The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  The Germans were said to be using gas. . . . This, also, was not true.

  A powerful relief force was coming to the aid of Leningrad. . . . Nor was this true.

  The city began to take on the appearance of a fortress. The big stores and office buildings on the Nevsky, the Liteiny, the factories on the Petro-grad side, the industrial establishments beyond the Narva Gates—all were turning into sandbagged fire points. Luknitsky thought the Gostiny Dvor, an ancient merchant arcade, now looked like a miniature Kremlin under its sandbags. Every park in the city had been dug up for air-raid trenches. They crisscrossed the Summer Gardens and the Champs de Mars.

  Some eighty Leningrad writers had joined the People’s Volunteers. But there were others, too. There were people who were trying to escape Leningrad, Luknitsky noted, “like rats leaving a ship in danger.”

  One such coward, he regretted, had been found within the Writers Union and had been expelled for “desertion.”

  “How could he look us in the eyes after the war?” Luknitsky asked himself.

  Luknitsky’s father was a sixty-five-year-old professor in a naval institute. Together with Academician B. G. Galerkin, he had joined a special commission to provide Party Secretary Kuznetsov with scientific advice on constructing fortifications and air defenses, for turning the city into a “contemporary fortress,” as Bychevsky put it. On the twenty-second of August Luknitsky helped his father pack a small bag of essentials. Henceforth he would live and work in a naval barracks.

  Just at this time Kochetov got back to Leningrad from the Luga front and the area of the Kingisepp breakthrough. The evening he arrived, August 22, he and his friend Mikhalev had a fine lamb cutlet at the old Kvissisana Café on Nevsky Prospekt. Kochetov enjoyed his meal, but he had been upset by the Komendatura officer’s remarks about desertions at the front. Kochetov kept telling himself there were no such cases.

  His mood did not improve when he met the editor of his newspaper. He got into a row about a story concerning a Red Army man whom Kochetov had brought into a field hospital, suffering from thirty-two shrapnel wounds. The editor felt the story was too bloody, too terrible, would sow demoralization. He also suggested that Kochetov try not to make so much noise as he clumped around the corridors in his military boots.

  In a huff Kochetov decided to get out of the city and go back to the front. He visited the offices of the newspaper For the Defense of Leningrad. There he got a better reception. He had his picture taken with the staff, “just in case,” as he put it. Then he sat down to a meal with the newspaper staff. What a meal! Not even the government members ate so well. This was more to Kochetov’s taste. Maybe he could get a transfer from the Leningradskaya Pravda.

  It must have been that same day, August 25, that Pavel Luknitsky paid a call on Anna Akhmatova, the great Leningrad poet. He found her in the same cluttered apartment in Karelsky Pereulok beside the Fontanka where she had lived for so many years.

  Anna Akhmatova was sick in bed, but she greeted Luknitsky with her usual politeness. She was in good spirits, despite her illness, despite the danger to her beloved Leningrad. She had been invited, she told Luknitsky, to speak on the radio.

  “She is a patriot,” Luknitsky wrote in his diary, “and the consciousness that her spirit is shared by all fills her with courage.” The invitation was remarkable. Since 1925 Akhmatova had been forbidden under a secret police decree to speak in public.

  Thus Leningrad, a city of three million people, a city of cowards and of patriots, of sleazy sharpers and men and women of endless dedication, of blundering military men and feuding Party leaders, moved toward the time of trial.

  * * *

  1 Ration figures can be converted from the metric system by using the rough equivalent of 450 grams to the pound.

  2 Karasev, op. cit., p. 91. The figure is given as 477,648 in N.Z. (p. 144). Probably a misprint.

  3 Not to be confused with the great Kirov metallurgical (former Putilov) works.

  21 ♦ Stalin on the Phone

  IT WAS DAILY ROUTINE FOR STALIN TO TELEPHONE FROM the Kremlin in Moscow to Party Secretary Andrei Zhdanov and Marshal Voroshilov at their Smolny headquarters on the Neva. The calls came through at almost any hour but were more frequent after midnight. The war might be on, Russia might be in deadly danger, but Stalin had not changed his habits of a lifetime. He continued to do most of his work late at night.

  The normal Stalin working day started shortly before noon. He rose, ate a light breakfast, ran quickly over the most urgent situation reports and telegrams and then began his conferences with the Supreme Command, fellow Politburo members, generals about to receive or being considered for posts of great responsibility, the industrial chiefs chargéd with producing tanks, airplanes and artillery, and diplomats representing his new allies of the West.

  He spent much time in the communications room of the Kremlin, adjacent to his office, where direct teletype wires connected him with most of the chief cities, and VC or high-priority high-security telephone linked him with the military fronts and commands.

  Stalin had now in late August apparently recovered from the breakdown he suffered at the onset of war. He had assumed supreme command of the Soviet armed forces as head of what was called the Stavka or the Supreme Command on July 10, a week after the delivery of a radio speech to the nation on July 3—a performance so halting, so filled with pauses, hesitations, sighs audible to the radio audience, interludes of noisy water-drinking, that it impressed many as the effort of a man barely in control of himself. On July 19 Stalin took over the post of Defense Commissar, and on August 8 he was named Supreme Commander of the Soviet Union or, as the title later came to be used, Generalissimo.

  Some time after July 10—he does not seem to recall the precise date— Admiral Kuznetsov saw Stalin for the first time since the outbreak of war. He found him in the office of Defense Commissar Timoshenko, standing before a long table strewn with maps of the fighting fronts. Kuznetsov was quick to note that there were no naval maps among them.

  Stalin questioned Kuznetsov about the situation in the Baltic, particularly the defense of Tallinn and the islands of Ösel and Dagö.1 He wanted to shift the heavy guns from the islands, but when Kuznetsov said it was almost impossible to move coastal artillery, Stalin dropped the question.

  By the end of July the Stavka had begun meeting in Stalin’s Kremlin offices, being summoned at Stalin’s personal whim, its composition varying according to Stalin’s desires. In other words, by the end of July the Soviet Government was running again in the familiar Stalin style.

  Stalin’s working habits put a murderous burden on his chief associates and upon the General Staff in particular. In order to cover the long hours during which they were subject to call—from 10 A.M. to possibly 4 or 5 A.M.—they were compelled to divide their working shifts. For example, Marshal Aleksei I. Antonov, Deputy Chief of Staff, was permitted to sleep from 5 or 6 A.M. to noon. The rest of the twenty-four hours he was subject to call at any moment. General Semyon Shtemenko, his deputy, was given free time between 2 and 6 or 7 p.m.

  Stalin received three reports daily from the General Staff. The first was between 10 and 11 A.M. by telephone, usually by Shtemenko. At 4 or 5 P.M. Antonov reported. But the main report came at night, often close to midnight. If Stalin was at his villa on the Mozhaisk Chaussée, the officers drove there. If he was in the Kremlin, the General Staff officers entered through the Borovitsky Gate, circling around the Great Palace in which the Supreme Soviet met, and crossed ancient Ivanovsky Square to the little corner where Stalin’s apartment and office were to be found. They went in through the offices of his chef de cabinet, the loathsome General Poskrebyshev,2 passed through the anteroom in which the chief of Stalin’s personal guard was stationed, and then into Stalin’s familiar office.

  On the left side of the room was a long table where the officers spread their maps and a large globe on which, Khrushchev said, Stalin plotted operations.3

  Stalin went over the rep
orts from the fronts. They were made orally and usually without notes. The military sat on one side of the room and the Politburo on the other. Stalin paced the room fitfully, occasionally returning to his desk in the far corner, picking up two papirosy (he preferred a brand called “Herzegovina Flor”), breaking them open, filtering the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, tamping it down, and lighting it in a blue cloud of smoke.

  Although he was now in better command of himself, he was still nervous and jittery. Indeed, it was not until more than two years later that Marshal Voronov, on returning from an extended trip to the front, noted that Stalin had become “significantly more quiet and self-confident.” He was, Voronov said, much less “nervous and hot-tempered” than in the early months of the war.4

  The General Staff, with the assistance of the chiefs of the various branches of service, reported to Stalin the action of the past twenty-four hours, referring to the fronts, the mechanized and armored corps by the names of commanders. The divisions were referred to by number. This was Stalin’s way of conducting business.

  After the briefings Stalin dictated orders, usually written out on the spot by Shtemenko and corrected by Stalin in his own hand. These were often put directly on the teletype to the front commanders without being typed up.

  It was 3 or 4 A.M. before this procedure was finished. Then the commanders had to return to their headquarters and issue the necessary supporting orders.

  The Stalin system was one of enormous centralization. Stalin refused to permit a single important decision or document relating to artillery to issue from the General Staff without Voronov’s signature. Nor would he consider or even read a report until Voronov had personally cleared it. Stalin would not permit even the smallest question to be decided without his concurrence. Since many individuals were fearful of reporting to him, the net result was incalculable delay and confusion in the conduct of the war.5

  Despite the improvement of his physical condition, Stalin had not yet begun to attach his name to major communiqués and decrees. That would wait a bit—until the Soviet Union began to achieve successes rather than appalling disasters.6

  However, Stalin was sufficiently in command of himself so that Harry Hopkins at the end of July found him in what seemed to be perfectly normal spirits. Indeed, Hopkins was impressed with Stalin’s conviction that the Russian armies would be able to halt the German attack not more than 60 or 70 miles east of the lines then held. Stalin told Hopkins on July 31 that the Russians would go into the winter still holding Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad.

  Hopkins left Moscow without a hint of the traumatic period from which Stalin had so recently emerged. Hopkins had every confidence that the Soviet leader was correctly evaluating the military situation.

  Stalin was now following the details of the Leningrad crisis with his usual minuteness. He was especially interested in the internal defenses of Leningrad, the system of fortifications and street barricades, the mobilization of the population into Volunteer battalions, the formation of block-by-block fighting units.

  Not infrequently he telephoned directly to Party Secretary Kuznetsov, who was in chargé of fortifications, giving him specific instructions as to how barricades should be built, where they were to be placed and how the population should be prepared to fight the Germans.

  It was not easy for Kuznetsov to carry out the peremptory and often arbitrary instructions which Stalin gave him. But he was a man of unusual capacity for work, great zeal and great optimism. His humor was usually good. He knew his technical staff, knew the industrial capabilities of the city and for the most part was able to meet Stalin’s demands.

  As the Germans closed in on Leningrad, the issue of internal defense grew more and more pressing. The Leningrad Command, headed by Zhdanov and Voroshilov, did not have the time or energy to cope with the task efficiently. For this reason, acting on their own initiative, they had created the Council for the Defense of Leningrad on August 20, staffing it with the men who were concerned with these local matters.

  The moment was one of the greatest tension. The twenty-first was the day proclamations went up on the city walls—on the Nevsky, on Kirov Prospekt, on Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment: “The enemy is at the gates!”

  This was the day—or evening—that Stalin called Zhdanov and Voroshilov to an urgent consultation on the VC telephone. Stalin was in a rage. Why had they set up the Council for the Defense of Leningrad without consulting him? And why were they not personally members of the Council?

  It was in vain that Zhdanov attempted to explain that the Council was designed to handle matters to which the Leningrad Front Command had no time to attend—the block-by-block plans, the location of the tank traps, the sandbagging of machine-gun posts, the issuance of Molotov cocktails, the thousand and one details of getting the great city ready for street battle and Nazi storming.

  Stalin refused to be appeased. Perhaps he thought that Zhdanov and Voroshilov were seeking to evade responsibility for the city’s fall. Or he (or one of his Kremlin associates) may have seen a dark plot to yield up Leningrad. It may have been anger at a manifestation of independence which might forebode greater independence later on. There well may have been others in the Kremlin (or Stalin himself) who sought to find grounds for criticism of Zhdanov and Voroshilov for their failure to halt the German drive on the city. Stalin may have seen in the creation of the special Council visible evidence of panic.

  The precise motives of the strange and disturbed dictator are not clear. What is clear is that Stalin would not accept the action of his Leningrad proconsuls.

  The truth is that Stalin had become increasingly critical of the conduct of Leningrad’s defense as the situation worsened. He and his deputy, Chief of Staff Marshal B. M. Shaposhnikov, examined every decision affecting Leningrad. Repeatedly Stalin or Shaposhnikov (at Stalin’s insistence) ordered changes in dispositions, in the use of troops or weapons.

  As the Leningrad forces fell back toward the northern capital, Stalin began to hector Voroshilov and Zhdanov. He called them “specialists in retreat.” Zhdanov, he insisted, “concerns himself with only one thing—how to retreat.”

  Not infrequently, Stalin rejected proposals out of hand. He did not seem to understand the relative strength of the German attacking forces and those available for Leningrad’s defense.

  His dissatisfaction with Leningrad’s leaders reached culmination August 21. Not only did he peremptorily order that the Council for the Defense of Leningrad be “reviewed” and its membership “revised” to include Voroshilov and Zhdanov, but he administered a formal rebuke to both men. He assailed what he called their “enthusiasm” for forming workers battalions with insufficient weapons. He ordered that the commanders who had been picked to head the battalions be changed for others, nominated by Moscow. Here again his concern for the minutiae of the city’s internal defense suggested a fear that Leningrad might be delivered to the Germans from within. These fears may have been inflamed by reports from the NKVD that the Leningrad populace was not to be trusted; or the secret police may have circulated rumors of some kind of plot by Zhdanov and Voroshilov. Or Stalin may simply have had a pathological fear of putting weapons into the hands of ordinary Soviet citizens.

  This same day Stalin rejected a proposal by Admiral Tributs for a naval offensive to be launched from Tallinn toward Narva in hope of undermining the German troops advancing on Leningrad.

  Although the Baltic Fleet was fighting for its life at Tallinn, Admiral Tributs and his Military Council, N. K. Smirnov and A. D. Verbitsky, suggested that the fleet mobilize all its resources, the men defending Tallinn (a group 20,000 to 25,000 strong called the 10th Corps), the garrisons remaining on the Baltic islands and on Ösel, Dagö and Hangö, plus all of the fleet marines. This force would number about 60,000 men plus three artillery regiments. It would be hurled at the rear of the German Group Nord in a sudden offensive from Tallinn toward Narva.

  Tributs said that his air intelligence and reports of scouts indic
ated the Germans had no reserves in the rear and that there was every prospect of catching them by surprise and delivering a stunning defeat. It was a Church-illian concept, brave, imaginative and bold, one of the few creative military schemes to emerge in Soviet councils during the war.

  Stalin turned it down out of hand. The official reason was that it would uncover the Gulfs of Riga and Finland to German entry and that it was too difficult to assemble the forces in the time available. Actually, the rejection may have been grounded in politics, not in military concerns.

  The interventions by Stalin desperately handicapped Leningrad’s defenses. They handicapped the task of the men whose responsibility it was to save the city from the Germans. They were compelled to name themselves to the Council for the Defense of Leningrad, and, as a result, by August 30 it had been discarded as a useless appendage since it merely duplicated the Leningrad Front Council.

  Whatever the motivation for Stalin’s conduct, its significance has been underlined by a multitude of circumstances. The very existence of the Council for Defense had not been revealed until Dmitri V. Pavlov did so in his slender volume, Leningrad v Blokade, which appeared in 1958. Not one word of elaboration of his account was added until 1965, when a few details were set forth in a civilian history of Leningrad in the war.7 Finally, in 1966 the full text of the order establishing the Council was published in a collection of official Leningrad documents. Even so, every Soviet historical and public reference continues to be couched in virtually the words of Pavlov’s original reference—a sign that the wording was cleared at the highest level of Soviet Government and that nothing else was cleared or has been cleared. In other words, the question of the Council for Defense was still a sensitive issue in Soviet politics more than twenty-five years after the event.

  There can be no doubt that the savage row between Stalin and the Leningrad defenders, Zhdanov and Voroshilov, was of import not only in the defense of the city but in the higher game of Kremlin politics which went on throughout the war between Stalin and those of his associates who sought, by one means or another, to advance their personal fortunes, regardless of its effect on the war.