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Rating: Moskva, night between 25th and 26th October 1941. Military District
- …beeeeeep…beeeeeep…(*)…General Artemyev!
- Comrade General! Gather as many men and vehicles as possible to march on Red Square for the anniversary of the Revolution! The fascist beasts will not stop us! The parade will take place!
- …uhm Comrade Stalin, with all the commitment that…you know perfectly well that preparation requires much more time…then we have the Germans at the gates…I wouldn't know…uhm…
- Comrade General, I urge you to bypass the bureaucracy!
- …uhm…I'll do my best Comrade Stalin!
- I'm sure of it! I want everything ready for the next 7th of November and nothing to leak from the Kremlin walls until the day before! For safety reasons, the parade will start two hours ahead of schedule, so at 7 in the morning!
- ……at your orders Comrade Stalin!
- Do svidaniya!...click.beep-beep-beep…
- DAMN MATRYOSHKA!!!
Moskva, 7th November 1941. Red Square
- …Grisha…pssst, Grishaaa!
- …what do you want Jurij!
- …how many of us are marching?
- …I don’t know exactly Jurij but it seems that Comrade General Artemyev managed to assemble about twenty divisions!
- …but is it true that we won't return to the barracks after the parade?
- …I'm afraid not Jurij…we are heading to the front…wait I can't talk now…
- …comrade red soldiers and red sailors, commanders and political leaders, partisans and partisans! The whole world looks at you as a force capable of annihilating the brigand hordes of the German invaders… … …the war you are leading is a war of liberation, a just war…let the daring figures of our great ancestors Aleksandr Nevskij, Dmitrij Donskoy… … …may the victorious banner of the great Lenin be the sign that guides you! For the complete defeat of the German conquerors! Death to the German invaders! Long live our glorious Motherland, its freedom, its independence! Under the banner of Lenin, forward, to victory!...
- …tell me Jurij, I couldn't respond to you with my eyes turned towards the mausoleum… under Comrade Stalin's gaze…
- …so, are we going to the front?
- …I heard the fritz have reached Kalinin! Do you understand? 140 versts! (**) they evacuated two million Muscovites and some were even sent to Alma Ata!...
- Damn!...
- …wait Jurij, Comrade Maestro Agapkin is performing the Internationale…
- …will we return home?...
“The eye of the nation”, Dmitrij Baltermants, photojournalist of Izvestija, the Soviet press organ, is there that cold morning of November 7, 1941. The Germans don't seem to stop even in front of the imposing Russian winter. The commander of the Moscow military district, General Pavel Artemyev managed, with an olympic-worthy timing, to hastily organize an event that would have required at least three months of preparation. Despite a good part of the means and soldiers being engaged at the front, 28,000 military personnel trampled the cobbles of Red Square covered by a few spans of snow.
According to the dictator, the parade for the XXIV Anniversary of the October Revolution would lift the morale of the citizens and soldiers, in those days situated well below ground level. Baltermants is wearing a Zorkj, an ushanka (fur hat), and a coat. The falling crystals rest gently on the coarse fabric like the epaulettes of a uniform and his frozen fingers withstand the blows of a sterile yet cutting wind.
Many hope that Red Square will never end. Someone tries to suppress the insistence of a gag reflex, someone shudders with pride as Stalin proclaims the feats of the tsarist generals. The mustached one, this time, has managed to handle emotions well.
Someone attempts to disguise the tension by counting steps that miss the lithic surface of the square by a few millimeters, and there are those who succumb to hidden dismay when the colorful spires of St. Basil’s Cathedral flatten to the point of disappearing from the field of view.
The dominant color in Baltermants’ shots is lead. In every sense. Leaden is the sky, clear in negative and able to highlight the Kremlin structures like precisely outlined spots drawn in pencil. The gunpowder pricks the nostrils covering the freshness of the seemingly heavy snow. The stench of sauerkraut is so close that during the reading of a war bulletin, the "Die Fahne hoch" sung by the advancing Germans manages to ride the Soviet radio waves. There is no more time. Hitler is doing better than Napoleon…
Moskva, 20th November 1941. Kremlin
An extremely worried Stalin, after several kilometers walked up and down in his office, enveloped in a thick cloud of tar, dials a number.
- …beeeeeep…General Zhukov!
- Are you sure we will be able to hold Moskva? I ask you with pain in my heart. Tell me honestly, as a communist!
- … … …we will hold!
Petrischevo, 29th November 1941
The Soviet guerrilla Zoja Kosmodem’yanskaja, saboteur of the partisan reconnaissance unit no. 9903, was captured during a "scorched earth" action against a garage occupied by SS officers. After the customary violence and torture, the Germans will hang a sign on her shoulders reading “Brandstifterin” (Incendiary). Before a hemp rope takes her life with a jolt, Zoja will exclaim: “For how many of us they hang, they won’t be able to hang us all, they won’t be able to hang all 170 million people defending the Soviet Union!”.
Her body will be left hanging at the gates of the village for forty days and the Germans will desecrate it all the while. Zoja was 18 years old and still, in Moskva, at the foot of a statue located at the “Partizanskaja” metro station, flowers are laid.
Perhuskovo, 2nd December 1941. Headquarters of Zhukov.
- …beeeeeep…beeeeeep…General Stepanov!
- Any news Comrade General?
-…Comrade Stalin, the Germans have reached Maslovo but the situation is under control. I find it necessary to suggest relocating the headquarters further east, Comrade Stalin! For precautionary purposes, you understand…
- …mmh, do you have shovels?
-… … … … … …uhm, shovels? … … … …uhm… … …certainly Comrade Stalin!
- Comrade Stepanov! If there are shovels, then dig your grave because no one is moving from there. I am not leaving Moskva and neither will you!...beep-beep-beep-beep…
Go to Google Maps and enter the Russian capital in the search box, Earth or Satellite mode depending on the browser. Set a starting point on Red Square and enter in "Directions," the Leningradskoye Shosse. It is the highway leading to Sheremetyevo airport. The artery rises at the end of Tverskaya, after the ring to the northwest of St. Basil's Cathedral. Drag a point for 41 km, give or take a few hectometers. You have arrived, indeed, at the infamous "Km 41," where a Soviet-era monument marks the furthest point reached by the German troops. To be precise, according to KGB archives, an abundant 90% of advancing Nazis were halted at "Km 41." Some soldiers from the SS Regiment "Deutschland" reached the trolleybus depot 27 km from the Kremlin, while a platoon from the 258th Infantry Division was repelled at Khimki Bridge (20 km) visible on the same motorway. Kutuzov in 1812 stopped Napoleon's armies at Maloyaroslavets, 100 km from the capital.
A little further back, before the airport exit, next to a trace of the West (an Ikea warehouse), there is a statue representing "Horses of Frisia." At that height, the Soviet lionesses of the "Narodnoe Opolchenie" (People's Volunteers) dug thousands of kilometers of anti-tank ditches, laid barbed wire, and placed the spikes that should have hindered a possible panzer advance. If they hadn't been moistened by snow crystals, they would have remained practically untouched.
(*) Stalin was accustomed, with the following of wild and not merely politburo members, to linger in furious meetings and/or banquets until the early hours of the morning. In those days dictated by a frenzied pace imposed by terror, a phone call from the dictator could come at any moment. The reckless interlocutor who wouldn't answer by the third ring would hardly hold the same role the next day.
(**) A unit of measurement used in the Tsarist Empire but not disused in the Soviet era, equal to 1.066 meters.
The first two dialogues, except for what was said by Stalin in the second, although evoking real events, are purely imaginary. But not too much.
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