupted. Two divisions were deployed for all-round defense. They shot German tanks and direct fire infantry. Chuprunov and I and the signalmen were 300 meters from the battery firing positions on the church bell tower in the village of B. Rzhavki.

With the onset of darkness, the Nazis calmed down and became quiet. We went to see the battlefield. The picture is familiar to war, but terrible: half of the gun crews were killed, many fire platoon and gun commanders were out of action. 9 guns and 7 tractor-trailers were destroyed. The last wooden houses and barns on this western outskirts of the village were burning down...

On December 1, in the area of the village of B. Rzhavki, the enemy only occasionally fired mortars. On this day the situation stabilized...

AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER DIES HERE

Newspapers in early December 1966 reported that on December 3, Muscovites bowed their heads before one of their heroes - the Unknown Soldier, who died in the harsh days of December 1941 on the outskirts of Moscow. In particular, the Izvestia newspaper wrote: “...he was fought for the Fatherland, for his native Moscow. That's all we know about him."

On December 2, 1966, representatives of the Mossovet and a group of soldiers and officers of the Taman Division arrived at the former burial site at the 41st km of the Leningradskoye Highway around noon. Taman soldiers cleared the snow around the grave and began opening the burial. At 2:30 p.m., the remains of one of the soldiers resting in a mass grave were placed in a coffin entwined with an orange and black ribbon - a symbol of the soldier's Order of Glory; on the lid of the coffin there was a helmet of the 1941 model. A coffin containing the remains of the Unknown Soldier was placed on the pedestal. All evening, all night and morning next day, taking turns every two hours, young soldiers with machine guns, war veterans, stood on guard of honor at the coffin.

Cars passing by stopped, people came from the surrounding villages, from the village of Kryukovo, from Zelenograd. On December 3, at 11:45 a.m., the coffin was placed on an open car, which moved along the Leningradskoye Highway to Moscow. And everywhere along the way, the funeral procession was seen off by residents of the Moscow region, lining up along the highway.

In Moscow, at the entrance to the street. Gorky (now Tverskaya), the coffin was transferred from the car to an artillery carriage. The armored personnel carrier with the battle flag unfurled moved further to the sounds of the funeral march of a military brass band. He was accompanied by soldiers of the honor guard, war participants, and participants in the defense of Moscow.

The cortege was approaching the Alexander Garden. Everything is ready for the rally here. On the podium among the leaders of the party and government are participants in the Battle of Moscow - Marshals of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky.

“The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the ancient walls of the Moscow Kremlin will become a monument of eternal glory to the heroes who died on the battlefield for their native land, here from now on rests the ashes of one of those who overshadowed Moscow with their breasts” - these are the words of Marshal of the Soviet Union K.K. Rokossovsky, said at the rally.

A few months later, on May 8, 1967, on the eve of Victory Day, the opening of the monument “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” took place and the Eternal Flame was lit.

IN NO OTHER COUNTRY

EMAR VILLAGE (Primorsky Territory), September 25, 2014. The head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Sergei Ivanov, supported the proposal to make December 3 the Day of the Unknown Soldier.

“Such a memorable day, if you like, a day of remembrance, could easily be made,” he said, responding to a proposal made during a meeting with the winners and participants of the competition among school search teams “Search. Finds. Opening".

Ivanov noted that this is especially important for Russia, given that no other country had such a number of missing soldiers as in the USSR. According to the head of the presidential administration, the majority of Russians will support the establishment of December 3 as the Day of the Unknown Soldier.

THE FEDERAL LAW

ON AMENDMENTS TO ARTICLE 1.1 OF THE FEDERAL LAW “ON DAYS OF MILITARY GLORY AND MEMORABLE DATES IN RUSSIA”

Add to article 1.1 Federal Law dated March 13, 1995 N 32-FZ “On the days military glory and memorable dates of Russia”... the following changes:

1) add a new paragraph fourteen as follows:

President of Russian Federation

Consultant Plus

UNKNOWN SOLDIER

For the first time, this concept itself (as well as a memorial) appeared in France, when on November 11, 1920, in Paris, at the Arc de Triomphe, an honorary burial was made for an unknown soldier who died in the First World War. And then the inscription “Un soldat inconnu” appeared on this memorial and the Eternal Flame was solemnly lit.

Then, in England, at Westminster Abbey, a memorial appeared with the inscription “Soldier of the Great War, whose name is known to God.” Later, such a memorial appeared in the United States, where the ashes of an unknown soldier were buried at Arlington Cemetery in Washington. The inscription on the tombstone: “Here lies an American soldier who gained fame and honor, whose name only God knows.”

In December 1966, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow, the ashes of an unknown soldier were transferred to the Kremlin wall from a burial site at the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway. On the slab lying on the grave of the Unknown Soldier, there is an inscription: “Your name is unknown. Your feat is immortal” (the author of the words is the poet Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov).

Used: in the literal sense, as a symbol of all the fallen soldiers, whose names remained unknown.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. M., 2003

Anatoly Rybakov

UNKNOWN SOLDIER

As a child, every summer I went to the small town of Koryukov, to visit my grandfather. We went with him to swim in Koryukovka, a narrow, fast and deep river three kilometers from the city. We undressed on a hillock covered with sparse, yellow, trampled grass. From the state farm stables came the tart, pleasant smell of horses. The clatter of hooves on the wooden flooring could be heard. Grandfather drove the horse into the water and swam next to him, grabbing the mane. His large head, with wet hair stuck together on his forehead, with a black gypsy beard, flashed in the white foam of a small breaker, next to the wildly squinting horse's eye. This is probably how the Pechenegs crossed the rivers.

I arrived in Koryukov on the twentieth of August, after the final exam. I got a B again. It became obvious that I would not go to university.

Grandfather was waiting for me on the platform. The same as I left it five years ago, the last time I was in Koryukov. His short thick beard had turned slightly gray, but his wide-cheeked Face was still marble white, and his brown eyes were as lively as before. The same worn-out dark suit with trousers tucked into boots. He wore boots both in winter and summer. He once taught me how to put on foot wraps. With a deft movement he twirled the footcloth and admired his work. Patom pulled on his boot, wincing not because the boot stung, but from the pleasure that it fit so well on his foot.

What are our incomes? Previously, the road passed through, people traded, the river was navigable, but it became shallow. There is only one stud farm left. There are horses! There are world celebrities. But the city has little benefit from this.

My grandfather was philosophical about my failure to get into university:

If you get in next year, if you don’t get in next year, you’ll get in after the army. And that's all.

The same wooden houses with gardens and vegetable gardens, the market on the square, the regional consumer union store, the Baikal canteen, the school, the same centuries-old oak trees along the street.

The only thing new was the highway, which we found ourselves on again as we left the city for the stud farm. Here it was just under construction. The hot asphalt was smoking; he was laid out by tanned guys in canvas mittens. Girls in T-shirts and kerchiefs pulled down over their foreheads were scattering gravel. Bulldozers cut away the soil with shiny knives. Excavator buckets dug into the ground. Mighty equipment, rumbling and clanging, advanced into space. On the side of the road there were residential trailers - evidence of camp life.

We handed over the chaise and horse to the stud farm and went back along the shore of Koryukovka. I remember how proud I was the first time I swam across it. Now I would cross it with one push from the shore. And the wooden bridge from which I once jumped with my heart sinking in fear hung just above the water.

Previously, at this time I was leaving my grandfather, and the sadness of parting was then mixed with the joyful anticipation of Moscow. But now I had just arrived, and I didn’t want to go back.

In the morning I woke up: my father, passing through the dining room where I sleep, clapped his flip-flops - shoes without backs. He clapped them before, but then I didn’t wake up, but now I woke up from just the premonition of this clapping, and then I couldn’t fall asleep.

Each person has his own habits, perhaps not entirely pleasant; you have to put up with them, you have to get used to each other. And I couldn’t get used to it. Have I become crazy?

All this was all the more surprising because we were, as they say, a friendly family. Quarrels, discord, scandals, divorces, courts and litigation - we did not have any of this and could not have had it. I never deceived my parents and I knew that they did not deceive me. What they hid from me, considering me small, I perceived condescendingly. This naive parental delusion is better than the snobbish frankness that some consider the modern method of education. I'm not a prude, but in some things there is a distance between children and parents, there is an area in which restraint should be observed; it does not interfere with friendship or trust. This is how it has always been in our family. And suddenly I wanted to leave the house, hide in some hole. Maybe I'm tired of exams? Having a hard time dealing with failure? The old people did not reproach me for anything, but I failed, I deceived their expectations. Eighteen years, and still sitting on their necks. I felt ashamed to even ask for a movie. Previously, there was a prospect - university. But I couldn’t achieve what tens of thousands of other kids who enter higher education every year achieve.

On the table is a bottle of port wine, white bread, not at all like in Moscow, much tastier, and boiled sausage of an unknown type, also tasty, fresh, and butter with a tear, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. There is something special about these simple products of the regional food industry.

Do you drink wine? - Grandfather asked.

Yes, little by little.

Young people drink heavily,” said the grandfather; “they didn’t drink like that in my time.”

I referred to the large amount of information received by modern man. And the associated heightened sensitivity, excitability and vulnerability.

“I once drank at the fair,” said the grandfather, “my parent gave me such a hard time with the reins.”

He smiled, kind wrinkles gathering around his eyes.

I wouldn't allow it!

It’s wild, of course,” grandfather readily agreed, “only before the father was the head of the family.” With us, until the father sits down at the table, no one dares to sit down until he gets up - and don’t even think about getting up. The first piece for him is the breadwinner, the worker. In the morning, the father was the first to go to the washbasin, followed by the eldest son, then the rest - this was observed. And now the wife runs off to work at first light, comes late, tired, angry: lunch, store, home... But she earns money herself! What kind of husband is her authority? She doesn’t show him respect, and neither do the children. So he stopped feeling his responsibility. I grabbed a three-ruble ruble and it was half a liter. He drinks and sets an example for his children.

Anatoly Rybakov

UNKNOWN SOLDIER

I arrived in Koryukov on the twentieth of August, after the final exam. I got a B again. It became obvious that I would not go to university.

My grandfather was philosophical about my failure to get into university:

If you get in next year, if you don’t get in next year, you’ll get in after the army. And that's all.

We handed over the chaise and horse to the stud farm and went back along the shore of Koryukovka. I remember how proud I was the first time I swam across it. Now I would cross it with one push from the shore. And the wooden bridge from which I once jumped with my heart sinking in fear hung just above the water.

Previously, at this time I was leaving my grandfather, and the sadness of parting was then mixed with the joyful anticipation of Moscow. But now I had just arrived, and I didn’t want to go back.

Unknown Soldier. Anatoly fishermen - unknown soldier

Dear young reader!

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With your hands held high

Rise of the masses

Heroes with a name

FIGHTING AT THE CROSSROADS OF LENINGRAD AND LYALOVSKY HIGHWAYS

AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER DIES HERE

IN NO OTHER COUNTRY

THE FEDERAL LAW

UNKNOWN SOLDIER