Stalingrad
Page 16
Alexei Yakovlevich Zimin (Lieutenant, former worker at the Barricades factory, headquarters commandant of the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade, 64th Army): When we arrived to hold the line at the Barricades factory, when we took up positions at the Upper Settlement, I got a chance to visit the offices of the factory [party] committee and the district committee. The only one there from the factory committee was Skorikov, but I did see Secretary Kotov from the district committee. The district soviet was gone—they’d already gone across. The factory management was gone. The factory’s director had come back on September 25. Actually, he was brought back and told to stay put until told otherwise.
They did assembly work at the factory. The assembly workshop was undamaged apart from its glass roof, which had fallen in, and this is where the assembly work was done. When they started returning, the managers and foremen had to be forced to organize the work. They organized the assembly of finished parts and weaponry. After that they started making repairs. The Tractor factory had also been blown up, but then their people organized the assembly work and repaired tanks returning from the field.
Ivan Vasilevich Vasilev (Brigade commissar, chief of the political section of the 62nd Army): Party activists could have been left here, so that every apartment and building would return fire, and when the Germans entered the city we’d have been right on top of them. We had no other support. The city was undefended. [ . . . ] If you’ve got 400,000 workers, what if you just took 100,000—that’s a whole army! We’d have even been able to arm them. We’d have posted them on high ground, and the Germans never would have entered Stalingrad. We would have stopped them on the approach, just like we did in the city. We’d have an easier task now if we’d stayed there, but in the city, even with all our skill, it was a difficult and complex job that took a lot of blood. This much is clear: the city was abandoned, not defended.
Pavel Petrovich Matevosyan (Chief engineer of the Red October steelworks): On September 15 we were with General Chuikov and Gurov, a member of the military council. They demanded that we get our people out, saying that people were dying—they’re shooting us, we’re shooting them. That’s when we started moving out.
Ilya Fyodorovich Burin (Former mechanic at the Barricades factory, scout in the 38th [7th Guards] Motor Rifle Brigade): All the workers began evacuating across the Volga. Then the order came for us to drive to Leninsk with all the machinery. They took everyone. We went across to Leninsk. From there we were to evacuate to Novosibirsk. Some of us were late, and they didn’t let us go. Later we got the order: any worker with evacuation papers who stays behind will be detained and sent into combat. We were detained and sent there.
Our unit was formed in Solyanka. I was the only one from my workshop. Later I met a comrade from the same factory, but from Workshop no. 16, Neznamov was his name. Since then we’ve always been together. [ . . . ] At first we were the Factory Emergency Rifle Regiment. We were trained there. When our training was completed, we were asked what we wanted to do. I volunteered to be a submachine gunner, and later I was transferred to reconnaissance.
Vladimir Kharitonovich Demchenko (Major, commandant of Stalingrad): Lately we’ve had to force people to leave. Some of them think: I’ve been living here twenty years, where will I go? We’ll defend our city to the very end; the city will not surrender. There were some, of course, who were waiting for the Germans. [ . . . ]
From September 23 to October 15 we evacuated 149,000 families [from the population in the factory districts]. We did have to send in the militia to do this. They went into every trench and bomb shelter to take people out and send them to the east bank. Not much of the population remained in the city. Most of those who remained were in the Dzerzhinsky and Voroshilov districts, which had been occupied suddenly. Very few remained elsewhere—frail old people, sick people. In the area where 62nd Army was, they stayed until the very end. There were quite a few children left. The mothers died, the kids remained. Some children were found in bunkers.
This one time we kicked the Germans out of a bunker and destroyed the firing position, but didn’t go inside that day. The next evening we entered the bunker. There was a girl, eight or nine years old, lying there among the bodies. As soon as we came in she cried: Take me with you, it’s cold in here with them. Her mother had been killed. General Sokolov, commander of the 39th Division,40 took the girl.
Pavel Petrovich Matevosyan (Chief engineer of the Red October steelworks): We planted mines throughout the factory three times, and each time we removed them. We were in direct communication with army HQ and with the division that was protecting us. At first we had an NKVD division. They’d warned us how difficult things were. The last time we went to General Chuikov he said there was no order from Moscow. He doubted that we were going to blow up the factory: we were going to fight it out to the end. Hopefully we wouldn’t lose the city, but if it came down to it, we’d have to abandon Stalingrad. So we removed the mines. Afterward we put them back—after all, that was just his personal opinion. No one had ordered us not to. [ . . . ] Then we got the order from Moscow to clear the mines. It had apparently come from Beria41 himself. [ . . . ] We left there on October 4, and we were the last to leave.
Konstantin Vasilievich Zubanov (Chief engineer of the Stalingrad Power Station, StalGRES): The artillery fire was at its heaviest on September 23, when about four hundred shells hit our power station. That was an intense day, and a difficult period for the workers. It turned out to be a fatal moment for the station.
At first there were isolated shots, then a barrage (which military personnel usually call a fire assault). Our station was rendered completely useless. [ . . . ] Even without counting the shrapnel, the shells that stuck the station brought destruction to the building assemblies and the units, and there was this entire mass of shrapnel, components, glass, wood, brick, metal—all of this came down on top of people at their work stations. It was especially bad at the boiler shop. [ . . . ] That day a dud landed at the feet of the boiler technician Dubonosov. He didn’t know the shell wouldn’t go off right away. He risked his life but never left his station. I saw myself what he went through. He calmed down only once the shell had been carefully removed from his spot and made safe.
In any case, the station was shut down. We had to figure out what to do. The Germans had zeroed in on us well, and their shooting was precise. Working under such conditions was dangerous. [ . . . ] I met the workshop foreman to discuss the work before us. Later we jokingly called this meeting the Council of Fili.42 We asked ourselves: What can we do? If we stop, then the factories nearby won’t be repairing tanks or making shells, it will mean that the entire area will go without water and that the army will go without bread. Getting the place running again, on the other hand, would expose our workers and all of the managerial staff to considerable danger. It came as no surprise when not a single one of the foreman said no. Very modestly and calmly, and under the unrelenting music of artillery, each of them reached their verdict: the station must continue operating. The station was up and running that very day, September 23.
The onset of darkness at first reduced, then completely eliminated the artillery fire. It appeared that the Germans had been aiming at the cloud of smoke coming from the station. Artillery fire continued straight through to November 10. After the lesson of September 23, our regional authorities decided that the station should operate only at night.
Ivan Alexeyevich Piksin (Secretary of the Stalingrad City Committee): There was this one incident that sounds like a joke. The artillery fire was unbelievable. Zemlyansky, the director of the power station, makes a written address to the army commander: “I request that you immediately neutralize the enemy artillery, as it is making it impossible for Stalingrad Power Station to operate. Should this request be denied, I will appeal to your superiors.” Shumilov recalled this recently: “When I got that request, I wrote to the artillery commander: ‘Comrade so-and-so, you are to immediately neutralize the artillery so the station can operate.’”<
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Konstantin Vasilievich Zubanov (Chief engineer of the Stalingrad Power Station, StalGRES): Something surprising: people we had ordered to places less exposed to falling debris and exploding shells often found these heavy barrages very difficult. But if you went along to the main panel, you would see, or rather hear, something extraordinary: against the background of the artillery music you could hear classical music. This was comrade Karochansky playing records on a gramophone.
Sergei Dmitrievich Babkin (First secretary of the Kirov District Committee): When the planes first came and flew over the settlement, people ran and hid in trenches. Now everyone’s used to it. They see a group of planes in the air, and people can already tell what they’re going to attack. In Staraya Beketovka there were about thirty or forty Katyushas. When they fired, the windmill would immediately start turning. In October, when we were at the collective farm, we watched the Katyushas get hit. A Messerschmitt showed up, turned around, and flew away. I said that more German planes would come in ten minutes. After fifteen minutes, the German planes appeared and started their bombing runs. We were about 250 meters away, and we saw one plane drop eight bombs, then the others made their drops and flew away. We could hear cries and moans. We saw that the planes were coming for us and we took cover behind a building. Two bombs landed three meters away, another at five meters. The driver and I were covered in dirt. We saw a third group. They attacked like that all day long, but everyone held up just fine, no panicking. There was some long-range artillery there, and children would wait on skis and sleds, and when they fired, the shock waves from the guns would push them down the slope.
Konstantin Vasilievich Zubanov (Chief engineer of the Stalingrad Power Station, StalGRES): November 4, 1942. At the end of the night shift at the station, after we shut down, all personnel (incidentally, no one had been allowed to leave since the first days of the siege), went to bed. People were so used to this new way of life that no amount of artillery fire kept them from undressing and going to bed as usual. But on November 4 at 8:30 A.M., fascist vultures unexpectedly spread their wings over the station. Forty-nine Stukas—or, as we called them, “musicians”—started a methodical bombardment. The intention was to destroy our station once and for all. Every one of the forty-nine dive-bombers made multiple runs. The wail of their sirens was particularly unpleasant. I never believe people who say they get used to artillery fire or bombs. I just can’t find any truth in it. For me every bomb or shell is hard to take, it’s painful. What’s important is how you conduct yourself, how much you can contain your feelings. I have never since experienced anything like what I experienced then. You often hear it said that Red Army soldiers were less afraid of the bombs than of the sirens. I’m certain that’s the truth. The Stukas’ sirens really were incapacitating. So you can imagine what things were like at the station. Half-naked men jumping out of bed and running to the shelters, some running toward the power assemblies to make sure they were “prepared” for such an attack.
The bombing didn’t last long—maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes—but for us this seemed like an eternity. When the planes had left we recognized the unusually devastating effects of the bombing. Before then we hadn’t had any serious casualties, but that day there were two dozen. Many of the units were lost. In operational terms, the station was put out of action for quite some time.
Secretary Ilin from the regional party committee arrived. The committee finally had us evacuate to the east bank so that these last few brave men might be saved.
Nikolai Romanovich Petrukhin (Chief of the war department of the Stalingrad Regional Party Committee): Regarding the partisans [ . . . ] By the time of the German invasion we had created thirty-four partisan reconnaissance detachments comprising a total of 839 men. About sixty caches with provisions had been placed to supply these units with food. They were also issued equipment, and the caches also contained weapons and ammunition. Most of the partisans had been trained in units of the destruction battalions or in units created by the regional council of OSOAVIAKhIM,43 in so-called training groups. We trained some of them in a special school. [ . . . ]
All the partisan detachments were located on the open steppe. No good cover, no water. That is why the detachments tended to be small, no more than seven, ten, or fifteen men. The fascist hordes conducted harsh inspections and committed atrocities against the civilian population in the occupied districts (fourteen of the regional districts were occupied), which also made it difficult for these detachments to conduct their operations.
In early September 1942 a group of partisans went to Ulyana Vasilievna Sochkova in the village of Kamyshki and asked for water. While citizen Sochkova was fetching the water, two German patrols approached the partisans, who then killed the Germans and disappeared. The next day, German soldiers took the sixty-year-old Sochkova and her thirty-year-old daughter. They conducted a manhunt in the area near the village with a large number of riders, and they found some regular Red Army soldiers who happened to be there after breaking through the encirclement. The Germans gathered all of the men from the village and made them dig a grave. Then they brought over the Russian soldiers and the two women and shot them in front of everyone. A German officer warned the villagers, saying that this would happen to them, that for each murdered German soldier one hundred of them would be shot. [ . . . ] In the village of Averino in the Kalachevsky district they arrested seventeen children ranging from eight to fifteen years old. They were taken into the road and publicly whipped. For seven days they were given no food or water. On November 7 the fascists shot ten of these defenseless boys as part of a bloody and malicious reprisal. The bodies were taken to the pit silo of the collective farm. It was said that the boys had been shot because an officer was missing a pack of cigarettes, and suspicion had fallen on one of the boys. In the village of Plodovitoye, the wife of a former collective farm manager who had been expelled from the party in 1938 and sentenced to five years for anti-Soviet agitation denounced Natalya Nikolayevna Ignatievna, a party member, who was then executed by the German occupiers. Her body was left there for a week.
Ezri Izrailevich Ioffe (Acting director of the Stalingrad Medical Institute): Already by December 1942, while Stalingrad was still under occupation, steps were being taken to return a core group of professors. Faculty from the Stalingrad Medical Institute started moving there by the end of January. Four faculty members were in place by February 25.
Veniamin Yakovlevich Zhukov (Foreman of Workshop no. 7 at the Red October steelworks): I’d watched the plant grow up, so it’s not easy for me now [This interview was conducted on January 8, 1943, at the site.] to see it destroyed. It’s like leaving your parents at home, alive and well, and coming back later to find them dead—that’s what it feels like. [ . . . ] Now all I see are ruins. You can’t even walk through them, let alone drive. I just can’t take it in. A team from my shop, twenty-two of us, have come to work. We’re waiting to get in there so we can help put things back in shape.
Major General Stepan Guryev hands over the Red October factory to its director, Pavel Matevosyan, in January 1943. Photographer: G. B. Kapustyansky
Alexei Semyonovich Chuyanov (First secretary of the Stalingrad Regional Committee): February 4. Today we’re celebrating our victory on the Volga. The austere and majestic Square of the Fallen Heroes is covered in red bunting. [ . . . ] Twelve o’clock noon. Front and army military council members appeared on an improvised rostrum, including V. I. Chuikov, M. S. Shumilov, A. I. Rodimtsev, and the leaders of regional and city organizations. [ . . . ] By request of the regional committee, the regional soviet of workers deputies, and the city defense committee, I gave an address to the rally: “As we fought against this vicious enemy, the fascist German occupiers decimated our city. But today, in the name of the motherland, of the party, and of our government, let us vow that we will restore our beloved city.” [ . . . ] I said good-bye to my comrades at arms. Their path takes them westward, while I will remain in the city. I was an ordinary civi
lian once again. The front has moved hundreds of kilometers away. The army is moving out. It wasn’t easy to see them go, these comrades I had shared so much with.
Clearing the Volga embankment. Photographer: L. I. Konov
Vasily Petrovich Prokhvatilov (Secretary of the Stalingrad Regional Committee of the AUCP[b]): There was a public rally on February 4.44 Other rallies took place throughout the region. We’d heard from the Sovinformburo that Chuyanov had eliminated the surrounding forces, and I received many congratulatory telegrams from within the region, then from everywhere in the Soviet Union. Not long ago I got one from a certain Pletnev, naming his unit and congratulating us on our victory. This meant something to Stalingrad. Not just Stalingrad, but the entire country. There were a lot of messages like that.
Ivan Alexeyevich Piksin (Secretary of the Stalingrad City Committee): Right after we had completely eliminated the German forces in Stalingrad, we focused our efforts on clearing the bodies. Every district had several thousand corpses.
Alexei Mikhailovich Polyakov (Deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of the Stalingrad Regional Soviet of Workers Deputies): Our main task now is to clear the streets as fast as we can. We’ve been at it for a month and have barely made a dent. It’s not that we aren’t working. Thousands of people are helping with the work.
Laborers from the Srednaya Akhtuba and Praleyksky collective farms have been providing a lot of assistance. They each sent around fifty carts, along with workers on camels and oxen. These men and women have removed tens of thousands of bodies.