The 900 Days (32 page)

Some plants took raw materials and supplies along with them. On July 29 this was categorically forbidden for iron, steel and metals. About a week later all Leningrad plants were put on fuel quotas and work was begun to equip large boilers, such as those at Power Station No. 5, the Kirov factory and others, to burn peat and wood.

The task of fulfilling high-priority orders of the State Defense Committee, such as a directive to the Kirov plant to begin serial production of field guns, became harder and harder. The order was subcontracted to thirty-eight separate factories but, even so, in July only 133 guns were turned out.

Another high-priority order was for rocket shells for the famous Russian secret weapon, the Katyusha, an eight- and twelve-barreled rocket gun. This work had to be subcontracted to seventeen factories, and not until August 27 were the first shells produced.

The Germans plunged ahead with deadly vigor. Their forward units had begun to break into the areas of Leningrad’s exurbia—if a later concept may be applied to Leningrad—the regions where many people had summer villas or commuting homes.

Zhdanov summoned to Smolny August 16 what was called in Party circles a “narrow
aktiv
”—that is, a meeting not of the full active membership of the higher Party ranks but of key people: secretaries of the Party districts, the
raions
or counties and wards of the city and its environs, the chairmen of the governmental units, directors of big factories, the backbone of the Leningrad Party. The time had come for frank talk. Already there were grumbling and concern in the factories. Workers could not understand why the Red Army retreated, retreated, retreated. Nor were they reassured by the fact that rumor after rumor of bad news, the fall of cities and further withdrawals was confirmed days later by the official communiqués. Zhdanov talked bluntly. He said all must be prepared for a serious worsening of the situation.

“We must expect at any moment,” he said, “mass air attacks upon areas of the city. We must immediately inspect and bring to full strength all ranks of the ARP, the fire-fighting and the first-aid commands.”

Peter S. Popkov, Mayor of Leningrad, reported that about 400,000 persons had been evacuated from Leningrad, leaving some three million in the city. Popkov was an extremely able, energetic man. He spent little time at Smolny and usually was to be found at factories, power stations or other industrial sites, lending a hand with production problems. He was hot-tempered and nervous and not always able to maintain a calm exterior. He reported there were only five thousand air-raid shelters and that they would not accommodate more than one-third of the populace. New air-raid shelters must be built immediately.

A. K. Kozlovsky, a Party worker at the great Northern Cable plant, attended the meeting. He jotted his impressions in his diary:

Bychevsky came away from the meeting grim and determined. “We left this meeting filled with thought about the urgent matters which must be done immediately, this very night, tomorrow,” he recalled. “The streets seemed more tense than ever. The whistle of a militiaman invisible in the blackout seemed particularly sharp. From somewhere sounded a single shot.”

Well the streets might seem more tense. The Germans were broadcasting by radio and leaflet to the Leningrad area that only Vasilevsky Island was still holding out and that Kronstadt “is burning.” SS and police units for “maintaining order” in Leningrad had been designated. Special passes in the name of the “Commandant of Leningrad” had been printed for cars entering Leningrad. Leaflets were dropped over Leningrad saying: “If you think that Leningrad can be defended, you are mistaken. If you oppose the German troops, you will perish in the wreckage of Leningrad under the hurricane of German bombs and shells. We will level Leningrad to the earth and destroy Kronstadt to the water line.”

“Only hours remain before the fall of Leningrad, the stronghold of the Soviets on the Baltic Sea,” the Berlin radio announced.

The deadly seriousness of it all was apparent to everyone. On August 20 Zhdanov and Voroshilov set up a special Leningrad City Council of Defense, headed by General A. I. Subbotin, head of the People’s Volunteers. It included Party Secretary Kuznetsov, Party Secretary Ya. F. Kapustin, Mayor Popkov, and L. M. Antyufeyev, member of the Military Council of the People’s Volunteers. The Defense Staff was to comprise Subbotin, Colonel Antonov as Chief of Staff, and Antyufeyev as Military Commissar. Its task was to direct block-by-block defense of the city. Under the Council were created all-powerful troikas—three-member directorates—in each region of the city. The troika consisted of the Party secretary, the local city executive chairman, the local NKVD commandant. The area Volunteer Military Command was attachéd to the troika. In each factory a small troika was named, chargéd with defense of the plant. Each district was divided into sectors, each sector into subsectors. One hundred fifty workers battalions of 600 men, women and teen-agers were to defend the sectors; 77 of the battalions were to be mobilized before nightfall. They were to be armed with rifles, shotguns, pistols, submachine guns, Molotov cocktails, sabers, daggers, pikes. In the neighborhoods street barricades, fire points, machine-gun nests and antitank traps began to be set up. In parks and open fields machine-gun posts were erected to protect against German parachutists. Heavy posts were fixed into the ground to wreck planes or gliders attempting to land. The fortified system was to be completed within four or five days.

Zhdanov called to Smolny a full party
aktiv
on August 20. It was the second of the war. No invitation tickets were issued. Word of the meeting was spread from Party cell to Party cell. Only the participants knew the place and time. The meeting was held in Lepny Hall. There were no formalities, no election of a presidium, no reports. The participants were red-eyed, gaunt-faced, exhausted and openly alarmed. They carried their side arms into the meeting. Both Zhdanov and Voroshilov, pistols in holsters, spoke—Voroshilov first, with a map and pointer. He showed mile by mile the line defending the city, the new breakthrough points (Gatchina was closest). He warned that the Germans were preparing a savage attack but promised that “Leningrad will become its grave.”

Zhdanov spoke slowly, solemnly.

“We have to teach people in the shortest possible time the main and most important methods of combat: shooting, throwing grenades, street fighting, digging trenches, crawling. . . .

“The enemy is at the gates. It is a question of life or death. Either the working class of Leningrad will be enslaved and its finest flower destroyed, or we must gather all the strength we have, hit back twice as hard and dig Fascism a grave in front of Leningrad.”

It was a short meeting. There was no time for talk. An order was issued to the troops: “No backward step!”

The next day a proclamation, signed by Voroshilov, Zhdanov and Popkov, carried the same message to the people. All over the city gigantic posters appeared on the walls: “The enemy is at the gates!”

At this precise moment—unknown to Leningrad and its leaders—Hitler had squarely joined the issue: Leningrad must first be fought and won. Only after that would the battle of Moscow begin.

Hitler issued a new directive August 21 decreeing that the principal Nazi objective was not the capture of Moscow but (in the north) the encirclement of Leningrad and junction with the Finns.

“Not until we have tightly encircled Leningrad, linking up with the Finns and destroyed the Russian Fifth Army [the Leningrad force] shall we have set the stage and can we free the forces for attacking and destroying the Center Army Group Timoshenko [defending Moscow],” Hitler said.

In Leningrad, security clamped down. When Kochetov and his ever-present friend Mikhalev arrived in their Ford at the Leningrad outskirts on August 22, they were halted by a patrol of the newly created Komendatura. The officer explained that the patrol was designed to prevent the Germans from infiltrating the city in the guise of refugees. “We will not permit any Fifth Column,” the officer said. He also mentioned the problem of deserters.

While it was true that the Komendatura patrols would halt any organized German units, their chief target was spies, saboteurs, deserters from the Soviet armed forces and “other hostile elements.” No one was permitted into the city without proper papers. Anyone without them was taken into immediate custody. The disorderly flow of refugees into the city was summarily halted. Refugees were to be collected in central gathering points and then, it was hoped, directed to the rear.

Ilya Glazunov, the little boy of the Red-Russian-versus-White-Russian game, was among those refugees. His parents had delayed until the last moment leaving their place in the country. Now thousands of people swarmed the roads. The children were serious and silent. Each had his own burden. In Ilya’s knapsack was a little porcelain Napoleon. He never could remember why he had saved it except that he’d just got it on his eleventh birthday. German planes roared over the torrent of humanity, again and again. The only shelters were the bomb pits made by earlier strafing runs. The Glazunovs managed to board one of the last trains for Leningrad. It passed through a “dead zone,” the suburban area cleansed of population where, hour by hour, the German advance guard was expected. Everywhere there were field works and trenches. The passengers talked of nothing but saboteurs and spies, about shooting, about murdered children. Someone said that the train just ahead had been attacked by German planes, almost all the passengers killed. Ilya’s mother, thinking him asleep, quietly asked a neighbor: if she covered him with her body, would that protect against the German bullets? The neighbor thought it wouldn’t. His father smoked his pipe, looked out the window and stared up at the cloudy sky.

A curfew was imposed within the city. No one was permitted on the street between 10
P.M.
and 5
A.M.
without a special pass.

The police were strengthened. The city possessed 36 police divisions, broken into 352 units of 2,341 men. In addition, there were 1,250 police posts in institutions and 80 special observation posts on building roofs.

New enrollment of workers battalions was undertaken, and by August 28 another 36,658 individuals had been enlisted. In September these formed the cadres for the 5th and 6th People’s Volunteers.

The new Council for the Defense of the city of Leningrad met August 20, the very day of its formation. Colonel Antonov was ordered to submit by 4
P.M.
, August 21, a plan for the internal defense of the city.

Guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails were stocked on streetcar platforms. Guns were mounted on trucks—twenty heavy weapons per sector—for mobile movement from one part of the city to another.

The city was surveyed for areas where the Germans might drop paratroops. Haymarket, Theater Place, Vorovsky, Champs de Mars, Palace Square, the Tauride Palace Gardens, the Volkov Cemetery, the Botanical Gardens and the Smolensk Cemetery were singled out as special danger points.

Round-the-clock observation posts were established in the rotunda of St. Isaac’s Cathedral (at 330 feet, the tallest building in Leningrad), the roof of the Lenin flour mill, the Troitsky Cathedral and the Red Banner factory.

The city was sown with dragon’s teeth—great cement blocks to bar the passage of German tanks. Railroad iron was crisscrossed into jungles along the outskirts of the city where the Nazis might break through.

Some measure of the task thrown upon the backs of Leningrad men—and women, mostly women—is afforded by the statistics: 450 miles of antitank ditches, 18,000 miles of open trenches, 15,000 reinforced-concrete firing points, 22 miles of barricades, 4,600 bomb shelters.

When Pavel Luknitsky returned to Leningrad from the Karelian front August 14, the city at first glance seemed not to have changed too much. There were crowds at the stations, trying to get aboard trains leaving the city. Few buses were running, and he noticed how empty the shelves were in the grocery stores.

But within ten days he noted in his diary: “How quickly has the Leningrad situation changed in the last 10 days!”

“Will we drive the enemy from Leningrad?” he asked himself. “Will they fall back in panic, pursued and attacked by our troops? Or ... I don’t want to think about the alternative. . . .”

Rumors ran through the city: Kingisepp had been recaptured. . . . Narva had been retaken.. . . Also Smolensk and Staraya Russa . . .

“Even if one of these rumors is correct, the situation is better,” Luknitsky wrote. Unfortunately, none was true.

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.