A prominent place in our country is occupied by the Red Banner Panfilov Division, which was staffed by representatives of almost thirty nationalities that inhabited the USSR. Their role in protecting Moscow from the fascist hordes rushing towards it is indelible in human memory. But the people of the older generation also remember the propaganda excitement that was raised around the “feat of 28 Panfilov’s”, which later turned out to be just an idle fiction of a journalist.

Legendary Division Commander

Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov began to master military science back in the years of the Imperialist War - in 1915 on the Southwestern Front. Participating in hostilities as part of the 638th Olpinsky Regiment, he rose to the rank of sergeant major, which corresponds to the modern army. When the autocracy was overthrown in February 1917 and processes aimed at democratizing society began in the country, Panfilov joined the committee of his regiment.

In the very first days of the Civil War, he became a Red Army soldier. It should be noted that unspeakable luck awaited Ivan Vasilievich - the infantry regiment in which he was enlisted became part of the Chapaev division, and thus Panfilov, commanding a platoon first, and then a company, got the opportunity to gain combat experience under the command of one of the most famous and legendary military leaders in the entire history of the Red Army. This experience was useful to him in future battles.

In the fire of the Civil War

In the period from 1918 to 1920, he had a chance to participate in battles with formations of the Czechoslovak corps, the White Poles, as well as the armies of Kolchak, Denikin and Ataman Dutov. Panfilov ended the civil war in Ukraine, leading units whose task was to fight numerous bandit formations, formed mainly from local nationalists. In addition, in those years, Ivan Vasilyevich was instructed to command one of the platoons of the battalion of border guards.

In 1921, the command sent Ivan Vasilievich to study at the Kyiv School of the Higher Command of the Red Army, which he graduated with honors two years later. By this time, Soviet power had already been established in the European part of the country, but fierce battles were still going on in the republics of Central Asia, and the young graduate was sent to the Turkestan front to fight the Basmachi.

It was in Central Asia that the career of the future legendary commander was further developed. For ten years (1927-1937) he directed the regimental school of the 4th Turkestan rifle regiment, commanded a rifle battalion, a mountain rifle regiment, and in 1937 became chief of staff of the Central Asian military district. The next important step is his appointment in 1939 to the post of military commissar of Kyrgyzstan. In the last pre-war year, Ivan Vasilyevich was awarded the rank of major general for his services in strengthening the country's defense capability.

Formation of a division and sending it to the front

In July 1941, on the orders of the military commissar of Kyrgyzstan, Major General I.V. Panfilov, it began to be completed. It soon became one of the two that were named after their commanders in the entire history of the Red Army. The first was the Chapaevskaya, and the second was this one - the Panfilov division. She was destined to go down in history as a model of mass heroism of soldiers and commanders.

Formed in July 1941, the Panfilov division, whose national composition included almost all representatives of the Central Asian republics, entered the battle with the Nazis in the Novgorod region a month later, and in October was redeployed to Volokolamsk. There, as a result of stubborn battles, she was able not only to defend her positions, but also with heroic counterattacks to completely defeat four German divisions, among which were two infantry, tank and motorized. During this period, the Panfilovites destroyed about 9 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, and also knocked out about 80 tanks.

Although the general situation at the front forced the division, led by I.V. Panfilov, to leave the positions defended by it and retreat in accordance with the general tactical plan of the command, it was one of the first on the front to be awarded the honorary right to be called the Guards.

A very curious document has survived to this day, reading which involuntarily overflows with pride for those people who once blocked the path of the Nazis. This is a report from the commander of the 4th German tank brigade. In it, he calls the Panfilovites a "wild division" and reports that it is absolutely impossible to fight with these people: they are real fanatics and are not at all afraid of death. Of course, the German general was wrong: they were afraid of death, but they put the fulfillment of duty above life.

Official version of the event

In November of the same year, events took place that, in their presentation by means of Soviet propaganda, made the division and its commander known throughout the country. We are talking about the famous battle in which the soldiers managed to destroy 18 enemy tanks near the Dubosekovo junction in a short time, despite the fact that there were only 28 of them.

The Panfilov division in those days fought fierce battles with the enemy, who tried to surround it and destroy the headquarters. According to the version widely disseminated by Soviet propaganda, on November 16, the soldiers of the 4th company, commanded by political instructor V. G. Klochkov, defending the Dubosekovo junction, located 8 kilometers from Volokolamsk, and repelling the attack of fifty enemy tanks, accomplished an unprecedented feat. In a battle that lasted four hours, they managed to destroy 18 enemy combat vehicles, and force the rest to turn back.

All of them, according to the same version, died the death of the brave. The political instructor Klochkov himself, dying, allegedly uttered a phrase that later became a propaganda cliché: “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat: behind is Moscow!” Having fulfilled its duty, the Panfilov division stopped the further advance of the enemy in the Volokolamsk direction. On the same days, falling under heavy enemy mortar fire, the division commander himself, Lieutenant General I.V. Panfilov, also died.

Myth dispelled

Unfortunately, this story, when examined in detail, caused certain doubts among the researchers. Already after the war - in 1948 - a prosecutor's investigation of this incident was carried out. As a result, the chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Lieutenant General of Justice Afanasiev, was forced to state that the feat attributed to 28 Panfilov heroes was a fiction.

Resurrected from the dead traitor

The impetus for the beginning of the investigation was very curious circumstances. The fact is that a year before that, a traitor to the Motherland and a former accomplice of the Nazis, I. E. Dobrobabin, had been arrested in Kharkov. During a search, among other things, a book about the exploits of 28 Panfilovites, popular at that time and published in mass circulation, was found in his possession.

Flipping through its pages, the investigator stumbled upon information that plunged him into amazement: it turned out that his defendant appears in it as one of the main participants in the events. Moreover, the book said that he died heroically and was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. It is quite clear that after this "discovery" it was necessary to check the rest of the facts stated by the authors of the popular publication.

Exposed falsification

Documents were immediately requested, which made it possible to form an objective idea of ​​​​the hostilities in which the Panfilov division then participated. The list of the dead at the end of November 1941, reports of all clashes with the enemy, reports of unit commanders and even intercepted German radio messages immediately lay on the table of the investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the Kharkov region.

As a result, as mentioned above, the investigation convincingly proved that the facts set forth in the book are fiction and there is a deliberate falsification of the events that took place. In May 1948, Lieutenant-General Afanasyev personally reported these findings to the Prosecutor General of the USSR G.N. Sofonov, who, in turn, drew up a document sent to them

A myth born from a journalist's pen

The initiator of the historical falsification, as established by the investigation, was the editor of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Ortenberg. At his direction, an article written by a newspaper reporter Krivitsky was published in the next issue, which contained partly unverified, and partly deliberately fictional material. As a result of this, a myth was born about a small handful of heroes who managed to stop the enemy tank armada.

During interrogation, Krivitsky, who by that time had occupied one of the leading posts in the editorial office of the Krasnoe Znamya newspaper, admitted that the famous dying phrase of political instructor Klochkov “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat ...” was invented by him, as, indeed, everything else written in a book. But even without his confession, the lie was obvious: from whom could he hear those words, because, according to his version, all the participants in the battle died and there were no witnesses left?

The author of the falsification himself, thanks to the story he invented, managed to create a name for himself in literary circles, write and publish several books, become the author or at least co-author of several poems and poems about the unprecedented heroism of 28 Panfilov's men. And among other things, this story gave a tangible impetus to his further career growth.

Historical forgery

What actually happened? This question is answered by further studies of historians of the Patriotic War. It can be seen from them that at that time the Panfilov division really fought in this area with several German corps. Moreover, in the area of ​​​​the Dubosekovo junction, they took on a particularly fierce character.

However, neither our nor even the enemy military reports mention the battle described in the sensational newspaper article, thanks to which the Panfilov division became the center of everyone's attention at that time. The list of those who died in those days also does not correspond to the data given by Krivitsky. There were many killed: there were heavy battles, but they were completely different people.

The former commander of a rifle regiment stationed in that area at the time of the events described testified that the Dubosekovo junction was defended by a company that was completely destroyed during the fighting, but, according to him, there were 100 people, not 28. The Panfilov division in those days suffered heavy losses, and this company replenished their number. However, only 9 tanks were hit, of which 3 burned out on the spot, and the rest turned back and left the battlefield. In addition, he emphasized the absurdity of the assumption that 28 lightly armed fighters could successfully withstand 50 enemy tanks on flat terrain.

This myth became widespread in the post-war years thanks to Soviet propaganda. The materials of the prosecutor's check in 1948 were classified, and an attempt made in 1966 by E. V. Kardin, an employee of the Novy Mir magazine, to reveal in his article the inconsistency of the official version, received a sharp rebuff from L. I. Brezhnev. The General Secretary of the CPSU called the published materials a slander against the Party and the heroic history of our Motherland.

Only during the years of perestroika, when the materials of the investigation of 1948 were finally declassified, was it possible, without detracting from the glory that the Panfilov division rightfully deserved, to bring to the attention of the general public the fact of distorting the events of the past war.

However, despite such an unfortunate incident, the perpetrators of which were excessively zealous Soviet propagandists, one should recognize the great contribution of the Panfilovites to the victory over the Nazis. In November of the same year, their division became officially known as Panfilov. Only in the Volokolamsk direction in the period from November 16 to 21, she, in conjunction with other units and formations, stopped the advance of two German corps and one tank division.

Subsequent fate of the division

The further combat path of the Panfilov division was difficult, full of losses, but, as before, covered with glory. In the first months of 1942, she, along with other Soviet units, took part in the battles against the SS division "Totenkopf". The fighting took place with unusual bitterness on both sides and caused numerous losses both in the ranks of the Panfilovites and their opponents.

Having fought with honor until 1945, that is, almost until the end of the Second World War, the Panfilov division during the attack on the Latvian city of Saldus was surrounded. As a result, almost all of its personnel died, and only 300 people were able to break through the enemy ring. Subsequently, the surviving members of the Panfilov division were assigned to other units and already in their composition ended the war.

Postwar years

In the post-war years, the division, which, thanks to its high fighting qualities and partly due to the propaganda excitement raised around it, was known to the whole country, was completely restored. The territory of Estonia was chosen as the place of its deployment. However, in 1967, the leadership turned to the government of the country with a request that the personnel of the Panfilov division with all weapons and equipment be transferred to them in the republic. This appeal was prompted by national security considerations and therefore met with support in Moscow.

Having become part of the Turkestan military district, the Panfilov division, which by that time was largely replenished with conscripts from the Central Asian republics, was partly deployed in the Kirghiz SSR, and partly in the Kazakh. For a state that included various republics, this was quite normal. But in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the history of the Panfilov division has undergone several dramatic moments.

Suffice it to say that, being part of the Northern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Kyrgyzstan, in 2003 it was completely unexpectedly abolished and completely disbanded in 2003. It is difficult to say who and by virtue of what political or other interests made such a decision. However, the famous division ceased to exist.

Only eight years later, when the seventieth anniversary of its founding was celebrated, it was re-formed and received its former name. Today, its location is the city of Tokmok, located not far from Bishkek. The Panfilov division, whose national composition today is mainly a conglomerate of peoples inhabiting Kyrgyzstan, serves under the command of a native of those places, Colonel Nurlan Isabekovich Kiresheev.

The Panfilovites are soldiers of the 316th Infantry Division (later the 8th Guards) under the command of Major General Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov, who participated in the defense of Moscow in 1941.
Among the soldiers of the division, the most famous were 28 people ("Panfilov's heroes" or "28 Panfilov's heroes") from the personnel of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion of the 1075th rifle regiment. On November 16, when a new enemy offensive against Moscow began, the soldiers of the 4th company, led by political instructor V.G. battle, destroying 18 enemy tanks. All 28 heroes died (later they began to write "almost all").
The official version of the feat was studied by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and recognized as a literary fiction. According to Professor S. Mironenko, director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, "there were no 28 Panfilov heroes - this is one of the myths planted by the state." At the same time, the very fact of heavy defensive battles of the 316th rifle division against the 2nd and 11th German tank divisions in the Volokolamsk direction on November 16, 1941 is undeniable.
The emergence of the official version
The history of the emergence of the official version of events is set out in the materials of the investigation of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office. The feat of the heroes was first reported by the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on November 27, 1941, in an essay by a front-line correspondent Koroteev. An article about the participants in the battle said that "everyone died, but the enemy was not missed."
On November 28, 1941, an editorial was published in the Red Star under the heading "Testament of 28 Fallen Heroes." This article indicated that 29 Panfilov soldiers fought with enemy tanks:
Over fifty enemy tanks moved to the lines occupied by twenty-nine Soviet guards from the division. Panfilov ... Only one out of twenty-nine was faint-hearted ... only one raised his hands up ... several guardsmen at the same time, without saying a word, without a command, shot at a coward and a traitor ...
Further, the editorial says that the remaining 28 guardsmen destroyed 18 enemy tanks and ... "lay down their lives - all twenty-eight. They died, but did not let the enemy through ..." The editorial was written by the literary secretary of the Red Star Krivitsky. The names of the guardsmen who fought and died, both in the first and in the second article, were not indicated.
On January 22, 1942, in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Krivitsky published an essay under the heading "About 28 Fallen Heroes", in which he wrote in detail about the feat of 28 Panfilovites. In this essay, Krivitsky confidently, as an eyewitness or a person who heard the story of the participants in the battle, writes about the personal experiences and behavior of 28 guardsmen, naming their names for the first time:
Let the army and the country finally know their proud names. In the trench were: Klochkov Vasily Georgievich, Dobrobabin Ivan Evstafyevich, Shepetkov Ivan Alekseevich, Kryuchkov Abram Ivanovich, Mitin Gavriil Stepanovich, Kasaev Alikbay, Petrenko Grigory Alekseevich, Yesibulatov Narsutbay, Kaleynikov Dmitry Mitrofanovich, Natarov Ivan Moiseevich, Shemyakin Grigory Mikhailovich, Dutov Petr Danilovich, Mitchenko Nikolai, Shapokov Dushankul, Konkin Grigory Efimovich, Shadrin Ivan Demidovich, Moskalenko Nikolay, Yemtsov Petr Kuzmich, Kuzhebergenov Daniil Aleksandrovich, Timofeev Dmitry Fomich, Trofimov Nikolay Ignatievich, Bondarenko Yakov Aleksandrovich, Vasiliev Larion Romanovich, Bolotov Nikolay, Bezrodny Grigory, Sengirbaev Mustafa, Maksimov Nikolay, Ananiev Nikolay...
All essays and stories, poems and poems about the 28 Panfilovites, which appeared in print later, were written either by Krivitsky or with his participation and in various versions repeat his essay "On 28 Fallen Heroes".
In April 1942, after it became known from the newspapers in all military units about the feat of 28 guardsmen from the Panfilov division, at the initiative of the command of the Western Front, a petition was filed with the People's Commissar of Defense to confer on them the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 21, 1942, all 28 guardsmen listed in Krivitsky's essay were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Criticism of the official version
Critics of the official version, as a rule, give the following arguments and assumptions:
* The battle with these details is not mentioned in either Soviet or German official documents. Neither the commander of the 2nd battalion (which included the 4th company), Major Reshetnikov, nor the commander of the 1075th regiment, Colonel Kaprov, nor the commander of the 316th division, Major General Panfilov, nor the commander of the 16th Army, General Lieutenant Rokossovsky. German sources do not report anything about him either (and after all, the loss of 18 tanks in one battle at the end of 1941 was a notable event for the Germans).
* It is not clear how Koroteev and Krivitsky learned so many details of this battle. The information that the information was received in the hospital from a mortally wounded participant in the battle is doubtful, since according to the documents, Natarov died two days before the battle, on November 14th.
[edit] Investigations
In November 1947, the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Kharkov garrison arrested and prosecuted Dobrobabin Ivan Evstafievich for treason. According to the case file, while at the front, Dobrobabin voluntarily surrendered to the Germans and in the spring of 1942 entered their service. He served as chief of police in the village of Perekop, Valkovsky district, Kharkov region, temporarily occupied by the Germans. In March 1943, when this area was liberated from the Germans, Dobrobabin, as a traitor, was arrested by the Soviet authorities, but escaped from custody, again went over to the Germans and again got a job in the German police, continuing active treacherous activities, arrests of Soviet citizens and direct implementation of the forced sending of labor to Germany.
When Dobrobabin was arrested, a book about "28 Panfilov Heroes" was found, and it turned out that he was one of the main participants in this heroic battle, for which he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Dobrobabin’s interrogation established that in the Dubosekovo area he was indeed slightly wounded and captured by the Germans, but did not perform any feats, and everything that is written about him in the book about Panfilov’s heroes does not correspond to reality. In this regard, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR conducted a thorough investigation into the history of the battle at the Dubosekovo junction. The results were reported by the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Armed Forces of the country, Lieutenant General of Justice N. Afanasyev, to the USSR Prosecutor General G. Safonov on May 10, 1948. On the basis of this report, on June 11, a certificate signed by Safonov was drawn up, addressed to A. A. Zhdanov.
For the first time, V. Kardin, who published the article "Legends and Facts" in the journal Novy Mir (February 1966), publicly doubted the authenticity of the story about the Panfilovites. This was followed by a series of publications in the late 1980s. A strong argument was the publication of declassified materials from the 1948 investigation of the military prosecutor's office.
In particular, these materials contain the testimony of the former commander of the 1075th Infantry Regiment, Kaprov Ilya Vasilyevich:
... There was no battle between 28 Panfilov's men and German tanks at the Dubosekovo junction on November 16, 1941 - this is a complete fiction. On this day, at the Dubosekovo junction, as part of the 2nd battalion, the 4th company fought with German tanks, and really fought heroically. More than 100 people died from the company, and not 28, as they wrote about it in the newspapers. None of the correspondents contacted me during this period; I never told anyone about the battle of 28 Panfilov's men, and I could not speak, since there was no such battle. I did not write any political report on this matter. I do not know on the basis of what materials they wrote in the newspapers, in particular in the "Red Star", about the battle of 28 guards from the division. Panfilov. At the end of December 1941, when the division was assigned to the formation, the correspondent of the "Red Star" Krivitsky came to my regiment along with representatives of the political department of the division Glushko and Yegorov. Here I first heard about 28 Panfilov guardsmen. In a conversation with me, Krivitsky said that it was necessary to have 28 Panfilov guardsmen who fought with German tanks. I told him that the whole regiment, and especially the 4th company of the 2nd battalion, fought with German tanks, but I didn’t know anything about the battle of 28 guardsmen ... Captain Gundilovich gave names to Krivitsky from memory, who talked with him on this topic, there were no documents about the battle of 28 Panfilov soldiers in the regiment and could not be. Nobody asked me about my last name. Subsequently, after lengthy clarifications of surnames, only in April 1942 from the headquarters of the division were sent ready-made award lists and a general list of 28 guardsmen to my regiment for signature. I signed these sheets for conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 28 guardsmen. Who was the initiator of compiling the list and award lists for 28 guards - I do not know.
The materials of the interrogation of the correspondent Koroteev are also given (clarifying the origin of the number 28):
Approximately November 23-24, 1941, together with the war correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper Chernyshev, I was at the headquarters of the 16th army ... When we left the army headquarters, we met the commissar of the 8th Panfilov division Yegorov, who spoke about the extremely difficult situation on front and said that our people are fighting heroically in all areas. In particular, Yegorov gave an example of a heroic battle of one company with German tanks, 54 tanks advanced on the line of the company, and the company delayed them, destroying some of them. Egorov himself was not a participant in the battle, but spoke from the words of the regimental commissar, who also did not participate in the battle with German tanks ... Egorov recommended writing in the newspaper about the heroic battle of the company with enemy tanks, having first read the political report received from the regiment ...
The political report spoke about the battle of the fifth company with enemy tanks and that the company stood "to the death" - it died, but did not retreat, and only two people turned out to be traitors, raised their hands to surrender to the Germans, but they were destroyed by our fighters. The report did not mention the number of company soldiers who died in this battle, and did not mention their names. We did not establish this from conversations with the regiment commander either. It was impossible to get into the regiment, and Yegorov did not advise us to try to get into the regiment. Upon arrival in Moscow, I reported the situation to the editor of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Ortenberg, about the company's battle with enemy tanks. Ortenberg asked me how many people were in the company. I answered him that the composition of the company, apparently, was incomplete, about 30-40 people; I also said that two of these people turned out to be traitors ... I didn’t know that an advanced one was being prepared on this topic, but Ortenberg called me again and asked how many people were in the company. I told him that about 30 people. Thus, the number of 28 people who fought appeared, since out of 30 two turned out to be traitors. Ortenberg said that it was impossible to write about two traitors, and, apparently, after consulting with someone, he decided to write about only one traitor in the front line.
The interrogated secretary of the newspaper Krivitsky testified:
During a conversation in PUR with Comrade Krapivin, he was interested in where I got the words of political instructor Klochkov, written in my basement: "Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat - Moscow is behind," - I answered him that I invented it myself ...
... In terms of sensations and actions, 28 heroes are my literary conjecture. I did not talk to any of the wounded or surviving guardsmen. From the local population, I spoke only with a boy of 14-15 years old, who showed the grave where Klochkov was buried.
... In 1943, from the division where 28 Panfilov heroes were and fought, they sent me a letter of awarding me the title of guardsman. I was only in the division three or four times.
The conclusion of the investigation of the prosecutor's office:
Thus, the materials of the investigation established that the feat of 28 Panfilov guardsmen, covered in the press, is a fiction of the correspondent Koroteev, the editor of Krasnaya Zvezda Ortenberg, and especially the literary secretary of the newspaper Krivitsky.
Documentary evidence of the battle
The commander of the 1075th regiment, I. Kaprov (testimonies given during the investigation of the Panfilov case):
... In the company by November 16, 1941 there were 120-140 people. My command post was behind the Dubosekovo junction, 1.5 km from the position of the 4th company (2nd battalion). I don’t remember now whether there were anti-tank rifles in the 4th company, but I repeat that in the entire 2nd battalion there were only 4 anti-tank rifles ... In total, there were 10-12 enemy tanks in the sector of the 2nd battalion. How many tanks went (directly) to the sector of the 4th company, I don’t know, or rather, I can’t determine ...
With the resources of the regiment and the efforts of the 2nd battalion, this tank attack was repulsed. In battle, the regiment destroyed 5-6 German tanks, and the Germans withdrew. At 14-15 hours, the Germans opened heavy artillery fire ... and again attacked with tanks ... More than 50 tanks attacked in the regiment's sectors, with the main attack directed at the positions of the 2nd battalion, including the 4th sector company, and one tank even went to the location of the command post of the regiment and set fire to hay and a booth, so that I accidentally managed to get out of the dugout: I was saved by the embankment of the railway, people who had survived after the attack of German tanks began to gather around me. The 4th company suffered the most: led by the company commander Gundilovich, 20-25 people survived. The rest of the companies suffered less.
According to archival data of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the entire 1075th Infantry Regiment on November 16, 1941 destroyed 15 (according to other sources - 16) tanks and about 800 enemy personnel. The losses of the regiment, according to the report of its commander, amounted to 400 people killed, 600 people missing, 100 people wounded.
Testimony of the chairman of the Nelidovsky s / council Smirnova at the investigation in the Panfilov case:
The battle of the Panfilov division near our village of Nelidovo and the Dubosekovo junction took place on November 16, 1941. During this battle, all our residents, including myself, hid in shelters ... The Germans entered the area of ​​\u200b\u200bour village and the Dubosekovo junction on November 16, 1941 and were repulsed by units of the Soviet Army on December 20, 1941. At that time, there were large snow drifts, which continued until February 1942, due to which we did not collect the corpses of those killed on the battlefield and did not perform funerals.
...In the early days of February 1942, we found only three corpses on the battlefield, which we buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of our village. And then already in March 1942, when it began to melt, military units carried three more corpses to the mass grave, including the corpse of political instructor Klochkov, who was identified by the soldiers. So in the mass grave of the Panfilov heroes, which is located on the outskirts of our village of Nelidovo, 6 fighters of the Soviet Army are buried. No more corpses were found on the territory of the Nelidovsky village council.
Battle reenactment
By the end of October 1941, the first stage of the German operation "Typhoon" (attack on Moscow) was completed. German troops, having defeated parts of three Soviet fronts near Vyazma, reached the near approaches to Moscow. At the same time, the German troops suffered losses and needed some respite to rest their units, put them in order and replenish. By November 2, the front line in the Volokolamsk direction had stabilized, the German units temporarily went on the defensive. On November 16, German troops again went on the offensive, planning to defeat the Soviet units, surround Moscow and victoriously end the 1941 campaign.
The 316th Rifle Division took up defensive positions on the Dubosekovo front - 8 km southeast of Volokolamsk, that is, about 18-20 kilometers along the front, which was a lot for a formation weakened in battles. On the right flank, the neighbor was the 126th Infantry Division, on the left - the 50th Cavalry Division of the Dovator Cavalry Corps.
On November 16, the division was attacked by the forces of two German tank divisions: the 2nd tank division attacked the positions of the 316th rifle division in the center of defense, and the 11th tank division hit the positions of the 1075th rifle regiment in the Dubosekovo area, at the junction with the 50th and cavalry division. A blow to the joints between formations was a frequently encountered element of the tactics of the German troops. The main blow fell on the positions of the 2nd battalion of the regiment.
The 1075th Rifle Regiment suffered significant losses in personnel and equipment in previous battles, but before new battles it was significantly replenished with personnel. According to the testimony of the regiment commander, there were 120-140 people in the 4th company (according to the staff of division 04/600, there should be 162 people in the company). The question of the artillery armament of the regiment is not completely clear. According to the staff, the regiment was supposed to have a battery of 4 76-mm regimental guns and an anti-tank battery of 6 45-mm guns. There is evidence that there were actually 2 76-mm regimental guns of the 1927 model, several 76-mm mountain guns of the 1909 model of the year and 75-mm French divisional guns Mle.1897. The anti-tank capabilities of these guns were not high - regimental guns pierced only 31 mm of armor from 500 m, armor-piercing shells were not supposed to be attached to mountain guns at all. The heavily outdated French guns also had poor ballistics; nothing is known about the presence of armor-piercing shells for them. At the same time, it is known that, in general, the 316th Rifle Division on November 16, 1941 had 12 - 45 mm anti-tank guns, 26 - 76 mm divisional guns, 17 - 122 mm howitzers and 5 - 122 mm corps guns , which could be used in combat with German tanks. The neighbor, the 50th Cavalry Division, also had its own artillery.
The infantry anti-tank weapons of the regiment were represented by 11 anti-tank rifles PTRD (including 4 guns in the 2nd battalion), RPG-40 grenades and Molotov cocktails. The real combat capabilities of these weapons were not high: anti-tank guns had low armor penetration, especially when using cartridges with B-39 bullets, and could hit German tanks only at close range, exclusively to the side and stern at an angle close to 90 degrees, which in a frontal situation a tank attack was unlikely. In addition, the battle near Dubosekovo was the first case of the use of anti-tank rifles of this type, the production of which was just beginning to unfold. Anti-tank grenades were an even weaker tool - they pierced up to 15-20 mm of armor, provided they were in direct contact with the armor plate, therefore it was recommended to throw them on the roof of the tank, which was a very difficult and extremely dangerous task in battle. To increase the destructive power of these grenades, fighters usually tied them together in several pieces. Statistics show that the proportion of tanks destroyed by anti-tank grenades is extremely small.
The fate of some Panfilov
* Dobrobabin Ivan Evstafievich. He was captured, fled, served with the Germans as a policeman (at one time as chief of police) in his native village of Perekop, then again at the front. In 1948 he was sentenced to 15 years for collaborating with the Nazi occupiers, the decree on awarding him was canceled on February 11, 1949. In 1955, the term was reduced to 7 years, and he was released. In the late 1980s, he sought rehabilitation, but to no avail - in 1989 he was denied rehabilitation. Some materials about Dobrobabin's service in the police were published by Lieutenant General of Justice A.F. Katusev. He died in 1996 in Tsimlyansk. There are allegations that he allegedly served in the police on behalf of the partisans, which, however, Dobrobabin himself never claimed. The request for rehabilitation was motivated by the fact that during the service he did not harm anyone and even helped a number of people, warning them about being taken to Germany; the former was found to be inappropriate to the circumstances of the case, the latter a mitigating but not exculpatory circumstance. He was rehabilitated by the decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine dated March 26, 1993.
* Kozhabergenov (Kuzhebergenov) Daniil Alexandrovich. Liaison officer Klochkov. He did not directly participate in the battle, since in the morning he was sent with a report to Dubosekovo, where he was captured. On the evening of November 16, he escaped from captivity to the forest. For some time he was in the occupied territory, after which he was discovered by the horsemen of L. Dovator, who were in a raid on the German rear. After the release of the Dovator connection from the raid, he was interrogated by a special department, admitted that he had not participated in the battle, and was sent back to the Dovator division. By this time, a submission had already been drawn up for conferring the title of Hero on him, but after an investigation, his name was changed to Kozhabergenov Askar. Died in 1976.
* Kozhabergenov (Kuzhebergenov) Askar (Aliaskar). He arrived in Panfilov's division in January 1942 (thus, he could not participate in the battle near Dubosekovo in any way). In the same month, he died during a raid by the Panfilov division on the German rear. Included in the submission for the title of Hero instead of Daniil Alexandrovich Kozhabergenov, after it turned out that the latter did not take part in the battle and remained alive. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 21, 1942, together with other Panfilovites, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
* Vasiliev, Illarion Romanovich. In the battle on November 16, he was seriously wounded and ended up in the hospital (according to various versions, he was either evacuated from the battlefield, or picked up by local residents after the battle and sent to the hospital, or crawled for three days and was picked up by Dovator's horsemen). After recovery, he was sent to the active army, to the rear unit. In 1943 he was demobilized from the army for health reasons. After the publication of the Decree on awarding him the title of Hero (posthumously), he announced his participation in the battle. After appropriate verification, without much publicity received the star of the Hero. He died in 1969 in Kemerovo.
* Natarov, Ivan Moiseevich. According to Krivitsky's articles, he participated in the battle near Dubosekovo, was seriously wounded, taken to the hospital, and, dying, told Krivitsky about the feat of the Panfilovites. According to the political report of the military commissar of the 1075th Infantry Regiment Mukhamedyarov, stored in the TsAMO funds, he died two days before the battle - on November 14. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 21, 1942, together with other Panfilovites, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
* Timofeev, Dmitry Fomich. During the battle he was wounded and taken prisoner. In captivity, he managed to survive, after the end of the war he returned to his homeland. Claimed to receive the star of the Hero, after appropriate verification, he received it without much publicity shortly before his death in 1950.
* Shemyakin, Grigory Melentievich. During the battle, he was wounded and ended up in the hospital (there is information that he was picked up by soldiers of the Dovator division). After the publication of the Decree on awarding him the title of Hero (posthumously), he announced his participation in the battle. After appropriate verification, without much publicity, he received the star of the Hero. He died in 1973 in Alma-Ata.
* Shadrin, Ivan Demidovich. After the battle on November 16, he was captured, according to his own statement, in an unconscious state. Until 1945 he was in a concentration camp, after his release he spent another 2 years in a Soviet filtration camp for former prisoners of war. In 1947, he returned home to the Altai Territory, where no one was waiting for him - he was considered dead, and his wife lived in his house with her new husband. For two years he was interrupted by odd jobs, until in 1949 the secretary of the district committee, who learned his story, wrote about him to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. After appropriate verification, without much publicity, he received the star of the Hero. Died in 1985.
Memory
On November 17, 1941, the 316th Division was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for military merit, on November 18 it received the name of the 8th Guards Division, and on November 23 it was named after I. V. Panfilov, who died on November 18.
* On July 21, 1942, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 28 participants in this battle were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).
* In 1966, a street in the Severnoye Tushino district (Street of Panfilov Heroes) was named after the Panfilovites in Moscow, where the monument was erected.
* In their honor, a memorial was also erected in Dubosekovo in 1975.
* In the village of Nelidovo (1.5 km from the Dubosekovo junction), a monument was erected and the Museum of Panfilov Heroes was opened. In the city of Alma-Ata, native to the Panfilovs, there is a park named after 28 Panfilov guardsmen, in which there is a monument in their honor.
* Mention of the 28 "most brave sons" of Moscow was also included in the song "My Dear Capital", which is now the anthem of Moscow.

Memorial in Dubosekovo
*
Notes
1. ^ M. M. Kozlov. The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945. Encyclopedia .. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985. - S. 526.
2. ^ 1 2 3 4 5 6 Reference-report "About 28 Panfilovites". State archive of the Russian Federation. F.R - 8131 ch. Op. 37. D. 4041. Ll. 310-320. Published in the journal "New World", 1997, No. 6, p.148
3. ^ Adjusted for the myth "POISK - newspaper of the Russian scientific community
4. ^ The famous feat of twenty-eight Panfilov's men at the Dubosekovo junction Was invented by the Red Star Journalists and the Party Leadership of the Red Army - Newspaper "Facts and Comments ...
5. ^ In particular, the loss of 10 tanks on November 6, 1941 in the battles near Mtsensk made a strong negative impression on the command of the 4th Panzer Division and was especially noted in the memoirs of Guderian - M. Kolomiets. 1st Guards Tank Brigade in the battles for Moscow. - Front illustration, No. 4, 2007
6. ^ "The Red Army soldier Natarov, being wounded, continued the battle and fought and fired from his rifle until his last breath and died heroically in battle." Political report of A. L. Mukhamedyarov dated November 14, 1941, published by Yu. A. Zhuk. Unknown pages of the battle for Moscow. Moscow battle. Facts and myths. - M., AST, 2008
7. ^ V. Cardin. Legends and facts. Years later. "Questions of Literature", No. 6, 2000, see
8. ^ 1 2 http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/victory/46841/ Transcript of the program "The Price of Victory", radio "Echo of Moscow". Author - Andrey Viktorovich Martynov, historian, Ph.D.
9. ^ A. Isaev. Five circles of hell. The Red Army in "cauldrons". - M.: Yauza, Eksmo, 2008. P.327
10. ^ Infantry weapons
11. ^ A. Shirokorad. "God of War of the Third Reich", pp.38-39.
12. ^ Military History Journal, 1990 No. 8.9, essay "Alien Glory"
13. ^ See material in the program "Searchers" from March 19, 2008
14. Dobrobabin during the investigation on the issue of rehabilitation stated: "I really served in the police, I understand that I committed a crime against the Motherland"; confirmed that in fear of punishment he voluntarily left the village. Perekop with the retreating Germans. He also claimed that he "did not have any real opportunity to go over to the side of the Soviet troops or join a partisan detachment", which, however, was considered inappropriate to the circumstances of the case.
15. ^ Dobrobabin Ivan Evstafievich

Taking up the study of the history of the 316th (later 8th Guards) Panfilov Division, one encounters a paradox. The recognition of this compound is almost absolute, the word "Panfilov" was heard even by people who are completely unfamiliar with military history. However, judging by the publications in the media, the attention of researchers and writers, we can conclude that the entire division was formed solely for the sake of one battle in November 1941. Thanks to the efforts of the writer Alexander Beck and the Panfilov battalion commander Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, the defense of the Volokolamsk highway is quite widely known, and the battle at the Dubosekovo stronghold received just scandalous fame.

Meanwhile, having taken up the history of the Panfilov division in detail, we find that only the actual battles near Volokolamsk are widely known. But the Panfilov division went through several significant battles of the Great Patriotic War, and one of the most acute episodes in its history occurred in the spring of 1945. Life studied the combat path of the 316th Rifle Division, which later became the 8th Guards.

The brainchild of 1941

The beginning of the war turned out, as you know, a grandiose catastrophe for the country and the army. The pre-war plans did not provide for the mass formation of new formations, however, not only battalions and regiments, but entire armies disappeared in the chain of "cauldrons". Already in July 1941, in the depths of the country, the creation of new divisions to replace the defeated ones began. The mobilization mechanism worked without interruption. Fresh formations lacked full-fledged command personnel, they were often led by precocious officers or, conversely, commanders who quietly met old age in rear positions. There was not enough time for training and cohesion.

The decision of the Stavka on the mass introduction of new formations into action is as cruel as it is devoid of alternatives: troops were required as soon as possible. This new cohort also included the 316th division. It began to be formed in July 1941 from conscripts and volunteers from among the inhabitants of the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR. The national composition of the division does not give much reason for speculation: out of more than 11 thousand soldiers and officers, Russians made up about 4.5 thousand, Kazakhs - 3.5 thousand, Ukrainians - 2 thousand people. Subsequently, the division was actively replenished with Kyrgyz conscripts.

The division was headed by Major General Ivan Panfilov. Previously, he held the unpretentious position of the military commissar of Kyrgyzstan. However, it was a battle-hardened soldier who had the First World War, the Civil War and the experience of fighting the Basmachi in the 20s. He had not previously led a division into battle, but it cannot be said that a random person led the formation. His eighteen-year-old daughter also served in the division as a nurse. She survived the war and was demobilized after being seriously wounded at the very end.

A little-known but very important officer for the division was Colonel Ivan Serebryakov. The chief of staff of the division, skilled and energetic, he went with the division through all the key battles of 1941 and 1942, leaving it only in the middle of the war for a position at army headquarters.

Panfilov began, in fact, with the formation of the division, which he was to command. He himself participated in the selection of commanders from the battalion commander and above, so that the division accumulated many officers with good service or military experience.

However, a serious problem remained: there was only about a month for training, although most of the division's soldiers still did not even have basic combat training. And she had to fight against the most skilled, unforgiving, powerful opponent. Already in August, the fresh 316th Rifle Division went to the active army.

Writers rarely mention what the Panfilovites did in August and September. The fact is that the division was in the depths of the battle formations of the Red Army east of Novgorod. However, these were critical weeks. Panfilov got the opportunity to train his subordinates in close proximity to the enemy, without throwing them on the move into a meat grinder. For the remaining time, Ivan Vasilievich at a frantic pace led the training of soldiers and officers.

Training went on daily for 8 hours or more. The commanders were further trained in planning on the battlefield, field fortification, orientation, and interaction. The rank and file were trained in the use of weapons, especially carefully - which would later turn out to be extremely important - preparations were made for battle in difficult conditions, at night and in the forest. At the same time, in the orders there are references to practicing actions against tanks. By the way, the order of construction of fortifications established by Panfilov's order is characteristic: it was anti-tank obstacles that were erected first.

Separately, officers were prepared for action in a situation where they had to defend themselves on a wide front. In general, Ivan Vasilievich looked into the water: even near Novgorod, his soldiers and officers practiced actions in precisely such a situation in which they had to actually fight some time later.

The result was worth the effort: the 316th Infantry entered the battle much better prepared than many others.

On a broad front

The military field idyll near Novgorod ended in early October. Operation "Typhoon" began near Moscow - the Wehrmacht's breakthrough to Moscow. In essence, its first stage became a "harvest" for the Germans: the Soviet troops, weakened by previous battles, had no real opportunity to thwart this offensive and were rapidly overturned. Several armies immediately fell into the "cauldrons" at Vyazma and Bryansk, and the Army Group "Center" began to rapidly move towards the capital.

The 316th Rifle became one of the divisions that was supposed to save the day. The battles near Moscow became the high point of the division. Although her most famous battle dates from mid-November, her most successful battle dates back to October 41st.

On October 10, the division left the echelons in Volokolamsk. She was to fight in the 16th army of Konstantin Rokossovsky on the Volokolamsk highway. Since there was a catastrophic shortage of troops near Moscow, the division's defense front turned out to be several times longer than it should be in a normal situation - 41 kilometers.

In a normal situation, this in itself would mean an imminent rout. However, a specific feature of the Red Army was the flexible structure of artillery: many separate artillery units made it possible to quickly strengthen the desired direction. Rokossovsky understood perfectly well that the Panfilovites were defending a key sector, so he handed over to the 316th division simply colossal by the standards of the autumn of the 41st force - 7 artillery regiments in addition to the only regular one.

In total, Panfilov now had 207 guns, and it was on gunfire that the division's defense system was built. The division commander himself arrived on the future battlefield before the soldiers, and even before that, a group of staff officers went to the future defense area to study the area. So upon arrival, the battalions and regiments received detailed instructions on where and how to equip the defense units.

Already on October 16, the positions of the Panfilovites were tested for strength. The "examiner" was the 2nd Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht: a powerful, well-equipped formation, for which "Typhoon" was the first operation on the Eastern Front. Before the start of the offensive on Moscow, the division had 194 tanks, and by the middle of the month it was unlikely that many vehicles had gone out of action. This power was concentrated on a narrow front against one of the Panfilov rifle regiments - the 1075th. In theory, the impact of such a mass of tanks was irresistible.

However, the attacks on October 16 and 17 unexpectedly failed. The attackers got stuck in front of the anti-tank ditches under fire, suffered heavy losses from artillery batteries that were not detected in time. On the third day of the fighting, the Germans found a weak spot in the ranks of the defenders. However, the throw to the near rear turned out to be fatal: behind the leading edge, a "gift from Rokossovsky" was found - heavy guns on direct fire. Of course, the Wehrmacht remained the Wehrmacht, and these battles cost a lot of blood. In addition, the small number of infantry led to heavy losses among the gunners. The report in hot pursuit contained the following remark:

Artillery had absolutely no losses from tanks and had completely insignificant losses from enemy aircraft (despite the intensive bombing of 25 aircraft) both in personnel and in materiel until it suffered heavy losses from infantry and machine gunners of the enemy who entered the flanks and rear of artillery battle formations. With the normal presence of our infantry to cover the guns, the artillery would not have suffered such heavy losses. The infantry units, due to their small numbers, were unable to provide the front, flanks, and even the rear of the artillery combat formations.

However, by the standards of the autumn of 1941, what happened looked amazing: a full-blooded tank division of the Wehrmacht gave way to the rifle division of the Red Army. On October 23, the infantry caught up with the German tank division, and in the reinforced composition of the Panfilovites they were pushed away from Volokolamsk by the 27th, but the onslaught of three divisions (tank + 2 infantry) should have led to such a result. However, the withdrawal of no more than 15 kilometers (in some areas, Panfilov's division retreated only a kilometer at all) in seven days of fighting - this was a completely unexpected and gratifying result.

In addition, the division was not torn apart, did not lose control, retained its combat potential - and this is in a one-on-three battle. It was this battle on the Volokolamsk highway that brought glory to the 316th division and soon the guards rank.

Between Volokolamsk and Moscow

Soon the division was to survive the second stage of the Typhoon. The successes of individual units (the Panfilovites near Volokolamsk, the 4th tank brigade near Mtsensk) looked like bright flashes against the general bleak background. In the autumn of the 41st, the Red Army had a huge drawback: it completely lacked large mobile formations. The mechanized corps, which made it possible to support the front in the summer of 1941, burned down in battles and were disbanded, only tank brigades of direct infantry support remained on the battlefield, while among the armies of the Center group advancing on Moscow, there were three tank brigades at once. All of them were seriously exhausted, but the energy of the next blow had yet to be extinguished.

For the Panfilovs, the situation was complicated by the fact that the artillery was partly lost in the October battles, partly withdrawn in favor of other directions. In addition, after heavy fighting, the staffing of the division left much to be desired. The defense was built on a chain of company strongholds capable of supporting each other with small arms fire on some limited scale. At the same time, the sector, which was defended by the 316th and the Dovator cavalry group standing to the south, was attacked by units of 5 Wehrmacht divisions at once. Under other conditions, this would mean instant defeat, but the word "units" was used for a reason: the Wehrmacht experienced supply disruptions, so it could not attack at full strength.

However, the situation did not become simple. The entire 16th Army planned a counterattack, but on November 16, the positions of the division were subjected to a fierce attack. Actually, on this day the most famous battle of the Panfilovites took place.

Around this particular battle, spears are being broken with might and main. Meanwhile, if we renounce a priori sympathies and evaluations, we will see the following.

On November 16, frankly, not the most successful battle for the Panfilovites took place. The battle group of the German 2nd Panzer Division - the same one that broke its teeth on the Soviet redoubts in October - this time managed to succeed. The Germans did not attack the Dubosekovo stronghold itself, defended by the 4th company, but the neighboring position.

From the side of Dubosekovo, it was supported by fire, but soon the battle moved beyond the forest on the flank, and the 4th company could no longer provide assistance to its comrades. The flank of the division was bypassed, and the 4th company itself was soon attacked. By this time, not only in the company, but in the entire 1075th rifle regiment, there were almost no anti-tank weapons left: one light anti-tank gun and 4 anti-tank guns were frankly unimportant protection.

At least two companies, including the 4th, withdrew to the forest edges and continued to fight there. During the day, the regiment was scattered, suffered heavy losses, but the results of its actions (of the entire regiment, not only the 4th company) turned out to be modest: 4-5 tanks according to their own requests. Moderation of the declared successes can indirectly speak about the veracity of the report.

On the one hand, this fight is very different from the canonical legend. On the other hand, tanks are much less likely to be knocked out with hand weapons than one might think if one imagines war based on films. The battle was unsuccessful, despite the fact that the soldiers and officers did what they could.

Actually, the German review of the battle does not allow us to say that it did not exist at all or that the Germans did not notice the Panfilovs: " Not too strong enemy defends stubbornly, using forests". However, success in defense was also not achieved, the history of the battle took on a life of its own.

Employees of the "Red Star" Koroteev, Ortenberg and Krivitsky, without leaving the front line, formed a classic legend, which featured 28 fighters, 18 destroyed German tanks, and the successful defense of the line, actually broken by the Germans. In essence, the "Red Star" did a disservice to the entire division. Without any exaggeration, the Panfilovites covered themselves with glory near Volokolamsk.

Actually, on November 16, the soldiers of the 1075th regiment did everything that depended on them to at least delay the enemy, however, given the actual circumstances of the event, they simply could not do anything outstanding against the general background of the war (we emphasize - against the general background of the war).

However, the protrusion of the battle at Dubosekovo led to a kind of blackout of other combat episodes. It was the glorification of 28 people to the detriment of everyone else that became the reason why later the officers of the Panfilov division reacted rather sourly to questions about this battle. Note that 28 participants in the defense of the Dubosekovo base camp were presented for the country's highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Against the background of, say, Podolsk cadets, who actually destroyed a dozen and a half "panzers" near Ilyinsky that autumn, but did not receive a single "Gold Star" for their feat, or much less well-known battles of the Panfilovites themselves in October - this is really a rather political decision.

In November, the Panfilovites had no time for discussions with journalists. The battle continued. The commander of the 1075 regiment, Kaprov, gathered around him the remnants of the regiment and retreated to the east. The battalion of Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, who was surrounded, made his way through the forests. The division retreated, but retained controllability and did not allow its front to be completely destroyed. The heaviest losses concerned not only the privates. A day later, Ivan Panfilov was killed by a random mine. The division was soon given the name of its deceased commander, respected and loved by both the soldiers and the command. His colleagues had to fight themselves.

What did the Panfilovites achieve near Volokolamsk? The Wehrmacht did not reach Moscow quite a bit. Access to the outskirts of the city automatically meant monstrous losses of the civilian population and enormous difficulties associated with the transformation of the Moscow transport hub into a battlefield. It was impossible to stop the colossus of Army Group Center at once, but it depended on the soldiers and officers who fought and died in the autumn of 41 how quickly the enemy would stop, at what point the flow of the wounded, killed and damaged equipment would make it impossible to continue the offensive.

numb enmity

The battle near Volokolamsk made the name of the division - no longer the 316th, but the 8th Guards. Now she had to confirm her title.

At the end of November, the exhausted division was removed from the Volokolamsk direction, but was not transferred to the rear at all. The Panfilovites, led by the new commander Vasily Revyakin, were moving towards the village of Kryukovo (now within the boundaries of Zelenograd). Revyakin's pre-war career did not contain sharp turns. At the beginning of the war, he was deputy commander of the 43rd Army, and now he received an independent appointment. The newly minted guards were given the task of returning the Kryukovo station, which was lost on November 30. The Wehrmacht had exhausted its forces in the offensive, and German troops were digging in on the outskirts of Moscow. The division performed well, and success was expected from it.

However, the absence of Panfilov immediately showed how much depends on one person. In addition, fresh replenishment did not always meet all the requirements for a soldier. The reconnaissance before the attack was carried out carelessly, tactically the offensive quickly degenerated into frontal attacks, so that it was not possible to take Kryukovo from December 3 to 6.

Unfortunately, on average, the Wehrmacht at that time showed much better efficiency at the tactical level than the Red Army. However, Revyakin quickly showed the ability to learn from mistakes. In addition, the Panfilovites were reinforced with cavalry (formally - a division, in reality - in terms of numbers - a complete battalion), an artillery regiment and a tank battalion (14 tanks). An air regiment of night bombers was assigned for air support. At that time, the division had a very small number - only 3800 people. From 11 thousand in October there was no trace left.

However, the enemy was not in the best condition either: intelligence counted 7 depleted battalions in the Kryukovo area. This time, Revyakin planned to cover Kryukovo from two sides.

This plan was successful. The 1077th and 1075th rifle regiments bypassed the defense knot near Kryukovo from the north-west, the attached rifle brigade covered it from the south. The division formed assault groups from the most trained infantrymen, and used them in a non-trivial way - for a night attack. In the morning the Russians broke into Kryukovo. The German counterattack was repulsed, throwing their few tanks into action. Kryukovo remained with the Red Army.

A significant claim for trophies is interesting: the Panfilovites announced the capture of 29 tanks. This might seem implausible, but for December 1941, such a relation looks quite realistic. The fact is that in the immediate rear of the Wehrmacht, a huge amount of equipment has accumulated with damage that is not fatal, but excludes military operations without repair, maintenance or even elementary refueling.

Army Group Center put all its efforts into the push towards Moscow and now had neither fuel reserves nor a reserve of spare parts. This circumstance made the rollback from Moscow catastrophic: the withdrawal meant that all equipment that could not be evacuated remained with the winners. The analytical report on the results of the battles for Kryukovo emphasizes the mass of abandoned equipment. It is characteristic, by the way, that in the battle for Kryukovo the Germans used tanks as fixed firing points - precisely because of the impossibility of maneuvering them. Well, the creation of specialized assault groups became a tactical technique widely used in the Red Army already noticeably later, so here the guards really showed their class.

Kryukovo was the last operation of the 8th Guards in the Moscow region. Since the beginning of the war, the division has lost 3620 people killed, missing and captured and 6300 wounded. In fact, almost all the soldiers of the first draft were out of action. The division had to be withdrawn to the rear for resupplying. The rest lasted until the end of January 1942. The next destination for the division was the Kholm area.

By January 1942, the Red Army and the Wehrmacht stood facing each other like two boxers ready to fall into a knockout. Near Demyansk there was a struggle to encircle the German group. Here the Panfilovites had to act again with a new commander at the head. In general, the leaders of the division changed quite often. Under the Hill, the 8th Guards became, in fact, a raid group.

The blow of a fresh division in itself proved unstoppable: the enemy front held out with all its might. In the depths of the defense of the Wehrmacht, the Panfilovites had to meet with units of a no less famous German division - the SS men from the "Dead Head". Head-to-head confrontation did not work out: the "Head" moved inside the resulting cauldron. The Germans will keep the boiler thanks to skillful and energetic resistance and effective air supply, but the head has become really dead: during the Demyansk siege, it lost more than 2/3 of the composition.

The Panfilovites marched south. They also managed to participate in the formation of a small environment at the Hill. In general, the winter campaign of 1942 looked bizarre: parts of the belligerents mixed up, the front line looked like the fruit of an abstractionist’s creativity on the map, and the Germans and Russians constantly fell into large and small encirclements.

This page of the 8th Guards war is almost unknown to the general reader, but meanwhile it achieved tremendous success, and if Kholm and Demyansk were subsequently defeated, then it was with this raid that the 8th Guards would enter the history of the war in the first place. However, what happened happened: the fruits of the success of the guards were never thwarted, because the Germans held Demyansk and Kholm.

The time when the "cauldrons" were quickly and effectively destroyed came much later. The hill was skillfully defended, and, as usual with the Germans, was supplied by air. In positional battles under the Hill, the 8th Guards got stuck for a very long time. Until mid-1944, she fought almost exclusively local positional battles without much success. In the spring of 1944, she was transferred to another section, but the situation did not change there either.

For more than two years, the division almost did not conduct active operations. Private operations ended with relatively small losses - the meat grinder of the Volokolamsk highway, thank God, did not repeat itself. But the successes looked very modest. Some breakthrough was outlined only in January 1944, when the Panfilovites liberated more than a hundred settlements and before settlements. The grandiose battles of the turning point in the war passed it. It seemed that the Panfilovites would remain "canned food" of the front.

The salty wind of the Baltic

Everything changed in the summer of 1944, when the German front in the east collapsed within just a few months in the entire space from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Baltics seemed to both sides a "bearish corner". The soldiers of the German Army Group North, with the usual rude humor for the military, hung out on one of the roads behind their positions a poster "Here begins the ass of the world" - the endless trench seat tormented them too. In the summer of 1944, however, no one had to be bored.

July 10 Panfilov went into battle in Latvia. The Dvina-Rezhitsa operation was overshadowed by the grandiose offensives of that summer, but it was a major battle. The Russian target was the city of Rezekne in the east of the republic. Here the guardsmen quickly demonstrated that they had not lost their grip.

The year was 1944, the level of training of the Red Army had grown significantly, and the technical equipment - radically. Hacking the defensive orders of the Wehrmacht turned out to be quick and clean. The boilers did not work out this time, however, within three weeks, the Soviet troops covered 200 kilometers, which is a very good pace for the infantry. The enemy of the Red Army in this battle turned out to be interesting.

They managed to break through to Latvia over the cold corpses of the 2nd Latvian division of the SS troops (aka the 19th grenadier division). For the Panfilovites, this operation became an accurate solution to standard tasks: offensive, breaking into field defenses, pursuit, storming small towns. It was the 8th Guards that stormed the final goal of the operation - the city of Rezekne, otherwise Rezhitsa. Now the division had to solve a new serious task: to fight in the swamps of the Baltic.

The Lubansko-Madonskaya operation was also a private battle of the 2nd Baltic Front. She went in the most difficult conditions: she had to break into the defense of the Wehrmacht in solid swamps. Breaking through the marshes was not an easy task. This time such a spectacular breakthrough as near Rezhitsa did not work out. The tasks were often not so much combat as engineering: the division constantly made detours through the bog, making its way along the gats and pontoons. By roundabout maneuvers, the Germans were gradually forced to retreat from the usual lines, but the advance was slow and did not bring high-profile success. In a word, the guardsmen acted as a kind of laborers of the war: they slowly squeezed out the enemy from convenient positions.

The Panfilovites were not allowed to rest. Two weeks later, the division gnaws through the front line in the Baltic operation. This time we are talking about one of the largest offensives of the war. Riga became the common goal of the front. The battle, however, progressed slowly. In October, the Panfilovites took part in the capture of Riga, but this time they are no longer in the first roles.

After the cleansing of Latvia in the Baltic States, a large foothold of the Wehrmacht remained - Courland. In this area, German units pressed to the sea defended themselves until the very end of the war and surrendered only after May 9, 1945. The supply was by sea. The Courland cauldron, in the words of one of the modern historians, became "a battle of the disabled on rough terrain."

Neither for the USSR, nor for Germany, this impasse was not a priority. The headquarters strengthened the troops in Courland according to the residual principle, but nevertheless, periodically attempts were made to dump the Germans into the Baltic Sea. One of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the division took place here.

Anyone who considers acute situations and encircled battles an attribute of the exclusively initial period of the war will be deeply mistaken. Just as units of the Wehrmacht happened to end up in local encirclements in the summer of 1941, so the Red Army found itself in equally acute situations in the spring of 1945. The last military March is a case of the only encirclement of the entire 8th Guards Division in the entire war. Another local offensive in an attempt to break into the defenses of Army Group "Kurland" gradually bogged down in the swamps. The front command decided to take a risky step: the Panfilovites were ordered to advance without looking back at their neighbors. A breakthrough has been made, but a very narrow one. On the night of March 18, the Germans cut off the main forces of the division in the depths of their defense in the Kaupini area.

However, the year was 1945, and the collapse of those surrounded in the cauldron did not take place. Marshal Govorov personally arrived at the command post of the 10th Guards Army. The main forces of the army concentrated on rescuing the Guards Division. One of the regiments remained outside the boiler, and it was he, with the help of his neighbors, who took the first step towards breaking through the ring. However, the situation was simply critical: although there was no continuous front of the encirclement, all the paths along which the supply was going remained under the fire control of the Wehrmacht.

Fortunately, the offensive of the Panfilovites before the encirclement was so successful that the encirclement could quite actively shoot back with the help of captured weapons and ammunition. However, it was not possible to rescue the encircled, and the situation escalated. On March 25, the Germans made an attempt to crush the boiler. Due to the extreme degree of exhaustion on both sides, these attacks failed, and by March 2, having overwhelmed the Germans with a mass of steel (large artillery forces participated in the counterattack), the Russians made their way to the encircled units. The week-long epic struggle in the encirclement ended.

On this, the war of the Panfilov division, in fact, ended. After May 9, Army Group Courland began laying down its arms.

The 316th, then the 8th Guards Division with good reason became one of the most famous in the Red Army. A kind of recognition of the merits was the inclusion of the actions of this division in post-war collections summarizing the combat experience of the Great Patriotic War. These materials were intended for cadets of military educational institutions and active officers of the army, and they were not propaganda, but military analytics. Of course, the 8th Guards did not always achieve success, but even strong critics of the legend about 28 fighters on November 41 agree that the division as such, with its combat history, has earned the eternal memory of grateful posterity.

Throughout the history of the existence of the armed forces of the Soviet Union only two divisions were named after their commanders. During the civil war, it was the Chapaev division, during the Great Patriotic War - the 8th Guards Order of Lenin Red Banner Order of Suvorov Rezhitskaya named after I.V. Panfilov Rifle Division.

On July 12, 1941, by order of the government, the formation of the 316th Rifle, later the heroic Panfilov, division began in Alma-Ata. Within a month, the division was replenished with teams of conscripts from different regions of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The division consisted of three rifle regiments, an artillery regiment, a communications battalion, a separate engineer battalion, a separate auto company, a medical battalion, a separate reconnaissance motorized rifle company, a field bakery, a field postal service and a herd of cattle. The military commissar of Kyrgyzstan, Major General I.V. Panfilov, formed and led the 316th division. Personal acquaintance with Stalin allowed the general to select the best personnel when forming a division. So, not recruit boys, but mature family men, representatives of 28 peoples of the USSR, entered its ranks.

Guards Major General Ivan Vasilyevich P Anfilov began his military career in the First World War in 1915, when he was assigned to the 168th reserve battalion (Inzara, Penza province) on conscription. With the rank of non-commissioned officer, he was sent to the active army on the Southwestern Front in the 638th Olpinsky Infantry Regiment, where he rose to the rank of sergeant major (senior sergeant in modern troops).

After the February Revolution of 1917, Panfilov was elected a member of the regimental committee. Having voluntarily joined the Red Army in October 1918, he was enrolled in the 1st Saratov Infantry Regiment, which later became part of the 25th Chapaev Rifle Division. Commanding a platoon and a company of the legendary division, from 1918 to 1920 he fought against formations of the Czechoslovak corps, the White Guards of Generals Denikin, Kolchak, Dutov and the White Poles. In September 1920, Panfilov was sent to fight banditry in Ukraine, in 1921 he led a platoon of the 183rd border battalion.

After graduating from the Kyiv Higher School of Commanders of the Red Army in 1923, Panfilov was sent to the Turkestan Front, where he actively participated in the fight against the Basmachi. From 1927 to 1937 he headed the regimental school of the 4th Turkestan Rifle Regiment, commanded a rifle battalion, and then the 9th Red Banner Mountain Rifle Regiment. In 1937 he was appointed head of the department of headquarters of the Central Asian Military District, and a year later - to the post of military commissar of the Kirghiz SSR. In January 1939, Panfilov received the rank of brigade commander (since 1940 - major general).

Formed in 1941 by Panfilov 316 rifle division in August of the same year, she began her military journey near Novgorod, and in October she was transferred to the Volokolamsk direction. Waging continuous battles, for a month, units of the division not only held their positions, but with swift counterattacks defeated the 2nd Panzer, 29th Motorized, 11th and 110th Infantry Divisions, destroying a total of up to 9,000 German soldiers and officers , more than 80 tanks and other enemy equipment. On October 27, the situation at the front no longer allowed holding the occupied line, Volokolamsk had to be abandoned. Despite the retreat, for services in the October battles The 316th division was one of the first to be called the guards division number 8.

In November, the 8th Guards became famous for the feat of 28 Panfilov heroes. According to the version published in the same year in the central press, on November 16, a group of 29 tank destroyers met their death at the railway siding Dubosekovo, destroying 18 enemy tanks. The enemy struck from the south at the junction of the division and the 50th Cavalry Corps, trying to surround the Panfilovites and capture the headquarters. Despite the exceptional stamina of the soldiers of the 1075th regiment, the Germans broke through to the headquarters. Our units were drained of blood: in the 4th company out of 140 fighters, no more than 25 remained, in other companies even less. Having accepted the battle, the 8th Guards Division managed to stop the enemy in the Volokolamsk direction. A week later, reporters learned about this feat, several articles were published in Krasnaya Zvezda devoted to the events at the Dubosekovo junction.

The day after the terrible battle, the division received the Order of the Red Banner.

And on November 18, the division commander died - he was wounded by shrapnel during a mortar attack. This was a real tragedy for the soldiers of the division, who they treated Panfilov very warmly, calling him Batya.

On November 23, at the request of the fighters of the division, the 8th Guards was named after Major General I.V. Panfilov.

The media have so “hyped up” the story of the 28 Panfilovites that only a few know the real truth about it. In 1948 The military prosecutor's office checked the authenticity of the feat of 28 Panfilovites, described in the press. On the basis of the check carried out by the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Lieutenant General of Justice Afanasyev, on May 10, 1948, a “Reference-report “On 28 Panfilovites” was compiled.

However, a closer examination of the document reveals the following:

“In the period from November 1941 to January 1942 in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda there were three mentions of the feat of the Panfilov heroes: For the first time, a message about the battle of the guardsmen of the Panfilov division appeared in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on November 27, 1941. On November 28, Krasnaya Zvezda published an editorial titled "Testament of 28 Fallen Heroes." In 1942, in the newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda" dated January 22, Krivitsky published an essay under the heading "About 28 Fallen Heroes." From the testimony of Koroteev, a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper: “About November 23-24, 1941, together with the military correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper Chernyshev, I was at the headquarters of the 16th army ... When we left the army headquarters, we met the commissar of the 8th Panfilov division Yegorov, who spoke about the extremely difficult situation at the front and reported that our people fight heroically in all areas. In particular, Yegorov gave an example of a heroic battle of one company with German tanks, 54 tanks advanced on the line of the company, and the company delayed them, destroying some of them. Egorov himself was not a participant in the battle, but spoke from the words of the regimental commissar, who also did not participate in the battle with German tanks ... Egorov recommended writing in the newspaper about the heroic battle of the company with enemy tanks, having first read the political report received from the regiment ... The political report spoke about the battle of the fifth company with enemy tanks and that the company stood "to death"- died, but did not move away, and only two people turned out to be traitors, raised their hands to surrender to the Germans, but they were destroyed by our fighters. The report did not mention the number of company soldiers who died in this battle, and did not mention their names. We did not establish this from conversations with the regiment commander either. It was impossible to get into the regiment, and Yegorov did not advise us to try to get into the regiment. Upon arrival in Moscow, I reported the situation to the editor of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Ortenberg, about the company's battle with enemy tanks. Ortenberg asked me how many people were in the company. I answered him that the composition of the company, apparently, was incomplete, about 30-40 people; I also said that two of these people turned out to be traitors... I didn't know that a front line on this subject was being prepared, but Ortenberg called me again and asked how many people were in the company. I told him that about 30 people. Thus, the number of 28 people who fought appeared., since out of 30 two turned out to be traitors. Ortenberg said that it was impossible to write about two traitors, and, apparently, after consulting with someone, he decided to write about only one traitor in the front line. On November 27, 1941, my short correspondence was published in the newspaper, and on November 28, the editorial “Testament of 28 Fallen Heroes” written by Krivitsky was printed in the Red Star

From which it follows that the number of Panfilov heroes in the "Red Star" of November 28, 1941 was determined approximately.

About the events after December 20, 1941, when our troops regained temporarily lost positions, the following is said:

“When it became known that the place where the battle took place was liberated from the Germans, Krivitsky, on behalf of Ortenberg, drove to the Dubosekovo junction. Together with the commander of the regiment Kaprov, commissar Mukhamedyarov and the commander of the 4th company Gundilovich Krivitsky went to the battlefield, where they found three corpses of our soldiers under the snow. However, Kaprov could not answer Krivitsky’s question about the names of the fallen heroes: “Kaprov did not give me the names, but instructed Mukhamedyarov and Gundilovich to do this, who compiled a list, taking information from some kind of statement or list. Thus, I got a list of the names of 28 Panfilov soldiers who fell in battle with German tanks at the Dubosekovo junction "

8th Guards Rifle Division - formation of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War

Connection history:

November 16, 41 The last offensive of the German troops on Moscow began. 316sd, which was part of 16A Rokossovsky, was at the forefront of the main attack of the enemy. On this day, the 16A command planned to deliver a counterattack on the right flank of the army with the forces of 126sd, 58d and 17 and 24kd. General Panfilov, in a report to the army headquarters, asked to speed up the start of this offensive. However, the offensive of our troops on November 16-17, having run into the stubborn defense of the German infantry divisions, did not achieve its goal. For this operation, significant artillery forces were concentrated, including 39 cap rgk, 138 paps, 426 gap, 641 cap pto, 13 gmp. Artillery in the 316sd section was much weaker - it was supported by 296 and 768pto and 14gmp. On the left flank of the division from Shiryaevo to Petelino, he occupied the defense of 1075sp Kaprov, in the center along the Volokolamsk highway. defended 1073sp, the right flank of the division occupied 1077sp and 690sp (from the right-flank 126sd).

The main blow of the enemy on November 16 fell on the center and left flank - at the junction with the Cavalry. Dovatora group. After an air strike and artillery preparation, German tanks attacked positions 1073 and 1075sp. A hard fight ensued. During the attack, the enemy broke through the defenses of the left-flank 1075sp in the Petelino area and once. Dubosekovo and captured the village of Matrenino and the village of Matrenino. It was also pressed at Shiryaevo kav. Dovator group. 1073sp, defending along the Volokolamsk highway, was attacked from Muromtsevo and was forced to withdraw, leaving Mykanino and Rozhdestvenno. 690sp, defending between 1077 and 1073sp, was attacked in the Chentsy area and pushed back. 1077sp on the extreme right flank were not attacked that day. By the end of the day, the center and left flank of the division were pushed back to the line of Lystsevo, Rozhdestvenno, Matrenino, Morozovo. Counterattacks by our troops and Dovator's cavalrymen, with the support of tank brigades, stopped the advance of the enemy. The night counterattack of the 1073rd battalion and the Dovator cavalry group drove the enemy out of the village of Matrenino and the village of Matrenino. Losses of 1073sp amounted to over 30% hp.

On November 17, the positions of 1077sp were attacked, which Avdotino left and fought for Golubtsovo. 690sp was surrounded in the Chentsy area. 1gvtbr with a battalion of the NKVD and 27tbr and a battalion of 1073sp defended the station of Matrenino. To the left, the enemy continued to push 690sp, which Shishkino had left. 5 T-34 tanks were sent to help him. On the morning of November 18, German troops on the right flank of the division broke through from the Shishkino area to the south, cutting off the group defending in Matrenino. 690sp escaped from the encirclement by retreating to the Amelchino area (northern Shishkino).

November 18, 1077 attacked by the German 2nd, having suffered heavy losses, left Strkovo, Sytnikovo continuing to retreat to the east. The 2nd battalion 1073sp, which occupied the defense in the Sitnikovo area, was subjected to heavy air bombardment by 12 aircraft and lost 30 people. killed and 60 wounded. After the air strike, his positions were attacked by up to 40 tanks. The enemy occupied Amelfino while continuing to move to the s-in .. To ref. the day the division retreated to the line east. Sitnikovo, Gusenevo.

On November 18, for exemplary actions on the front of the fight against fascism, the division was transformed into the 8gvsd. On the same day, the commander of the division, Major General Panfilov, during an attack by enemy tanks on the village of Gusenevo, was killed during a mortar attack. The divisional commander never found out about the transformation of the division into a guards division.

On November 23, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command granted the request of the Military Council 16A to award the division with the honorary name " Panfilovskaya". This was one of the first cases of assigning an honorary name to a unit during the Second World War.

As a result of three-day battles, 700 people remained in 1077 cn, 120 people in 1075 cn, 200 people in 1073 cn, 180 people in 690 cn. On November 19, the division retreated to the B. Sestra river. On November 19, 690sp joined the 126sd (without an order from the headquarters of the 8gvsd).

Major General Revyakin was appointed the new division commander. Until October 41. he served as commandant of Moscow, and in November 41. was at the headquarters of the Western Front. From November 23, Revyakin was in charge of the defense of Solnechnogorsk, but as a result of a surprise attack, the city was quickly captured by the enemy. Revyakin arrived in the division only on December 1. Prior to that, all orders and operational reports were signed by the beginning. headquarters Colonel Serebryakov.

On November 20, the 1gvtbr tanks assigned to the division were recalled under the command of the brigade commander Katukov by order of the commander of 16A. Meanwhile, the enemy’s VAK (106, 35 infantry division, 2nd division), knocking down units of 316 (8gv) division from the positions on November 20, struck at the right-flank 126 division and 20 division and the cadet detachment, occupying Teryaev Sloboda. The right flank of the division, covered by 20kd, was under threat. On the morning of November 21, an order was received from the commander to transfer the division to the Ustinovo area (northern Novo-Petrovskoye). The Dovator cavalry group operating here (50, 53kd) suffered heavy losses by this time. Only a few dozen people remained in the cavalry regiments. Parts of the 1st Guards, 23rd, 27th, 28th Brigade, covering this area, lost almost all the tanks in the battles on November 16-21. Burning behind them the remaining settlements, the columns of the division marched to the designated line, where they arrived at 16:00. By this time, Novo-Petrovskoye had already been captured by the enemy.

By November 23, a group of 2nd and 35th divisions of the Germans bypassed the Istra reservoir from the north. On the afternoon of November 23, 2nd tanks broke into Solnechnogorsk with a surprise attack. Parts of the 8gvsd, 18sd, the Dovator cavalry group and other parts of the 16A continued to defend themselves in the west. on the banks of the reservoir in the Spas-Nudol region and in the Novo-Petrovsky region were deeply bypassed by the enemy, being under the threat of encirclement. On November 23, by attacking tanks, the Germans pushed back parts of the division and the 23rd brigade supporting it from Ustinkovo ​​to Bodrovo and Nizh.Vasilevsky. The losses of the division amounted to 130 people. killed and missing and 200 wounded.

On November 24, under these conditions, the commander of 16A, Lieutenant General Rokossovsky, gives his famous order to withdraw army units to the line of the Istra reservoir. and the river Istra. At the command of 16A during this period, on the right flank of the army, the Solnechnogorsk breakthrough was the main headache. The cavalry divisions of the Dovator cavalry group have already retreated to the east. shore of the reservoir. To help the cavalrymen, a battalion 1077sp with a battery 857ap was attached. Having reinforced them with tanks, the cavalry group was supposed to be used for a counterattack against the Germans who had captured Solnechnogorsk. 8gvsd was supposed to firmly defend the east. shore of an artificial lake. After the regiments began to withdraw to a new line, the German 11th and 5th divisions began to immediately pursue the retreating units of the 8th Guards Rifle Division and the left-flank 18th Division. At 15:30 German troops captured Yakunino, Sinevo, Torlonovo. Pursuing the retreating enemy 1075sp from Torlonovo, broke through to the dam of the reservoir, defended by 23tbr. In view of the unauthorized, unorganized withdrawal, the regiment commander, Colonel Kaprov, was removed from his post. Major Starikov became the new commander of 1075sp. 1077sp withdrew to the east. shore of the north dams in the Gorki area. On the morning of November 25, the 3rd battalion 1077sp received an order to advance to the Pyatnitsa area and take up defense in the narrowest place in the north. parts of vdkhr. However, when approaching Friday, it turned out that the village was already occupied by the enemy. The battalion was scattered by machine-gun fire. 1073sp departed in the center of the reservoir in the Lopotovo area. But on the shoulders of our troops, German troops also crossed the lake and captured Lopotovo late in the evening. Our troops blew up the flood gates and the water level in the reservoir fell. However, even such obstacles did not stop the enemy's offensive against the greatly weakened parts of the division. On November 26, the Germans crossed the reservoir and, in its southern part, knocked out 1073 joint ventures from Trusovo, and by evening from Sokolovo, Povadino. 1075sp with 23tbr could not keep the Germans in the dam area. To ref. day the regiment retreated to the Ognikovo area, which is 5 km east. reservoirs. Even further south, in the 18sd sector, German troops managed to capture the intact bridge across the Istra at Buzharovo. Thus, a strong defensive line, which the command of 16A so hoped for, was immediately broken through by the enemy in one day. Since our troops did not occupy preliminary positions along the east. bank of the Istra and the reservoir, it was very difficult to occupy them in the conditions of retreat and pursuit by the enemy's motorized formations.

However, resolutely attack from the busy to the east. The Germans still did not succeed on the coast of the bridgehead. 1077sp continued to hold Ognikovo and repelled all enemy attacks from the dam from Rakovo. The enemy attacks on November 27 were repulsed by units of the 8th Guards Rifle Division. A much greater threat was posed by an enemy breakthrough south of the dam in the Buzharovo area in the 18sd sector. The incoming marching battalion was immediately sent here, which attacked Novo-Sergovo. On November 28, German troops drove out parts of the division from Ognikovo, Novo-Sergovo, developing an offensive on Lytkino. On November 28, German aviation bombed Maryino 4 times, where the division headquarters was located. On November 29, the division's defenses were again broken through. Unable to withstand the enemy's attack and losing control, the division began to retreat to the east. The division's withdrawal opened the flanks of 2GvKK (the former Dovator group) and 18sd, which were also forced to withdraw to the east.

By the end of November 29, units of the 8th Guards Rifle Division withdrew to their last line of defense in the Moscow region and probably the second most famous after Volokolamsk - in the area of ​​Kryukovo station. From December 1, the division was tasked with returning Alabushevo (northern Kryukovo). 1077sp, with the support of 10 tanks of the 1gvtbr, attacked Alabushevo, while the other two regiments held the line on the outskirts of Kryukovo. In general, the 1077sp attack was unsuccessful. The artillery was late in readiness, Katukov's tanks did not arrive at the beginning of the attack. The attack was repulsed. Our losses were 2 killed, 8 wounded, 1 tank. The enemy, meanwhile, on December 1, knocked out 1075sp, which occupied Aleksandrovka (northern Kryukovo on the railway). On December 2, a new attack of enemy tanks and motorized infantry took place from the direction of Aleksandrovka and Andreevka. Under the attack of enemy tanks, 1075sp was forced to leave Kryukovo and retreat to the east. 1073sp together with 44kd in the Kamenka area (southern Kryukovo) held their positions. December 3, 1075sp, with the support of 4 tanks, led an attack on Kryukovo. The units of the regiment managed to gain a foothold in the west. env. Kryukovo. On December 5, the 1073rd Rifle Division, together with units of the 44kd (from the south) and 159th Rifle Division (from the 7th Guards Rifle Division), attacked in the direction of Kryukovo station. After a hard battle with heavy losses of our attacking units, we managed to drive the Germans out of Art. Kryukovo. The regiment before the attack consisted of 350 people. Losses during the attack amounted to 30 killed and 60 wounded. The commander of the regiment, Art. Lieutenant Momysh-Uly.

On December 7, a decisive assault on Kryukovo took place. The 8gvsd, 1gvtbr, 44kd and fresh 17sbr took part in the attack. Leading a stubborn battle, moving from house to house, the fighters cleared Kryukovo from the enemy. 1077sp bypassed Kryukovo from the north. By the end of the day on December 8, Kryukovo and Kamenka were completely in our hands. As trophies, 25 tanks, 2 tractors, 3 armored vehicles, 3 motorcycles, 36 vehicles, 5 guns and many other military equipment of the enemy were captured. The losses of only 1073 and 1077sp were 47 killed and 87 wounded. Attempts to immediately develop the offensive on December 9 to the west of Kryukovo were unsuccessful. Attacks on Andreevka were repulsed. On December 10, German troops began to retreat west to the line of Istra. But the 8th Guards Rifle Division did not immediately join the persecution, remaining in the Kryukovo area to clean up. The tankers of the 1gvtbr, 145tbr, 17sbr and 44kd went ahead.

On December 12, the division advanced in the direction of the city of Istra, where units of 16A left. During the march, 20 people were blown up by mines. from zenad. On December 15, it was withdrawn to the Stavka reserve in the Nakhabino area, becoming part of the 2GvSK.

From January 19 to February 2, it will be redeployed to the NWF. On February 3, it goes on the offensive, breaking through the enemy defenses in the Staraya Russa area. After passing 200 km along the rear of the enemy, it connects with parts of the Kalinin Front.

January 42. to replenish the division, the entire personnel (more than 1700 people) of the 100th brigade formed in Alma-Ata was sent. Before being sent to the front in August 42. Several more consolidated battalions were sent from this brigade to replenish the countrymen's division.

Losses of the division in the battles on the Western Front: irretrievable 3630 people, wounded 6300 people. On the North-Western Front (at the time of writing the report - August 42): irrevocable 4132 people, wounded and sick 9615 people ..

The last offensive in 1945.

By the beginning of 1945, the entire territory of the USSR was liberated from the German invaders - except for the Courland (Kurzeme) peninsula. There was blocked from the land by the so-called. the Courland grouping is the German Army Group North (two armies - the 18th and 16th), consisting of more than 30 divisions. Several offensives undertaken since October 44. to March 45 did not give significant results. It was not possible to take Libau or destroy the entire bridgehead. 10GvA, which included 8gvsd, was withdrawn to the reserve for rest in mid-March for the upcoming new offensive. Back in February, the division received replenishment of personnel and for 1.5 months was preparing for the offensive

On the morning of March 17, the weather turned out to be bad. There was thick fog, which forced us to postpone the start of the attack at 10.00, then at 12.00. By noon, the fog cleared somewhat, but sleet began to fall. Visibility even deteriorated. Aviation could not operate at all. On March 17, it was possible to overcome the tactical defense of the enemy in the sector of Kauni, Dangas. Only the 85th Guards Rifle Division lagged behind, clinging to its left neighbor. At the junction of the 7th and 8th Guards Rifle Divisions, the positions of one German infantry battalion remained intact. The corps commander did not immediately realize the danger that was brewing here, and until the evening of March 18, in essence, did not take any radical measures.

He did not see anything threatening in the presence of the formed ledge and the army headquarters. It was decided by the commander of the 29th Guards Rifle Division, Colonel V.M. Lazarev and the commander of the 8th Guards Rifle Division, Colonel G.I. Lomov, to attack without looking back at their neighbors. It seemed that as a result of the success of these divisions, the enemy would not be able to hold out for long at their junction in the area of ​​Dzeni, Dandzinas, Sutuli, Mazkalki. In the dark, the 29th division, with a tank regiment attached to it, traveled another six to eight kilometers, reaching the area of ​​Lazdukamni, Aizunin, Dzervmes. And the 8th Guards went to Danchi, Bites. However, at night, the situation escalated. From the Saldus area, the Nazis counterattacked the right flank of the 15th Guards Rifle Corps and entered the rear of the 29th Guards Rifle Division, which continued to move north. Several battalions of German infantry, reinforced with six-barreled mortars and about 60 tanks, occupied the Yanaishi-Dembin forest region. At the same time, enemy infantry with 30-40 tanks pinned down the actions of the 85th division and further increased its separation from the 29th. The situation worsened in the zone of the 8th Guards Division: west of Kaupini, Ziemyali, Dandzinas, the enemy managed to cut the battle formations of the Panfilovites. The 30th Guards Rifle Division, which the corps commander intended to use to develop success at the junction of the 85th and 29th divisions, had a hard time. The Nazis counterattacked with large forces since the evening of March 17 and upset the pre-battle formations of the units. The division accepted the battle already in the dark, moreover, in a completely obscure situation.

In the zone of the 7th Guards Rifle Corps, the Germans counterattacked from the west and east with three infantry divisions. As a result, by the morning of March 18, the main forces of the 8th division were cut off. Nevertheless, there was still faith in the successful development of the operation. The troops were not yet tired; they used up no more than 0.8 ammunition from ammunition. However, Marshal of the Soviet Union L. A. Govorov assessed the situation differently. March 18 at 11.00 he himself arrived at the command post of the 10th Guards Army. This was unusual in his practice. As a rule, Leonid Alexandrovich led the troops through the headquarters of the front. Govorov resorted to personal telephone conversations with commanders, and even more so to a personal meeting, only in exceptional cases.

Govorov began to carefully examine the map lying on the table. A little longer his gaze lingered on two dents in the enemy defenses made by the 29th and 8th divisions. The marshal asked to clarify what prevented the 30th Guards Rifle Division from advancing to the 29th line and why it was not possible to eliminate the ledge at the junction of the 7th and 8th divisions in a timely manner.

- What do you think to do next? asked Govorov. - Are you going to continue the offensive? If so, what kind of help from the front commander would you like to receive? I spoke in favor of continuing the offensive and only asked for more ammunition for us. The commander listened to me in silence, never interrupted me, did not ask a single additional question, and suddenly announced his decision, which I did not expect at all: - You can’t attack like this. It was necessary from the very beginning to evenly advance the battle formations of the corps and divisions. Ammunition, except for those that have already been released, the army will not receive. They are not in the warehouses of the front. Therefore, you should now take care of the withdrawal of the twenty-ninth and eighth divisions from the encirclement. Only after that it will be possible to think about the continuation of the offensive ...

Was the only reason for stopping the offensive by the commander that there was no uniform advance of the entire shock group of the army? Unlikely. As a rule, there is no uniform advance of troops when breaking through enemy defenses. The 29th and 8th divisions, which had pulled ahead, were not in such a dire situation either. The forces of the Nazis here, in general, are small, and the army still has a whole guards corps in reserve. The reason that prompted the front commander to interrupt the operation was, apparently, something else - he proceeded from the situation in the front line as a whole.

The chief of staff of the army, General N.P. Sidelnikov, transmitted the relevant orders to the commanders of the 15th and 7th corps. In the 7th Corps, the need to withdraw the 8th Guards was perceived with full understanding. The 29th division for two nights quite easily passed through the battle formations of the Nazis. Having rescued the 29th, they completely focused their attention on the 8th Guards. By order of the corps commander, two of its regiments (19th and 30th) were organized in an organized way from the Danchi area, Bites south of Kaupini. At the same time, the 23rd Regiment, in cooperation with the 26th Regiment of the 7th Guards Division, cut off the enemy's ledge in the Dzeni, Lapas area. But so far it has not been possible to completely eliminate the jumper that separated the main forces of the Panfilovites from the rear. All forest roads and clearings, along which the material support of the troops was carried out, were shot through. Only at night did the soldiers manage to carry some ammunition, crackers, sugar, and canned food.

The crisis matured by March 25, when the enemy, with units of three divisions, began to compress the ring around the 8th Guards Rifle Division. Parts of the 263rd and 290th infantry divisions, supported by tanks, tried to cut off parts of the division from the rest of the 7GvSK forces with attacks from the east, north and west. The rifle units of the division suffered heavy losses, especially the units covering the flanks of the division suffered heavy losses. By the end of March 26, the enemy managed to cut off the division and joint venture of the 47th SD from the main forces of the army. Attempts to restore the division's communications by forces of the 7GvSK made on March 27 did not produce results, and the breakthrough of the encircled units of the division in the south-west direction also failed. The enemy continued to attack the encircled parts of the division, trying to cut off the regiments from each other and destroy them piece by piece. Realizing that it would not be possible to connect with the surrounded units with the available forces, the reserve 22gv sd was transferred to the bd area. Morning attack March 28, 1945 units of the 7th Guards Rifle Division and 22 Guards Rifle Division in the north-west direction and the surrounded units towards them, the ring was broken and the units of the 8th Guards Rifle Division left the encirclement. ( there is evidence that no more than 300 people from the 8th Guards Rifle Division left the encirclement, but nothing of the kind is written in the documents of the 8th Guards Rifle Division and 2nd PribF. Probably, after such losses, the division would have been withdrawn not to the second echelon, but to reorganization ...).

After leaving the encirclement, parts of the division were withdrawn to the second echelon of the army, where, after putting themselves in order, they were engaged in combat training in preparation for new battles. On March 31, the 2nd Baltic Front was liquidated and units transferred to the Leningrad Front. at 14:00 on May 8, the Courland group of Germans capitulated. On May 9, 1945, while in the second echelon of the Leningrad Front, they received news of the surrender of Germany and the end of the war.

Commanders:

• Panfilov Ivan Vasilievich (11/18/1941 - 11/18/1941), Major General
• Revyakin Vasily Andreevich (11/01/1941 - 01/18/1942), Major General
• Chistyakov Ivan Mikhailovich (01/18/1942 - 05/23/1942), Major General
• Serebryakov Ivan Ivanovich (05/01/1942 - 10/31/1942), colonel
• Chernyugov Spiridon Sergeevich (10/01/1942 - 02/29/1944), Major General
• Dulov Dmitry Arsentievich (03/01/1944 - 05/31/1944), colonel
• Sedunin Ernest Isakovich (05/01/1944 - 06/30/1944), Major General 22A, NWF