The Damansky conflict of 1969 is an armed clash between the troops of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The geographical location gave the name to the event - the battle took place in the area of ​​​​Damansky Island (sometimes it is mistakenly called the Damansky Peninsula) on the Ussuri River, which flows 230 kilometers south of Khabarovsk. It is believed that the Daman events are the largest Soviet-Chinese conflict in modern history.

Background and causes of the conflict

After the end of the Second Opium War (1856-1860), Russia signed an extremely beneficial treaty with China, which went down in history as the Beijing Treaty. According to official documents, the Russian border now ended on the Chinese bank of the Amur River, which meant that only the Russian side could fully use the water resources. No one thought about the belonging of the deserted Amur Islands due to the small population in that territory.

In the middle of the 20th century, China was no longer satisfied with this situation. The first attempt to move the border ended in failure. In the late 1960s, the leadership of the PRC began to assert that the USSR was following the path of socialist imperialism, which means that relations could not be aggravated. According to some historians, a sense of superiority over the Chinese was cultivated in the Soviet Union. The servicemen, as never before, began to zealously monitor the observance of the Soviet-Chinese border.

The situation in the area of ​​Damansky Island began to heat up in the early 1960s. The Chinese military and civilians constantly violated the border regime, penetrated into foreign territory, but the Soviet border guards expelled them without the use of weapons. The number of provocations grew every year. In the middle of the decade, attacks on Soviet border patrols by Chinese Red Guards became more frequent.

In the late 60s, the fights between the parties ceased to resemble fights, first firearms were used, and then military equipment. On February 7, 1969, for the first time, Soviet border guards fired several single shots from machine guns in the direction of the Chinese military.

The course of the armed conflict

On the night of March 1-2, 1969, more than 70 Chinese soldiers, armed with Kalashnikovs and SKS carbines, took up a position on the high coast of Damansky Island. This group was noticed only at 10:20 in the morning. At 10:40, a border detachment of 32 people, led by Senior Lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov, arrived on the island. They demanded to leave the territory of the USSR, but the Chinese opened fire. Most of the Soviet detachment, including the commander, died.

Reinforcements arrived on Damansky Island in the person of Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin and 23 soldiers. The shooting continued for about half an hour. On the armored personnel carrier of Bubenin, the heavy machine gun failed, the Chinese fired from mortars. They brought ammunition to the Soviet soldiers and helped to evacuate the wounded residents of the village of Nizhnemikhailovka.

After the death of the commander, junior sergeant Yuri Babansky took over the operation. His squad was dispersed on the island, the soldiers took the fight. After 25 minutes, only 5 fighters survived, but they continued to fight. At about 13:00, the Chinese military began to retreat.

On the Chinese side, 39 people died, on the Soviet side - 31 (and another 14 were injured). At 13:20, reinforcements from the Far Eastern and Pacific border districts began to flock to the island. The Chinese were preparing a regiment of 5,000 soldiers for the offensive.

On March 3, a demonstration took place near the Soviet embassy in Beijing. On March 4, the Chinese newspapers reported that only the Soviet side was to blame for the incident on Damansky Island. On the same day, Pravda published completely opposite data. On March 7, a picket was held near the Chinese embassy in Moscow. The demonstrators threw dozens of vials of ink into the walls of the building.

On the morning of March 14, a group of Chinese military men moving towards Damansky Island was fired upon by Soviet border guards. The Chinese retreated. At 15:00, a unit of Soviet army fighters left the island. It was immediately occupied by Chinese soldiers. Several times that day the island changed hands.

On the morning of March 15, a serious battle ensued. The Soviet soldiers did not have enough weapons, and what they had was constantly out of order. The numerical superiority was also on the side of the Chinese. At 17:00, the commander of the army of the Far Eastern District, Lieutenant General O.A. Losik violated the order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU and was forced to enter into battle the secret Grad multiple launch rocket systems. This decided the outcome of the battle.

The Chinese side on this section of the border no longer dared to engage in serious provocations and hostilities.

Consequences of the conflict

During the Damansky conflict of 1969, 58 people died and died from wounds from the Soviet side, 94 more people were injured. The Chinese lost from 100 to 300 people (this is still classified information).

On September 11, in Beijing, Premier of the State Council of the PRC Zhou Enlai and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR A. Kosygin signed a truce, which in fact meant that Damansky Island now belongs to China. On October 20, an agreement was reached on revising the Soviet-Chinese border. Finally, Damansky Island became the official territory of the PRC only in 1991.

After the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, a provision appeared that the borders between states should, as a rule (but not necessarily), run along the middle of the main fairway of the river. But it also provided for exceptions, such as drawing a border along one of the coasts, when such a border developed historically - by agreement, or if one side colonized the second coast before the other began to colonize it.

In addition, international treaties and agreements do not have retroactive effect. Nevertheless, in the late 1950s, when the PRC, seeking to increase its international influence, came into conflict with Taiwan (1958) and participated in the border war with India (1962), the Chinese used the new border provisions as an excuse to revise the Soviet -Chinese border.

The leadership of the USSR was ready to go for it, in 1964 a consultation was held on border issues, but ended to no avail.

In connection with ideological differences during the Cultural Revolution in China and after the Prague Spring of 1968, when the PRC authorities declared that the USSR had embarked on the path of "socialist imperialism", relations became especially aggravated.

Damansky Island, which was part of the Pozharsky district of Primorsky Krai, is located on the Chinese side of the main channel of the Ussuri. Its dimensions are 1500-1800 m from north to south and 600-700 m from west to east (an area of ​​about 0.74 km²).

During the flood period, the island is completely hidden under water and does not represent any economic value.

Since the early 1960s, the situation around the island has been heating up. According to the statements of the Soviet side, groups of civilians and military personnel began to systematically violate the border regime and enter Soviet territory, from where they were expelled each time by border guards without the use of weapons.

At first, on the instructions of the Chinese authorities, peasants entered the territory of the USSR and defiantly engaged in economic activities there: mowing and grazing, declaring that they were on Chinese territory.

The number of such provocations increased dramatically: in 1960 there were 100 of them, in 1962 - more than 5,000. Then the Red Guards began to attack border patrols.

The number of such events was in the thousands, each of them involved up to several hundred people.

On January 4, 1969, a Chinese provocation involving 500 people was carried out on Kirkinsky Island (Qiliqingdao).

According to the Chinese version of events, the Soviet border guards themselves organized provocations and beat up Chinese citizens who were engaged in economic activities where they always did it.

During the Kirkinsky incident, they used armored personnel carriers to oust civilians and crushed 4 of them, and on February 7, 1969, they fired several single automatic shots in the direction of the Chinese border detachment.

However, it has been repeatedly noted that none of these clashes, no matter whose fault they occurred, could result in a serious armed conflict without the approval of the authorities. The assertion that the events around Damansky Island on March 2 and 15 were the result of an action carefully planned by the Chinese side is now the most widely spread; including directly or indirectly recognized by many Chinese historians.

For example, Li Danhui writes that in 1968-1969, the directives of the CPC Central Committee limited the response to Soviet provocations, only on January 25, 1969, it was allowed to plan "retaliatory military operations" near Damansky Island with the forces of three companies. On February 19, the General Staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC agreed to this.

Events March 1-2 and the next week
On the night of March 1-2, 1969, about 300 Chinese military personnel in winter camouflage, armed with AK assault rifles and SKS carbines, crossed to Damansky and lay down on the higher western coast of the island.

The group remained unnoticed until 10:40, when a report was received from the observation post at the 2nd Nizhne-Mikhailovka outpost of the 57th Imansky border detachment that a group of up to 30 armed people was moving in the direction of Damansky. 32 Soviet border guards, including the head of the outpost, Senior Lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov, left for the scene in GAZ-69 and GAZ-63 vehicles and one BTR-60PB. At 11:10 they arrived at the southern tip of the island. The border guards under the command of Strelnikov were divided into two groups. The first group under the command of Strelnikov went to a group of Chinese servicemen who were standing on the ice southwest of the island.

The second group, under the command of Sergeant Vladimir Rabovich, was supposed to cover Strelnikov's group from the southern coast of the island. Strelnikov protested the violation of the border and demanded that the Chinese troops leave the territory of the USSR. One of the Chinese servicemen raised his hand, which served as a signal for the Chinese side to open fire on the groups of Strelnikov and Rabovich. The moment of the beginning of the armed provocation was captured on film by military photojournalist Private Nikolai Petrov. Strelnikov and the border guards following him died immediately, and a squad of border guards under the command of Sergeant Rabovich also died in a short-lived battle. Junior Sergeant Yuri Babansky took command of the surviving border guards.

Having received a report about the shooting on the island, the head of the neighboring, 1st outpost of the Kulebyakiny Sopki, Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin, drove out in the BTR-60PB and GAZ-69 with 20 fighters to help. In battle, Bubenin was wounded and sent an armored personnel carrier to the rear of the Chinese, skirting the northern tip of the island on the ice, but soon the armored personnel carrier was hit and Bubenin decided to go with his soldiers to the Soviet coast. Having reached the armored personnel carrier of the deceased Strelnikov and reseeded into it, the Bubenin group moved along the positions of the Chinese and destroyed their command post. They began to retreat.

In the battle on March 2, 31 Soviet border guards were killed, 14 were injured. The losses of the Chinese side (according to the KGB commission of the USSR) amounted to 247 people killed

At about 12:00 a helicopter arrived at Damansky with the command of the Iman border detachment and its chief, Colonel D.V. Leonov, and reinforcements from neighboring outposts. Reinforced detachments of border guards went to Damansky, and the 135th motorized rifle division of the Soviet Army was deployed in the rear with artillery and installations of the BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system. On the Chinese side, the 24th Infantry Regiment of 5,000 men was preparing for combat operations.

On March 3, a demonstration was held in Beijing near the Soviet embassy. On March 4, the Chinese newspapers "People's Daily" and "Jiefangjun Bao" (解放军报) published an editorial "Down with the new tsars!" invaded Zhenbaodao Island on the Wusulijiang River in our country's Heilongjiang Province, opened rifle and cannon fire on the border guards of the People's Liberation Army of China, killing and injuring many of them." On the same day, the Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article entitled “Shame on provocateurs!” According to the author of the article, “an armed Chinese detachment crossed the Soviet state border and headed for Damansky Island. On the Soviet border guards guarding this area, fire was suddenly opened from the Chinese side. There are dead and wounded." On March 7, the Chinese embassy in Moscow was picketed. The demonstrators also threw ink bottles at the building.

Events March 14-15
On March 14, at 15:00, an order was received to remove border guard units from the island. Immediately after the departure of the Soviet border guards, Chinese soldiers began to occupy the island. In response to this, 8 armored personnel carriers under the command of the head of the motorized maneuver group of the 57th border detachment, Lieutenant Colonel E. I. Yanshin, moved in battle formation towards Damansky; The Chinese retreated to their shore.



At 20:00 on March 14, the border guards received an order to occupy the island. On the same night, a group of Yanshin dug in there, consisting of 60 people in 4 armored personnel carriers. On the morning of March 15, after broadcasting through loudspeakers from both sides, at 10:00 from 30 to 60 barrels of Chinese artillery and mortars began shelling Soviet positions, and 3 companies of Chinese infantry went on the offensive. A fight ensued.

From 400 to 500 Chinese soldiers took up positions off the southern part of the island and prepared to go behind Yanshin's rear. Two armored personnel carriers of his group were hit, the connection was damaged. Four T-62 tanks under the command of D.V. Leonov attacked the Chinese at the southern tip of the island, but Leonov's tank was hit (according to various versions, by a shot from an RPG-2 grenade launcher or blown up by an anti-tank mine), and Leonov himself was killed by a Chinese sniper when trying to leave a burning car.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that Leonov did not know the island and, as a result, the Soviet tanks came too close to the Chinese positions. However, at the cost of losses, the Chinese were not allowed to enter the island.

Two hours later, having used up ammunition, the Soviet border guards were still forced to withdraw from the island. It became clear that the forces brought into battle were not enough and the Chinese significantly outnumbered the detachments of the border guards. At 17:00, in a critical situation, in violation of the instructions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU not to bring Soviet troops into conflict, on the orders of the commander of the Far Eastern Military District Oleg Losik, fire was opened from secret at that time multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) "Grad".

The shells destroyed most of the material and technical resources of the Chinese group and the military, including reinforcements, mortars, and stacks of shells. At 17:10, motorized riflemen of the 2nd motorized rifle battalion of the 199th motorized rifle regiment and border guards under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Smirnov and Lieutenant Colonel Konstantinov went on the attack in order to finally crush the resistance of the Chinese troops. The Chinese began to withdraw from their positions. Around 19:00, several firing points “came to life”, after which three new attacks were made, but they were also repulsed.

The Soviet troops again retreated to their shore, and the Chinese side no longer undertook large-scale hostile actions on this section of the state border.

In total, during the clashes, Soviet troops lost 58 people killed and died from wounds (including 4 officers), 94 people were wounded (including 9 officers).

The irretrievable losses of the Chinese side are still classified information and, according to various estimates, range from 100-150 to 800 and even 3000 people. A memorial cemetery is located in Baoqing County, where the ashes of 68 Chinese soldiers who died on March 2 and 15, 1969 are located. Information received from a Chinese defector suggests that other burials exist.

For their heroism, five servicemen received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: Colonel D. Leonov (posthumously), Senior Lieutenant I. Strelnikov (posthumously), Junior Sergeant V. Orekhov (posthumously), Senior Lieutenant V. Bubenin, Junior Sergeant Yu. Babansky.

Many border guards and military personnel of the Soviet Army were awarded state awards: 3 - Orders of Lenin, 10 - Orders of the Red Banner, 31 - Orders of the Red Star, 10 - Orders of Glory III degree, 63 - medals "For Courage", 31 - medals "For Military Merit" .

Settlement and aftermath
The Soviet soldiers failed to return the destroyed T-62 due to constant Chinese shelling. An attempt to destroy it with mortars was unsuccessful, and the tank fell through the ice. Subsequently, the Chinese were able to pull it ashore and now it stands in the Beijing Military Museum.

After the ice melted, the exit of Soviet border guards to Damansky was difficult and Chinese attempts to capture it had to be hindered by sniper and machine-gun fire. On September 10, 1969, a ceasefire was ordered, apparently to create a favorable background for negotiations that began the next day at the Beijing airport.

Damansky and Kirkinsky were immediately occupied by the Chinese armed forces.

On September 11, in Beijing, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR A. N. Kosygin, who was returning from the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, and the Premier of the State Council of the PRC, Zhou Enlai, agreed to stop hostile actions and that the troops remain in their positions. In fact, this meant the transfer of Damansky to China.

On October 20, 1969, new negotiations were held between the heads of government of the USSR and the PRC, and an agreement was reached on the need to revise the Soviet-Chinese border. Further, a series of negotiations were held in Beijing and Moscow, and in 1991 Damansky Island finally went to the PRC.

In March 1969, the two most powerful socialist powers at that time - the USSR and the PRC - almost started a full-scale war over a piece of land called Damansky Island.

In our photo story, we tried to restore the chronology of events.

Sponsor of the post: http://www.klimatproff.ru/installation of air conditioners.html: Installation, installation of air conditioners from 7000 rubles.

1. Damansky Island on the Ussuri River was part of the Pozharsky District of Primorsky Krai and had an area of ​​0.74 km². It was located a little closer to the Chinese coast than to ours. However, the border did not run along the middle of the river, but, in accordance with the Beijing Treaty of 1860, along the Chinese bank.

Damansky - view from the Chinese coast

2. The conflict on Damansky occurred 20 years after the formation of the People's Republic of China. Until the 1950s, China was a weak country with a poor population. With the help of the USSR, the Celestial Empire was not only able to unite, but began to develop rapidly, strengthening the army and creating the conditions necessary for modernizing the economy. However, after Stalin's death, a period of cooling began in Soviet-Chinese relations. Mao Zedong now claimed almost the role of the leading world leader of the communist movement, with which Nikita Khrushchev could not agree.

At the same time, the policy of the Cultural Revolution pursued by Zedong constantly demanded to keep society in suspense, to create ever new images of the enemy both inside and outside the country, and the process of “de-Stalinization” in the USSR in general threatened the cult of the “great Mao” himself, which gradually formed in China. As a result, in 1960, the CCP officially announced the "wrong" course of the CPSU, relations between countries escalated to the limit, and conflicts often began to occur along the border with a length of more than 7.5 thousand kilometers.

3. On the night of March 2, 1969, about 300 Chinese soldiers crossed to Damansky. For several hours they remained unnoticed, the Soviet border guards received a signal about an armed group of up to 30 people only at 10:32 in the morning.

4. 32 border guards under the command of the head of the Nizhne-Mikhailovskaya outpost, senior lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov, left for the scene. Approaching the Chinese military, Strelnikov demanded that they leave Soviet territory, but small arms fire was opened in response. Senior Lieutenant Strelnikov and the border guards following him died, only one soldier managed to survive.

Thus began the famous Damansky conflict, which for a long time was not written anywhere, but which everyone knew about.

5. Shooting was heard at the neighboring outpost "Kulebyakiny Sopki". Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin went to the rescue with 20 border guards and one armored personnel carrier. The Chinese actively attacked, but retreated after a few hours. Residents of the neighboring village of Nizhnemikhailovka came to the aid of the wounded.

6. On that day, 31 Soviet border guards were killed, 14 more soldiers were injured. According to the KGB commission, the losses of the Chinese side amounted to 248 people.

7. On March 3, a demonstration took place near the Soviet embassy in Beijing; on March 7, the PRC embassy in Moscow was picketed.

8. Weapons captured from the Chinese

9. On the morning of March 15, the Chinese went on the offensive again. They brought the strength of their forces to an infantry division, reinforced by reservists. Attacks by the method of "human waves" continued for an hour. After a fierce battle, the Chinese managed to push back the Soviet soldiers.

10. Then, to support the defenders, a tank platoon headed by the head of the Iman border detachment, which included the Nizhne-Mikhailovskaya and Kulebyakiny Sopki outposts, Colonel Leonov, moved to counterattack.

11. But, as it turned out, the Chinese were prepared for this turn of events and had a sufficient amount of anti-tank weapons. Due to their heavy fire, our counterattack failed.

12. The failure of the counterattack and the loss of the latest T-62 combat vehicle with secret equipment finally convinced the Soviet command that the forces put into battle were not enough to defeat the Chinese side, which was prepared very seriously.

13. Then the forces of the 135th motorized rifle division deployed along the river entered the business, the command of which ordered its artillery, including a separate BM-21 Grad division, to open fire on the positions of the Chinese on the island. This was the first time that Grad rocket launchers were used in combat, the impact of which decided the outcome of the battle.

14. The Soviet troops withdrew to their shore, and the Chinese side did not take any more hostile actions.

15. In total, during the clashes, Soviet troops lost 58 soldiers and 4 officers killed and died from wounds, 94 soldiers and 9 officers were wounded. The losses of the Chinese side are still classified information and, according to various estimates, range from 100-150 to 800 and even 3,000 people.

16. For their heroism, four servicemen received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: Colonel D. Leonov and Senior Lieutenant I. Strelnikov (posthumously), Senior Lieutenant V. Bubenin and Junior Sergeant Yu. Babansky.

In the photo in the foreground: Colonel D. Leonov, Lieutenants V. Bubenin, I. Strelnikov, V. Shorokhov; in the background: the personnel of the first frontier post. 1968

The post used materials from Russian77.ru and Ogonyok magazine.

The history of troubles on the border between Russia and China goes back to the 17th century, when Russian settlers arrived in the Amur region. After a series of clashes, Russia and the Qing Empire concluded the first border treaty in the history of the two countries in Nerchinsk. Subsequently, the demarcation line was repeatedly shifted, its outlines were refined.

In the 20th century, relations between the USSR and China looked cloudless for some time. The two largest socialist countries were in close alliance, the USSR provided China with a variety of assistance - economic, technical, military. However, in 1969 an armed conflict unfolded between the states.

Stalinist 1940s and early 1950s became a "honeymoon" in relations between the two countries. Soviet logistical assistance laid the foundations for China's future industrial power in many ways. However, with the coming to power in the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, relations began to cool. First, in Beijing, the debunking of Stalin's personality cult was negatively perceived. In addition, ideological differences were widening between the USSR and China. The idea of ​​"peaceful coexistence" with Western countries, voiced by Khrushchev, did not find understanding with Mao Zedong. The Chinese leader was annoyed by the calmness of Moscow, which did not support Beijing in a series of border incidents where the interests of China, India and Taiwan intersected. And most importantly, Mao believed that China should come to the fore in the socialist world - the place of the slave did not suit him. The paths of the USSR and China began to diverge.

Against this background, the issue of the border became more acute. According to the Beijing Treaty of 1860, in those places where the borders went along the rivers, the border did not pass along the fairway or the line of the middle of the river, as is usually the case, but along the Chinese bank. Thus, the islands on the river were ceded to the USSR, which the Chinese considered as a flagrant injustice. In addition, the border between the USSR and China was not clearly defined in a number of areas, even boundary signs were often absent.

All 1960s Tensions increased on the Soviet-Chinese border. Most often, the Chinese in large groups demonstratively tried to penetrate the territory of the USSR, and the violators were brought to the place centrally. Armed with stakes and metal rods, they tried to force the Soviet border guards out of the islands on the Ussuri. The Chinese smashed the headlights and viewing devices of cars and armored personnel carriers, tried to beat the border guards themselves. There is a known case when peasants, under the cover of soldiers, tried to penetrate Soviet territory and plow it, chanting political slogans. More often, however, detachments of Chinese, numbering from several dozen to several hundred people, tried to break through the border with Mao's quotes in their hands. The border guards did not open fire and only drove the violators back. There was a categorical ban on the use of firearms. To expel the Maoists, improvised means were used, ranging from rifle butts to fire engines, and home-made blunt horns and clubs were also used.

In January 1968, the USSR Foreign Ministry issued a note on the events on Kirkinsky Island, where the Chinese were most active. However, a series of incidents at Kirkinsky had no serious consequences. A year later, the PRC tested the strength of the Soviet border guards on Damansky Island.

This island, located north of Vladivostok, is a strip of land about half a kilometer wide and over 1,500 meters long. The channel separating Damansky from the western, Chinese coast of the Ussuri has a width of only 47 meters, from the Soviet - 120 meters. The island is stretched along the river from the northeast to the southwest.

During the period of Soviet-Chinese friendship, Chinese from the border zone freely came to this island to graze cattle and make hay. However, with the beginning of the cooling of relations between the two countries, this practice was stopped. Now that the river was frozen, there were constant fights with the Maoists trying to cross it. The clashes lasted for several hours, and the border guards were often injured.

In February 1969, the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army of China approved the plan for the operation to capture Damansky. This action was planned to put pressure on the USSR during future border negotiations. Three reconnaissance companies of 200-300 people each were selected for the operation, they were commanded by officers with combat experience. The armed action was preceded by the usual skirmishes, in which the Chinese side was no longer political activists, but directly military personnel. So far, only clubs have been used as weapons by both sides. In January 1969, border guards recaptured several dozen machine guns and carbines from Chinese soldiers and found that the captured weapons were loaded with live ammunition.

After that, the head of the Imansky border detachment, Colonel Democrat Leonov, in whose area of ​​​​responsibility Damansky was, sent a report to the headquarters of the military district and asked to send additional equipment. In addition, Leonov asked for clear instructions, but received only confirmation of previous orders: to push violators to Chinese territory, not to use weapons. Leonov did what he could: reinforced the outposts near Damansky with people and armored personnel carriers at the expense of his own reserves, and also organized constant training with live fire.

Key events unfolded on the night of March 1-2, 1969. Three infantry companies of the Chinese army crossed to Damansky Island, where they remained until the morning. The Chinese took measures to disguise themselves, so that they were not noticed even by a detachment of border guards, who bypassed Damansky on skis. However, on the morning of March 2, observers at the border post discovered a group of armed Chinese of at least 30 people moving towards Damansky. At the Nizhne-Mikhailovka outpost, people were alerted. The head of the outpost, Senior Lieutenant Strelnikov, with 30 subordinates, left to meet the violators, intending to oust the Chinese from the island.

In front of Damansky, the border guards split up. Strelnikov walked from the front along with six border guards, two more groups moved at some distance. At 11 am Strelnikov approached the Chinese and demanded to leave the island. In response, the Chinese soldiers opened fire. The head of the outpost died on the spot along with everyone who was nearby. The same fate befell the detachment covering the flank. On the third group, under the command of junior sergeant Babansky, they opened fire from machine guns and mortars, but he organized the defense and requested support by radio.

The remnants of the detachment were saved thanks to the clear actions of the commander of the neighboring frontier post, Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin, who advanced to the battlefield at the head of the maneuver group. For more than half an hour, his detachment fought without visible results. Then Bubenin decided to bypass the island on the ice in an armored personnel carrier and go to the rear of the Chinese unit. The officer's plan was fully justified: he managed to catch a Chinese company crossing the river on the ice and destroy it with the fire of a heavy machine gun of an armored vehicle. The armored personnel carrier was damaged by return fire, but Bubenin moved to another armored personnel carrier and brought the attack to an end. After some time, the second armored personnel carrier was destroyed by an armor-piercing projectile from the Chinese coast, but in the end it was Bubenin's raid that turned out to be decisive for the course of the battle. The Chinese suffered heavy losses, and, judging by the fragments of field telephones found, the command post was destroyed. The perpetrators have left the island.

This day was the bloodiest for the Soviet side. 31 people died, 14 border guards were injured. One soldier went missing, later the Chinese side handed over his body.

Having learned about the heavy battle on Damansky, a commission headed by the chief of staff of the border troops, Lieutenant General V.A. Matrosov and the deputy chairman of the KGB, Colonel General N.S. Zakharov, left for the Imansky border detachment. The government of the USSR sent a note of condemnation to Beijing, declaring its readiness to take decisive measures to stop the provocations. A maneuver group led by Lieutenant Colonel E. I. Yanshin, consisting of 45 people and 4 armored personnel carriers, advanced to Damansky. A reserve detachment deployed on the Soviet coast. Parts of the 135th division of the Far Eastern Military District were urgently pulled up to the border, and strong points were erected at the positions of the border detachment. Meanwhile, the leadership of the KGB, which was in charge of the border troops, received instructions from Moscow: not to allow the seizure of Soviet territory and at the same time not to allow the conflict to escalate into a large-scale war.

On March 14, a group of Chinese soldiers again tried to penetrate Damansky. The fire of the machine gun on duty stopped them, but then the border guards were ordered to retreat from the island. They were supposed to be replaced by the maneuverable group of Yanshin. Since the border guards left the island before the maneuver group arrived, the Chinese occupied Damansky again on March 15. At about 11:35 a group of Yanshin approached the island, which entered into battle with the invaders. Despite the fact that better trained and equipped with armored Soviet soldiers had an advantage, the Chinese, constantly receiving reinforcements from their shore, continued to resist. The commanders of the border guards asked for help from the leadership of the military district, but they never received it. Army units were forbidden to engage in battle due to fears that a border clash would escalate into a war.

The interaction of foot border guards and armored personnel carriers made it possible to inflict heavy losses on the enemy and, on the whole, to successfully fight. However, the Chinese, who had a large number of hand grenade launchers, knocked out part of the armored personnel carriers. The wounded accumulated at the border guards. At that moment, an important event took place. A tank company consisting of nine T-62 tanks approached the command post of the border detachment. Colonel Leonov reassigned the KGB vehicles on the spot and tried to repeat the success of the Bubenin raid, that is, bypass the island on ice. However, this time the Chinese prepared for such a development of events and opened heavy fire from grenade launchers. The lead tank was hit by a hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher (according to another version, the T-62 hit a mine), the crew died trying to get out of the car. Colonel Leonov was killed by a bullet while leaving the tank.

Yanshin's maneuver group gradually ran out of ammunition, but nevertheless remained stable and fought. The capabilities of the Soviet troops were seriously limited by the lack of artillery support. The battle was fought on its own by border guards with the support of tanks, while the Chinese constantly fired mortars to suppress.

While a fierce battle was going on around Damansky, key decisions were made in Moscow. The commander of the Far Eastern Military District, Colonel General O. A. Losik, constantly asked Moscow, trying to get an order to use rocket artillery against the Chinese. At the disposal of the 135th motorized rifle division was a division of rocket launchers "Grad". The officers of the division were determined and were only waiting for orders from the capital. However, the leadership ignored requests from the Far East. The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev, was just at that moment on his way to Budapest, and the delegation also included the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs and the head of government, A. N. Kosygin. As a result, Losik (according to other sources - his deputy, Lieutenant General P. M. Plotnikov) made an independent decision to use heavy weapons. At 17:10, an artillery regiment and a Gradov division of the 135th division opened fire on the rear positions of the Chinese group. At the same time, two army motorized rifle companies launched a counterattack on Damansky. The Chinese were driven off the island. The impact of artillery - primarily psychological - was powerful enough to end the confrontation with one quick attack.

As it turned out later, the Chinese soldiers managed to visit a Soviet tank that was shot down during the battle and remove various equipment from it, including secret devices for stabilizing the gun. What was left of the tank was flooded in Ussuri, firing mortars at the ice. Subsequently, the skeleton of the combat vehicle was lifted and taken to Beijing, where it is installed in the Museum of the People's Liberation Army of China to this day.

The battle of March 15 was the culmination of the confrontation on Damansky. Subsequently, the provocations undertaken by the Chinese side did not reach such a scale, their activity began to decline. Later, another relatively large armed incident took place in the area of ​​Lake Zhalanashkol, but the Chinese soldiers who crossed the border were surrounded and quickly defeated, with one intruder captured alive. After these events, the military gave way to diplomats, the outline of the Soviet-Chinese border began to be determined at the negotiating table.

As a result of the fighting on Damansky, 58 Soviet servicemen were killed. It is much more difficult to determine the losses of the Chinese side. After the clashes in the USSR, the deaths of 800 and even 2000 Chinese were announced. Of course, this is an "upper estimate". Official Chinese figures show 71 killed and 88 wounded. These data are certainly confirmed by the presence of graves. However, there is reason to believe that this information is underestimated. Thus, the military hospital where the Chinese wounded were treated reported the treatment of 200 fighters who arrived there as a result of the fighting on the island. In addition, there is information about the execution for cowardice of a number of Chinese soldiers and officers. Be that as it may, the official version of Beijing gives an idea of ​​the lower limit of the losses of Chinese troops.

In the autumn of 1969, negotiations were held in Beijing and Moscow, as a result of which the border agreements were revised. Damansky Island went to China, in 1991 the transfer was finalized.

Four border guards and one motorized rifleman received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the battle on Damansky. For Vitaly Bubenin, the confrontation on the Far Eastern island was the first step in an impressive career: in 1974 he became the commander of the Alpha group, and retired already in the 1990s. major general.

The incident on Damansky Island leaves a number of questions, first of all, to the political leadership of the country. Key decisions were made locally. The categorical ban on opening fire eventually led to the execution of border guards. Moscow had several days to develop a coherent plan of action, but the border guards opposing the Chinese were left face to face with the enemy, without the help of army units with their heavy equipment. The use of tanks again took place thanks to the strong-willed decision of the army and KGB officers on the spot. Finally, the command of the motorized rifle division and the military district put an end to the confrontation, while Moscow actually removed itself from the leadership of events.

Soviet soldiers showed their usual perseverance and courage, but in the end, the Chinese achieved at the negotiating table what they could not achieve on the battlefield ...

46 years ago, in March 1969, the two most powerful socialist powers at that time - the USSR and the PRC - almost started a full-scale war over a piece of land called Damansky Island.

1. Damansky Island on the Ussuri River was part of the Pozharsky District of Primorsky Krai and had an area of ​​0.74 km². It was located a little closer to the Chinese coast than to ours. However, the border did not run along the middle of the river, but, in accordance with the Beijing Treaty of 1860, along the Chinese bank.
Damansky - view from the Chinese coast


2. The conflict on Damansky occurred 20 years after the formation of the People's Republic of China. Until the 1950s, China was a weak country with a poor population. With the help of the USSR, the Celestial Empire was not only able to unite, but began to develop rapidly, strengthening the army and creating the conditions necessary for modernizing the economy. However, after Stalin's death, a period of cooling began in Soviet-Chinese relations. Mao Zedong now claimed almost the role of the leading world leader of the communist movement, with which Nikita Khrushchev could not agree. At the same time, the policy of the Cultural Revolution pursued by Zedong constantly demanded to keep society in suspense, to create ever new images of the enemy both inside and outside the country, and the process of “de-Stalinization” in the USSR in general threatened the cult of the “great Mao” himself, which gradually formed in China. As a result, in 1960, the CCP officially announced the "wrong" course of the CPSU, relations between countries escalated to the limit, and conflicts often began to occur along the border with a length of more than 7.5 thousand kilometers.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


3. On the night of March 2, 1969, about 300 Chinese soldiers crossed to Damansky. For several hours they remained unnoticed, the Soviet border guards received a signal about an armed group of up to 30 people only at 10:32 in the morning.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


4. 32 border guards under the command of the head of the Nizhne-Mikhailovskaya outpost, senior lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov, left for the scene. Approaching the Chinese military, Strelnikov demanded that they leave Soviet territory, but small arms fire was opened in response. Senior Lieutenant Strelnikov and the border guards following him died, only one soldier managed to survive.
Thus began the famous Damansky conflict, which for a long time was not written anywhere, but which everyone knew about.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


5. Shooting was heard at the neighboring outpost "Kulebyakiny Sopki". Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin went to the rescue with 20 border guards and one armored personnel carrier. The Chinese actively attacked, but retreated after a few hours. Residents of the neighboring village of Nizhnemikhailovka came to the aid of the wounded.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


6. On that day, 31 Soviet border guards were killed, 14 more soldiers were injured. According to the KGB commission, the losses of the Chinese side amounted to 248 people.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


7. On March 3, a demonstration took place near the Soviet embassy in Beijing; on March 7, the PRC embassy in Moscow was picketed.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


8. Weapons captured from the Chinese
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


9. On the morning of March 15, the Chinese went on the offensive again. They brought the strength of their forces to an infantry division, reinforced by reservists. Attacks by the method of "human waves" continued for an hour. After a fierce battle, the Chinese managed to push back the Soviet soldiers.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


10. Then, to support the defenders, a tank platoon headed by the head of the Iman border detachment, which included the Nizhne-Mikhailovskaya and Kulebyakiny Sopki outposts, Colonel Leonov, moved to counterattack.


11. But, as it turned out, the Chinese were prepared for this turn of events and had a sufficient amount of anti-tank weapons. Due to their heavy fire, our counterattack failed.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


12. The failure of the counterattack and the loss of the latest T-62 combat vehicle with secret equipment finally convinced the Soviet command that the forces put into battle were not enough to defeat the Chinese side, which was prepared very seriously.
Photo: Ogonyok magazine archive


13. Then the forces of the 135th motorized rifle division deployed along the river entered the business, the command of which ordered its artillery, including a separate BM-21 Grad division, to open fire on the positions of the Chinese on the island. This was the first time that Grad rocket launchers were used in combat, the impact of which decided the outcome of the battle.


14. The Soviet troops withdrew to their shore, and the Chinese side did not take any more hostile actions.


15. In total, during the clashes, Soviet troops lost 58 soldiers and 4 officers killed and died from wounds, 94 soldiers and 9 officers were wounded. The losses of the Chinese side are still classified information and, according to various estimates, range from 100-150 to 800 and even 3,000 people.


16. For their heroism, four servicemen received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: Colonel D. Leonov and Senior Lieutenant I. Strelnikov (posthumously), Senior Lieutenant V. Bubenin and Junior Sergeant Yu. Babansky.
In the photo in the foreground: Colonel D. Leonov, Lieutenants V. Bubenin, I. Strelnikov, V. Shorokhov; in the background: the personnel of the first frontier post. 1968