The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  The other members of the mission were A. N. Kosygin (later to become Premier of the Soviet Union), who was deputy chairman of the State Committee on Evacuation; Air Marshal P. F. Zhigarev, Soviet Air Commander in Chief; Voronov and Kuznetsov. Technically, Voroshilov and Zhdanov were members of the Commission as well.1

  The Commission was assigned the task of “evaluating the complicated situation” and rendering on-the-spot aid to the military command, the city and the regional Party organizations. It was endowed with the widest discretionary authority. Obviously, it held in its hands the fate of Leningrad, specifically the question of whether it could or should be held.

  Kuznetsov did not fly directly to Leningrad; instead, he flew with the party to Cherepovets, where a special train was made available. The route itself is a clue to the desperation which must have been felt in Moscow concerning the Leningrad situation. Cherepovets is nearly two hundred miles due east of Leningrad and is a point on the east-west Leningrad-Vologda railroad, rather than the direct north-south Leningrad-Moscow railroad.

  The distinguished party boarded the special train at the provincial station of Cherepovets and moved westward, through Tikhvin and Volkhov until they got to the little station of Mga, about twenty-five miles southeast of Leningrad. There, for reasons not immediately clear to Kuznetsov, the semaphore was set red against further progress. An air attack was just coming to an end; German bombers, their motors clearly audible, were flying away; antiaircraft guns were banging; explosions could be heard and fires were springing up not far from the railroad.

  “To wait for dawn was not desirable,” Kuznetsov thought. But what to do? A number of bombs had fallen on the trackage, and it was not possible for the train to move forward. The party disembarked and picked its way down the tracks, boarded an interurban streetcar and presently met an armored train which Voroshilov had thoughtfully sent to Mga to pick up the bedraggled members of the State Defense Committee.

  It is not likely that Malenkov and Molotov arrived in Leningrad with any great confidence in the military position.

  As Kuznetsov remarked: “In a military situation one sometimes encounters unexpected situations. However, the position in which the Stavka representatives found themselves speaks of the insufficiencies of information and of control over situations even in those cases where it was essential.”

  What Malenkov and Molotov did not realize until after their arrival in Leningrad was that the bombing of Mga which they witnessed was the prelude to a Nazi attack on the station which would on August 30 cut the last rail connection—that of the Northern Railroad—between Leningrad and the mainland of Russia.

  The Commission members spent about ten days in Leningrad. The exact nature of their decisions is not clear from any of the Soviet accounts. There is no published record of the conversations between Malenkov, Molotov and Zhdanov. There is not to be found in any front-line reminiscences, officers’ tales or specialized histories a reference to the presence of Malenkov or Molotov on any fighting front during the time of their visit. Kuznetsov gives the impression that he concerned himself wholly with fleet matters and was not privy to the discussions.

  Marshal Zhigarev is said to have aided in overcoming deficiencies in air defenses (the city was on the eve of savage German air attacks but thus far had not been bombed). Voronov helped on antitank defenses. Admiral Kuznetsov, the naval member, worked on the collaboration of Baltic Fleet units in artillery support of the Leningrad front. Assistance in plans for the internal defense of the city was rendered. Once again minute details were spelled out. The line of defense was to run from the Finnish Gulf and the Predportovaya Station along the October Railroad tracks through the village of Rybatskoye to the Utkin factory, the Kudrovo State Farm, to Rzhevka and along the line Udelnoye^Kolomyagi-Staraya Derevnya. If the Germans broke into the city, they would be met by 26 rifle divisions and 6 tank battalions, armed with 1,205 guns, or 30 per mile of front.

  Much attention was given to the problem of evacuating population, factories and scientific institutions and improving Leningrad’s food position, although by this time all rail routes had been severed.

  During this period Admiral Panteleyev went to Smolny at Voroshilov’s summons. A big meeting was in progress. The room was filled with people, most of them military but many civilians as well. Some were women. Voroshilov sat against the wall at a long table covered with a dark cloth. He looked tired, gloomy and discouraged. He talked in a quiet, soft voice, not at all like himself. The windows were blacked out, and the room was dark and dismal.

  Panteleyev did not recognize anyone in the room besides Marshal Voroshilov, although there were many high officials present. He does not name them. Were the members of the State Defense Committee present?

  The meeting was one long catalogue of disaster—of people who had refused to be evacuated, of people (especially children) evacuated into the path of the Germans, of special trains which stood on dangerous sidings for days without moving, subject to Nazi air attack, of children sent off thousands of miles to the east with no word to their families as to their destination.

  Again and again someone would say: “But who would have thought the enemy would get so close to Leningrad?”

  Voroshilov sternly demanded an answer as to why the government orders to evacuate the population had not been fulfilled.

  The meeting didn’t take long. It left Panteleyev filled with despondency. The next day orders were issued to continue to evacuate civilians—not less than a million through Shlisselburg. Shlisselburg fell three days later.

  The visit of Malenkov and Molotov to Leningrad has dropped out of Soviet historiography. But it once was firmly fixed as a stellar event. Malenkov proudly noted in his biography in the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsyklopedia, published in 1952, that he “in August, 1941, was to be found on the Leningrad front.” Standard histories written as late as 1953 mentioned the visit. In fact, the official version then was that “under their [Malenkov’s and Molotov’s] firm leadership plans were worked out and measures carried out directed at organizing the defeat of the enemy.” Or, as another historian put it: “In September at the sharpest moment of the struggle for Leningrad the Central Committee sent V. M. Molotov and G. M. Malenkov into the besieged city to organize its defense.”

  The mission may have been designed to assist the hard-pressed defenders of Leningrad. But it may—and this possibility is hinted at by Kuznetsov— have been entrusted with the task of deciding whether Leningrad should be abandoned.

  Voronov, a tall, thoughtful man whose quiet manner inspired confidence, was first on the ground. He was there by August 22. His impressions were troubled.

  “To my surprise,” he recalled, “the city continued to live very peacefully. You might have thought that the battle was being fought on the nearest approaches to Berlin and not under the walls of Leningrad.”

  He was appalled to find practically nothing had been done about evacuating the population. He saw in this clear evidence of an underevaluation of the threat which now hung over the city. He was right.

  The State Defense Commission, Voronov recalled, demanded the immediate evacuation from Leningrad of children, women and old persons and also all scientific institutions and factories which could not be used for the essential needs of the front or city. The Commission called for the immediate reconstruction of the life of the city on military terms.

  Just though Voronov’s criticisms were, the time was far too late to undo the fatal results of weeks of false optimism.

  On August 26 Zhdanov and Voroshilov, presumably joined by Voronov, talked via the VC phone with Stalin in Moscow. Reporting the desperate situation which had been created by the German capture of Lyuban Station, about fifty miles southeast of the city, and the cutting of the October Railroad between Moscow and Leningrad—the principal communications route to the city—they said they must have additional forces if the city was to be held.

  Stalin responded to the plea of desperation. He agreed that Lenin
grad should receive the next four days’ supply of tanks from the Leningrad tank factories (principally, the KV 60-ton monsters turned out by the Kirov and the Izhorsk factories). These were two of the main producers of armored weapons in the Soviet Union, and, desperate though the Leningrad situation was, their production had continued to go almost entirely into the central strategic reserves of the Red Army in the Moscow area.2 Stalin’s order meant twenty-five to thirty tanks for the Leningrad front. Many of them moved straight into battle, their steel bodies unpainted and glistening.

  Moreover, Stalin promised to send to Leningrad four aviation regiments and ten infantry battalions. This would bring the number of reserves sent to the Leningrad front since the outbreak of war to seventy battalions. At the same time Stalin grimly ordered the Leningrad Command to “put in order” the Forty-eighth Army (actually, little more than a figure on a piece of military paper after its latest disasters) and to mine heavily the Moscow-Leningrad highway and the approaches to Leningrad. In fact, of course, the Germans had already cut the Moscow-Leningrad highway.

  Each of the ten battalions which Stalin agreed to send to Leningrad comprised a thousand or more men. But not all were experienced and not all had weapons.

  “Don’t hurry about throwing them into battle,” Zhdanov warned G. Kh. Bumagin, Military Council member of the Forty-eighth Army. “The new recruits need a little preparation for the battle front.”

  But the caution was in vain. The Nazi 39th Panzer Corps of the 3rd Panzer Group was driving forward from Lyuban to Tosno and Mga on the outskirts of Leningrad. The commander of the luckless Forty-eighth Army threw everything he could lay his hands on into the battle in an attempt to halt the German advance. Nothing helped. The Germans drove remorselessly on.

  Stalin had defined the basic task of the Leningrad Command in these terms: to protect the city from attack from the west, southwest and southeast; to prevent the Germans from cutting the October, Pechora and Northern railroads; to hold firmly the Koporsky Plateau to insure the defense of Leningrad from the sea; to halt the Finnish offensive at the Vuoksi River and keep the Finns from cutting the Kirov railroad.

  It was a task beyond the capability of the forces defending Leningrad— or of any reinforcements which the city could hope to obtain.

  This was the grim moment at which Malenkov and Molotov appeared on the scene.

  Malenkov was Zhdanov’s keenest rival as a possible successor to Stalin and court favorite. Molotov’s role was anomalous, but the indications are that he was playing at Malenkov’s side, not Zhdanov’s. These were two members of the three-man junta which had taken power during the days of Stalin’s incapacity in June; two of the three men who had sent Zhdanov back to Leningrad to defend his fief, who had cut him off from decision-making or ambition-satisfying exercises in Moscow. Zhdanov had been in Leningrad now for two months, directing its defense. His record was hardly brilliant. Now the gravest decisions had to be made. Could the city be held? Was there any way of thwarting the Nazi offensive?

  Only echoes of the icy conversations of the high Soviet leaders with their brutal underlay of anxiety and emotion come through the reports of the survivors. All mention of Malenkov and Molotov in this connection has been banished from the Soviet press since their ignoble defeat in the 1957 attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev. Zhdanov left no record before his untimely death August 31, 1948. Most of Zhdanov’s closest associates were shot in the following years.3

  However, without question the fateful issue of abandoning Leningrad arose. If there were opposing positions in these discussions, they must have been: Zhdanov for holding on, Malenkov and Molotov for giving up.

  The usual command upheavals and reshuffles, a certain sign of crisis on a Soviet front, occurred. On the twenty-third of August Karelia had been split off from the Leningrad Command. On the twenty-ninth the State Defense Committee (was the idea that of Malenkov and Molotov?) named Voroshilov as the Leningrad front commander, with Zhdanov and Party Secretary Kuznetsov as Military Council members, and General Popov as Chief of Staff. The move made considerable sense, yet it marked a downgrading of the roles of Voroshilov and Zhdanov. They formerly had been in chargé of the whole complex of fronts and armies in the Leningrad area. Now they had only the single front—essentially that of the city itself. The next day the Council for the Defense of Leningrad was dissolved and all its functions taken over by the Leningrad Front Command of Zhdanov and Voroshilov.

  On September 1 Stalin delivered a formal reprimand to Zhdanov and Voroshilov. In a message from the Stavka to the Leningrad Command he laid down the line that errors of organization and lack of firmness had marked the defense of the approaches to Leningrad. He demanded that more active measures be taken for the defense of the city.4

  It is likely that this reprimand was the first fruit of the intervention of Malenkov and Molotov. It may have been stimulated by an act of hopeless deception which was attempted by the Leningrad Command. Leningrad did not promptly report the loss of Mga to Moscow. Presumably, it did not report this fact because it hoped to recapture Mga and restore the situation. The hope, like so many others, was vain.

  The battered Forty-eighth Army was ordered by the Leningrad Command to retake Mga Station at any price. The 1st Division of NKVD troops, withdrawn from the Karelian front, was thrown in. No luck. The Germans had Mga and they would retain it.

  The record was beginning to be built up against Zhdanov and Voroshilov. First, they had been “masters of the art of retreat.” Next, they had set up an internal defense committee which Stalin seemed to regard as a possible device for the surrender of the city. They made arrangements for street fighting in the city which aroused his suspicions.

  Now they were caught red-handed concealing a terrible defeat.

  If Leningrad were to fall, Malenkov and Molotov would have little difficulty in presenting a record which would put full blame on Zhdanov and Voroshilov.

  The fall of Leningrad from the standpoint of the junta of Malenkov and Molotov would have one favorable consequence. It would eliminate for all time a dangerous and able rival for political power within the Kremlin. Not that Zhdanov was entirely without allies in Moscow. On September 2 Izvestiya published an eloquent declaration, expressing confidence that Leningrad and the Leningraders would fulfill their great honor and duty by defeating the Germans and driving them back from the city. It was signed, “N. Petrov.” But its author was the venerable Mikhail I. Kalinin, President of the U.S.S.R. and himself a native of Leningrad. He at least gave a vote of confidence to the Leningrad defenders. But Kalinin was by no means the equal in power and intrigue of Zhdanov’s opponents. The war on the front with the Nazis might be deadly. That behind the scenes was even more so.

  Kuznetsov did not return to Moscow with the other members of the State Defense Committee. Naval matters held him up, and he did not fly back to Moscow until September 12, to the accompaniment of a thunderstorm which tossed his plane about as it flew low over the stormy waters of Lake Ladoga.

  The next day he was summoned to the Kremlin at the unusual hour of noon. Ordinarily he was never called until evening. During the day Stalin worked in his Kremlin office, but at night, when air raids were likely, he often transferred his work to a suite near the Kremlin air-raid shelter. Kuznetsov felt that only an urgent matter would have brought the call at the unusual midday hour. He was right.

  Stalin opened the meeting abruptly by advising Kuznetsov that the Leningrad Command had been put in the hands of General Georgi Zhukov. The decision had been made the night before,5 and Zhukov was already in Leningrad or on his way.

  What Stalin did not say—or Kuznetsov did not report—was that Voroshilov had been removed after another tremendous row between Leningrad and Moscow.

  Once again Leningrad had been caught out.

  The Germans had smashed their way into Shlisselburg, the fortress on the Neva, and closed the circle around Leningrad on September 8. But the Leningrad Command did not report this fact—no more than it ha
d reported the loss of Mga. It did not report the loss of Shlisselburg on September 8. It did not report it September 9. On September 9 Moscow learned about the loss from another source—the official German communiqué.

  Stalin demanded an explanation.

  The explanation was hardly satisfactory. On September 11 Voroshilov and Zhdanov advised the Kremlin that for two months they had been trying to create a shock group to seize the initiative from the Germans but that as fast as troops were provided they had had to be thrown into the breach. Thus their efforts to organize a powerful counteroffensive and throw the Germans back from the breakthrough to Mga and Shlisselburg had failed.

  This merely confirmed Stalin in his conviction that it was the “passive-ness” of Voroshilov that had caused the Leningrad disasters. He ordered Voroshilov removed and Zhukov sent in to replace him.6

  Apparently, Stalin did not go into this detail with Admiral Kuznetsov. Nor, apparently, did Kuznetsov tell Stalin of a curious experience which occurred while he was sitting in Admiral I. S. Isakov’s office in Smolny on August 30 waiting for the Admiral to return from a meeting of the Military Council. The telephone rang—not the military telephone but the ordinary city line. Kuznetsov answered it. It was a young girl, who said despairingly: “The Germans have gotten to the Neva River in the region of Ivanovskoye.”

  The news was completely unexpected. Admiral Kuznetsov reported it to General Popov, the Leningrad Commander, who was inclined to think it was the fruit of panic or fantasy. But, unfortunately, it was neither. The Germans had broken through to the Neva, and they stayed there until 1943.

  None of this came up in the conversation between Stalin and Kuznetsov.

  Stalin strolled about his office nervously and finally sat down on a black-leather couch, peppering Kuznetsov with questions. How many ships remained in the Baltic? Where were they? Were they playing any role in the battle for Leningrad? He referred to the city by its old familiar nickname of “Piter” rather than Leningrad.