The website of the Zvezda TV channel publishes a series of articles about the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 by the writer Leonid Maslovsky, based on his book Russkaya Pravda, published in 2011.

In his author's materials, Maslovsky, according to him, exposes "the myths invented by Russia's ill-wishers about the events of the Great Patriotic War and shows the greatness of our Victory." The author notes that in his articles he is going to "show the unseemly role of the West in preparing Germany for war with the USSR."

In October 1941, the 7th Army under the command of K. A. Meretskov, after 3 months of fighting and retreats, stopped the Finns, reinforced by German troops, on the Svir River from the eastern side of Lake Ladoga, preventing them from connecting with German troops and completely closing the encirclement ring Leningrad. The plans of the German command were thwarted. The Finns and the Germans were not allowed to go to Vologda from the side of Lake Onega.

The German troops failed to crush the Red Army and take Leningrad, but the German troops remained under it. Thus, the connection of the city of Leningrad and the Leningrad Front with the country by land was interrupted. The supply through Lake Ladoga was complicated by the fact that a group of German troops crossed the Volkhov River, cut the Tikhvin-Volkhov railway, and captured Tikhvin on November 8, 1941.

Famine came to Leningrad. The bread ration, which averaged about 800 grams per day, was rapidly declining. On October 1, the bread ration was reduced for the third time - workers and engineers received 400 grams of bread a day, employees, dependents and children 200 grams each. From November 20 (5th reduction) workers received 250 grams of bread per day. All the rest - by 125. Sick and weak people began to die of hunger and cold, as the amount of food delivered did not meet the needs of the city's inhabitants, despite the significant number of people evacuated from the city.

In total, more than half of the pre-war population - 1.7 million people - was evacuated from Leningrad. But for a relatively short time, German troops interrupted the supply of the city along Ladoga. On December 9, our troops liberated Tikhvin and drove the Germans across the Volkhov River, ensuring the movement of trains to the station. Voyglass. Cargoes went to Leningrad in a continuous stream. From December 25, 1941, the norms for issuing products began to increase.

At the end of December, the Red Army troops captured several bridgeheads on the left bank of the river. As a result of the Tikhvin offensive operation, Soviet troops advanced 100-120 km and liberated a significant territory.

By the end of January 1942, a successful military operation allowed the railway workers to lay an additional railway line to Lake Ladoga itself, and cargo from the wagons began to be unloaded directly into the bodies of trucks that were standing on the ice of the lake. Further along the ice of the lake and roads, cargo was delivered to Leningrad, which made it possible to significantly increase the nutritional standards of the inhabitants of the city and the fighters of the Leningrad Front, as well as improve the supply of troops with weapons and ammunition.

Since February 1942, the supply of food to the inhabitants of the city in sufficient quantities for life was established and maintained until the blockade was broken.

A. M. Vasilevsky wrote that day and night, cars loaded with food, medicines, fuel, equipment, and ammunition went to Leningrad in a continuous stream, and women, children, the elderly, the wounded and the sick were taken away on their return flights.

K. A. Meretskov, pointed out that even before the spring thaw (spring of 1942 - L. M.) on Ladoga, more than 300 thousand tons of all kinds of cargo were delivered to Leningrad and about half a million people who needed care and treatment were taken out of there.

In navigation, cargo continued to be delivered by water transport of the North-Western River Shipping Company, as well as by ships of the Ladoga military flotilla.

In my opinion, the contribution of rivermen to the supply of the city and the Leningrad Front is underestimated. As in winter, car drivers, so in navigation, day and night, day and night, they carried goods to Leningrad and took people out of Leningrad, and from the summer of 1942 also the products of industrial enterprises.

In documentary footage, in particular from the film "The Unknown War", Leningraders leaving for the front, working in factories and cleaning the streets of the city in the spring of 1942, do not look exhausted, like, for example, prisoners of German concentration camps.

Someone really wants to make the city-concentration camp Leningrad out of the hero city of Leningrad. The trend of turning Soviet heroes into victims is visible in all liberal works, and the number of these victims of the besieged Leningrad, published in the media, is growing from year to year. In fact, the city worked, fought, children went to school, theaters and cinemas worked.

Leningrad was defended by the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. The Leningrad front was in blockade, the Volkhov front was on the outer side of the blockade ring and stretched for 250 km along the Volkhov River, grinding the Nazi troops thrown to Leningrad and preventing them from connecting with the Finnish troops stopped north of the Svir River.

In this regard, the besieged Leningrad is unacceptable to be considered in isolation from the Leningrad front. The front positions could be reached by tram. Leningrad and the Leningrad Front fought together and were a single fortress.

It was during the evacuation and to the Leningrad Front that the bulk of the inhabitants of Leningrad departed, and did not die of starvation. Fighters and commanders of the Leningrad Front, the militia are buried along with the dead and dead residents of the city in the cemeteries of Leningrad.

Considering Leningrad in isolation from the Leningrad Front means deliberately making a mistake and coming to conclusions that do not correspond to reality.

Our troops carried out three operations to break the blockade, and only the last of them was successful. In the period from January 7 to April 30, 1942, the forces of the Volkhov and the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front carried out the Luban operation in order to unblock Leningrad, but they failed to push the Germans back from Lake Ladoga.

Only 16 kilometers separated the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. To break the blockade, these troops had to meet. On August 19, 1942, the troops of the Leningrad Front, and on August 27, the troops of the Volkhov Front, with the assistance of the forces of the Baltic Fleet and the Ladoga military flotilla, went on the offensive towards each other. The Sinyavino military operation began, which was also carried out with the aim of deblocking Leningrad. Our troops were sure of victory.

Meretskov wrote: “The troops intended for the offensive gave us in the chosen direction more than three times superiority over the enemy in manpower, four times in tanks, two times in artillery and mortars. So we thought, not knowing about the arrival of Manstein's divisions from the south.

These Manstein divisions arrived from near Sevastopol to storm Leningrad as having experience in storming a large seaside city during the six-month battle for Sevastopol. But they did not have to storm Leningrad. The offensive of our troops disrupted the prepared new German assault on Leningrad. E. Manstein wrote: "And now, instead of the planned offensive against Leningrad, a battle unfolded south of Lake Ladoga."

Outlining the events of the Sinyavino operation, most historians cite Manstein's description of it. But honestly and clearly, it was not E. Manstein who spoke about it, but K. A. Meretskov, who wrote the following about the results of the operation: “The bulk of the troops finished reaching the eastern coast by dawn on September 29. The remaining units left on the night of 30 September. After that, active hostilities were stopped. Our troops, as well as the enemy troops, returned approximately to their old positions. The artillery duel and mutual air raids, as if by inertia, then continued for several days, but no offensive actions were taken.

Neither the commander of the Volkhov Front, K. A. Meretskov, nor the chief of the General Staff, A. M. Vasilevsky, mentions the encirclement of German or our troops in the Sinyavinsk operation. The Neva Operational Group fought until 6 October. The Nazi command made a lot of efforts to throw the units that crossed the Neva into the water, but the glorious soldiers of the Leningrad Front, thanks to the courage of the fighters and the artillery that fired across the Neva, managed to hold two small footholds. Such was the end of the Sinyavino operation. The Volkhov and Leningrad fronts failed at that time to break the blockade of Leningrad. However, the calculations of the Nazi command to storm Leningrad suffered a complete collapse.

In the song "Volkhovskaya Table" there are lines about the Sinyavin operation: "Our bayonets on the heights of Sinyavin, our regiments near Mga will be forever glorified in legends under a machine-gun blizzard."

The loss of German troops in killed and captured amounted to about 60 thousand people, and in equipment - 260 aircraft, 200 tanks, 600 guns and mortars. According to the testimony of prisoners in the companies of most divisions, 20 people remained in the ranks. “It is better to visit Sevastopol three times than to stay here,” the prisoners said. The soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, with their counterattacks and two major offensives, defended the inhabitants of the besieged city. Leningrad continued to live, work and fight.

Cargo continued to be delivered to Leningrad around the clock in a continuous flow by rail and then by road or river transport (depending on the time of year) for 25 km across Lake Ladoga.

Not only the city, but the entire Leningrad front was supplied with weapons, shells, bombs, cartridges, spare parts and food. Cars and river boats returned back to the railway with people, and from the summer of 1942 with products manufactured by Leningrad enterprises.

It should be noted that the degree of risk of both the winter and summer routes along the lake is exaggerated - this route did not exceed 25 kilometers and was reliably protected from enemy aircraft and ground forces. Of course, there were losses, but compared to the amount of cargo delivered, the losses were insignificant.

“In the summer, Leningrad received the first tons of liquid fuel through a 25-kilometer pipeline laid to supply the city and the front along the bottom of Ladoga. Later, current from the partially restored Volkhovskaya hydroelectric station began to flow here again through the submarine cable. This allowed a number of enterprises to resume the production of military products, ”K. A. Meretskov points out.

Thus, in 1941-1942, the army and the government did everything possible to supply the city and the Leningrad front, protect the inhabitants of Leningrad and break the blockade by land.

On December 28, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command approved the third plan for the operation to break the blockade and gave it the name Iskra. “The idea of ​​this operation was to defeat the enemy grouping in the Shlisserburg-Sinyavino ledge, break through the blockade and restore the land connection of Leningrad with the central regions of the country with counter strikes from two fronts - Leningrad and Volkhov.

Our soldiers near Leningrad had to fight in difficult conditions: in summer there are a huge number of mosquitoes that do not give soldiers rest day or night, in winter severe frosts and snow drifts. There are forests and swamps all around, which are difficult for a person to pass through, not to mention the movement of cars, artillery pieces, tanks and other equipment.

After careful consideration of all options, it was decided to break through the German fortifications somewhat north of the place where they tried to break through the blockade from August 19 to October 10, 1942 during the Sinyavino operation. “This direction was the most difficult due to the presence of extremely powerful enemy fortifications here, but also the shortest. We had to overcome only a 12-kilometer strip between Shlisselburg and Lipki, or six kilometers to each of our two fronts,” wrote K. A. Meretskov.

The Leningrad Front could deliver a counterattack only in the place where the troops of the Volkhov Front were closest. The Leningrad Front did not have enough forces for a deeper operation, since all the supply of the front and the city was carried out along the Road of Life, that is, on the ice of Lake Ladoga.

The Germans tried to cut off the road of life, but they were defeated near Sukho Island. Due to the position of the Leningrad Front and the difficulty of moving equipment in the swampy terrain, it was necessary to plan an attack on the area of ​​​​the Shlisselburg-Sinyavino ledge, which was most fortified by the Germans. The Germans' density of troops in this area was twice as high as provided for by their charters.

But the Headquarters was also able to provide an average of 160 guns and mortars for every kilometer of the front. This allowed our troops to create an extremely high density of fire, sufficient to destroy the German fortifications. All front-line aviation as part of the 14th Air Army, Major General I.P. Zhuravlev, was redirected to the offensive site. The long-range aviation of Colonel-General A.E. Golovanov was also involved in the operation. The offensive of our troops was supported by the Baltic Fleet and the Ladoga military flotilla.

On January 12, 1943, aviation and artillery preparation began. Our artillery destroyed the German fortifications for about 2 hours. Dozens of tons of metal, brought down on the enemy, thoroughly destroyed the German positions and suppressed many firing points. Our troops went on the offensive.

The enemy offered maximum resistance in the area of ​​the Kruglyaya grove. All day there was close combat, which repeatedly turned into hand-to-hand combat. By the evening, the specified node of resistance was taken. The 327th division was renamed the Guards for the accomplished feat. On January 13 and 14, Lipki and Rabochy settlement No. 8 were isolated and cut off. All attempts by fresh German formations to break through to them from Mga were unsuccessful.

Only two, the most difficult, kilometers remained for our fronts to pass in order to break through the blockade. And they passed. On January 18, 1943, the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts met. The blockade of Leningrad, which lasted 500 days and nights (1 year 4 months and 10 days), was broken, the connection between the city and the country by land was restored.

It was the millions of heroic deeds of the Soviet people at the front and in the rear that ensured our victory. The history of the Great Patriotic War has a great many examples of mass manifestations of heroism. Not a single country and not a single army in the world knew such mass heroism.

“When the formations of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts at the end of January 1943 turned south, taking up positions along the Sinyavin line, work was already in full swing in their rear: in the corridor north of Sinyavin, they began to build a railway to Leningrad. The railroad brigades moved behind the advancing troops. The local population came to their aid, and then the fronts allocated a number of military units for the construction of the road ... A temporary ice-pile bridge was erected on the Neva, which connected the branch with the track from the Black River to the village of Morozov.

Already on February 2, as soon as the last rails were lowered and fixed from the repair and construction railcars, a trial train passed, and four days later a long-distance freight train rushed along the 36-kilometer line. The Victory Road - the result of two weeks of heroic work - has entered service, ”writes the commander of the Volkhov Front, K. A. Meretskov. Roads were laid parallel to the railway.

The Germans began to shell the constructed section of the railway, but the railway workers laid another branch of the railway in a safer place, and the large-caliber artillery of both our fronts and the guns taken from the ships of the Baltic Fleet destroyed the German batteries, and they fell silent.

For almost twelve months, the troops of the fronts were now flaring up, then fading hostilities in the direction of the Mga station, trying to expand the strip of liberated land, and not allowing the Germans to return the recaptured native land. But our armies did not have forces sufficient to break through the German defenses. And the Headquarters could not allocate additional troops, since the main reserves went to Stalingrad and Kursk, where the fate of the entire war was decided.

In the battles after the blockade was broken on January 18, 1943, Soviet artillery and aviation haunted the Germans. A. E. Golovanov writes that the German troops in the Sinyavino area were bombarded by large groups of aircraft massively, which gave the most tangible results. So, in eleven raids on this area, only 1299 aircraft of the Long-Range Bomber Aviation took part. Massively bombed by German troops and front-line aviation.

It is known that during the attack on Leningrad, the siege of the city and the retreat, not only ours, but also the German military units had huge losses. But our historians and politicians are silent about them, thereby presenting our losses near Leningrad as unjustified.

Some even write that there was no need to defend the city, but it was necessary to surrender it to the enemy, and then the Leningraders would avoid starvation, and the soldiers would avoid bloody battles. And they write and talk about it, knowing that Hitler promised to destroy all the inhabitants of Leningrad.

I think they also understand that the fall of Leningrad would mean the death of a huge number of the population of the northwestern part of the USSR and the loss of an enormous amount of material and cultural values.

In addition, the released German and Finnish troops could be transferred near Moscow and to other sectors of the Soviet-German front, which in turn could lead to the victory of Germany and the destruction of the entire population of the European part of the Soviet Union.

Only haters of Russia can regret that Leningrad was not surrendered to the enemy. Hitler was going to take Leningrad in 4 weeks by July 21, 1941 and send the liberated troops to storm Moscow, but he could not take the city by January 1944 either.

Hitler ordered the proposals to surrender the city to the German troops not to accept and wipe the city off the face of the earth, but in fact, the German divisions stationed near Leningrad were wiped off the face of the earth in January 1944 by the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts.

Hitler stated that Leningrad would be the first major city captured by the Germans in the Soviet Union and spared no effort to capture it, but did not take into account that he was fighting not in Europe, but in Soviet Russia. I did not take into account the courage of the Leningraders and the strength of our weapons.

To be continued…

The opinions expressed in the publications of Leonid Maslovsky are the opinions of the author and may not coincide with the opinions of the editors of the Zvezda TV channel website.

So why didn't the Germans enter Leningrad?

This question has bugged me for a very long time. I remember that in the 1950s I discovered an interesting thing for myself: in the city center there was no destruction from the war, there were only “scratches” on the houses. Those. ALL buildings stood intact. But on the southern outskirts (near the Narva Gates) there were solid ruins, and only residential buildings.

Alexey Kungurov in his article"On Mathematics and Historical Reality" exploring this issue, draws attention to why the Kirov plant worked:
“It is known that the Kirov plant worked all the time of the blockade. The fact is also known - he was 3 (three !!!) kilometers from the front line. For people who did not serve in the army, I will say that a bullet from a Mosin rifle can fly at such a distance if you shoot in the right direction (I just keep quiet about artillery pieces of a larger caliber).
From the area of ​​the Kirov factoryevacuated residents , but the plant continued to work under the very noses of the German command, and it was never destroyed.
Now, on the former front line, there is a T-34 tank on a pedestal. It is very close to Avtovo metro station built in 1955. I don’t know if the Kirov Plant was bombed or not, but here’s the shipbuilding plant named after. Marty (on Repin Square) was not bombed, but they were constantly shelled. Workers in the workshop were killed by shrapnel right at the machines. The plant then did not build new ships, only repaired crippled ones.
The Germans had no order to occupy Leningrad. Von Leib, commander of the Army of the North, was a competent and experienced commander. He had up to 40 divisions under his command (including tank divisions).Front in front of Leningrad was 70 km long. The density of troops reached the level of 2-5 km per division in the direction of the main attack.
In such a situation, only historians who do not understand anything in military affairs can say that in these conditions he could not take the city. We have repeatedly seen in feature films about the defense of Leningrad how German tankers enter the suburbs, crush and shoot a tram. The front was broken, and there was no one ahead of them. In their memoirs, Von Leib and many other commanders of the German army claimed that they were forbidden to take the city, they were ordered to withdraw from advantageous positions ...
And at the same time there is a struggle for the mastery of the city of Murmansk. Here the German troops bombed from the heart. So why was Hitler so determined to capture Murmansk? After all, he did not reckon with any losses. And even, in the most difficult periods of the war for him, he preferred to transfer troops from Africa, but did not remove them from the Murmansk direction.
Tens of thousands of people died in the Murmansk direction and in the city itself. Why, then, did the Soviet command send their soldiers to the death with such persistence, did not take into account any losses, protecting the bare hills? What was defended - the Kola Bay? But the allied convoys were also unloaded in Arkhangelsk (only with lesser losses).
These are questions to which official history does not and will not give answers.
Contrary to all Soviet propaganda, Hitler was not a fool, and there were pretty good reasons for all these actions of his army. Everyone already knows his desire to know the origins of the Aryan race and obtain evidence that it is the Germans who are their descendants. He needed evidence of this and artifacts. He was looking for traces of Hyperborea and not only traces, but also technologies.
Of course, he was well acquainted with the results of the Barchenko expedition, he probably knew that the NKVD had “staken out” a large area of ​​​​the territory, fencing with barbed wire and establishing a serious guard. So that's where you should be looking. This is where the persistence in the fight for Murmansk came from.
In Murmansk, rocks and all possible artifacts are stored in the rocks. Therefore, it was possible to safely bomb the city without fear of destroying the archives of Hyperborea. But with Peter, everything is much more complicated.
So why didn't Hitler give the order to enter the city?
And all because Hitler knew very well that what he needed was very well and reliably guarded, and not only by people. It was the same as in Murmansk, i.e. ancient artifacts. Under St. Petersburg there are many ancient tunnels built by the real builders of the city, many entrances. One entrance was under the Winter Palace. The tunnel went under the Neva to the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the Romanovs often used it, riding in a carriage.
Unknown subway of the Romanov family

For many years, from generation to generation, the inhabitants of Tsarskoye Selo have been passing on stories about mysterious dungeons and tunnels. Members of the royal family used underground passages for secret business meetings and secret rendezvous with lovers, and during the time of Nicholas 2, secret construction of the Imperial Metro was carried out in Tsarskoye Selo.

In the palace parks today they find bars that enclose nothing, doors that cannot be opened, stairs leading to nowhere. Perhaps this is the passage to the underground railway...

For the first time the idea of ​​building a subway was expressed in Russia during the reign of Catherine II. The underground passages dug in Tsarskoye Selo, connecting the Catherine Palace with a number of buildings in the city, allowed Her Majesty, without advertising her visits, to appear at any end of Tsarskoye Selo at any time of the day or night. The idea of ​​creating underground conveyors and elevators was also in the air. She seemed bulky, but the Empress liked her very much.
Naturally, these tunnels were made by the ancient builders of St. Petersburg and are most likely part of a large branched system of underground structures. What was "opened" in Tsarskoye Selo was the clearing of ready-made tunnels, their restoration and modernization with the laying of a railroad.

Abandoned storm well in the landscape part of the Alexander Park. There is another, if you draw a direct direction to the village of Aleksandrovka. Photo 2004

Construction management was entrusted to Senator N.P. Garin, who for some time replaced the Minister of War and oversaw military-technical programs in the Ministry of War.
Construction began with the fact that in May 1905 the public was strictly forbidden to freely visit the Alexander and Farmer parks in Tsarskoye Selo. Solid wire fences and outposts were installed around the park arrays. The Okhrana spread rumors that colossal construction work was underway in the parks in connection with preparations for the tercentenary of the reigning Romanov dynasty.
For eight years, in conditions of strict secrecy, 120 trucks removed hundreds of tons of soil per day from here. Four hundred carts brought food at night and took out workers, for whose accommodation two-story barracks were erected in the village of Aleksandrovskaya. The lion's share of the excavated soil was taken out by a freight single-track, later the soil began to be taken out to the right bank of the Kuzminka River near Aleksandrovskaya station.
In 1912, security measures were strengthened and a second strip of barbed wire was put into operation, through which current was passed. A month before the commissioning of the facility, unprecedented work was launched on the surface to cover up traces. Alexander Park was actually rebuilt.
And eight years later, during the celebration on the territory of the imperial parks, distinguished guests did not find any traces of the work being done here in 1905. The strange top-secret facility in Tsarskoye Selo, worth 15 million gold rubles, remained the most secret in the Russian Empire until March 1917.
On March 19, 1917, a group of warrant officers of the Tsarskoye Selo garrison discovered a pit leading to a deep dungeon. What they saw shocked the imagination of the ensigns. At a depth of eight meters, a wide single-track was laid in the belly of a three-meter-high concrete tunnel. In a small depot, an electric trolley with two trailed carriages for twenty seats, according to the number of members of the royal family and retinue, was rusting.
Electric cables were visible everywhere along the walls, small searchlights in the side aisles illuminated the entire underground space from the cellars of the Catherine Palace to the village of Alexandrovskaya, where an electric trolley lift with its contents was mounted. The total width of the central tunnel with side passages was 12 meters.
To supply electricity in Tsarskoye Selo, the so-called palace power plant was built. The electrical engineer A.P. Smorodin.
The station was built with a huge reserve of power for purposes far from the power supply of Tsarskoye Selo palaces, the city and the garrison. The two-story Moorish-style building at the corner of Tserkovnaya and Malaya streets was placed in such a way as to power not only the already open tunnels, but also new ones planned within the city limits and under the military camp of the Tsarskoye Selo garrison troops.
The secret object began with a strange house number 14 on Pushkinskaya street (in those days, Kolpinskaya). A two-story wooden house has long attracted attention with a strange brick extension with one window along the main facade and a narrow tower from the courtyard, which had communication only with the second floor of the building. During the time of Catherine II, her secret chambers were located here. Through the underground passage, the empress could reach this house without being noticed by anyone. Here she conducted especially secret, confidential negotiations.

The system of side tunnels of the royal subway turned it into an underground hub with its own gold storage, a network of wide tunnels capable of accommodating troops to suppress the revolutionary elements and save the royal family. Every hundred meters of the tunnel there were round brick columns - kingstones, so that, if necessary, water from the ponds of Alexander Park could flood everything in a matter of minutes.
By May 1, 1917, all the side tunnels of the most secret object in Russia were explored and looted, including the gold depository of the Romanov House near Parnassus and under the building of the Chinese Theater. While the royal family was kept under house arrest in the Alexander Palace, she had some, if not great, chance to escape through the subway tunnels. Alas, the secret of the Tsarskoye Selo metro ceased to be a secret before the escape of the Romanovs was planned.
Engineer L. B. Krasin, who was appointed director of the Tsarskoye Selo palace power plant in the name of the revolution, spoke about the attempt to free the royal family to V. I. Lenin.

- Someday we will take a swing and build a subway under the Moscow Kremlin, Ilyich dropped with a devilish gleam in his eyes and explained that the Germans demanded the transfer of the Russian capital to Moscow.
And again the question arises: why did they need it?
Tsarskoye Selo was occupied by the Nazi troops, completely looted and destroyed.

Historians from Russia, Belarus, the USA, Great Britain, Finland, Canada, Denmark shared information found in the declassified archives of different countries over the past 10-15 years. The participants still “on the shore” agreed: the conference is not public, but scientific, so we will do without political appeals and leave emotions - only facts.

- I was in the ranks of the People's Militia. More than 60 years have passed since then, but I can’t cope with the feeling of the strangeness of what was happening, - began Daniil Granin, the initiator of the conference, chairman of the board of the Likhachev Foundation (this organization, together with the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the support of the Konstantinovsky Foundation called a conference). - On September 17, 1941, my regiment left Pushkin by order and headed towards Leningrad. The space between Pulkovo and the city was filled with refugees and retreating units - it was a terrible sight. I was stunned that along the way we did not meet any fortifications, no barriers ... I got to the house, and waking up the next day, I thought that the Germans were already in the city - because access to Leningrad was open. At least in one area.

In the winter of 1941-1942, according to the writer, who at that time was in the fortified area near Shushary, it was not clear to him alone: ​​what was the enemy trying to achieve?

“The Germans knew perfectly well the state of our defense, but did not try to capture the city,” recalls Daniil Granin. - And the fighting was carried out as if only to justify their presence here. Serious battles then went only near Sinyavin.

“Why was the city not taken back in August and September?”, “Why was the city blockaded?”, “Why was the city blockaded for so long?”- the participants tried to answer these questions “not in the way that was accepted in Soviet historiography”. As one of the conference participants noted, in the study of the causes and course of the Second World War, for some reason, we do not use the methods that are used in the study of the causes of the First World War.

“Hitler wanted to wipe Leningrad off the face of the earth, but when the German troops approached the city, it turned out that it was impossible to enter it,” says Valentin Kovalchuk, Doctor of Historical Sciences. - There was an order: if offers to surrender come from the city, in no case should they be accepted. Of course, this caused dissatisfaction with the German soldiers and commanders: we approached the city - and then what? In October, Hitler received an explanatory directive, so to speak: Leningrad could be mined, so it was impossible to send troops there.

Once upon a time, Valentin Kovalchuk, together with his colleague Gennady Sobolev, were the first to publish terrible data: about 800 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad with a population of 2.5 million - contrary to the official "632 thousand 253". Now historians believe that the dead were at least 750 thousand. Not counting those who died in the evacuation. Or on the road: at some stations they were removed from trains and buried by the thousands.

At one time, the Finnish historian Ohto Mannien was upset by this: the lack of detailed information about those who died in Leningrad - how many died not from hunger, but were executed for crimes? How many committed suicide?

“Initially, Hitler wanted to destroy Leningrad and Moscow, but in practice difficulties began: the country is large, there are many people, the danger of street fighting is great,” says Manninen. – Therefore, the decision was to block the city hard. Germany tried to shift the problem of governing Leningrad to Finland, but the Finns did not take on this burden and avoided direct action against the Russians. The task of the small country of Finland at that time was to prevent the Russian army from moving forward.

The British historian John Barber does not have enough numbers.

“It's bad that researchers usually focus on statistics: they find out the number of deaths - and that's it,” Barber regrets. – It is also necessary to study how people experienced this hunger – what could weaken it and what aggravated it. This is mainly about the distribution of food, and therefore the actions of the government, right or wrong.

On both sides

There were no German historians at the conference. As the organizers said, not for some reason - it just happened. Some were unable to attend due to illness.

Yuri Lebedev, chairman of the Reconciliation Center, author of the book On Both Sides of the Blockade Ring, tried to make up for the absence of the “German scientific side”.

Lebedev speaks German, and therefore there is no language barrier for him when working with German archives (“Unfortunately, our young historians do not delve into the German archives simply because they do not know the language,” says Lebedev. “There are a lot of materials for dissertations there!”) . In addition, Lebedev is a military man, and, as such, finds only one answer to the question Why didn't the Germans enter the city? Yes, because there was an order from Hitler: do not take Leningrad.

- In Soviet historiography, the emphasis was on Hitler's plan to destroy Leningrad. And it was usually overlooked that this plan, however, did not provide for ground combat operations by the German army in Leningrad, - Yuri Lebedev notes.

According to Lebedev, the German command considered different ways: from blockading the city and exhausting it with hunger (especially since even before the attack on the USSR, the German Ministry of Food Supply stated that the problem of supplying Leningrad with food was unsolvable) to the option in which the population was released from the city (saving face in front of civilized countries).

Which option was chosen - everyone knows.

“Leningrad turned into a huge concentration camp, and the German 18th Army of the North group was destined for the role of overseers,” Lebedev stated. According to the historian and the military, this role was unfamiliar to the soldiers. They came to fight with an armed enemy, and not to watch the civilian population die of hunger. This alignment did not raise morale at all.

“You can’t make a criminal out of some army,” summed up the director of the Reconciliation Center. - Certain people are criminals.

An interesting study was conducted by the historian Alexander Rupasov, a senior researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences: he traced the attitude of Leningraders to life as a value from a source that, it seems, was not taken before - the materials of the city prosecutor's office, which became military during the war.

In the summer and early autumn of 1941, the cases concerned mainly the purchase of antiques, gold, and escaped prisoners. Judging by the texts of the interrogations, as Rupasov says, the defendants did not cling to life: it will not get any worse. But a sharp change in the nature of affairs, according to Rupasov, occurred in the spring of 1942. The overwhelming majority of materials now concerned denunciations of neighbors and superiors.

For example. The guard of the artel on Nevsky Prospekt reported on her boss: she calls to surrender to the Germans. The boss defended himself: I was sick, I got hit by a tram, I got a head injury. And so the prosecutor's office did not consider it hard to ask the hospitals: did such and such a citizen with such and such an injury act at such and such a time. Answer: he did, and the citizen is likely to have schizophrenia, so one should not pay special attention to his statements. The case was closed.

Another case. The turn of 1942 - 1943. Leningraders believed that they would survive. In addition to the need for food, there was a need for some kind of sophistication: at least listen to music. The district police officer found in the apartment where two old women lived, a radio receiver, which had long been supposed to be handed over for reasons of state security. And here - five-lamp. A crime? Yes sir. But the prosecutor's office took care: they ordered an examination of the radio receiver to find out whether it was possible to transmit the encryption with its help. The examination lasted two months. Answer: the receiver is good, acceptable for communication; however, all five lamps are burned out, so it cannot be used. The case is closed.

“There was no indiscriminate grasping of the hand,” the historian concludes, and as another indicative stroke, he cites an addition to one of the filed cases: “The case is closed due to the severe exhaustion of the accused.” The value of life has increased.

“Political control during the blockade: “total and effective” was the title of the report by Nikita Lomagin, a professor at St. Petersburg State University. After all, in historiography, among others, there is the concept of totalitarianism: they say that the victory was ensured not by heroism at all, but by total control by the state security agencies.

- The control was not total. Because it was impossible,” says Lomagin. - The number of NKVD officers in Leningrad was not very large: many went to the front, their places were taken by ideological people, but less experienced. For a city with a population of 2.5 million people, 1,200 NKVD officers, even taking into account 30,000 informant agents, are not enough for total control.

Lomagin listed other reasons for the weakening of supervision: in a besieged city, with extremely low mobility, it was difficult to receive information, transmit it, and verify it; the pre-war developments of the NKVD were practically inaccessible (the archives were prepared for evacuation and fell out of operational work).

But were the actions of the NKVD effective in this case? It turns out that yes, Nikita Lomagin answers: no serious act of sabotage has been recorded anywhere - although during the blockade and the battle for Leningrad, the critical attitude of the population towards the authorities grew.

Conclusion: the organs of the NKVD played an exceptional role in the defense of Leningrad - without this institution, chaos would have set in in the city: neither the party nor the Soviets, according to the historian, would have been able to cope with the situation. And after the war, the party had to work hard to return to the top rung of the hierarchy, pushing down representatives of state security and the military.

It was not possible to do without emotions. For example, the British scientist John Barber was shocked by the statement that the blockade, alas, is gradually becoming some kind of small-town issue - not even on a national scale, but simply an event in the life of the city, and nothing more.

“In my opinion, the history of the blockade of Leningrad is of interest to people all over the world,” Barber insisted.

And since it is impossible to take heroism out of the number of reasons why we won, and it is difficult to talk about heroism with restraint, Nikolai Baryshnikov, Doctor of Historical Sciences (he was in the personnel troops during the Great Patriotic War), spoke very emotionally:

– Avoiding the topic of heroism is a profound mistake. And the deepest mistake is to believe that the troops were not able to hold the defense.

Nikolai Ivanovich once again urged (as he already did in our newspaper of September 7) to pay attention to the date of September 25, 1941. This is the first victory of the defenders of Leningrad in defensive battles. And she deserves to be remembered.

Discussing the “disputable and indisputable”, everyone agreed that the decisive role in the victory was played, as it was said awkwardly, but correctly, “the presence of a large number of good Soviet people”, and the common denominator for both Soviet and “not particularly Soviet” was patriotism.

It is clear that further “without emotions” will not work. Because a common language is sought by those who understand what it is - not to know when the hunger will end and whether it will end at all, and those who, thank God, have never starved a day in their lives. And which of these sides will be more difficult is the question.

But the intention with which the conference was arranged - "the formation of a common scientific space between the leading historical schools of different countries" - remained in force. Detailed materials of the conference are expected to be published.

Version of the military translator, writer

In the early 1990s, as a military translator, I happened to participate in meetings of Russian and German veterans. Former German soldiers brought with them the history of divisions, memoirs, diaries, which ended up in my library. Gradually, there were a lot of them. It was then that doubts arose: is everything unambiguous in the question of why Leningrad withstood? Why did the German offensive, which began in the summer of 1941, end on September 24 on the outskirts of Leningrad, turning into a 900-day blockade?

In search of answers to these questions, I translated something from German sources and showed it to leading St. Petersburg historians. Someone expressed interest in new materials, someone began to sharply defend the point of view adopted in the Soviet years. And she was like this: "We did not allow the enemy to take Leningrad by storm." As proof, I was given the diaries of the Chief of the General Staff of the German Land Forces, Colonel-General Franz Halder. Indeed, they repeatedly repeated the idea of ​​the need to capture Leningrad. Halder, with all the desire, no one could object to. His chronicle of the Second World War is considered a valuable source. I no longer knew what to do. Doubts did not leave me, but there was no answer to them. The wise St. Petersburg historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences Valentin Mikhailovich Kovalchuk came to the rescue. He recommended that, as a specialist in the German language, I read Halder's diaries in the original.

After that, everything fell into place.

It turned out that the term "capture" was artificially inserted in the Russian edition of Halder's diary in Soviet times. In fact, he never uses this word, moreover, he does it consciously. On the contrary, Halder, seeing the ever-increasing resistance of the Soviet troops, began to inspire Hitler with the idea of ​​blocking Leningrad.

He succeeded, and on September 5, Leningrad was declared a secondary theater of operations. It was necessary to surround him with a tight ring and wait for the Soviet authorities to hang out a white flag.

It turns out that I was not alone in my doubts. At the international conference "Siege of Leningrad: controversial and indisputable" in September 2007 in St. Petersburg, the writer Daniil Granin puzzled those present with an unusual statement. He said: “It is not clear to me why the Germans did not enter the city in the autumn of 1941, when, it would seem, everything was ready for this? In the second decade of September, the city was completely open to the invasion of the Germans. On September 17, as a militia soldier, I was sent to the city, went from the front line at Shushary near Pushkin almost to the center of Leningrad, without encountering any cordons and patrols. Waking up the next day, I was completely sure that the Germans had already entered the city.

At the same conference, I tried to answer the writer's question. My answer was: “There was no order to take Leningrad. There was another order: "Block the city and wait for surrender." However, I did not convince Granin and other participants of the conference at the time. It just looked painful. True, we agreed to continue studying this topic together. There were speeches, articles were written, and books appeared. Granin published the Blockade Book in a new edition. With great interest, readers took his new stories and novels: "Conspiracy", "It was not quite like that", "My Lieutenant". I also got a few jobs. The book “Leningrad Blitzkrieg” has been published, where I cite Leeb’s complete diary and give a correct translation of the text of Halder’s diary concerning the actions of German troops near Leningrad. Then my other books appeared: Blockade Solitaire and Passing to Eternity.

Other people joined the research, including from the German side. For example, the son of Field Marshal von Leeb, commander of Army Group North, sent a letter to Granin in 2007, citing his father's words that he did not understand why there was no order to capture Leningrad, which had almost nothing to defend.

Georgy Zhukov, who led the Leningrad Front, also did not understand why the Germans stopped their offensive. He did not believe his head of intelligence, Colonel Evstigneev, who reported that the tank divisions were moving away from Leningrad. Zhukov's distrust can be explained. As a military strategist, he was well aware that the huge enemy strike force, concentrated near Leningrad, was simply obliged to storm the city. And only after making sure that the tank and motorized formations had really moved away from Leningrad, Zhukov admitted that there would be no assault.

The adjutant of Field Marshal von Leeb, Baron von Grisenbeck, summed up this kind of reflection. Already after the war, he wrote in his diary: “The capture of the city, which was guarded only by weak forces, was prevented by an order from above, according to which seven divisions were withdrawn with a view to their further transfer to Moscow. Leeb's warning, expressed by him in a personal conversation with Hitler, that neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg would be taken in this way, was confirmed.

How did everything happen in the initial period of the war near Leningrad? First, a few words about Army Group North. It was a huge group of troops, numbering over 500 thousand people. It included the 18th and 16th armies, as well as the 4th tank group. They were supported by the 1st Air Fleet as part of the 1st and 8th Air Corps.

On the very first day of the war, June 22, 1941, the commander of Army Group North, advancing on Leningrad, Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb, faced something that had not happened before in Europe conquered by the Germans. Leeb's two definitions, "enemy resistance" and "bad roads," would accompany his diary entries until his retirement.

This proved to be a serious Russian counter-argument against the German troops. Seeing the growing resistance of the Red Army on the Eastern Front, the chief of the general staff of the ground forces, Halder, decided to sacrifice one of the three directions of the offensive against the Soviet Union. On July 2, he expressed himself quite unambiguously about the impending blockade fate of the city on the Neva: "The 4th Panzer Group must cordon off Leningrad." Halder decided to confine himself to the encirclement of Leningrad in the hope that the city would eventually surrender itself. Thus, in his opinion, it would be possible to save forces and means for operations in the central and southern directions. There was already a serious decrease in the pace of the offensive. These thoughts he began to inspire Hitler. In essence, it was a departure from the Barbarossa plan.

July 10 is considered the official start date of the battle for Leningrad. On this day, German troops launched strikes in the Luga, Novgorod and Staraya Russian directions. The Finns went on the offensive on the Karelian Isthmus and in Eastern Karelia. The German 4th Panzer Group together with the 18th Army from the south and the Finnish South-Eastern Army from the north began to advance directly on Leningrad. The pace of the advance of the German troops steadily decreased, the deeper they invaded Russian territory. The Finns, on the contrary, success followed success: they won back their land.

Leeb writes on July 12: “Great losses. If the offensive continues like this, the troops will soon be exhausted. The Fuhrer no longer attaches much importance to St. Petersburg. There was an explanation for this. Less than a month after the start of the war, the impulsive Hitler changed his mind about Leningrad. The city on the Neva ceased to be an object of paramount importance for him. The leading role in this fateful decision belongs to Halder, who managed to argue with the command of the Wehrmacht and finally convince Hitler to abandon the capture of Leningrad. The main reason for this was the ever-increasing resistance of the Soviet troops.

Leeb had to obey orders from Berlin again and again, which were at odds with his plans to capture Leningrad. On August 2, a meeting was held at the headquarters of the command of the ground forces. There, once again, the main goal of Army Group North was announced: blocking Leningrad. On August 18, this was officially announced at Hitler's headquarters. Hitler ordered to start with Kyiv, which he wished not to capture, but to wait for him to throw out the white flag. After that, turn the city into ashes and ruins. The same fate awaited Leningrad. However, Hitler's demand was not supported by real technical capabilities for the destruction of megacities. In addition, most German military leaders did not support such plans. For them, the destruction of the captured cities simply did not make sense. After all, in addition to the consumption of a huge amount of ammunition by the troops, who at that time already blocked this city, after its fall, it was necessary to be placed in warm apartments. And this could only be done in the city itself. With the approach of winter, such thoughts increasingly overcame the German generals. Representatives of the highest military authorities clearly realized that the idea of ​​blitzkrieg had failed. Therefore, the German generals reasonably hoped that Hitler would still allow them to capture large cities. This happened to Kyiv in September after the Soviet command left the city. The Nazis did not destroy the city.

As we approached Leningrad, the forces of the Army Group "North" were increasingly depleted.

In Leeb's diary, a remarkable phrase appeared that "the troops are no longer the same as they were at the beginning of the war." She speaks of the physical and moral fatigue of German soldiers after two months of continuous fighting. In Russia, the war turned out to be completely different from that in the West.

Even the role of German propaganda companies has changed. Their initial task was to track the victorious path of the Nazi troops. Now for them, as Leeb writes, the stage of "inspiration" has come. It was about "a painful struggle with the enemy." If the pace of the German offensive in the first days of the war really corresponded to plans, then at the final stage of the campaign against Leningrad it dropped to two kilometers per day, and then to several hundred meters altogether. The Germans literally gnawed through the defenses on the way to the fortress city.

Nevertheless, the commander of the Army Group "North" did not give up hope for the encirclement of Leningrad, not only from the south, but also from the northeast direction for subsequent connection with the Finns on the Karelian Isthmus. After completely blocking the city, it would be easier to capture it. To do this, he planned to use the units of the 3rd Panzer Group transferred to him: the 39th Motorized and 28th Army Corps. He intended to equip them with bridge equipment in order to establish a crossing after crossing the Neva in assault boats. At the same time, he was increasingly worried about the situation with the reserves. He called it catastrophic.

The capture of Shlisselburg on September 8, which is considered the official day of the beginning of the blockade of Leningrad, did not cause joy in Leeb. It was on this day that he makes a noteworthy entry in his diary that in this sector of Army Group North, he would have to wage a "war of an unfortunate man." Leeb was saddened by the fact that his plans were collapsing: the Finns stopped on the Karelian Isthmus and east of Lake Ladoga, the Leningrad front was declared a "secondary direction", enemy resistance was growing everywhere.

On September 9, the most difficult stage of the battles for Leningrad began. Despite Hitler's order not to take the city, the command of Army Group North did everything to create a favorable situation for changing this decision. But the order for the departure of seven German divisions had already been announced. Without them, it was not possible to take the city. The mood of the German soldiers during this period was not the most rosy. From a psychological point of view, this change of plans meant their defeat. They left without completing their plans. On September 14, the German 6th Panzer Division stood with advanced tank battalions at the Pulkovo Heights near Pushkin and waited for the order to break into Leningrad. An entry appeared in the divisional history that day: “There is a strong feeling that the enemy’s resistance on the outer ring of fortifications has been broken. The continuation of the offensive would lead, at least in the zone of responsibility of the division, to the fact that its units would break into the city. But it seems that by decree from above it is ordered to stop the offensive. A decision no one understands." The next day, the 6th Panzer Division turned to Moscow.

On September 24, 1941, a new stage of hostilities began near Leningrad. From that moment on, the weakened and exhausted troops of Army Group North went over to positional defense near Leningrad. The paradoxical situation when the 18th German Army, as the besieging side, did not even try to break into the city, but only repulsed the attacks of the besieged, lasted two and a half years, ending on January 27, 1944 with the lifting of the German blockade of Leningrad.

In the end, we agreed with Daniil Aleksandrovich Granin that the September epic of 1941 did not end with the capture of Leningrad due to Hitler's strategic mistake, which missed the favorable moment. But he was doomed to this mistake, because he did not expect such fierce resistance in Russia.

Here it would be appropriate to recall Pushkin:

Thunderstorm of the twelfth year
It has come - who helped us here?
The frenzy of the people
Barclay, winter, or a Russian god?

Yuri Lebedev,

member of the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg

Especially for "Century"

08:26 25.02.2016

In October 1941, the 7th Army under the command of K. A. Meretskov, after three months of fighting and retreats, stopped the Finns, reinforced by German troops, on the Svir River from the eastern side of Lake Ladoga, preventing them from connecting with German troops and completely closing the encirclement of Leningrad.

The website of the Zvezda TV channel publishes a series of articles about the Great Patriotic War of 1941– 1945 by the writer Leonid Maslovsky, based on his book Russkaya Pravda, published in 2011. In his author's materials, Maslovsky, according to him, exposes "the myths invented by Russia's ill-wishers about the events of the Great Patriotic War and shows the greatness of our Victory." The author notes that in his articles he is going to "show the unseemly role of the West in preparing Germany for war with the USSR." In October 1941, the 7th Army under the command of K. A. Meretskov, after three months of fighting and retreats, stopped the Finns, reinforced by German troops, on the Svir River from the eastern side of Lake Ladoga, preventing them from connecting with German troops and completely closing the encirclement of Leningrad. The plans of the German command were thwarted. They did not let the Finns and the Germans pass to Vologda from the side of Lake Onega. The German troops could not crush the Red Army and take Leningrad, but the German troops remained under it. Thus, the connection of the city of Leningrad and the Leningrad Front with the country by land was interrupted. The supply through Lake Ladoga was complicated by the fact that a group of German troops crossed the Volkhov River, cut the Tikhvin-Volkhov railway and captured Tikhvin on November 8, 1941. Famine came to Leningrad. The bread ration, which averaged about 800 grams per day, was rapidly declining. From October 1, the bread ration was reduced for the third time: workers and engineers received 400 grams of bread a day, employees, dependents and children - 200 grams each. From November 20 (5th reduction) workers received 250 grams of bread per day. All the rest - 125 grams each. Sick and weak people began to die of hunger and cold, as the amount of food delivered did not meet the needs of the inhabitants of the city, despite the significant number of people evacuated from the city. In total, more than half of the pre-war population was evacuated from Leningrad - 1.7 million people. But for a relatively short time, German troops interrupted the supply of the city along Ladoga. On December 9, our troops liberated Tikhvin and drove the Germans across the Volkhov River, ensuring the movement of trains to the Voybokalo station. Cargoes went to Leningrad in a continuous stream. From December 25, 1941, the norms for issuing products began to increase. At the end of December, the Red Army troops captured several bridgeheads on the left bank of the river. As a result of the Tikhvin offensive operation, Soviet troops advanced 100–120 kilometers and liberated a significant territory. A successful military operation allowed the railway workers to lay an additional railway line to Lake Ladoga itself by the end of January 1942, and cargo from the wagons began to be unloaded directly into the bodies of trucks that stood on the ice of the lake. Further along the ice of the lake and roads, cargo was delivered to Leningrad, which made it possible to significantly increase the nutritional standards of the inhabitants of the city and the fighters of the Leningrad Front, as well as to improve the supply of troops with weapons and ammunition. Since February 1942, the supply of food to the inhabitants of the city in sufficient quantities for life was established and maintained until the blockade was broken.A. M. Vasilevsky wrote that, day and night, motor vehicles loaded with food, medicines, fuel, equipment, ammunition went to Leningrad in a continuous stream, and women, children, the elderly, the wounded and the sick were taken away on return flights. A. Meretskov pointed out that even before the spring thaw (spring 1942 - L. M. ) on Ladoga, more than 300 thousand tons of various cargoes were delivered to Leningrad and about half a million people who needed care and treatment were taken out of there. rivermen in the supply of the city and the Leningrad front is underestimated. As in winter, car drivers, so in navigation rivermen round the clock carried goods to Leningrad and took people out of it, and from the summer of 1942 also the products of industrial enterprises. working in factories and cleaning the streets of the city in the spring of 1942, do not look haggard, like, for example, prisoners of German concentration camps. Someone really wants to turn the city-hero of Leningrad into a city-concentration camp Leningrad. The trend of turning Soviet heroes into victims can be seen in all liberal writings, and the number of these victims of the besieged Leningrad, published in the media, is growing from year to year. In reality, the city worked, fought, children went to school, theaters and cinemas worked. Leningrad was defended by the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. The Leningrad Front was under blockade, the Volkhov Front was located on the outer side of the blockade ring and stretched for 250 kilometers along the Volkhov River, grinding the Nazi troops thrown to Leningrad and preventing them from connecting with the Finnish troops stopped north of the Svir River. In this regard, the besieged Leningrad it is unacceptable to consider in isolation from the Leningrad front. The front positions could be reached by tram. Leningrad and the Leningrad Front fought together and represented a single fortress. It was during the evacuation and to the Leningrad Front that the bulk of the inhabitants of Leningrad departed, and did not die of starvation. The soldiers and commanders of the Leningrad Front, the militia are buried along with the dead and dead residents of the city in the cemeteries of Leningrad. To consider Leningrad in isolation from the Leningrad Front means deliberately making a mistake and coming to conclusions that do not correspond to reality. Our troops carried out three operations to break the blockade, and only the last of them was successful. In the period from January 7 to April 30, 1942, the forces of the Volkhov Front and the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front carried out the Luban operation in order to unblock Leningrad, but they failed to push the Germans back from Lake Ladoga. Only 16 kilometers separated the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. To break the blockade, these troops had to meet. And on August 19, 1942, the troops of the Leningrad Front, and on August 27, the troops of the Volkhov Front, with the assistance of the forces of the Baltic Fleet and the Ladoga military flotilla, went on the offensive towards each other. The Sinyavino military operation began, which was also carried out with the aim of deblocking Leningrad. Our troops were confident of victory. Meretskov wrote: “The troops intended for the offensive gave us in the chosen direction more than three times superiority over the enemy in manpower, four times in tanks, and two times in artillery and mortars. So we thought, not knowing about the arrival of Manstein's divisions from the south. ”These divisions of Manstein arrived from near Sevastopol to storm Leningrad as they had experience in storming a large seaside city during the six-month battle for Sevastopol. But they did not have to storm Leningrad. The offensive of our troops disrupted the prepared new German assault on Leningrad. E. Manstein wrote: “And now, instead of the planned offensive against Leningrad, a battle unfolded south of Lake Ladoga.” Outlining the events of the Sinyavin operation, most historians cite Manstein’s description of it. But honestly and clearly, it was not E. Manstein who spoke about it, but K. A. Meretskov, who wrote the following about the results of the operation: “The bulk of the troops finished reaching the eastern coast by dawn on September 29. The remaining units left on the night of 30 September. After that, active hostilities were stopped. Our troops, as well as the enemy troops, returned approximately to their old positions. The artillery duel and mutual air raids, as if by inertia, then continued for several days, but no offensive actions were taken. ”Neither the commander of the Volkhov Front K. A. Meretskov, nor the chief of the General Staff A. M. Vasilevsky mention the encirclement of the German or our troops. The Neva Operational Group fought until 6 October. The Nazi command made a lot of efforts to throw the units that crossed the Neva into the water, but the glorious soldiers of the Leningrad Front, thanks to the courage of the fighters and the artillery that fired across the Neva, managed to hold two small footholds. Such was the end of the Sinyavino operation. The Volkhov and Leningrad fronts failed at that time to break the blockade of Leningrad. However, the calculations of the Nazi command to storm Leningrad suffered a complete collapse. In the song "Volkhovskaya Table" there are lines about the Sinyavin operation: "Our bayonets on the heights of Sinyavin, our regiments under Mga will be forever glorified in legends under a machine-gun blizzard." The loss of German troops in killed and captured amounted to about 60 thousand people, and in equipment - 260 aircraft, 200 tanks, 600 guns and mortars. According to the testimonies of the prisoners, in the companies of most divisions, 20 people remained in the ranks. “It is better to visit Sevastopol three times than to stay here,” the prisoners said. The soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, with their counterattacks and two major offensives, defended the inhabitants of the besieged city. Leningrad continued to live, work and fight. Cargoes continued to be delivered to Leningrad around the clock in a continuous stream by rail and then by road or river transport (depending on the time of year) along 25 kilometers across Lake Ladoga. Not only the city was supplied, but the whole Leningrad front with weapons, shells, bombs, cartridges, spare parts and food. Cars and river boats returned back to the railway with people, and from the summer of 1942 with products manufactured by Leningrad enterprises. protected from enemy aircraft and ground forces. Of course, there were losses, but compared to the amount of cargo delivered, they are insignificant. “In the summer, Leningrad received the first tons of liquid fuel through a 25-kilometer pipeline laid to supply the city and the front along the bottom of Ladoga. Later, current from the partially restored Volkhovskaya hydroelectric station began to flow here again through the submarine cable. This allowed a number of enterprises to resume the production of military products, ”points out K. A. Meretskov. Thus, in 1941-1942, the army and the government did everything possible to supply the city and the Leningrad front, protect the inhabitants of Leningrad and break the blockade by land. Twenty-eighth In December, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command approved the third plan for the operation to break the blockade and gave it the name "Iskra". “The idea of ​​​​this operation was to defeat the enemy grouping in the Shlisselburg-Sinyavino ledge with counter strikes from two fronts - Leningrad and Volkhov, break through the blockade and restore the land connection of Leningrad with the central regions of the country. Our soldiers near Leningrad had to fight in difficult conditions: in the summer a huge number of mosquitoes that do not give the soldiers peace day or night, in winter severe frosts and snow drifts. There are forests and swamps all around, which are difficult for a person to pass through, not to mention the movement of cars, artillery pieces, tanks and other equipment. After careful consideration of all options, it was decided to break through the German fortifications somewhat north of the place where they tried to break through the blockade from August 19 to October 10, 1942 during the Sinyavino operation. “This direction was the most difficult due to the presence of extremely powerful enemy fortifications here, but also the shortest. We had to overcome only a 12-kilometer strip between Shlisselburg and Lipki, or six kilometers to each of our two fronts, ”wrote K. A. Meretskov. The Leningrad Front could strike a counterattack only in the place where Volkhovsky’s troops were closest front. The Leningrad Front did not have enough forces for a deeper operation, since all the supply of the front and the city was carried out along the Road of Life, that is, on the ice of Lake Ladoga. The Germans tried to cut the Road of Life, but they were defeated near Sukho Island. Due to the position of the Leningrad Front and the difficulty of moving equipment in the swampy terrain, it was necessary to plan an attack on the area of ​​​​the Shlisselburg-Sinyavino ledge, which was most fortified by the Germans. The Germans' density of troops in this area was twice as high as provided for by their charters. But the Stavka was also able to provide an average of 160 guns and mortars for each kilometer of the front. This allowed our troops to create an extremely high density of fire, sufficient to destroy the German fortifications. All front-line aviation as part of the 14th Air Army, Major General I.P. Zhuravlev, was redirected to the offensive site. The long-range aviation of Colonel-General A.E. Golovanov was also involved in the operation. The offensive of our troops was supported by the Baltic Fleet and the Ladoga military flotilla. On January 12, 1943, aviation and artillery preparation began. Our artillery destroyed the German fortifications for about two hours. Dozens of tons of metal, brought down on the enemy, thoroughly destroyed the German positions and suppressed many firing points. Our troops went on the offensive. The enemy offered maximum resistance in the area of ​​​​the Round Grove. All day there was close combat, which repeatedly turned into hand-to-hand combat. By the evening, the specified node of resistance was taken. The 327th division was renamed the Guards for the accomplished feat. On January 13 and 14, Lipki and Workers' Settlement No. 8 were isolated and cut off. All attempts by fresh German formations to break through to them from Mga were unsuccessful. Only the two most difficult kilometers remained for our fronts to break through the blockade. And they passed. On January 18, 1943, the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts met. The blockade of Leningrad, which lasted 500 days and nights (1 year 4 months and 10 days), was broken, the connection between the city and the country overland was restored. It was the millions of heroic deeds of Soviet people at the front and in the rear that ensured our victory. The history of the Great Patriotic War has a great many examples of mass manifestations of heroism. Not a single country and not a single army in the world knew such mass heroism. “When the formations of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts at the end of January 1943 turned south, taking up positions along the Sinyavin line, work was already in full swing in their rear: in the corridor north of Sinyavin, they began to build a railway to Leningrad. The railroad brigades moved behind the advancing troops. The local population came to their aid, and then the fronts allocated a number of military units for the construction of the road ... A temporary ice-pile bridge was erected on the Neva, which connected the branch with the track from the Black River to the Morozov village. Already on February 2, as soon as the repair and construction the railcars were lowered and the last rails were fixed, a trial train passed, and four days later a long-distance freight train rushed along the 36-kilometer line. The Victory Road, the result of two weeks of heroic labor, was put into operation,” writes K. A. Meretskov, commander of the Volkhov Front. Automobile roads were laid parallel to the railway. The Germans began to shell the constructed section of the railway, but the railway workers laid another branch of the railway in a safer place, and the large-caliber artillery of both our fronts and the guns taken from the ships of the Baltic Fleet destroyed the German batteries, and they fell silent For almost twelve months, the troops of the fronts waged either flaring up or fading hostilities in the direction of the Mga station, trying to expand the strip of liberated land and not allowing the Germans to return the recaptured native land. But our armies did not have forces sufficient to break through the German defenses. And the Headquarters could not allocate additional troops, since the main reserves went to Stalingrad and Kursk, where the fate of the entire war was decided. In the battles after the blockade was broken on January 18, 1943, Soviet artillery and aviation haunted the Germans. A. E. Golovanov writes that the German troops in the Sinyavino area were bombarded by large groups of aircraft massively, which gave the most tangible results. So, in eleven raids on this area, only 1,299 long-range bomber aircraft took part. German troops and front-line aviation massively bombed. It is known that during the attack on Leningrad, the siege of the city and the retreat, not only ours, but also German military units had huge losses. But our historians and politicians are silent about them, thereby presenting our losses near Leningrad as unjustified. Some even write that there was no need to defend the city, but it was necessary to surrender it to the enemy, and then the Leningraders would have avoided starvation, and the soldiers would have avoided bloody fights. And they write and talk about it, knowing that Hitler promised to destroy all the inhabitants of Leningrad. I think they also understand that the fall of Leningrad would mean the death of a huge number of the population of the northwestern part of the USSR and the loss of an enormous amount of material and cultural values. In addition , the released German and Finnish troops could be transferred near Moscow and to other sectors of the Soviet-German front, which in turn could lead to the victory of Germany and the destruction of the entire population of the European part of the Soviet Union. Regret that Leningrad was not surrendered to the enemy, may only haters of Russia. Hitler was going to take Leningrad in four weeks, by July 21, 1941, and send the liberated troops to storm Moscow, but he could not take the city by January 1944 either. Hitler ordered that proposals for the surrender of the city to German troops not be accepted and the city wiped off the face of the earth, but in fact, these were the German divisions stationed near Leningrad, which were wiped off the face of the earth in January 1944 by the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. Hitler stated that Leningrad would be the first large city captured by the Germans in the Soviet Union, and spared no effort to capture it, but did not take into account that he was fighting not in Europe, but in Soviet Russia. I did not take into account the courage of the Leningraders and the strength of our weapons. To be continued… The opinions expressed in the publications of Leonid Maslovsky are the opinions of the author and may not coincide with the opinions of the editors of the Zvezda TV channel website.