The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  Many Russians hesitated to enter the Baltic area, fearing the general state of insecurity. Some wives of naval officers refused to accompany their husbands to Riga. They had heard too much about the Latvian nationalists, about terrorists, snipers and bombings.

  Beginning on June 13, at the very moment when the Tass communiqué was denying rumors of war, special detachments of the Soviet secret police had been concentrated in the principal Baltic cities. That day and each day thereafter they carried out mass arrests. In Lithuania possibly 35,000 persons were taken into custody. The number arrested in Estonia and Latvia was on the same order. The total was close to 100,000.

  The police rounded up members of non-Communist parties, former military and police officers, priests, ministers, businessmen and well-to-do farmers. Persons who had been arrested in the early months of Soviet rule were taken from their prison cells and loaded on trains for the long journey east to Siberian prison camps.

  The purge was far from complete when war broke out. Many remained in prisons in Vilnius, Kaunas, Riga and Tallinn, awaiting transport to the east. Nor was care taken by the police as to who was arrested. Soviet publications later delicately noted that “in conditions of the Stalin cult of personality not a few mistakes were perpetrated.”

  Vladimir Rudny, a young Moscow newspaperman, witnessed the action in Riga. On June 17 the entire Riga Party organization was mobilized to assist in the arrests. Among those mobilized, as later became evident, were secret members of the Latvian underground, who protected their cohorts and managed to send to prison persons either neutral or inclined to the Soviet cause.

  Late in the evening, walking through the Riga streets, Rudny heard firing. A colonel of the Latvian nationalist army was shooting it out with an NKVD detachment, trying to save a cache of arms and radio transmitters.

  As Rudny watched the battle, a young Latvian woman came up and they fell to talking. She warned Rudny to get out of Riga, saying she knew that war was about to start and that the Germans would quickly be in Riga. Rudny replied in anger. That kind of rumor spread panic. That was why the arrests were being made, to round up the Fifth Column so there would be no repetition of events in Spain.

  “Do leave, I beg you. Do leave,” the woman insisted and melted into the darkness.

  Later Rudny met two colleagues—Vyacheslav Susoyev and the playwright Sergei Mikhalkov, a man of extraordinary thinness and height—six feet five inches tall and weighing, then, only 150 pounds.

  To Rudny’s amazement, Mikhalkov ako said war was only a few days distant.

  “Nonsense,” snapped Rudny. “That’s a fairy story for beginners in Civil Defense.”

  “Wait and see,” said Mikhalkov calmly. “Time will tell.”

  The trio were drinking wine in the ancient cellar of the Fokstrotdil. Nothing more was said. But Rudny was never to forget the conversation.

  Soviet authorities did not explain to the population what was going on. Panic and rumors spread. The NKVD sent off to Siberia a considerable number of Soviet supporters and left untouched many bitter opponents. The result fanned the hatred already felt by many Baits for their Soviet masters. The round-up underlined the dichotomy with which the Soviet leadership viewed the possibility of conflict—on the one hand acting with hysterical haste to prepare for war and on the other banning talk of war as virtual treason.1

  The Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians had welcomed the Soviet takeover in 1940 with little enthusiasm. They enjoyed independence. Their feeling of nationalism was strong. It was reinforced by passionate anti-Communism and, quite often, chauvinistic hatred for Russians.

  For a thousand years the Baltic states had boasted a strong German minority. The Germans played a leading role in cultural, economic, political and military life. Even in St. Petersburg the Germans had been an important factor. Many settled there in the time of Peter and Catherine. The German influence in the Romanov court had been profound and was blamed by many for the final collapse of the czarist dynasty.

  At the time of the Soviet takeover the German minority in Latvia numbered 60,000, passionately pro-Hitler and banded together in 268 Nazi organizations. Some 52,000 of these Germans were repatriated in October-December, 1939, but official German missions had been established in both Riga and Tallinn, and as late as March 7, 1941, Berlin was still trying to get consular status for them.

  In all the Baltic states fiercely nationalistic anti-Soviet organizations remained in the underground along with a network of German spies. Soviet intelligence agents had been at war with them for months. They uncovered one spy in the code room of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From July, 1940, to May, 1941, the NKGB rounded up 75 underground nationalist groups in Lithuania. Throughout 1940 and the first quarter of 1941 the NKGB took into custody 66 resident German intelligence agents and 1,596 individual operatives. Of this number 1,338 were in the western areas, the Baltic states and the Ukraine.2

  In preparation for the attack on Russia the Germans established in 1940 a special organization known as Brandenburg-800 to carry out diversionary operations behind the Russian lines—the destruction of bridges, blocking of tunnels, capture of rear fortifications and similar objectives. It was to operate in liaison with agents already inside the Soviet Union—nationalist and other anti-Soviet groups.

  “At the disposal of the staff of the German Army,” reported Admiral Canaris, chief of German intelligence, on July 4, 1941,

  there has been made available a large number of groups of agents of the native population, that is, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Finns, Estonians, etc. Each group numbers 25 or more men. At the head of each group is a German officer. The groups use captured Soviet arms, military trucks and motorcycles. They are capable of penetrating the Soviet rear to a depth of 35 to 200 miles ahead of the advancing German armies to which they report by radio the results of observations, devoting special attention to the collection of information on Russian reserves, the condition of railroads and highways and also all measures being carried out by the enemy.

  Among the nationalist groups in Lithuania were the Union of Lithuanians, the Front of Lithuanian Activists and the Committee for Rescuing Lithuania. In Latvia they included the Perkinkrusts, and in Estonia the underground Legion of the East and the Committee of Rescue, otherwise known as the Izmailites and the Kaitzelites. The Estonians before the outbreak of war had organized so-called Erna battalions to carry out diversions behind the lines of the Red Army.

  In prewar weeks tension was high in Latvia. Several mysterious forest fires were attributed by Soviet police to Latvian nationalists. In many villages the kulaks or richer peasants were in, open rebellion against the Soviet Union. Agitation against the regime was widespread. There had been interference with spring sowing and growing reluctance on the part of poor peasants to join in Soviet agricultural projects. Sabotage was reported in sawmills. From the pulpits priests and ministers were giving frank voice to their antagonism to Soviet power.

  Nowhere was the situation sharper than in Lithuania. The Lithuanian Activist Front had been established in Berlin November 17, 1939, by Colonel Kazys Shkirpa, former Lithuanian military attaché in Germany. He formulated a program for liberation of Lithuania and on March 24, 1941, smuggled into Lithuania directives for carrying out an uprising to be timed with the German attack on the Soviet Union.

  LAF cells of three or five persons were assigned individual tasks—the taking over of police stations, seizure of telephone exchanges, etc.

  By the eve of the war the LAF estimated its membership at 36,000. It was damaged by the Soviet round-up of June 14, but not seriously. Two command centers were established, one in Vilnius and the other in Kaunas.

  There were other nationalist organizations active in Lithuania: the Lithuanian Defense League, the Iron Wolf at Sakiai, the Lithuanian Freedom Army in Siauliai and the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters.

  The dissident Baits were encouraged by the overt Nazi preparations for attack. By mid-June the Nazis hardly
bothered to conceal their work along the Baltic frontier. Engineers labored openly, setting up fire points and observation posts, strengthening bridges on roads leading to the Soviet frontier and putting down pontoons along the streams. In some places new mine fields were laid, in others old ones were taken up. Beginning about June 17 groups of German officers in cars began to cruise along the border, studying the terrain and the deployment of Soviet troops. On the night of the twentieth a skirmish was fought near Buraki, where a group of German scouts tried to force their way into Soviet territory. Three were killed and two captured.

  With the outbreak of war the Baltic states were quickly in turmoil. Soviet authorities were so uncertain of the population that they made no effort to order mobilization, fearing that they could not rely on such forces. As a result even elements loyal to the Soviet Union had no weapons and no means of defending themselves against the Germans or anti-Soviet Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian nationalist bands.

  The former Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian armies had been incorporated into the Red Army, where they formed three territorial corps, the 29th (Lithuanian), the 24th (Latvian) and the 22nd (Estonian). Each consisted of two rifle divisions with corps artillery, communications and engineering units. Most of these were at summer camps when war broke out, and none played a role of consequence in the defense of the Baltic littoral— probably because the Soviet command had grave doubts of their loyalty.

  Neither the Baltic armies, commanded by Colonel General F. I. Kuznetsov, nor the Baltic Fleet, under Admiral Tributs, had plans for evacuation of their forces or of the civilian population. There were no plans for carrying out any operations whatever on Baltic soil. All the Soviet war plans called for carrying the war to the enemy’s territory. There was nothing in the directives about fighting on the home ground.

  Within twenty-four hours the radio station at Kaunas had been seized by the Lithuanian underground organization. At 11:30 A.M. Radio Kaunas proclaimed Lithuanian independence. It announced the formation of a new government headed by Shkirpa, with General Rastikis (who was also in Berlin) as Minister of National Defense.3 Lithuanian underground groups seized the police stations, captured the prison, freed political prisoners and took control of the automatic telephone station. Fighting between the Lithuanians and Soviet troops was severe. Some two hundred Lithuanians were killed in the Kaunas battle and possibly two thousand in other cities and villages.

  By the time Colonel General Georg von Kiichler marched into Kaunas June 25 in parade formation at the head of the Eighteenth Nazi Army, the Lithuanian rebels controlled the city. The Lithuanians estimated that nearly 100,000 persons joined the uprising.

  Only too swiftly did it become apparent that the glacis which the Soviets had hoped to create in the Baltic states as a reliable defensive zone and protection to Leningrad was a deadly trap.

  Nothing was secure within it. The Russians found themselves overwhelmed at the front by the swift German Panzer thrusts. They were cut off from communication from their headquarters and isolated in hostile country where every village might contain an ambush and every street corner might conceal deadly peril. German paratroops dropped into the countryside. German agents, native patriots, bands of dissident elements seemed to spring out of the very ground.

  Major M. P. Pavlovsky served in the coastal command at Kingisepp in the Moonzund Archipelago of Estonia. For weeks before the war he had been alarmed by the attitude of the local population. A German agent named Rosenberg had been arrested among the workers building emplacements for the 315th, 317th and 318th batteries of 180-mm coastal guns. German officers had appeared in the midst of the new fortified areas—a grave-location team, it was said, come to make arrangements about transfer to the homeland of the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War I. There was difficulty in getting reliable local labor to work on the batteries. At night around Tallinn there were bursts of gunfire.

  With the outbreak of war Pavlovsky’s worst apprehensions about the local populace were confirmed. That Sunday evening a young Soviet commander was shot and killed as he emerged from a restaurant in Kingisepp. The next morning anti-Soviet leaflets showered through the streets of Kuressaare. They called on the population to assist the advancing Nazi armies. Armed bands appeared near Virtsu and Lihula. Radio messages in cipher to Nazi agents were intercepted. The Germans dropped a battalion of troops by parachute near Parnu.

  At any moment a Soviet unit might be struck from the back.

  The situation at Riga was even worse. The Germans bombed the city in the first hours of the war and anti-Soviet skirmishers quickly took positions in the streets. There were practically no troops to maintain order—only infantry cadets and an NKVD regiment. The other military elements in the city were not combat forces—the staff of the Special Military District, rear-echelon forces and a staff regiment.

  When the Germans dropped parachutists in Riga, there weren’t enough Soviet patrols to cope with them. Bands of workers were mobilized to help out, and a dozen battles were fought in the city in an effort to restore order.

  A squadron of mine layers under Vice Admiral V. P. Drozd came into Riga Monday night, June 24. They found fires raging and random shooting near the harbor.

  Drozd ordered his sailors to bend all efforts to loading the ships with mines and ammunition. Even engineers and machinists were pressed into duty.

  The firing came closer and closer.

  “Who was shooting and why they were shooting no one knew,” Drozd told companions later. “We did not know how the fires had been set. Our troops had already left the city. There were no Soviet police. Persons brought in rumors that the Germans were entering the city. My sailors captured two provocateurs at the very gates to the depot. But to whom should they turn them over?”

  The moment Drozd had reloaded his squadron he went back to sea.

  “It’s much more peaceful at sea,” he observed.

  To Admiral Tributs, the Baltic Fleet Commander, it was apparent that the new advanced positions in the Baltic states were so insecure as to endanger the whole fleet. All the reservations he had offered to Stalin’s insistence upon the forward Baltic bases had proved well founded.

  Admiral Tributs concluded that Riga would prove no more secure than Libau and Ventspils, which fell in a matter of two or three days. The Riga authorities, panicky at the hostile attitude of the Latvians, had almost ceased to function. The Aisargi, the Latvian nationalists, began sporadic firing from rooftops. German paratroops and saboteurs threatened the naval base at Ust-Dvinsk. Tributs gave orders to evacuate Riga.

  But this presented difficulties. The Germans had heavily mined the Irben Strait, and Admiral Drozd did not have enough mine sweepers to clear a path for his retreating squadron. The only mine-free route to the east and Tallinn lay through the narrow, shallow Muhu-Vain Strait, separating the coast from the Moonzund Islands.

  Drozd’s small craft could navigate this channel easily. But there were heavily laden transports and the 7,ooo^ton cruiser Kirov, put on duty in 1936, Soviet-built, Drozd’s flagship, the /jpride of the Baltic.

  Heavy ships had not used the passage since World War I when the Russian battleship Slava traversed the shallow waters, fleeing German attack. Later, blockships, filled with cement, had been sunk in the channel.

  The choice was difficult. But rather than risk the German mine fields, Drozd determined to squeeze the Kirov through the shore channel. Draggers and trawlers were put to work deepening its shallowest portions. Cargo was shifted to smaller ships. Finally, the Vtoraya Pyatiletka (which had been bound for Germany on the night of June 21–22) managed to scrape through.

  Only the Kirov and the powerful icebreaker, the K. Voldemars, remained in Riga. Drozd could wait no longer. The Germans had reached Riga’s outskirts by June 27. On the night of June 29, with work on the northern part of the channel unfinished, Drozd led his remaining ships, escorted by the destroyers, Stoiki, Smetlivy and Grozyashchi, into the shallow path.

  Later, Drozd c
alled the trip worse than any battle he had ever fought.

  All started well. But as they reached the point where the World War I blockships had been sunk, the cruiser scraped bottom, first on sand, then on the cement. It came to a full stop.

  “We on the bridge shuddered. But we had to hurry,” Drozd recalled, “while it was still dark. Again I ordered slow speed ahead. The cruiser moved a little.”

  Buoys with tiny lights had marked the course of the dredged channel. The cruiser steered a painful path along this route. At midnight it ran completely aground. Tugs finally freed it. But almost immediately the cruiser headed into a shoal, nose on. It took three hours to get off.

  The next day with Drozd4 still on the bridge the Kirov sailed into Tallinn.

  The fleet got out of Riga just in time. On June 29 a Nazi tank group broke into Riga on the Bausky Chaussée and raced for the bridge across the Daugava (or Dvina) River. Two bridges had been destroyed, and the Germans made for the railroad bridge, which was intact. A ton of high explosive had been placed under it, but when the plunger was pushed, the chargé did not ignite.

  The Russians threw together some units from the 10th and 125th rifle divisions and the NKVD regiment. With the support of an armored train they managed to smash three German tanks which got over the bridge. Then a second and successful effort was made by Lieutenant S. G. Baikov and a detachment of seven sappers to blow it up. Baikov was killed in the explosion.

  Foiled in their attempt at direct entry, the Nazis circled around to the east. The broken Soviet forces hastily pulled out of Riga and hurried down the Pskov highway to Sigulda. On July 1 the German 26th Army Corps victoriously marched into Riga.

  Ten days of war, Admiral Panteleyev noted. The fleet had lost the whole Baltic littoral up to Tallinn, and now it must prepare to fight for its life for its principal base.