Everything for war, everything for victory. Great Victory Awards

This slogan appeared during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). It was first mentioned in the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 29, 1941. The slogan “Everything for the front! Everything for victory” was proclaimed by I.V. Stalin on July 3, 1941 during a radio speech. The slogan was supported by the whole country. Variants were also used - “In labor - like in battle!”, “The front needs it - we’ll do it!”

The youth of GAZ put forward a counter initiative - “Work tirelessly, do not leave the workshop without completing the production task.” For example, V. Shubin fulfilled 19 standards one day. This movement became all-Union, thanks to which labor productivity in Komsomol youth brigades doubled.

Examples

(1932-2018)

“The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin” 1963-1970 - Lyusha’s speech about the start of the war to fellow villagers:

“Every effort will be devoted to increasing productivity. Everything for the front, everything for victory!“She paused, paused, collecting her thoughts. And she quietly continued: “You, women, receive special treatment.” Not today, tomorrow, our men, our fathers, our husbands, our brothers will leave to defend freedom. War is war, and maybe not everyone will be able to return. But while they are there, we will remain here alone. It will be difficult. And the kids are small, and they have to clean the hut, and cook, and do the laundry, and look after their garden, and not forget about the collective farm work. Whether we like it or not, now everyone will have to work for two or three. Both for myself and for the men. And we must and will endure this. Guys! Go to the front, fulfill your manly duty, defend our Motherland from adversaries to the last. Don't worry about us. We will replace you..."

Get up, huge country, get up for mortal combat
With the dark fascist force, with the damned horde!
Words from a song

...can anyone who has not been there understand what war is? And war, if you want to know, is, first of all, the smell of blood, feces, sweat and corpses.
From a conversation with a front-line soldier

Sooner or later, all secrets will certainly be revealed.
There is nothing secret that will not become obvious.
Mikhail Prishvin, geographer, writer

There are many sad and joyful dates in the history of our Russia. But the distant Sunday date of June 22, 1941 is as if burned with fire in our hearts. It looks like a deep wound, which, although healed, still hurts, and will forever remind you of itself.
Today this day is called the Day of Remembrance of Defenders of the Fatherland. It is not red on our calendar. Torn out of bed by the deafening roar of shell explosions, people then rushed towards war! And everything disappeared somewhere: a pensive dawn, touched by a light crimson, the clear peace of the sky, serene silence...
On that day, a message came to every home about the threat looming over the Fatherland, and mothers and wives soon began to receive letters so scary called “funerals.”
Human memory of that fateful first day, first hour, will probably never disappear.
The author is daily reminded of the Great Patriotic War by its relics located in the bookcase nearby. In a square glass vase there are fragments of shells, grenades, cartridge casings (ours and Germans), found on the passes. Nearby is the body of a mortar mine and the case of a German grenade.
For the author, the memory is also sacred because in the summer of 1942, between Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog, his paternal grandfather first went missing. And a little earlier, in March, near Kharkov - my maternal grandfather. It is not known how they died or where they were buried. Only pre-war photographs remained as a souvenir.On the night of May 8-9, 1945, a Nazi girl killed her great-uncle in Berlin. He stood on the balcony and, together with his friends, watched as thousands of rockets rose over Berlin, announcing the Victory to the world, and at that time a “mädchen” came out of the opposite room and shot him in the back...He finally realized the loss of his grandfathers when he reached the age of their death. And they were 40 years old.
Having lived in this world until the time of summing up the results of old age, I began to constantly feel in my soul the damned question: why the hell, what the hell, what the hell, what the hell did humanity actually get involved in the horror of world wars? What happened to people? What kind of madness struck them? And blind darkness instead of an answer.For the author, Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, Kharkov and Berlin are now not just cities - they are places where his father fought, where his unknown grandfathers died.
Father Pavel Nikolaevich (1924-1998), miraculously not dying, returned from the front in 1944 as a 20-year-old war invalid. One of those who were modestly named - a participant in the Great Patriotic War, he was awarded the medals “For Courage” and “For Military Merit”, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class. Like all front-line soldiers, he was a small part of a huge war. War was part of it. But he survived it and gave life to me.
Reading the works of scientists of the Soviet period, who wrote, of course, not out of ignorance, but according to the social order of the authorities, and memoirists who lied “as eyewitnesses,” it is difficult to reconcile the events at the front and in the rear. It turns out to be some kind of “black hole”. At the front, our pilots, tank crews, artillerymen and sailors constantly fought against superior German forces. And this was at a time when, in the rear, our workers and engineers were producing several times more weapons than the Germans. Can not understand anything.
After Stalin’s death, it turned out that it was not the leader who led the Soviet people to Victory, but the “faithful Leninist Khrushchev.” He accused Generalissimo Stalin of not wanting to listen to intelligence data, smart advisers, or his Nikita Sergeevich’s advice. The Red Army, they say, would not have been defeated if it had been commanded by commanders Blucher, Tukhachevsky, Yakir - there would have been no losses, no retreat to Moscow. For example, when Stalin sent him, Khrushchev, as a member of the Military Council of the front at Stalingrad, the result was immediate: the Germans were defeated. Wow!
In the mid-1960s, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, “The History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945” was published. (in 6 volumes). M.: Military Publishing House, 1960-1965. Khrushchev’s “….lizas” now named a different figure for losses: not 7 million, as before, but 14, and then even 20. Well, Stalin was always to blame for everything, who made erroneous decisions, did not take care of the lives of soldiers, exterminated a cohort of brilliant commanders. But they did not tell the truth about the war.
After the dismissal of Nikita, historians suddenly “discovered” that Stalin and Khrushchev had nothing to do with it. The people were rallied against the enemy by an even more faithful Leninist, Marshal of the Soviet Union, four times more a hero than Stalin, “dear and beloved Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.” He made only one small addition. In 1978 - “with tears in his eyes” - the sycophants who were constantly spinning around him, who were creating a new cult of personality in the USSR, tried to impose Malaya Zemlya on the entire country. They argued that it was there, near Novorossiysk, that the fate of the entire country was “decided”; the most brutal and fateful battle of the war took place. There, on Malaya Zemlya, the key participant in the events was the political officer, Colonel Brezhnev,” who... gave smart advice even to Zhukov.
By the way, it is known for sure that Leonid Ilyich did not really like the increased attention to his person. When they began to turn the battle on Malaya Zemlya into a second Stalingrad, Brezhnev was indignant, but his inner circle did their job.
For what battle did they award Brezhnev the Order of Victory a quarter of a century later? Which front did he command? After all, the statute of the order has not changed since 1943.
Under Brezhnev, “The History of the Second World War 1939-1945” was published for 10 years. in 12 volumes. M.: Military Publishing House, 1973-1982. At the same time, about 35% of the volume was devoted to the actions of the allies. And again there was no reliable information about the war.
Well, after Brezhnev’s death, all our victories: at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, in Berlin, were owed only to him - “the faithful son of the Soviet people, four times Hero of the Soviet Union, the great commander Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.” During the years of Brezhnev's leadership of the country, with all the power of communist propaganda, the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Suslov, the Minister of Defense Grechko and the head of the GPU Army Epishev, the cult of Marshal Zhukov was inflated to the point of indecency, who, having suddenly turned into an ardent opponent of Stalinism, began to bravely kick the shadow of the dead leader even under Khrushchev .All this is sad and sad. But Rokossovsky did not give in to Khrushchev’s persuasion...
We inherited from the USSR some strange mixture of military-historical research. It is no secret that there was politicized historical literature, littered with discussions about the role of the CPSU. The authors of such large-circulation works often deviated from factual history into purely vulgar propaganda. This type of historical literature has its roots in propaganda articles and essays during the war, designed to inspire heroic deeds and teach through the example of heroes, which was also important in that period.
At the same time, many authors were driven by the desire to show the war through the eyes of direct participants in the events. However, this approach requires an objective selection of participants from the very thick of events. Without the skeleton of a clear general description of the battle, the result is jelly. The description of tactical episodes is, of course, entertaining, but often leads to a loss of the thread of the narrative about the development of general events and serious mistakes. This has long been known to historians. And it’s time for us to grow out of the short-pants description of the war as a mosaic of tactical episodes.
In the USSR, there were works classified as “DSP” and “Secret”, aimed at training future commanders in schools and academies. As a rule, the typed works were not overloaded with the role of the party and quite clearly described the development of events in certain battles. Often even with impartial assessments of decisions made by commanders and commanders. This type of historical research also has its roots in wartime. Then, for the purpose of exchanging experience, information bulletins and collections of materials on studying the experience of the war were published. However, the predominantly educational functions significantly reduced the value of these books as historical works. First of all, this concerns the topic of losses. As a rule, there is no data on losses suffered by troops in marking work. Meanwhile, the losses incurred are an important criterion for assessing the intensity of combat operations, the skill of the troops and the correctness of the decisions made by the command.
In addition to covering the issue of losses, it is necessary to honestly write about penal companies and battalions. The silence of their actions led to completely unnecessary mystery around the actions of the penalty box.
Throughout the war, there were only 65 penal battalions and 1,037 penal companies on all fronts. But not at the same time! From 1942 to 1945, only one battalion existed - the 9th separate penal battalion. Usually these units were disbanded after a few months. Experts have long calculated that during the entire war, 34.5 million people passed through the army. And 428 thousand were sent to penal units. And they could not win the war, as the “experts” say. Less than one and a half percent! Although this is a lot.
When the forgettable 1990s arrived, and complete indifference to everything that was not “grandma” in our “zero” years of the 21st century, the old interpretation of the history of the war began to be considered overly ideological, but there was no new one. No, of course, there were talented works, but only specialists knew them. But without a correct understanding of our past, you and I have no future.
At the time of Gorbachev's glasnost, the people learned about the huge losses of the Red Army, but the culprits of the defeats of 1941-1942. the same people remained - Stalin, Beria, Molotov and others. Gorbachev’s “liberals”, under the leadership of the second person in the CPSU, A. N. Yakovlev, explained the history of the war simply: we ourselves are to blame for everything. It turns out that this terrible Stalin, just before the war, criminally concluded a criminal act with Hitler, so we are guilty before all of humanity, and now we must constantly ask for forgiveness and repent.
In books and newspapers, new myths about the war were created by literally everyone who felt like it, and for any reason. Only official publications on the history of the Great Patriotic War remained very meager.
The generation of people who experienced the Patriotic War in the bastions of the Brest Fortress, in the icy trenches of the Moscow region, in the snowy mountains of the Caucasus, in the ruins of Stalingrad, on the steps of the Reichstag, in the offices and bunker of the Reich Chancellery, is gradually disappearing from the face of the earth. All the marshals and almost all the generals of Victory passed away into another world. Those who knew the truth about the war reliably and deeply.
The country in which the war veterans lived no longer exists. She became different. Fifteen union republics, which stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of the Motherland and won Victory in 1945 thanks to their unity, began to live separately. But it will not be long before the people understand where the truth of that war is.
Catherine II left behind a famous aphorism: “History is written by the victors.” You can add: and as they want.
There have been textbooks where the war is called not the Great Patriotic War, but the “Soviet-Nazi War of 1941-1945.” This is the name of the chapter in the textbook “History of Russia. XX century. Volume II - 1939-2007." edited by A. B. Zubov (M., 2009).
And they, stupid people, did not know that we defeated Hitler’s Germany not because the “wise comrade Stalin” led our fathers and grandfathers into battle, but because very quickly that same “Soviet-Nazi war” turned into the Great Patriotic War. Hitler had to fight not with the Stalin regime, but with the people who defended not the state, but the Motherland, their Fatherland. But the Patriotic War can never be won from the Russian people. And at no cost. History fully confirms this!
In Soviet times, any schoolchild, even a poor student, knew what time the Great Patriotic War took place, and among the commanders he could name not only Marshal G.K. Zhukov. Nowadays, many do not even know who I.V. Stalin was, when this war took place. Some “smart guys” even claim that Moscow was surrendered to the Germans without a fight. Like Kutuzov to the French in 1812.
Alas, official propaganda did not catch on with ordinary Russian soldiers. We are not so “lazy and incurious,” as the great A.S. Pushkin said. Among hundreds of thousands of living eyewitnesses of the tragic events of 1941–1945. there were people who did not believe the fake facts about the war.
“It wasn’t like that during the war!..” - the front-line soldiers, who were awarded the Order of the Patriotic War by the government on the 40th anniversary of the Victory, proudly declared after watching another movie about the war.
In 1985, the Order of the Patriotic War was revived as a memorial award for veterans, its production and mass awards were resumed - on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Victory, it was awarded to all front-line soldiers, regardless of rank and merit, as well as to all partisans, underground fighters and war participants. The Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, 1985, was received by all veterans who remained alive and had at least one military award. The order was cast in the same form, but there are still differences. Due to the huge number of decorated veterans, they decided not to use gold. Silver was used to make it. To give the award the appropriate appearance, individual details were gilded. In all other respects, the award badge was no different. It had a number and the inscription: “Mint.” The order was accompanied by an order book.
Since the abolition of the Soviet Union in 1992, this order has not been awarded, but it has forever remained a symbol of the feat of the people, their military labor and their Great Victory.
Then, for the most part, many former front-line soldiers were still alive. And they didn’t like to talk about the war, just as they didn’t like “fantasies” about it. These warriors who survived into the 21st century, mostly with anniversary medals on their chests, loved to say how brave they were. But they don’t...
Having had the opportunity to explore part of the declassified archival materials, modern publicists M. Baryatinsky, A. Isaev, O. Kozinkin, A. Martirosyan, M. Meltyukhov, Yu. Mukhin, V. Savin, M. Solonin, A. Shirokorad and others. All our miscalculations and their reasons during the war years were convincingly shown. There were difficulties, but there was heroism and feat of the Soviet people. And no matter what, he won.
One thing is needed from us: to understand how difficult it was for our fathers and grandfathers during the Great Patriotic War, to remember their military and labor exploits, thanks to which we survived and live today.
What happened in the pre-war and war years in Cherkessk, in the country? What did the residents of Cherkessk, and indeed our parents in general, face at the front, in the occupation and in the rear? Why during the first weeks of the war was the Red Army swept away, crushed, defeated and mostly captured? Why did the Wehrmacht manage to reach the Caucasus Mountains? There are many questions.
We, the heirs of the Great Victory, must know the truth about the war so as not to repeat the mistake.
▲ At the beginning of January 1941, in almost 29 thousand Cherkessk, life proceeded as usual. Over the city, where New Year trees were especially desirable for children, the spirit of the New Year holiday still hovered. For the last peaceful New Year's tree in Cherkessk there was an unusually large amount of candy, and in a variety of wrappers (candy wrappers). Old-timers said that after the annexation of the Baltic states, a flood of sweets poured out from there, which began to be sold in stores in Cherkessk. After the end of the New Year's holiday, most of the purchased candies remained intact. The candies were put into boxes and hidden in chests until the next holiday. Out of habit, because that’s how it was accepted.
▲ Local newspapers increasingly published reports of the “Anglo-German War” (as the press then called the war, which began on September 1, 1939 with a German attack on Poland). But for now, the war, in which dozens of states would be drawn in, and military operations would take place on the territory of forty of them, was taking place outside our country and therefore seemed far from Cherkessk.
▲ On April 9, 1941, the new composition of the National Defense Committee, created back in 1937, was approved. Instead of seven, it was reduced to five people: K. E. Voroshilov (chairman), A. A. Zhdanov (deputy chairman), N. G. Kuznetsov, I. V. Stalin and S. K. Timoshenko.
▲ The air of May Day 1941 intoxicated the residents of Cherkessk with spring freshness. The smells of the first greenery gave rise to thoughts about the coming summer - about country holidays, travel and warm feelings. The apple trees were blooming just as always. And the “beautiful girls,” dressed in light dresses, hurried to the holiday of “peace, labor and May.” And in their hands are rustling bouquets of lilacs, blue roses and tulips.And they were still alive!
▲ We are often told: the war crept up unnoticed. It is not true. War was expected, although the common people did not want war and lived with their own concerns. They even prepared for it. Moreover, both sides: Germany and the USSR. It was never a secret.
At the May Day demonstration, captivated by the holiday atmosphere, students from men's school No. 8 in the city of Cherkessk walked with BGTO (Be Prepared for Labor and Defense) badges on their chests. Walking past the podium of local leaders, they inspiredly sang a song from the movie “If Tomorrow is War”:
Let's take new rifles - flags on a bayonet,And with a song we’ll go to rifle circles.When the war comes like a blizzard again,Then know how to aim, know how to shoot.The guys did not know that the war would come in 53 days.
Composers and songwriters who composed their creations at the request of the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Lev Mekhlis, came up with all sorts of things! And the people sang these songs:
“We will defeat the enemy with little blood, with a mighty blow!”
The country sang Lev Oshanin’s song to the music of Zinovy ​​Kompaneets:
“We are ready for battle, Comrade Voroshilov,We are ready for battle, Stalin is our father!”
They sang about tankers and artillerymen, to whom “Stalin gave orders,” that “our armor is strong and our tanks are fast,” and even about enemies who “will never roam our republics.”
From all the loudspeakers it boomed: “And if a hardened enemy comes to us, he will be beaten everywhere and everywhere.”
▲ Sober-minded people understood that war with the West could not be avoided, that it was already on the doorstep. Many residents of Cherkessk tried to believe the government and especially “Comrade Stalin.” The non-aggression pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop did not reassure anyone. People understood: the agreement was just a delay.There was not a day in schools when students were not told that there would be a war with Germany. It is no coincidence that many girls wore GSO badges - “Ready for sanitary defense”, and boys from the age of fourteen studied at the YVV school (Young Voroshilov Riders) and knocked out the right to be called “Voroshilov shooter” from rifles in shooting ranges. In military-technical circles - small arms and PVHO (Aircraft Chemical Defense) of Osoaviakhim (Society for the Promotion of Defense, Aviation and Chemical Construction) they studied the effect of toxic substances, mastered a set of individual chemical protection, and passed military sports standards. In gymnastics clubs, exercises corresponding to the third or second sports category were performed on the trapeze, rings, and parallel bars. During frequent training alarms, including, separately, chemical alarms (then instead of a siren they hit a hanging rail), Cherkessk schoolchildren put on gas masks and continued to study in classes while sitting in them.
All youth were required to pass the standards for the BGTO (“Be Ready for Labor and Defense”) and GTO “Ready for Labor and Defense” badges.
One can say more: ideologically and psychologically, everyone was brilliantly prepared for the war, which became one of the factors of Victory. But there was no physical opportunity to truly prepare - you can’t build up muscles in a short time!
▲ On May 6, 1941, residents of Cherkessk learned that I.V. Stalin, while retaining the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (Prime Minister), replacing V.M. Scriabin (Molotov) in this post ). This was also not without reason. Premonitions of war primarily came from newspapers.Reading between the lines, it was even strange to people that the war did not start today. Sometimes we wondered why it didn’t flare up yesterday? And they went to bed in anxiety - as if war would break out tomorrow!
▲ In June 1941, the Mosfilm film studio filmed the film “The Pig Farm and the Shepherd” in Teberda. Some residents of Cherkessk were even lucky enough to get to the set and see the filming for the first time, the main characters of the film Marina Ladynina, Nikolai Kryuchkov and other artists.
▲ On June 14, 1941, TASS radioed a statement refuting rumors about a possible German attack on the USSR. “Germany is as unswervingly observing the terms of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact as the Soviet Union...” the Soviet government assured its people. He was echoed by the statement of the Nazi command about sending its troops into East Prussia and Poland, supposedly “for rest, replenishment and maneuvers.”
Both statements tried to instill hope for the future, but the townspeople, fearing accusations of “alarmism” and “spreading false rumors,” whispered in the corners and asked each other the same question: “Will there be a war or not?”
Indeed, well, what is the point of Hitler rushing to Russia when he has undefeated England behind him, when the guns are still thundering in Greece? War?! Common sense protested, disagreeing. Absurd. Germany was seeking “its own” in Europe, and there was no need for it to get into trouble. The Soviet Union also complied with the agreement with Germany, and until the last day of the eve of the war, it sent cargoes with Russian grain, oil, and ore to the Germans by land and sea.
▲ The war, which benefited few people, was nevertheless recognized by everyone as inevitable. Stalin's actions on the eve of the German attack show the difficult position he was in. Unreasonable repressions, personnel confusion, reluctance to acknowledge the reality of the timing of the attack, delay in rebuilding the first echelon of defense - there is no way around it. Stalin's decision is considered a miscalculation not to announce general mobilization and not to send troops into fortified areas before the Germans attack.
But this was not a miscalculation, but a conscious decision that took into account all the pros and cons.
▲ It was no secret to Stalin that Hitler carefully studied the deeds of the kings of Germany, tried to imitate some of them, and always carried a portrait of Friedrich Barbarossa in his pocket. His admiration for this German emperor, who marked the beginning of a new stage in German politics - “Drang nach Osten”, could not but alarm Koba.
Stalin knew about the concentration of rifle, cavalry, tank and motorized divisions, airborne and anti-tank brigades - trained and trained in the best traditions of the Prussian military - near the western borders of the USSR. The leader never believed Hitler, but entered into relations with Germany based only on the security interests of the Soviet Union.
▲ Even on June 21 in Cherkessk there were no signs of trouble. Many townspeople who survived the revolutionary events, the Civil War, post-war famine and devastation during the famine days of the 1930s actually began to eat plenty of bread only by the beginning of the war. They carefreely rejoiced at everything and were happy. The radio installed in the center of Cherkessk was still playing peacefully and cheerfully. Until late in the evening the songs “Katyusha”, “If tomorrow there is war...”, “Cavalry”, “Eh, Andryusha”, “Lyuba-Lyubushka”, “It’s easy on the heart from a cheerful song” were played.
At the cinema. Gorky was shown the film "Cutter from Torzhok", released in 1925, and from June 24 a new feature film "Volga-Volga" was to be shown here.
They went to bed in peacetime and woke up in wartime.
▲ Sunday June 22 is a day of rest. Early in the morning the whole country was still asleep. Some of our border guards, with their caps pushed back on their heads, were probably lying in the grass, and maybe even counting the stars in the clear June sky...
Elderly generals and officers, after visiting theaters, continued to relax in summer restaurants or in their companies, puffing on tobacco in the fresh air. They went to bed around midnight and slept soundly in the morning.
Young officers, having watched “Chapaev” or maybe “Volga-Volga” in the cinemas in the evening, then waltzed on the summer dance floors, and in the morning they could not part with the beautiful female representatives.
Former tenth-graders, girls and boys, after the gala graduation evening, traditionally prepared to greet the dawn.
By this time the milkmaids had already woken up and were tugging at the cows' peaceful tits. There is no doubt that many men were already sitting in ambush in the bushes with a fishing rod and catching fish in the river, welcoming the upcoming day off with a glass of “strong drink.” But the bulk of the population was still snoring peacefully in their beds, having suffered at work or in the fields.
And at this time what happened happened.
▲ 129 years later - day after day - after Napoleon crossed the Berezina River, the Germans followed his path. Hitler believed that he would fight the Stalinist regime. A naive fool who repeated the mistake of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had to fight with the people who defended not the state, but the Motherland and Fatherland. He knew little about the history of Russia: the Patriotic War could never be won against Russia and at no cost.
You can defeat the Russians only in one case - if you exterminate them all.
The Germans surprisingly did not experience any forebodings. It did not occur to them that, in the end, as the American historian Weinberger writes, “an attempt to push back the Red Army on the territory of the entire USSR could have been unsuccessful, if only because the tracks of German tanks could not help but wear out in a country of such size...”.
On June 22, 1941, in the early hours of the far west, German planes prepared to take off to bomb Soviet cities and airfields. The crews of fascist tanks brought their vehicles to their original positions. Hitler's generals of the German army groups, having received the prearranged signal "Dordmung" at night, which meant to begin moving troops into the border zone, increasingly looked at the dials of their watches. Their arrows were approaching the fatal mark...
At 3 hours 12 minutes Berlin time, the military machine of the Third Reich began to move, and 3 minutes later, thousands of guns and mortars of the German army opened fire on border outposts and the location of Soviet troops.
At 3:30 a.m. the first wave of German bombers crossed the western border of the USSR. In the morning twilight, 10 large Soviet airfields were attacked.
The second wave of bombers also set course for their intended targets.
To achieve surprise, German Air Force planes flew over the Soviet border in all sectors simultaneously. Already at sunrise, the main forces of the Luftwaffe attacked railway junctions, sea and river ports, concentrations of Soviet tanks, Soviet army headquarters, warehouses and 66 airfields, where 1,489 aircraft were concentrated (including the latest types). The Messerschmitt pilots couldn’t believe their eyes: hundreds of Soviet planes were standing at the runways, without any cover, not camouflaged. Most of them didn't even have time to take off.
▲ In recent years, publications have appeared in which the authors are trying in every possible way to shift responsibility for the start of the Great Patriotic War from Germany to the USSR. I just want to tell them: read the pre-war diary of the Chief of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces F. Halder! Everything is clear there: who started and how.
According to his information, in June 1941, near the Soviet border, as part of the first operational echelon, the Nazis had 92 infantry, 17 tank, 13 motorized, one cavalry divisions and 16 separate brigades.
According to the German historian Paul Karel, on June 22, 129 German first-line divisions (7 armies, 4 tank groups and 3 air fleets), in which there were about 4 million well-trained, trained soldiers with extensive experience in combat operations, invaded the territory of the USSR. officers who began to act in a strictly planned direction. And along with them - 600 thousand units of equipment, 750 thousand horses, 3,580 armored combat vehicles, 7,184 guns and 1,830 aircraft.
These were the most formidable Wehrmacht forces ever to take part in battles in the history of warfare.
The number of our divisions stationed on the border is indicated in military literature from 110 to 227! Well, our General Staff officers and military scientists did not have enough post-war time to count all the divisions on their fingers. We still do not have a complete official list of all Soviet divisions that existed before the war. If you leaf through the books and compare all the figures indicated (the number of equipment and people), the result is complete nonsense.
▲ The first enemy attack was taken by border guards and engineering battalions who were engaged in construction work and had no military skills. Thousands of the first victims of the war appeared. But not one of the 455 border outposts on the western border withdrew without orders. Left alone with an enemy many times superior to them, the border guards died, but they never received help from the regular Red Army. Having suffered significant losses, she was forced to retreat and, without orders, began to withdraw military units from the border directly to the east. In the gaps that arose in our defenses, the Germans broke through to the rear of the Red Army troops.The mass heroism of the border guards was later silenced because it emphasized Beria’s competence against the backdrop of the incompetence of the army command.
▲ On the first day of the war, along the entire Soviet-German front, according to the worst-case scenario, events unfolded in the city of Brest and its fortress. Neither the command of the 4th Army, nor the commanders of formations and units, nor the Soviet and party organizations of the Brest region expected the invasion of Nazi troops and did not think that it would happen in a few hours. Therefore, no measures were taken to bring the troops into combat readiness on the evening of June 21 in the Brest direction.
In Brest itself, 18 fully equipped tank, rifle, artillery, engineer-sapper and motorized rifle regiments were concentrated, plus a border detachment (regiment) of the NKVD. There was also a district military hospital, a huge number of various military warehouses, etc. Not counting the many small units and rear units, not counting the divisions located in the immediate vicinity of Brest. If this mass of troops had been withdrawn from the border, dispersed and put on the defensive, the defense of Brest could have become a heroic page in the military history of the country.
But two railway and four road bridges across the navigable Western Bug in the Brest region, as well as others that were not blown up, located along the border, were captured by the enemy already in the first hours of the war, which was a complete surprise for him. At 7 am, two German infantry divisions, without experiencing resistance from the divisions of our 4th Army, occupied Brest.
▲ The Bug and Mukhavets rivers, and their branches, additionally imparted inaccessibility to the Brest Fortress, built by the Russians in 1842 and which had long lost its significance as a fortification structure. Along the outer circumference of the citadel there was a solid brick two-story barracks, which had 500 casemates for housing troops (beneath them were basements, and even lower was a network of underground passages) and at the same time served as a fortress wall.
Having concentrated troops in the area of ​​the Brest Fortress by the summer, the commanders of the Red Army, not without the approval of the commander of the Western District D. G. Pavlov, did not hesitate for long. Instead of putting up tents for personnel, it was decided to use the capital premises of the fortress to house troops and warehouses of the 6th and 42nd SD of the 4th Army, which was prohibited by the governing documents.
The Germans sent their first shells directly into the midst of the bodies of soldiers and officers sleeping in the fortress. And by seven in the morning, only memories remained from two rifle divisions (34 thousand people) and a tank division (11 thousand people). Soldiers and officers died, mowed down by German machine guns while trying to panic to get out through the two narrow gates of the mousetrap citadel. Under normal conditions, it took more than 3 hours to withdraw the troops and institutions inside the fortress through these gates.
Residents of Cherkessk V.V. Doroshnenko (here he was captured by the Germans) and A.A. Evstafiev, A.A. Savoskin managed to stay alive in this utter hell and return home after the front roads of the war.
▲ The tsarist engineers who built the Brest Fortress never dreamed that the enemy would be able to break into the citadel on the very first day, and all the equipment and warehouses would go to him as trophies.
The survivors of about 4 thousand soldiers and commanders of the 6th SD and 42nd SD, trapped in the Brest Fortress, together with the border guards of the 9th outpost and the guards of the 132nd battalion of the NKVD, then formed the “immortal garrison” of the famous book of the writer Sergei Smirnova.
An unknown defender of the fortress scratched with a bayonet on the stone wall of the citadel: “I am dying. But I don't give up. Goodbye, Motherland. 20.VII.41.” But it is unknown how many days the defenders of the Brest Fortress fought. More precisely, how many weeks, months. From German chronicles there are cases of nameless defenders who were alive even in the spring of 1942.
Today, under the slabs of the Brest Fortress memorial complex, the found remains of 962 victims lie, the names of only 272 of them have been established. How many thousands of soldiers actually died in the Brest Fortress, as they say, is known only to God...
▲ In the turmoil of the first weeks of the war, a terrible miscalculation immediately emerged - our inability to retreat competently. But this is also art. But this was the attitude: the Red Army should only go forward. The results were immediate. Retreating, the armies of the Southwestern Front suffered huge losses, and then generally fell into a cauldron. They were cut off and didn't know what to do.
For example, on the first day of aggression, the Germans broke into our territory only 40-50 km. Having encountered resistance, the enemy quickly bypassed the military units of the Red Army, attacked them from the flanks and rear, and tried to advance their tank divisions as far in depth as possible. Sabotage groups dropped by parachute, German intelligence agents from among local residents, as well as machine gunners on motorcycles rushing to the rear, disabled communication lines, captured bridges, airfields, and other military installations.
To create panic among the defending Red Army soldiers and create the appearance of being surrounded, German motorcyclists fired indiscriminately from automatic weapons. Continuous air bombing, artillery shelling, dense machine-gun fire, smoke from fires (due to dry weather, forest fires started) forced our surrounded troops to rush from side to side. As a result, a large number of Red Army rifle divisions were dismembered or surrounded.
▲ On June 22, some residents of Cherkessk met the unexpected enemy with weapons in their hands. Even then, in the very first days of the war, even in its very first hours, our fellow countrymen shed their blood or gave their lives in battle.
At about 4 o'clock in the morning, near the town of Litovo of the Lithuanian SSR, Pavel Ivanovich Lykov met the enemy with weapons in his hands, near Lvov - Nikolai Semenovich Karaulov and Ivan Romanovich Medvedsky, at 5 o'clock in the morning, in Transcarpathia, on the Prut River - Mutalib Adamovich Shebzukhov.
Near Brest (until 1939 - Brest-Litovsk) the war began for Konstantin Ivanovich Ivanov and Alexander Timofeevich Klyuev, Kishinev - Vasily Ignatievich Oseredko, Dorogobush - Alexey Ivanovich Lemeshukov, Shauliai (Lithuanian SSR) - Fitsa Shagabanovich Nartokov, Smolensk - Galim Umarovich Kantemirov , on on the border with Poland - Vasily Ivanovich Deduk, in Ukraine - Vasily Grigorievich Tishchenko, in the Leningrad region - Kaspot Soslanalievich Kunupov, in Belarus - Vasily Sergeevich Karpenko, Ivan Vasilyevich Likhobabin, Pavel Petrovich Malyakin, Nikolai Kirillovich Pechenkin, Stepan Fedorovich Semenenko, Zinovy ​​Ageevich Sibirtsev.
“Women, children, old people, girls with small bundles walked from west to east along the roads where the corpses lay. These were mainly Jewish refugees. The refugees made their way away from the roads, and the Germans, adapting to this, bombed right on the sides of the roads. The Germans did not spoil the roads themselves: they intended to go quickly and unhindered. And young civilian men walked towards the refugees. They went to their recruiting stations. Mobilized, who did not want to be considered deserters. And at the same time, they knew nothing, did not understand where they were going. They were driven forward by a sense of duty and disbelief that the Germans could be here, so close,” recalled the Honorary Citizen of the city of Cherkessk, Colonel Z. A. Sibirtsev, at one of the meetings with young people.
▲ On the morning of June 22, 1941, Berlin radio notified the whole world about the start of Germany’s war against the USSR, and only Moscow remained deeply silent. Only by noon, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - Molotov, Malenkov, Voroshilov and Beria - prepared the text of the statement of the Soviet government.
That Sunday morning, many residents of the city of Cherkessk, according to the old tradition, went to the market for shopping, the children ran to swim in Abaza and Kuban. During the day, sporting competitions were to be held in the city; in the evening, mass celebrations and a concert were planned in the central square. The day turned out to be sunny. Many townspeople began to gather on Green Island, but at ten o'clock a rumor began to spread around the city with lightning speed that at 12 o'clock an important government message would be broadcast on the radio.
Time passed terribly slowly. Many people, still cheerful and carefree, joined the crowd crowded at the intersection of Pervomaiskaya and Krasnoarmeyskaya streets near the Post Office building. As anxious and agitated as a hive of bees, the crowd stared at the large plywood bell of the loudspeaker.
Finally the announcer’s voice was heard: “Moscow speaking!”
▲ In the living, concentrated silence of Cherkessk, Molotov called the war a war: “Citizens and citizens of the Soviet Union! The Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, instructed me to make the following statement. Today, at 4 o'clock in the morning, without presenting any claims to the Soviet Union, without declaring war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders in many places and bombed our cities from their planes - Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, and more than two hundred people were killed and wounded. Raids by enemy aircraft and artillery shelling were also carried out from Romanian and Finnish territory...”
Comrade Molotov still deceived the Soviet people in his address. And then, for about 70 years, we were also enthusiastically lied to, that war had not been declared, that the enemy attacked treacherously.
It is now known for sure that the Reich German Foreign Minister J. von Ribbentrop, on behalf of the German government, declared war on the Soviet Union. But the text of the memorandum that Ribbentrop handed to the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Germany V. G. Dekanozov at 4.00 on June 22, 1941 is still inaccessible to citizens of the Russian Federation (formerly citizens of the USSR) as it is kept “under seven seals.” The German government declared war on the USSR! And using dozens of examples, he explained his actions as the only possible ones in the current situation. Apparently it is impossible to refute Germany’s accusations, and maybe you don’t want to answer such questions. The text of the memorandum contains something that could change our attitude towards the war.
Molotov’s first words sounded an obvious acquittal note. In addition, words were spoken that became the tuning fork of the entire struggle: Patriotic War! For the first time - on the very first day - this war was called the Patriotic War by Molotov. On July 3, in a radio speech, Stalin called her Great. The name was given. This is how the Great Patriotic War began.
People stood, afraid to breathe.
“Now that the attack on the Soviet Union has already taken place,” continued Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, “the Soviet Government has given our troops an order to repel the predatory attack and expel German troops from the territory of our Motherland.”
The appeal ended with the words: “...The Government calls on you, citizens of the Soviet Union, to rally your ranks even more closely around our glorious Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet Government, around our great leader, Comrade Stalin.”
The finale of the speech sounded like an alarm bell: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours".
▲ Having listened to Molotov’s speech to the end, many townspeople still did not fully understand everything that had happened. The stamp of dull shock and bewilderment remained on their faces: how could this be? Without a quarrel, without ultimatums, without mobilization, without a hitch? Just a few days ago, many men of Cherkessk often talked about the Germans, about their military equipment and the victories that they so easily won in Europe. They even admired their operations and did not feel much hatred towards them. And now? Now the Nazis have crossed our border to kill us.
▲ Then the crowd scattered, spread out. Some hurried home, subconsciously feeling the need to spend some time, perhaps for the last time, with their family and children. Others, catching up with each other, talking restrainedly, went to the city party committee and the House of Defense. Still others - there were some - rushed to the stores to buy salt, matches, cereals, everything that was still on the shelves. Some for the sake of self-interest, some in the naive hope of stocking up on acquisitions for the entire war.
▲ “In 1941, before graduating from secondary school No. 11, I was then 16 years old, I became a Komsomol member. She immediately began to carry out her first Komsomol assignments: she was on duty at the polling station, provided assistance to the elderly, attended the choir,” recalled Lidia Mikhailovna Popytaeva, a Komsomol member of the 40s, a holder of the Order of Lenin and the VDNKh silver medal, and a teacher with many years of experience.
On June 22, our school choir, led by teacher Aleksandra Vasilievna Durakova, was supposed to perform on the radio. But the residents of Cherkessk did not hear our songs. The war has begun."
▲ Anna Dmitrievna Bryantseva recalled: “I was just over fifteen and a half years old. I was at my friend's school graduation party. I came home in the morning and fell asleep like the dead. Around noon, my grandmother woke me up, since my mother was not at home. “Are you sleeping, granddaughter, and don’t know anything?” “No, I know. Today a brass band has been invited to Green Island. All the city’s graduates will gather there.” “We will all already have a brass... Don’t bare your teeth! War".
The thoughts were more bitter than each other. It’s unthinkable, incomprehensible to the mind: a German on Soviet soil.”
▲ “On June 21, a warm summer evening,” recalled Cherkessk resident Yuri Melnikov, “we walked past the House of Soviets on Komsomolskaya Square without talking. The excitement was overwhelming, my soul was sad and joyful. The last time we went to 10th. Stalin's school (now gymnasium No. 9 - S.T.), where the best years passed. More than half of my life. Despite the fact that there was still more than an hour before the start of the prom, a whole group of classmates met us at the front porch. But only an hour ago we parted after an exciting run around the shops, decorating the club, and a short rehearsal. And here again, like a magnet, I am drawn back to school, to my comrades, and I can’t believe that now we will not gather every day within the walls of our own school.
The graduation party began at eight o'clock. By this time, the parents of the graduates had gathered. In a solemn atmosphere, they presented certificates of maturity and flowers, and then, to the sounds of a brass band, they twirled in an eternally young waltz.
After the gala evening, both graduating classes performed a small concert. Long after midnight, a noisy gang heads to Green Island to greet the dawn: we discuss plans, consult about the future, argue about which specialty is better. Then the morning dawn began to sing, and we moved again towards the school. And from her, holding hands, they walked in wide ranks through the streets of their native Cherkessk. The words of the song: “We have left the school building forever...” disturbed the peacefully sleeping residents.
We ourselves were excited, joyful, we joked, greeted graduates of other schools with shouts of welcome, congratulated them, and they congratulated us. None of us knew that our plans would not come true. Unbeknownst to us, a rumor spread throughout the city - WAR!”
▲ On June 22, former Red partisan V.S. Solyanoy, a participant in the Civil War, whose feat was recognized in those years with the highest award: the Order of the Red Banner, came to the Circassian regional military registration and enlistment office. He put three statements on the table: from himself, from his 17-year-old son Nikolai and 16-year-old daughter Nina.
Carrying out the decision of the Bureau of the Circassian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Vasily Semenovich led a hundred horsemen, which became part of the cavalry corps of General L.M. Dovator. Nikolai fought in the 75th Cavalry Regiment. In 1943 he was seriously wounded and returned home. In the 1950s went to restore the mines of Donbass, in 1960 he retired for health reasons and, returning to Cherkessk, worked for a long time as an instructor in the city fire department. Having become a nurse, Nina endured the siege of Leningrad and was awarded the medal “For Courage.”
▲ On June 23 (on this day the “Union of Militant Atheists” was dispersed in the country), a meeting of workers took place in the city, which was opened by the first secretary of the Circassian regional committee of the CPSU (b) G. M. Vorobyov. In the adopted resolution, “expressing indignation at the machinations of presumptuous dogs,” the city’s workers unanimously declared: “... we will defend the sacred borders of our Fatherland with all our might, for fascism is disgusting, it is the Middle Ages, barbarism and tyranny.”
In Cherkessk (Kubanskaya St., 73), a recruiting station of the regional military registration and enlistment office began operating. As of June 27, only from those liable for military service who were not subject to conscription, 213 applications were submitted about their desire to voluntarily go to the front; of these, 124 applications were submitted by women.
From a national construction project (they planned to build a dam along the Kuban River in 10 years - S.T.), nurses A. Vasilenko and M. Protasova were taken to the front. They learned what war is by rescuing the wounded near Rostov-on-Don and Millerovo as part of the surgical group of the 426th medical battalion of the 351st SD of the 37th Army. In May 1942, near Kharkov, nurses were surrounded, but miraculously escaped. And then there was Stalingrad, Kursk, the liberation of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland. May 9, 1945 Art. Lieutenant m/s A. Vasilenko met in Lardsberg on the Warta River.
▲ On June 24, V. M. Molotov’s speech was published in all central, regional and regional newspapers. A large photo of I.V. Stalin was placed nearby, and it seemed that the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the head of the Soviet state, was addressing the people himself. Then, on June 22, the Soviet people did not hear Stalin’s voice. We still don’t know where Stalin was at that moment. On June 18, he sent his directive and on June 19-21 he was in the Kremlin, where he quite intensively received the top leaders of the country and the army. This can be seen in the log of Stalin’s visits to the Kremlin, which is available for review today.
His alleged absence from the Kremlin from June 22 to June 25, 1941 due to unclear circumstances, is now explained by some researchers as an assassination attempt on the leader (they tried to poison Stalin in those days). At the same time, from the “Journal of Visits of J.V. Stalin in his Kremlin Office” it is clear that the leader received visitors in the Kremlin in the subsequent days of June, i.e. from June 22 to 28.
There is also a version according to which the German generals, led by Hitler, hoped for additional help in the form of the “opposition,” a kind of “fifth column” in the Soviet Union. Some German generals spoke about this without hints in their memoirs and had high hopes for a political revolution in Russia and the overthrow of Stalin in June 1941.
The date of the German attack after May 15 was always “floating” until the last day. The Germans were always waiting for something. The long-awaited signal “Dordmung” was received by the troops only on the night of June 21.
According to Khrushchev, there was an opinion that Stalin was confused on June 22, lost his self-control - in short, out of fear he fled to his dacha and did not appear in the Kremlin for several days. Knowing Stalin's firm and decisive character, this seems strange. During the Brezhnev era, Khrushchev’s statement about Stalin’s cowardly flight was softened. They say he didn’t chicken out, but was simply worried about why Hitler deceived him and suddenly attacked the USSR.
Zhukov also claimed that the leader was at the dacha, and then, after he, Zhukov, called about the start of the war, he came to the Kremlin.
Mikoyan, on the contrary, wrote in his memoirs that the leader was in the Kremlin, and on June 22, at 4:30 a.m., he gathered all the members of the Politburo and the military in his office.
▲ In the newspapers, under the text of Molotov’s speech, the residents of Cherkessk read the first reports of the Red Army High Command for June 22 and 23, telling about the battles in the border areas.
Both then and later, there was very little specific information in the newspapers. Moreover, she was often far from the truth and bordered on mockery. The purpose of such articles is to leave the reader completely unaware of what is happening. The main source of useful information was only one - rumors!
▲ On June 24, the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo), or SIB for short, was formed in Moscow. Programs began to be broadcast regularly - “In the Last Hour”, “Letters from the Front”, “Sovinformburo Reports”. Several times a day, the report was read out by All-Union Radio announcer Yuri Levitan. His voice captivated everyone, even if the message was sad. And the whole of Cherkessk, with bated breath, fell to the loudspeakers and listened to the voice of Moscow.
At first there was little truth in the reports. It is clear that ours praised themselves. How else? After all, it was necessary to maintain our fighting spirit. Naturally, the country's population was disoriented. If there is no real threat, then the attitude towards the war was the same. Among the residents of Cherkessk, for a certain time, a mood of mischief reigned. Everyone lived in anticipation of a turning point in the coming days and hours, lived in anticipation of the speedy victory of the “invincible Red Army.” Eagerly listening to the words of Moscow, the townspeople were still waiting for the news that the enemy had been stopped, knocked over, that he was running, abandoning everything. And our troops with red banners are already marching along the streets of surrendered fascist cities.
But, despite this, the loudspeaker has become the most expensive necessary thing for the residents of Cherkessk, the most necessary source of information, a window to the world.
▲ On June 24, local newspapers - the regional "Red Cherkessia" and the regional "Ordzhonikidze Pravda" - informed their readers that from June 22, on the basis of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, on the territory of 14 military districts of the country (Leningrad, Baltic special, Western special, Kiev special , Odessa, Kharkov, Oryol, Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Ural, Siberian, Volga, North Caucasus and Transcaucasian) mobilization was announced, which was subject to those liable for military service born from 1905 to 1918 inclusive. The first day of mobilization was considered June 23, 1941.It became clear that they would have to fight on their own territory and that the war would be long and bloody.
▲ On June 24, the newspapers Izvestia and Krasnaya Zvezda published the poems “Holy War.” The head of the Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble of the Red Army, A. V. Alexandrov (1883-1946), was so shocked by the words that he immediately wrote music for them.
On June 27, 1941, the song “Holy War” (“Get up, huge country...”), which became the anthem of the Great Patriotic War, was first performed by an ensemble at the Belorussky railway station in Moscow in front of soldiers leaving for the front.
The newspaper “Arguments and Facts” (No. 13, 1991) reported that the author of the lines “Holy War” was a native of the village. Klintsy, Chernigov province, graduate of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, teacher Alexander Adolfovich Bode (1865-1939), who taught ancient languages ​​in Livonia, at the Arensburg gymnasium and Russian literature in Rybinsk. He was a holder of the orders of St. Stanislaus, 3rd and 2nd classes, and St. Anne, 3rd class.
Under the influence of the First World War, in 1916 he wrote the following poems:
“Get up, huge country,Stand up for mortal combatWith German dark powerWith the Teutonic horde.May the rage be nobleBoils like a waveThere is a people's war going on,Holy war.Let's go break with all our might,With all my heart, with all my soulFor our dear landFor my native Russian land.Black wings dare notFly over the homeland,Its fields are spaciousThe enemy does not dare to trample!Rotten Teutonic evil spiritsLet's drive a bullet into the forehead,The scum of humanityLet's put together a strong coffin.Get up, huge country,Stand up for mortal combatWith German dark powerWith the Teutonic horde."
But then the song was not in demand. Considering the songwriter V.I. Lebedev-Kumach a great patriot, Bode sent him a letter with a poem in 1937 to get a review, and maybe publication, but did not receive a response.
In “The Holy War” Lebedev-Kumach only slightly reworked the text, leaving the main meaning unchanged. By the way, earlier the poet was accused of appropriating the words of the popular pre-war foxtrot “Masha” from Yalta resident F. M. Kvyatkovskaya; they said that poems surprisingly similar to “May Moscow” (“The morning paints with a gentle light ...”) were published in the magazine "Ogonyok" even before the revolution.
▲ On June 24, 1941, many teachers from Secondary School No. 10 named after. Stalin. Among them were physics teacher Lev Bogumilovich Levbich, mathematicians - Terenty Fedorovich Stupakov, who later died near Sevastopol, literature - Maryana Mikhailovna (surname not established) and others. “Farewell, the sonorous splash of the Kuban, and you, our beloved Cherkessk!” - was written on one of the slogans of the school building.
▲ “After the declaration of war, we boys devoured newspapers and listened to then rare radio broadcasts from “black saucers” installed in the city center. Our boys’ eyes lit up: “Well, now we’ll give it to them, these bastards, because the Red Army is the strongest of all...” recalled Art. master ChZHM A. I. Kulyabtsev. “But the first reports from the Sovinformburo were laconic: “There are fierce battles along the entire length of the front from the Black to the Barents Sea. Both sides are suffering huge losses."
▲ Before the war, people were drafted into the army at the age of 20. With its beginning, this law was naturally broken. Already in the second half of 1941, young people born in 1922 and 1923 left for the active army. The next year, 1942 - 1924. and even 17-year-olds, 1925. The conscription of children under age later became commonplace. In the spring of 1943, the remaining young men born in 1925 went to the front, and in the fall, those born in 1926. In November 1944 - young men born in 1927, many of whom turned 18 in the middle or even at the end of the victorious year of 1945.
▲ Cherkessk - a peaceful, sunny city - together with the whole country began to change its appearance, began to switch to war, subordinating all life to its strict requirements. At work, residents were advised not to panic: the war was temporary and would end soon.
In the first days of the war, lines in stores became longer and longer, and the list of products that were difficult to buy became longer and longer. The demand for bread, salt, matches, soap, cereals, pasta, and tobacco increased sharply, so their unlimited sale stopped. Moreover, for a number of goods there are insignificant stocks left in stores and warehouses. Sugar and cheeses were almost gone for sale. Due to the fact that drunkenness began in the first days of mobilization (conscripts were escorted into the army with copious amounts of alcohol), the open sale of vodka was prohibited, and then prices for alcohol, tobacco and perfumes were generally increased.
In the market, food prices have jumped three to four times.
In the queues they talked about the arrests by the NKVD of alarmists (for spreading rumors) and speculators (some were found with boxes of soap, others with bags of salt, and still others with matches).
After June 22, citizens were prohibited from withdrawing more than 200 rubles from their savings books. per month. New taxes were introduced throughout the country and loans were stopped. The townspeople stopped accepting government winning loan bonds, while simultaneously obliging all workers and employees to buy new military loan bonds (in total, 72 billion rubles were issued throughout the country).
The NKVD authorities confiscated hunting rifles from all residents of Cherkessk. An order was issued to hand over radio receivers, and citizens hurried to collection points to get rid of a wooden box with a speaker covered with a fabric mesh. Many had the "SI" model: these were probably the initials of the leader. Now everyone was freed from enemy propaganda. An exception to the surrender of radios was made only for some security officers and police officers. All the news (they were “blacker than clouds”) came from a loudspeaker hanging on the Post Office building.
Windows began to be glued crosswise with paper tapes. To prevent glass from flying out from explosions.
▲ From the day the mobilization was announced, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Zuychenko sharply increased his performance in work. From June 22 to June 30, it produced 300% of the norm, and on June 30 – 500%. Over the course of two days, Stakhanovite from the Promkombinat artel A. Pronina sewed 58 tunics and 48 trousers for the Red Army soldiers. Under normal conditions, this work required at least 5 days. Candidate member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Martynenko fulfilled the plan by 300%.
▲ At the end of June, newspapers published the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the working hours of workers and employees in wartime.” It provided for the introduction of “one to three hours a day of overtime work with pay at one and a half times the rate”, replacing vacations with monetary compensation.Vacations were prohibited. Compensation for unused vacation was transferred to savings books, but it was impossible to receive them until the end of the war. Since everything is for the front, everything is for victory, personal money too.
At the enterprises of Cherkessk, the Decree was universally met with deep approval, as it responded to the aspirations of people to devote all their strength to defeat the enemy.
▲ By the end of June, clothing and shoe factories and a number of other industrial cooperatives in Cherkessk switched to producing army footwear and uniforms. The Molot plant, the Krasny Metallist industrial cooperative and other enterprises within a short time mastered the production of parts for artillery and mortar weapons, mine and grenade bodies, products for the aviation industry, saddles, harnesses and horseshoes for cavalry units. Artel "Khimprom" has launched the production of anti-tank bottles with a flammable mixture.
Of great importance for the country was the supply by the Molot plant of chaises (steam-horse passages) for army convoys. At that time, all collective farms had special funds: “Horse for the Red Army”, “Britchka for the Red Army”. Every month, Circassia and Karachay sent 400-450 steam passages and thousands of wagon parts.
▲ By the end of June, about two thousand conscripts were called to the front from Cherkessk. Fathers, sons and husbands left to fight the enemy. Women and teenagers took over their jobs. An example was shown by the wives of workers at the Molot plant. At the plant, among other posters, there was this one: “Women to the machines!”
On June 23, nine women took the jobs of turners and mechanics in the machine shop where their husbands, who were called up to the front, worked. About 30 women who did not have a specialty were hired as auxiliary workers and apprentices. The plant began training women in the professions of mechanics and turners. The slogan “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” became the law of life for the townspeople in those harsh days. We worked seven days a week, 14-16 hours a day. When there were urgent tasks, they slept at their workplaces, or in clubs and red corners.
▲ After the death of Stalin, under Khrushchev, it was first published that from June 30, 1941, all power in the country was concentrated in the State Defense Committee (GKO), formed at the suggestion of Beria. Agree, it’s strange - the war went on for more than a week, and there was no governing body for the country’s defense yet. Where has the leadership gone? Khrushchev, apparently, had not yet decided how to present the events of the beginning of the war to the population of the country.
Naturally, J.V. Stalin became the chairman. His deputy V. M. Molotov oversaw tank building, and members of the State Defense Committee: G. M. Malenkov - aviation, K. E. Voroshilov - troop recruitment (in 1941 he also headed the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR), L. P. Beria - coal, oil, forestry industry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, NKVD. On behalf of the State Defense Committee, from February 1942, Beria also began to exercise control over the People's Commissariats of Arms, Mortars, and Ammunition, and organized the production of military products in the Gulag. From December 1942, he began to supervise the tank industry instead of Molotov. Later N.A. Bulganin, N.A. Voznesensky and A.I. Mikoyan were introduced into the State Defense Committee.
Until May 9, 1945, the State Defense Committee concentrated all power in the USSR and united in its hands the military, political and economic leadership of the country. All structures of the party, government and army were subordinate to him. The Communist Party was also the executor of the will of the State Defense Committee. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks never met during the war years. The highest party bodies, congresses and party conferences were also not convened from the beginning of the war until October 5, 1952.
▲ In the office of the Circassian JSC SOYUZTRANS, training of female drivers and car mechanics began. Six women successfully mastered the profession of drivers and replaced the men who went to the front. Among them are Maria Podsvirova, Ksenia Denisenko, Anna Zhitlova and others. At the enterprises of the city, women were trained in the professions of milling machine, turner, and planer. Many women began to be trained in special courses in MTS mechanical workshops. After 2-3 months, they became turners and mechanics, after which they improved their skills directly in production.
▲ The Machine and Tractor Station (MTS), located in the city of Cherkessk, within a few days after the start of the war, attracted more than 60 tractor drivers who had stopped working before the war to take short-term courses in driving combine harvesters. All of them joined the ranks of machine operators to replace those who had gone to the front. Turner Tatyana Mikhailenko, having a baby, came to production on June 23 and immediately mastered her workplace. By the end of August 1941, with a shift rate of 22, she was turning out 45 parts needed by the country with high quality workmanship.
▲ A resident of Cherkessk, Daria Vasilyevna Petrova, submitted an application to the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with a request to use her house as an infirmary, and she herself expressed her willingness to be a nurse there to care for the wounded.
▲ “NOTICE. Military reserve comrade. TSARKOV Ivan Kuzmich, Cherkessk city, Svoboda street, 79. June 23, 1941. I order you on June 28 of this year at 5 o’clock in the morning to appear for military training at the address: Circassian Regional Military Commissariat.” Hundreds of citizens received similar notices.On June 27, the first meeting dedicated to sending military personnel to the front took place in Cherkessk. Breathing down each other's necks and craning their necks, people crowded around the tiny square. They spoke briefly, most of the speeches resembled a report: the workers of the Molot plant are waiting to be sent to the front, the Komsomol members of the Khimprom artel and the shoe factory consider themselves mobilized...
“We will stand up in defense of our Motherland!”, “The Soviet people will give a crushing rebuff to the enemy!” - this was unanimously heard in the speeches of the workers, collective farmers, and intelligentsia who came to see off the first conscripts. People don't realize that this is the last time many of them see each other. Conscripts called up from the Karachay Autonomous Okrug also went to the front from Cherkessk. The radio first boomed with marches and then broadcast decrees calling for fourteen ages. Steamy and excited, people left the meeting, ready - as in films about the Civil War - to immediately line up for rifles.The second rally to send the mobilized took place in Cherkessk on July 9.
▲ Among the first volunteers to go to the front was the Chairman of the Circassian City Executive Committee S. N. Kosenko. By July 1, the military registration and enlistment office and the city committee of the Komsomol received more than 400 applications from Komsomol members of Cherkessk with a request to send them to the active army. Only 250 applications were submitted by Komsomol girls.
▲ On Thursday, July 3, 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet people via radio. For the first time since the beginning of the war, residents of Cherkessk heard his speech on the radio, which began with the famous address: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Soldiers of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!”
With his simple words, the leader rejected party dogmatism and seemed to say: “Russian people! It’s about whether we should be or not.” He said that the enemy had captured Lithuania, part of Latvia, the western part of Belarus, and part of Western Ukraine.
In fact, the situation was even worse. At this time, the Germans were already in control of Riga and were approaching Bobruisk. Exactly a week after Stalin’s speech, Wehrmacht troops completely occupied Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, a significant part of Estonia, Moldova and Ukraine. There was a threat of enemy troops breaking through to Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv.
Out of excitement, Stalin drank water, and the residents of Cherkessk heard his teeth chattering on the edge of the glass.
After the leader’s speech, many residents of Cherkessk wrote statements to the military registration desk: “Please send me to the front.” People were eager to quickly engage in battle with the enemy and fight with him until complete victory.
▲ It’s a completely different matter to stay in the rear. Many townspeople, especially at first, felt very bad. The feeling of some kind of guilt and even shame did not leave them for a minute. It seemed to them that everyone was looking sideways at them: young people, they say, boys and girls, and walking around Cherkessk at such a time!
However, from the very first days of the war there was no time to walk around. There weren't enough people in the workshops, and every person counted. We returned home late in the evening. We returned, as it were, to the hotel. Just to spend the night.
The slogan is “Everything for the front!” Everything for Victory!” – hung on many walls of industrial premises. It was the main and, perhaps, the only principle of life in Cherkessk, as well as throughout the country. And that was okay. Everything was sent there, to the front where their husbands, brothers and children went to gain victory over the Nazi invaders with their blood. Without any discussion, both food and clothing were given to the front. And somehow... We’ll survive... It’s also good that we’re not under bullets, not under bombs...
Well, yes, they did not sit in the trenches, since they were born a little later than the guys of military age. But they also had a great time. The war touched them too, licked them with a fiery tongue. Directly or indirectly, they also suffered from it. After the death of fathers and brothers, a burden beyond their age fell on their shoulders. And life didn’t turn out the way I wanted.
Home front workers who worked seven days a week, who fell off their feet from hunger and fatigue, who survived the occupation of Cherkessk, who wandered around the barracks after its liberation... Children whose childhood was during the difficult war years... They were malnourished, sick, and did not develop properly. That is why they are now being gnawed by diseases that could have been avoided. And everyone also has bad teeth. Or no teeth at all... Previously, they were not reimbursed or compensated for anything. They didn't wait. We thought that life just happened that way. They had such a time.
▲ On July 4, a squad of self-defense and public protection of all means of communication was created in the Circassian regional communications office.On July 6, 1941, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued on responsibility for the spread of false rumors in wartime that arouse alarm among the population. The perpetrators were punished by imprisonment for a term of 2 to 5 years, “unless this action by its nature entails a more severe punishment by law.”
▲ On July 8, the garment factory team produced the following daily output: Ozova’s team – 166%, Kisilev’s and Dronichkina’s – 150% each, Dotsenko’s – 130%, K. Shenkao’s and Gaivoronskaya’s – 125% each.
In order to provide enterprises with labor, the responsibility of workers for labor discipline was tightened, and vacations were cancelled. From July 1, the working day was extended to 11 hours, mandatory overtime was introduced, which in total increased the equipment load by a third without involving additional workers.
▲ From July 10, it was necessary to comply with the blackout instructions. The windows in the houses of Cherkessk began to darken, after which the city plunged into black, hopeless darkness. The police and special units warned everyone not to let out a single strip of light from the windows. The blackout was supposed to confuse the enemy pilots, whom, however, the townspeople in Cherkessk, far from military operations, were not yet expecting.
▲. Small, until recently quiet, Cherkessk has become unrecognizable. The city seemed to swell and become cramped. This is how a teenager’s shirt, out of necessity, is pulled on a hefty uncle, cracks. In addition to the owners, families who fled from the invasion of Hitler's Armada appeared in many houses. Near the two-story high school buildings, it was no longer children running around with oilcloth briefcases, but wounded soldiers who began to stroll, nursing their plastered hands or bouncing on crutches. A crowded bazaar grew, where police whistles often sounded.
▲ The first military ambulance train with 650 seriously wounded arrived in Cherkessk on July 15. The next day there were another 600 wounded, then another 500. All of them needed medical attention. People ran to the station, thinking: “Maybe my dear son, husband, father, brother is there. At least he was alive!” But, not having met a relative, they helped local nurses unload the wounded and carried them on stretchers to the nearest hospital buildings.
The flow of wounded was so large that the medical staff, especially surgeons and operating room nurses, had to stay awake for days. There was a struggle for the life and health of the wounded. It took a lot of blood. So many. And the townspeople went to the donor points. And when the need arose for things, beds, dishes, bed and underwear, the residents of Cherkessk again came to the aid of evacuation hospitals, and the collective farms of the Cherkessk Autonomous Okrug supplied them with food.
▲ At various times, from July 18, 1941 until the arrival of the Germans, the following evacuation hospitals of the People's Commissariat of Health were stationed in Cherkessk (time of stay is indicated in brackets):
No. 2046-NKZ (07/18/1941 – 07/09/1942),No. 3189-NKZ (09/05/1941 – 07/09/1942),No. 4571-NKZ (10.03 – 01.08.1942),No. 4931-NKZ (20.05 – 08.08.1942),No. 3959-NKZ (15.07 – 08.08.1942),No. 1797-NKZ (29.07 – 04.08.1942)and one field mobile hospital: No. 219-PPG (05.08 – 08.08.1942).
▲ Evacuation hospital No. 3189-NKZ, with 1,500 beds, was created on the basis of the buildings of secondary schools No. 7, 8 and 13. From October 1941 until the arrival of the Germans, hospital No. 3189-NKZ was also located in the new building of secondary school No. 11. During this period, students studied in three shifts in the small pre-revolutionary building of school No. 7, located opposite the Church of the Intercession.
The junior medical and service personnel of the evacuation hospital were recruited from citizens living in Cherkessk. Mikhail Andreevich Shishkov, chief. surgeon - Anastasia Vasilyevna Kurmoyarova (surgeon of the Circassian Medical School), eye specialist - Nikolai Nikolaevich Petrov, head. infectious diseases department - Vera Stepanovna Zozulya, doctors Khalit Magomedovich Shidakov and his wife Shura, Art. m/s - Nadezhda Vasilievna Dontsova and Valentina Vasilievna Rozhdestvenskaya, m/s - Alexandra Vasilievna Nebratenko, Tatyana Yakovlevna Grishina, Lyudmila Krylova, nurses - Olga Vasilievna Shevchenko, Alexandra Pavlovna Shkodina and others.
▲ Among the first to die in evacuation hospital No. 3189-NKZ were soldier Sobolev (both his arms were torn off and his jaw crushed), tankman Pavlov (according to eyewitnesses, he resembled a charred tree), Leningrader Rappoport.
On February 6, 1942, Aleksey Iosifovich Vorontsov, born in 1902, a native of St., died of wounds. Batalpashinskoy, Red Army soldier of the 1149th joint venture; On July 7, 1942, R.-D. Arguyanov died from wounds received in battle. B., drafted by the Mikoyan-Shakhar city military registration and enlistment office
All of them, and other soldiers who died in evacuation hospitals, were buried, without coffins, in a mass grave in a cemetery located on the southern outskirts of Cherkessk (now not far from secondary school No. 7). Deceased soldiers were sent on their last journey on carts covered with tarpaulin.
▲ After the organization of military hospitals in the city, seventh-grader Zoya Khvostenko (married Puchkina), together with her friends Lipa Likhodeeva and Sveta Martynenko, as a Komsomol assignment, received an order to care for the wounded soldiers in the hospital, for which the building of the teacher’s institute was adapted. However, the girlfriends soon left Cherkessk with their parents, and Zoya remained working in the hospital until the last wounded left it before the Germans arrived.
“My father is Sergeant Kirill Aleksandrovich Khvostenko, born in 1906, he was called to the front from Cherkessk. In 1942, in Stalingrad, he went missing. (His name is carved on one of the plates of the Motherland memorial on Mamayev Kurgan - S.T.). But before that, he wrote a letter from Kharkov that he was in the hospital, Zoya Kirillovna recalled. And so I, who had recently joined the Komsomol, came to the city committee and asked to be sent to a hospital where I could help the front. With the direction I came to Ch. doctor Colonel m/s Larisa Nikolaevna (unfortunately, I don’t remember her last name). Seriously wounded soldiers were also placed on the ground floor of the building next to the sanitary checkpoint. Everyone else lay on the second floor; The operating room and dressing rooms were also located here.The wounded were transported by rail, and then transported by truck to hospitals. Usually it was in the evenings at night. They assigned me two wards of seriously ill patients. I helped them as much as I could. My duties included, first of all, making an inventory of the soldier’s duffel bag. The wounded dictated to me what was in their bags, and I wrote it down. In addition, my rooms were 16 and 17, where I measured the temperature of wounded soldiers and distributed food. Today there is an office of the director of the pedagogical school and a reception area. I still remember soldier Bryantsev from the Krasnodar Territory, who was wounded in the stomach. I wrote it to my family. My wife and son arrived. How he rejoiced at their arrival!
I quickly got used to the hospital. She took the temperature of the wounded, fed them, wrote letters to their relatives, and helped unload trains with the wounded. And I was a little girl, no strength at all. One day she stumbled on the steps and dropped the stretcher with the wounded man. Then, in the hospital, he called me over and said: “Did you, little sister, drop me?” I started apologizing. And he said: “Can such little hands hold a man?” He was a sailor, and his last name was Khochin. He arrived at the hospital without his arm, which he lost in battle. He also had his uniform hidden. As soon as I recover, he said, I’ll run to the girls. He didn’t have to put on this uniform - he died in the hospital.
Here's another memorable incident. At that time we had only one cinema in the city - it. Gorky. Can't get tickets. And the wounded ran away from the hospital, entered the auditorium, and sat down wherever they felt comfortable. But the visitors did not dare to raise them; they stood against the walls. The director of the cinema called our duty officer - they say take your patients away. They sent me once. I approach one wounded man, but they don’t come to the other. I stand at the exit and roar. We had one recovering person - a scout. I saw that I was crying, and the whole hall heard a whistle, all our people got up and followed me.”
▲ Ksenia Buchneva, a native of Cherkessk, recalled: “When the war began, I was 17 years old. She worked at the hospital at the time. I remember when the first wounded began to arrive, we, still teenagers, donated blood so that they would survive. Those were difficult times, but they are very dear to me. People were completely different then. No one thought about personal gain. Everyone tried to help and support each other.”
▲ In December 1941, the Ordzhonikidze regional military registration and enlistment office proposed that evacuation hospital No. 3189-NKZ be divided into two independent evacuation hospitals. The new evacuation hospital No. 4571-NKZ was allocated 700 beds in the premises of the Collective Farmer's House, the Teachers' Institute and the gynecological building of the regional hospital. Doctor D.N. Guryev, who before his appointment worked in the regional health department, was appointed head of this evacuation hospital:
▲ In July 1942, when enemy troops began to approach Cherkessk, the wounded were delivered to evacuation hospitals directly from the battlefield on carts covered with straw. They were transferred to stretchers and distributed to unequipped wards. But every day the number of wounded arriving increased and they even had to be placed not in wards, but in the courtyards of hospitals.
Literally just before the enemy arrived in Cherkessk, all evacuation hospitals were sent to Pyatigorsk.
Due to the fact that real operating rooms were only available in the city hospital located above Kuban, all seriously wounded soldiers were sent only there. Before the arrival of the Germans, a serious situation arose with the dead. Things got to the point where there was no time left for the funeral. The dead soldiers, from privates to officers, began to be buried in a mass grave dug right there in the courtyard of the hospital. After the war, a large round flower bed was located in this place for a long time. But at the beginning of the 21st century it was razed to the ground and covered with asphalt. The medical staff repeatedly raised the issue of reburying the remains, or decorating a flowerbed for a mass grave (the author personally saw notes from former nurses on this topic in the Lenin Banner newspaper), but everything remained the same.
▲ The concepts of “front” and “rear” have been erased. Many of the seriously wounded were taken in by city residents. And the nurses, staggering from hunger, had to have no less courage than the soldiers at the front in order to breathe life into the remaining soldiers, to save them, forgetting about themselves, about hunger, about their family losses.
▲ Just before the war, Olga Vasilievna Yurchenko buried her daughter. And when the war began, my husband went to the front. In 1995, a nurse recalled: “I was left alone. My heart was so heavy! At that time, an evacuation hospital began to open in Cherkessk. I got a job at the hospital at the eighth school. Soon the wounded began to arrive. Dirty, lice-infested, without arms, blind. How many of them, poor people, are now lying in the old cemetery?! (meaning the cemetery near secondary school No. 7 - S.T.).
…There weren’t enough sheets to cover. They folded them in their underwear. The soldiers did not want to die. We responded to every groan, every cry. One lieutenant, when he felt that he was dying, hugged me by the shoulders and did not let me go. It seemed to him that if someone was near him, if a nurse was nearby, then life would not leave him. He asked: to live for five more minutes, for two more minutes... A man dies, but still does not think, does not believe that he is dying. I kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? And a tear jumped out of his eye and floated into the bandages and hid. That's all. He died... The surname has been erased, gone from memory, but the face remains...
In August 1942, our people began to retreat, hospitals were evacuated, and people took in the seriously wounded. We also took one 18-year-old wounded man. His name was Vanya. He dug us a shelter in the garden. Soon his leg healed, and he began to get ready to go home, and he lived in the Donbass. We dressed him in a woman's dress, walked him across the bridge that led to Psyzh, and said goodbye. The war ended, Vanya came to us in military uniform and said that he worked for the authorities. We never met him again...”
▲ At the end of the 90s of the 20th century, Derkacheva Nadezhda Mikhailovna, Dontsova Nadezhda Vasilyevna, Ermilova Anastasia Petrovna, Zabaznaya Olga Nikolaevna, Zozulya Nina Ivanovna, Kozyreva Nina Nikolaevna, Kuznetsova Maria Panaetovna, Mikhailovskaya Maria Semyonovna, Nebratenko Alexandra Vasilievna, lived in Cherkessk Ovcharenko Maria Stepanovna, Petrova Lyubov Dmitrievna, Podsvirova Nadezhda Semenovna, Rozhdestvenskaya Valentina Vasilievna, Romanenko Maria Mikhailovna, Serkova Nina Nikolaevna, Storozhenko Tatyana Nikolaevna, Yurchenko Olga Vasilievna, Yunnikova Efrosinya Egorov-na...It was they, and many others, then still young girls, who went to work as nurses in the evacuation hospital in Cherkessk. And although this was not the front line, here the girls saved from death those who were delivered from firing positions. How many wounds their tender hands bandaged, how many sleepless nights they spent at the beds of the seriously wounded, they won them back from treacherous death! And if blood was needed to save a warrior, then, without hesitation, the sisters offered theirs.
▲ On July 20, the residents of Cherkessk learned that Stalin had taken the post of People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (from August 8, 1941, he became the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR).
▲ On July 27, Komsomol members and pioneers of secondary school No. 13 in the city of Cherkessk organized a Sunday to collect scrap metal for a tank column. The group of Komsomol member Valandina collected 45 centners of scrap metal in a day, and the group of Komsomol member Arkhipov collected 50 centners in 3 hours. Other educational institutions in the city followed their example, and over the next 20 days, Soyuzutil reception centers accepted 700 centners of scrap non-ferrous and ferrous metals from schoolchildren.
▲ On August 1, on a nationwide initiative, the collection of funds for the country’s defense fund began in Cherkessk. In total, 52.3 million rubles were received into this fund in Circassia, a fifth of which was contributed by residents of Cherkessk.
Collectives of wool spinning, clothing and shoe factories, and other enterprises in the city decided to contribute their three-day earnings to the defense fund every month. Members of the “Five-Year Plan” promartel contributed to this fund all the profits to be paid to them for the first half of the year - 9.6 thousand rubles - and decided to deduct one day’s earnings every month.
▲ On the initiative of the residents of Cherkessk, over 500 thousand rubles were collected for the construction of aircraft. The country's air force received from the townspeople a flight of "Red Circassia" heavy bombers.
▲ By decision of the Bureau of the Circassian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on August 4, 236 tractor drivers and 116 combine operators were trained in Cherkessk. All women replaced men who went to the front.
▲ In the first months of the war, the Circassian driving school trained 135 female drivers and 170 motorcyclists from young people of military age.
▲ In August, in an editorial, the newspaper “Red Circassia” reported that in many enterprises and institutions of Cherkessk “...military training of the population has already been organized. Techniques of bayonet fighting, grenade throwing, methods of anti-aircraft and anti-chemical defense are studied... All male citizens aged 16 to 50 years old who are capable of carrying weapons are registered. During 100 hours of training, they must undergo tactical, fire, combat, physical education, sapper, chemical, sanitary training and study the Charter of the Red Army.”
▲ By August 20, Cherkessk schoolchildren had prepared more than 30 tons of wild apples, pears and berries. From these, 300 centners of various juices were produced, including 50 centners of high-quality raspberry juice. In addition, the children collected and donated 1,107 kg of medicinal herbs and rose hips to the pharmacy. The children donated the money they earned from collecting fruits and medicinal plants to build tanks and airplanes for the Red Army.
▲ The refugee problem has become a serious problem for local authorities. In July, people evacuated from Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova began to arrive in the Circassian Autonomous Region. They all needed housing, food, and work. Many citizens from the evacuated population had neither clothes nor shoes. An evacuation point was created in Cherkessk to receive refugees. The townspeople helped them in any way they could, sharing the meager rear rations like brothers, supplying them with clothing, and providing shelter.
▲ According to Stalin’s order No. 320, from August 25, 1941, all active army personnel began to receive 100 grams of vodka daily. Such “doping” was required to restore labor costs and reduce mental stress.
▲ Based on the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR published on August 28, 1941, in the second half of the year many Soviet Germans, including those living in the North Caucasus and Cherkessk, were subjected to forced migration. They were sent to the Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, Altai Territory, Kazakhstan and Buryatia allegedly “for close ties with the Third Reich.”
▲ Natives of Batalpashinsk, Kurman Aliyev and Chashif Bayramukov, after finishing their seven-year school, studied in absentia at the technical school and worked on its construction sites. In June 1941, the guys arrived in Leningrad, where they planned to spend their vacation. But then war broke out. The guys turned to one of the city's district military registration and enlistment offices with a request to send them to the front. Their wish was granted, and on their way to their unit, in September they found themselves at an anonymous crossing point. Not far from the Mga station, located 49 km east of Leningrad, during a raid by Nazi planes, they carried stretchers with Leningrad children, deprived of the ability to move, from burning cars. During the shelling of the train, Chashif was killed by a Nazi pilot and buried at a siding. The fate of K. Aliyev is unknown.
▲ On September 7, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution “On universal, compulsory military training for citizens of the USSR.” In the fall, compulsory military training was introduced in Cherkessk, which thousands of citizens completed. Special schools trained soldiers, signalmen, motorists, parachutists, snipers, and horsemen for the front. Every third city resident has undergone training in defense against enemy air and chemical attacks. The entire population aged 16 to 60 years was subject to training.
Small articles in local newspapers were devoted to the construction of bomb shelters and gaps for protection from air bombs, measures to combat incendiary and high-explosive bombs, blackout, the ability to use gas masks, behavior during a chemical alarm and air attack.
In addition, the population was taught to recognize the silhouettes of enemy aircraft. At that time, any boy living in the front-line zone could tell by the sound which plane was flying: “Messer”, “Junkers” or “Fokker”.
▲ The Red Army Allotment Standards, in force until the end of the war, were established by the Government and set out in Order of the Minister of Defense No. 312 of September 22, 1941.
Based on proteins, fats and carbohydrates, the composition of the daily ration and its caloric content were established: 3450 kcal for combat units, 2950 kcal for the rear of active armies, 2820 kcal for spare parts (here kcal is kilocalories; at the front they were called “big calories”).
In practice, due to supply difficulties, these standards were often not met and reached 1600 kcal. This norm was a physiological limit, below which the soldiers, although they did not yet die of hunger, quickly lost their combat effectiveness. There were cases when the norm reached 410-700 kcal per day. And this is hunger, which can only be withstood for a very short time during exhausting campaigns.
By the way, one “standard cracker” prepared from an “eight piece” of a kilogram loaf of rye bread corresponded in calorie content to 125 grams of bread (240 kcal).
▲ On October 1, 1941, the newspaper “Red Circassia” published a letter from Fisenko, an employee of the “Molot” plant. She wrote: “In June my husband was drafted into the Red Army. I went to the company where he worked and took over the milling machine. I have mastered the work and now I promise to fulfill the plan at least 200 percent every month.”
▲ As of October 3, residents of the city of Cherkessk donated 230 sweatshirts, 220 trousers, 86 pairs of felt boots, 42 short fur coats, 49 sweaters, 53 blankets, 10 burkas and 812 meters of textiles to the Red Army soldiers. 465 housewives worked from home, knitting socks, gloves, and woolen hats. The wives of the Red Army commanders collected 6.5 thousand rubles. In addition to warm clothes, the workers of Cherkessk collected 55 thousand rubles in money for the front-line soldiers.
▲ In October, the railway bridge across the Kuban was camouflaged. The spans of the bridge were painted to match the color of river water, pillboxes were built on both sides, and security was strengthened. As in other cities and towns of the region, by the decision of the executive committee of the Ordzhonikidze Regional Council of Workers' Deputies, cards for bread, sugar, and confectionery were introduced in Cherkessk. They were received by workers, employees, dependents, and children under 12 years of age.
Workers and employees were given 400-500 grams of bread per day, and dependents - 300-400. Personal consumption of food products by the region's population, with the exception of nomenklatura workers who retained special distributors and high-calorie rations, decreased by almost half. Collective farmers did not receive food cards. Bread and other products were distributed to them according to coupons and lists.
▲ The Circassian Regional Defense Committee began to operate. The regular units of the NKVD could not take under protection all the most important national economic facilities of Circassia: plants, factories, railways, bridges, power plants, communication lines. The destruction battalions provided effective assistance in this matter. On October 23, 1941, a fighter battalion was created in Cherkessk to combat parachute landings and enemy saboteurs. At night, the battalion soldiers carried out patrol duty.
The battalion commander was appointed deputy. Chief of the NKVD for the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, police lieutenant Keshokov, commissar - Bespalchenko, head. headquarters - Sukhachev, head. communications - Labushkin, head. ammunition - Erin, beginning. supplies - Pustovalov.
In early August 1942, at midnight, Ivan Shambarov, who was on duty at the reception desk of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, was informed by telephone that the Germans had dropped a parachute landing in the Salt Lakes area. Alerted by the first secretary of the regional party committee, Vorobyov, the destroyer battalion took an active part in the destruction of this landing.
▲ In the summer-autumn of 1941, the 53rd Caucasian Cavalry Division was formed in Voroshilovsk, which became part of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps under the command of General L.M. Dovator. During the war, cavalrymen of this division fought on the fronts near Moscow, in Belarus, Poland and Germany.
The first dovator soldiers from Cherkessk were mobilized by the Circassian regional military registration and enlistment office on July 8, 1941. The gathering took place on the same day on Pokrovskaya Square, and on the morning of July 9, the future cavalrymen were loaded into wagons and sent to the front. They were seen off by the first secretary of the Circassian regional committee of the CPSU (b) G. M. Vorobyov and the chairman of the Circassian regional executive committee A. M. Akbashev. Initially, 76 people from Cherkessk and 150 people from Mikoyan-Shahar fought in the division. Horses, uniforms and weapons of the division were provided by stud farms, collective farms and state farms of Stavropol, Karachay, Circassia, Kabardino-Balkaria and the Don.The workers of Voroshilovsk presented the banner to the 44th cavalry regiment of the 53rd division, the workers of the Karachay Autonomous Region - to the 50th regiment, the workers of the Cherkess Autonomous Region - to the 74th regiment.
On behalf of the regional party committee and the regional executive committee, Suslov presented the 53rd division with a banner. In November 1941, the 53rd Cavalry Division, after receiving the Guards banner, became known as the 4th Guards Division.
▲ In the mechanical workshops of the Circassian AK "SOYUZTRANS" for the 53rd, which later became the 4th Guards Cavalry Division, the production of blades (sabers and checkers) was organized, which was carried out until August 1942. Only by January 1941, about 800 of them were produced things. Parts for tanks were also machined here.In the 90s of the 20th century, in one of the old houses of Prokhladny, in Kabardino-Balkaria, a cavalry saber with a wooden handle and an inscription on the blade was discovered in the attic: “In memory from the collective of workers of the Circassian Army Corps to Zavgorodniy Ivan Stepanovich. 1942." The find was transferred to the Prokhladnensky City Museum. Attempts to find the owner of the saber or establish his fate were unsuccessful.
▲ On October 30, the staff of the Circassian Shoe Factory donated seven days’ earnings for the purchase of warm clothes for soldiers, which amounted to more than 9 thousand rubles.
▲ While peaceful Cherkessk was slowly transitioning to military life, major events took place on the war fronts, moreover, not to the benefit of our country.There are no stupid people in world politics. But this is exactly how Hitler is presented to our duped youth. The war he started was by no means a revenge of the German imperialists, although Hitler personally longed for revenge for the defeat in the First World War. He wanted to do everything so that defeated, humiliated and robbed Germany would again rise from the ashes. Believing in the dominance of a “new race” and the emergence of a “new order,” the Fuhrer tried to replace capitalism in Europe with an alternative system with a thousand-year-old Reich and the National Socialist system. Having come to power, Hitler outlined the path for Germany's development through war and with the help of war. And in this he was no different from Lenin, Trotsky and other supporters of the world revolution, who saw its solution in a world war.
But, having set the daring task of conquering the whole world, Hitler led the Germans to reassess their own capabilities. With the idea of ​​national superiority, it is impossible to crush the whole world!
▲ One of the main goals of Germany in World War II was the complete extermination of Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill. And the Germans did not attack Russia in order to free the Russian people from internationalists. Hitler needed Russian spaces without Russians. At one of the meetings, Hitler said “Russia is our Africa, the Russians are our blacks.” And even then one of his generals whispered to his neighbor: “With this opinion of Hitler, the war is lost.”
By the way, not all German generals were eager to fight the Red Army. The commander of Army Group South, Field Marshal K. Rundstedt, from the very beginning was against the war with Russia, which he studied well back in the First World War. From his point of view, it was an incomprehensible country with a difficult climate, limitless spaces and bad roads. And the Russian soldier was generally unpredictable.
▲ The Nazi leadership, as well as the bulk of the leaders of Russian emigrants, hoped that after several attacks by the Wehrmacht, an anti-Bolshevik uprising would begin in the USSR, as a result of which Stalin would be overthrown. But Hitler and his entourage miscalculated. The actions of the NKVD, both before the war and after it began, did not allow the creation of a “fifth column” in our rear. The overwhelming majority of the tens of thousands of saboteurs thrown into the rear of the Red Army during the war were neutralized by the NKVD and SMERSH.
▲ It has long been the custom in history that winners are not judged. Many Soviet military leaders also escaped trial. And those who, in the summer of 1941, were unable to fulfill their duty to control the military units entrusted to them in battles near the border. And those who commanded our armies 200, 500, 1000 km from the front line, but did not meet the advancing Germans with hostility! But they had to meet the enemy.
Why did it happen that in the summer of 1941 we turned out to be weaker than the enemy? Anyone has every right to ask the question: “What is the reason for our failures?” True, some people argue differently: why stir up the past, why deal with the reasons...
▲ You can refer to the leakage of highly secret information from the upper echelon of the military leadership abroad (it has now been proven that it was also from Marshal of the USSR Tukhachevsky), to the conspirators from the “fifth column” of the USSR (and they could be not only from the top of the military of the Red Army, but also large political figures).
The story of the “right hand in the leadership of the Nazi Party” Rudolf Hess, classified by England after the war for 50 years, and then, for some unknown reason, until 2017, is proof of this. It was the Soviet-party post-Stalin leadership, led by Khrushchev, that did not want to release Hess, who had been imprisoned for life, as it was interested in maintaining the secret of Stalin’s “neutralization” in June 1941.
▲ One can give explanations that the repression of the military leadership is to blame, that we did not know the exact date of the attack, that all our failures and miscalculations occurred due to the “sudden attack” of the Germans. Marshal Zhukov was the first to come up with this excuse in the post-war period and let him walk around the world. He wanted to justify the miscalculations of the high command of the Red Army and blame the late Stalin for the defeats at the beginning of the war (for some reason he didn’t do this when the leader was alive?!). Many “warriors” and “politicians” liked Zhukov’s excuse: there is no need to study, analyze or rack your brains in search of the truth.
▲ You can say that Stalin was a “mug” and did not understand military affairs (such information is still leaked in the media), although in fact he understood it very well, was a talented self-taught person and constantly expanded his military knowledge.
They have repeatedly tried to prove to us that the idiot Stalin and his circle of cretins were to blame for the tragedy of the first months of the war. They even compared him to Hitler. But it has long been proven that none of the statesmen in the world did more for the comprehensive (political, military, economic, organizational, ideological, moral) defeat of Nazism and its eradication than Stalin.
Having devoted his entire life to the idea of ​​socialism, Stalin eliminated all his political opponents on this issue, and at the same time the competitors standing in his way. And he did this in order to subjugate a great country and raise it to a great cause. The system he created forced the bulk of people to strictly follow his orders. She did not do without excesses, but she cleared the army of enemies of the people and subordinated it to the indomitable will of the leader.
Everything that the country had, by order of Stalin, was given to the military industry. Thousands of tons of gold were spent on German, French, British, American, Italian, and Swiss technologies and equipment.
For the leader, this was a continuation of imperial policy, an offensive against the aggressor, which was Hitler’s Germany. The main thing was that by that time the West was trying to get away from a war that was unnecessary for it from any point of view, and was trying in every way to set Hitler against Stalin.
▲ In this situation, Stalin officially declared that the USSR was ready to cooperate with capitalist countries, which advocated the preservation of peace. However, he warned: if the Soviet state comes under attack, the enemy will be defeated, and the fighting will be transferred to its territory, as was the case in the Patriotic War of 1812 with France.
Stalin also openly warned that he would use the war to introduce socialism in Europe. Therefore, the Comintern was dissolved only in 1944, otherwise the Allies would not agree to open a second front.
What is Stalin’s fault if our military leaders, even in the spring of 1941, did not really prepare for war, and in May 1941 they allowed a German plane to reach Moscow? What is Stalin’s fault if on the night of June 18, 1941, he personally gave a directive to bring all troops in the border districts to full combat readiness? The directive passed along the party line, but, in the most criminal way, it was not fully implemented. On the afternoon of June 21, Stalin already recognized a clash with Germany, if not inevitable, then very, very probable...
The only army on the entire Soviet front from the Black to the Barents Sea that fulfilled Stalin’s directive and the task assigned to it in the Arctic region was only the 14th Army of Lieutenant General V. A. Frolov.
▲ Throughout the pre-war decade, the leader dealt with defense issues comprehensively and systematically, but at the same time he did not attend maneuvers or exercises, did not communicate with Red Army soldiers and commanders, and did not know their problems. He saw the Red Army only from the outside - at parades and in films, and assessed its combat effectiveness only from reports from the leadership of the People's Commissariat of Defense, which he believed that it reflected the real state of affairs.
But it turned out that the leader was deeply mistaken: the “big-star” military leaders reported only on successes and hid shortcomings. The brave lie cost our country too dearly.
From June 22 to October 10, 1941, according to verdicts of tribunals and Special Departments of the NKVD, 10,201 Red Army soldiers were shot for desertion and betrayal. In total, during the war years more than 994 thousand were convicted, of which 157,593 people were shot (10 divisions!!!)
But Stalin laid the blame for the catastrophic start of the war on the generals. From July 1941 to March 1942, 30 generals were shot.
▲ When talking about the war, it is not at all necessary to lie. And there’s no reason to – reality almost always turns out to be scarier and brighter than any fiction. It is no secret that many of our memoirists were members of the CPSU. And the well-known aphorism that war is like war is well known to many readers. Telling the truth is betrayal. To deceive is a matter of valor and heroism. But this is if you are in the hands of the enemy, and they are trying to extract secret information from you under torture.
That was during the war. It’s not clear why we should be turned into uncomplaining “rams” after the war. After all, you need to learn from mistakes, not hide them. This truism has been known for a long time.
Don’t think I’m bragging, but I know the main reason for our defeat in 1941: it was a heavily armed enemy, which was Germany. I always chuckle maliciously when I read that our tanks, guns, mortars, etc. were not abandoned, but lost during the retreat. How do I understand that if there had been no war, our Red Army would not have lost a single gun? Wow? The enemy brazenly, unceremoniously, and even unexpectedly, prevented us from fighting with a sense of dignity, calmly and with order! The ill-fated “retreat” is perceived by our marshals as a natural disaster, as a respectful, “objective” reason, independent of the actions or inaction of soldiers, that justifies the loss of an astronomical amount of weapons. It's disgusting to read!“On the 15th day of the war, headquarters 11A found itself 450 km straight from the state border.” How can you travel such a distance in 15 days? This is impossible. You can run away, but it is extremely tiring. But if you throw everything away (rifles, grenades, machine guns, mortars, cannons...), then you can make it just in time! But our generals wrote “the enemy followed our retreating units with caution and apprehension,” “we retreated due to the situation that had arisen.” That's it.
Not a complete defeat and a disorderly retreat, not the loss of military equipment and mass desertion (what else can explain the loss of 60% of the retreating troops on the 5th day of withdrawal and the almost complete absence of personnel on the 13th day of this “strange” withdrawal.
In his “Memoirs,” Zhukov writes: “Neither the People’s Commissar of Defense (Tymoshenko), nor I, nor B. M. Shaposhikov and K. A. Meretskov (long dead), nor the leadership of the General Staff expected that the enemy... etc. ."
It turns out that our marshal, being the chief of the General Staff, did not expect such agility from the enemy, did not expect him to deliver “crushing scattering blows.” What was he waiting for? An affectionate pat on the bottom, a firm kiss on the lips and an invitation to “tea”? Moreover, from an enemy several times less powerful! After all, any rifle division of the Red Army was not inferior to an infantry division of the Wehrmacht, even in terms of anti-tank defense capabilities. In addition, the 178 Wehrmacht tank divisions on the Eastern Front had half as many tanks (3266).
The war in Spain “taught the Germans” where they finally understood “what tanks are needed.” But even in the summer of 1941, the Wehrmacht did not have weapons with which it could repel a massive attack by large formations of new Soviet tanks. But, technology is technology, and most importantly, there must be complete interconnection between units (infantry, artillery, aviation, engineering units, ground and air reconnaissance, communications, medical battalion, rear services - fuel, ammunition, uniforms and food). And we didn’t have it anyway. We had it like in the fable of the fabulist Krylov: “swan”, “crayfish” and “pike”.
▲ It can be suggested that 20 years of dictatorship of the Lenin-Stalin party greatly contributed to the moral decay of the army; that dispossession, the “Holodomor” and the system of collective farm slavery significantly reduced the willingness of mobilized men to fight for such a life and for such power. There is no doubt that the mass repressions of 1937-1938 turned a significant part of the command cadres into mortally and lifelong frightened people. In the first two months of the war alone, the Red Army lost as many soldiers as the Russian Army did in three years of the First World War.
By the end of August 1941, the pre-war personnel Red Army ceased to exist. During the remaining four years of the war, reservists fought against the German army. And another 5.36 million people liable for military service, who did not have time to be drafted into the Red Army, remained in enemy-occupied territory.
▲ In the summer of 1941, we lost 5.3 million soldiers and officers killed, captured and missing (VIZH, 1992, No. 2, p. 23). Wounded, shell-shocked and maimed soldiers were not included in this figure.
In 4 months, more than 2 million soldiers were captured: in July 323 thousand near Bialystok and Minsk, in August 328 thousand near Smolensk, in September 665 thousand near Kiev, in October 662 thousand near Bryansk and Vyazma. The Germans captured 100 thousand Red Army soldiers each near Melitopol and Uman.
Crowds of prisoners appeared when units of the Red Army found themselves in a hopeless situation, remaining surrounded without supplies. In addition to them, there were rear officers, signalmen, and artillerymen who did not have infantry training and could not stand up for themselves on the battlefield. In fact, they then formed columns of despondent prisoners.
▲ The war found most of the military formations of the Red Army in trains stretching along the railway from the Volga to the Dnieper. There were 47 thousand wagons carrying military cargo on the railway. And this was the main target for the fascist aces. Many regiments entered the battle with the Nazis after leaving the carriages or platforms. That is why the mass capture of our soldiers and officers occurred.
The Western Front alone lost 4,216 railway cars with ammunition at the border, which were awaiting unloading (VIZH, 1980, No. 5, p. 71). Captured in border warehouses and in stacks by Soviet air bombs, Luftwaffe aces later bombed Moscow and Leningrad, wiped out Sevastopol and Stalingrad, and destroyed Voronezh and Rostov.
The enemy also got hold of tanks filled with fuel and wagons containing equipment and food.
“VIZH” (1975, No. 1, p. 81) reported that “by the end of June 1941, 1,320 trains with cars were idle on the railways.” The standard military train of the time consisted of forty-five 20-ton wagons or flatcars. If there was at least one car in each carriage or on the platform, which is unlikely, then it means that 59,400 (45 x 1320) Red Army vehicles were awaiting unloading and came under bombing!
At the same time, the proximity of our warehouses to the border, which the Germans destroyed or captured in an instant, is not one of the reasons for the catastrophic start of the war for the Red Army, as the media write. This is just a consequence of our failures in the border battle. Smart Germans would have done exactly the same. Extension of communications, that is, supply lines, is always the weakest point of any army. Neither the Wehrmacht nor the Red Army intended to retreat in the upcoming war, so they pulled up their material reserves as close to the border as possible.
Throughout the war, German warehouses also fell into our hands during their retreat. War is war. And this was repeated many times. Although, of course, not on such a large scale as in the initial days of the war here.
▲ Using our N-2P pontoon-bridge fleet, the best in the world, Wehrmacht crossed (without it he would not have been able to cross at all) the Dnieper River below Kyiv. The Germans were very “grateful” to the Soviets when they captured the pontoons abandoned on the border. Not only did Germany not have such pontoons, but even England and the USA did not have them.
▲ “Defense must be taken across the river” - this truism is known to all military personnel. The river is a natural ditch with water, which the enemy has to cross on rafts, planks and other auxiliary materials under the whistle of bullets, shells, mines and bombs. We had no defense near large rivers. Sorry, but it was there. True, in front of the Neman, and not behind it. This led to the death of Soviet soldiers in this very river! They all drowned.
▲ Throughout Europe, railway tracks are much narrower than ours. And the Germans must have been so clever that in the first three months of the war they shoveled 15 thousand kilometers of Soviet tracks in their own way. The enemy understood: it was impossible otherwise - the supply of troops would choke, and the war would be lost.
▲ The most tragic events unfolded for us in the Western Front, where the Wehrmacht delivered the main blow with the troops of Army Group Center.When a large gap opened up between the Northwestern and Western fronts, which there was nothing to close, the Red Army became uncontrollable. During the 18 days of the war, there was no continuous defense front. Like a castle built of sand on the seashore, the Western Front crumbled at the first surge of the German military wave. The 4th Army was defeated, 3A, 10A and 13A were encircled. Of the 44 Soviet divisions that were originally part of the front, 24 were completely lost, 20 lost from 30 to 90% of their strength. The total losses numbered in the thousands: both people and equipment.
A significant part of the aircraft of the Western District were taken by surprise not only on the first, but even on the third and fourth days of the war. After the first bombing, many air units urgently and brazenly fled deep into Soviet territory to the east, instead of providing assistance to ground troops.
Three thousand tanks were not involved in repelling enemy aggression due to a lack of fuel, which for some reason ended up “by mistake” in Maikop (Adygea) - thousands of kilometers from the place where it was supposed to be.

Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, invaded the territory of the Soviet Union without declaring war.

At first, the Soviets, under the leadership of the Communist Party, suffered serious losses.

In the first years of the war, we lost Ukraine, Belarus, Stalingrad and many other territories, which we regained with difficulty some time later.

I think you already know all this well from school history lessons. However, you should also know the famous slogan of those times - “Everything for the front! Everything for victory!

The appearance of the slogan

So, let's start with the history of this famous slogan. The first mention was made in the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on June 29, 1941, only one week had passed since the start of the war.

Then, on July 3, Stalin himself uttered this slogan in his radio address to the citizens of the Soviet Union.

Soon, among the military and civilian population of the country, the leader’s statement gained unprecedented popularity and gave rise to the famous expression “In work - like in battle”, “If it’s necessary for the front, we’ll do it.”

In general, the Soviet Union was a master at coining new slogans (although any communist party is replete with loud statements), for example, take the famous statement “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours!".

However, it was this slogan of the Second World War that became a symbol of the victory of the Soviet people over fascism.

How the slogan influenced the outcome of the war

The statement itself could not, of course, literally change the outcome of the war, but it was able to push the impoverished people, tired of the hardships of the war, in the right direction.

After all, the country’s leadership not only needed to evacuate industrial enterprises to the east and at the same time re-establish them there, it was necessary to increase production significantly in order to provide the army with the necessary ammunition, provisions and weapons.

Most of the production capacity at the time of the declaration of war was located in the European part of the USSR - as a result of which ours lost enterprises, equipment, and people in the end.

What we were able to deploy behind the front line could not boast of the rapid speed of production/repair of tanks, aircraft, guns, and rations. Refugees came to the rescue, they themselves stood at the machines and minted bullets, assembled machine guns, and repaired tanks and airplanes.

They worked in three shifts, women, children, and old people worked. Due to the high influx of labor, the country's leaders were able to fulfill their plans - they provided the army with new planes, tanks, ships, repaired damaged vehicles, and organized the supply of essential products to the army.

Summing up

Many people of the old, still Soviet school, believe that if the current generation had fought now, the war would most likely have been lost.

Most likely they are right, but the government of that time also knew how to direct people in the right direction, and the people themselves were different.

“Everything for the front! Everything for victory!” - became one of the main slogans of the Second World War, which undoubtedly made a great contribution to over fascism.

Lesson type: lesson on learning new material and initially consolidating knowledge.

Lesson objectives:

• characterize the process of transferring the economy to a war footing and reveal the role of the rear as one of the factors in the victory of the Soviet people over fascism;
• students practice skills in working with various historical sources, skills in systematizing educational material;
• contribute to the formation of citizenship and patriotism.

Basic concepts: occupation regime; evacuation; rear.

Basic knowledge: the essence of the occupation regime; the moral and psychological state of Soviet society during the war; restructuring the economy on a war footing;

Equipment:

• workbook (issue 2, paragraph 32);
• reader; tables;
• map "The rear of the country during the war";
• textbooks, exhibition of literature on the topic: "Novokuznetsk during the war",
• materials from the exposition prepared for the lesson.

Preparatory stage.

1). Advance tasks for students - “tour guides”.

2). Write a mini-essay - research on the topic "My family during the war."

DURING THE CLASSES

I. Organizational moment.

1. Greeting.

2. Preparation for the lesson.

3. The teacher’s introductory speech about the work in the lesson.

II. Learning new material.

Formulation of the problem:

• What is the contribution of home front workers to the common cause of defeating the enemy?

II.1. Plan "OST" (frontal conversation).

II.2. Moral and psychological state of Soviet society in the first period war.

(independent work with the textbook: par. 31, p. 225 “Soviet society in the first period of the war” and the document, p. 226 “From a speech on the radio by J.V. Stalin,” July 3, 1941)

a) Why in his speech on the radio did J.V. Stalin address the people with the words: “Brothers and sisters”?

b) What turning point in the relationship between government and society did this appeal reflect?

II.3. Evacuation (work with definition).

Evacuation is the removal of the population, enterprises, and material assets from areas under the threat of some kind of disaster.

Student message (summary).

The amazing successes of the German troops and the frightening failures of the Red Army in the first weeks of the war brought together all Soviet people, who understood that the fate of the Fatherland was being decided now: with the victory of Germany, not just the Soviet regime or the Stalinist regime would collapse, Russia would be destroyed. A common misfortune brought people together and made them feel like a single family. People's feelings and sentiments were manifested not only in the mass heroism of Soviet soldiers at the front, but also in the rear. Slogans: “In the rear, as at the front!”, “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” became a guide to action.

Tens of thousands of women, teenagers, and elderly people took to the machines, mastered tractors, combines, and cars to replace the husbands, fathers, and sons who had gone to the front.

The most difficult, both morally and materially, was the problem of the mass evacuation to the east of large industrial enterprises and millions of people. World history has never seen such a practice. It was not included in the special mobilization plan drawn up in case of war. Therefore, the decision to start it caused many leaders to feel close to shock. The very possibility of industrial giants moving thousands of kilometers seemed incredible, especially at a time when the front was in dire need of their products. For many people, the evacuation was perceived as a planned escape.

But the short-lived confusion was overcome by clear and thoughtful work, which was directed and coordinated by the Evacuation Council, specially created on June 24, 1941.

From July to November 1941 alone, 1,500 large industrial enterprises and about 10 million people were evacuated from the front-line areas to the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.

An equally difficult task was the placement and installation of equipment, the startup of evacuated factories, and the resettlement of workers and their families. Local residents often hosted evacuees, sharing with them not only shelter, but also their last piece of bread. In other places, neighborhoods of hastily built temporary huts and even dugouts, called “living quarters of a simplified type,” arose around newly erected factories.

The selfless work of people soon yielded results. Already in 1942, despite the loss of important economic regions, the output of military products, compared to 1940, increased significantly and exceeded the civilian level in volume. In the subsequent years of the war, the production of weapons, military equipment and military equipment constantly increased.

II. 4. Home front during the war (using the example of the city (Novokuznetsk) Stalinsk).

• A correspondence tour of the city is conducted by students based on materials from the exhibition prepared for the lesson using materials from the school museum, photographs of memorable places in Novokuznetsk.

Approximate content of the excursion.

The beginning of the war.

June 22, 1941 at 16:00 local time to residents Stalinsk The beginning of the Great Patriotic War was announced on the radio. Crowded rallies took place on Victory Square, near the Metallurgists' Palace, and in the KMK workshops.

At 10 p.m., the secretary of the city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, V.A. Moskvin, received a telegram about mobilization, and from that moment on, the city party committee began work on the mobilization plan. Similar resolutions came to the district party committees, the city committee and the district Komsomol committees. The main task of the party and Komsomol of Stalinsk was to help in the defense of the country.

In the first month of the war alone, the city party committee, the Komsomol committee, and the city military registration and enlistment office received over 10 thousand applications from volunteers with a request to send them to the front. Only during the formation of the Siberian Volunteer Division, over 5 thousand applications were submitted from the workers of our city with a request for voluntary enrollment.

During the war, 64 thousand Novokuznetsk residents were drafted into the army, two thousand communists and six thousand Komsomol members voluntarily went to the front.

(Photo used: memorial plaque on the building of school No. 8, where units of the 237th Infantry Division were formed in 1942).

Mobilization of people and labor resources.

Along with mobilization, life in the city began to be restructured on a war footing. The logistics work was of great importance. Here the combat reserves of the Red Army were formed and trained, and titanic work was carried out to ensure an uninterrupted supply of weapons and food to the front.

From the very first days of the war, the team of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant began a huge amount of work to rebuild units to produce metal for the needs of the front. In 4 months, the production of armor steel in heavy-duty open-hearth furnaces was mastered, and a technology for rolling armor metal was developed. By the end of 1941 The plant already produced more than one-third of the metal produced in the country.

In 1941-1945. 1973 high-speed melts were welded at KMK, 70 new grades of steel were mastered.

40 thousand heavy tanks, 45 thousand aircraft, 100 million shells were made from Kuznetsk metal - almost half of the country's total production.

For his labor feat during the war, KMK was awarded the Order of Lenin (1943), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945), and the Order of Kutuzov, 1st degree (1945).

(Photos used: KMK, memorial, plant management ; reproduction of KMK: armor steel is coming.)

Alexander Chalkov distinguished himself when developing and mastering the technology of melting armor steel. The master of high-speed steelmaking worked selflessly throughout the war. He smelted 14 thousand tons of steel beyond the plan! Dozens of tanks, thousands of guns, mortars and machine guns were made from it. In March 1943, A. Chalkov was awarded the State Prize. The laureate handed it over to the army. This money was used to make machine guns with the inscription “To the Siberian from steelmaker Chalkov,” which were awarded to the best fighters of the Siberian Volunteer Division. The command included Chalkov in the division lists and awarded him the title “Guardsman.” While working in the rear, Alexander Chalkov was awarded the Military Order of the Red Star.

Accommodation of evacuated enterprises.

The city accepted and quickly helped put into operation a number of evacuated enterprises. In August-September 1941 the number of evacuated enterprises was exactly 10, and by the end of the year grew to 55. Among the largest factories evacuated from the western regions were 4 military (registered) factories from Kiev and Moscow, a metal structures plant from Dnepropetrovsk, the Dneprospetsstal plant from Zaporozhye, cement plants from Dneprodzerzhinsk and Ordzhonikidze, Slavyansky mechanical and Debaltsevo machine-building plants, 4 coke plants from Ukraine, the Krasny Tigel plant from Luga and others.

Most of the evacuated enterprises were located under the roofs of the KMK workshops and on the factory site, forming new units and workshops, strengthening the production capacity of the plant. The Dneprospetsstal plant became the electric furnace melting and long-rolling shops of KMK, the equipment of coke-chemical enterprises exported from Ukraine was used in the construction of the 5th coke battery, the machine-building and mechanical plants were located in the mechanical shops of KMK.

The placement of evacuated factories increased the load on construction trusts and specialized installation organizations.

Construction of new enterprises.

In 1941 288 million were allocated for the industrial construction of the city. rubles - a huge amount at that time. The load on the main industrial construction trust Stalinskpromstroy (Kuznetskpromstroy) during the year 1941 increased more than 10 times.

For the successful completion of the State Defense Committee's tasks for the construction and commissioning of new facilities, the Stalinskpromstroy trust was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1943.

* The most rapid growth of industrial construction falls in 1942. Of 500 million rubles. capital investments in 1940-1944. - 235 million rubles were disbursed this year.

* July 7, 1942 is considered the birthday of the Kuznetsk Ferroalloy Plant: the first melt was produced. On December 31, 1943, construction of the last fifth furnace was completed. In harsh wartime conditions, a large high-quality metallurgy plant was built.

Reproduction: 1942 Panorama of the KZF construction.

* Since the beginning of the war, the demand for aluminum has increased sharply in the country. At the construction of the first aluminum smelter in Siberia, builders and installers worked around the clock. Their motto was: “Give winged metal to the Motherland quickly!”, and on the night of January 7, 1943, a dazzling stream of molten aluminum flowed into the ladle.

Reproduction: 1941 Women's team at the construction of an aluminum plant.

(Photos used: photograph of the NKAZ plant management and a combat fighter aircraft as a symbol of the selfless labor of aluminum workers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 ).

During the first three years of the war, more than a hundred industrial facilities were put into operation in the city, including aluminum, ferroalloy, metal structures plants, the Kuznetsk Thermal Power Plant, the Abashevskaya mine, etc.

By the fall of 1942, the number of evacuated people in the city amounted to 195 thousand people, and the housing problem became acute. Since 1943, the construction of housing - temporary dormitories - has been increasing.

Hospitals.

From the first days of the war, trains with seriously wounded soldiers began to arrive in Stalinsk. During the four years of the war, dozens of military ambulance trains were received. Hundreds of soldiers returned to duty after treatment.

Photos used: (memorial plaques on the buildings of school No. 12, the Beryozka factory and the Moscow restaurant, where evacuation hospitals were located during the war.)

During the war, 11 hospitals were stationed in Stalinsk (Novokuznetsk)

(Archive of the Military Medical Museum of the USSR Ministry of Defense).

Novokuznetsk residents in battles for their homeland.

A guy from Baydayevka.

In 1939, the Klimenko family moved from Biysk to Stalinsk. After graduating from seven classes, he went to work as a turner's apprentice in the mechanical repair shop of the Baydayevskaya mine. This is what the former Komsomol organizer of the workshop at the Baidaevskaya mine, M.N., remembers about him. Krikunova: “Kolya was an active participant in the movement of Komsomol youth brigades for the fulfillment and overfulfillment of the coal mining plan.” In the winter of 1942, in battles with the Nazi invaders, Nikolai’s brother Nikita, who, like Nikolai, studied at secondary school No. 27 in the village, died a heroic death. Baydaevka.

In February 1943, seventeen-year-old Nikolai Klimenko volunteered to join the army and was sent to the Vilna Infantry School, which was evacuated to Novokuznetsk. In May 1944, with the rank of junior lieutenant, Nikolai Klimenko arrived in the 920th Infantry Regiment of the 247th Infantry Division on the eve of the grandiose offensive of Soviet troops in Belarus, which began on June 23 and ended on August 29, 1944 with the defeat of the Nazi troops. At that time, Nikolai Lukich Klimenko was appointed to the position of rifle platoon commander. The division command set the fighters the important task of crossing the Vistula River, seizing a bridgehead and holding it until the main forces arrived. On July 28, 1944, under heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire, Nikolai Klimenko’s platoon was one of the first to cross and immediately entered into hand-to-hand combat. The Nazis tried to throw the daredevils into the river and liquidate the bridgehead at any cost. Despite the huge losses, the enemy launched more than a dozen counterattacks in one day.

But the Soviet soldiers not only survived, but also, together with other advanced units, expanded the bridgehead, deepened it to twenty-five kilometers and gained a foothold in the Polish village of Brzeście.

On the night of August 2, the enemy threw tanks and aircraft against the Soviet soldiers. The main blow was delivered on the left flank, against the platoon of N.L. Klimenko. An unequal battle ensued: against 42 fighters who had no artillery cover, an infantry battalion and Nazi tanks. When the Germans decided that the resistance of our fighters had been broken, Nikolai Klimenko and his orderly met the enemy with destructive lead. The Nazis decided to take him alive. With the last grenade, N.L. Klimenko blew himself up and the Fritzes who surrounded him.

The battalion commander Baev and his deputy for political affairs Katkalov informed his mother Pelageya Fominichna of the Siberian officer’s feat. Nikolai Klimenko was buried in Poland, on the left bank of the Vistula River, northwest of the village of Andzhuev, Lublin Voivodeship. On March 24, 1945, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Nikolai Klimenko was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin. At the numerous requests of the breastfeeding people of the city of Novokuznetsk, one of the streets of the Zavodsky district was named after Nikolai Klimenko. Nikolai Klimenko Street is one of the most picturesque corners of the Factory District. Here there are kindergartens, a clinic, shops, a school, a Metallurgists' Garden and flowers and greenery everywhere. A memorial plaque was installed at house No. 29 on Nikolai Klimenko Street.

Photos used: (a memorial plaque on the building of a dental clinic on Klimenko Street in the Zavodsky district of Novokuznetsk, buildings on Klimenko Street).

The feat of three heroes.

(The exposition of the school museum is used).

The immortal feat at the walls of ancient Novgorod was performed by communist patriots from Novokuznetsk - Ivan Savich Gerasimenko, Leonid Arsentievich Cheremnov and Alexander Semenovich Krasilov.

Leonid Cheremnov and Alexander Krasilov were born and raised in the same village. In the 30s they came to the construction of KMK, then both worked in the Red Transport Worker artel. In the terrible days of 1941, we joined the army together and ended up in the same unit. Another Novokuznetsk resident, Ivan Gerasimenko, served with them.

On the night of November 29, 1942, a group of soldiers, including our fellow countrymen, secretly crawled to the front line of the enemy’s defense, silently removed the German sentries guarding the enemy defense center, and began throwing grenades at them. The Germans opened fire from neighboring bunkers. Under a shower of enemy bullets, the soldiers threw grenades at them too. The grenades ran out, and three more machine guns were fired from the nearest bunkers. There was a threat of death of the platoon. Three fighters in a single impulse rushed to the enemy bunkers, covering the embrasures with their bodies, and silenced the machine guns.

The Motherland adequately appreciated the feat of its soldiers, posthumously awarding them the high titles of Heroes of the Soviet Union. Streets in our city are named after them, and a monument to the heroes was erected in Novgorod.

My family during the war.

If time permits, mini-essays on the topic “My family during the war years” (1-2) are read out.

III. Stage of primary consolidation of knowledge.

work with workbooks, vol. 2, p.58, work. sheet 8.

solving a problem task.

Students conclude that victory in the Great Patriotic War was forged in the rear, and the city of Novokuznetsk played a decisive role in solving many wartime problems.

IV. Homework. Steam. 33, fill out the table “Culture during the war years”.

TABLE "Culture during the War"

FULL NAME. scientist, cultural figure	What problem did you work on and what did you create?
S.A. Chaplygin, M.V. Keldysh, S.A. Khristianovich	Theoretical developments in the field of aerodynamics made it possible to develop and begin production of new types of combat aircraft.
A.F.Ioffe et al.	Created the first Soviet radars.
O. Berggolts	"Leningrad Poem".
V.Inber	"Pulkovo Meredian".
K.M.Simonov	"Days and Nights"
V.S. Grossman	"The direction of the main attack."
A.Beck	"Volokolamskoe highway".
L. Lukov	film "Two Fighters".
I. Pyryev	film "Secretary of the District Committee".
D. Shostakovich	Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony.
A.V.Alexandrov, S.V.Mikhalkov, G.El-Registan	A new USSR Anthem was created.
K. Shulzhenko, L. Ruslanova, R. Beibutov, M. Bernes	Famous performers of lyrical songs.

V. Summing up the lesson.

The teacher thanks everyone for their work in preparing and teaching the lesson and announces grades.

LITERATURE.

1. Berlin A.B. Novokuznetsk in a soldier's overcoat. Novokuznetsk, 1995.
2. Borzova L.P. Games in history lessons: Method. manual for teachers. - M.: Publishing house VLADOS-PRESS, 2003.
3. Extracurricular activities on Russian history. 10-11 grades./ Comp. I.I. Varakina, S.V. Paretskova - Volgograd: Teacher - AST, 2005.
4. Story: Extracurricular activities. 5-11 grades. (Correspondence travel and excursion, tournaments for the curious and savvy, a lesson in courage, a historical evening in “faces”, a holiday of Russian culture, “Round Table”) / Author - comp. I.V. Kuzmina. - Volgograd: Teacher, 2005.
5. Korneva T.A. Non-traditional lessons on the history of Russia of the twentieth century in grades 9 and 11. - Volgograd: Teacher, 2002.
6. Non-standard lessons at school. Story. 8-11 grades. / Author - compiled by N.S. Kochetov. - Volgograd: Teacher, 2004.
7. Patriotic education of schoolchildren. Grades 5-11: oral journals, theme evenings, literary compositions / author's compilation. ON THE. Belibikhina, L.A. Kalitventseva, G.P. Popova. - Volgograd: Teacher, 2007.
8. Subject weeks at school. Story. Social science disciplines. / Comp.N.S. Kochetov. - Volgograd: Teacher, 2003.
9. Let us bow to the Great Ones of those years. - Collection of memories. - Novokuznetsk, 2006.
10. Surmina I.O. Open lessons in the history of Russia: grades 9-11 / Surmina I.O., N.I. Shilnova. - Rostov n/a: Phoenix; 2008.