The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  A mass meeting of 2,500 youngsters was held September 14 at the Tauride Palace. Old workers who had fought the White Guards spoke. So did Vsevolod Vishnevsky, who exclaimed: “Forward, comrades! Forward, youth! Forward, Leningraders! We will conquer!” The youngsters swore an oath to die before surrendering Leningrad, and hundreds marched straight from the assembly to the front. Rifles were passed out to them as they formed up outside the palace. Vishnevsky’s speech was recorded and played to troops in the battle zone.

  On September 15, fifty-two top Party leaders were sent from civilian posts to fighting duty. The calls for Communists to take front-line positions came, hour by hour. There was no time for preparation. Secretary A. A. Kuznetsov called in Party worker A. A. Trakhachev and said he must have 200 trained artillerymen in 24 hours. The next day the “artillerymen” went off to their units. Five hundred Communists were mobilized for combat political work on an hour’s notice.

  Controls on movement of population, already strict, had been tightened. Since August 24 all movement in the city between the hours of 10 P.M. and 5 A.M. had been forbidden. The highways leading into the city were barricaded. On September 18 three interior lines were set up on the south and southwest approaches to the city. Special Komandaturas prevented people from coming in or out of the city without full identification. The number of police in the city had been radically increased. There had been 36 police commands, with personnel of 352. Now the figure was 2,321. Special police posts had been set up in 1,250 institutions and factories and 80 special rooftop observation posts.

  The Workers Battalions were placed on twenty-four-hour call. They slept in their factories or offices. The Military Council was trying to arm them with whatever came to hand—grenades, Molotov cocktails, reconditioned arms. Improvised antitank guns had been mounted on streetcar platforms, trucks and buses.

  Machine-gun posts were set up in areas where German paratroops might drop—the Haymarket, Theater Square, Vorovsky, Commune, Trud, Vos-staniya, Plekhanov, the Champs de Mars, Palace Square, Isskustvo, Diktatur, Narva, Revolution, Leo Tolstoy squares, the park named for May 1, the Tauride Palace gardens, the Volkov Cemetery, Lenin Park, the Botanical Gardens, Chelyuskintsev Park and the Smolensk Cemetery. Similar precautions were taken on the outskirts of the city at such places as Porokhove, Rzhevka, Piskarevsky, Grazhdanka, Lesnoi and Kolomyagi.

  As Red Army troops fell back into the city, they would take over command of the interior barriers now manned by NKVD troops.

  In the ensuing street battles the workers’ formations and all the general population were expected to take part. They would be commanded by the chief of each sector.

  The task of the Baltic Fleet was to support the city with its naval guns and the guns mounted in land batteries. It was especially to guard against amphibious landings from the Gulf of Finland.

  When Admiral Panteleyev came into Leningrad from Kronstadt after an absence of a week, he found the streets transformed—everywhere there were hedgehogs of railroad iron, concrete blocks and pillboxes. In the squares stood batteries of antiaircraft or antitank guns. Normal traffic had disappeared.

  From the Neva most of the serviceable warships of the Baltic Fleet directed a ceaseless cannonade against the Germans in the suburbs.

  The Germans now were within range of the guns of the cruiser Gorky and the battleship October Revolution (the former Petropavlovsk). The Marat was beginning to bring them under fire. As he returned to Kronstadt, passing through Avtovo, Panteleyev recognized the deep whine of 180-mm shells from the Maxim Gorky, which was stationed near the grain terminal of the commercial port. He heard, too, the guns of the Marat, which was at the entrance of the Sea Canal and was now opening up with its 12-inch guns.

  The Germans had begun a propaganda drive, designed to create the impression that Leningrad was about to fall. Hitler congratulated von Leeb on his great success in the Leningrad campaign. General Jodl, Chief of Staff, flew to Helsinki to award Marshal Mannerheim the Iron Cross for the Finnish victories. He also promised to send the Finns 15,000 tons of wheat.

  On September 6 the High Command of the Wehrmacht began to discuss the fall of Leningrad in its communiqués. “The encirclement of Leningrad is progressing,” the communiqué said. A special press conference of foreign correspondents was called in Berlin. They were told that all the Soviet troops in the Leningrad area had been drawn into a noose and faced either starvation or extermination. The Germans had decided, it was said, not to storm the city simply for reasons of prestige. They had no desire to suffer unnecessary losses. If Leningrad did not surrender, it would suffer the fate of Warsaw and Rotterdam—total destruction by air and artillery bombardment.

  The Germans appeared to believe their own propaganda. Hitler approved a directive dated September 6 for the mounting of his offensive against Moscow. It called for Army Group Nord to transfer not later than September 15 its Panzer and mechanized divisions and its dive bombers to the Moscow front.

  Hitler insisted that von Leeb draw the tightest kind of circle around Leningrad. Secretly, the Fuhrer instructed von Leeb that the city’s capitulation was not to be accepted. The population was to die with the doomed city. Random shelling of civilian objectives was authorized. If the populace tried to escape the iron ring, they were to be shot down.

  No hint of this brutal decision was made public.

  Thousands of German leaflets rained down on Leningrad. Most residents feared even to pick them up lest they be seized and shot by the special “destroyer” battalions of workers, chargéd with maintaining internal defense. But by word of mouth the message of the leaflets spread. They were addressed to the women of Leningrad and they said: “Take every opportunity to convince your husbands, sons and friends of the senselessness of struggling against the German Army. Only by ending the battle of Leningrad can you save your lives.” Leaflets directed to the Soviet troops proclaimed: “Beat the Political Commissars—throw a brick in their snouts.”

  Haider, always a skeptic where the operations of Army Group Nord were concerned, now reflected the optimism that was felt in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters. On September 12 he made the entry:

  “Leningrad: Very good progress. The enemy begins to soften on the front of Reinhardt’s corps. It would appear that the population does not want to take a hand in defense. The Commander in Chief Nord [von Leeb] vehemently wants to keep Reinhardt’s corps.”

  The next day, the thirteenth, he laconically noted that he had agreed to let von Leeb keep the armored corps for the continuance of the drive on Leningrad, and two days later he reported that the “assault on Leningrad had made good progress.”

  It had, indeed, made good progress. There was some truth in the German belief that not all Leningraders were prepared to defend their city to the last. One Soviet officer was convinced that the path into Leningrad lay practically open. Had the Nazis simply thrust forward, they would have brushed aside the weakening front-line units and won the day. Kochetov, who was quite ready to see the worst in his fellow citizens, was suffused in pessimism. According to his account Soviet secret police uncovered not only German spies, sympathizers and agents but individuals who were forming “fighting groups” which would lead an uprising in Leningrad to coincide with the culminating storm of the city by the Germans.

  What about the city’s ability to defend itself once the Germans broke in—if they broke in?

  Kochetov, like the other Leningraders, could observe the hundreds of machine-gun posts, the antitank traps, the embrasures built into the buildings, the internal-defense preparations. The general view, he thought, was that there were “not too few, not too many” of these pillboxes. Were there enough? Could the city rely on them? That was the question. It is apparent from Kochetov that not everyone did. He insists that he and his friends did believe that the city’s defenses would hold. Others had their doubts— among them Stalin, as was evident in Admiral Kuznetsov’s curious discussion with him in the Kremlin September 13 about preparing the Baltic Fleet f
or destruction.

  On the evening of the thirteenth Admiral Tributs returned to Kronstadt from his daily session at Smolny considerably earlier than usual. He had met the new front commander, Marshal Zhukov, and he had new orders. Admiral Panteleyev found Tributs unusually gloomy when he arrived at the Kronstadt staff dock on the Italian Pond across from the headquarters building. He felt immediately that something serious had happened. Tributs listened inattentively to the routine reports and then called his chief of operations, his chief of rear services, and Panteleyev into his office.

  All knew that Leningrad was being prepared for street battle, that every house, every building, every square was to be defended. They knew of the staff of internal defense which had been formed, and they knew that every possible measure was being taken for saving the city.

  The three officers waited with pencils and notebooks in hand for Tributs’ orders.

  “The situation at the front is critical,” Tributs said. “A terrible battle is under way. Leningrad will be defended to the last possibility. But everything is possible. If the Fascists break into the city, troikas have been set up at all institutions and military objectives to destroy everything that might fall into the enemy’s hands. AH bridges, factories, institutions, are to be mined. If the enemy breaks into the city, he will die in its ruins.”

  A long pause followed. The Admiral wiped the perspiration from his brow and continued:

  “The Stavka demands that not one ship, not one supply dump, not one cannon in Kronstadt fall into enemy hands. If the situation demands, all are to be destroyed. The staff and the rear services must immediately draft a plan for mining every ship, fort and warehouse. Before the ships are scuttled the personnel must be taken ashore, formed into ranks and marched to the front.”

  Tributs told his associates to carry out the orders immediately.2 Panteleyev admitted that the announcement stunned him. “All kinds of unpleasant thoughts arose in my mind,” he said.

  The task of working up the plans, placing the mines, establishing the order in which crews would be removed from the doomed ships and of handling their actual destruction, was placed in the hands of what Panteleyev called “especially firm, dedicated Communists” for it was a matter which required great political strength. There had to be the most careful precautions to see that no catastrophes occurred such as the premature blowing up of some of the ships. While Panteleyev had no doubt about the steadfastness of the Communist organization in the fleet, nevertheless the strictest vigilance would be required of every Party man.

  Late in the evening while the orders for scuttling were being typed up, General Mitrofan I. Moskalenko, chief of rear services, came into Pantele-yev’s office. He sat down on an old sofa, pushing aside an ashtray and a roll of maps, and waited for Panteleyev to get off the telephone.

  “Tell me,” Moskalenko said, “what does it take to get rid of this old divan? It must be a hundred years old. It’s good for nothing but the rubbish heap.”

  The two men sat and talked about refurnishing the staff headquarters while they waited for the typists to bring them their lists of military objectives, broken down into categories: “To be scuttled,” “To be blown up,” “To be set afire.”

  One sailor selected to assist in mining warehouses at the naval docks never forgot the hopeless gesture with which his commanding officer gave the squad its orders to place bombs under all the warehouses of the military port. Depth bombs. They were to be wired together so that a single thrust of the plunger would send the whole port up in one tremendous explosion.

  The sailors went to work setting out the bombs while the port workers continued to move supplies in and out, keeping a fearful eye on the terrible business at hand.

  The first intimation Colonel Bychevsky had that the destruction of the city was contemplated came when he was called back from the front late on the evening of September 15. He had worked all day in the Pulkovo region, where the situation was unbelievably serious. The Germans had cut the front of the Forty-second Army by reaching the Strelna-Leningrad highway, and two Nazi divisions were attacking toward Strelna and Volodar-sky. The 21st NKVD Division under Colonel M. D. Panchenko had fallen back into Ligovo.

  Bychevsky was received immediately by General Khozin, who asked, “Are the Leningrad bridges mined? Where are your plans and maps? Give me a report on all this in the morning.”

  To be called back in the evening when the reports weren’t needed until morning didn’t seem natural to Bychevsky. He knew Khozin well. He noted in Khozin’s voice something that sounded like alarm. Bychevsky was deeply troubled.

  In the morning of the sixteenth he was back at Khozin’s office and laid before Khozin the plans which had been drafted for blowing up the Leningrad bridges. He pointed out how he would get electric power to detonate the explosives and the command arrangements for touching off the chargés.

  “Where are the explosives?” Khozin demanded.

  “The Military Council thought it was not appropriate to put them under the bridges,” Bychevsky replied.

  Khozin ordered him to rework his plans and submit them within twenty-four hours, including the placing of chargés in the galleries which already had been prepared under the bridges. Khozin asked for precise details on time, men and materials needed to put the plan into action.

  It was apparent to Bychevsky that Khozin was speaking under orders. It seemed that the matter was not merely one of mining the bridges.

  “What supplies of explosives do we have available?” Khozin asked.

  “The supply in the city is limited to some tens of tons,” Bychevsky said. “But the Party committee is taking measures to increase production. We are having serious difficulty with TNT, which is essential for antitank mines in the fighting zone.”

  “I am talking not about the operational area,” Khozin said, “but about the operational rear.”

  What kind of “operational rear” did Khozin mean? Bychevsky decided to put the question.

  “You are talking about the city of Leningrad, Comrade General?”

  “Yes,” said Khozin, “in a certain case.”

  The next day, the seventeenth, the “certain case” became clear. The Military Council ordered that forty tons of explosives from the army engineers’ supplies be turned over to “regional troikas.” The heads of the troikas were the first secretaries of the Party organizations in the Kirov, Moscow, Volo-darsky and Lenin regions.

  During the day the explosives were passed out to the troikas. They had orders to blow up every important object in their districts if the Germans broke into the city in strength.

  Each regional troika issued a sealed packet to the subordinate troikas which had been set up in the big factories, institutions and buildings in its area. There were 141 of these lesser troikas. None of the lower echelons knew the exact contents of the sealed packet. They knew it was to be opened only if the Germans broke into the city in strength. Some, certainly, knew the contents more precisely—orders to blow up the buildings and march out to fight a final battle with the Nazis.

  In each institution a close, armed, dedicated group of Communists was formed to carry out whatever order was given. These groups knew that one duty was to destroy the city by demolishing every large building, every bridge, every factory, every important objective within the limits of Leningrad.

  At the Izhorsk factory, for example, which had continued to operate under Nazi shelling even though it was virtually on the front line, explosive chargés and detonators were set under the cranes and presses. In the great petroleum reservoir a cylinder of hydrogen had been placed. At a signal the hydrogen could be released into the oil, touching off an explosion of tremendous force.

  At the Kirov works the troika was headed by the regional Party Secretary Yefremov. He directed the placing of explosive chargés under the blast furnaces, the rolling mills and the railroad viaduct under which the great KV tanks rolled as they emerged from the works and headed directly to the front just up the streetc
ar line at the seventh station stop from the factory.

  The whole territory south of the Circle Railroad had been cleared of institutions and factories. Some twenty-one factories had been evacuated to the “rear” of the city—to the Vyborg and Petrograd sides and to Vasilevsky Island. All of these evacuated plants were ready to be blown up at the touch of the plunger. The Izhorsk plant—what could be moved of it—had been shipped out. More than 110,000 residents of the Narva, Moscow and Neva Gates areas had been evacuated. This region was to be a no-man’s land.

  Would the signal be given?

  The night of the sixteenth-seventeenth was the most alarming Leningrad had experienced, especially in the southern areas adjacent to the fiercest battles.

  At 15 minutes to 11 P.M. G. F. Badayev, secretary of the Moscow region, called by telephone to all the directors of factories and big institutions in his region. This night, he warned, the Germans might break into the city from the south. He ordered the Workers Battalions, with all fighting equipment, to man the barricades.

  Similar orders went to all factories and institutions in the Narva and Neva Gates regions.

  “At thirty minutes past midnight we went into our positions,” M. Stra-shenkov, a commander of a Workers Battalion at the Kirov works, jotted in his diary. “They are not far from the factory. Two pillboxes have been completed. One is half finished and a fourth hasn’t been started.”

  All Communists, all Young Communists, all “non-Party activists” in the city were put on alarm and ordered to sleep at their posts.

  The Workers Battalions at the great Elektrosila factory, the Bolshevik factory, the Izhorsk works, were on No. i Alert.