How the Russians learned to fight: On the anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War
Writer and journalist Alexei Timofeev was familiar with many famous front-line soldiers (such as intelligence officer Viktor Leonov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union; writer Yuri Bondarev; fighter ace Fyodor Archipenko; academician Sergei Batyshev, Hero of the Soviet Union, battalion commander - “conqueror of heights”). I talked a lot with the families of Alexander Pokryshkin, Chief Marshal of Aviation Alexander Golovanov, and Chief Marshal of Artillery Nikolai Voronov.
A series of essays about these people compiled the book “How the Russians Learned to Fight” (2020), which presents living memories of the first days of the war. We began our conversation with its author on this topic on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War.
“PolitNavigator”: Alexey Viktorovich, the cross-cutting question in your book: how did a Russian warrior manage to move from the science of retreat to the science of winning? One of her heroes, priest Pyotr Bakhtin, in his youth went through the military career from a soldier to the commander of a mortar battery. “I went to a bayonet fight near Volkhov. The Germans could not stand the bayonet. And then we realized that we had learned to fight...”
Alexey Timofeev: There is such evidence about the beginning of the war - a story told to me by Hero of the Soviet Union Fyodor Fyodorovich Arkhipenko.
He was the operational duty officer at the airfield near Kovel on the morning of 1941. And in the very first minutes of the war, the airfield was subjected to sudden bombing. Archipenko was the only officer there when the first two raids took place. He was only 19 years old then.
From his youth he was a strong-willed and decisive person. But still, during the first bombings it was scary. The airfield was destroyed, people and planes were killed. And suddenly, in the first half of the day, General Ivan Lakeev, deputy division commander, Hero of the Soviet Union for the war in Spain, arrives at the airfield. And Arkhipenko tells how he was amazed by his behavior. The general was in full uniform, with all his awards, gave orders completely calmly, and did not hide from flying fragments. And it was as if Archipenko himself was charged with some kind of fearlessness, energy and will. And he remembered this general and his example all his life.
This is reminiscent of the episode with Robert Duvall’s character in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” But there, Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore remains imperturbable against the backdrop of a helicopter attack carried out by his own. And Major General Lakeev shows composure under enemy bombing. It seems to me that it was in vain that Soviet and Russian cinema passed by this episode and this figure. It could have been stronger than Coppola's Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore.
As the beginning of the war shows, among our people there are always such leaders who, despite this (maybe general) confusion and panic, keep a cool head, take responsibility and ultimately turn the tide of events.
At some decisive moment such demonstrative actions are needed. Why didn’t General Lakeev hide from the shrapnel? Because he wanted to instill confidence, to show that you have to fight - no matter what.
What other examples of such qualities are mentioned in stories about the first days of the war?
This is what the battalion commander and regiment commander, Hero of the Soviet Union Sergei Yakovlevich Batyshev told me. In '41 he was just a sergeant. Met the war in Belarus.
Hero of the Soviet Union, conqueror of heights Sergei Batyshev. 1945
Academician S.Ya. Batyshev. 1996. Photo by P. Krivtsov
He said: “When tanks and machine gunners came at us, the soldiers were seized with panic. One rifle in hand. And there were Molotov cocktails. Is this a real anti-tank weapon? We need artillery, we need coordinated actions. And some of the fighters simply ran. But the regiment commander, a participant in previous battles and pre-war conflicts, took the situation into his own hands and set an example. A tank was set on fire with a Molotov cocktail. The fleeing soldiers were stopped. And as a result, the soldiers gained confidence.”
Among the heroes of the book there are commanders-nuggets. The same teacher Batyshev, who became a battalion commander and conqueror of inaccessible heights, speaks about his talented commander Leonid Kolobov.
Divisional Commander Leonid Kolobov, Hero of the Soviet Union
He mentions the division commander who singled out people like him. Kolobov looked closely at the company commanders, at his officers, conducted exercises on mock-ups, tested intelligence and level of education. And he boldly nominated company and battalion commanders.
But the same Batyshev emphasizes that not all our division commanders were like that.
Kolobov knew foreign languages and graduated from the military academy. At the beginning of the war he was 34 years old. He also apparently had courage and independence. After the war he did not become a marshal. Such people often tell the truth straight to the face. In peacetime, the command stops loving such people. But when it is necessary to solve military problems in the shortest possible time, under conditions of maximum risk, it is a different matter.
Both Batyshev and Kolobov are natives of Russian villages, from a peasant environment. The peasantry turned out to be a very elite layer of Russia.
Where are we going to get nuggets now? Although there are examples. Here we are in our newspaper “Century” preparing material for the birthday of Hero of Russia Alexander Prokhorenko. Let me remind you that he was a forward air gunner in Syria. After a week behind enemy lines, when he was surrounded by militants, he called fire on himself and died in the best traditions of the Great Patriotic War. I read about him: he grew up in the Orenburg outback. Apparently, the school got a good teacher. Alexander had the attitude: “I want to become a hero.” And so he did.
Your interlocutors and the heroes of the book often analyze the reasons for the first defeats in the Great Patriotic War and talk about the prerequisites for a radical change.
The key idea that I pursue both in the book about Pokryshkin and in this book of essays about other war veterans: there is a big qualitative difference between a peacetime army and a wartime army. Because, first of all, these are personnel, these are people.
In a peacetime army, in order to achieve certain command positions, other qualities are often needed. Sometimes you need to be able to both please your superiors and march beautifully.
But when war comes, in these extreme conditions other qualities are needed: independence, determination in defending one’s point of view, the ability to sometimes move away from the tactics of the pre-war years, to offer new military techniques on the battlefield.
Such people are often very inconvenient in peacetime, especially in the army with its mandatory discipline. And people with such characters often remain unclaimed in times of peace. And even, on the contrary, for manifestations of determination and independence in front of their superiors, they sometimes suffer some kind of persecution. But in an extreme military situation, many peacetime commanders cannot show this determination. Of course, the majority then overcome themselves. But we need some leaders, leaders. They only begin to manifest themselves in wartime. And often they quickly make a career in military conditions and occupy corresponding positions.
Here Rokossovsky is just a major general at the beginning of the war, and then he becomes a marshal by 1944. In decisive operations, it was his military genius that manifested itself especially clearly.
And those who often seemed to be outstanding commanders, such as the commander of our Western District Pavlov, or the commander of the Kyiv District Kirponos, failed to cope with these extreme conditions. The same Rokossovsky, when he got to Kirponos’s headquarters in Kiev, after talking with him and seeing his confusion, realized that this man may have been a hero before the war, but at the level of a front commander he was simply not ready for the burden of his duties in wartime .
Therefore, I constantly emphasize examples of the qualitative difference between a peacetime army and a wartime army. And it seems to me that this idea is almost not visible in our military literature. I'm trying to sharpen it. It is especially felt in the memoirs of General Alexander Gorbatov, one of our best army commanders. And this can be found in some other war memoirs. But for some reason our military historians do not pay attention to this. They talk about the number of planes, tanks, and repressions during the war. But they don't talk about it.
Another important point. By the beginning of the war, the German army had preserved its historical traditions, especially the First World War. The mid-level commanders who were most prominent during the First World War were all in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. They had the strongest corps of non-commissioned officers, who played a decisive role on the battlefield.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the German army had already been fighting for two years. And there the assimilation of military experience has already taken place.
How did this happen?
For example, Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, after the war in Spain, was looking for ways to restructure tactics for new aircraft, new conditions of air combat. And he, for all his Nazism, was an ace of the First World War. And in order to formulate a new tactics for fighter aviation, he did not convene some kind of commission of old colonels, generals, staff workers, but invited the most successful pilot of the Spanish war, Captain Werner Mölders (he was 25 or 26 years old). And he instructed me to draw up fighter aviation tactics in modern conditions.
Mölders compiled these instructions. The Germans began to fly in pairs instead of threes, the appropriate firing distances were designated, the training of pilots was worked out to the smallest detail, etc.
That's why they beat ours at first.
And what did our people contrast with Mölders’ military experience?
\We can say that Melders’ double in our fighter aviation is Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin. They were born almost on the same day, in March 1913. But Mölders in 1941 was already a general and squadron commander. This is more than our fighter air division, this is more than a hundred Messerschmitts.
And Pokryshkin was a senior lieutenant, a flight commander. It was only by 1943 that he developed his own tactics, having gone through the most difficult school of combat.
And then this tactic was already used at the headquarters of our Air Force and began to be spread on other fronts. And this was the time when a turning point in the war occurred.
Your book quotes the words of pilot Arkhipenko: “Who won the air war?.. Mostly young people, guys born around 1920-1923. Those who were older, pre-war forty-year-old squadron commanders, family people, to be honest, avoided dangerous missions by any means. Unfortunately, we young people received nothing from the older generation of pilots who previously participated in battles.” This was just his experience and he is generalizing? Or is this really the big picture?
This is an absolutely correct generalization.
But Pokryshkin is of a different age.
Yes, he was 43 years old in 30. Pokryshkin was practically an exception among our aces. This was also due to the fact that he initially ended up in the aviation technician school by mistake, and then he was not allowed to fly. And only at the age of 25, before the war, he managed to get into the flight school, Kachinskoe.
The overwhelming majority of hero pilots, especially in fighter aviation, where instant reaction is needed, overloads must be endured, and constant extreme risk is required, are 20-25 year olds. I studied the documents of Pokryshkin’s guards regiment (more than a hundred people), their age, party affiliation, and national composition are indicated there.
What about the national composition?
The regiment included representatives of many nationalities of the Soviet Union. But let's look at the flight crew, 33 people. Thirty people are Russians, two are Ukrainians, one is Belarusian. And it was a revealing picture for all fighter pilots. In such extreme areas, as a rule, there were our Russian guys (to which I include all 33).
In the chapter about the fighter ace Archipenko, the topic of calculations and statistics of downed aircraft is raised. And there an explanation is given of the German “records”, starting from the counting system and ending with their model of behavior in air combat...
“They recorded a hit on our plane with a photo-machine gun. If there is a hit on film, it is considered a victory. Whether he was shot down or not is unknown. But with us it was counted only when the downed person was confirmed by ground troops or partisans.”
“We were brought up in such a way that if a Messer is attacked by our bomber, then we must save it at any cost, even if we put our heads on the line. But the German is an egoist, his own life was more valuable to him, he attacked from a position advantageous to him in order to then escape.”
Well, even Bismarck said that you need to lie in two cases: before elections and in war. The year is 1944, the Germans’ fronts are bursting at the seams - the top of the Third Reich understands that the situation is simply catastrophic. And at this time such reports begin that Hartmann, the number one German ace, simply begins to shoot down our planes in batches. German submariners begin to sink enemy ships in batches. And I agree with one historian’s version that this was already a propaganda war. The Germans tried to increase morale with these victorious reports. German statistics are clearly false. It needs to be halved or tripled.
Here, in particular, I give such a typical example in the book. When the air battle for England was going on back in 1940, the Germans had accurate information about it (unlike our gigantic expanses): how many aircraft the enemy had, how many of them were produced per day. And so Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, compared Goering’s reports about the downed British planes and this intelligence data about how many planes the British had. And little by little it turned out that there should be no more British planes in the sky, because they had all been shot down, according to Goering’s reports. But the war only began to simmer with unrelenting force, and the British defended their airspace. But, according to Goering’s reports, these planes are no longer there, they are in the red. And Canaris reported this. And Goering’s victorious reports ceased to sparkle with their former brilliance.
And in the same way, the Germans lied everywhere. This was part of the propaganda war. And, unfortunately, this remains part of psychological warfare even now.
Here they are again telling us that Hartmann shot down 352 planes. Yes, he didn’t shoot down so many planes! Although, if we take into account his flying talent, his qualifications (the Germans trained their pilots for two years), take into account this aerial hunting tactics (from behind the clouds, from the direction of the sun, shoot down, not the strongest, but the weakest, and quickly escape), then he could shoot down 100 or even 150 aircraft. Under such conditions I could. But for the German aces to shoot down 100-200 en masse! No matter who I spoke to among our fighter heroes, they did not believe it.
What arguments did our aces give against German statistics?
small touch. It was not included in my books (I have no documentary evidence).
I talked with veterans at the anniversary of Georgy Arturovich Baevsky, Hero of the Soviet Union, ace pilot, my oldest friend. It was 2001. Arkhipenko and a number of other heroes were there, congratulating the hero of the day on his 80th birthday. And next to me sat Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Alexandrovich Shcherbakov, the son of the famous party leader Shcherbakov, who died in 1945. He fought a little. And after the war he became famous as a test pilot in the deadly spin tests (for which he received the title of Hero).
Shcherbakov and Baevsky examined German statistics, disagreed, and refuted them in publications. I asked: “Alexander Alexandrovich, in one of your articles it is written that Hartmann, being already in the camps, in captivity, said that twice in air battles, knowing that Pokryshkin was in front of him, he did not engage in a duel. Where did you get this information from? You didn’t refer to anything in the article.”
He recounted how, while still working for the magazine "Wings of the Motherland," they received a letter from a distinguished lawyer who had participated in Hartmann's trial. The German ace was sentenced to 25 years in prison for damages inflicted on the Soviet state. Hartmann was quite open about it. He said, "Yes, I recognize the strength of Soviet fighters. I was shot down several times in combat with them. I can say that, knowing twice that it was Pokryshkin in front of me, I did not engage in that battle."
Hartmann's theory: the more you shoot down, the better, but with the aces you don't have to engage in the hardest battles, waste your energy, risking death...
My book about Pokryshkin is now posted on many websites. And there is a chapter “Stalin's Falcons against Luftwaffe Experts.” I wrote all this more than twenty years ago, and now I have only become stronger in my reasoning, analysis, and comparison of our and German aces. It talks about these statistics briefly, but on all the main points.
In the chapter about Archipenko you write: “German aces were given the right to “free hunt”, not constrained by other orders and assignments. For Soviet fighters, the main thing was to cover ground troops, escort their own and attack foreign bombers. Here is the data from Arkhipenko’s award list: out of 467 combat sorties, he flew 35 in attack, 28 in reconnaissance, 247 in cover, 125 in escort. And only 32 in “free hunting!”
We had regiments that were given the opportunity to hunt freely. They were recruiting aces. Probably, it was necessary to create more units that could participate in a free hunt, choose the moment of attack, the route of attack. The ace pilots could do this themselves. And they probably would have shot down more.
The book contains essays about five holders of the Order of Glory. It says that all five heroes had good families, and four of them worked in one place all their lives. The arithmetic average liberal would say that this is evidence of dullness, that these people were cogs in the system. And from the point of view of a healthy traditionalist, this is an example of absolute consistency, decency, and integrity.
The fifth of them, Nikolai Sazonovich Bulychev, a former artilleryman, by the way, also worked all his life in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was an ambassador. I was struck by this root, root part of the Russian people. These are real heroes, very positive people, hard workers, family men. This is the central part of the Russian people, which our literary classics, unfortunately, overlooked.
Nikolai Sazonovich Bulychev, artilleryman and diplomat. 1995. Photo by P. Krivtsov
This meeting took place in 1995. I did not specifically choose my interlocutors. They gave me several phone numbers offhand. I didn't reach some of them. And I met and talked with five. The Knights of the Order of Glory spoke very frankly, telling everything as it happened. They even treated me with warmth, because at that time they were not very much questioned: no one in 95 needed them, in fact. That's why they greeted me like family.
Let's talk to Viktor Leonov, the legendary commander of the 181st special reconnaissance detachment of the Northern Fleet. The reader of your book is jealous of the author who communicated with the famous intelligence officer: it’s like meeting and easily talking with Achilles, Patroclus, Odysseus.
Viktor Nikolaevich Leonov is simply a titan. Next to him, Otto Skorzeny turns pale. This is how they are compared in the West. Portraits of Leonov hang at American naval special forces bases. They are trying to take something from his experience. And who among us knows him? Nobody!
I accidentally found out about his death. In 2004, our mutual acquaintance, Colonel Pyotr Mikhailovich Dunaev (he is also a hero of my book), called me and said: “Alexey, walking down the street, bent down to tie his shoelace. I look: the Rostokinsky district newspaper (he also lived in Sviblovo, next to VDNKh): a portrait of Leonov.” I picked up the newspaper - it was last year. It turns out that Leonov died last year. And we learned about it from the local newspaper on the sidewalk. There were no reports on TV that a national hero had died. This is what our propaganda and our other media are...
Visiting V.N. Leonov, artist S.M. Kharlamov and writer A.V. Timofeev. 1994
V.N. Leonov. 1994 Photo by Pavel Krivtsov
There is a stunning episode in Viktor Leonov’s stories about the legendary raid on Cape Krestovy in November 1944. At the most critical moment, when the scouts were already being fired upon by machine guns and artillery pieces, the hero Ivan Lysenko, a wrestling champion, tore out the rail crosspiece on which the barbed wire was attached and lifted it onto his shoulders. The hero paved the way for the reconnaissance group at the cost of his life: more than twenty bullets hit him. Thanks to Ivan Lysenko, the scouts captured enemy guns with minimal losses and fired at the Germans from them.
This is the symbol of Leonov’s detachment: “for one’s friends.” The Germans did not understand this. Well, they didn’t have that. Carrying out a wounded person means everyone will die. And the captured German says: it was necessary to eliminate this wounded man, why should everyone die because of one thing. And Leonov says: “We almost died at Cape Mogilny because we were carrying with us an officer, Lieutenant Shelavin, who was seriously wounded in both legs. I know: if you quit now, then everyone will have the thought in their heads: they abandoned the officer, and so they will abandon me.”
Perish yourself, but help your comrade - this is Suvorov’s principle, which neither the Germans nor the Turks understand.
The Leonov reconnaissance detachment performed fantastic feats from the first years of the war. But Leonov received his first Hero Star only at the end of 1944 for the destruction of a strategically important German stronghold at Cape Krestovy.
In general, we awarded very modestly, especially in the first two or three years of the war. Dunaev told me (and he studied archival documents) that there were twenty thousand nominations for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And they embezzled a little over ten thousand. Almost every second failed. And he says: “Yes, almost everyone had to give it.” We stinted. The political workers were afraid: what if we give it to the wrong person.
The same ace Arkhipenko said something wrong to the political worker. He gets out of the cockpit, hot after the battle, and this fool comes to him: “Why did they shoot down so few?” Archipenko replies: “You sit down and fly.” And some more informal vocabulary... And there are many such examples. Because of this, the awards were also held back.
As battalion commander Batyshev said: it is not only the falcon that reaches the top of the mountain, but also the snake. And often these snakes begin to teach falcons how to fly.
Leonov was given a Hero only when it was no longer possible not to.
Each chapter of the book contains some applied rules from the science of warfare. Including from special forces soldier Leonov. For example, he talks about the psychological nuances in a situation where he found himself face to face with the enemy without having time to get his weapon. Leonov looks the German in the eye and smiles...
This is a situation where there was no longer time to shoot. The gun is already pointed at Leonov. You are walking along the path, and a German in a camouflage suit comes out from behind this boulder and points his machine gun at you. There is no use in grabbing your gun at this point. If you make some kind of deceptive movement, he will shoot and hit. Leonov says: “I smiled.” And the German will think for a couple of seconds: why did you smile? He won't shoot right away. “And three seconds was enough for me to use some of my capabilities.” Maybe just kick him in the forehead while jumping.
This, of course, requires special preparation and self-control. Not every person can do this. Leonov said: “You need to look your opponent in the eyes. And it depends on this look which of you will win.” But this thesis, of course, can be fully understood by anyone who has been in such a situation. The energy of exchange comes from these eyes. And someone wilts, and someone understands that now he will win this fight. These are hard, scary things.
Special forces are always carefully selected. Need motivation. You ask Leonov: how did you manage to achieve your goal behind enemy lines in incredible conditions? He answered: “Hatred was bubbling.”
Good war films are rare and the exception. But why is there still no feature film based on the material about the intelligence officer Leonov? Do northern conditions scare filmmakers away? This is how Leonov performed his exploits in the Far East. For example, in the port of Wonsan, 140 Leonov “black devils” captured a Japanese garrison of 3500 soldiers.
They don’t take it off - thank God. If they film it about Pokryshkin or Leonov, it will be an abomination, I’m sure. It’s good that these scoundrels who are making Russian films now didn’t get to these heroes. This needs to be removed with clean hands, with an understanding of what you are doing.
I deliberately did not watch the film about Devyatayev, so as not to injure myself. I once watched the series “Fighters”, the beginning. They show some fools, fighters. And this is the elite of the nation, the smartest, most talented people.
Devyatayev hugs a friend in a German uniform and stuff like that. Although Devyatayev writes in his book of memoirs how he personally punched a traitorous sailor in the face who helped the Germans in the camp.
You watch old Soviet films - of course, you feel that they were shot within some framework: some things were possible, some things were not. But these are living people, living situations. You watch a good movie like a documentary. And now these are some kind of cartoons or clips. After all, in theory, now there are technical capabilities to film a real fight well, and not these “cartoons.”
Thank God that these dirty hands did not touch such heroes as Leonov or Pokryshkin.
English version :: Read in English How the Russians Learned to Fight: On the Anniversary of the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War