The 900 Days (87 page)

The tank started out on the ice with turret open, at Govorov’s insistence. Behind it marched Voroshilov with Govorov at his side. The tank slithered out on the ice. It had gone about 150 yards when the ice cracked in every direction. Govorov yanked Voroshilov back from a yawning hole as the tank plunged under the water. A moment later tankist Mikhail Ivanov, wet, freezing but alive, bobbed up. Someone handed him a flask of vodka.

“Give him the Order of the Red Star,” Voroshilov ordered. “And as for you, Bychevsky, we will have a conversation later.”

Once again Bychevsky was in trouble. Fortunately, Govorov was not so disturbed. He ordered Bychevsky to continue his experiments.

It was a quiet New Year’s in Leningrad. There were only 637,000 people left in the city—not a quarter of the number there a year before. Vera Inber had a party. Most of the Leningrad writers—all of them engaged in war work of some kind—came. So did many of the physicians at her husband’s Erisman Hospital. There were cake and wine, vodka and caviar. Aleksandr Kron was there. So were Nikolai Chukovsky and Lev Uspensky. Vsevolod Vishnevsky came in late on the snowy, fresh evening. He had been broadcasting one of his blustery orations (“1943 will bring justice! This year will be
oursl
The blow is nearing. Forward, friends!”). Vera Inber had written out fortunes for each guest on bits of paper. Vishnevsky’s said: “Don’t think about the future; the future is thinking about you.” He liked that.

Vera Inber’s husband, Dr. Strashun, cut his finger opening a bottle. One of his colleagues bandaged it with the virtuosity born of treating thousands of more serious wounds. There was a radio speech by President Kalinin and a communiqué reporting enormous trophies and thousands of prisoners at Stalingrad. But Vera Inber was filled with disquiet. She had planned to put down on paper her achievements and her failures for 1942—and her hopes for the New Year. She didn’t succeed. She didn’t write anything. Her mood was low again. There was another air raid, and she was having trouble with the fifth chapter of “Pulkovo Meridian.” Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio. She was more hopeful. She remembered New Year’s of 1942. How much better things looked now. She read a poem which she called “The House-warming”:

Because of the weakness of the Neva ice, generals Govorov and Meretskov proposed to Moscow December 27 that the date for the offensive be set back to January 12. Stalin’s reply came in on December 28. It read:

Y
EFREMOV,
A
FANASYEV,
L
EONIDOV:

The Stavka of the Supreme Command approves your proposal concerning the timing of preparations and beginning Operation Iskra.

“Yefremov” was the code name for Marshal Voroshilov, “Afanasyev” that of General Meretskov and “Leonidov” that of General Govorov.

The action began at 9:30
A.M.
on January 12. More than 4,500 guns opened up on the Germans. The barrage lasted two hours twenty minutes on the Leningrad front, one hour forty-five minutes on the Volkhov front. It was not the familiar story of too little, too late or too weak. The unearthly roar of the multibarreled rockets, the Katyushas, shook the ice-clad earth.

At 11:42
A.M.
a green rocket flashed over the Neva. General S. N. Bor-shchev, whose 268th Infantry Division was to lead the attack, suddenly froze. He saw his troops, mistaking the signal, start to push across the ice, not waiting for the Katyushas to complete their fire. It was too late to halt them. He could only watch in fear that turned to triumph as the men picked their way safely across the ice, their losses minimized by the sudden move.

General Dukhanov’s divisions, the 268th led by General Borshchev and the 136th led by General N. P. Simonyak (one of the heroes of the fighting at Hangö), stormed across the Neva. They met heavy Nazi counterattacks, and the 268th was in serious trouble before the combined weight of the Soviet attack began to be felt. The Second Shock Army of Meretskov’s Volkhov front pushed straight west toward a link-up with Dukhanov’s forces.

Most of the Leningrad correspondents couldn’t get permission to go to the front. Luknitsky had been at Dukhanov’s command post but was ordered back to Leningrad on the evening of January 11. Orders had been given: “Not one correspondent is permitted here.” Luknitsky raced back to Leningrad. It was not until 3
P.M.
on January 13 that he and the others were permitted to join the attacking troops.

Sayanov joined the 86th Division pushing into Shlisselburg. It was late night, and the blue light of the moon shone down on the endless drifts which covered the low-lying land. On the edges of the snowy field he saw black shell holes torn in the earth. Everywhere sprawled a jumble of Nazi arms—cannon, machine guns, tommy guns, boxes of ammunition, shells, grenades, a box of iron crosses, cases of cognac, Goebbels’ leaflets, tin cans, straw boots, broken cartons of cigarettes, stray wagon wheels. By morning, Sayanov thought, the wind will have dusted over the battlefield and it will disappear under the white powder. But now he could follow the course of the fighting. Here lay the body of a Russian soldier, a youth not more than twenty-three. Even in death he gripped his rifle firmly. He had been firing on the enemy to the last. A heap of expended cartridges lay beside him, his eye was still at the gunsight and his finger on the trigger. Someone had thrown a white camouflage cape over the boy and thrust a stick in the snowdrift with his helmet on it. There was a white paper glued to the helmet, probably the boy’s name and possibly that of his family.

The battle raged on. From his headquarters at Novgorod three times Field Marshal von Kiichler ordered the Shlisselburg garrison to hold out to the last man.

Rows broke out among the Soviet generals. Marshal Georgi Zhukov, hero of the Battle of Moscow, hero of Stalingrad, had been sent in to “coordinate” between the Volkhov front and Moscow.
⁴
He got on the VC high-security line to General Simonyak of the 136th Division. Why didn’t Simonyak attack the Sinyavino Heights? The Nazi positions there were holding up the Second Shock Army.

“For the same reason the Second Army doesn’t attack them,” Simonyak replied. “The approach is through a marsh. The losses would be great and the results small.”

“Tolstoyite! Passive resister!” shouted Zhukov. “Who are those cowards of yours? Who doesn’t want to fight? Who needs to be ousted?”

Simonyak angrily replied that there were no cowards in the Sixty-seventh Army.

“Wise guy,” snapped Zhukov. “I order you to attack the heights.”

“Comrade Marshal,” Simonyak rejoined. “My army is under the command of the Leningrad front commander, General Govorov. I take orders from him.”

Zhukov hung up. Simonyak got no order to attack the Sinyavino Heights.

Steadily the Russians pushed ahead. By January 14 the distance separating the Leningrad and Volkhov troops was less than three miles. The confidence of Moscow in the outcome was demonstrated by Stalin’s action in promoting Govorov on January 15 to the rank of colonel general. The next day the distance between the two fronts had dwindled to three-quarters of a mile. At midevening on January 17 General Govorov gave a final order: The gap between the two fronts was to be closed by any means. By this time Shlisselburg was almost surrounded. The 86th Division was attacking from the south, and the 34th Ski Brigade of Colonel Ya. F. Potekhin had circled around to the east. The end was near. The German commanders, desperately trying to keep an escape corridor open, ordered a counterattack at 9:30
A.M.
, January 18. It failed.

Within hours the units of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts were joining hands—the basic blockade of Leningrad had been broken. The first meeting of Soviet troops came in the morning near Workers’ Settlement No. 1, about five miles southeast of Shlisselburg. There at 9:30
A.M.
Simonyak’s 123rd Rifle Brigade met a unit of the 1240th Regiment of the 372nd Division from the Volkhov front.
⁵

It was dark before Shlisselburg fell. There had been fifteen thousand people in the old fortress city before the war. Only a few hundred were left. The rest had been shipped to Germany, died of hunger or had been executed by the Germans. Oreshek, the hard little nut, the fort which had held out for five hundred days, stood like a battered battleship just off the Shlisselburg piers. Sayanov spent a night at Oreshek, interviewing the defenders. Water trickled down the thick walls. The air was dank. A little oil lamp stood on the table. “It’s very gloomy,” Sayanov said. “It reminds me of one of the cells where they held the revolutionaries.”

“It is,” the commander replied.

All Leningrad was waiting. Each evening for days the people had waited for the “last-minute news at 11
P.M.
” Would the blockade be lifted? When?

All day on the eighteenth rumors ran through the city. Then just before 11
P.M.
came the communiqué, read in the solemn tones of Yuri Levitan, Moscow’s No. 1 announcer:

“Troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts have joined together and at the same time have broken the blockade of Leningrad.”
⁶

Vera Inber had no night pass, but she had to get to Radio House. She had to, and she feared she would be too late. Radio House was a long way from Aptekarsky Island. But her fears were groundless. No passes were needed. Everyone was on the street. Leningrad radio stayed on the air until 3
A.M.
For once there was no plan, no censor. People spoke. Music played. Poems were read. Speeches were made.

“This snowy moonlit night of January 18-19 will never vanish from the memory of those who experienced it,” Vera Inber told the people of Leningrad. “Some of us are older and others are younger. All of us will experience happiness and grief in our lives. But this happiness, the happiness of liberated Leningrad, we will never forget.”

Vsevolod Vishnevsky was at the command post of the fleet artillery when the communiqué came in. He promptly jotted in his diary: “Seventeen months of blockade, of torment, of expectation. But we held out! Now there is a holiday in our street!”

Pavel Luknitsky was in Shlisselburg. At three minutes to 1
A.M.
, January 19, less than two hours after the victory communiqué, he managed to get a direct military telegraph line to Moscow and sent off the first story to the Moscow press about the lifting of the blockade. A scoop.

Olga Berggolts wrote a poem:

But she warned:

It was true. The flags went up in the streets, red flags everywhere. Girls danced down the pavement. They spoke to everyone. They threw their arms around soldiers. It made Vishnevsky think of the February Revolution. In the Radio House studios everyone kissed each other—Olga Berggolts, Boris Likharev, Yelena Vechtomova, Director Yasha Babushkin.

The siege had lasted 506 days. But, though the Germans had been pushed back, they still sat on Leningrad’s doorstep. Their guns still raked the city.

On February 7 Pavel Luknitsky went to the Finland Station. Shell holes gaped. The train shed was a tangle of steel and girders. But the platform was decorated with red flags and bunting. At 10:09
A.M.
a light locomotive, No. L-1208, pulling two passenger cars and a string of freight cars, chuffed into the station. It had come from the new line connecting Leningrad with the “mainland” via the new Shlisselburg bridge across the Neva and Vol-khovstroi.
⁷
A band struck up. The crowd cheered. Mayor Popkov spoke. So did Party Secretary Kuznetsov. Just before noon the meeting ended and the train dispatcher snouted: “Train No. 719, Leningrad-Volkhovstroi, Engineer Fedorov, is prepared to depart!”

It was the 526th day of the blockade. Train service had begun again by an indirect, roundabout way, over temporary bridges and running a murderous corridor of Nazi artillery fire. The blockade was lifted, but only partially. Most Leningraders thought the full and final end of the siege was at hand. They were wrong. Many days, many weeks, many months, many lives lay between that February day and the ultimate freeing of the city.

¹
There is disagreement among Soviet witnesses on this. Yuri Alyanskii, who was present, contends no German shells fell in the city because of precautionary fire by Soviet batteries.
(Zvezda
, No. 11, November, 1961, p. 195.) V. M. Gankevich says Ferch ordered his guns to fire but they were immediately silenced. (Gankevich,
op. cit
., p. 80.) N. N. Zhdanov, then one of Leningrad’s artillery specialists, says the Germans were kept from opening fire by Govorov’s counterbattery barrage. (N. N. Zhdanov,
Ognevoi Shchit Leningrada
, Moscow, 1961, p. 76.) Neither Inber, Vishnevsky nor Bogdanov-Berezovsky mentions shelling. All were present. (Inber,
Izbranniye Proizvedeniya
, Vol. III Leningrad, 1958, pp. 347–348; Vishnevsky,
op. cit
., p. 598; Bogdanov-Berezovsky,
V Gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny
, Leningrad, 1959, p. 146.) General Friedrich Ferch was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. In 1955 he was turned over to Western Germany and soon thereafter released,
(Istoriya VOVSS
, Vol. III, p. 128.)