Original taken from visual history in Moscow Walk 1941
I think we must agree with those who believe that these posts are not made by Varlamov himself. Here you can spend more than one hour watching, and a day would have gone to preparation, at least. Yes, and not a Zyalt specialist in the history of the Second World War.
The post turned out to be very interesting.
Original taken from varlamov.ru in Moscow Walk 1941
View of the Kremlin during an air raid, July 1941
Today I am starting a series of posts about Moscow during the Great Patriotic War. Let's see how the capital lived in this difficult time. I collected old photographs and memories of Muscovites. Read it, very interesting, although a lot of text came out. If you have something to add, tell us in the comments.
Today is 41 years old. The most difficult for Moscow. This includes evacuation, and bombing, and the Nazis, who came close to the city. With the outbreak of the war, the entire civilian population was obliged to hand over bicycles, radios (there were only the famous plates on the wall and radio sockets), as well as cameras. Did not pass - a spy. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to find amateur photographs of military Moscow, in the city under martial law only accredited photojournalists with Leicas issued to them took pictures (remember Simonov’s famous lines: “With a Leica and a notebook, or even with a machine gun ...”).
Despite the fact that the Soviet authorities knew about the imminent war with Hitler (the possible date of the German invasion was repeatedly reported, for example, by intelligence officer Richard Sorge), Muscovites did not suspect that it would fall on them very soon.
On May 1, 1941, the last peacetime parade took place on Red Square. The Soviet leadership had high hopes for this parade. In the context of the impending war, the demonstration of the military might of the Soviet Union was of the utmost importance. At the parade there are ranks of the foreign diplomatic corps, there were also official representatives of the Wehrmacht. 
Ordinary people, meanwhile, went to theaters, cinemas and stadiums. On June 19, the last pre-war match took place at Dynamo: the home team took on the Stalingrad Tractor. On June 22, a parade and mass competitions of athletes were to be held there ...
At a football match, Dynamo stadium. 
Review of cyclists - participants in the run Moscow - Yalta. May 1941 
The city lived a peaceful life and did not prepare for defense. Newspapers wrote about the appearance of the first televisions and ultraviolet lamps, in March 1941 the first Stalin Prizes were awarded, in early June the city managed to hold a chess championship. At the same time, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition was held at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (future VDNKh). In mid-June, the general reconstruction of the TsPKiO im. Gorky.
Sale of soda on the Kuznetsk bridge. 
In 1941, Zaryadye continued to be demolished in Moscow. Demolition began in the 1930s. This story will end only by the end of the 1950s. And in 1967, the Rossiya Hotel will be built on the site of the old quarters. 
Temple of St. Nicholas Wet. 
The picture was published on August 11, 1941 in the article "LIFE photographers saw Moscow a week before the Nazi invasion." 
The US Embassy was located in the building from which this picture was taken from 1933 to 1954. Then it was moved out of harm's way to the street. Tchaikovsky (now Novinsky Boulevard). And in this building GAO "Intourist" settled for several decades. 
The war caught the inhabitants of the capital by surprise. On the morning of June 22, 20,000 schoolchildren arrived in Moscow from the Moscow Region: a holiday was organized for them in the Sokolniki Park of Culture and Recreation. Until the 12th day, none of the Muscovites knew that the war had begun.
At 12:15, Molotov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, spoke on the radio with a message about the German attack on the USSR - it was he who uttered the famous phrase "Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours."
Factory workers "Hammer and Sickle" listening to the Soviet government's statement about the outbreak of war. 
From the memoirs of the archaeologist M. Rabinovich:
“Without losing pace, I began to prepare for the next exams - for graduate school, they were supposed to start in a month. It was urgent to “adjust” a foreign language. On Sunday, the 22nd, looking up for a minute from a German book, I went out to buy something I learned from the seller of the vegetable stall that the Germans had attacked us and had already bombarded our cities. So, mechanically clutching a bunch of radishes in his hand, without going home, he went to the history department. Molotov's speech was broadcast (probably not for the first time). Like the others, I stopped, greedily catching every word. "Our cause is just! The enemy will be defeated! Victory will be ours!" No matter how unsympathetic this person is now to me, I must say that then Molotov (or the one who wrote his speech) said the most necessary words.
From the diary of Muscovite Marusya K.:
“What a terrible and hard to describe day! Comrade Molotov’s message caught me at the hairdresser’s. Realize what will happen? It’s hard to imagine, but I foresee that it’s very terrible. "everything is in my character, but it's all no longer pleasing. It's hard to imagine what feeling enveloped me, and, looking at the people in the house who carry sand to the attic with heavy, uncomprehending eyes, I began to do the same."
On June 25, martial law was introduced in Moscow. Air and combat training alarms gradually became commonplace. The city began to get used to wartime conditions.
From the diary of the scientific secretary of the Commission for the Study of the History of Moscow P. Miller:
"In the morning at 3 o'clock the sirens raised Moscow. Residents nervously jumped up, began to hide in shelters, but most remained in the yards, the janitors drove everyone out of the streets. Anti-aircraft guns fired, occasionally machine guns fired, fire flashes in the clouds, in some places I saw cars "everything is at a high altitude. I personally saw ten white spots arranged in an almost regular ring. "Around what? The spots resembled those white stripes that always mark a stratospheric uplift. Everything looked very serious, but the absence of high-explosive bombs and fires is immediately striking. At about 4 o'clock the alarm ended. Later, in the afternoon, it turned out that this was a trial exercise."
After the end of the air raid alert, people leave the Ploshchad Sverdlova metro station and wait for transport at the Moskva Hotel. 
Distribution of gas masks on Mayakovsky Square. 
Pushkin Square. 
In Moscow cinemas, along with feature films, a demonstration of defense-training films began: "Let's create protective rooms", "Individual sanitary package", "Take care of a gas mask", "How to help a gas-poisoned person", "Simple shelters from air bombs", "Blackout a residential building", etc. Later, patriotic films began to be shown, including the famous "Combat Film Collections".
Cinema "Central" (in the 1930s - still "Sha-Noir"), st. Gorky, 18-a, phone B1-97-54. 
On July 1, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the universal mandatory preparation of the population for air defense" was issued. On the same day, the executive committee of the Moscow City Council adopted a resolution "On the procedure for the evacuation of children from Moscow."
From June 29 to July 29, almost 950 thousand people were evacuated from Moscow, mostly women and children. By December 1941, the population of the capital had decreased from 4.5 to 2.5 million people. Not only people were evacuated, but also industry: in September-October, about 500 industrial enterprises of federal and republican significance were transferred from Moscow and the Moscow region to the rear.
Zinaida Nikolaevna Aristarkhova:
“When the war began, I was 12 years old. At the direction of the authorities, all the children had to come to the Krasnopresnenskaya outpost, the parents had to collect mattresses, pillowcases and light things for the children. They put us all on a tram and took us to the River Station. the steamers on which we were loaded onto the platform, onto the deck, who somehow managed to find a place for themselves.This steamer set off in the direction of Ryazan.The steamer then left for the Oka, probably late in the evening.
The light was not on on the ship; everything was extinguished. When we sailed, all the time there were rumors that there would be no light. Before that, there were cases when the Nazis attacked ships. who went inland from the capital. Everyone said that we were going to Ryazan. We arrived in Ryazan and were dropped off at Elatma, near Ryazan.
Moskva River near Krasnokholmskaya embankment. Evacuation of Muscovites in autumn 1941. 
Waiting for the evacuation train at Kazansky railway station. 
Interesting footage. Livestock evacuation! 
The first air alert in Moscow had to be announced on the third day of the war. But at first, German pilots flew only for reconnaissance. Almost immediately, the camouflage of the capital began, which was supposed to save the key objects of the city from German bombs. Particular attention was paid to the Kremlin.
View of the Kremlin from the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. The wall and towers were disguised as residential buildings. 
In his report to Beria dated June 26, 1941, the commandant Spiridonov proposed two options for disguising the Moscow Kremlin. The first provided for the removal of crosses and the destruction of the luster of the gilded domes of the Kremlin cathedrals. The roofs and exposed facades of all the Kremlin buildings were planned to be repainted to look like ordinary houses. The second option differs from it in that false city blocks were to be obtained through a combination of different layouts, and a false bridge was built across the Moscow River to disorient the enemy.
One more frame. Covers were pulled over the spiers of the Kremlin, and a special coloring was applied to the square, creating the illusion of residential areas. 
To camouflage the Kremlin and adjacent territories, a planar imitation is used with repainting of the roofs and open facades of buildings. 
On June 24, orders are issued to blackout residential buildings, enterprises and transport. In the evenings, the city was plunged into darkness. People bumped into each other, public transport began to move more slowly: for example, tram drivers had to press their foreheads against the glass in order to see obstacles on the way.
From the diary of P. Miller:
"In the evening - a flaming sunset behind the large Triumphal Gates, a little to the left. Around 11 o'clock in the evening I wandered around, looking for a tram to get out of Presnya. Terrible darkness."
By the way, white stripes were painted on the walls in the arches of the Spassky, Borovitsky and Arsenalny Gates of the Kremlin to guide the drivers at night. A week after the start of the war, the chimes on the Spasskaya Tower stopped playing. By mid-July, in the Kremlin buildings, they finished pasting the windows with strips of cloth crosswise.
The Mausoleum disguised in 1941. 
Almost simultaneously with the disguise of the Kremlin, a special commission came to the conclusion that it was necessary to take out the body of Lenin from the Mausoleum (although it was “repainted-remade” into an ordinary city building). Experts argued that even one bomb would be enough to raze the tomb to the ground. They took the body of the leader to Tyumen on a special train. His protection along the way was assigned to the Office of the Commandant of the Moscow Kremlin and the NKGB of the USSR. The body of Ilyich safely reached the place, and there he was placed in a two-story stone house, where the scientists who had arrived from Moscow had already settled down. At 5 am on March 28, 1945, Lenin returned to the renovated Mausoleum. And in September 1945, access to the body of Ilyich was open to everyone. 
The disguised Kremlin (especially at first) greatly confused the Nazis. Alas, all precautions could not fully protect this grandiose monument of architecture and history. The Kremlin was bombed already 8 times. But the soldiers themselves said that some unknown force seemed to protect this holy place - some of the bombs (and more than a hundred and fifty were dropped in total) did not explode. Some of those who exploded either caused minimal damage or no damage at all. 
The Manege building in camouflage. 
Masking the Bolshoi Theatre. 
Camouflage coloring of the theater of the Red Army. 
Air raid on Moscow 
Here's what it looked like from the plane. 
Here you can see a fake gallery near the Moscow City Council building. 
The peak of camouflage work in Moscow came in the summer-autumn of 1941, and already in 1942 it was decided to abandon it. Most likely, the camouflage turned out to be ineffective: judging by the German aerial photography, the city has changed little, and the familiar contours were easily read. Yes, and bombed, mostly at night.
The first air raid on Moscow took place on July 21, 1941, but, apparently, it was reconnaissance. The massive bombardment of the city began the next day, exactly one month after the start of the war. It involved about 200 German aircraft. The Soviet Information Bureau reported the destruction of 22 bombers during their first attack, the captured Germans estimated losses at 6-7 vehicles.
During the raid, one of the bombs fell on the Vakhtangov Theater on the Arbat and almost completely destroyed it. On 23 July the bombardment was repeated.
The ruins of the Vakhtangov Theater on the Arbat. 
A direct hit by an air bomb on the administrative building No. 4 on Staraya Ploshchad. October 24, 1941. The raid is better known for the fact that during the bombing, the politician A.S. Shcherbakov received a shell shock; almost all the inhabitants of Zaryadye had glass in their houses, and the girl pilot of the Luftwaffe was personally awarded by Hitler for completing the task. 
Stadium "Dynamo". The stadium itself was camouflaged from enemy air raids and carefully guarded. In the winter of 1942, young spruces were planted on the football field for the purpose of camouflage. From the point of view of today, this attempt to pass off a stadium for a park for German pilots looks naive and not entirely reasonable, but it clearly demonstrates the state's concern for preserving the main sports attraction of the capital. 
But the center of Moscow. The picture was taken on July 24, 1941. 
House on Triumfalnaya, where Interfax and Il-Patio are now. 
From July 21, 1941 to mid-1942, when the most intense bombing ended, the city experienced 95 night and 30 daytime raids. 7202 aircraft participated in them, but only 388 managed to break through to the capital through fighters, anti-aircraft fire and balloons.
Tamara Konstantinovna Rybakova:
“Our house was not far from the Vladimir Ilyich plant, and Goznak was very close to our house, and the Germans tried to hit these objects with their bombs, but they failed to bomb them. The bombs were flying somewhere nearby, including . and on our house ("lighters"), were extinguished by adult residents, members of the air defense, who were on duty on the roof, among them was my mother.After the bombing, my friends and I went out into the street and collected shell fragments in bags and handed them over to scrap (of course, free of charge). And so - until the next bombing. It was very scary when the siren rang, everyone fled to the bomb shelter. I was offended that my mother was almost never with me in the bomb shelter - she was on the roof (attic) and was responsible for putting out the bombs."
Corner of Tverskaya and current Gazetny Lane. The house was either destroyed by a bomb or demolished in the summer of '41. 
Anti-aircraft guns in Gorky Park. 
"Sky Patrol" on Pushkin Square. 
Anti-aircraft machine gun on the roof of the Government House. 
Anti-aircraft crew on Serafimovich Street. 
From the diaries of the writer Arkady Perventsev:
"August 16
They were not allowed to reach Moscow, although Hitler scattered leaflets where he indicated that he would bomb Moscow from the 15th to the 16th, and suggested that women and children go to the front line. He wrote in leaflets that Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili had surrendered to the Germans. This is not true. Yakov Dzhugashvili fought to the last bullet. What happened to him is still unknown. The son of Chapaev and the son of Parkhomenko fought at the front.
September 3
The Germans use the following tactics when raiding Moscow and secret objects: the first plane ignites a fire, and the rest drop bombs on the conflagration.
Fighters patrol the Moscow sky. 
Barrage balloons after night duty. 
Barrage balloon on Tverskoy Boulevard. 
Kaluga area. 
Barrage balloons on Bolshaya Ordynka.
Barrage balloons over Moscow.
Pyatnitskaya street, the building was destroyed as a result of an air strike on July 23, 1941 
Bolshaya Polyanka Street, house No. 50, a direct hit by a land mine in the building of the district committee. From memories: “A relative told me about this air raid, he found her in the area of M. Kamenny Bridge. Several bombs fell in his area, two hit the Tretyakov Gallery, one exploded, killing a policeman, the second got stuck in the ceilings and did not work. Paintings and sculptures by that time were already packed and prepared for evacuation to Novosibirsk".
Downed fascist bomber Ju 88. Sverdlov Square. 
They hide from the bombings in the subway. 
Zoya Vladimirovna Minaeva:
“First we ran to the bomb shelter, and then we began to descend into the Paveletskaya metro station, which was just beginning to be built, deep into it along wooden ladders - my mother, and sister, and I with a bag of crackers and blankets. There were wooden floorings in the tunnels boards, and we all found a place and lay pressed against each other. And in the morning we climbed again, it was more difficult to climb - my mother had a sister in her arms. It probably takes 200 steps or 300 to go upstairs.
Here, at the station, important events are held. Solemn meeting on November 6, 1941, dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. 
Library at metro station "Kurskaya" (Koltsevaya). Of course, the shot is purely staged and propagandistic. According to the recollections of Muscovites who survived the war, there was not enough space at the stations during the bombing, and most took refuge in the tunnels. At the stations, at best, there were women and children, and then only if there was enough space. 
In August 1941, the Germans began to drop not only bombs from planes, but also leaflets in order to undermine the morale of Muscovites. The Soviet authorities responded with an impressive set of propaganda posters.
Muscovites are studying propaganda. 
Book collapse on the Kuznetsk bridge. The picture is taken from Leonid Mitrokhin's article "Photographing the Russian War" (Our Heritage magazine, 1988, No. 6). Margaret Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer present in Moscow during the German attack. Upon returning to the United States, Margaret Bourke-White published the book Photographing the Russian War. 
Similar photo. Apparently it's a staging. 
At the TASS news stand on Tverskaya. 
From memories:
“In the yard we had a lot of fat men and women, and after two months everyone became lean, as the rationing system for food was introduced, beer disappeared from the stalls, around which fat-bellied men always crowded. Food cards were of four categories: “workers "- the most significant, "employees" - worse, "dependent" - the most skinny and, finally, "children's" - with coupons for milk and other baby food.
From memories:
"... an order was issued on the mandatory involvement of the entire able-bodied population of the city in the construction of trenches, clearing yards from fences and sheds, attics from debris, etc. - up to three hours a day, and the non-working population - up to eight hours a day. Only pregnant and lactating women, doctors and patients were released. For refusing such work, a fine of 100 to 300 rubles (about the average salary) was due. "
In early July, the first detachments of boys and girls were sent near Moscow to build defensive structures. On July 4, the State Defense Committee issued a resolution "On the Voluntary Mobilization of the Workers of Moscow and the Moscow Region in the People's Militia Division." Already by July 6, 12 divisions of the people's militia were formed, which included 170 thousand people.
The country's main sports arena, the Dynamo stadium, has turned into a training center for young fighters, into a military training camp. Already on June 27, detachments of the OMSBON (Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purpose) began to form on it, which were then sent behind enemy lines.
Memoirs of a volunteer of the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of Special Purpose E. Teleguev:
“In my free time from combat training, I walked along the streets of Moscow. I noticed the respectful, precautionary attitude of citizens towards me, a young man in military uniform. Once I went into a store to buy white bread. I stood in line. military uniform, asked: "Comrade fighter! What would you like to buy? Somewhat embarrassed by such attention, he answered: "A bun for 7 kopecks."
The saleswoman and the women standing in line began to speak in unison, began to invite to buy a bun without a queue. The saleswoman gave me not one, as I asked, but two buns. On my attempts to refuse one and pay off, she insisted on her own, she did not take the money. Both she and other women told me to gain strength in order to beat the Nazi bandits. He left the store embarrassed, with an ardent desire to justify the hopes of women.
Tverskaya near Mayakovskaya. From the memoirs: “Without rifles, the militias went to the front at that time. Those with rifles are young, except for one with a bald head. My relative (from his wife's side) left with the militia just at that time. Without a rifle. He attacked the tanks with a stick (the rifle was 1 for three, the order was to take weapons in battle). Naturally, he was taken prisoner, from where he returned in the 44-45th. He worked on a farm for a German in the Baltics, apparently they were not considered a prisoner of war. 
Leningrad highway, October 16, 1941 
Defense of Moscow. Muscovites go to the front. The soldiers of one of the workers' battalions of Moscow on a halt. 
Moscow militia. 
The motorcycle battalion is sent to the front. Division of Captain V. Alekseev. 
Novokuznetskaya street. 
In the autumn of 1941, on the initiative of G.K. Zhukov, it was decided to urgently build a ring bypass of Moscow in a simplified version. To speed up the work, sections of existing roads were connected into a ring, overpasses were built at the intersection with highways and railways, floating bridges were built over water barriers. This route became one of the main belts of defense of the capital and contributed to the successful conduct of the counteroffensive operation and the defeat of the Nazis near Moscow. Now at this place of the Moscow Ring Road. 
From memories:
"In October 1941, Moscow became a real front-line city. The front line was half an hour away by car. All freight stations were packed with trains and industrial equipment - they did not have time to take it out. Residents were in a hurry to leave. At the stations and sidings - boxes with paintings and sculptures , museum valuables. At night, hundreds of huge cucumbers rose into the sky - air barrage balloons.
From memories:
“I remember the infamous day of the Moscow panic on October 16, 1941, when German tanks reached Khimki and artillery cannonade was heard. It began with the fact that in the morning people, as usual, went to factories and plants, but unexpectedly returned "pood of wheat flour. Production stopped. I went out into the street: people were walking and running along it. There were also people in the backs of trucks, trolleybuses and buses were overcrowded, some people were sitting on their roofs. I went to the center. There - the same picture. Ashes and unburned paper swirled in the air (documents were burned). Books were sometimes scattered on the sidewalks. On the Kuznetsky bridge near the wall of the house there was a pile of several volumes of Lenin's works. The metro did not work. As it became known later, it was being prepared for mines and explosions. The subway stopped for a day for the first time in the entire history of its existence. "
On November 7, 1941, the famous parade was held on Red Square. It was needed not only to demonstrate the military power of the USSR and raise the morale of the Red Army, but also to stop the panic that arose in the city in October.
Military parade on Red Square. Moscow, November 7, 1941. 
The photo shows servicemen with self-loading rifles Tokarev model 1940 SVT-40 in the "shoulder" position. Single-blade bayonets are attached to the rifles. Behind the back of the soldier is backpack equipment of the 1936 model, on the side are small infantry shovels. 
Soviet medium tanks T-34 on parade. 
The photo is interesting in that the soldiers of the Red Army are wearing winter helmets, canceled in July 1940, and armed with old English machine guns of the Lewis system, (Lewis), brought to Russia in 1917. 
From the diary of a Muscovite L. Timofeev, a philologist:
"November 7
The parade ended and the night passed quietly. The parade was obviously impressive: large and medium tanks even walked along our boulevard past me. It has been snowy in the morning, a blizzard is blowing, it is cold. There were many tanks, and they were new. Buttercup claims to have counted over 600 pieces."
"Recruits go to the front." Marching companies leave for the front directly from Moscow. December 1, 1941. 
Tanks on Tverskaya. 
“After walking along the once verdant boulevards, we go out to the Nikitsky Gates and see confirmation of the strong defense capability of the Capital. An anti-aircraft battery is located right in front of the monument to the great scientist Timiryazev. , but keep the adversaries away from the heart of the Motherland. They are sure of their victory, and the Victory will be theirs!" 
Monument to Timiryazev after the bombing. 
Queue to the branch of the Bolshoi Theatre. December 1941 
Nikitsky Gate Square and Tverskoy Boulevard. 
Muscovites store firewood for the winter. 
"Square of the Prechistensky (in 1941 - Kropotkinsky) Gates. Distribution (and sale in excess of the norm) of firewood" 
The Tver overpass is also a monument to the defense of Moscow. The only one of the surviving pre-war bridges in the Leningrad direction. 
Barricades on Leningradsky Prospekt. 
Trenches at the bridge of the Leningrad highway, outskirts of Moscow. 
Anti-tank barriers at the Kaluga outpost. 
On the Garden Ring, near the Crimean bridge, there are also barricades. 
Original title - "The crew of an anti-tank gun selects and checks the firing sector. Fili area. October 1941." Now here Rublevskoe highway. 
Teachings on Chistoprudny Boulevard. 
There was no strength to leave the field ... Memories of the legendary match that took place in besieged Leningrad on May 31, 1942
BLOCKADE MATCH.
On May 31, St. Petersburg celebrates the 70th anniversary of an incredible event that has gone down in history forever. According to the official version, on May 31, 1942, in the midst of the blockade, a football match was held in Leningrad, in which the players of the local Dynamo met with the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant.
Text by Igor Borunov
Almost everyone in St. Petersburg knows this story in one form or another. Having survived the most terrible winter of 1941-1942, besieged Leningrad was just beginning to recover. The Road of Life was launched, besides, up to 200 wagons of food began to arrive in the city every day ... It was very important to support the belief of the Leningraders that everything would end well. And someone up there came up with an idea: in the besieged city, they should play football against all odds. And they played - at the Dynamo stadium, on Krestovsky Island.
Until now, disputes have not subsided about which match should be considered the very first blockade. Versions are different. It is widely known that the real blockade match took place on May 6th. Football players of the Leningrad "Dynamo", they say, met with the team of the Baltic Navy crew and won with a score of 7:3. Perhaps this was the case, especially since the direct participants in the events insisted on this, in particular the goalkeeper, and later commentator Viktor Nabutov. But there is much more evidence that allows us to consider the game on May 31 between Dynamo and the team representing the Leningrad Metal Plant named after Stalin (LMZ), which included football players from the Leningrad clubs Zenit and Spartak, as well as several workers, as the first official match. For wartime reasons, the name of the rival team of the blue and white sounded like "team of the N-factory."
The meeting ended with a convincing victory for Dynamo, who were better prepared for it - 6:0, but a week later, in the replay, the N-sky plant almost took revenge, achieving a draw - 2:2. After these matches, sports competitions in the besieged city became almost regular.
WHO PLAYED
"Dynamo" - "N-sky plant" - 6:0
"Dynamo": Victor Nabutov, Mikhail Atyushin, Valentin Fedorov, Arkady Alov, Konstantin Sazonov, Viktor Ivanov, Boris Oreshkin, Evgeny Ulitin, Alexander Fedorov, Anatoly Viktorov, Georgy Moskovtsev.
"N-sky plant": Ivan Kurenkov, Alexander Fesenko, Georgy Medvedev, Anatoly Mishuk, Alexander Zyablikov, Alexei Lebedev, Nikolai Gorelkin, Nikolai Smirnov, Ivan Smirnov, Petr Gorbachev, V. Losev.
Judge Pavel Pavlov.
Honored coach of the USSR German Semenovich Zonin came to Leningrad from Kazan in 1949. On the Volga, he attended matches with the participation of Dynamo and Zenit players evacuated from Leningrad.
- The Dynamo team was the hallmark of the city. Everyone knew and loved them. The guys were good. Friendly team. Her soul was Valentin Fedorov, who played for Dynamo together with his brother Dmitry. Almost the entire Zenit team was evacuated, and only a few people from Dynamo left for Kazan. They worked at the factory there and played football on Saturdays. The people at the matches were packed! They played great football. I will never forget how Peka Dementyev (at that time a Zenit footballer. - Ed.) At the request of the public, began to do his tricks. It was simply impossible to take the ball away from him without a foul,” recalls Zonin.
Zonin met the participants in the blockade matches already in Leningrad, when he began to play for Dynamo.
- We met with goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov at the Dynamo stadium. Nabutov returned from his illness, and I trained him every day. I was on good terms with Arkady Alov, but when I arrived, he was already playing not at Dynamo, but at Zenit. I played in Dynamo together with Anatoly Viktorov. Then he left - Vsevolod Bobrov took over, and Viktorov became the champion of the Soviet Union in hockey three times as part of the Air Force. I remember Kostya Sazonov - a handsome guy! Played as a winger. Before matches, he always made a circle around the square by car. The girls were running after him! And then he returned to the stadium, - says Zonin.
I ask German Semenovich to tell about the prehistory of the blockade match.
- The war found Dynamo in Tbilisi. They returned to Leningrad and, as one, enlisted in the ranks of the Red Army. Since they represented the Dynamo society, many worked in the police and the NKVD - they neutralized spies who showed the Germans where to bomb. There was such a young player - Fedor Sychev, a central defender. In the autumn of 1941 he was on duty. The bombing started. Seeing an elderly woman crossing the road, Fyodor decided to help her go to the shelter. At the time of the explosion, he covered her with his body. She survived, but he died, - the veteran of national football sighs.
In addition to Sychev, the harsh wartime did not spare a few more players from that team. Under different circumstances, Nikolaev, Shapkovsky and Kuzminsky died.
– Valentin Fedorov was a good organizer. He and Alov were entrusted with gathering the players. They called in the city committee of the party. Why were they called? Goebbels' propaganda rang out to the whole world that the city of Lenin is the city of the dead, the inhabitants are already beginning to engage in cannibalism. Then the city committee decided to hold a football match. Fedorov and Alov were given the task of gathering the players. The other team was assembled by the trade unions. Of course, people were thin and hungry, but they came out to play, Zonin continues.
"THE GAME IS A MISSION"
Unfortunately, none of the direct participants in those events survived to this day. The last one, Dynamo striker Yevgeny Ulitin, passed away in 2002. It was he who was captured in the only surviving reliable photograph of the blockade match, taken by TASS photojournalist Vasyutinskiy. Let us turn to the blockade memoirs of the organizers of the game, published in newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Valentin FEDOROV, Dynamo midfielder:
- Once, Arkady Alov and I were summoned to the military department of the city party committee. The manager asked which of the players remained in the city, whose addresses or places of service we know. Seeing our bewilderment, he explained: “The military council of the front decided to hold a football match in the besieged city and attaches great importance to this game. Consider it your most important combat mission." The task was difficult. The Dynamo team did not actually exist then. Six players were in Kazan, four were killed, one was seriously injured and evacuated. But picking was not the most difficult. How to play when there was not enough strength even for walking? However, the players gradually gathered, and we started training. We trained twice a week.
Alexander ZYABLIKOV, midfielder and captain of the N-factory team:
- We, the players of the pre-war "Zenith", in the spring of 1942, there were not so few left in the city. Almost everyone worked in the shops of the Metal Plant. For example, I was the deputy head of the air defense department. Naturally, we did not even think about any football. At the beginning of May, I quite by chance ran into Dynamo player Dmitry Fedorov on the street and quite unexpectedly immediately received an offer from him to play with Dynamo. We had more problems with recruitment. I had to collect players from Spartak and other city teams. Some included in the squad never entered the field - they were so exhausted from hunger. Our opponents gave us the form. Dynamo players, who managed to practice a little, offered to play two halves of 45 minutes. The factory workers agreed only to two for 20. “Let's start with half an hour,” I said, going up to Judge Pavlov. “If we endure, then all 45 minutes.” We did not have a goalkeeper, so the defender Ivan Kurenkov got into the goal, but still one more player was missing. Then Dynamo gave us their player Ivan Smirnov. And yet we survived two halves, because we understood: the city must know that we played.
Before the second match on June 7, the N-factory team found the goalkeeper, Kurenkov took his usual place in defense, and the factory workers almost won.
The son of Dynamo goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov, commentator, journalist and producer Kirill Nabutov, admitted that his father did not like to talk about the blockade match. But he told the impressions of another white-and-blue player - Mikhail Atyushin, an operative of the Leningrad police, who before the war played football only at an amateur level.
“I spoke with Mikhail Atyushin, a football player and gymnast who participated in the match and whose name is also on the memorial plaque,” says Nabutov. - He once went to the Dynamo stadium in May to do gymnastics. In the winter months I did not train - blockade, hunger. Came and met the guys-footballers. They say to him: “Oh! Good thing we got you! Come on, let's play." We played, but he did not remember the details very well.
"DO NOT BEAT IN OUT - THERE IS A POTATO"
Beloved by many Leningraders, the Dynamo stadium has hardly changed over the past 70 years, except that buildings designed for other sports have appeared instead of large stands.
In 1942, only one of the three spare fields was suitable for playing football at Dynamo. A German shell fell on the main platform. On the other two, rutabaga and cabbage were grown. And only on the third field, to the left of the main entrance, it was possible to play football, although also not without restrictions.
- When they entered the field, they were told: try not to hit out of bounds, because potatoes are planted there. Blockade potatoes are life. When the first half ended, the players were offered to rest, but they replied that they would not rest, because if they sat down, they would no longer be able to get up, - says German Zonin.
The testimonies of the players allow you to understand how hard it was for them.
Anatoly MISHUK, Zenit player, midfielder of the N-factory team:
- In the spring I was placed in the factory hospital in the last stage of dystrophy. When I got out of there, Zyablikov found me, said that there would be a game. It seems that I was the weakest of ours. I remember such an episode: there is a slight long transmission. I, as I did hundreds of times in pre-war matches, take the ball with my head, and he ... knocks me down.
“OUTSIDE THE WAR, AND HERE IS SOMETHING
SHANTRAPA IS RUNNING THE BALL!”
Information about how many fans there were at the game is different in different sources - from several dozen wounded from a nearby hospital to 350 graduates of command courses. Before the war, Dynamo players were the favorites of the city, they were known by sight, but the hardships of the blockade changed people beyond recognition. Leningraders, who were at the meeting place, were extremely surprised when they realized who was in front of them.
Evgeny ULITIN, Dynamo player:
- On the eve of the game, the unit where I served as a communications sergeant received a telephone message that it was necessary to arrive at the match. Early in the morning I drove to Leningrad in a passing car, got off the truck at Palace Square. Then I walked to the stadium. There he hugged with his comrades, picked up boots and a uniform. “There is a war in the yard, and here some kind of scammer is chasing a ball!” fans were outraged. They just didn't recognize their recent idols. In the first minutes, neither the legs nor the ball obeyed us. But the guys slowly wound up, and the game went on. “Bah! Yes, it's Oreshkin! Nabutov! Fedorovs! - was heard from the stands, which immediately thawed and began to ache to the fullest. Despite the warm day, it was difficult to play, at the end of the match my legs were cramping. However, most of the Dynamo players had much more strength than our rivals. In addition, a field player stood in their gates. This largely explains the large account. In the course of the game, I wanted to change, but with great difficulty we recruited people for two squads. The meeting participants left the field in an embrace. And not only because they were proud of each other - it was just easier to go that way. He returned to the unit near Shlisselburg and barely walked for two weeks.
The players were well aware of the importance of the mission entrusted to them. It was necessary to shame the fascist propaganda and give the city hope for a peaceful life.
Valentin FEDOROV:
- It was difficult. And the muscles ached terribly, and the ball seemed heavier than usual. And he didn't fly very far. But all this was nothing compared to the mood. We understood how important it is to just play…
Indeed, the radio report on the game, which appeared the next day, was met with extraordinary enthusiasm on the front lines. Former Dynamo striker Nikolai Svetlov wrote about this in a letter: “I will never forget the day when in the trenches in the Sinyavinsky swamps, 500 meters from the Germans, I heard a report from the Dynamo stadium. At first I didn't believe it. I ran into the dugout to the radio operators. They confirmed that they are broadcasting football. What happened to the soldiers! Everyone was excited."
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
Around the blockade match, or rather blockade matches - we know that there were several of them - there is a lot of dubious information, and sometimes outright speculation. But what is important is that in the difficult year of 1942 in besieged Leningrad they really played football, and more than once. At the same time, a number of photographs of the supposedly blockade match have nothing to do with it, since they depict a game at the dilapidated Lenin Stadium, and not at all at Dynamo. There was not and could not be a direct radio broadcast to the Soviet and German trenches. On the radio, they talked about the game in a recording.
“There was no report on the enemy trenches,” says Kirill Nabutov. - Intelligence work. In the case of a live report, the Germans would instantly determine where the match was taking place, and they could calmly fire at the crowded place. And so the shots were, but far away. A shell fell a few hundred meters away, and that was it. As always, reality is more modest than the legends that accompany it. I spoke with the Austrian communist Fritz Fuchs. During the blockade, he worked on the Leningrad radio - in German he conducted propaganda news releases that were broadcast to enemy troops. Someone on the radio told him: “Have you heard? They played football at Dynamo yesterday” – “What are you talking about? Of course I'll tell you about it!" And in the news release, he announced the match. There were many blockade matches.
“In 2018 TO THE MONUMENT TO FOOTBALL PLAYERS-
FLOWERS WILL BE PLACED TO BLOCKADERS"
On May 31, on the day of the 70th anniversary of the legendary match, a monument will be unveiled next to the field on which the game took place: two struggling football players, next to it is a bench with flowers and a military uniform. St. Petersburg TV commentator Gennady Orlov hopes that the matter will not be limited to the opening of the monument and the memorial plaque that appeared in 1991.
– Can you imagine, football players and fans from various countries will come to the 2018 World Cup and lay flowers in memory of the victory of the spirit. The participants of the blockade match were dystrophics. They said: “You better not give us a break between halves, because if we stop, we will not be able to get up.” I had the honor to know many of the participants in the match. Amazing people - such inner beauty! This should be sung, and there should be a museum, - Orlov is convinced.
A football match was held at the Dynamo stadium. He had to show that the city not only fights, but also lives, despite.
In April 1942, the Germans dropped leaflets from aircraft. They claimed that “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We are not taking it yet because we are afraid of a deadly epidemic. We wiped this city off the face of the earth."
Leningraders did not agree with this formulation. To show the lies of Nazi propaganda, on May 6, 42, the Leningrad City Executive Committee decided to hold a football match at the Dynamo stadium. The first field was pitted with craters from shells, and a vegetable garden was planted on the second, so we had to use an alternate site.
In the "match of life" the teams of "Dynamo" and the Leningrad Metal Plant (LMZ) met. Moreover, because of the secrecy, the second team of football players was called the "Team of the N-factory." For the same reasons, only graduates of the commander's courses and wounded soldiers from a nearby hospital became fans at the match. It was deadly dangerous to announce the game - the information could fall into the hands of the enemy.
For the match, many Dynamo players had to be recalled from the front - the athletes defended their hometown with weapons in their hands.
The commander of the armored boat Viktor Nabutov was sent to Leningrad from the Oranienbaum bridgehead, chief foreman Boris Oreshkin commanded a patrol boat, Dmitry Fedorov was recalled from the Karelian Isthmus, deputy political instructor of the medical unit Anatoly Viktorov and infantryman Georgy Moskovtsev arrived from near Krasnoye Selo, five more athletes served in the city police detectives.
In the team of rivals from LMZ, they gathered everyone who could play football and had the strength to do so. Of course, not all the starving workers of the plant were able to go to the field. Dynamo even lost their player Ivan Smirnov to the factory workers.
It was decided to play two short halves of 30 minutes. The players moved slowly across the field.
At the very beginning of the game, Zenit midfielder Anatoly Mishuk, who played for LMZ, took the risk of taking the ball on his head and collapsed on the field. He had just been discharged from the hospital, where he was diagnosed with severe dystrophy. During the break, the athletes did not sit on the grass, as they would hardly have stood up again.
In the second half, the Germans saluted in a peculiar way, starting bombing in the area. Football players and fans had to go down to the bomb shelter.
Newsreel fragment depicting the game on May 31, 1942
Of course, Dynamo won against LMZ with a big score - 6:0.
All the players left the field, embracing, without disassembling the teams. Those who were stronger helped their emaciated comrades. The city lived.
The next day at the front, repeaters broadcast a report from this match for the fighters on all radios. Dynamo forward Nikolai Svetlov, sitting in a trench, was surprised to hear: “Smirnov passes along the flank, crosses Fesenko into the penalty area - Dynamo goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov takes the ball in a brilliant jump!”
Goalkeeper of the Dynamo team, armored boat commander Viktor Nabutov (in the future - a well-known Soviet sports commentator, father of journalist Kirill Nabutov)“At first I didn’t believe it, I ran into the dugout to the radio operators, and they confirmed: it’s true, they are broadcasting football. What happened to the soldiers! It was such a military upsurge that if at that moment a signal was given to kick the Germans out of their trenches, they would have had a bad time! ”, Nikolai Svetlov recalled after the war.
In St. Petersburg there is a monument that not everyone knows about - a monument in memory of the football players of besieged Leningrad. The legendary football match that took place 75 years ago had a powerful ideological and psychological impact on the inhabitants of the besieged city and on the enemy. Famous Leningrad footballers of that time changed their tunics for T-shirts to prove that Leningrad is alive and will never surrender.
In August 1941, two months after the start of the Great Patriotic War, a powerful offensive of fascist troops on Leningrad began. The German command hoped to capture the cradle of the revolution as soon as possible, and then move on to Moscow. But Leningraders - both adults and children - stood shoulder to shoulder to protect their native city.
But it was not possible to take Leningrad, and then the Nazis decided to strangle the city in a blockade. In August, the Germans managed to block the Moscow-Leningrad road and the blockade ring was closed by land. There were 2.5 million people in the city, of which about 400 thousand were children. And even in the most difficult conditions of the city and the bombings, Leningraders continued to work and fight. During the blockade, more than 640 thousand people died of starvation and more than 17 thousand died from shells and bombs.
In the spring of 1942, fascist planes periodically scattered leaflets over the Red Army units: “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We do not take it yet, because we are afraid of a cadaveric epidemic. We wiped this city off the face of the earth." But it was not so easy to break the inhabitants of the city.
Today it is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of football, but on May 6, 1942, the Leningrad City Executive Committee decided to hold a football match at the Dynamo stadium. And on May 31, a football match was held between the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant and Dynamo. This match refuted all the arguments of fascist propaganda - the city did not just live, it also played football.
It was not easy to recruit 22 people to participate in the match. For participation in the match from the front line, former football players were recalled. They understood that they would not only please the inhabitants of the city with their game, but also demonstrate to the whole country that the city is alive.
The Dynamo team included players who played for this club even before the war, but the factory team turned out to be heterogeneous - those who were still strong enough to enter the field and knew how to play football played for it.
Not all athletes were able to enter the field. Many were so emaciated that they could hardly move. The very first ball that Zenit midfielder Mishuk took on his head knocked him down. After all, he had recently been discharged from the hospital after being treated for dystrophy.
They played on the reserve field of the Dynamo stadium, since the main one was simply “plowed up” by bomb craters. The fans were wounded from a nearby hospital. The match took place in two shortened halves of 30 minutes each, and the players had to spend the second half under bombardment. It seems incredible that exhausted and exhausted players managed to hold out for so long on the field.
At first, the players moved so slowly that the action on the field had little resemblance to sports competitions. If a footballer fell, then his comrades picked him up - he couldn’t get up on his own. During breaks, they did not sit on the lawn, because they knew that they would not be able to get up. Athletes left the field in an embrace - it was much easier to walk that way.
Needless to say, this match was a real feat! Ours, the Germans, and the inhabitants of Leningrad learned about the fact of this match. This last match really lifted the spirit. Leningrad survived and won.
In 1991, a memorial plaque was installed at the Leningrad Dynamo stadium with the words “Here, at the Dynamo stadium, on the most difficult days of the blockade on May 31, 1942, Dynamo Leningrad held a historical blockade match with the team of the Metal Plant” and silhouettes of football players. And in 2012, a monument to the participants of a football match was opened in St. Petersburg at the Dynamo stadium, the author of the monument is People's Artist of Russia Salavat Shcherbakov.
The legendary Nikifor Kolyada, nicknamed Batya by the partisans, was an outstanding personality. Tales are told about people like him. At the zenith of military glory, already being a laureate of the Order of Lenin, Kolyada, treated kindly by journalists, fell under the relentless wheels of the repression machine.
At the beginning of life
The history of Kolyada is full of exciting twists and turns. The future hero was born in 1891 in the Kharkov province, on the Kostev farm, in the family of a poor peasant. The help of the sisters allowed him to finish a three-year city school, which was a great achievement for a peasant child. Having started the path of the military even before the revolution, Kolyada, with the rank of ensign, went through the First World War, and then decisively supported the Bolsheviks, became a member of the city Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. For Bolshevik agitation, the Petliurists threw him in prison, but Kolyada escaped and created one of the first partisan detachments in the Smolensk region. He successfully defended Vinnitsa from the troops of Ataman Shepel, smashed Petlyura, and in 1920 was appointed military commissar of the 57th Infantry Division. The young hero of the revolution, who had not yet grown a full beard and had not received the nickname Batya, even then showed himself to be an outstanding person with excellent abilities for organization, command and bold tactical decisions. In his free time, Kolyada was constantly studying. When the country calmed down a little, he entered the Chinese department of the Far Eastern University and left there knowing two languages - English and Chinese.
"No Activity Data"
The characteristic issued to Kolyada's relatives after his arrest says: "During the time he was in the partisan detachments (July - September 1942), the former commander of the partisan detachments, Kolyada, showed himself exclusively from the negative side." Every letter of this reply breathes lies.
On June 22, 1941, Nikifor Kolyada was already 50 years old. He held a good position and was not subject to conscription because of his age, but he immediately wrote a statement to the Central Committee with a request to send him to the front. Taking into account Bati's partisan experience, he was sent to the Smolensk region in the German rear, where in a year, under the most difficult conditions, he gathered tens of thousands of people around him and created a strong, combat-ready partisan movement. By July 1942, he was already leading the activities of 20 detachments in six districts. Bati's fighters blocked roads and destroyed enemy communications, blew up railway tracks. At the height of the war, they liberated more than 230 settlements in which they restored Soviet power, and also removed more than a thousand children from the occupation. The operation of the Nazis to destroy the partisans "The Last Harvest" and an attempt to knock them out of their stronghold - Sloboda - failed.
Arrest
At the end of September, Batya was urgently summoned to Moscow. He attended a reception with the secretary of the Central Committee Andreev and the commander of the partisan movement Voroshilov, and immediately after he was arrested. Having avoided falling under the comb of repression in the 30s, Kolyada still did not escape his fate. Formally, he was accused of treacherous work in favor of the German occupiers and the fight against the local population, turning a blind eye to the fact that policemen acted as the local population, and also that “cattle, food, fodder were confiscated from the population, which led to discredit Soviet power", in an unstable moral character (despite the fact that Kolyada was married, he started relationships with partisan girls).
In fact, the reason for the arrest, most likely, was the conflict with the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement P. Ponomarenko, who opposed large partisan formations, as well as disagreements with the secretary of the Smolensk Regional Committee D. Popov. According to Ponomarenko, Batya criticized the leadership in his presence: “The leaflets scattered by the regional committee do not matter. Party organs have discredited themselves. Retreat, evacuation, etc. undermined the confidence of the people in the party organ. We must scatter leaflets on behalf of persons who have won the respect of the people by their struggle. My leaflets signed by me in the Smolensk region could play a big role. I am known everywhere."
During interrogations, Batya did not admit the charge of betrayal, and the report of the NKVD officer who conducted the search in the apartment speaks well of the facts of looting. "The arrest was not imposed, since the defendant has no valuable personal property," the report said.
Nevertheless, the wheels began to spin, and Nikifor Kolyada was sentenced to labor camps for a period of 20 years. He was released ahead of schedule immediately after the death of Stalin, fully rehabilitated and found not guilty. But the health of the hero of the Smolensk region was already severely undermined - the legendary Batya died of a heart attack in March 1955.
Didn't have time to convert
Repression and constant rotation of personnel is one of the essential features of a totalitarian system. The story of Bati is a textbook example of how a bright, charismatic person, accustomed to proving patriotism not with words, but with deeds, fell into her millstone. Having concentrated several thousand armed fighters under his command, having wide popularity and the disposition of the masses, as well as a certain popularity in the West (the Queen of England even awarded him with a personalized dagger), Nikifor Kolyada could not help but cause fear at the top, especially since he was not restrained in his language and allowed himself to sharply criticize the authorities. In the era of screw-downs, such an outcome, unfortunately, is not uncommon.