Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology

Confusion in the Terrible Autumn of 1941

V. P. Stolbov, Yu. V. Dmitrieva, I. A. Baranov
Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology

Type: scholarly journal article
Language of the original: Russian
Issue: 28
Year: 2010
Pages: 346–358
Journal: Collection of Scholarly Works of Russian Universities: Problems of Economics, Finance and Production Management
Publisher: Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology, Ivanovo

Abstract

The article analyzes the social and psychological state of Soviet society during the first months of the Great Patriotic War. Documents recording protest actions at enterprises in the Ivanovo Region in the autumn of 1941 are used as evidence for assessing this state.

The beginning of the Great Patriotic War and the first reports of the Red Army’s defeats and retreat produced a certain confusion in society. For Soviet people, life split into a prewar period and wartime, while long-held assumptions about the country’s readiness for war and the way it would be fought began to collapse. This state can be regarded as a kind of psychological trauma suffered by millions of people whose consciousness had been shaped by distorted ideas: that war with Germany was not inevitable, and, if it did come, it would begin only after Germany had defeated Britain, perhaps in 1942. Mass propaganda, moreover, had insisted that a war between the USSR and Nazi Germany, should it occur, would be brilliant and short, entail small losses, and be fought on enemy territory [1, pp. 119–122].

For ideological reasons, and because the officially accepted interpretation of Soviet history stressed mass heroism, Soviet historical and journalistic literature paid virtually no attention to the phenomenon of confusion in the social life of Soviet society. The more recent opening of archives and declassification of many documents from the prewar and wartime period make it possible to assess those events more realistically.

The concept of “confusion,” involving tension and anxiety among social groups, institutions, organizations and agencies, is defined in Ozhegov’s dictionary as “strong agitation, anxiety, panic and bewilderment” in the behavior of an individual and of society.

The causes of such a phenomenon in public life are complex and contradictory. The first cause can naturally be sought in the shortsighted and mistaken policy of the Soviet political and military elite. One telling example was the outcome of the war with Finland in 1939–1940, which exposed the army’s inadequate preparation for winter warfare. Another cause was the shortsightedness of the Soviet political leadership under Stalin in its attitude toward Nazi Germany. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 was vigorously presented as a major diplomatic success for the USSR and Germany and as a triumph over British and French diplomacy.

Mass propaganda implanted in Soviet society the idea of the superiority of the Red Army General Staff’s military doctrine, which emphasized offensive operations and assumed that war would be carried onto enemy territory. In keeping with this doctrine, barbed-wire barriers on the border were dismantled before the war, minefields were absent, and bridges over waterways were not mined. In Stalin’s speech to graduating military-academy students in the Kremlin on May 5, 1941, the Red Army was described as an army that would be more offensive-minded than any previous attacking army. Germany was identified as the most probable adversary in a future war, but the anticipated date was the spring of 1942. The personal archive of an Ivanovo Red Army soldier, A. V., who served in the Zhytomyr Region in 1940–1941, shows that political classes among servicemen did sometimes discuss an approaching war.

On May 6, 1941, Stalin combined party, state and military authority in his hands and became commander in chief of the Red Army. Implementing the offensive doctrine, on May 15 the General Staff sent a directive to all border districts calling on them to be ready, on the commander in chief’s order, “to deliver rapid blows in order to defeat the enemy, transfer military operations to his territory and seize the most important lines” [2]. The authors note that the full text of this directive had not been published. Yet, strangely, in response to German aircraft flying over Soviet border territory, the border formations were simultaneously instructed: “Do not succumb to provocations.”

Modern historians and political scientists have assessed the actions of the Soviet military-political leadership in 1940–1941 ambiguously, particularly its failure to draw conclusions from Germany’s open preparations for war against the USSR. Hitler had already spoken about such a confrontation years earlier. On March 30, 1941, he told Wehrmacht commanders: “Our task in relation to Russia is to smash its armed forces and liquidate the state… Communism is an enormous danger for the future. We must abandon the false feeling of soldiers’ comradeship. A Communist has never been and never will be our comrade. The war will be a war of annihilation” [3, p. 90].

In the final prewar days Germany halted deliveries under existing agreements and evacuated its embassy from Moscow. Troops and equipment were being concentrated near the border. Soviet intelligence officers, including the famous Richard Sorge, as well as defectors from the German side, reported the date and even the hour of the intended German attack, but Stalin and the General Staff did not always give such intelligence due weight. In his memoirs Georgy Zhukov recalled Stalin’s reactions to the reports: “They are frightening us with the Germans, and the Germans with the Soviet Union, setting us against one another”; “One man is giving us very important information about the intentions of Hitler’s government, but we have certain doubts”; and the claim that some intelligence was false and deliberately planted to test how the USSR would react. Stalin also said that “one cannot believe intelligence in everything” [2, pp. 235, 239, 240–241].

Some modern historians of the Red Army General Staff argue that senior commanders had become obedient executors of the leader’s will. Among senior officers there was an assumption that Stalin possessed some kind of super-secret information. The authors connect this situation with the purges of the army during the five years preceding the war. They state that 70 percent of the higher officer corps was executed, that four men succeeded one another as chief of the General Staff, that around 50,000 commanders died innocently, and that the total number of people repressed in the army was still larger. As a result, in 1941 the ground forces lacked 67,000 commanders and the aviation technical establishment was about 32 percent understaffed [4]. German General Staff chief Franz Halder was quoted as saying of the Soviet officer corps that Russia would need twenty years to restore it to its former level [5].

With the military danger obvious, on June 13 representatives of the General Staff proposed that Stalin order the border districts to full combat readiness and deploy the first covering echelons. Stalin answered: “We’ll think about it.” Paradoxically, on June 14 Soviet radio and the press circulated a TASS statement asserting that rumors of Germany’s intention to break the pact and attack the USSR were groundless, and that recent movements of German troops to eastern and northeastern Germany should be explained by motives unrelated to Soviet-German relations [6, pp. 58–59].

Germany’s attack in the early morning of June 22, 1941 caused shock and confusion among Stalin and his entourage. Only at 00:30 on June 22 did a directive reach the troops ordering all units to be brought to readiness, dispersed and camouflaged, while forbidding other action [2, pp. 243–244]. The authors attribute to this tactical miscalculation the destruction on Soviet airfields of more than 1,200 aircraft and the burning of 900 tanks that never started their engines. They note that the first German aircraft over Brest was shot down at 3:30 a.m.

The mistaken concepts in Red Army military doctrine affected the army throughout the first days and months of the war. Chaos and disorder prevailed in many border formations. A directive approved by Stalin called for a counteroffensive onto enemy territory, but in the absence of reliable communications with the troops and headquarters its implementation had disastrous consequences, with hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers killed or encircled. At the same time, individual sectors produced remarkable acts of courage. The authors cite the defense of the Brest Fortress, the border posts led by Lieutenants N. S. Slyusarev and A. V. Lopatin, the aerial ramming attack of Senior Lieutenant I. I. Ivanov, later repeated by Nikolai Gastello, and the fighter pilots S. I. Zdorovtsev, M. P. Zhukov and P. T. Kharitonov. Yet despite such heroism, Soviet defense was fragmented and often uncoordinated, reserves of men and equipment were lacking, and retreat became widespread.

The first months of the Great Patriotic War caused bewilderment and anxiety throughout the country. Doubts about the policies of Stalin and his entourage combined with fear of future hardships. Stalin’s failure to address the Soviet people until July 3, several days after the attack, produced many rumors and conjectures. Daily radio bulletins repeatedly ended with the words “…the city was abandoned.” The German advance proceeded according to the logic of Blitzkrieg despite fierce resistance by individual Red Army units and garrisons.

The price of the General Staff’s errors was retreat and the loss of vast territories. The authors list the rapid fall of Kaunas, Daugavpils, Minsk, Lviv and Pskov, the encirclement of Kyiv, the bombing of cities and railway junctions, and enormous losses of equipment and personnel. During the first summer months, they write, the Red Army lost 7,600 tanks and 6,233 aircraft. Hundreds of thousands of troops were surrounded and captured in the Minsk, Smolensk, Uman, Kyiv and Vyazma pockets. About three million Red Army soldiers and officers fell into German captivity in 1941. The authors ask what motivated those who surrendered: unwillingness to kill, memories of collectivization among former peasants, dissatisfaction with the Soviet system, or an expectation among some soldiers and civilians that the German advance represented “liberation from Bolshevism.” They reproduce the controversial opinion of some historians that mass voluntary surrender declined only from 1943, when the war was perceived more fully as a truly patriotic war. Soviet reaction included Order No. 270, which declared captured servicemen “malicious deserters” and subjected their families to arrest as families of oath-breakers and traitors [8].

The summer-autumn campaign was a military catastrophe. The high command placed blame on commanders of formations and operational staffs, many of whom, according to the article, were not acting maliciously but simply lacked experience. Zhukov later wrote that many were young and militarily inexperienced [9]. Some commanders also became disoriented because of contradictory orders from above. The authors again connect this weakness with the officer purges of the late 1930s and the atmosphere of suspicion created among the country’s political elite. Zhukov recalled that as danger grew, the General Staff failed to convince Stalin that war with Germany was inevitable and that urgent border-defense measures had to be implemented [2, p. 238]. Many people then paid for these failures through repression, while the highest military-political leadership escaped responsibility. Confusion in people’s minds and emotions was a natural consequence.

To compensate for the failures and replenish the army, general mobilization was announced. Some 5.3 million people, including 650,000 reserve officers, were called into the armed forces. Former General Staff chief General M. Moiseyev later stated that ten million people were mobilized in the first year of the war and that three million were sent to the front [10]. The civilian economy supplied 234,000 motor vehicles and 31,500 tractors. Additional mobilizations followed. From late June to December 1, 1941, 291 divisions and 94 brigades were sent to the field army, including newly formed units, formations transferred from internal districts, and divisions from the Far East, Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Volunteer people’s militia detachments, regiments and divisions were also formed, beginning in Moscow and Leningrad. Around sixty militia divisions and two hundred separate regiments, along with many battalions and detachments, were created in the summer and autumn, totaling about two million fighters; more than four million people across the country expressed a desire to join. Newly recruited troops were frequently thrown immediately into battle against well-mobilized and trained German formations and therefore suffered extremely high losses. In addition, 1,755 fighter battalions were formed, mainly in frontline regions, to combat saboteurs and guard important state facilities. About ten million people took part in defense construction in 1941 [11, p. 62].

It would be wrong, the authors argue, to assume that the German army experienced no confusion or losses during the summer-autumn campaign. Soviet KV tanks could produce panic and flight among German soldiers. According to official German figures, which the authors regard as understated, by mid-July the German army had lost as many as 100,000 men, more than 1,200 aircraft and around half of its tanks [3, p. 67]. For the entire summer-autumn campaign the authors cite a quarter of a million German dead and 100,000 disabled [5, p. 6]. The central consequence for German doctrine was the failure of Blitzkrieg. This became unmistakable in the defense of Moscow and the broad Red Army counteroffensive beginning in December 1941 and continuing into April 1942, which drove the enemy back as much as 300 kilometers. The authors stress the enormous sacrifice of volunteer militia units, arguing that Moscow’s militia helped stop Army Group Center and disrupt Operation Typhoon, while the Leningrad militia likewise contributed at an immense human cost.

The military disaster of 1941 left under occupation a huge territory that before the war had contained about 40 percent of the country’s population and had produced 68 percent of its pig iron, 58 percent of its steel, 64 percent of its coal, 38 percent of its grain and 84 percent of its sugar. Civilians suffered most directly under bombing and artillery fire. Some tried to break through the front; others fled the frontline zone. An Evacuation Council was created on June 24, but the German advance and the panic it generated filled roads and railways with immense crowds of refugees. Rear-area towns became overcrowded, public transport was overloaded and food supply became acute. Refugees themselves sometimes transmitted contradictory rumors. The crisis deepened in autumn 1941 as German armies approached Moscow. In cities not occupied by the Germans, lack of reliable information fed panic. Fear of battle, hunger and uncertainty led some people to behavior inconsistent with wartime law and produced unpredictable forms of resistance to the circumstances.

NKVD informant reports from the first weeks of the invasion recorded numerous examples of what officials called “unhealthy moods” and provocative rumors. In Moscow, for example, rumors circulated that German occupiers posted notices promising not to punish workers for being twenty-one minutes late. Between June 22 and September 1, the article states, 2,524 sentences were imposed for such offenses and their circulation, including 204 death sentences, according to a report of the Chief Military Prosecutor [12, pp. 213, 702].

A recently published collection of documents on public sentiment in Moscow during the first months of war emphasizes the bewilderment of inhabitants confronted by the German invasion. Muscovites were informally divided into “patriots,” the “swamp,” and “defeatists” [13]. Memories of autumn 1941 describe panic as fighting came close to the capital, accompanied by day and night air raids and fires. Confusion intensified after October 15, when the State Defense Committee adopted its resolution “On the Evacuation of the Capital of the USSR, Moscow.” Government agencies, the General Staff administration, military academies, people’s commissariats, embassies and factories were to leave. Major factories, power stations, bridges and the metro were to be prepared for demolition, while workers and employees were to receive extra flour or grain and a month’s salary in advance.

These measures frightened the population and prompted a mass flight eastward along the Highway of Enthusiasts. Nearly two million residents were evacuated. A Muscovite named Reshetin described October 16 in his diary: the highway was full of fleeing people amid noise, shouting and chaos; scraps of paper and rubbish blew around Ilyich Gate and the smell of burning hung in the air; people stopped cars heading for the highway, dragged out those inside, beat them, threw out their belongings and scattered them on the ground [14, 15]. Journalist Verzhbitsky wrote of fights in queues, elderly women being crushed, youth looting, policemen standing by because there were “no instructions,” and cars of yesterday’s verbal “enthusiasts” racing eastward loaded with nickel-plated beds, leather suitcases, carpets, boxes and food [14, 15].

The paralysis of authority, impunity and the desire to survive at any price produced an atmosphere in which even people who were not professional criminals could be drawn into looting. Experienced criminals also took advantage of the moment. One man tried to transport two suitcases of diamonds and gold in a baby carriage but was stopped by security officers. In another case guards abandoned a train carrying prisoners. For people convicted of less serious offenses and fit to bear arms, military tribunals could postpone imprisonment until the end of hostilities and send the convicted person to the front. The article quotes a sentence against A. P. Rodichev, who had fallen behind his unit and returned to Moscow: ten years’ imprisonment for desertion, execution of the sentence postponed until the end of the war, and transfer to the active Red Army, with the possibility of later petitioning for release if he proved himself a steadfast defender of the USSR [14, 15].

The situation in Moscow did not last long. On October 20 the State Defense Committee introduced a state of siege in Moscow and nearby districts. The decree placed the defense line 100–120 kilometers west of the city under General Zhukov, entrusted the immediate defense of Moscow to Lieutenant General Artemyev, imposed a midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew except for specially authorized traffic, placed strict maintenance of order under the commandant with NKVD troops, police and workers’ detachments at his disposal, and ordered violators to be tried by military tribunal while provocateurs, spies and enemy agents inciting disorder were to be shot on the spot. The decree called on the capital’s working people to maintain order and calm and give every assistance to the Red Army [14].

The authors argue that similar behavior undoubtedly occurred in other regional and industrial centers. Even if it was not generally mass behavior, it testified to the mood and confusion of people in the terrible autumn of 1941. Orders to dismantle industrial equipment or prepare facilities for destruction in the event of an enemy advance generated similar anxiety.

Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand described the atmosphere in Dnipropetrovsk in July 1941 in his diary: “A multitude of people were rushing about the streets. The trams were overcrowded and people hung from the footboards, so that we barely managed to board and get off at the stop we needed… It was terrible and unexpected… Komsomol members and nonmembers pasted paper over windows, dug pits, bustled about, made noise, and in general everyone was in an unusual state” [16]. Accounts from Yessentuki in September–October similarly describe a city gradually emptying as thousands left by day and night, rumors spread, and those who remained watched the departing population with indignation [16].

Confusion, fear and bewilderment were also observed in Ivanovo and other towns of the region. They became especially pronounced during the battle for Moscow, when German forces approached the borders of Ivanovo Region. The city itself changed. After dark, windows in homes and enterprises were tightly blacked out. Special duty patrols enforced blackout regulations. Sand boxes stood on the streets in case of incendiary bombing. Hundreds of residents with shovels went along the Lezhnevo highway to build defenses. Public transport functioned irregularly, some trams were converted for transporting wounded soldiers, fuel was short, homes were poorly heated, and food shortages became severe. The first wartime winter was particularly difficult. Ration cards provided workers with 600 grams of bread per day, dependents with 400 grams and children with 300 grams.

One eyewitness wrote that a trainload of wounded soldiers was being unloaded at the station while the terminal was packed with thin, exhausted women carrying small children and sitting among bundles and suitcases; blacked-out streets saw only occasional overcrowded trams, people hanging from the footboards, and long queues outside bread stores [17, p. 135]. Around 100,000 refugees arrived in the region. Their stories of exhaustion and hunger helped create anxiety among some local residents.

Documents from Ivanovo Region confirm manifestations of confusion among townspeople, intensified when equipment began to be dismantled at textile enterprises. Sources, introduced into scholarly circulation only relatively recently, record protest actions at textile factories in the city and region [18; 19]. Statements and protests were noted in NKVD documents, special reports, and reports by party and Soviet officials during the first months of war. Such reporting was part of the security organs’ responsibilities and focused mainly on the social and psychological mood of inhabitants of a number of towns and industrial enterprises. Approximately ninety percent of the special notes examined contained information about “negative” attitudes or actions toward the national leadership or local authorities [19, pp. 111–136].

Researchers emphasize that, because textiles dominated the region’s industry and military-age men were at the front or in militia units, the protesting workforce was predominantly female. Ordinary party members could be among the protesters because their social situation differed little from that of nonparty workers, while the party nomenklatura remained socially distant [19, p. 111].

The documents did not describe only negativity. They occasionally recorded restrained optimism: “The general political mood among the working people of the region is entirely satisfactory” [20]. Other reports expressed open patriotism: Germany’s “brazen bandit attack” was said to have provoked unrestrained anger among workers; sewing workers improved production and were filled with patriotism, with cries such as “Tear this vermin apart!” heard in the workshops [20]. The formation of military divisions from reservists and civilians and their dispatch to the front likewise reflected such patriotic sentiment.

At the same time, other recorded statements can be explained by fear, hunger and insecurity. Workers criticized the leadership’s prewar relations with Germany. One railway worker at Melenki said in effect: “So much for Hitler being the Soviet Union’s friend! For two years our fools fed and clothed him and sent military equipment while starving us.” Another man remarked: “I told you we would feed an enemy and put him on our necks” [20]. Some even believed that Germany could not have started the war and that the USSR must have attacked first.

People were also dissatisfied with the way the first phase of the war was covered in the media. They resented the concealment of the real military situation. One senior stoker complained that official speeches contained nothing but slogans—“Our cause is just” and “Victory will be ours”—while the Germans kept advancing; the radio reported only enemy aircraft losses and said nothing about Soviet losses [20]. The lack of truthful information, and at times outright disinformation, generated rumors and panic. Common rumors concerned treason by commanders, mass surrenders, Voroshilov’s supposed refusal to fight, alleged betrayal by the government, German leaflets over Moscow, parachutists poisoning wells, and sabotage at industrial plants.

Because of the grave situation at the front and the economic crisis in the region, so-called “defeatist moods” also appeared. Some workers complained that the Soviet troops were not advancing, that young men were being killed, and that officials never spoke about Soviet dead or missing. Others predicted that Germany, perhaps assisted by Japan, would defeat the USSR and end Soviet power. The authors note the naïve idealization of Germans as a supposedly cultured people and a profound misunderstanding of Nazism and the occupiers’ goals. Some residents imagined that the Germans would abolish collective farms, free workers from need and provide goods. Others openly hoped Hitler would overthrow Soviet power, statements the authors interpret partly as nostalgia for pre-revolutionary life and rejection of post-revolutionary conditions.

People also blamed the Soviet authorities and Stalin personally for the disasters of the first months. Some recorded statements called for an uprising or refused to defend “the Communists.” People who spoke so recklessly often faced criminal prosecution; some were executed.

Because Ivanovo was a major textile center, the article pays special attention to factory workers’ attitudes toward management and to strikes and disturbances. Party documentation describes unrest and also reveals the interpretive scheme adopted by officials. Relatives of repressed people and persons with criminal records were identified among the participants and then treated as “hostile elements” who had provoked an otherwise politically unconscious mass. Some responsibility was also assigned to local managers who had become detached from workers and failed to prevent excesses. This explanation allowed local leaders to defend themselves and central authorities to describe the unrest as a local problem that did not require changes in policy; it also gave ordinary workers some protection from repression.

A report “On the Situation at Textile Enterprises of Ivanovo Region” stated that discontent was caused by a noticeable fall in textile workers’ earnings, a sharp deterioration in food supply amid rapidly rising market prices, and extremely poor work by trade organizations and factory canteens [19, p. 112]. At Furmanov Factory No. 2 some workers claimed that workers in Ivanovo had gone on strike and were then given a kilogram of bread. At a meeting at the Nogin factory, a female worker asked why bread was now unavailable after so much had previously been sent to Hitler [19, pp. 113–114].

A Central Committee commission reported that leaders of party and economic organizations, through poor organization and rude treatment of people, intensified workers’ dissatisfaction, which hostile elements then exploited [19, p. 114]. The same report described a factory director who declared Sunday, September 21, a working day. Of 250 people in the shift expected to work, only 75 came to the meeting. Workers could not understand whether they were being invited to a voluntary Sunday work drive or ordered into a normal legal workday. The director read the order, closed the meeting and refused to answer questions. The workers did not report for duty and the weaving mill’s work was disrupted [19, p. 115].

Other documents described party-political agitation in factories and workers’ dormitories as exceptionally neglected: city and district party secretaries had withdrawn from this work, become detached from the people and shunned them [19, p. 115].

The unrest, the article argues, was not a conscious revolt against Soviet power. Factory workers—mostly women whose husbands were at the front—were primarily afraid of losing their livelihood if equipment was removed and the plants destroyed. Long-accumulated resentment of local leaders who neglected workers’ needs added to this fear. A report to Central Committee Secretary A. A. Andreyev on “anti-Soviet actions by workers of textile enterprises in Ivanovo and the region on October 19–20, 1941” noted poor attention to workers’ living conditions, delayed wages, badly organized supply of necessities and even unheated dormitories on Sundays simply because the stoker had the day off [19, p. 128].

The decision to dismantle machinery, carried out in secrecy, pushed workers from passive to active resistance. On October 15–16, following orders from the People’s Commissariat of the Textile Industry, preparations began to dismantle half of the equipment at one combine. The work was conducted in strict secrecy and began on October 17, a day off. No explanatory work was done among the workforce. When workers arrived at 6 a.m. on October 18 and saw partially dismantled equipment, a group moved from the weaving section to the finishing plant, found crates containing dismantled machinery, and began smashing them with axes and hammers [19, p. 119]. When the destruction could not be stopped, the director warned that if the equipment could not be removed the plant would be blown up rather than handed to the enemy. Rumor-mongers immediately ran through the workshops shouting that the plant was about to be blown up together with the workers and that mines had been laid [19, p. 119].

After these events, closed party meetings and workers’ meetings were held at factories and combines, with regional and city party secretaries giving reports. Workers were told that their behavior was shameful while the Soviet people were fighting German fascism and were shown the supposed role of provocateurs and fascist agents. Workers promised to correct their mistakes through successful labor. At the Yakovlev linen combine some asked to be sent voluntarily to defense work, and many women voluntarily made up the hours they had missed on October 20 [19, p. 128].

Summing up the numerous protest statements, the authors argue that the mood of the Ivanovo population in summer and autumn 1941 cannot be explained by a single cause. It reflected a combination of social-psychological factors—fear, accumulated resentment and rumors; organizational failings—lack of information and the detachment of managers from workers’ immediate problems; relatively low political culture and literacy among textile workers; economic decline caused by disrupted raw-material supplies; a low standard of living and weak social protection; acute food shortages; and fear of unemployment.

The authors emphasize that these materials are not presented to diminish the Soviet people or their heroism. Nothing in the world is one-dimensional, especially a national tragedy in which more than twenty-seven million people were killed, went missing or died of wounds, and from which the Soviet people emerged victorious over fascism and Nazism. Not every Soviet citizen could be a hero; people were first of all human beings, with needs, ideas, judgments, fears and desires.

The confusion in people’s souls and the panic among part of the population do not obscure the fact that by October–December 1941 more sober attitudes prevailed and people increasingly understood the need to concentrate their strength and will. Mass meetings were held in Ivanovo where people vowed to spare neither strength nor life in defense of the homeland. Ten recruiting stations opened in the city, and many people volunteered before receiving call-up papers.

Several units sent to the fronts of the Great Patriotic War can properly be called “Ivanovo” formations. The 307th Rifle Division, later known as the Novozybkov Division, fought near Starodub in the Bryansk area in the summer and autumn of 1941, took part in the Voronezh–Kastornoye operation in early 1943, fought on the northern sector of the Kursk salient and defended Ponyri.

The 332nd Frunze Rifle Division, later called the Ivanovo–Polotsk Division, was formed in autumn 1941 and sent toward Moscow in October. During the counteroffensive of December 1941–January 1942 it advanced more than 300 kilometers westward, liberating Andreapol, Zapadnaya Dvina and 920 other settlements. It later fought around Velizh in Smolensk Region and in northern Belarus around Polotsk; for the latter fighting it received the name Polotsk. Its combat path ended near Liepāja in Latvia.

The 117th Rifle Division, formed from December 1941 to February 1942, was sent to the Kalinin Front. In February 1944 it broke through enemy defenses near Nevel, helped liberate Belarus, and as part of the 1st Belorussian Front took Lublin, distinguished itself in crossing the Vistula and reached Berlin.

The core of the 49th Roslavl Rifle Division, formed in the region during 1942, consisted of militia members of the Furmanov Ivanovo Workers’ Regiment, later the 222nd Regiment. The division fought in the Battle of Stalingrad around the Barrikady plant, then at Kursk and in the liberation of Smolensk Region. It received its name for the hard fighting around Roslavl, advanced through Belarus and Lithuania in 1944, broke through defenses south of Warsaw in January 1945, crossed the Vistula and Oder, stormed Frankfurt an der Oder and ended the war fighting German forces around Berlin.

Ivanovo was also the starting point of the legendary Normandie–Niemen air squadron, later a regiment. Under an agreement between the Soviet government and Fighting France, French pilots arrived in the Soviet Union in late 1942. Their new unit was based at an airfield on Ivanovo’s northern outskirts, where they received living quarters and fourteen Yak-1 fighters. In 1943 they were already fighting alongside Soviet comrades.

Tens of thousands of residents of the region received orders and medals. V. S. Grishanov and V. I. Pipchuk became full holders of all three classes of the Order of Glory. Thirty-four Ivanovo residents were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, including tanker G. P. Aleksandrov, pilot S. I. Lazarev, sapper V. I. Veselov, artilleryman M. Ya. Dubrovin, scout I. M. Lobanov and machine gunner V. P. Antonov [21]. During the war 400,000 people left the region for military service voluntarily or through mobilization, and 130,000 did not return. From Ivanovo itself around 70,000 went to the front, of whom 27,000 did not come home. Their names were memorialized in the regional Book of Memory, published in 1995 and subsequently supplemented through patriotic research by young people and enthusiasts.

References cited in the original

1. A. V. Golubev, “Russia Can Rely Only on Itself: Images of a Future War in Soviet Society of the 1930s,” Otechestvennaya istoriya, no. 5, 2008.
2. G. K. Zhukov, Memoirs and Reflections, Moscow, 1970.
3. They Were Not Only Opponents: Russians and Germans over Two Centuries, Moscow, 1990.
4. G. Kumanev, “At Dawn on the 22nd,” Pravda, June 22, 1989.
5. M. Bragin, “Officers of Victory,” Pravda, May 8, 1982.
6. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941–1945: A Short History, Moscow, 1965.
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14. Documentary material on Moscow in October 1941 cited in the original article.
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16. The Diaries of Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand, 1941–1945.
17. P. D. Vasilyev, Combat Days, Ivanovo, 1954.
18. Studies and document collections on Ivanovo Region during the first stage of the Great Patriotic War.
19. “The Confusion of the Autumn of 1941: Documents on Unrest among Ivanovo Textile Workers,” Historical Archive, no. 2, 1994.
20. S. V. Tochenov, “Public Moods in Ivanovo Region during the Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War (June–August 1941),” Bulletin of Ivanovo State University: Humanities, issue 4, 2008.
21. Feat: Stories about Heroes of the Soviet Union from Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, 1968.