Participants of the Great Patriotic War gathered for discussion of those events at the video bridge Moscow-Kiev-Chisinau-Yerevan-Astana.
“I myself was recruited in August 1942 in Akhmola. After one and a half months of training I was sent to the front in the convoy of the 261st rifle regiment of the 310th rifle division. I arrived in the Leningrad district. But then in 10 days we were re-deployed to participate in the Battle of Stalingrad. So we protected Stalingrad. I was assigned to the 62nd Army under the command of General Chuikov. Our regiment was assigned to defend the tractor plant and the Krasny Oktyabr’ plant so that the Germans wouldn’t get to them. And we managed to fight them off,” the veteran from Armenia says.
“I was 17 and I was doing my 3rd year in technical secondary school,” the other Armenian veteran remembers. “I was recruited to an artillery regiment. On 23 February 1943 I took the military oath. They formed a division and sent us to Rostov. We expected in 1943 that the main strike would be on the South, as Germany had concentrated its forces there. Germany planned to destroy the supply line of the Soviet Army. There are bridges over the river Don 25 km from Rostov, and the Germans planned to destroy these bridges, thus severing our troops from the supply bases and effectively winning the war. The Soviet command knew about these plans and it took all necessary steps to stop them. At the end of 1943 we concentrated our troops in the region of Rostov. It was the former Armenian district of Nakhichvan. There was an aerodrome there, we had some planes, but they were still very small. On the 7th or the 8th of July the German attack was launched. 350 Messerschmits, 86-87 Junkers… I don’t remember exactly now… and 90 fighters covered the German troops. They wanted to destroy the bridges. But we fought them off. I myself was a gunner back then. We didn’t let them even approach. Only in Bataysk was one of our regiments directly hit by the bombs and the guns were destroyed. Many people died there. But in all other directions we won. We shot down 7 of the planes; and one of them was shot down by my gun crew. We had 30mm Soviet guns and 40mm American guns. So we didn’t give the enemy an opportunity to fulfil their plans. We prepared the counterattack. Our team was decorated. Later our artillery battery was re-formed into a separate regiment. There were 16 batteries in it. It was in Saratov. We were sent to free the territory. We started from Rovno – you all know the story, then Lutsk, Kiev, Lvov. All the artillery operations in this space were carried out by us. We participated in the liberation of these cities. The Germans had already suffered a great defeat under Leningrad and were retreating. The power of the Soviet Army was growing by the year.”
“Years and decades pass, and time erases details from our memories, the details of that deadly battle that the Soviet people had to go through to protect their freedom and independence,” Colonel Vyacheslav Basalin says. “When all the soldiers of this battle pass away, future historians, writers, artists and composers will turn their attention to the Great Patriotic War.
Mikhail Myagkov, the head of the War and Geopolitics research center under the RAS World History Institute
“It is truly our common victory and we paid a great price for it. 26.5 million of our soldiers and civilians died in this war. They gave their lives to secure this victory. And it is a great price. We have to keep this memory. The veterans have said correctly today: if we don’t keep this memory we won’t be able to carry on as the united nation which crushed the Fascist aggressor, the biggest danger ever posed by the 20th century (and I think by the whole of human history) to the world. It is important to stress that we had to battle not only against German forces; we had to combat all the Fascist forces, as Germany had already subdued the whole of Europe. These were not only the Germans, these were Fascists from Italy, there was even a Spanish division.
We need to remember that, as we wouldn’t be sitting here today listening to our dear veterans if they had lost that war. And we need to treasure this memory. And we need to retain the friendship with all the states that are independent now but fought together during the war. We need to remember that members of very different nationalities defended the Brest fortress. There were Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Chechens, Armenians there, and they were the first ones to engage in battle with the Fascists who attacked our land. And the Germans suffered the heaviest losses then, on June 22nd in Brest. And it was this international contingent that fought this first attack off. We also need to remember that our allies (I mean the USA) regarded the Soviet Union to be the only force capable of saving them all. So the US and the UK… Churchill told Harriman (who was the US envoy to the UK then) back in 1942 that it was France in 1940, the USSR in 1941, and it was GB in 1942 and it will be the US in 1943. He meant that if we, the USSR, would have fallen to the aggressors, then GB and the US would have repeated this sad destiny. And the whole world would have been painted black and brown.
Today, when we recall those events, we try to find common points, common grounds with our brother-historians from Belarus and Ukraine. We’ve recently published a book headlined ‘Land on Fire: 1941’. This book is the first experience of such joint research based on archive documents and memoires. We used documents that were uncovered just recently: these are not only Russian military documents, but also Ukrainian and Belarusian. I believe that this experience is quite a success. We couldn’t believe that this book would be published up until the last moment, not only here, but in Ukraine and Belarus as well: there were too many obstacles, too many different political opinions. But we decided to put politics aside and we agreed on one thing: we have to tell the truth about the war, no matter how terrible it is. And we know that in Ukraine alone 6 million people were recruited during the war and half of them were killed. Today Russian school children have to know this figure as well as Ukrainian pupils. All of them, I think, must know about the terrible battles of Moscow, of Stalingrad, they need to know that there were Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and members of other ethnicities in the Pavlov House, and they protected their common Motherland there. When will we finally accept that it would be easier for us to further develop our cooperation and to survive in this complex world that poses a lot of new threats.
I often think about this: imagine it’s 1945, a lot of Germans were taken prisoner by us and others were running to surrender to the Allies. It’s surprising that the Germans captured by us were not trying to escape, the escapes were very rare. Why? When in 1941 a lot of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner, the majority of them tried to escape and rejoin the army. But the Germans didn’t try to do that, because the spirit of our soldiers was higher, because the Germans were crushed. They knew that even if they were to escape they would be captured again. I think it is a very important thing to add to the picture of our soldiers’ state of mind.
How did our troops in Berlin and Austria celebrate May 9th? The archive documents also help us better understand this aspect. We met with our allies back then. There were celebrations, press-conferences; and it is interesting that both Americans and British always proposed the first toast to the Soviet soldiers and command and for Stalin. And it was a relative of the new US President Truman who proposed the toast to Stalin. It was Truman’s nephew who served in the US army. And such a toast to the head of the Soviet state didn’t sound strange back then. It was only logical that we won that war together and so we should carry on in peace afterwards. But we know that later on the cold war started. But the memory of that Elbe Day, of our front brotherhood lives on in all the countries that participated in the anti-Hitler coalition. I would like to conclude my address by saying that we prevailed over a truly terrifying enemy.
If in 1941 we didn’t have General Zhukov on our Moscow front, if General Chaikov wasn’t defending Stalingrad, and if we had military leaders like those that led the US and GB – and I don’t want to belittle the services of Eisenhower or Montgomery, of course – could such generals hold these cities against enemy attacks? I think the answer is ‘no’. Not only because of the talent of our generals (and they were very talented), but also because our generals always remembered that a united multi-national country is behind them. They knew that if they were to give up their positions they would subject more millions of people to hostile occupation, they knew they were fighting for their Motherland. And I would very much like this spirit to live on in all our countries: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Kazakhstan… This tradition of protecting your state should be preserved today. We need to face the new challenges together, as one, as when we are together no enemy would dare to attack us. Thank you. Congratulations to the veterans once more.
