The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  Luknitsky felt the same—except when he encountered the red tape of the army administration. He had a pass issued by the army in Moscow—it carried twenty stamps and signatures. And even this, often, would not persuade an army commander to give him a meal, a ration card or transportation.

  What was changing the mood of the city was events. Party Secretary Kuznetsov spoke at Philharmonic Hall:

  “The enemy recently created a large group of divisions which had been active on the Sevastopol front. But thanks to the Sinyavino [Volkhov] operation and the action of the troops of the Leningrad front, this group was smashed. And the time is not far distant when our troops will receive the order: Break the circle of blockade!”

  He got a big ovation.

  Now Leningrad prepared to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution. No parade. The time for that was not yet. But there were holiday entertainments. Vishnevsky and two colleagues, Aleksandr Kron and Vsevolod Azarov, had written a musical comedy about the Baltic Fleet, not a very comical subject, in seventeen days. It was called The Wide, Wide Sea. Vishnevsky never had the remotest connection with music or comedy. In fact, he went to Rose Marie to see what a musical was like and burst into tears. The Wide, Wide Sea was written to orders—orders of the Baltic Fleet Political Administration. Vishnevsky had simply responded, “Yes, sir!” and then set about to discover what it was he was supposed to do. He flung himself into the project with such enthusiasm that he hardly noticed that nothing had come of an invitation Party Secretary Kuznetsov gave him on September 30 to go to the United States as Pravda correspondent, an invitation that was a by-product of Wendell Willkie’s trip to Russia. Vishnevsky had plunged into that, too (he started to read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt to prepare himself). But a few days later he was told the trip was off. He never knew why.

  The usual preholiday reception was held at Smolny. Vishnevsky attended. So did the full Leningrad Party leadership—Zhdanov, Kuznetsov, the other Party secretaries, Lieutenant General Govorov. Vishnevsky was filled with emotion—twenty-five years of the Revolution, twenty-five years of Bolshevism. It had started in this very hall on the evening of November 8, 1917, when Lenin stepped to the platform and quietly said, “We will now proceed to construct the Socialist order.” Vishnevsky tried to contain himself, but it was not easy. He looked at the honor guard—Baltic sailors with wide, bright faces—just like 1917. They listened to Stalin’s speech. The news was good. Rommel had been defeated in the western desert. The chandeliers were bright with light (an underwater power cable across the depths of the Ladoga now linked Leningrad with the reactivated Volkhov power station), and the hall was all white and marble and gold. The crowd was mostly in uniform—70 percent of the Party was in the armed forces, 90 percent of the Young Communists.

  Vishnevsky did not notice the adjutant who quietly walked up to General Govorov as he sat on the stage at the Assembly Hall. The officer whispered to Govorov, “There is a call for you.” Govorov silently left the stage and hurried to the VC wire to Moscow. The conversation—with Stalin—could hardly have been more brief. The words which Stalin uttered were cryptic. He ordered Govorov to proceed with “War Game No. 5.”

  In his address to the nation that holiday eve Stalin had said that soon “there will be a holiday in our streets.” He was referring to Stalingrad, where the Nazi offensive had one more week to run and the Soviet counter-offensive was only a fortnight distant. Soon, he was hinting, Russia would have something to celebrate. To Govorov the coded words meant that Leningrad would have something to celebrate as well.

  “War Game No. 5” was a rather sophisticated code by Soviet standards. Dmitri Shcheglov listened one evening to a field telephone operator. “Jasmine” was calling “Rose.” Rose reported to Jasmine in a code in which reconnaissance units were called “eyes,” sailors were called “ribbons” (from the ribbon on their sailor hats), artillery was “black” (their uniform piping). The general was “the old man.” The commander of the Eighth Army was “grandpa.” Shells were cucumbers. Shcheglov wondered who was fooling whom.

  As the war progressed, slightly more complex codes were employed. But not much. Stalin in April, 1943, was “Comrade Vasilyev,” in May and August he was “Comrade Ivanov.” Marshal Zhukov was “Konstantinov” in April, 1943, and “Yuryev” in May, 1943. In April, 1943, Marshal N. F. Vatu-nin was “Fedorov,” Nikita S. Khrushchev was “Nikitin,” and F. K. Korzhenevich was “Fedotov.” In May, 1943, Marshal Rokossovsky was “Kostin.”

  Most code names derived from the commander’s given name. Those for Stalin utilized the commonest of Russian surnames—something like calling him Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones.

  Stalin tended to refer to his commanders by family name, contrary to the ordinary Russian habit of using given name and patronymic. In conversation, if Admiral Kuznetsov, for instance, referred to “Andrei Aleksandro-vich” (meaning Zhdanov), Stalin would interject, although he very well knew who was meant: “Now which Andrei Aleksandrovich do you mean?” He made an exception for Marshal Shaposhnikov. Shaposhnikov could be called “Boris Mikhailovich” without any question from Stalin.

  “War Game No. 5” was Govorov’s instruction to proceed with plans for the offensive to lift the Leningrad blockade. Govorov went to his office, opened his safe and took out a fat folder. It had been his habit since he assumed the Leningrad Command to jot down endlessly ideas, plans, notations for the offensive. Now he locked himself in his office on the second floor of Smolny, told his adjutant to let no one in, even on the most urgent business, and began to select the documents he needed.

  The November holiday meeting had almost concluded before Govorov returned to his place on the Smolny platform.

  Soon a small group of Govorov’s commanders, General Bychevsky, chief of engineers, General Georgi Odintsov, chief of artillery, and a few others set to work. This was to be effort No. 5 to break the blockade. And it was to be different. A preliminary draft went to Moscow November 17 and a more detailed plan November 22.

  Leningrad was to have as much strength as Volkhov. There was to be a new army, the Sixty-seventh, led by General Dukhanov, one of the best commanders, a man under whom Govorov had once served before the war, when Dukhanov commanded the Leningrad Military District and Govorov was chief of an artillery regiment.

  Govorov worked with intense concentration. He literally shut himself in his office, studying his charts and maps, pacing the floor from one end to another, drinking countless glasses of very hot, very strong tea. He was a little farsighted and used glasses for reading and for examining maps. He was a careful, studious man, painstaking about details. Once Vissarion Saya-nov said to Govorov that in the early days of the war the Russians had fought bravely but seemed to lack skill in tactics and put too much weight on German military theory.

  “Well,” Govorov replied, “it seems that way not only to you but to anyone who understands military science. Of course, this is not the time to talk about that. But the time will come when all the mistakes that were committed at the beginning of the war will be discussed at the top of our lungs.”

  This time, if Govorov could help it, there would be no mistakes.

  On the twenty-ninth of November he called in his commanders and laid out the general design of the offensive. The Neva would be forced on an eight-mile front from Nevskaya Dubrovka to Shlisselburg. The Volkhov front would thrust in the Sinyavino area to meet the Leningrad front. There would be a first echelon of four rifle divisions with a brigade of light tanks, a second echelon of three divisions and two brigades of heavy and medium tanks. The second echelon was to go into action within forty-eight hours of the start of the battle. The heavy tanks would cross immediately. There would be 2,000 guns—three times as many as in the disastrous attacks of 1941–42. Plans were to be ready within a month.

  Formal orders for the offensive were issued by Stalin on December 8.2 The objective: to end the blockade of Leningrad. The code for the operation: Iskra, the spark, a name long associated
with the Revolution and with Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad, the name of the first Social Democratic newspaper, the one which Lenin edited before the break between the Men-sheviks and the Bolsheviks.

  General Govorov’s opponent was Colonel General Lindemann, commander of the Eighteenth Army. Lindemann had more than twenty-five divisions at his disposal. He was well aware of the importance of the forthcoming battle. In an order to his troops he said: “As the source of the Bolshevik Revolution, as the city of Lenin, it is the second capital of the Soviet. Its liberation will constantly be one of the important goals of the Bolsheviks. For the Soviet regime the liberation of Leningrad would equal the defense of Moscow, the battle for Stalingrad.”

  Lindemann was right.

  Govorov was determined to leave nothing to chance. For security all orders were handwritten and in only one copy. Units were prohibited from moving by day. Only small units could be moved through Leningrad and only by varying routes. The established routine of radio communications was maintained, and new units were forbidden the use of radio. No new intelligence operations were permitted, and artillery fire was deliberately dispersed.

  Govorov met with the Sixty-seventh Army staff on Christmas Day. With him was Party Secretary Zhdanov, Party Secretary Ya. F. Kapustin, Party Secretary A. I. Makhanov and Mayor Peter Popkov and Marshal Voro-shilov. Voroshilov had been assigned by Stalin as liaison between Moscow and Leningrad. The notorious Police General Mekhlis3 had been assigned as Political Commissar to General Meretskov on the Volkhov front, and Party Secretary Kuznetsov had been temporarily named Commissar of the Second Shock Army on the Volkhov front in an attempt to keep that ill-fated army from once again falling into encirclement.

  Govorov ordered the Sixty-seventh Army to carry out a full simulation of the forthcoming attack, an operation in which 128 hours of preparation were invested.

  The ice was still thin on the Neva, and General Bychevsky and his engineers kept searching for means of strengthening it so they could put T-34 tanks across the river. Major L. S. Barshai of the Leningrad Subway Construction Trust devised a wooden outrigger to which the tank treads would be bolted. This enabled the weight to be distributed across the ice. It looked promising. As Bychevsky showed a model to General Govorov, Marshal Voroshilov walked in. He insisted on coming to a demonstration the next day on the Neva near the Novo-Saratov settlement. Bychevsky was hardly pleased when all the brass—Voroshilov, Govorov, Party Secretary Kuznetsov, General Odintsov and some others—turned up for the test.

  The tank started out on the ice with turret open, at Govorov’s insistence. Behind it marched Voroshilov with Govorov at his side. The tank slithered out on the ice. It had gone about 150 yards when the ice cracked in every direction. Govorov yanked Voroshilov back from a yawning hole as the tank plunged under the water. A moment later tankist Mikhail Ivanov, wet, freezing but alive, bobbed up. Someone handed him a flask of vodka.

  “Give him the Order of the Red Star,” Voroshilov ordered. “And as for you, Bychevsky, we will have a conversation later.”

  Once again Bychevsky was in trouble. Fortunately, Govorov was not so disturbed. He ordered Bychevsky to continue his experiments.

  It was a quiet New Year’s in Leningrad. There were only 637,000 people left in the city—not a quarter of the number there a year before. Vera Inber had a party. Most of the Leningrad writers—all of them engaged in war work of some kind—came. So did many of the physicians at her husband’s Erisman Hospital. There were cake and wine, vodka and caviar. Aleksandr Kron was there. So were Nikolai Chukovsky and Lev Uspensky. Vsevolod Vishnevsky came in late on the snowy, fresh evening. He had been broadcasting one of his blustery orations (“1943 will bring justice! This year will be oursl The blow is nearing. Forward, friends!”). Vera Inber had written out fortunes for each guest on bits of paper. Vishnevsky’s said: “Don’t think about the future; the future is thinking about you.” He liked that.

  Vera Inber’s husband, Dr. Strashun, cut his finger opening a bottle. One of his colleagues bandaged it with the virtuosity born of treating thousands of more serious wounds. There was a radio speech by President Kalinin and a communiqué reporting enormous trophies and thousands of prisoners at Stalingrad. But Vera Inber was filled with disquiet. She had planned to put down on paper her achievements and her failures for 1942—and her hopes for the New Year. She didn’t succeed. She didn’t write anything. Her mood was low again. There was another air raid, and she was having trouble with the fifth chapter of “Pulkovo Meridian.” Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio. She was more hopeful. She remembered New Year’s of 1942. How much better things looked now. She read a poem which she called “The House-warming”:

  Again winter. The snow flies . . .

  The enemy still at the city gates,

  But I call you to the housewarming.

  We’ll meet the New Year with a party . . .

  We’ll breathe warmth into the house

  Where death lived and darkness reigned

  Here will be life. . . .

  Because of the weakness of the Neva ice, generals Govorov and Meretskov proposed to Moscow December 27 that the date for the offensive be set back to January 12. Stalin’s reply came in on December 28. It read:

  YEFREMOV, AFANASYEV, LEONIDOV:

  The Stavka of the Supreme Command approves your proposal concerning the timing of preparations and beginning Operation Iskra.

  “Yefremov” was the code name for Marshal Voroshilov, “Afanasyev” that of General Meretskov and “Leonidov” that of General Govorov.

  The action began at 9:30 A.M. on January 12. More than 4,500 guns opened up on the Germans. The barrage lasted two hours twenty minutes on the Leningrad front, one hour forty-five minutes on the Volkhov front. It was not the familiar story of too little, too late or too weak. The unearthly roar of the multibarreled rockets, the Katyushas, shook the ice-clad earth.

  At 11:42 A.M. a green rocket flashed over the Neva. General S. N. Bor-shchev, whose 268th Infantry Division was to lead the attack, suddenly froze. He saw his troops, mistaking the signal, start to push across the ice, not waiting for the Katyushas to complete their fire. It was too late to halt them. He could only watch in fear that turned to triumph as the men picked their way safely across the ice, their losses minimized by the sudden move.

  General Dukhanov’s divisions, the 268th led by General Borshchev and the 136th led by General N. P. Simonyak (one of the heroes of the fighting at Hangö), stormed across the Neva. They met heavy Nazi counterattacks, and the 268th was in serious trouble before the combined weight of the Soviet attack began to be felt. The Second Shock Army of Meretskov’s Volkhov front pushed straight west toward a link-up with Dukhanov’s forces.

  Most of the Leningrad correspondents couldn’t get permission to go to the front. Luknitsky had been at Dukhanov’s command post but was ordered back to Leningrad on the evening of January 11. Orders had been given: “Not one correspondent is permitted here.” Luknitsky raced back to Leningrad. It was not until 3 P.M. on January 13 that he and the others were permitted to join the attacking troops.

  Sayanov joined the 86th Division pushing into Shlisselburg. It was late night, and the blue light of the moon shone down on the endless drifts which covered the low-lying land. On the edges of the snowy field he saw black shell holes torn in the earth. Everywhere sprawled a jumble of Nazi arms—cannon, machine guns, tommy guns, boxes of ammunition, shells, grenades, a box of iron crosses, cases of cognac, Goebbels’ leaflets, tin cans, straw boots, broken cartons of cigarettes, stray wagon wheels. By morning, Sayanov thought, the wind will have dusted over the battlefield and it will disappear under the white powder. But now he could follow the course of the fighting. Here lay the body of a Russian soldier, a youth not more than twenty-three. Even in death he gripped his rifle firmly. He had been firing on the enemy to the last. A heap of expended cartridges lay beside him, his eye was still at the gunsight and his finger on the trigger. Someone had thrown a white camouflage cape over the bo
y and thrust a stick in the snowdrift with his helmet on it. There was a white paper glued to the helmet, probably the boy’s name and possibly that of his family.

  The battle raged on. From his headquarters at Novgorod three times Field Marshal von Kiichler ordered the Shlisselburg garrison to hold out to the last man.

  Rows broke out among the Soviet generals. Marshal Georgi Zhukov, hero of the Battle of Moscow, hero of Stalingrad, had been sent in to “coordinate” between the Volkhov front and Moscow.4 He got on the VC high-security line to General Simonyak of the 136th Division. Why didn’t Simonyak attack the Sinyavino Heights? The Nazi positions there were holding up the Second Shock Army.

  “For the same reason the Second Army doesn’t attack them,” Simonyak replied. “The approach is through a marsh. The losses would be great and the results small.”

  “Tolstoyite! Passive resister!” shouted Zhukov. “Who are those cowards of yours? Who doesn’t want to fight? Who needs to be ousted?”

  Simonyak angrily replied that there were no cowards in the Sixty-seventh Army.

  “Wise guy,” snapped Zhukov. “I order you to attack the heights.”

  “Comrade Marshal,” Simonyak rejoined. “My army is under the command of the Leningrad front commander, General Govorov. I take orders from him.”

  Zhukov hung up. Simonyak got no order to attack the Sinyavino Heights.

  Steadily the Russians pushed ahead. By January 14 the distance separating the Leningrad and Volkhov troops was less than three miles. The confidence of Moscow in the outcome was demonstrated by Stalin’s action in promoting Govorov on January 15 to the rank of colonel general. The next day the distance between the two fronts had dwindled to three-quarters of a mile. At midevening on January 17 General Govorov gave a final order: The gap between the two fronts was to be closed by any means. By this time Shlisselburg was almost surrounded. The 86th Division was attacking from the south, and the 34th Ski Brigade of Colonel Ya. F. Potekhin had circled around to the east. The end was near. The German commanders, desperately trying to keep an escape corridor open, ordered a counterattack at 9:30 A.M., January 18. It failed.