The 900 Days (86 page)

Meretskov got more in reinforcements and arms than he had expected from Moscow in the light of the Stalingrad crisis. Stalin sent him 20,000 rifles and tommy guns, although he had asked for only 8,000 to 10,000. They were shipped by a roundabout route to deceive the Nazis about the coming offensive. The men were sent in closed railroad cars marked “fuel,” “food,” “hay.” Tanks were sent on flatcars covered with hay.

The offensive failed. It rumbled on into October but never gave promise of breaking the German lines. Once again Leningrad troops forced the Neva River, sending three rifle divisions across in daylight September 8 in the face of terrible German fire. Govorov took the responsibility for the fiasco and proposed to try again. He especially trained some troops and brought in amphibious tanks. The new action started September 26. It went just as badly. Rain set in. Once again Govorov took the hard decision. He ordered the
place (Varmes
liquidated and the troops withdrawn to the north bank of the Neva on October 8.

Meretskov had no better luck. His troops pushed forward a short distance, but by September 20 Manstein was counterattacking, trying to cut off the Soviet forward positions. The bad-luck Second Shock Army bogged down in the marshes. General Meretskov plunged into action to help extricate the 4th Guards Rifle Corps. Twice his personal car was destroyed by a direct hit. He got word that Stalin was urgently calling him on the VC high-security phone, but not until September 30 did he emerge from the marshes and put through the call.

“Why didn’t you come to the direct wire?” Stalin demanded.

“I lost two machines,” Meretskov replied. “But more than that I was afraid that if I left the command point of the corps, behind me would come dragging the staff of the corps and after them the staff of the units.”

He reported he had extricated the surrounded troops. That was the end of the fourth effort to lift the Leningrad siege. It was October 6—the 402nd day of the siege. But the threat of a new German attack on Leningrad had been removed. Manstein had lost 60,000 men, killed or taken prisoner, 260 planes, 200 tanks and 600 guns and mortars. “Better be three times at Sevastopol than stay on here,” men of the Manstein command said.

Yet somehow the mood of Leningrad was changing. The city was preparing for its second winter of war in a new spirit. The manager of the Astoria Hotel, a young woman named Galina Alekseyevna, mascara on her eyelashes, sang as she mounted the marble, circular staircase. “Why am I so happy?” she asked Pavel Luknitsky. “I really don’t know. The city is being shelled, and I am singing. I never used to sing in the morning. I used to live quite well, but I cried all the time. The things I cried for! It makes me laugh to think of them. Now I’ve lost everyone. All my dear ones. I thought I couldn’t survive that. But now I’m ready for anything. If I die, I die. I’m not afraid of death any more.”

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

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

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

He got a big ovation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formal orders for the offensive were issued by Stalin on December 8.
²
The objective: to end the blockade of Leningrad. The code for the operation: Iskra, the spark, a name long associated with the Revolution and with Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad, the name of the first Social Democratic newspaper, the one which Lenin edited before the break between the Men-sheviks and the Bolsheviks.

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

Lindemann was right.

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

Govorov met with the Sixty-seventh Army staff on Christmas Day. With him was Party Secretary Zhdanov, Party Secretary Ya. F. Kapustin, Party Secretary A. I. Makhanov and Mayor Peter Popkov and Marshal Voro-shilov. Voroshilov had been assigned by Stalin as liaison between Moscow and Leningrad. The notorious Police General Mekhlis
³
had been assigned as Political Commissar to General Meretskov on the Volkhov front, and Party Secretary Kuznetsov had been temporarily named Commissar of the Second Shock Army on the Volkhov front in an attempt to keep that ill-fated army from once again falling into encirclement.

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

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