The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  Whichever version is correct, events demonstrated that the position of the Second Shock Army was very shaky, very precarious. On April 9 the Germans attacked again and cut off the army. It was reduced to receiving supplies by plane and air drops. The situation was so difficult that Ivan V. Zuyev,4 the Second Shock Army Political Commissar, held a meeting of all political workers, army procurators, military tribunals and members of the dread “special branch” of the secret police and ordered the “highest vigilance” against any German “agents.” At this point the army commander, Lieutenant General N. K. Krykov, fell ill and had to be evacuated by plane. General Vlasov was sent in to replace him.5

  The difficult situation was made more difficult by one of the erratic command changes which Stalin so often introduced. Stalin had been continuously dissatisfied at the failure of the efforts to lift Leningrad’s blockade. He had sent one high emissary after another to get some action. Now he summoned the erstwhile Leningrad front commander, General Khozin, for a conference April 21. Khozin had repeatedly put blame for the failure of the deblockading efforts on lack of coordination between the sprawling units of the Leningrad (internal) and Volkhov (external) fronts. He repeated his complaints now and urged that the Stavka ensure close and effective collaboration. He presented his views to Stalin, Marshal Shaposhnikov, Marshal Vasilevsky and a number of Defense Council members, undoubtedly including Malenkov.6 Unexpectedly, Khozin contends, Stalin proposed that the fronts be united and Khozin put in chargé. Khozin describes the idea as having been as sudden to the others as to him. Because of the “colossal authority of Stalin,” Khozin observed, no one thought of challenging the notion. An order was drafted to unite the two fronts as of midnight April 23 and put them under Khozin’s command.

  No one was more surprised than General Meretskov, the Volkhov front commander, at this decision. “I could not understand what the point was of this consolidation,” he said. “In my view there was neither operative nor political nor any kind of advantage in it.” He soon heard, however, that General Khozin had promised that if the two fronts were united he could lift the Leningrad blockade. In view of this, Meretskov thought it understandable that the Stavka had ordered the reorganization and strengthened the new front with the 6th Guards Rifle Corps and another rifle division. But he did think it odd that the Volkhov front commander, that is, himself, had not been consulted.

  “I learned about the proceedings,” he recalled, “on April 23 when General Khozin with the directive in his pocket and in a jolly mood appeared at the Volkhov staff headquarters.”

  Meretskov insists that he called Khozin’s attention to the plight of the Second Shock Army but that “Khozin had his own opinion and didn’t agree with me.”

  Meretskov went straight to Moscow, and there on April 24 he again raised the question of the Second Shock Army with Stalin and Malenkov.

  “The Second Shock Army is practically stifling,” Meretskov recalls saying. “It can’t attack and it can’t defend itself. Its communications are threatened by the German blows. If nothing is done, catastrophe is inevitable.”

  Meretskov proposed that the army be evacuated from the impenetrable marshes in which it was bogged down (especially dangerous with the heavy spring thaw which made every road and trail impassable) and brought back to the line of the Chudovo-Novgorod highway and railroad. He was listened to with patience and a promise of attention. He was then transferred to the Western Front to command the Thirty-third Army. Almost simultaneously the other top Leningrad commander, General Fedyuninsky, was removed from the Fifty-fourth Army and sent to command the Fifth Army, neighboring the Thirty-third on the Western Front.

  Khozin’s story is that he gave first priority to the plight of the Second Army, which was virtually encircled and badly weakened by the winter of incredibly difficult fighting. Many units were down to 60 to 70 percent of rated strength. Tank brigades had no tanks and artillery no shells. The forests were so waterlogged it was impossible to move by truck or car. Even horses had difficulty getting around.

  General Khozin got Stalin to agree that the Second Shock Army should go on the defensive in preparation for an effort to get out of the encirclement. There were at this time eleven infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions and five infantry brigades in encirclement. By May 4 the five cavalry brigades had forced their way out. Two infantry divisions and some smaller units broke out and joined the Fifty-ninth Army.

  General Vlasov, with his Chief Commissar Ivan Zuyev, flew out of encirclement to consult with Khozin May 12. They returned to headquarters May 14 with plans for constructing a road through the wilderness along which it was hoped to move out the troops. But the idea did not get very far. The Germans had begun to build up their forces again, sensing that they were nearing the kill. The Bavarian Rifle Corps was brought in, and there were signs the Germans planned a simultaneous drive from Chudovo and Novgorod.

  General Khozin had put the Fifty-ninth Army into action to try to lessen pressure on the Second, and Stalin agreed to lay aside the drive for lifting the Leningrad blockade while trying to save the Second Shock Army. Plans were laid for a simultaneous push June 5 by the Second and Fifty-ninth armies. But the Germans spotted the Soviet preparations and themselves went over to the offensive. Some Soviet troops forced their way out, but by June 6 the Germans had firmly closed the circle around parts of seven rifle divisions and six infantry brigades—altogether 18,000 or 20,000 men.

  General Khozin did not try to conceal the disaster. He reported what had happened promptly to Moscow, and on June 8 General Meretskov was urgently brought back from the Central Front and again summoned to the Stavka. In the presence of virtually the whole High Command Stalin said: “We made a big mistake in combining the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. General Khozin wanted to head the Volkhov operation, but he has done badly. He didn’t carry out the orders of Stavka for the withdrawal of the Second Army. As a result the Germans have cut off the communications of the army and encircled it.”

  Stalin turned to Meretskov. “You, Comrade Meretskov, know the Volkhov front very well. So we are sending you with Marshal Vasilevsky to bring the Second Army out of encirclement even if you have to abandon the heavy artillery and equipment.”

  Meretskov flew into Malaya Vishera, where Khozin had his headquarters, before nightfall. He found a gloomy situation—the Second Army cut off completely, with hardly any supplies and no way to provide food or ammunition. There were no real reserves, but Meretskov gathered what troops he could and ordered a narrow attack on June 10 to try and create an escape corridor.

  The effort was only partially successful. The Germans had mustered four infantry and an SS division to the north and about five divisions including an international legion to the south.

  Meretskov attacked again and again, and Vlasov smashed from the inner side of the circle. About 6,000 men made their way out up to 8 P.M., June 22. Finally an all-out attack was ordered for June 23 into which Vlasov and his men were told to throw everything in a last effort. The attack was launched at 11:30 P.M., June 23. The Second Army drove toward the Fifty-ninth Army lines. The Fifty-ninth threw its strength into opening a corridor. Toward dawn (very early in these white nights) a narrow path was opened and the first men of the Second Army passed through. They kept on coming until about noon. Then the Germans closed the passage. At this point, according to Meretskov, General Vlasov lost control of the situation. He ordered his men to try to escape in small groups, individually and on their own. This disoriented them. Communications with Vlasov were now lost. Nevertheless, toward evening of the twenty-fourth the corridor was opened again and more men slipped through. But by 9:30 in the morning of the twenty-fifth it was closed again—this time finally.

  Meretskov was personally directing the rescue operation, and on the morning of the twenty-fifth he was advised by some escaping officers that they had seen Vlasov and his senior officers on one of the back roads. Meretskov immediately directed a tank regiment and some mobile infantry, toget
her with his adjutant, Captain M. G. Borod, to penetrate the region where Vlasov had been seen. They found no trace of him. Knowing that Vlasov had a radio receiver, they tried to reach him by wireless without result. Later, it was learned that Vlasov had divided his staff into three groups, which were supposed to come out about 11 P.M., June 24, in the region of the 46th Rifle Division. Unfortunately, none of them knew where the 46th command point was located. As they approached the Polist River, they came under strong German machine-gun fire. Vlasov apparently was not seen beyond this point. The Military Council and General Afanasyev, chief of communications, turned north. Two days later Afanasyev’s group met a partisan unit and managed to make contact with a second partisan group which had a radio transmitter. With the aid of the transmitter General Afanasyev was able to communicate with Meretskov July 14. He was brought out by plane.

  At some point V. N. Ivanov, secretary of the Young Communist organization in Leningrad, encountered Vlasov, but whether before or after the Polist River incident is not clear. Ivanov was dropped with some other young Communists, by parachute, behind the German lines. By mistake the pilot let them jump over a small village which was occupied by a Nazi SS unit. Ivanov was badly wounded and took refuge in a nearby forest, where he encountered Vlasov, in Soviet uniform, still holding out. Then they separated and trace of Vlasov was again lost.

  After Afanasyev’s rescue Meretskov telephoned Party Secretary Zhdanov, who ordered the partisan units to undertake a widespread search for General Vlasov and the other members of his staff. The partisans mobilized three groups and searched the regions around Poddubye for many miles but found no trace of Vlasov. A few of the command officers turned up. Colonel A. S. Rogov, chief of intelligence, got through the encirclement. He followed the route of the Military Council but came out a little behind them. For years the fate of Commissar Zuyev was unknown. Then, by chance, his grave was discovered near the 105th kilometer of the Chudovo railroad, near the Torfyanoye Station. Starving, wounded and weak, he had emerged at the railroad line and begged a bit of bread from some workers. One of them ran to tell the Germans. Before he could be seized Zuyev pulled out his service revolver and shot himself. About 9,322 men escaped encirclement; 8,000 to 10,000 were lost.

  Vlasov did not shoot himself. Two days before Zhdanov ordered the partisans to search for him he surrendered to the Germans on July 12 and within a short time had placed himself at the service of the Nazi propaganda apparatus as the head of what became the Vlasovite movement, an organization of Russian soldiers and officers directed against the Soviet cause. He was the only Soviet general officer of prominence to defect, and his defection was always a prickly business in which he frequently would not play the Nazi game. But Vlasov’s treachery became such a thing of awe and horror in wartime Russia that his name was hardly uttered.

  Later, however, many Soviet writers sought to put the blame for the Second Shock Army’s disaster on him. They suggested that he had been deliberately playing a double game. There is no evidence in the record of the desperate fight of the Second Shock Army to support such a view. General Khozin, who, of course, was himself deeply involved in the tragedy, concluded that the Soviet side simply did not have the strength to defeat the well-organized, well-reinforced German troops opposing them. The Germans were, he pointed out, “at the zenith of their power.” At no time was the Supreme Command in Moscow able to send sufficient reserves to the Leningrad front to create a real breakthrough force.

  This, rather than failures by part of the troops, bad generalship or incipient treachery by Vlasov, was the key. The Second Shock Army was in encirclement, almost inextricably bogged down in the marshes and confronted by powerful, well-led German forces before Vlasov flew in by U-2 light reconnaissance plane in mid-April to take command. General Meretskov, not unnaturally, put much blame on Moscow for the absurd command change which ousted him in April only to bring him back in early June—a decision which played a part in the disaster. But nothing in Meretskov’s conduct of the late winter-early spring operations gave hope that the fate of the Second Shock Army would have been different had he been left in chargé. Vlasov’s role was secondary, but his emergence at the head of the Vlasovite movement threw his actions and the whole question of the Second Shock Army into the lurid limbo of critical Soviet political issues. Everyone connected with the affair had to prove that the blame rested with Vlasov, that each had no connection with the traitor, that the fault lay with Vlasov and no one else. For twenty years there were only peripheral mentions of Vlasov in Soviet historiography, and even today the main thrust of the memoirs and studies is to establish that the individual commanders had nothing to do with Vlasov or the Kremlin’s decisions in relation to him and the ill-fated Volkhov operations.

  There is some substance to this. Vlasov’s career until tragedy enmeshed him in the swamps of the ancient Novgorod tract bore telltale marks of Kremlin politics. The Volkhov-Leningrad front clearly fell within the responsibility of Georgi Malenkov, a sworn enemy then and later of Leningrad Party Boss Andrei Zhdanov. The role and fate of Malenkov’s protégé, Vlasov, inevitably played a part in Kremlin politics.7

  With the loss of the Second Shock Army one more hope for Leningrad went glimmering—the hope that spring or summer would bring an end to the blockade. In early June Party Secretary Zhdanov had gone to Moscow and bravely told the Supreme Soviet that the people of Leningrad stood as one, united, fighting for their city. This was true. But now on July 5 another kind of decision had to be made. The Leningrad Military Council that day ordered the transformation of Leningrad into a military city, with only the minimum population necessary to carry on the city’s defense and essential services. The next day Zhdanov announced the decision: another 300,000 people must be removed by the Ladoga route. The city must be cut to the bare minimum—800,000 population, no more. It was July 6, the 340th day of the blockade. The city was holding out, but no one knew what summer would bring. The bright dreams of spring had faded. The Nazis were on the move once more. Soviet armies were falling back toward the Volga. The gains of winter in the north Caucasus had been lost. There were ominous signs of a new build-up at Leningrad. Hitler had issued directive No. 45 to General Lindemann of the Eighteenth Nazi Army and to Field Marshal von Kiichler, now in command of Army Group Nord. They were to set in motion preparations for the capture of Leningrad by the beginning of September. Heavy reinforcements both of men and artillery were being assigned to the task.

  Leningrad could take no chances. The Germans were enormously powerful, and the momentum that would take them to Stalingrad and Maikop in the Caucasus was already visible. Despite all the sacrifices it might well take them into Leningrad itself.

  It was at about this time that a young Leningrad soldier named Yevgeny Zhilo was making his way through the broken countryside just outside his native city. It was near dawn, and in the pale luminosity of the white night the sky was dipped in rosy pastels. Somewhere beyond the unseen horizon the sun was rising. He pushed through the clumps of lilac, his carbine tangling in the branches. For a moment he halted and buried his nose in the heavy perfume of the blossoms. In their rich fragrance, in the dew now sparkling in the sunshine, in the soft, strange quiet of the morning, there seemed nothing but the happiness and brightness of life. Standing there, a soldier for six brief months, tears sprang into his eyes. Remembering the experience twenty-five years later, Zhilo felt no sense of shame. He had cried not because he was a youngster but because it was the summer of 1942 and he was still there just beside Leningrad and he had forgotten nothing, nothing that had happened—the flickering lamp in the darkness of the room; the frosted window pane and the glare of the burning houses; the unthinkable silence of the great city; the sound of the steps of a passer-by, heard from such a distance that their approach became frightening. He remembered the starving children, little old men who knew everything, understood everything. He knew as he stood breathing in the rich scent of the lilacs that he would never see again the eyes of those nea
rest and dearest to him, those doomed to die with eyes wide-open, solemn and a little mad, those who stood already at the border of death.

  He knew as he stood there with his carbine outside Leningrad on that sunny morning that what had happened around him had never happened in the history of the world and that no one would forget it nor would anything be forgotten—not for centuries upon centuries.

  The young soldier stood in the clump of lilacs and cried and the tears ran down his face. Then he put his carbine over his shoulder again, brushed aside the lilacs, and shouldered forward toward the line of trenches, there to fight while he could.

  So Leningrad entered the second summer of war.

  * * *

  1 Govorov joined in July, 1942. He was admitted without going through the candidate stage. (N.Z., p. 345.)

  2 The idea of “offensive” use of artillery against the German siege guns brought a tart comment from Marshal Voronov, chief of Soviet artillery. “There were people on the Leningrad front who, attracted to terminology, attempted to juggle concepts of the First World War in place of the accepted and legitimate concepts—extermination, destruction and suppression.” (Voronov, op. cit., p. 219.)

  3 The Ladoga shipping route proved very successful and efficient in 1942. By May 28 large-scale barge movements were under way. At the orders of State Defense Committee representative Aleksei Kosygin, a major rebuilding and expansion of port facilities had been carried out as well as preparation of large numbers of barges. During the 1942 navigation season, which closed November 25, 1942, the Ladoga route delivered 703,300 tons of freight, including 350,000 tons of food, 99,200 tons of war supplies, 216,600 tons of fuel, as well as horses, cows and sheep weighing 15,500 tons, and 41,500 tons of wood (towed as rafts). The route moved out of Leningrad 270,000 tons of freight, including 162,100 tons of machinery. It evacuated 528,000 persons, including 448,700 civilians. It carried to Leningrad 267,000 persons, including 250,000 troops. (V. Y. Neigoldberg, htoriya SSSR, No. 3, March, 1965, pp. 102 et seq.)