One of the famous rifle divisions of the Union, distinguished themselves in the first days of the war (according to the Germans "Iron" ).

The 41st Rifle Division was part of the active army from 17 to 28 September 1939. and from June 22 to December 27, 1941.

The 41st Rifle Division (territorial) entered, on July 1, 1935, into the 7th Rifle Corps (Dnepropetrovsk) having in its composition (deployment):

In 1940 in a rifle formation People's Commissar Defense of the USSR Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko held an inspection review, and a not high, but positive assessment of his combat training was received. The divisional artillery, which acted very clearly and successfully in the training of troops with live fire, received a higher assessment. For the excellent preparation of the artillery of the formation, the head of the artillery of the division, Colonel S. S. Varentsov, was awarded a gold watch.

Thus, the 41st Rifle Division, the fortified area and the border detachment were the forces that, in the event of war, were supposed to cover the state border on a front of up to 50 km in the important operational direction Tomaszow - Lvov. However, for a year and a half prewar period I don’t recall a single joint exercise with the commanding staff or with the troops of our division, fortified area and border detachment in order to work out issues of interaction in case of war.

On 06/22/1941, the division was stationed in the area of ​​​​the city of Rava-Russkaya, in the north-west of the Lvov ledge. The task of the division for a special period was: relying on the strongholds of the Rava-Russky fortified area, together with its troops, to defend the section of the demarcation line with Germany from Ugnev to the village of Novoe Selo, with a length of the defense line of the SD 50 kilometers. Although according to the guidance documents (rukdok) on the defensive sd could occupy a defensive strip along the front (on a normal front), that is, it could successfully defend a strip 8-12 kilometers wide along the front and 4-6 kilometers deep, and in especially important areas, defense fronts sd could have been already, reaching up to 6 kilometers of the defensive strip on rifle division. On a broad front, defense for sd, was determined at 18 - 20 kilometers. So for 41 sd(and not only) all indicators were exceeded.

06/22/1941, with the outbreak of hostilities, parts of the division occupied the Rava-Russky fortified area. It took up defense in a strip about 50 kilometers wide. Together with units of the 91st Border Detachment (supported by the 209th Corps Artillery Regiment since the second half of the day), it successfully repulsed the invasion, pushed back the enemy troops, and the 102nd Rifle Regiment even crossed the border at a front of 8-10 kilometers and deepened to German territory at a distance of about 3 kilometers. It held its positions until 06/26/1941, under the strongest air raids and enemy attacks, parts of the division were surrounded, but again made their way to their own.

On the night of June 27, 1941, under the threat of encirclement, she was forced by order to leave Rava-Russkaya and begin a retreat. By that time, the losses of the division amounted to 2/3 of the original composition. By the morning of 06/28/1941, the division retreated to the Zhulkev-Glinsko-Fuina line, then continued its retreat to the east, by the evening it was defending on the Dobrosin-Stazhyska front, fought near Lvov, being the rearguard of the 6th Army. In early July 1941, she was surrounded, from which she partially emerged: only the 139th rifle regiment, the 132nd light artillery regiment and part of the 244th rifle regiment, while retreating in the Glinyany area, the 249th howitzer artillery regiment fell into a swampy area and abandoned, causing a malfunction, 22 howitzers with tractors.

07/09/1941 was withdrawn from the battles and sent to Belaya Tserkov for understaffing.

07/16/1941, without completing the resupply, with about three thousand people and about 20 guns, it was sent on the offensive in the Skvir direction, but did not achieve success, and began to retreat to the east. Then, until the twentieth of July, it reflects the blows of enemy troops between Fastov and Belaya Tserkov.

23.07.1941 41 sd night searches destroyed 10 enemy tanks and armored vehicles in Bloshintsy. On the afternoon of July 23, 1941, one serviceable armored vehicle was captured.

There are two left. Those who saw how Komarin was freed from the Nazis 75 years ago.

In the Bragin Historical Museum - a painting by Vasily Shevchenko "Forcing the Dnieper". Photo: Sergey Emelyanov

Witnesses

Ekaterina Ivanovna Petrusevich at that time was 13 years old. Children's memory stores the worst:

A policeman came and said: "Get your sandals, a sack ready, tomorrow the whole family will go to dig a ditch." Grandfather took a barrel of honey, lard, moonshine - and negotiate with the policemen. Agreed, and we the whole family - in the woods. And those who went to bury were themselves buried alive.

Olga Iosifovna Kopytko is five years older:

I just finished school, I wanted to go to medical school when the war began. The Germans committed atrocities: just about anything, they immediately gather people for a meeting, and then they shoot them. Therefore, we mostly hovered in the forests and swamps. Once I crawled away from such a meeting for two hours across a rye field. She hugged the earth tightly so that they would not notice. And when ours arrived, we all came out of the forests, rejoiced, kissed, as if the war was over. It was already possible to exist in this world, not to be afraid of anyone.

- And you're 18 years old...

I was immediately called to the medical battalion. And I, together with our liberators - the 181st Infantry Division of the First Ukrainian Front - went on to liberate Belarus further. Then there was Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, they were surrounded with their medical battalion. Served until the Victory. I have several thanks from Stalin.

blood crossing

The battle for the Dnieper is one of the bloodiest in the Great Patriotic War. Retreating on all fronts from Velikiye Luki to the Black Sea, the Nazis were in a hurry to roll back behind the "impregnable Eastern Wall" - as they called the well-fortified, deeply echeloned water lines on the western bank of the Dnieper.

On September 22, 1943, the troops of the 13th Army under the command of Lieutenant General N.P. Pukhov were the first to enter the water, pursuing the enemy. They were supported by formations of the 60th and 61st armies. The liberation of Belarus from the fascist invaders began.

It is difficult for us today to imagine what was going on in those days on the Dnieper. Apocalypse! The writer Viktor Astafyev, who also crossed the river, testified: "When 25 thousand soldiers entered the Dnieper from one side, then no more than 5-6 thousand went out on the opposite side."

You read the memoirs of veterans, and the blood runs cold. Ivan Vasilyevich Kovalev was then a sergeant, commander of the mortar crew of the 81st rifle division:

“As soon as we launched the boats into the water, a massive artillery shelling began, then German planes appeared in the sky. Of the six boats, only three crossed. near her, and she capsized. The shore and the waters of the Dnieper were red with blood. The worst thing was that there was nowhere to hide from the incessant explosions. Complete helplessness: you look to the right - the boat sank, to the left - the raft was blown apart, fear literally fetters you.

At the moment of the crossing, we clearly realized: our life is only in the hands of fortune. To be honest, I don't understand how I survived. Those who crossed the river desperately jumped ashore and tried to dig as deep as possible into the ground.

But there were not enough boats for everyone, so they crossed on rafts made of logs and boards, on ferries built from empty iron barrels, on raincoats stuffed with hay and straw.

The crossing of the Dnieper proceeded simultaneously in many areas from Loev to Zaporozhye. Local historian Ruslan Gerasimov from the district center of Bragin says:

After the crossing, hell continued. In our area, the village of Galki, for example, changed hands 12 times in one night. And the first to be liberated from the Germans was Komarin.

six stars

Despite her 93 years, Olga Iosifovna Kopytko is surprisingly mobile. Together with a friend, she takes care of the orchard, cherishes the grapes hanging from the trellis by the porch. She herself volunteered to show us the military monuments of Komarin.

We drive through a clean well-groomed village. Lenin Street, Sovetskaya Street, Karl Marx Street, Proletarskaya Street... As if we are returning to life from childhood - non-fussy, sunny...

Now Komarin is like a resort town, and after the liberation there was real horror, - the front-line soldier recalls. - All the houses are destroyed, the equipment is on fire, there are corpses all around and this unforgettable rumble. The front, having crossed the Dnieper, advanced far beyond Komarin, but the rumble remained.

We stop at a mass grave in the center of the village. Endless slabs with the names of the buried. 799 of our soldiers died during the liberation of Komarin and nearby villages. Here lie six Heroes of the Soviet Union.

The youngest - 19-year-old junior sergeant Nikolai Yakovlev from the Vologda region - died covering the infantry with machine gun fire near the very village of Galki. Destroyed about a hundred Nazis.

Orenburg lieutenant Dmitry Grechushkin commanded a platoon anti-tank rifles. After a tank attack, the entire platoon died, and the commander hid, waited until the "Tiger" set himself up weak point and knocked him out. He was immediately attacked by a self-propelled gun and died.

The lieutenant's compatriot, senior sergeant Vasily Boyarkin, with his machine-gun crew, distinguished himself when crossing the Dnieper, covering his comrades, in a battle near the village of Vyalye, where 60 Nazis killed his crew, but an accidental bullet cut short the life of the hero.

Lieutenant from Ukraine Fedor Pavlovsky - Komsomol organizer of the rifle battalion. He died during the battle, killing 65 Nazis.

Sakhalin Senior Sergeant Nikolai Grishchenko was the crew commander of the mortar company. When the danger of encirclement arose, the already wounded raised the soldiers in a counterattack, threw grenades at the enemy armored vehicle. He had no chance of staying alive.

Thirty-year-old foreman Oraz Anaev from Turkmenistan also blew up an armored car with seven fascists and two heavy machine guns. A street in Minsk is named after him...

In the Bragin Historical Museum, on the stand are the names of 396 soldiers who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their exploits during the liberation of the Bragin region. And this is only one region of Belarus, where the fighting went on for a little over a month!

Mirny Komarin

Every year the number of dead soldiers in our mass grave is growing, - says the head of the Komarinsky village administration Viktor Svislovsky. “We are gradually moving here the graves from the nearest villages, which were empty after the Chernobyl accident. Often we find remains during earthworks or natural collapse of the banks of the Dnieper. In May, we have very touching memorial events. Last year, a grandson from Uzbekistan found his grandfather here.

- How does Komarin live now?

There are 2428 inhabitants in the village, 310 students in the school. State farm "Komarinskiy", forestry, forestry, land reclamation service... There are about twenty streets alone. Two of them bear the names of the heroes Pavlovsky and Grechushkin. Now, within the framework of the "Small Motherland" program, serious money has been allocated to us for improvement. It is a pity that you did not come in July - here on Ivan Kupala there is such a bathing on the Dnieper! There were five thousand people this year - from everywhere, including from Russia. Songs, bonfires, fireworks! Thank God - the world is now.

- Do you have a lot of mosquitoes?

Are you referring to the name of the village? Previously, everything around was in swamps, but then there were a lot. And then the swamps dried up. But whether the name came from mosquitoes, I do not know. The village is 633 years old!

The editors would like to thank S.A. Dovgulyavts - head of the department of ideological work, culture and youth affairs and N.I. Meleshko - director of the Bragin Historical Museum with an Art Gallery.

"I don't have the means to travel..."

From the memoirs of the former commander of the 360th Infantry Regiment, Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General N. Stashek, honorary citizen of Komarin:

On a dark night I was called to the auxiliary command post army and personally from the commander of the army, General Pukhov N.P. received the task: "Within one and a half to two hours, cross the Desna and, without getting involved in a battle with the enemy, reach the Dnieper with a swift throw by dawn, force it in the Komarin area and hold the captured bridgehead until the main forces approach." "The task is clear," I replied, "there is only one question: where to get the means of transportation?"

The commander darkened. Apparently, he expected such a question and therefore answered without hesitation: "Look for the means of crossing by the river, I don't have them."

<...>Unfortunately, we could not overcome the distance of more than 50 km before dawn. By this time, only the vanguard battalion under the command of the deputy regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Mikhailovich Novikov, had reached the Dnieper. The enemy met the battalion with artillery-mortar and machine-gun fire. But despite this, the battalion began to build rafts from improvised means and fishing boats.

The exit of the main forces of the regiment to the river was absolutely unexpected for the enemy. There was confusion in his ranks. Taking advantage of this, the main forces of the regiment crossed the river on improvised means three to four kilometers south of the vanguard battalion. With a friendly surprise attack, the main enemy forces were destroyed, and by nightfall the regional center of Komarin was captured.

<...>Soon the enemy came to his senses and began to go over to the counterattack. But the regiment did not just defend itself, but attacked several times every day, although ammunition supplies decreased every hour ...

When launching another counterattack, the enemy managed to reach the rear of the second battalion in the area where the medical center was located. The Nazis rushed into a furious attack, anticipating an easy victory. Noticing the approach of the Nazis, the commander of the medical platoon ml. lieutenant of the medical service Ivan Danilovich Fionov gave the command "to the gun." The wounded, even those who could not move, but could at least hold a weapon with one hand, took up all-round defense and met the enemy with organized rifle and machine-gun fire ... When the ammunition was running out, Comrade Fionov raised the fighters to attack. She was so unexpected for the enemy that he was taken aback, the Nazis were confused and began to retreat. The wounded fought their way through and retreated to the rear. Comrade Fionov himself was seriously wounded in the stomach, but until the last minute he controlled the battle.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Intelligence questioning: Bair Irincheev about the fighting in the Northern Ladoga region

✪ Intelligence: Bair Irincheev on the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line

✪ Intelligence: Igor Pykhalov about the Nazi European Union, part two

Subtitles

I wholeheartedly welcome you! Bair, good afternoon. Hello, Dmitry Yurievich. Good afternoon, dear viewers. About what today? As promised last time, today we will talk about the hostilities in the Northern Ladoga region, which, unfortunately, from my point of view, became the most tragic page of the Soviet-Finnish war, despite the fact that it seems to be the most famous battle, with the encirclement of our units , with the fact that they were cut into boilers, and then gradually destroyed, all this was much further north, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bSuomussalmi and Raata, which we have already briefly talked about. But, from my point of view, the most difficult situation really happened in the Northern Ladoga region, i.e. this is the present Republic of Karelia, this is the region of Pitkyaranta, the now defunct village of Lemetti, and, accordingly, the current village of Loimola. What happened there: well, if you go back to Finnish pre-war plans at all, then the Finns believed that serious fighting , where something needs to be planned, where there will be a large concentration of forces, it will be just the Karelian Isthmus, about which we have already talked quite a lot, and also the Northern Ladoga region, just this very region. And, therefore, picture 1, the plans of the parties for the campaign in the Northern Ladoga region. So, our plan was such that 3 roads converge in the Pitkyaranta area - one road goes from Lodeynoye Pole along the coast of Ladoga to Pitkyaranta, the second, respectively, goes from Petrozavodsk through Lemetti, and just north of Pitkyaranta it connects to this main road near Ladoga. And the third road, respectively, goes along the railway to Loimola, and through Loimola also connects here. Those. 3 roads converge here, and, again, since our terrain is extremely difficult for the offensive of an ordinary European army, then, in fact, ours were advancing along these 3 roads, the 8th army. This means that the 56th rifle division was advancing on Loimola, the 18th rifle division was advancing along the road from Petrozavodsk, and the 34th light tank brigade supporting it, and from the south Bondarev’s 168th rifle division approached Pyatkiranta. It must be said right away that 56 never reached. That is, again, such a situation was repeated that we already had in the Suomossalmi area, that the Finns simply did not allow our forces to connect. Where were our troops supposed to move if everything really worked out: it means that our troops had to move, in fact, bypassing Lake Ladoga, i.e., united, move to Sortavala, further to Lahdenpokhya, and actually go to the rear Finnish defense on the Karelian Isthmus, i.e. go to the rear of the Mannerheim line. But, in fact, everything stopped, unfortunately, right here, because, in general, the Finns, one might say, set a trap here, which was worked out a long time ago at staff games in the 20s and 30s years, i.e. in fact, they planned to stop ours somewhere in the Pitkyaranta area and begin to strike from the north, cutting off the communications, respectively, of the division that approached from Petrozavodsk, along the road through Lemetti. And in general, in the same way, they first cut one road from the north, and then generally surrounded the entire group in general, just in the Pitkyaranta area. And, unfortunately, just like in the Suomussalmi area, the situation repeated here that the troops were not quite correctly deployed on the road, yes, back in late December, in general, they were attacking here, but the 168th division was already Finns stopped here. The 18th Rifle Division with 2 regiments tried to break through to the north towards the 56th Rifle Division, but, in general, nothing really worked out, this is our picture 2, the situation at the beginning of the Finnish counteroffensive. Already at the end of December, Finnish ski detachments began to enter the road from Petrozavodsk, and began to operate along the communications, in fact, the 18th rifle division, which in the same way was stretched for many kilometers, and, accordingly, was placed in an incomprehensible way. Those. yes, 2 regiments in front, 1 regiment in the rear, which is trying to guard our communications. And, in fact, on January 6, the Finns gather a large strike force, and begin to actively hit on, in fact, our right flank. And at this time, changes are taking place in our camp, again, due to unfortunate events in the Tolvajärvi region, due to the fact that the 56th division stuck, in fact, in front of the Finnish defense in the area of ​​​​the Kolla River, and cannot come here. And, in fact, go somewhere around 50 km. Our commander is changing, Khabarov is being removed, among other things, because of the defeat of ours at Tolvajärvi, and G.M. becomes the commander of the 8th army. Stern, which, by the way, the Finns immediately noticed, and released a special leaflet dedicated specifically to G.M. Stern, in which they absolutely categorically hinted at his nationality - he was a Jew. Back in the late 90s - early 2000s, I had the honor to meet with our veterans of the Finnish War, and here one of the veterans says - I picked up a leaflet, and it says "Jew, traitor, traitor, cattle - that's who your new commander Stern ". Picture 04 is a Finnish leaflet about Stern. But our veteran said - you know, I fought on the Karelian Isthmus, and this is all happening on the eastern coast of Ladoga, so I didn’t know who Stern was at all, I didn’t know at all where he was fighting at all, what was happening, but I remember it very much I remember, these are very sharp, not politically correct words about Stern. Nazis after all, what do you want from them. Then not quite Nazis yet, but, nevertheless, there really are such words, wow. And when Grigory Mikhailovich arrived at the front, he, in fact, immediately began to very abruptly take our troops into circulation, i.e. threatened with executions, etc., etc., but, in general, this did not help the situation. This did not help the 139th division in any way, although there Stern offered to carry out almost a decimation, i.e. shoot every tenth. Well, actually, gradually, again, using the fact that the main forces of the 168th division were to the west, i.e. they had already set their sights on Sortavala; cut off the 168th Infantry Division from Pitkyaranta. Those. everything, 168 is sitting in the boiler, but, again, it is possible to supply 168 on the ice of the Pitkäranta Bay, but on January 15 and 19, the Finns occupy the islands that control the archipelago, in general. Therefore, it turns out that even this supply route across the ice from Pitkäranta, in general, is under fire from Finnish machine guns and mortars. The distances here, in fact, are not very large. Well, of course, the question may immediately arise why an attempt to deblockade was not immediately made, etc., this is due to the fact that, in general, as in the case of Suomussalmi, there was somehow nothing to deblock, because, in fact , all the reinforcements went, again, from Lodeynoye Pole to Pitkyaranta on foot. Not bad. Those. there was the only road along Ladoga, this, excuse me, is about 150-200 km, the only road that is covered with snow, the road is bad. Therefore, the supply of reinforcements was extremely, extremely difficult in general. And, accordingly, after the encirclement of the 168th Infantry Division, the same situation was repeated on the road that went to Petrozavodsk. Those. the Finns surrounded the 18th rifle division and the 34th light tank brigade, as a result of which we had several boilers, i.e. on the road from Lemetti to Petrozavodsk, 4 boilers formed, which developed very ... Sorry, even 6 boilers would be correct to say if we take Lemetti more. They have very different fates. Those. this is how, in fact, the classic Finnish tactics, the column is cut by blows from the taiga into several parts, and, accordingly, after that it is already broken in parts. Again, creating a local numerical superiority, the Finns crush these boilers one by one. Well, the easternmost cauldron near the village of Uomaa lasted until the end of the war, and, in general, it survived to a large extent due to the fact that there was 1 company of the 4th NKVD border regiment. Those. they were local border guards who were very familiar with local conditions, well equipped, and highly motivated. And, in fact, for these events, 6 of our border guards received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. I would like, in general, to tell you about one. Red Army soldier Samsonov Vladimir Andreevich, born 17, i.e. he is 22 years old, a candidate member of the CPSU (b), a shooter of the 3rd company of the 4th regiment of the NKVD troops. This refers to 4 border regiments, i.e. border guards. But, again, unfortunately, in modern Russia, someone will see the 4th regiment of the NKVD troops there, he probably shot Finnish peasants there, who were no longer there. Well, just now, the idea for the title of Hero sounds enough, it generally sounds like a saga about the Vikings. “In one of the battles on January 17, 1940, repelling the attack of the White Finns, comrade. Samsonov was wounded in the arm by a bullet and a fragment of a mine and was evacuated to a first-aid post. However, he refused to stay in the dugout and, voluntarily returning to the trenches, continued to fight heroically with the enemy. Due to poor treatment left hand ceased to function and began to fester. Feeling it and making sure that the hand is weak, comrade. Samsonov himself broke it at the wound site and, throwing it out of the trench, in the presence of all the fighters, said: “Now it doesn’t bother me, now it will be easier for me to beat the White Finns.” And in all subsequent battles, up to the release of the garrison after the conclusion of peace, comrade. Samsonov heroically repulsed the onslaught of the White Finnish gangs, throwing grenades at them with one right hand . This is an exceptionally heroic behavior of a candidate member of the party of the Red Army Comrade. Samsonov played a colossal role in inspiring all the other fighters, in rallying them into a strong Bolshevik garrison, impregnable for the enemy. Here is a man who received a “Hero”, and, in fact, everyone who received “Heroes” for all this, for fighting surrounded by these little ones, these are precisely the border guards, because indeed, apparently, they were the most highly motivated, the strongest. Because the really gigantic problem of these small pockets was that there were a lot of supplies there, there were rears, here, in fact, here is the next garrison in the area of ​​the fork in the road, there were 1200 people, 500 of them were wounded. And so the Finns surrounded them, and there were people from different regiments, from different units, there began, as you understand, some kind of quarrels, such as “you are not from our unit, why are you coming here?” Then, as you understand, people began to starve, people began to hallucinate. There, by chance, someone had hallucinations, shot his own. Those. people have already begun to see some illusions, some kind of ghosts, and they thought that it was only Finns around. But, despite this, the commanders managed to build everyone, and this small garrison, excuse me, 1,200 people, of which 500 were wounded, it held out until the end of the war, and, accordingly, as a result, those who held out there, they left the encirclement. And how long did it take to stay? Well, they kept, excuse me, from about the 20th of January to March 13th. This, by the way, was the tragedy of the environment, that if on the Raat road, everything ended there in a week, then here people, excuse me, spent the whole of February, and another 2 weeks in March, and it was also frosts of minus 30, there was no food. Those. one can imagine what was generally done there in this taiga, in the middle of the forest, when there was nothing to eat. And, of course, the command understood that if you don’t help, then the people there will simply die of hunger. Therefore, all of our aircraft, simply all that was in this area, from Lodeynoye Pole, from Besovets to Petrozavodsk, they were all sent to supply our units, i.e. for food dumping. But the problem with these small boilers was that the drop zone was very small, and therefore, very often, in general, these packages, bags of food fell either on neutral, or even fell to the Finns. There are rumors that when the next package of food fell to the Finns, there were shouts in Russian from there “thank you Comrade Stalin for buckwheat porridge! But, again, it is not clear - rumors, not rumors. But, again, interesting point , what is really in the combat log of this our garrison, as it was called, in the area of ​​​​the fork in the road, it directly says that when there was a drop in food, very often it really happened that a bag or container, falling to the ground, broke, and there biscuits, cookies and everything else scattered, it is directly written that as soon as some kind of food package fell on the forest, then the shooting simply stopped, ours and the Finns ran through the forest, collecting these biscuits, without shooting at each other. Only when everything was assembled, only after that did they return to their positions again, take rifles, and start shooting at each other. Those. so there was nothing to eat? Otherwise, such peacefulness cannot be explained in any way. In fact, there, too, among the Finns, too, everything could not be said that everything was very simple. If, excuse me, such garrisons held out, again, this is the 2nd garrison that managed to hold out. 3 in the area of ​​​​Lake Suojärvi was very small, there were a couple of hundred people, and, in fact, the Finns crushed them at the end of February, i.e. just from the neighboring garrison, from the fork in the road, they simply said that the radio connection was lost, and we hear that the sounds of battle are dying down. And after the end of hostilities, about 200 dead people were found there. The next garrison, in the west, near the village of Lovajärvi, he was sitting there, and, in fact, fortunately, on February 14 he already received permission to break through, and, in general, by and large, managed to get out of there. Those. here, in fact, when they generalize everything and say that the Finns destroyed all the boilers, this is not entirely true. Those. there, indeed, 2 boilers held out, 1 small one died, 4 escaped. But here, closer to Pitkyaranta, the situation was very, very difficult, because, unfortunately, if we look at picture 6, the encirclement of the 18th division of the 34th light tank brigade, there, again, it turned out very, very unsuccessfully. Those. the Finns cut off the 68th division of Bondarev from the 18th rifle division, and, again, those units of the 18th rifle division that were surrounded were not placed in the same way. And, of course, the worst thing is that the commander of the 18th rifle division, brigade commander Kondrashov, lost his nerve. He had a nervous breakdown, he withdrew himself from command, i.e. simply stopped doing anything, did not organize defense, i.e. how they stood on the road, how, accordingly, everything stood, and when, in fact, the Finns surrounded - well, they also dug some trenches near the road, did not even occupy the dominant heights, which were literally 500 meters from the road, and, well, of course, the Finns occupied them, and they simply began to shoot through the entire encirclement area. Well, and the most important thing was that, indeed, it is obvious because Kondrashov blundered, because it was generally not clear what to do, i.e. if in December it was clear that yes, we are advancing, we have now united with the 168th division, 2 regiments are going to Loymola, trying to break through towards 56th, and 168th will now go to Sortavala, i.e. there is an attack going on. But then the Finnish counter-offensive begins, and, obviously, our command simply did not know what to do with it. As a result, I had the honor to communicate with 1 veteran from the 34th light tank brigade, with a Muscovite, he said that we just sat and did not know what to do at all, i.e. it was not clear why we are here, that we are here, what will happen now. Those. this apathy, and indeed in the army, when it is not clear what to do, this does not have a very good effect on the morale of the troops, in the first place. Yes, why is this Comrade. Tverskoy, Arkady Tverskoy, God rest his soul, he died recently, why is he a Muscovite: because the 34th light tank brigade was actually from Naro-Fominsk, it was an elite part of the Red Army, and on May 1, 39, it was their BT tanks that paraded along Red Square, i.e. part was so ... Elite. The part is elite, and, in fact, there are 105 BT tanks in it, and they arrived there in order to enter the gap after the Finnish defense line was broken, but, again, of course, this was an absolutely wrong decision, because everything There is a forest there. And 105 BT tanks, they simply blocked the roadsides, and when our units were surrounded, in fact, our tankers simply dug them into the ground and used them as fixed firing points. So, well, actually, the situation is such that our parts are really cut into separate boilers, and, well, the Finns, in fact, are gradually starting to cut it all into pieces. They succeed with the 18th Rifle Division, again, because Kondrashov frankly blundered, and they do not succeed with the neighboring 168th Rifle Division, because Bondarev, the commander of this division, was a much more energetic commander. Those. he immediately said - well, we were surrounded, which means we are narrowing the defense perimeter, i.e. we retreat to more advantageous positions, which means that all regiments stand together, which means that we have placed tanks everywhere. Yes, they had T-37, T-38 wedges, quite weak, but as if buried in the ground, with a machine gun, they showed themselves well even when repelling Finnish attacks. And so Bondarev said that ... i.e. he made it so that the Finns could not even, i.e. they tried to attack them a couple of times, but after that they realized that the commander was energetic, he realized that it was necessary to build a defensive perimeter and not let his division be cut to pieces. Those. The 168th division calmly held out until the end of the war, and their encirclement area was so large that they were there, in fact, on the ice of Pitkyaranta Bay, they made a runway there in general, and planes landed on them in the environment. Those. they didn’t drop bags of food, but sat straight down, and heavy bombers of TB also used them to supply them. Those. everything was more or less normal with them, which, unfortunately, cannot be said about the 2 regiments of the 18th rifle division, because, obviously, they had already lost, in fact, leadership from Kondrashov, who, respectively, was surrounded in Lemetti. (let's better put it here) Do not forget about the numbers of the pictures. And, accordingly, the Finns first began to put pressure on our units, surrounded in the area of ​​the fork in the road, i.e. right here right here. Accordingly, the area of ​​the fork in the road - picture 07, the death of the boiler. And look, please, picture 08, this is the Finns photographed the area where the boiler died, it’s just, unfortunately, the entire battlefield is littered with the bodies of our dead. And it is in this place, in the area of ​​​​the death of the “fork in the road” boiler, that the Cross of Sorrow stands, picture 09, this is a joint monument that Russia and Finland erected in the early 2000s. It was in these places that the tanker V.A. died in February 1940. Tereshkov, father of VV Tereshkova, the world's first female cosmonaut. Those. she came there to lay flowers on her father's grave. Those. he was from the Yaroslavl region, if I remember correctly, the Finnish war began, he was called up as a driver, and, accordingly, he died there in this place. Well, the next thing is just the death of the so-called regimental boiler. This, unfortunately, is a classic example of when there was no general leadership, it was not clear what to do, and as a result, in fact, the Finns managed such a huge cauldron, where, in general, there were 2 rifle regiments, a howitzer regiment, an artillery regiment , another separate tank battalion, managed to destroy it almost completely. Why did this happen - because Kondrashov from Lemetti contacted them by radio, he says - get through to us. They say - no, let's make our way to the south, to the encirclement area of ​​​​the 168th rifle division. 168 tried to break through to meet them, tried to get them out of there. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. But, in fact, by February 18, the boiler was completely destroyed, the Finns announced trophies of 22 tanks and 36 guns. Wow. Again, ours had a lot of tanks in those places, because there were also 2 separate tank battalions. Those. 1 of the 18 rifle division, plus there was, respectively, the 34 light tank brigade, in which there were 105 BT tanks of various types. Well, having dealt with this large cauldron, the Finns begin to deal, respectively, with the boilers in the Lemetti region, where it is divided into western and eastern Lemetti. This means that in western Lemetti there is one of our tank battalions from the 34th light tank brigade, a bakery of the 18th rifle division, and someone else. Those. it also turns out that somehow everything, i.e. non-combat units are gathered together, and it was in western Lemetti that this tragic situation happened, which is well described, that, in general, the battalion commander, captain Ryazanov, began to prepare the battalion for a breakthrough, because, perhaps, everyone had forgotten, but the tanks have ammunition , and most importantly, there is fuel. If the tank has no fuel, it won't go anywhere. When the battalion still had a sufficient supply of fuel so that the tanks could be withdrawn, so that there was ammunition, which, accordingly, could somehow be fought, Captain Ryazanov said - that's it, we're going, now we'll break through to our own, respectively, right here. Literally between them was ... about 1 km, it was only necessary to break through in order to connect with the encirclement area, where the brigade headquarters was sitting, and, by the way, where Kondrashov was sitting in a tent, having actually removed himself from command. But, again, there was no order, sit and wait. But when Ryazanov began to make orders about the fact that we were going and leaving, the head of the special department of the battalion said that we had no order, so excuse me, we will not go anywhere. Ryazanov said that I was the commander here, I give orders, a quarrel broke out between them, and the head of the special department Ryazanov shot dead on the spot. Yes, and just in the regimental cauldron, there, too, the commanders all quarreled, because some say to go there, others say to go there, i.e. the lack of a unified leadership, this led to chaos and mass deaths of our military personnel. Well, as a result, literally 200 of our people left the western boiler, all the tanks were abandoned, everything was left to the Finns. Intelligent Specialist. Yes, and, accordingly, Finnish trophies amounted to 32 tanks. But time goes by, in fact, there is frankly nothing to eat, i.e. indeed, the encirclement area is small, it’s hard to drop there, very little food falls there, and, accordingly, the head of the special department of the 34th light tank brigade, Doronkin, says that listen, that’s it, the edge has come, because, excuse me, we’re already eating bark from trees, already everyone horses have been eaten, everything is already there, people have been brought to physical exhaustion. Because, again, they got into the cauldron, excuse me, in mid-January, in the 2nd half of January, it was already the 20th of February in the yard. Those. people in the cold -30, with malnutrition have been for more than a month, and in a very crowded, small area. And all this is happening in some, excuse me, 5 km from Pitkyaranta, where our troops are sitting, and where new troops are slowly starting to arrive. And indeed, all these radiograms from the boiler that were going on, i.e. radio communication was maintained, they really show that, probably, those who were in the boiler took a too passive position, because they were told - please come, save us, we cannot believe that the enemy is so strong here. It’s not far at all here, it’s 5 km in a straight line through the taiga to Pitkyaranta, where Stern sits, where all our bosses sit. Well, and, accordingly, the headquarters of the 8th Army and the 15th Army, which began to concentrate here, is already new, and the 15th Army was actually a grouping that came entirely from the Belarusian Military District, i.e. The first commander of the 15th Army was Kovalyov, commander of the Belarusian Special Military District. But, again, due to the fact that there is only one road, the concentration of parts went very, very slowly. And Stern kept pulling and pulling, and said, wait, help is coming, but by February 27 and 28, our people in the boiler said that everything, no strength, we were going to break through. And, accordingly, indeed, please look at picture 12, a breakthrough from eastern Lemetti, they were divided into 2 columns, respectively, and, in general, one column was actually completely destroyed, this is a column, if I remember correctly, Smirnov, moreover most of the patients were sent there. Here one column was completely destroyed, the second managed to somehow reach the Pitkyaranta area, and, accordingly, the column that left was not led by Kondrashov, but by the chief of staff of the 18th rifle division, Colonel Alekseev, because Kondrashov, according to unverified reports, took off commander's uniform, put on the usual Red Army uniform, and left, in general, at the end of the column. He was, apparently, slightly injured during the exit, but remained alive, again, was actually immediately detained and placed under investigation. How did the investigation end? Again, here, the first is the commander of the 18th rifle division Kondrashov, and the commander of the 34th light tank brigade Kondratiev, they were constantly confused, and both ours and Finnish radio intelligence were simply constantly confused. So, it means that the commander of the 34th light tank brigade, the commissar of the brigade, the head of the special department, all shot themselves when they left the encirclement when they realized that they had fallen into a Finnish ambush, respectively. Those. the entire command of the 34th brigade died, but the command of the 18th rifle division managed to get out. During the breakout from the encirclement, the head of the political department died, and, in fact, it is not very clear where the banner went, because the banner of the division was just wrapped around his body, and there is such a version that battle flag divisions, the Finns have it somewhere, but this is not the banner that they exhibit. If you go now to the Central Museum of the Defense Forces of Finland, then in a place of honor hangs a beautiful, embroidered with silver, scarlet banner of the 18th rifle division, on which is written "18th Yaroslavl rifle division." But researchers from Petrozavodsk claim that this is just the anniversary banner of the division, which was issued to all divisions on the 20th anniversary of the Red Army, i.e. in 38, and the battle banner disappeared somewhere. And allegedly, here it was on the body of the head of the political department, and allegedly, it seems that someone even saw a photograph of the body of the head of the political department, taken by the Finns, but the banner disappeared somewhere. Maybe a fighter, what kind of officer is with him? Nothing is clear at all, absolutely nothing is clear, but the bottom line is that indeed, as you can understand, the situation, in addition to the loss of the banner, the situation here was already extremely difficult, because, excuse me, the 18th Infantry Division because of this sitting surrounded, due to ineffective leadership, due to everything else, suffered the highest losses, in general, among our divisions in the Finnish War. Those. at the beginning of the battle, when they had just been surrounded, there were about 10,000 people in the division. But after all this, when Kondrashov was already placed under investigation, and Colonel Alekseev was appointed acting commander of the division, who led everyone out of the encirclement, so he calculated that the total losses of the division amounted to 8754 people. This is out of 10,000 people, i.e. in fact, there are less than a fifth of them left. Those. heavy losses, the banner was lost, the Finns got virtually all the equipment as trophies, plus BT tanks, so please look at pictures 13, 14, 15 - trophies. Cruel. Yes. Well, it’s clear that all this happens at the end of February 1940, and, again, it was trumpeted again, of course, by Finnish propaganda, indeed, this is a victory, you can’t deny it. Indeed, the defeat of one division and a light tank brigade, and, again, exactly the same thing, in parts, but, again, to our great regret, if everything was fast in the Suomussalmi and Raata area, then here ours were still sitting for a very long time in boilers. Of course, people went through terrible trials, and just physical torment - and hunger, and cold, and night blindness, and illness, anything. It is clear that Kondrashov was placed under investigation. There is a version that after the war was voiced by veterans who left the encirclement. One of them said that I saw that Kondrashov was right ... the NKVD officers came straight to the hospital, they arrested him in the hospital, took him out into the yard, and immediately shot him. But the documents say otherwise, i.e. this is most likely just a legend, because the documents say that he was really arrested, placed under investigation, taken to Moscow, the investigation went on for a long time, he was forced to write a long explanatory note why his division was defeated in this way. The verdict was announced to him - execution, he filed an appeal, and in it he wrote that I do not think that I am a finished person, I believe that I can still serve my homeland. But the investigation considered otherwise, he was shot only in August 1940, i.e. from March to August he was under investigation, there were really legal proceedings, and he even had the opportunity to file a petition for pardon, which did not help. But in this case, it’s probably understandable that such a defeat, again, someone had to be punished, and it was clear that there was a lot of fault here, that for some reason he could not, like Bondarev, normally organize defense why they didn't occupy the heights right next to the road, where they could sit quietly, repulsing the Finnish attacks, thereby making the area large enough to make it easier for them to drop food, etc. Those. indeed, this is a big failure on our part, big trophies, many dead, wounded were abandoned again. And all the wounded, apparently, were finished off by the Finns in dugouts. Again, this is something that, in general, the Finns somehow don’t really like to remember, but, indeed, there are many sources that indicate that the wounded were abandoned in dugouts, and then, accordingly, the dugouts are just were either blown up with overhead charges, or were burned along with the wounded, or the wounded were finished off, respectively, by blows from rifle butts and bayonets. Those. also a very ugly story, in fact. Here, as you understand, all this place of encirclement remained on our territory after the war, therefore ... Here is a top secret act on March 17, i.e. 4 days after the end of the war, this act was drawn up by a commission, the chairman of the commission of the military commissar of the 56th rifle corps, brigade commissar Seryakov, acting. commander of the 18th division, Colonel Sokolov, acting military commissar of the 18th division, deputy. Head of the special department of the NKVD, and head of the 2nd department of the 56th rifle corps. What do they write? So... It's quite long, but I'll read the following. Lemetti south. Ours called Lemetti southern, the Finns called Lemetti eastern. “Lemetti South bears the traces of fierce and stubborn battles, representing a continuous cemetery of corpses, broken military and transport vehicles. The entire defense area of ​​the KP 18 SD is pitted with craters from shells, 90% of the trees in the defense area are mowed down art. shells. 10 dugouts were found, destroyed by art. shells of 152 m / m artillery, with people who were there. The remaining dugouts were mostly blown up by the Finns when they occupied Lemetti. 18 corpses of Red Army soldiers were found, burned by the Finns in dugouts, one corpse was found in a dugout, tied with wires to the bunks and shot, and one corpse with a rope tightened around its neck. Cars, trees, iron pipes of dugout stoves and all local objects are riddled with bullets and shell fragments. All military and economic property and personal property was demolished and piled by the Finns along the road. Well, and, accordingly, about the fate of the columns: “In the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbreaking through the enemy’s defense, a column of the head of the headquarters of the 18th SD, Colonel Alekseev, found 201 corpses, mainly in the enemy’s defense area and near wire barriers. In the area of ​​​​breaking through the enemy defenses, a column of the head of the headquarters of the 34th LTBR, ​​Colonel Smirnov, found 150 corpses, and 120 corpses of the remaining seriously wounded were found in hospital dugouts. Finnish corpses were not found, because. those were removed by the Finns between 29.2.40 and 17.3.40." Yes, the actual column that died: “About 400 dead were found in the area of ​​the Finnish camp, which is 2.5 km east of Lemetti, among which were identified: Head of the Political Department of the 18th SD Battalion Commissar. Razumov, Chief Artillery 56 SC - Colonel Bolotov, military commissar 97 OBS - senior political instructor Tyurin, military commissar 56 ORB - Art. political instructor Suvorov, pom. the head of the political department for the Komsomol, political instructor Samoznaev, the instructor of the political department of the 18th SD - political instructor Smirnov and his wife, the representative of the Air Force of the 8th Army, Lieutenant Permyakov, the Head of the Division's Vehicle Fleet and many others. In the area of ​​the death of the Northern Column, the following was established: the trees, for the most part, bear traces of a two-way shootout, which indicates the armed resistance of the Northern Group. During the examination, it was found that, despite the presence of mortal wounds, a significant part of the dead bears traces of shooting in the head and finishing off with rifle butts. One of the victims, shod in Finnish Peksa boots, is put upside down against a tree. The wife of the instructor of the political department of the 18th SD, Smirnova (who worked in the political department on party account) was naked and our hand grenade was inserted between her legs. Buttonholes and sleeve insignia were torn off most of the command staff. The orders that the commanding staff had were pulled out by the Finns with matter. Here is such a document about what happened when you exited the environment. Again, it is clear that it was necessary to do this much earlier, but still, an order is an order, so they really waited a long time, a very long time. And there are also memories, it is written here that most of the dead were in the area of ​​​​the wire, there many people could no longer even walk from the fact that they were hungry, and simply crawled out of the encirclement. Those. such a tragic fate befell the 18th rifle division and the 34th light tank brigade in the Soviet-Finnish war. It is clear that, once again, I will say that Finnish propaganda has, of course, trumpeted all this very much. A huge number of photographs were taken, and jubilant Finns, and trophies, and, again, our frozen corpses by the road, and so on and so forth. But, at the same time, I really need to say - from my point of view, this played a cruel joke on the Finns, because this all happens on February 27-28, when on the Karelian Isthmus, if we recall the previous story, the intermediate line of defense of the Finns has already been broken through, and ours are already, in general, moving towards Vyborg, and are aiming at the encirclement of Vyborg. Those. if our units are defeated here, then in the key theater of military operations, i.e. this is the Helsinki direction, the Finnish army is defeated. And, of course, the Finnish media and Finnish propaganda, she did not talk about what was happening near Vyborg, she, on the contrary, told what was happening here. And therefore, when after 2 weeks peace was concluded on terms that were not favorable for Finland, they now say that Finland won because it retained its independence, etc., assessments always change. But then, excuse me, all the newspapers came out in a mourning frame, all the flags were at half mast ... As a sign of victory, right? And, in fact, all foreign journalists, too, they regarded it as a victory for Russia. And, in fact, for the Finns it was a huge shock that we are fighting so cool, and it seems that here another 1 division was defeated, and the tank brigade was defeated, and the banner was captured, and in general everything is great, but here after 2 weeks it turns out, that we ended up losing. Those. propaganda is good, but it can, therefore, really public opinion to lure into a certain trap, it can just backfire with a huge shock for people. But this is what is happening in the Lemetti area, and further north, beyond Pitkäranta, the 168th Infantry Division is still holding out, and, accordingly, the new 15th Army is quietly concentrating, which arrives from the Belarusian Military District in order to break through the blockade ring of the 168th Infantry Division . But, again, please look at picture 17, communications of the 8th and 15th army, this is the only road that runs along Ladoga. But the most interesting thing is that much to the south, in the Salmi area, i.e. it is 50 kilometers to the south, near Ladoga there are the islands of Lunkulunsaari and Mantsisaari, where there are 2 Finnish 152 mm cannons, and a separate Finnish battalion is sitting there. And with their fire they periodically shoot through this road. Tov. Stern did not guess to take these islands by storm, and thereby, in fact, remove this obstacle to his only communication. In April 1940, when the commander-in-chief comrade. Stalin gathered all the commanders of the Red Army for a meeting in the Kremlin in order for them to tell how they fought in the Soviet-Finnish war, Stern began to say that the Finns had a giant fort, absolutely impregnable, on this island, and therefore they did not climb there. Stalin interrupted him and said that you know, there were 2 guns and 1 battalion, I don’t need to flood. Those. Stalin was aware that the Finns were not crowded there. But, again, they just left them alone there, calmly sat out until the truce, and until the truce, they, respectively, fired at this only road. And, by the way, it must, of course, be emphasized that after the war, at this conference, which we will discuss separately, our commanders greatly exaggerated the strength of the Finnish fortifications. Of course, it was necessary to somehow justify their not very effective actions. So, our reinforcements, in fact, go along this road, including the 204th airborne brigade from Borispol, from Ukraine, arriving on foot in mid-February. And, indeed, they come by train, on echelons to Lodeynoye Pole, from Lodeynoye Pole they walk 200 km, after which they are immediately thrown into battle to take the islands in Pitkyarantsky Bay. And the first battle ended for ours in a complete fiasco, because there was no reconnaissance, and all this only led to very high losses among our paratroopers. I must say that there is also such a stereotype that the Finns, they heard that there were some kind of paratroopers, and they directly thought that the paratroopers parachuted to these islands at night, but this is absolutely not confirmed by our documents. Our documents confirm that the brigade launched a battalion-by-battalion attack in mid-February, and, in general, immediately lost more than half of its personnel on the ice in front of the islands. They were excellent commanders. I'm surprised that special departments, such handsome men, didn't shoot everyone there. How would they shoot there, i.e. so when the command of the 15th army, somehow their first attack on the islands failed in mid-February, the second attack failed on February 23, then Kovalev was removed. After that, Kurdyumov was appointed commander of the 15th Army. And look, please, picture 18, breaking through the blockade of the 168th Infantry Division and the battle for the islands. The situation there was gloomy, in general, for both sides, both for ours and for the Finns, because, therefore, the Finns occupied these islands, at first everything seemed to be fine with them, they fired at our carts, which tried to break through at night on the ice of the Pitkyaranta Bay into the 168th division, shot them from machine guns and mortars. But when they began to put pressure on our islands, then, accordingly, of course, they didn’t do well there, this time. And the second is, in general, when it became clear that it would be very bad now, it was clear that ours attacked once, attacked twice, the attack was unsuccessful twice, but the second time they went somehow with the tanks. It is clear that the third time will be even more and even stronger. In general, those Finns who were on the islands, they were just there, in general, the officers abandoned them, the artillery scouts left, and, in fact, the book that describes the battles for these 2 islands - Lunkulunsaari and Mantsisaari - is in Finnish it is called “Front of the Forgotten”, “Front of the Abandoned”. You could say they were also left there... Commanders? Yeah, like hold on as long as you can. But they could only hold out until March 6, because on March 6 in battle both garrisons were actually completely destroyed by ours. And in the previous attacks, as it was - our aircraft flies, begins to bomb the islands, and at the same time an artillery raid is launched on the islands, moreover, the islands are completely rocky, and it is clear that there ... You will not burrow. You can't burrow there, and the rocks are a striking factor - when a shell hits them, there are fragments, granite dust and everything, everything, everything flies. Well, what did the Finns do - they just ran away from the island and lay on the ice. They are in white camouflage robes, they are not visible, then, when the attack begins, the Finns return to the island and open fire from the island. Ours in the 3rd attack, in fact, realized that, in general, the Finns were doing this, and already during the 3rd assault, in fact, it was agreed that our fighters were constantly loitering around the island, and when they saw that someone was there - sometimes he runs around in white camouflage suits, they just open fire on them. Those. and you can’t hide on the island, and, accordingly, you can’t hide on the ice either. Well, there are memories of just one of our paratroopers, who was in the first attack, in the second, in the third, i.e. he saw it all. And, in fact, there are very interesting memories of this third attack. “By 12 o'clock, the battalion units had liberated a third of the island, but were stopped by strong fire from the Finns. The battalion commander Solop reported the situation by telephone to the commander of the brigade I. I. Gubarevich and asked to move the artillery attack on the northern part of the island to 12 hours 50 minutes and attack the Finns at 13. Such a 10-minute artillery attack was carried out, and the fighters shouted "Hurrah!" attacked the enemy and went forward with the support of tanks. But our aviation appeared here and began to impede the advance of the battalion by their actions, firing at their own. Those. well, yes, aviation has an order, if there are some people in white running around, then they need to be shot. “...Captain Solop tried to contact the aviation by radio, but it was useless, he swore at them for what it was worth. At this time, a group of about 10 people in camouflage suits approached us. Solop continued to call for aircraft on the radio. One of the group asked: “Who is the commander here?” "Well, I, what do you want from me?" Solop said angrily. “I, Comrade Commander, Deputy People's Commissar - Kulik. What is holding you back now?" - he asked. I see my battalion commander turned pale from pink, he could not immediately report the situation. “Calm down,” said G. I. Kulik, “does aviation interfere with you?” "Yes, comrade deputy commissar, aviation is firing at its own and preventing it from moving forward." “Now, comrade Solop, I will instruct aviation on my radio to fire on the northern part of the island.” His radio operator was able to quickly contact the aircraft, and she suffered a blow to the northern part of the island of Maximan-Sari. After that, the battalion went forward ... "Ie. you also see that there was still no aircraft controller in combat formations on the ground. And the personal presence of the marshal is required in order to reorient it all. Yes, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, i.e. 2 people in the People's Commissariat. But, it means that when the islands were taken, our official archival documents record that the commanders lost control over the fighters, and, in fact, the fighters were so embittered by the previous unsuccessful assaults on these islands that just all the prisoners, i.e. even those who tried to surrender, the Finns were simply killed on the spot. Plus, again, such a powerful artillery raid was carried out on the islands that when ours entered the island, they saw that many Finnish soldiers were simply torn to pieces by shells. The Finns had something like a dressing station behind one rock, and so, the bomb hit the rock, and the rock just collapsed, they buried everyone alive there. And, in general, virtually no one from the Finns escaped from these islands. Literally a few wounded were saved, who realized that, probably, there was no need to give up, they just crawled away at dusk, in the afternoon, again, in their camouflage suits on the ice, and then crawled for a long time to their own, respectively, to the north. Well, just like in other places, the Finns in these units had a territorial principle for the formation of regiments, they were just from 2 neighboring villages, from Rantasalmi ... no, sorry, not from neighboring ones, there from the area just Savolaksa, from Rantasalmi and from Nilse, from 2 villages, almost everyone died there. Therefore, in the 2000s, they went to these islands, from 2 of their villages they erected monuments there. (picture 19, monument on the islands). Those. this is how, in general, the Soviet-Finnish war in the Ladoga region ended. Initial success, then the Finns stopped ours, launched a counterattack planned long before that, cut off communications, one of our commanders got a nervous breakdown and removed himself from command. Never heard of it. The second commander, on the contrary, gathers his division into a very dense defensive perimeter, arranges supplies, builds a runway on the ice there, and holds on until the end of the war. The 18th Rifle Division is practically completely destroyed, the 34th Light Tank Brigade loses half of its personnel and all tanks. Well, everything ends with the concentration of our new army, and on the third attempt, the capture of the islands of Pitkäranta Bay, heavy losses for the Finns, heavy losses for ours, but the 168th division is released. And, of course, the question may immediately arise, but what, the Red Army seems to be a humane army, all people are brothers ... Komsomol members. Komsomols, yes. We are not fighting against the Finnish people, we are fighting against the White Finnish gangs, we generally wanted to liberate Finland. Why such cruelty, why the prisoners, ie. those who tried to surrender, why were they finished off? Why finished off the wounded? I remember from childhood that they were always called lakhtars, i.e. butchers, these same Finns. You know, there, by the way, in this document, where it is written that they finished off, it is directly stated that when they ran on skis to the island to attack, they ran on skis over the bodies of their comrades who died in previous attacks, and you can imagine how they felt when in mid-February they did not take, put a certain number of their own - young, 20-year-olds, the same Komsomol members, paratroopers, the elite. February 23 is the same. And only on March 6, on the third attempt, they reached these islands, and there really was everything, they did not give mercy. And this is indeed reflected in our official archival documents, it is directly written down. These are sad places, i.e. no success. Yes, it seems that it was planned to attack, i.e. when 168 is released, attack Sortavala, etc. But, again, the end of hostilities on all these plans put an end to it. Although the Finns also have a legend there that in Sortavala, Finnish reservists are sitting there, and they hear that, accordingly, the Russians have, excuse me, a whole army there, a lot of fresh troops have approached Pitkyaranta, and now they will rush across the ice into Sortavala, and allegedly everyone there just arranged a giant drinking bout in Sortaval that they would not be able to keep the city. Those. already the complete superiority of the enemy. But these are also such legends and tales, of which there are many on both sides. But I would not like to end there, because we have the 56th Infantry Division nearby, literally 50 km away, which, from the side of Loimala, from the side of Solvajärvi, is trying to break into these same places in general. And this is another theater of operations on the river. Calla so-called. Picture 20, the battle on the Kolla River, in December, in fact, everything happens there as follows. The 56th rifle division is advancing, one Finnish regiment is defending, and just on the Kolla River, relying on the dominant heights, the Finns stop ours. That is, again, no encirclement happened there simply because neither ours nor the Finns had the strength to do so. Those. both sides tried to make detours, repulsed each other, after which the front stood up. And he got up, in fact, until March 1940. Why are we talking about this at all - simply because the Finnish sniper Simo Hyaukha fought there (picture 22). Simo Hyaukhya is one of the symbols of the Soviet-Finnish war, and, accordingly, he is probably more famous in Finland than Vasily Zaitsev and others Soviet snipers . And as I said in the last broadcast, in fact, a legend was made of him already during the Finnish War, and only increased after the war (picture 21, sniper Simo Hyaukha in mid-February 1940). A positional war is already underway, nothing seems to be happening, a Swedish delegation arrives, gives Khyaukhya a Swedish rifle, Colonel Svensson presents him with a diploma, i.e. there is such a beautiful ceremony that everyone takes pictures of, and, accordingly, that's exactly how he stands, smiling, in picture 21 with a Swedish rifle presented to him, if I'm not mistaken. And indeed, from mid-December to March, nothing much happens there. Different sources indicate a completely different number of his victories, let's say so. Up to 700 people are attributed to him, but let's have some doubts about this number, which some sources cite, especially Internet sources. The fact is that, again, the front stood up somewhere in the 20th of December, and Simo Hyaukhya was seriously wounded by a hit of either an explosive bullet or a fragment in the jaw on March 5, 1940. Those. he, it turns out, January, February, 2 more weeks, i.e. it turns out somewhere around 70 days ... 10 people a day. Yes, it turns out 10 people a day. Seven days a week. Yes, no days off. It is interesting that he was the first, he showed his position, he returned to these places in 41, and the place where he was is known. Indeed, the position chosen is wonderful, picture 22, Simo Hyaukha shows his firing position, this is a rock, and the rock is such that on the right and left it is covered with rocks, and on the left in front it is also covered with a rock. Simo Hyaukhya was very short, he was himself a peasant, obviously not from a very rich family, i.e. malnourished, so he was 1.55 tall. He was very short, you can see his uniform in the Central Museum of the Finnish Defense Forces, you can see that he was small. Further, he fired from a rifle without a sniper scope, i.e. he had a maximum range of 400-450 meters. And now there are estimates that he may have reached 200 victories as a sniper, but you know, if we know where his firing position was, he crawled out to neutral, i.e. he was not sitting in the Finnish trenches. He crawled out into neutral, even went beyond the Finnish gouges. Here at this position. If we know the radius of destruction of his rifle approximately, and we know the number of the regiment that was stationed there, then if we try to evaluate his victories, his real sniper score, you just need to take the losses of this regiment and see how many were killed there during this time. The whole regiment, apparently, right? To be honest, I have this ... Or else they had to be adjusted to satisfy the bloodthirsty. You know, in fact, they say that we have all sorts of legends here and all that, but in the same place ... It is unacceptable. Only truth. No, no, listen. Finnish tourists, here they are, for them this is really a national hero, i.e. as for us Vasily Zaitsev, or who else is there, Kozhedub, one of the greatest military heroes. And, accordingly, the Finns told me that you know, he was nicknamed "white death" ... Russians? Yes, ours called him "white death". Never met anywhere. Frost was more likely to be called white death. Those. As a researcher, this raises serious doubts for me. The second thing they sent, almost personally, Stalin drove a whole army of snipers to hunt for him. Most importantly, he said, the Finns said they sent 5 female snipers. White tights. Yes, white tights. That they were very cool, but all the same, Hyauhya killed them all, because, like, their optics shone, but mine didn’t. And he had no optics. Finnish trick. Finnish trick, but he also said that he explained after the war, i.e. he died in 2002, sorry, he lived a very long life, and there was a whole pilgrimage to him from Finns, and Americans, and anyone. They went to him, recorded interviews with him, and asked - why like this, why without a sniper scope, etc. He said, firstly, the optics can fog up in winter, that's one thing. The second - from his point of view, through a sniper scope, through optical sight take longer to aim. Well, and the third - after all, if there is a sniper scope, it glares, that’s one thing, and number 2 is that you still need to raise your head literally 2-3 cm higher, because the sniper scope is located higher than a regular scope on the barrel of a rifle. Those. here is his explanation. Sorry, I’ll interrupt, I doubt very much that without a sight at 400 meters you can hit somewhere. Well, supposedly he is a Finnish hunter, etc. With a scope, not everyone hits 400 meters. I do not believe, as Stanislavsky said. Again, if one would like to really do a normal, calm, neutral study, exactly how much, i.e. try to estimate the losses that are in our units ... Is it possible to somehow get the data? So, I'm saying that you just need to take the data on the losses of the regiment that stood against Khyaukhya, and in general see what their total losses were for December, January, February. What happened there? Maybe it will turn out there that 40 people were killed and 100 wounded there. How did they rate it? Well, Khyaukhya came in the evening and said how many he allegedly killed there. But, nevertheless, no matter how much he killed, for the Finns this is one of the symbols of the Soviet-Finnish war. It is clear that now they say that 700 is probably an exaggeration, because already, as in the photo on February 17, he stands like a hero, he is handed a rifle, a diploma, and so on and so forth. Most likely, 200 ... Still a lot. Many, still outstanding, one of the greatest snipers. But the most important thing that is interesting is that an ordinary Finnish resident, a simple Finnish inhabitant, he will not even bother and question this number. A legend and a legend, now the Finns are starting, in my opinion, filming a film about Simo Hyaukha, about the white death, and there no one will count, like with 28 Panfilov’s men, how many there were, how many tanks they knocked out, everything is one way or another, not important - national hero , legend, we are filming, and there are no protests among ... Let's look for documents, shoot a video about Simo Hyaohya. Interesting. But, in fact, how it all ended on the Kolla River. Calmness ended in early March, because at the beginning of the Finnish war there was one of our divisions, then by March ours brought 4 more. 2 of our corps were already standing there, overwhelming superiority in infantry, in everything. And, accordingly, just on March 4-5, our people simply begin to put pressure on the Finns from all sides, i.e. they attack not only along the front just on the Kolla River, but they begin to make detours, now there are more forces, much more forces. And just like that, on March 5-6, March 5, Simo Hyaukha is seriously injured. According to the official version, it was just a duel with our sniper, which hit him in the lower jaw, and because of this, in fact, his entire lower jaw was crushed, so his face was very deformed, i.e. his jaw was pieced together in the hospital. This is one version. Another version is that a shell fragment hit, because the fighting became very, very intense again, but despite the overwhelming superiority, the Finns still managed to hold out there until March 13. Although, indeed, their situation again became difficult, i.e. both flanks are already covered, somehow there are no reserves anymore, i.e. it is not clear how it would all end. But, nevertheless, picture 23, the situation on the Colla River at the end of the war, which completes our today's reconnaissance. All the same, the Kolla River and Simo Hyaukhya for the Finns became a symbol of the Finnish army's resilience in the Soviet-Finnish war, that they broke through the Mannerheim line in Summa, and Kolla resisted. They, in fact, came out right after the war, the book of just one serviceman of the Finnish army, who fought there. He called the book that “Colla survived”, the front survived. Therefore, for them, this is also a certain symbol of their courage and stamina, which indeed was high in the Soviet-Finnish war, this cannot be denied. And, accordingly, if someone travels there, unfortunately, the road from Pitkyaranta to Loimala and Suoyarvi is in a terrible state. Those. if it is repaired, then in general it would give an impetus to tourism in these places, but now you just shake 40 km on some PAZik at a speed of 40 km / h. If anyone is there, the Finns brought the monument there, the top of it was broken off, please do not think about local vandals, it was the Finns who carried it themselves and broke it themselves during transportation. Therefore, there should have been a high obelisk, and it turns out that it was broken in half. But now everyone thinks that everything is so special, that the sculptor so specially conceived. But there, in fact, this Finnish obelisk stands on Finnish positions, and on the other side of the river there is a very large mass grave of our soldiers and commanders who died there. And, by the way, on one side of the road is the grave of our fighters and commanders, and on the other side of the road, 100 meters away, is the position of Hyauhya. Those. he really crawled forward, into neutral, and indeed, probably, the fact that he was very small in stature was a big plus in this regard. Plus, really from one, on the left side it was completely covered by a rock. Strange at all. Those. this is a violation of all the rules in general - to sit in one place. Do you think that no one will notice you? They will notice, and sooner or later they will arrive. Well, roughly speaking, the Finnish version is that he was so cooler than all our snipers that, yes, he almost put them there one by one. And so 2 months. But, again, this is about the question that any war, if it is a domestic war, and for the Finns, the Soviet-Finnish war is regarded precisely as a domestic war, that is how Mannerheim proclaimed it on the very first day of the war, that we are fighting for faith, home , and fatherland. Those. not for the faith, the king, and the fatherland, but for the faith, the house, and the fatherland. This is actually a declaration of patriotic war, i.e. we will fight to the end. In any such war, in general, there always appear their own legends, and, of course, Hyaohya is one of them, and, in general, is known throughout the world. Why, in fact, there was such a pilgrimage to him after the war, already in the 90s, 2000s, they came and met with him. He was buried, in fact, in his native places, in the cemetery of the village of Ruokolahti. You will pass there, you can call in, a very small, modest grave. But there on it is just the silhouette of a Finnish soldier in a white camouflage coat, and there are actually always flowers there. Those. to them he is a hero. Yes, now you can argue, study, etc., but still they will make a film where he is there, probably like 300 Spartans, only he will be there alone. And, indeed, yes, if not 700 ... 800. 800, at least he will certainly put our Red Army men there. Queues. Yes. There, obviously, ours will climb like orcs, but there is no discussion about this, that “maybe he didn’t kill so much?”, “Maybe everything was wrong?” absolutely not in Finnish society. And if someone starts raising his voice, then he will probably immediately begin to receive threats to hack to death with an ax in the street, or to stab him with a Finnish knife, because there they are ... in this regard, they are much more touchy than ours, from my point of view. Lost, yeah. Of course, it's a shame. A good example of this is just when 2 young 30-year-old masters of history decided to dig a little into the biography of Lauri Törni, who is another Finnish hero, we need to talk about him separately already in the stories about the second war of 41-44. So they, in general, found documents, and they wrote in the book that he was considered the greatest Finnish warrior, but in fact he was a Nazi, because he, yes, he fought in the Lemetti region in 40 just in 40 Jaeger, then in 41 he went to fight in the SS in the Donbass and in Chechnya, because it was there that the 5th Viking SS division was located, in those parts. Then, in 1943, he returned to Finland, became a Finnish saboteur, left in 1944 after the armistice with the Soviet Union, left Finland for Sweden, from Sweden for the USA, joined the US Army, and only in Vietnam he was calmed down. Only in 65, his helicopter was shot down, he crashed somewhere in the jungle, he was found only in the early 2000s. Well, also in the central museum of the defensive forces of Finland you will see the "Soldier of the 3 armies" - in Finnish uniform, in SS uniform, in American uniform. There is something to be proud of. There is something to be proud of. By the way, he was born in the city of Vyborg, Vyborg, though Finnish. So, these two young people said - and you know that he was a Nazi in general, you know that he was categorically against the truce between Finland and the Soviet Union, he almost planned a military coup in Finland, so as not to reconciled with the USSR, and continued to fight for the Germans. So, these 2 young people began to receive threats to life and health, and were forced to hire security guards for themselves. Not bad. Democracy, yes. 2 years ago, and the book came out at the book fair in Helsinki, this is the premiere, when all the new, most important books in Finland come out, this, of course, became a big scandal, that we thought he was good, but he ... He, it turns out , out what! Yes. But that, again, is a completely different story. There is a feeling that a certain revision is also beginning in Finland. In general, I look - only while the Soviet Union was alive, all this scum was somehow managed to be kept in check, that everyone was forced to agree that Nazism is bad, that it is impossible to serve in the SS, that this is scum, that cooperation with the Nazi mode is not good. And now, it turns out, everything was fine. Those. there is no one to hit the table with his face, and our handsome men support all this with all their might, but why be shy now. AT Soviet time there was a huge self-censorship in Finland, i.e. yes, there were books, yes, there were studies, but it was rather for, as it were, very right-wingers and for veterans. And now it has become mainstream, I would say. It won't lead to good. Well, alas, I'm afraid it won't. Yes, one should write a study about Simo Häuhä someday, because he is a legendary person and an interesting topic for research. To sum up our today's conversation, I would like to say that, oddly enough, one of the few books written about the tragic events in the Lemetti area art books about the Soviet-Finnish war. It is called “Death of the Division,” wrote Petrozavodsk researcher, writer, journalist A.A. Gordienko, who, unfortunately, died in 2010. This is a new posthumous edition. Before the war, the 18th Infantry Division was based in Petrozavodsk, in fact, from there it went to its, unfortunately, death in the Lemetti area. But those who returned, all returned to Petrozavodsk, and all relatives remained in Petrozavodsk, so this book is written as if the diary of one of the employees of the political department of the 18th Infantry Division, i.e. such a story in the form of a diary, based on documents, on interviews. Yes, maybe it is with some excesses, but it’s better that nothing about the Finnish war is written in our works of art at all. Can personnel be purchased somewhere? Yes, in fact, under the video there is a link to opershop, so this book can be purchased at opershop ... Is this this cross? Yes, this is exactly the cross of sorrow, very neutral, i.e. there is such a cross and 2 mothers embrace it from both sides. Those. one mother is Russia, the other is Finland. Those. monument erected in 2000, and on this moment this is the largest monument to the Soviet-Finnish war that we have. It is located just in the very places where our boiler was just destroyed at the Lemetti fork in the roads, so if you somehow travel in those parts, stop by and take a look. Unfortunately, there are not a large number of information plates there, but there a huge number of mass graves and monuments reminds of this battle of 40 years, i.e. they literally go along the road every 500 meters, which shows what happens when the commander gives up. In spite of everything, after all, the commander is the captain of the ship, he should even try to do something in a hopeless situation, because the situation, most likely, was not hopeless, which is shown by the situation in the neighboring division of Bondarev. Creepy. Yes. But, of course, it must also be said that, of course, this played a role in raising the morale in Finland, in maintaining the general normal public opinion in Finland. And for the Finns, this is probably such an important and glorious page in military history. For us, this is a very sad and tragic page in our military history, which was forgotten for a very long time, just what it was like. But, fortunately, even though this book was published in the early 2000s, it became a bestseller in Karelia, i.e. this is the 3rd edition. It hasn't been published in paper for a long time, so please, you can buy it in opershop. But I emphasize once again that in general, on the same days, when, in general, when leaving the encirclement, the entire command of the 34th light tank brigade shot themselves, on the same days, when our encircled soldiers simply did not see anything at night, because they started to have night blindness due to malnutrition, and the Finns just approached and threw grenades at them, at the same time the intermediate Finnish defense line was broken near Vyborg, and the situation on the Karelian Isthmus to the west of Lake Ladoga for the Finns is already close to critical. Every day the position of the Finnish army is only getting worse. Therefore, our next story is the end of hostilities in the Soviet-Finnish war. There has already been a request to tell about the locks of the Saimaa Canal, what happened to them - they were really blown up or not blown up, and what was there at all near Vyborg. How the hostilities ended, where our units stood at 12 noon on March 13, when the truce officially came into force, and what lessons did the Red Army, the Finnish Army, and all our Western partners learn from this. Thank you. We look forward to the next one. Thank you. And that's all for today. See you again.

I wholeheartedly welcome you! Bair, good afternoon. Hello, Dmitry Yurievich. Good afternoon, dear viewers. About what today? As promised last time, today we will talk about the hostilities in the Northern Ladoga region, which, unfortunately, from my point of view, became the most tragic page of the Soviet-Finnish war, despite the fact that it seems to be the most famous battle, with the encirclement of our units , with the fact that they were cut into boilers, and then gradually destroyed, all this was much further north, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bSuomussalmi and Raata, which we have already briefly talked about. But, from my point of view, the most difficult situation really happened in the Northern Ladoga region, i.e. this is the present Republic of Karelia, this is the region of Pitkyaranta, the now defunct village of Lemetti, and, accordingly, the current village of Loimola. What happened there: well, if we go back to Finnish pre-war plans at all, then the Finns believed that serious military operations, where you need to plan something, where there will be a large concentration of forces, it will be just the Karelian Isthmus, about which we have already talked quite a lot , and also the Northern Ladoga region, just this area. And, therefore, picture 1, the plans of the parties for the campaign in the Northern Ladoga region. So, our plan was such that 3 roads converge in the Pitkyaranta area - one road goes from Lodeynoye Pole along the coast of Ladoga to Pitkyaranta, the second, respectively, goes from Petrozavodsk through Lemetti, and just north of Pitkyaranta it connects to this main road near Ladoga. And the third road, respectively, goes along the railway to Loimola, and through Loimola also connects here. Those. 3 roads converge here, and, again, since our terrain is extremely difficult for the offensive of an ordinary European army, then, in fact, ours were advancing along these 3 roads, the 8th army. This means that the 56th rifle division was advancing on Loimola, the 18th rifle division was advancing along the road from Petrozavodsk, and the 34th light tank brigade supporting it, and from the south Bondarev’s 168th rifle division approached Pyatkiranta. It must be said right away that 56 never reached. That is, again, such a situation was repeated that we already had in the Suomossalmi area, that the Finns simply did not allow our forces to connect. Where were our troops supposed to move if everything really worked out: it means that our troops had to move, in fact, bypassing Lake Ladoga, i.e., united, move to Sortavala, further to Lahdenpokhya, and actually go to the rear Finnish defense on the Karelian Isthmus, i.e. go to the rear of the Mannerheim line. But, in fact, everything stopped, unfortunately, right here, because, in general, the Finns, one might say, set a trap here, which was worked out a long time ago at staff games in the 20s and 30s years, i.e. in fact, they planned to stop ours somewhere in the Pitkyaranta area and begin to strike from the north, cutting off the communications, respectively, of the division that approached from Petrozavodsk, along the road through Lemetti. And in general, in the same way, they first cut one road from the north, and then generally surrounded the entire group in general, just in the Pitkyaranta area. And, unfortunately, just like in the Suomussalmi area, the situation repeated here that the troops were not quite correctly deployed on the road, yes, back in late December, in general, they were attacking here, but the 168th division was already Finns stopped here. The 18th Rifle Division with 2 regiments tried to break through to the north towards the 56th Rifle Division, but, in general, nothing really worked out, this is our picture 2, the situation at the beginning of the Finnish counteroffensive. Already at the end of December, Finnish ski detachments began to enter the road from Petrozavodsk, and began to operate along the communications, in fact, the 18th rifle division, which in the same way was stretched for many kilometers, and, accordingly, was placed in an incomprehensible way. Those. yes, 2 regiments in front, 1 regiment in the rear, which is trying to guard our communications. And, in fact, on January 6, the Finns gather a large strike force, and begin to actively hit on, in fact, our right flank. And at this time, changes are taking place in our camp, again, due to unfortunate events in the Tolvajärvi region, due to the fact that the 56th division stuck, in fact, in front of the Finnish defense in the area of ​​​​the Kolla River, and cannot come here. And, in fact, go somewhere around 50 km. Our commander is changing, Khabarov is being removed, among other things, because of the defeat of ours at Tolvajärvi, and G.M. becomes the commander of the 8th army. Stern, which, by the way, the Finns immediately noticed, and released a special leaflet dedicated specifically to G.M. Stern, in which they absolutely categorically hinted at his nationality - he was a Jew. Back in the late 90s - early 2000s, I had the honor to meet with our veterans of the Finnish War, and here one of the veterans says - I picked up a leaflet, and it says "Jew, traitor, traitor, cattle - that's who your new commander Stern ". Picture 04 is a Finnish leaflet about Stern. But our veteran said - you know, I fought on the Karelian Isthmus, and this is all happening on the eastern coast of Ladoga, so I didn’t know who Stern was at all, I didn’t know at all where he was fighting at all, what was happening, but I remember it very much I remember, these are very sharp, not politically correct words about Stern. Nazis after all, what do you want from them. Then not quite Nazis yet, but, nevertheless, there really are such words, wow. And when Grigory Mikhailovich arrived at the front, he, in fact, immediately began to very abruptly take our troops into circulation, i.e. threatened with executions, etc., etc., but, in general, this did not help the situation. This did not help the 139th division in any way, although there Stern offered to carry out almost a decimation, i.e. shoot every tenth. Well, actually, gradually, again, using the fact that the main forces of the 168th division were to the west, i.e. they had already set their sights on Sortavala; cut off the 168th Infantry Division from Pitkyaranta. Those. everything, 168 is sitting in the boiler, but, again, it is possible to supply 168 on the ice of the Pitkäranta Bay, but on January 15 and 19, the Finns occupy the islands that control the archipelago, in general. Therefore, it turns out that even this supply route across the ice from Pitkäranta, in general, is under fire from Finnish machine guns and mortars. The distances here, in fact, are not very large. Well, of course, the question may immediately arise why an attempt to deblockade was not immediately made, etc., this is due to the fact that, in general, as in the case of Suomussalmi, there was somehow nothing to deblock, because, in fact , all the reinforcements went, again, from Lodeynoye Pole to Pitkyaranta on foot. Not bad. Those. there was the only road along Ladoga, this, excuse me, is about 150-200 km, the only road that is covered with snow, the road is bad. Therefore, the supply of reinforcements was extremely, extremely difficult in general. And, accordingly, after the encirclement of the 168th Infantry Division, the same situation was repeated on the road that went to Petrozavodsk. Those. the Finns surrounded the 18th rifle division and the 34th light tank brigade, as a result of which we had several boilers, i.e. on the road from Lemetti to Petrozavodsk, 4 boilers formed, which developed very ... Sorry, even 6 boilers would be correct to say if we take Lemetti more. They have very different fates. Those. this is how, in fact, the classic Finnish tactics, the column is cut by blows from the taiga into several parts, and, accordingly, after that it is already broken in parts. Again, creating a local numerical superiority, the Finns crush these boilers one by one. Well, the easternmost cauldron near the village of Uomaa lasted until the end of the war, and, in general, it survived to a large extent due to the fact that there was 1 company of the 4th NKVD border regiment. Those. they were local border guards who were very familiar with local conditions, well equipped, and highly motivated. And, in fact, for these events, 6 of our border guards received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. I would like, in general, to tell you about one. Red Army soldier Samsonov Vladimir Andreevich, born 17, i.e. he is 22 years old, a candidate member of the CPSU (b), a shooter of the 3rd company of the 4th regiment of the NKVD troops. This refers to 4 border regiments, i.e. border guards. But, again, unfortunately, in modern Russia, someone will see the 4th regiment of the NKVD troops there, he probably shot Finnish peasants there, who were no longer there. Well, just now, the idea for the title of Hero sounds enough, it generally sounds like a saga about the Vikings. “In one of the battles on January 17, 1940, repelling the attack of the White Finns, comrade. Samsonov was wounded in the arm by a bullet and a fragment of a mine and was evacuated to a first-aid post. However, he refused to stay in the dugout and, voluntarily returning to the trenches, continued to fight heroically with the enemy. Due to poor treatment, the entire left arm ceased to function and began to fester. Feeling it and making sure that the hand is weak, comrade. Samsonov himself broke it at the wound site and, throwing it out of the trench, in the presence of all the fighters, said: “Now it doesn’t bother me, now it will be easier for me to beat the White Finns.” And in all subsequent battles, up to the release of the garrison after the conclusion of peace, comrade. Samsonov heroically repulsed the onslaught of the White Finnish gangs, throwing grenades at them with one right hand. This is an exceptionally heroic behavior of a candidate member of the party of the Red Army Comrade. Samsonov played a colossal role in inspiring all the other fighters, in rallying them into a strong Bolshevik garrison, impregnable for the enemy. Here is a man who received a “Hero”, and, in fact, everyone who received “Heroes” for all this, for fighting surrounded by these little ones, these are precisely the border guards, because indeed, apparently, they were the most highly motivated, the strongest. Because the really gigantic problem of these small pockets was that there were a lot of supplies there, there were rears, here, in fact, here is the next garrison in the area of ​​the fork in the road, there were 1200 people, 500 of them were wounded. And so the Finns surrounded them, and there were people from different regiments, from different units, there began, as you understand, some kind of quarrels, such as “you are not from our unit, why are you coming here?” Then, as you understand, people began to starve, people began to hallucinate. There, by chance, someone had hallucinations, shot his own. Those. people have already begun to see some illusions, some kind of ghosts, and they thought that it was only Finns around. But, despite this, the commanders managed to build everyone, and this small garrison, excuse me, 1,200 people, of which 500 were wounded, it held out until the end of the war, and, accordingly, as a result, those who held out there, they left the encirclement. And how long did it take to stay? Well, they kept, excuse me, from about the 20th of January to March 13th. This, by the way, was the tragedy of the environment, that if on the Raat road, everything ended there in a week, then here people, excuse me, spent the whole of February, and another 2 weeks in March, and it was also frosts of minus 30, there was no food. Those. one can imagine what was generally done there in this taiga, in the middle of the forest, when there was nothing to eat. And, of course, the command understood that if you don’t help, then the people there will simply die of hunger. Therefore, all of our aircraft, simply all that was in this area, from Lodeynoye Pole, from Besovets to Petrozavodsk, they were all sent to supply our units, i.e. for food dumping. But the problem with these small boilers was that the drop zone was very small, and therefore, very often, in general, these packages, bags of food fell either on neutral, or even fell to the Finns. There are rumors that when the next package of food fell to the Finns, there were shouts in Russian from there “thanks to Comrade Stalin for buckwheat porridge!” But, again, it is not clear - rumors, not rumors. But, again, an interesting point, what is really in the combat log of this our garrison, as it was called, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe fork in the road, it is directly written there that when there was a drop in food, very often it really happened that a bag or container , falling to the ground, it broke, and there biscuits, cookies and everything else scattered, it directly says that as soon as some kind of food package fell on the forest, then the shooting simply stopped, ours and the Finns ran through the forest, collecting these biscuits without shooting at each other. Only when everything was assembled, only after that did they return to their positions again, take rifles, and start shooting at each other. Those. so there was nothing to eat? Otherwise, such peacefulness cannot be explained in any way. In fact, there, too, among the Finns, too, everything could not be said that everything was very simple. If, excuse me, such garrisons held out, again, this is the 2nd garrison that managed to hold out. 3 in the area of ​​​​Lake Suojärvi was very small, there were a couple of hundred people, and, in fact, the Finns crushed them at the end of February, i.e. just from the neighboring garrison, from the fork in the road, they simply said that the radio connection was lost, and we hear that the sounds of battle are dying down. And after the end of hostilities, about 200 dead people were found there. The next garrison, in the west, near the village of Lovajärvi, he was sitting there, and, in fact, fortunately, on February 14 he already received permission to break through, and, in general, by and large, managed to get out of there. Those. here, in fact, when they generalize everything and say that the Finns destroyed all the boilers, this is not entirely true. Those. there, indeed, 2 boilers held out, 1 small one died, 4 escaped. But here, closer to Pitkyaranta, the situation was very, very difficult, because, unfortunately, if we look at picture 6, the encirclement of the 18th division of the 34th light tank brigade, there, again, it turned out very, very unsuccessfully. Those. the Finns cut off the 68th division of Bondarev from the 18th rifle division, and, again, those units of the 18th rifle division that were surrounded were not placed in the same way. And, of course, the worst thing is that the commander of the 18th rifle division, brigade commander Kondrashov, lost his nerve. He had a nervous breakdown, he withdrew himself from command, i.e. simply stopped doing anything, did not organize defense, i.e. how they stood on the road, how, accordingly, everything stood, and when, in fact, the Finns surrounded - well, they also dug some trenches near the road, did not even occupy the dominant heights, which were literally 500 meters from the road, and, well, of course, the Finns occupied them, and they simply began to shoot through the entire encirclement area. Well, and the most important thing was that, indeed, it is obvious because Kondrashov blundered, because it was generally not clear what to do, i.e. if in December it was clear that yes, we are advancing, we have now united with the 168th division, 2 regiments are going to Loymola, trying to break through towards 56th, and 168th will now go to Sortavala, i.e. there is an attack going on. But then the Finnish counter-offensive begins, and, obviously, our command simply did not know what to do with it. As a result, I had the honor to communicate with 1 veteran from the 34th light tank brigade, with a Muscovite, he said that we just sat and did not know what to do at all, i.e. it was not clear why we are here, that we are here, what will happen now. Those. this apathy, and indeed in the army, when it is not clear what to do, this does not have a very good effect on the morale of the troops, in the first place. Yes, why is this Comrade. Tverskoy, Arkady Tverskoy, God rest his soul, he died recently, why is he a Muscovite: because the 34th light tank brigade was actually from Naro-Fominsk, it was an elite part of the Red Army, and on May 1, 39, it was their BT tanks that paraded along Red Square, i.e. part was so ... Elite. The part is elite, and, in fact, there are 105 BT tanks in it, and they arrived there in order to enter the gap after the Finnish defense line was broken, but, again, of course, this was an absolutely wrong decision, because everything There is a forest there. And 105 BT tanks, they simply blocked the roadsides, and when our units were surrounded, in fact, our tankers simply dug them into the ground and used them as fixed firing points. So, well, actually, the situation is such that our parts are really cut into separate boilers, and, well, the Finns, in fact, are gradually starting to cut it all into pieces. They succeed with the 18th Rifle Division, again, because Kondrashov frankly blundered, and they do not succeed with the neighboring 168th Rifle Division, because Bondarev, the commander of this division, was a much more energetic commander. Those. he immediately said - well, we were surrounded, which means we are narrowing the defense perimeter, i.e. we retreat to more advantageous positions, which means that all regiments stand together, which means that we have placed tanks everywhere. Yes, they had T-37, T-38 wedges, quite weak, but as if buried in the ground, with a machine gun, they showed themselves well even when repelling Finnish attacks. And so Bondarev said that ... i.e. he made it so that the Finns could not even, i.e. they tried to attack them a couple of times, but after that they realized that the commander was energetic, he realized that it was necessary to build a defensive perimeter and not let his division be cut to pieces. Those. The 168th division calmly held out until the end of the war, and their encirclement area was so large that they were there, in fact, on the ice of Pitkyaranta Bay, they made a runway there in general, and planes landed on them in the environment. Those. they didn’t drop bags of food, but sat straight down, and heavy bombers of TB also used them to supply them. Those. everything was more or less normal with them, which, unfortunately, cannot be said about the 2 regiments of the 18th rifle division, because, obviously, they had already lost, in fact, leadership from Kondrashov, who, respectively, was surrounded in Lemetti. (let's better put it here) Do not forget about the numbers of the pictures. And, accordingly, the Finns first began to put pressure on our units, surrounded in the area of ​​the fork in the road, i.e. right here right here. Accordingly, the area of ​​the fork in the road - picture 07, the death of the boiler. And look, please, picture 08, this is the Finns photographed the area where the boiler died, it’s just, unfortunately, the entire battlefield is littered with the bodies of our dead. And it is in this place, in the area of ​​​​the death of the “fork in the road” boiler, that the Cross of Sorrow stands, picture 09, this is a joint monument that Russia and Finland erected in the early 2000s. It was in these places that the tanker V.A. died in February 1940. Tereshkov, father of VV Tereshkova, the world's first female cosmonaut. Those. she came there to lay flowers on her father's grave. Those. he was from the Yaroslavl region, if I remember correctly, the Finnish war began, he was called up as a driver, and, accordingly, he died there in this place. Well, the next thing is just the death of the so-called regimental boiler. This, unfortunately, is a classic example of when there was no general leadership, it was not clear what to do, and as a result, in fact, the Finns managed such a huge cauldron, where, in general, there were 2 rifle regiments, a howitzer regiment, an artillery regiment , another separate tank battalion, managed to destroy it almost completely. Why did this happen - because Kondrashov from Lemetti contacted them by radio, he says - get through to us. They say - no, let's make our way to the south, to the encirclement area of ​​​​the 168th rifle division. 168 tried to break through to meet them, tried to get them out of there. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. But, in fact, by February 18, the boiler was completely destroyed, the Finns announced trophies of 22 tanks and 36 guns. Wow. Again, ours had a lot of tanks in those places, because there were also 2 separate tank battalions. Those. 1 of the 18 rifle division, plus there was, respectively, the 34 light tank brigade, in which there were 105 BT tanks of various types. Well, having dealt with this large cauldron, the Finns begin to deal, respectively, with the boilers in the Lemetti region, where it is divided into western and eastern Lemetti. This means that in western Lemetti there is one of our tank battalions from the 34th light tank brigade, a bakery of the 18th rifle division, and someone else. Those. it also turns out that somehow everything, i.e. non-combat units are gathered together, and it was in western Lemetti that this tragic situation happened, which is well described, that, in general, the battalion commander, captain Ryazanov, began to prepare the battalion for a breakthrough, because, perhaps, everyone had forgotten, but the tanks have ammunition , and most importantly, there is fuel. If the tank has no fuel, it won't go anywhere. When the battalion still had a sufficient supply of fuel so that the tanks could be withdrawn, so that there was ammunition, which, accordingly, could somehow be fought, Captain Ryazanov said - that's it, we're going, now we'll break through to our own, respectively, right here. Literally between them was ... about 1 km, it was only necessary to break through in order to connect with the encirclement area, where the brigade headquarters was sitting, and, by the way, where Kondrashov was sitting in a tent, having actually removed himself from command. But, again, there was no order, sit and wait. But when Ryazanov began to make orders about the fact that we were going and leaving, the head of the special department of the battalion said that we had no order, so excuse me, we will not go anywhere. Ryazanov said that I was the commander here, I give orders, a quarrel broke out between them, and the head of the special department Ryazanov shot dead on the spot. Yes, and just in the regimental cauldron, there, too, the commanders all quarreled, because some say to go there, others say to go there, i.e. the lack of a unified leadership, this led to chaos and mass deaths of our military personnel. Well, as a result, literally 200 of our people left the western boiler, all the tanks were abandoned, everything was left to the Finns. Intelligent Specialist. Yes, and, accordingly, Finnish trophies amounted to 32 tanks. But time goes by, in fact, there is frankly nothing to eat, i.e. indeed, the encirclement area is small, it’s hard to drop there, very little food falls there, and, accordingly, the head of the special department of the 34th light tank brigade, Doronkin, says that listen, that’s it, the edge has come, because, excuse me, we’re already eating bark from trees, already everyone horses have been eaten, everything is already there, people have been brought to physical exhaustion. Because, again, they got into the cauldron, excuse me, in mid-January, in the 2nd half of January, it was already the 20th of February in the yard. Those. people in the cold -30, with malnutrition have been for more than a month, and in a very crowded, small area. And all this is happening in some, excuse me, 5 km from Pitkyaranta, where our troops are sitting, and where new troops are slowly starting to arrive. And indeed, all these radiograms from the boiler that were going on, i.e. radio communication was maintained, they really show that, probably, those who were in the boiler took a too passive position, because they were told - please come, save us, we cannot believe that the enemy is so strong here. It’s not far at all here, it’s 5 km in a straight line through the taiga to Pitkyaranta, where Stern sits, where all our bosses sit. Well, and, accordingly, the headquarters of the 8th Army and the 15th Army, which began to concentrate here, is already new, and the 15th Army was actually a grouping that came entirely from the Belarusian Military District, i.e. The first commander of the 15th Army was Kovalyov, commander of the Belarusian Special Military District. But, again, due to the fact that there is only one road, the concentration of parts went very, very slowly. And Stern kept pulling and pulling, and said, wait, help is coming, but by February 27 and 28, our people in the boiler said that everything, no strength, we were going to break through. And, accordingly, indeed, please look at picture 12, a breakthrough from eastern Lemetti, they were divided into 2 columns, respectively, and, in general, one column was actually completely destroyed, this is a column, if I remember correctly, Smirnov, moreover most of the patients were sent there. Here one column was completely destroyed, the second managed to somehow reach the Pitkyaranta area, and, accordingly, the column that left was not led by Kondrashov, but by the chief of staff of the 18th rifle division, Colonel Alekseev, because Kondrashov, according to unverified reports, took off commander's uniform, put on the usual Red Army uniform, and left, in general, at the end of the column. He was, apparently, slightly injured during the exit, but remained alive, again, was actually immediately detained and placed under investigation. How did the investigation end? Again, here, the first is the commander of the 18th rifle division Kondrashov, and the commander of the 34th light tank brigade Kondratiev, they were constantly confused, and both ours and Finnish radio intelligence were simply constantly confused. So, it means that the commander of the 34th light tank brigade, the commissar of the brigade, the head of the special department, all shot themselves when they left the encirclement when they realized that they had fallen into a Finnish ambush, respectively. Those. the entire command of the 34th brigade died, but the command of the 18th rifle division managed to get out. During the breakout from the encirclement, the head of the political department died, and, in fact, it is not very clear where the banner went, because the banner of the division was just wrapped around his body, and there is such a version that the battle flag of the division, the Finns have it somewhere , but this is not the banner they display. If you go now to the Central Museum of the Defense Forces of Finland, then in a place of honor hangs a beautiful, embroidered with silver, scarlet banner of the 18th rifle division, on which is written "18th Yaroslavl rifle division." But researchers from Petrozavodsk claim that this is just the anniversary banner of the division, which was issued to all divisions on the 20th anniversary of the Red Army, i.e. in 38, and the battle banner disappeared somewhere. And allegedly, here it was on the body of the head of the political department, and allegedly, it seems that someone even saw a photograph of the body of the head of the political department, taken by the Finns, but the banner disappeared somewhere. Maybe a fighter, what kind of officer is with him? Nothing is clear at all, absolutely nothing is clear, but the bottom line is that indeed, as you can understand, the situation, in addition to the loss of the banner, the situation here was already extremely difficult, because, excuse me, the 18th Infantry Division because of this sitting surrounded, due to ineffective leadership, due to everything else, suffered the highest losses, in general, among our divisions in the Finnish War. Those. at the beginning of the battle, when they had just been surrounded, there were about 10,000 people in the division. But after all this, when Kondrashov was already placed under investigation, and Colonel Alekseev was appointed acting commander of the division, who led everyone out of the encirclement, so he calculated that the total losses of the division amounted to 8754 people. This is out of 10,000 people, i.e. in fact, there are less than a fifth of them left. Those. heavy losses, the banner was lost, the Finns got virtually all the equipment as trophies, plus BT tanks, so please look at pictures 13, 14, 15 - trophies. Cruel. Yes. Well, it’s clear that all this happens at the end of February 1940, and, again, it was trumpeted again, of course, by Finnish propaganda, indeed, this is a victory, you can’t deny it. Indeed, the defeat of one division and a light tank brigade, and, again, exactly the same thing, in parts, but, again, to our great regret, if everything was fast in the Suomussalmi and Raata area, then here ours were still sitting for a very long time in boilers. Of course, people went through terrible trials, and just physical torment - and hunger, and cold, and night blindness, and illness, anything. It is clear that Kondrashov was placed under investigation. There is a version that after the war was voiced by veterans who left the encirclement. One of them said that I saw that Kondrashov was right ... the NKVD officers came straight to the hospital, they arrested him in the hospital, took him out into the yard, and immediately shot him. But the documents say otherwise, i.e. this is most likely just a legend, because the documents say that he was really arrested, placed under investigation, taken to Moscow, the investigation went on for a long time, he was forced to write a long explanatory note why his division was defeated in this way. The verdict was announced to him - execution, he filed an appeal, and in it he wrote that I do not think that I am a finished person, I believe that I can still serve my homeland. But the investigation considered otherwise, he was shot only in August 1940, i.e. from March to August he was under investigation, there were really legal proceedings, and he even had the opportunity to file a petition for pardon, which did not help. But in this case, it’s probably understandable that such a defeat, again, someone had to be punished, and it was clear that there was a lot of fault here, that for some reason he could not, like Bondarev, normally organize defense why they didn't occupy the heights right next to the road, where they could sit quietly, repulsing the Finnish attacks, thereby making the area large enough to make it easier for them to drop food, etc. Those. indeed, this is a big failure on our part, big trophies, many dead, wounded were abandoned again. And all the wounded, apparently, were finished off by the Finns in dugouts. Again, this is something that, in general, the Finns somehow don’t really like to remember, but, indeed, there are many sources that indicate that the wounded were abandoned in dugouts, and then, accordingly, the dugouts are just were either blown up with overhead charges, or were burned along with the wounded, or the wounded were finished off, respectively, by blows from rifle butts and bayonets. Those. also a very ugly story, in fact. Here, as you understand, all this place of encirclement remained on our territory after the war, therefore ... Here is a top secret act on March 17, i.e. 4 days after the end of the war, this act was drawn up by a commission, the chairman of the commission of the military commissar of the 56th rifle corps, brigade commissar Seryakov, acting. commander of the 18th division, Colonel Sokolov, acting military commissar of the 18th division, deputy. Head of the special department of the NKVD, and head of the 2nd department of the 56th rifle corps. What do they write? So... It's quite long, but I'll read the following. Lemetti south. Ours called Lemetti southern, the Finns called Lemetti eastern. “Lemetti South bears the traces of fierce and stubborn battles, representing a continuous cemetery of corpses, broken military and transport vehicles. The entire defense area of ​​the KP 18 SD is pitted with craters from shells, 90% of the trees in the defense area are mowed down art. shells. 10 dugouts were found, destroyed by art. shells of 152 m / m artillery, with people who were there. The remaining dugouts were mostly blown up by the Finns when they occupied Lemetti. 18 corpses of Red Army soldiers were found, burned by the Finns in dugouts, one corpse was found in a dugout, tied with wires to the bunks and shot, and one corpse with a rope tightened around its neck. Cars, trees, iron pipes of dugout stoves and all local objects are riddled with bullets and shell fragments. All military and economic property and personal property was demolished and piled by the Finns along the road. Well, and, accordingly, about the fate of the columns: “In the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbreaking through the enemy’s defense, a column of the head of the headquarters of the 18th SD, Colonel Alekseev, found 201 corpses, mainly in the enemy’s defense area and near wire barriers. In the area of ​​​​breaking through the enemy defenses, a column of the head of the headquarters of the 34th LTBR, ​​Colonel Smirnov, found 150 corpses, and 120 corpses of the remaining seriously wounded were found in hospital dugouts. Finnish corpses were not found, because. those were removed by the Finns between 29.2.40 and 17.3.40." Yes, the actual column that died: “About 400 dead were found in the area of ​​the Finnish camp, which is 2.5 km east of Lemetti, among which were identified: Head of the Political Department of the 18th SD Battalion Commissar. Razumov, Chief Artillery 56 SC - Colonel Bolotov, military commissar 97 OBS - senior political instructor Tyurin, military commissar 56 ORB - Art. political instructor Suvorov, pom. the head of the political department for the Komsomol, political instructor Samoznaev, the instructor of the political department of the 18th SD - political instructor Smirnov and his wife, the representative of the Air Force of the 8th Army, Lieutenant Permyakov, the Head of the Division's Vehicle Fleet and many others. In the area of ​​the death of the Northern Column, the following was established: the trees, for the most part, bear traces of a two-way shootout, which indicates the armed resistance of the Northern Group. During the examination, it was found that, despite the presence of mortal wounds, a significant part of the dead bears traces of shooting in the head and finishing off with rifle butts. One of the victims, shod in Finnish Peksa boots, is put upside down against a tree. The wife of the instructor of the political department of the 18th SD, Smirnova (who worked in the political department on party account) was naked and our hand grenade was inserted between her legs. Buttonholes and sleeve insignia were torn off most of the command staff. The orders that the commanding staff had were pulled out by the Finns with matter. Here is such a document about what happened when you exited the environment. Again, it is clear that it was necessary to do this much earlier, but still, an order is an order, so they really waited a long time, a very long time. And there are also memories, it is written here that most of the dead were in the area of ​​​​the wire, there many people could no longer even walk from the fact that they were hungry, and simply crawled out of the encirclement. Those. such a tragic fate befell the 18th rifle division and the 34th light tank brigade in the Soviet-Finnish war. It is clear that, once again, I will say that Finnish propaganda has, of course, trumpeted all this very much. A huge number of photographs were taken, and jubilant Finns, and trophies, and, again, our frozen corpses by the road, and so on and so forth. But, at the same time, I really need to say - from my point of view, this played a cruel joke on the Finns, because this all happens on February 27-28, when on the Karelian Isthmus, if we recall the previous story, the intermediate line of defense of the Finns has already been broken through, and ours are already, in general, moving towards Vyborg, and are aiming at the encirclement of Vyborg. Those. if our units are defeated here, then in the key theater of military operations, i.e. this is the Helsinki direction, the Finnish army is defeated. And, of course, the Finnish media and Finnish propaganda, she did not talk about what was happening near Vyborg, she, on the contrary, told what was happening here. And therefore, when after 2 weeks peace was concluded on terms that were not favorable for Finland, they now say that Finland won because it retained its independence, etc., assessments always change. But then, excuse me, all the newspapers came out in a mourning frame, all the flags were at half mast ... As a sign of victory, right? And, in fact, all foreign journalists, too, they regarded it as a victory for Russia. And, in fact, for the Finns it was a huge shock that we are fighting so cool, and it seems that here another 1 division was defeated, and the tank brigade was defeated, and the banner was captured, and in general everything is great, but here after 2 weeks it turns out, that we ended up losing. Those. propaganda is good, but it can, in this way, really lure public opinion into a certain trap, it can simply backfire with a huge shock for people. But this is what is happening in the Lemetti area, and further north, beyond Pitkäranta, the 168th Infantry Division is still holding out, and, accordingly, the new 15th Army is quietly concentrating, which arrives from the Belarusian Military District in order to break through the blockade ring of the 168th Infantry Division . But, again, please look at picture 17, communications of the 8th and 15th army, this is the only road that runs along Ladoga. But the most interesting thing is that much to the south, in the Salmi area, i.e. it is 50 kilometers to the south, near Ladoga there are the islands of Lunkulunsaari and Mantsisaari, where there are 2 Finnish 152 mm cannons, and a separate Finnish battalion is sitting there. And with their fire they periodically shoot through this road. Tov. Stern did not guess to take these islands by storm, and thereby, in fact, remove this obstacle to his only communication. In April 1940, when the commander-in-chief comrade. Stalin gathered all the commanders of the Red Army for a meeting in the Kremlin in order for them to tell how they fought in the Soviet-Finnish war, Stern began to say that the Finns had a giant fort, absolutely impregnable, on this island, and therefore they did not climb there. Stalin interrupted him and said that you know, there were 2 guns and 1 battalion, I don’t need to flood. Those. Stalin was aware that the Finns were not crowded there. But, again, they just left them alone there, calmly sat out until the truce, and until the truce, they, respectively, fired at this only road. And, by the way, it must, of course, be emphasized that after the war, at this conference, which we will discuss separately, our commanders greatly exaggerated the strength of the Finnish fortifications. Of course, it was necessary to somehow justify their not very effective actions. So, our reinforcements, in fact, go along this road, including the 204th airborne brigade from Borispol, from Ukraine, arriving on foot in mid-February. And, indeed, they come by train, on echelons to Lodeynoye Pole, from Lodeynoye Pole they walk 200 km, after which they are immediately thrown into battle to take the islands in Pitkyarantsky Bay. And the first battle ended for ours in a complete fiasco, because there was no reconnaissance, and all this only led to very high losses among our paratroopers. I must say that there is also such a stereotype that the Finns, they heard that there were some kind of paratroopers, and they directly thought that the paratroopers parachuted to these islands at night, but this is absolutely not confirmed by our documents. Our documents confirm that the brigade launched a battalion-by-battalion attack in mid-February, and, in general, immediately lost more than half of its personnel on the ice in front of the islands. They were excellent commanders. I'm surprised that special departments, such handsome men, didn't shoot everyone there. How would they shoot there, i.e. so when the command of the 15th army, somehow their first attack on the islands failed in mid-February, the second attack failed on February 23, then Kovalev was removed. After that, Kurdyumov was appointed commander of the 15th Army. And look, please, picture 18, breaking through the blockade of the 168th Infantry Division and the battle for the islands. The situation there was gloomy, in general, for both sides, both for ours and for the Finns, because, therefore, the Finns occupied these islands, at first everything seemed to be fine with them, they fired at our carts, which tried to break through at night on the ice of the Pitkyaranta Bay into the 168th division, shot them from machine guns and mortars. But when they began to put pressure on our islands, then, accordingly, of course, they didn’t do well there, this time. And the second is, in general, when it became clear that it would be very bad now, it was clear that ours attacked once, attacked twice, the attack was unsuccessful twice, but the second time they went somehow with the tanks. It is clear that the third time will be even more and even stronger. In general, those Finns who were on the islands, they were just there, in general, the officers abandoned them, the artillery scouts left, and, in fact, the book that describes the battles for these 2 islands - Lunkulunsaari and Mantsisaari - is in Finnish it is called “Front of the Forgotten”, “Front of the Abandoned”. You could say they were also left there... Commanders? Yeah, like hold on as long as you can. But they could only hold out until March 6, because on March 6 in battle both garrisons were actually completely destroyed by ours. And in the previous attacks, as it was - our aircraft flies, begins to bomb the islands, and at the same time an artillery raid is launched on the islands, moreover, the islands are completely rocky, and it is clear that there ... You will not burrow. You can't burrow there, and the rocks are a striking factor - when a shell hits them, there are fragments, granite dust and everything, everything, everything flies. Well, what did the Finns do - they just ran away from the island and lay on the ice. They are in white camouflage robes, they are not visible, then, when the attack begins, the Finns return to the island and open fire from the island. Ours in the 3rd attack, in fact, realized that, in general, the Finns were doing this, and already during the 3rd assault, in fact, it was agreed that our fighters were constantly loitering around the island, and when they saw that someone was there - sometimes he runs around in white camouflage suits, they just open fire on them. Those. and you can’t hide on the island, and, accordingly, you can’t hide on the ice either. Well, there are memories of just one of our paratroopers, who was in the first attack, in the second, in the third, i.e. he saw it all. And, in fact, there are very interesting memories of this third attack. “By 12 o'clock, the battalion units had liberated a third of the island, but were stopped by strong fire from the Finns. The battalion commander Solop reported the situation by telephone to the commander of the brigade I. I. Gubarevich and asked to move the artillery attack on the northern part of the island to 12 hours 50 minutes and attack the Finns at 13. Such a 10-minute artillery attack was carried out, and the fighters shouted "Hurrah!" attacked the enemy and went forward with the support of tanks. But our aviation appeared here and began to impede the advance of the battalion by their actions, firing at their own. Those. well, yes, aviation has an order, if there are some people in white running around, then they need to be shot. “...Captain Solop tried to contact the aviation by radio, but it was useless, he swore at them for what it was worth. At this time, a group of about 10 people in camouflage suits approached us. Solop continued to call for aircraft on the radio. One of the group asked: “Who is the commander here?” "Well, I, what do you want from me?" Solop said angrily. “I, Comrade Commander, Deputy People's Commissar - Kulik. What is holding you back now?" - he asked. I see my battalion commander turned pale from pink, he could not immediately report the situation. “Calm down,” said G. I. Kulik, “does aviation interfere with you?” "Yes, comrade deputy commissar, aviation is firing at its own and preventing it from moving forward." “Now, comrade Solop, I will instruct aviation on my radio to fire on the northern part of the island.” His radio operator was able to quickly contact the aircraft, and she suffered a blow to the northern part of the island of Maximan-Sari. After that, the battalion went forward ... "Ie. you also see that there was still no aircraft controller in combat formations on the ground. And the personal presence of the marshal is required in order to reorient it all. Yes, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, i.e. 2 people in the People's Commissariat. But, it means that when the islands were taken, our official archival documents record that the commanders lost control over the fighters, and, in fact, the fighters were so embittered by the previous unsuccessful assaults on these islands that just all the prisoners, i.e. even those who tried to surrender, the Finns were simply killed on the spot. Plus, again, such a powerful artillery raid was carried out on the islands that when ours entered the island, they saw that many Finnish soldiers were simply torn to pieces by shells. The Finns had something like a dressing station behind one rock, and so, the bomb hit the rock, and the rock just collapsed, they buried everyone alive there. And, in general, virtually no one from the Finns escaped from these islands. Literally a few wounded were saved, who realized that, probably, there was no need to give up, they just crawled away at dusk, in the afternoon, again, in their camouflage suits on the ice, and then crawled for a long time to their own, respectively, to the north. Well, just like in other places, the Finns in these units had a territorial principle for the formation of regiments, they were just from 2 neighboring villages, from Rantasalmi ... no, sorry, not from neighboring ones, there from the area just Savolaksa, from Rantasalmi and from Nilse, from 2 villages, almost everyone died there. Therefore, in the 2000s, they went to these islands, from 2 of their villages they erected monuments there. (picture 19, monument on the islands). Those. this is how, in general, the Soviet-Finnish war in the Ladoga region ended. Initial success, then the Finns stopped ours, launched a counterattack planned long before that, cut off communications, one of our commanders got a nervous breakdown and removed himself from command. Never heard of it. The second commander, on the contrary, gathers his division into a very dense defensive perimeter, arranges supplies, builds a runway on the ice there, and holds on until the end of the war. The 18th Rifle Division is practically completely destroyed, the 34th Light Tank Brigade loses half of its personnel and all tanks. Well, everything ends with the concentration of our new army, and on the third attempt, the capture of the islands of Pitkäranta Bay, heavy losses for the Finns, heavy losses for ours, but the 168th division is released. And, of course, the question may immediately arise, but what, the Red Army seems to be a humane army, all people are brothers ... Komsomol members. Komsomols, yes. We are not fighting against the Finnish people, we are fighting against the White Finnish gangs, we generally wanted to liberate Finland. Why such cruelty, why the prisoners, ie. those who tried to surrender, why were they finished off? Why finished off the wounded? I remember from childhood that they were always called lakhtars, i.e. butchers, these same Finns. You know, there, by the way, in this document, where it is written that they finished off, it is directly stated that when they ran on skis to the island to attack, they ran on skis over the bodies of their comrades who died in previous attacks, and you can imagine how they felt when in mid-February they did not take, put a certain number of their own - young, 20-year-olds, the same Komsomol members, paratroopers, the elite. February 23 is the same. And only on March 6, on the third attempt, they reached these islands, and there really was everything, they did not give mercy. And this is indeed reflected in our official archival documents, it is directly written down. These are sad places, i.e. no success. Yes, it seems that it was planned to attack, i.e. when 168 is released, attack Sortavala, etc. But, again, the end of hostilities on all these plans put an end to it. Although the Finns also have a legend there that in Sortavala, Finnish reservists are sitting there, and they hear that, accordingly, the Russians have, excuse me, a whole army there, a lot of fresh troops have approached Pitkyaranta, and now they will rush across the ice into Sortavala, and allegedly everyone there just arranged a giant drinking bout in Sortaval that they would not be able to keep the city. Those. already the complete superiority of the enemy. But these are also such legends and tales, of which there are many on both sides. But I would not like to end there, because we have the 56th Infantry Division nearby, literally 50 km away, which, from the side of Loimala, from the side of Solvajärvi, is trying to break into these same places in general. And this is another theater of operations on the river. Calla so-called. Picture 20, the battle on the Kolla River, in December, in fact, everything happens there as follows. The 56th rifle division is advancing, one Finnish regiment is defending, and just on the Kolla River, relying on the dominant heights, the Finns stop ours. That is, again, no encirclement happened there simply because neither ours nor the Finns had the strength to do so. Those. both sides tried to make detours, repulsed each other, after which the front stood up. And he got up, in fact, until March 1940. Why are we talking about this at all - simply because the Finnish sniper Simo Hyaukha fought there (picture 22). Simo Hyaukhya is one of the symbols of the Soviet-Finnish war, and, accordingly, he is probably more famous in Finland than Vasily Zaitsev and other Soviet snipers. And as I said in the last broadcast, in fact, a legend was made of him already during the Finnish War, and only increased after the war (picture 21, sniper Simo Hyaukha in mid-February 1940). A positional war is already underway, nothing seems to be happening, a Swedish delegation arrives, gives Khyaukhya a Swedish rifle, Colonel Svensson presents him with a diploma, i.e. there is such a beautiful ceremony that everyone takes pictures of, and, accordingly, that's exactly how he stands, smiling, in picture 21 with a Swedish rifle presented to him, if I'm not mistaken. And indeed, from mid-December to March, nothing much happens there. Different sources indicate a completely different number of his victories, let's say so. Up to 700 people are attributed to him, but let's have some doubts about this number, which some sources cite, especially Internet sources. The fact is that, again, the front stood up somewhere in the 20th of December, and Simo Hyaukhya was seriously wounded by a hit of either an explosive bullet or a fragment in the jaw on March 5, 1940. Those. he, it turns out, January, February, 2 more weeks, i.e. it turns out somewhere around 70 days ... 10 people a day. Yes, it turns out 10 people a day. Seven days a week. Yes, no days off. It is interesting that he was the first, he showed his position, he returned to these places in 41, and the place where he was is known. Indeed, the position chosen is wonderful, picture 22, Simo Hyaukha shows his firing position, this is a rock, and the rock is such that on the right and left it is covered with rocks, and on the left in front it is also covered with a rock. Simo Hyaukhya was very short, he was himself a peasant, obviously not from a very rich family, i.e. malnourished, so he was 1.55 tall. He was very short, you can see his uniform in the Central Museum of the Finnish Defense Forces, you can see that he was small. Further, he fired from a rifle without a sniper scope, i.e. he had a maximum range of 400-450 meters. And now there are estimates that he may have reached 200 victories as a sniper, but you know, if we know where his firing position was, he crawled out to neutral, i.e. he was not sitting in the Finnish trenches. He crawled out into neutral, even went beyond the Finnish gouges. Here at this position. If we know the radius of destruction of his rifle approximately, and we know the number of the regiment that was stationed there, then if we try to evaluate his victories, his real sniper score, you just need to take the losses of this regiment and see how many were killed there during this time. The whole regiment, apparently, right? To be honest, I have this ... Or else they had to be adjusted to satisfy the bloodthirsty. You know, in fact, they say that we have all sorts of legends here and all that, but in the same place ... It is unacceptable. Only truth. No, no, listen. Finnish tourists, here they are, for them this is really a national hero, i.e. as for us Vasily Zaitsev, or who else is there, Kozhedub, one of the greatest military heroes. And, accordingly, the Finns told me that you know, he was nicknamed "white death" ... Russians? Yes, ours called him "white death". Never met anywhere. Frost was more likely to be called white death. Those. As a researcher, this raises serious doubts for me. The second thing they sent, almost personally, Stalin drove a whole army of snipers to hunt for him. Most importantly, he said, the Finns said they sent 5 female snipers. White tights. Yes, white tights. That they were very cool, but all the same, Hyauhya killed them all, because, like, their optics shone, but mine didn’t. And he had no optics. Finnish trick. Finnish trick, but he also said that he explained after the war, i.e. he died in 2002, sorry, he lived a very long life, and there was a whole pilgrimage to him from Finns, and Americans, and anyone. They went to him, recorded interviews with him, and asked - why like this, why without a sniper scope, etc. He said, firstly, the optics can fog up in winter, that's one thing. The second - from his point of view, through a sniper scope, through an optical sight, you need to aim longer. Well, and the third - after all, if there is a sniper scope, it glares, that’s one thing, and number 2 is that you still need to raise your head literally 2-3 cm higher, because the sniper scope is located higher than a regular scope on the barrel of a rifle. Those. here is his explanation. Sorry, I’ll interrupt, I doubt very much that without a sight at 400 meters you can hit somewhere. Well, supposedly he is a Finnish hunter, etc. With a scope, not everyone hits 400 meters. I do not believe, as Stanislavsky said. Again, if one would like to really do a normal, calm, neutral study, exactly how much, i.e. try to estimate the losses that are in our units ... Is it possible to somehow get the data? So, I'm saying that you just need to take the data on the losses of the regiment that stood against Khyaukhya, and in general see what their total losses were for December, January, February. What happened there? Maybe it will turn out there that 40 people were killed and 100 wounded there. How did they rate it? Well, Khyaukhya came in the evening and said how many he allegedly killed there. But, nevertheless, no matter how much he killed, for the Finns this is one of the symbols of the Soviet-Finnish war. It is clear that now they say that 700 is probably an exaggeration, because already, as in the photo on February 17, he stands like a hero, he is handed a rifle, a diploma, and so on and so forth. Most likely, 200 ... Still a lot. Many, still outstanding, one of the greatest snipers. But the most important thing that is interesting is that an ordinary Finnish resident, a simple Finnish inhabitant, he will not even bother and question this number. A legend and a legend, now the Finns are starting, in my opinion, filming a film about Simo Hyaukha, about the white death, and there no one will count, like with 28 Panfilov’s men, how many there were, how many tanks they knocked out, everything is one way or another, It doesn't matter - a national hero, a legend, we're filming, and there are no protests among ... Let's look for documents, we'll shoot a video about Simo Hyaohya. Interesting. But, in fact, how it all ended on the Kolla River. Calmness ended in early March, because at the beginning of the Finnish war there was one of our divisions, then by March ours brought 4 more. 2 of our corps were already standing there, overwhelming superiority in infantry, in everything. And, accordingly, just on March 4-5, our people simply begin to put pressure on the Finns from all sides, i.e. they attack not only along the front just on the Kolla River, but they begin to make detours, now there are more forces, much more forces. And just like that, on March 5-6, March 5, Simo Hyaukha is seriously injured. According to the official version, it was just a duel with our sniper, which hit him in the lower jaw, and because of this, in fact, his entire lower jaw was crushed, so his face was very deformed, i.e. his jaw was pieced together in the hospital. This is one version. Another version is that a shell fragment hit, because the fighting became very, very intense again, but despite the overwhelming superiority, the Finns still managed to hold out there until March 13. Although, indeed, their situation again became difficult, i.e. both flanks are already covered, somehow there are no reserves anymore, i.e. it is not clear how it would all end. But, nevertheless, picture 23, the situation on the Colla River at the end of the war, which completes our today's reconnaissance. All the same, the Kolla River and Simo Hyaukhya for the Finns became a symbol of the Finnish army's resilience in the Soviet-Finnish war, that they broke through the Mannerheim line in Summa, and Kolla resisted. They, in fact, came out right after the war, the book of just one serviceman of the Finnish army, who fought there. He called the book that “Colla survived”, the front survived. Therefore, for them, this is also a certain symbol of their courage and stamina, which indeed was high in the Soviet-Finnish war, this cannot be denied. And, accordingly, if someone travels there, unfortunately, the road from Pitkyaranta to Loimala and Suoyarvi is in a terrible state. Those. if it is repaired, then in general it would give an impetus to tourism in these places, but now you just shake 40 km on some PAZik at a speed of 40 km / h. If anyone is there, the Finns brought the monument there, the top of it was broken off, please do not think about local vandals, it was the Finns who carried it themselves and broke it themselves during transportation. Therefore, there should have been a high obelisk, and it turns out that it was broken in half. But now everyone thinks that everything is so special, that the sculptor so specially conceived. But there, in fact, this Finnish obelisk stands on Finnish positions, and on the other side of the river there is a very large mass grave of our soldiers and commanders who died there. And, by the way, on one side of the road is the grave of our fighters and commanders, and on the other side of the road, 100 meters away, is the position of Hyauhya. Those. he really crawled forward, into neutral, and indeed, probably, the fact that he was very small in stature was a big plus in this regard. Plus, really from one, on the left side it was completely covered by a rock. Strange at all. Those. this is a violation of all the rules in general - to sit in one place. Do you think that no one will notice you? They will notice, and sooner or later they will arrive. Well, roughly speaking, the Finnish version is that he was so cooler than all our snipers that, yes, he almost put them there one by one. And so 2 months. But, again, this is about the question that any war, if it is a domestic war, and for the Finns, the Soviet-Finnish war is regarded precisely as a domestic war, that is how Mannerheim proclaimed it on the very first day of the war, that we are fighting for faith, home , and fatherland. Those. not for the faith, the king, and the fatherland, but for the faith, the house, and the fatherland. This is actually a declaration of patriotic war, i.e. we will fight to the end. In any such war, in general, there always appear their own legends, and, of course, Hyaohya is one of them, and, in general, is known throughout the world. Why, in fact, there was such a pilgrimage to him after the war, already in the 90s, 2000s, they came and met with him. He was buried, in fact, in his native places, in the cemetery of the village of Ruokolahti. You will pass there, you can call in, a very small, modest grave. But there on it is just the silhouette of a Finnish soldier in a white camouflage coat, and there are actually always flowers there. Those. to them he is a hero. Yes, now you can argue, study, etc., but still they will make a film where he is there, probably like 300 Spartans, only he will be there alone. And, indeed, yes, if not 700 ... 800. 800, at least he will certainly put our Red Army men there. Queues. Yes. There, obviously, ours will climb like orcs, but there is no discussion about this, that “maybe he didn’t kill so much?”, “Maybe everything was wrong?” absolutely not in Finnish society. And if someone starts raising his voice, then he will probably immediately begin to receive threats to hack to death with an ax in the street, or to stab him with a Finnish knife, because there they are ... in this regard, they are much more touchy than ours, from my point of view. Lost, yeah. Of course, it's a shame. A good example of this is just when 2 young 30-year-old masters of history decided to dig a little into the biography of Lauri Törni, who is another Finnish hero, we need to talk about him separately already in the stories about the second war of 41-44. So they, in general, found documents, and they wrote in the book that he was considered the greatest Finnish warrior, but in fact he was a Nazi, because he, yes, he fought in the Lemetti region in 40 just in 40 Jaeger, then in 41 he went to fight in the SS in the Donbass and in Chechnya, because it was there that the 5th Viking SS division was located, in those parts. Then, in 1943, he returned to Finland, became a Finnish saboteur, left in 1944 after the armistice with the Soviet Union, left Finland for Sweden, from Sweden for the USA, joined the US Army, and only in Vietnam he was calmed down. Only in 65, his helicopter was shot down, he crashed somewhere in the jungle, he was found only in the early 2000s. Well, also in the central museum of the defensive forces of Finland you will see the "Soldier of the 3 armies" - in Finnish uniform, in SS uniform, in American uniform. There is something to be proud of. There is something to be proud of. By the way, he was born in the city of Vyborg, Vyborg, though Finnish. So, these two young people said - and you know that he was a Nazi in general, you know that he was categorically against the truce between Finland and the Soviet Union, he almost planned a military coup in Finland, so as not to reconciled with the USSR, and continued to fight for the Germans. So, these 2 young people began to receive threats to life and health, and were forced to hire security guards for themselves. Not bad. Democracy, yes. 2 years ago, and the book came out at the book fair in Helsinki, this is the premiere, when all the new, most important books in Finland come out, this, of course, became a big scandal, that we thought he was good, but he ... He, it turns out , out what! Yes. But that, again, is a completely different story. There is a feeling that a certain revision is also beginning in Finland. In general, I look - only while the Soviet Union was alive, all this scum was somehow managed to be kept in check, that everyone was forced to agree that Nazism is bad, that it is impossible to serve in the SS, that this is scum, that cooperation with the Nazi mode is not good. And now, it turns out, everything was fine. Those. there is no one to hit the table with his face, and our handsome men support all this with all their might, but why be shy now. In Soviet times, there was a huge self-censorship in Finland, i.e. yes, there were books, yes, there were studies, but it was rather for, as it were, very right-wingers and for veterans. And now it has become mainstream, I would say. It won't lead to good. Well, alas, I'm afraid it won't. Yes, one should write a study about Simo Häuhä someday, because he is a legendary person and an interesting topic for research. To sum up our today's conversation, I would like to say that, oddly enough, it is about the tragic events in the Lemetti region that one of the few fiction books about the Soviet-Finnish war has been written. It is called “Death of the Division,” wrote Petrozavodsk researcher, writer, journalist A.A. Gordienko, who, unfortunately, died in 2010. This is a new posthumous edition. Before the war, the 18th Infantry Division was based in Petrozavodsk, in fact, from there it went to its, unfortunately, death in the Lemetti area. But those who returned, all returned to Petrozavodsk, and all relatives remained in Petrozavodsk, so this book is written as if the diary of one of the employees of the political department of the 18th Infantry Division, i.e. such a story in the form of a diary, based on documents, on interviews. Yes, maybe it is with some excesses, but it’s better that nothing about the Finnish war is written in our works of art at all. Can personnel be purchased somewhere? Yes, in fact, under the video there is a link to opershop, so this book can be purchased at opershop ... Is this this cross? Yes, this is exactly the cross of sorrow, very neutral, i.e. there is such a cross and 2 mothers embrace it from both sides. Those. one mother is Russia, the other is Finland. Those. the monument was erected in 2000, and at the moment it is the largest monument to the Soviet-Finnish war that we have. It is located just in the very places where our boiler was just destroyed at the Lemetti fork in the roads, so if you somehow travel in those parts, stop by and take a look. Unfortunately, there are not a large number of information plates there, but there a huge number of mass graves and monuments reminds of this battle of 40 years, i.e. they literally go along the road every 500 meters, which shows what happens when the commander gives up. In spite of everything, after all, the commander is the captain of the ship, he should even try to do something in a hopeless situation, because the situation, most likely, was not hopeless, which is shown by the situation in the neighboring division of Bondarev. Creepy. Yes. But, of course, it must also be said that, of course, this played a role in raising the morale in Finland, in maintaining the general normal public opinion in Finland. And for the Finns, this is probably such an important and glorious page in military history. For us, this is a very sad and tragic page in our military history, which was forgotten for a very long time, just what it was like. But, fortunately, even though this book was published in the early 2000s, it became a bestseller in Karelia, i.e. this is the 3rd edition. It hasn't been published in paper for a long time, so please, you can buy it in opershop. But I emphasize once again that in general, on the same days, when, in general, when leaving the encirclement, the entire command of the 34th light tank brigade shot themselves, on the same days, when our encircled soldiers simply did not see anything at night, because they started to have night blindness due to malnutrition, and the Finns just approached and threw grenades at them, at the same time the intermediate Finnish defense line was broken near Vyborg, and the situation on the Karelian Isthmus to the west of Lake Ladoga for the Finns is already close to critical. Every day the position of the Finnish army is only getting worse. Therefore, our next story is the end of hostilities in the Soviet-Finnish war. There has already been a request to tell about the locks of the Saimaa Canal, what happened to them - they were really blown up or not blown up, and what was there at all near Vyborg. How the hostilities ended, where our units stood at 12 noon on March 13, when the truce officially came into force, and what lessons did the Red Army, the Finnish Army, and all our Western partners learn from this. Thank you. We look forward to the next one. Thank you. And that's all for today. See you again.

Guard Lieutenant Colonel Yaroshenko Aleksey Andreevich Instructor of the Political Department of the 41st Guards Rifle Division

On the counter-offensive of our troops near Stalingrad, which began on November 19, 1942, the guardsmen of the 41st learned by radio. This message aroused their jubilation: the reports of the Sovinformburo mentioned those places where the division had recently fought. The warriors were proud of their involvement in what had happened. They spoke about this at rallies held in all divisions.

The division at that time received replenishment and was already preparing to be sent to the front. That day came very soon. In early December, it was transferred to the region of the middle reaches of the Don, the headquarters of the division was located in the village of Nizhny Mamon.

Newspapers and radio every day brought news of the unfolding gigantic battle to destroy the encircled enemy group. The newspapers published responses from abroad, showing that the attention of the whole world was riveted on this battle. The whole course of events indicated that a turning point had come in the war.

But the enemy made frantic efforts to release the encircled troops, transferring fresh divisions from France and other Western countries. Army Group Don, led by Field Marshal Manstein, went on the offensive on December 12, seeking to rescue the encircled. Fierce battles ensued.

In order to disrupt the enemy's attempts to rescue the encircled grouping, the Soviet command was preparing new operation, which received the code name "Saturn". It was decided to deliver two strikes in converging directions: one - from the Upper Mamon region to the south in the general direction of Rostov (later, due to the advance of the enemy, the direction of this strike was changed to the southeast, towards Morozovsk), the second - from east to west in the direction of Likhai (1).

As a result of such an offensive, the outer front of the encirclement was pushed back 150-200 kilometers to the west, the 8th Italian Army was defeated, and the threat of encirclement of the Don Army Group was created.

In this operation, as in the encirclement of the enemy at Stalingrad, we did not have superior forces. However, in the directions of the main blows Soviet troops an overwhelming superiority over the enemy was created (1). This showed the high military art of the Soviet command.

The 41st Guards Rifle Division as part of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps again found itself at the forefront of the main attack of the 1st Guards Army(2). The regiments from the march reached the Don at night and took up positions on the bridgehead near the village of Osetrovka.

In the morning, a fascist Yu-88 heavy bomber appeared over the sturgeon bridgehead. The anti-aircraft battery of the division under the command of Guards Senior Lieutenant Yevgeny Bibikov opened fire on him and knocked him out with several volleys. He landed right there, on the banks of the Don. So they left him there. The victory of the anti-aircraft gunners made everyone happy. Enemy reconnaissance aircraft began to fly only at high altitude. The Nazis tried to bomb the landing plane, but they failed: the fire of our anti-aircraft gunners did not let them.

The command and political department of the division launched active preparations for the offensive. Everyone knew that it would not be easy. The regiments were renewed, there were few old-timers, fired soldiers, they were replaced by recruits, many of whom did not participate in the battles. The whole system of party political work needed to prepare them psychologically for the offensive. In companies, batteries, party and Komsomol meetings were held with the agenda

of the day: about the role of a communist, Komsomol member in battle. The commanders and political workers organized speeches by the participants in the battles, who told the newcomers about the actions of the soldier in the offensive. Such lively conversations were of great importance: they taught the youth, strengthened their sense of duty and self-confidence. The soldier then went on the attack not blindly, he had the experience of his elders, he looked up to them.

At the forefront, commanders of all levels and scouts continuously monitored the enemy, studied the location of his fire weapons and obstacles.

On the instructions of the chief of staff of the division, our political department photographer of the guard, foreman Ivan Nikolaevich Kuminov, took a panoramic photograph of the front line of the enemy's defense. At night, he went out with his inseparable camera to the first trench, and when the sun rose, he began to take pictures. By lunchtime, he returned to the division headquarters, and in the evening the chief of staff had a long map on the table - a photographic panorama of the fascist defense. This map helped the commanders better organize the offensive.

The artillerymen made good use of their time. It was necessary to prepare data for firing at the enemy's defensive structures, shoot them, and at the same time not reveal their firing positions to artillery. Therefore, the sighting was carried out by separate nomadic guns.

This task was solved by the battery commander of the 89th Guards Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant A.I. Krechet. He had to prepare data on 15 defense nodes from 15 different firing positions and shoot them. It took two weeks, they shot only one target a day. Of course, the enemy could not guess anything.

The shooting was carried out as follows: the senior officer of the battery of the guard, Lieutenant V.I. Lopukhov brought one howitzer to the firing position, and the battery commander A.I. Krechet went to the observation post. The data was clarified, shooting was carried out. The initial installations were sent to the headquarters of the division. Guards Lieutenant Lopukhov wrote down the data with paint on a board, which he attached to a pole driven into the ground at the point where the gun was standing.

Thus, the battery arriving at this position had data ready for firing during the artillery preparation for the offensive.

Two or three days before the offensive, employees of the political department, division headquarters and regimental workers inspected each soldier's weapons and uniforms, and talked with everyone. Everyone participated in this work - the commander of the division of the guard, Major General N.P. Ivanov, military commissar of the guards senior battalion commissar A.E. Anisimov, Deputy Commander of the Guards Division Colonel I.V. Abramov, head of the political department M.N. Fokov, deputy head of the political department I.I. Belov.

At that time, for many fighters, they did not have time to bring warm mittens, and the frosts were very strong. Therefore, it was decided to sew them from the old overcoats available in the warehouse. The political department turned to the residents of the villages of Lower and Upper Mamon with a request to sew mittens. Women set to work with great desire and sewed several thousand mittens in a day.

The command devoted to the material support of the offensive Special attention. The question arose about the evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield. There were few cars. Winter is snowy and cold. In order to facilitate the care of the wounded in such conditions, mobile medical stations were equipped in each battalion. A booth was set up on the sleigh, an iron stove was heated in it, there was always hot tea. Political workers were charged with the duty to monitor the condition of these points. During the offensive, such first-aid posts did not lag behind the units, and the wounded received timely assistance, and even in warmth, and not in the snow.

On the eve of the offensive, the military commissar of the division A.E. Anisimov and head of the political department M.N. Fokov gathered all the workers of the political department who were in the regiments. Each reported on the preparation of units for the offensive. The military commissar explained the received combat mission, told what to do on the last night before the offensive. In the evening, all the workers of the political department again went to the regiments in order to meet the morning together with the fighters in the first trench and go on the attack. They left with jokes, but everyone hid the question in the depths of their hearts: will we meet again? An attack is an attack... Our "Komsomol member" Sergey Bulychev was especially restless (his position was called: assistant to the head of the political department of the division for work among Komsomol members). He will go to the regiment - he will climb the entire front line, he will talk with many fighters. He knew how to joke, to cheer people up. In the political department, he often made fun of Kostya Mokhov, an instructor in accounting for party documents, who also had a sense of humor and liked to "throw" an anecdote. “Come, Kostya, quickly to Krasnoye Orekhovo,” Bulychev told him, “otherwise all the trophies will leave without you, and there will be something there.” Secretary of the Party Commission V.A. Lapshin and agitator I.D. Aksyonov looked at them and only smiled.

It was evening. The leading edge of the enemy barely differed in height. Our first trench is not deep, we had to duck down. The drifting snow covered her with dry streams of snow. Our position is on the heights, in front is a lowland, a "no-man's land", and behind it is the height and the Krasnoe Orekhovo farm. There is an enemy. In front of his trench are gray stripes of barbed wire. Yes, it is not easy to cross this rather wide neutral zone and attack the enemy.

Silence was maintained throughout the night. So that the enemy does not notice the preparation of the offensive. In the evening, short party and Komsomol meetings were held in the companies, political workers had conversations with the fighters. Then the soldiers were given the opportunity to rest. At dawn, they brought a hot breakfast in thermoses. Together with the fighters were commanders, political workers, representatives of the political department and the headquarters of the division. Commander of the Guards Division, Major General N.P. Ivanov and military commissar A.E. Anisimov also went through the first trench - they wanted to know the mood of the fighters. In the trench of the 3rd Battalion of the 126th Guards Rifle Regiment, they stopped near a group of fighters with whom the sergeant was talking.

• Commander of the Guard Sergeant Kirsanov! He introduced himself to the general.
• A participant in the battles, an experienced sergeant, - the agitator of the guard regiment, Lieutenant Pyotr Lozhnikov, who happened to be nearby, introduced him to senior commanders.
• The light will be reliable, - the general answered. - And the tanks will go, but at first they will follow you - they need to make their way to the open. Of course, the enemy will resist. But we must break his resistance. A fast attack is required. Remember, comrades, we are participating in a battle of the greatest importance for our Motherland, helping to finish off the encircled grouping.
• Comrade General, - answered Sergeant Kirsanov, - we will fulfill our duty.

The general began to ask the fighters about the opposing enemy: did they notice any changes in his behavior over the past 24 hours, did he pull up reserves, how did he fire. Of course, the Red Army men asked the question: would tanks go on the offensive with them, how would artillery and aircraft support the attack.

He was warmly supported by the Red Army.

All the soldiers of the division met the order to advance with enthusiasm.

They were eager to contribute to the defeat of the enemy group surrounded at Stalingrad, to the expulsion of the enemy from their native land.

Before dawn, fog hung over the hollow, it spread wider and wider, covering the heights occupied by the enemy. This doesn't happen often in winter. Division commander N.P. Ivanov and the head of artillery of the division of the guard, lieutenant colonel F.P. Lebedev anxiously peered ahead: this haze would greatly interfere with the artillery preparation of the attack and the actions of aviation.

At 8 o'clock in the morning on December 16, 1942, just at the moment of sunrise, although it was barely turning yellow because of the clouds, Katyushas began to play. Their hoots broke the silence. Artillery opened fire behind them. The soldiers saw that an avalanche of fire was raging on the enemy’s position, and rejoiced at such a powerful artillery preparation. However, the commanders of the artillery subunits were concerned: the fog made it difficult to adjust the fire, to suppress individual firing points - bunkers, and there were many of them in the enemy's defenses.

Artillery preparation lasted an hour and a half. The fog began to dissipate, but smoke hung like a dark cap over the enemy position.

Our aviation could not work.

Here, finally, is another volley of Katyushas, ​​as the final chord of the artillery preparation. Signal flares soared into the sky, the trench rolled:

For the Motherland, attack - forward!

And immediately on the virgin snow, the chains of our fighters swayed. Before the first trench of the enemy two or three hundred meters. But these hundreds of meters are very difficult. Deep, above the knees snow did not allow to go quickly. And then there is a hollow, this "no-man's" strip whipped by craters from exploding shells, wrapped in barbed wire. And all

enemy fire became denser - the Nazis, stunned by artillery, came to their senses, in different places they whipped towards the attackers with long red ribbons of tracer bullets.

Artillerymen of the 89th Guards Regiment immediately tried to drown out the bunkers and suppress the infantry in the trenches. Particularly successful was the division of the Guards, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Mazin, who fired at direct fire. Mazin was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 1st degree.

The guards went on the attack resolutely, with great enthusiasm. And now the 1st battalion of the 122nd Guards Rifle Regiment under the command of Guards Senior Lieutenant Olifirenko broke into the enemy position.

Strong resistance was offered by the enemy to the 3rd battalion of the 126th regiment, commanded by senior lieutenant M.M. Shchus, who was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the battles near Stalingrad. The battalion commander personally led the attack. But the enemy pressed one company to the ground with strong machine-gun fire from a bunker. Guards Sergeant Kirsanov rushed forward, got close to him. A grenade flew into the embrasure. It exploded in front of the very gap of the bunker, and the machine gun fell silent, as if choked by this explosion. However, a minute later, a long line slashed from there again. Kirsanov saw his comrades fall. He no longer had grenades ... The soldiers saw that he jumped to his feet, rushed to the bunker and fell on his embrasure with his chest ... The guardsmen rushed forward and crushed the enemy defending the first trench. Comrades ran up to Kirsanov. There was nothing to help him. The hero gave his life for the sake of victory, honorably fulfilled his duty, which he spoke about before the battle (1).

A red flag was hoisted over the height near the Krasnoye Orekhovo farm. Division

captured the first trench of the enemy ..

With two fighters, I went along the trench. It was destroyed by shells, the corpses of fascist soldiers lay at the bottom, rifles and machine guns were lying around. The progress of the message led to the dugout. They pushed the door, it opened. In the dugout there were several iron beds with scattered bedding, carpets on the floor and walls. All ours, stolen by the invaders. Yes, they settled comfortably there, but they fled hastily: toilet items, weapons, food were lying around. Retribution has arrived!

The sun had already risen above the horizon, the fog cleared. A rumble grew from the lowlands, the earth trembled from it. Our tanks were approaching the Krasnoye Orekhovo farm, which were to build on the success of the offensive. Under one of them, approaching the first trench of the enemy, a ball of fire shot up, an explosion thundered. Mine! The tank turned to the side, the left caterpillar flew off and unwound. The commander's hatch opened and a tanker appeared from it.

The mechanic was wounded, - he shouted to us, - help!

We rushed to help.

Soon sappers came up here and began to make passages in the minefield. Appeared in the air large group enemy bombers. But then our fighters arrived. An air battle ensued. Enemy bombers could not deliver an aimed strike.

The division, meanwhile, continued the offensive. The enemy made fierce counterattacks, but he could not hold back the onslaught of the guards. By noon, the division broke through the first position of the enemy and started a battle for the second.

The 25th, 18th and 17th tank corps (1) were introduced into the corridor, broken through in the enemy defense by the 41st Guards Rifle Division. The fighters of the division had never seen such an avalanche of our tanks, they rejoiced and irresistibly rushed forward. We felt how much our power had grown, and everyone's confidence in the success of the offensive and in our final victory became even stronger.

The next day, the offensive continued from dawn. On the initiative and under the command of the head of the operational department of the division, Guard Lieutenant Colonel A.F. Belyaev, a raid was organized by a small group (about a battalion) on the village of Vervekovka, where, according to the testimony of the prisoners, an enemy army artillery group was located. Belyaev managed to break through behind enemy lines with his group. Then he secretly led the group through the copses to the village. The attack turned out to be sudden for the enemy. This decided the outcome of the battle.

The guardsmen opened fire and rushed forward. Belyaev himself led the attack. Over 100 soldiers, 25 officers, including a lieutenant colonel and two majors, were killed in the battle. Captured a lot of guns and other military equipment (2).

A hot battle ensued for the village of Tverdokhlebovka, through which a tactically important road ran. In this battle, they died, the commander of the battalion of the guard, senior lieutenant M.M. Shchus and political worker of the 122nd Guards Regiment, Captain NM. Akhmetov, a former employee of the Bashkir regional committee of the Komsomol.

By the end of the second day of the offensive, the division had advanced 25 kilometers. Thus, advancing on the main direction of the 1st Guards Army, the 41st Guards Rifle Division successfully

completed her mission. In this direction, the entire tactical defense zone of the enemy was completely broken through (1).

On the night of December 17-18, the fighting did not subside. The guards, in cooperation with the tankmen of the 25th Corps, broke the enemy's resistance in the Dantsevka-Raskovka section, crossed the river. Bogucharka and took possession of the village of Barsuki. They essentially went to the rear of the enemy troops, who resisted the neighboring divisions.

On the morning of December 18, the enemy launched a counterattack here large forces infantry and tanks. The tanks were approaching the village to which the divisional headquarters had just moved. The infantry moved behind them. Fighters took up defense on a high-rise near the village special units, all employees of the division management. The enemy significantly outnumbered the chain of fighters who took up the defense. In addition, he had tanks. The situation has become unsettling. But after the headquarters of the division, Katyushas entered the village - two vehicles of guards mortars. They fired a salvo at enemy tanks and infantry. We saw how a flurry of fiery whirlwinds hit the enemy tanks. Many of them caught fire. The infantry also suffered heavy losses. To the left of us, we also heard the music of "Katyushas". Our tanks and artillery approached. The enemy's counterattack was thwarted, he began to hastily retreat. The tank corps rushed forward, into the operational space.

Our division liberated the state farm Boguchar, the settlements of Anno-Rebrikovo, Novo-Stepanovka and others. During these three days, the division destroyed over 3,000 enemy soldiers and officers and captured more than 1,500. Captured 600 vehicles, 15 tanks, 50 warehouses with ammunition, food and equipment (2). The results of the battles were impressive

At night, the division headquarters moved to the state farm Boguchar. Lieutenant Colonel Belyaev placed the operational group of the guard in a small adobe house located near the road. Nearby stood a fairly good house, there were no inhabitants in it. By the atmosphere it was possible to determine that fascist officers lived in it - there were various snacks on the table, there were bottles of wine. This house was occupied by scouts. They invited the instructor of the political department Z.Yu. Lukatsky and the author of these lines. We went there, but did not want to stay: everything seemed very suspicious - both the table with snacks and all the comfort.

• Have you checked if the house is mined? we asked the scouts.
• How about that, they answered in unison. - All rummaged.

And yet we left, and called the scouts. We went to the house where the operational department was located. Some time passed, and suddenly there was an explosion that shook everything around. The roof was torn off the house we were in, the windows flew out. We ran out into the street. The house, in which the scouts had recently been, turned around, something was burning next to it. As it turned out later, there were anti-tank mines near him. They flew into the air, and with them the house.

Explosions began throughout the village. The streets were mined.

Mines exploded under cars and wagons. The division headquarters was forced to leave this locality, and the sappers in the morning were engaged in demining.

Despite the fierce resistance of the enemy, in three days of offensive battles, our troops broke through his heavily fortified defenses, expanded the breakthrough to 60 kilometers along the front and advanced 40 kilometers. tank corps stepped out and started

pursue the retreating enemy. On December 22, the main forces of the 8th Italian Army were surrounded and completely defeated (1).