A forgotten name

Blank spots in history exist for two reasons: either because there are no extant historical documents or eyewitness accounts, or because official propaganda, for ideological reasons, doled out information in carefully measured doses, suppressing individual events and names that the public was forbidden to know. Fragments of World War II history are no exception, despite the abundance of literature, including memoirs. Which Soviet commanders ever told the truth in their memoirs about the penal battalions and human wave assaults? This is also true of the defense of Kyiv in July- August 1941. Many books and articles have been written about the heroic deeds of Red Army commanders and fighters who defended Kyiv, and whose names have been immortalized for all time. At the same time deliberate efforts were made to suppress the name of a man under whose command the Soviet forces repelled the onslaught of the German Wehrmacht for 71 days. During this period the Germans tried to capture Ukraine’s capital as part of a frontal attack, i.e., in a direct head-on confrontation.

In the early days of July 1941, after a tank battle victory outside Dubno and the hasty occupation of Berdychiv, the Wehrmacht’s 1st Panzer Group, commanded by Ewald von Kleist, rapidly exploited its success and, advancing in a V- formation, entered a 60-kilometer breach between the 5th and 6th armies of the Southwestern Front. On July 11, 1941, the forward elements of this panzer group approached Kyiv along the Irpin River. There were almost no regular Soviet forces on this stretch of the frontline, and during the four days that it took the retreating Red Army units to arrive there, the defense was maintained by cadets from Kyiv military academies, the 4th Detached Motorized Rifle Regiment of the NKVD, militias, and units of the 147th Rifle Division. They foiled the enemy’s attempt to capture Kyiv in a hasty attack. When reserves arrived and occupied positions in the fortified area of Kyiv, fierce fighting broke out and outlying areas changed hands several times. Nonetheless, on Aug. 6 the enemy forces succeeded in breaching the first line of the fortified area and wedging themselves into the Soviet defense. The situation was critical, not in the least because the Soviet forces lacked coordination: the disparate brigades and divisions were subordinated directly to the Southwestern Front headquarters, which also commanded four other armies. Therefore, in order to coordinate all the forces involved in the defense of Kyiv, the 37th Army was formed in three days (Aug. 8-10). It is precisely here that we come across a blank spot.

In describing the skilled organization of combat operations and heroism of the 37th Army, which in fact did not surrender Kyiv to the enemy but was forced to abandon the city on orders from the Supreme Commander in Chief, Soviet historians have “forgotten” to mention the name of the commander of the 37th Army. This army was commanded by Major General Andrey Vlasov — the Andrey Vlasov who, one year after being captured by the Germans in July 1942, formed the Russian Liberation Army manned by Soviet POWs who had fought for Nazi Germany. The general’s name thus became synonymous with high treason. But history, whether good or bad, cannot be rewritten. Historians wrote many negative things about the general, preferring to omit his accomplishments. This explains why the official history of Kyiv’s defense mentions an army without a commander. Let us consult the literature.

On the following day after it was formed, “the 37th Army launched a fierce counterattack against the enemy, liberating the settlements of Teremky and Mysholovka on Aug. 11, and Zhuliany, Tarasivka, Chabany, Novosilky, and Pyrohiv on Aug. 12-14. The Soviet forces continued their counterattack until Aug. 16. The troops and commanders of the regular forces and militias displayed valor and courage.” (The History of Kyiv, vol. 3, bk. 1., Naukova Dumka, Kyiv, 1985, p. 321). “With four divisions and an airborne corps (the one commanded by Oleksandr Radimtsev, mentioned in works on the defense of Kyiv — Author) the 37th Army dealt a heavy blow to the enemy. The infantry attack began at dawn on Aug. 11, after a barrage from our Katiusha rocket launchers. The strike came unexpectedly. Fierce fighting broke out in Holosiyivka Forest. At the same time our forces launched an attack in the vicinity of Zhuliany. The enemy suffered heavy losses. According to F. Haldner’s testimony, the 6th Army was losing some 1,600 soldiers every day near Kyiv.” (The History of the Ukrainian SSR, vol. 7, Naukova Dumka, Kyiv, 1977, p. 37).

After being appointed commandant of the Kyiv fortified area, where he received orders to form an army out of untrained reservists, Major-General Vlasov united under his command elements that until then had no general command. Within a short period he managed to organize a concerted operation. It should be noted that this was the first time that Vlasov was in command of an army. Until then his highest military position in peacetime was commanding the 99th Rifle Division, which became the best division in the Red Army. When the war broke out, he was commander of the 6th Army’s 4th Mechanized Corps, which fought valiantly in the first month of the war. Thanks to his wise organization of defenses and able command of the forces in the Kyiv fortified area, the 37th Army repelled attacks from 17 enemy divisions over a period of 71 days. Vlasov was determined to defend Kyiv to the last man and abandoned it only on orders from the Supreme Commander in Chief. In those heroic days the defenders of Kyiv proudly called themselves Vlasovites in tribute to their able commander.

The fruitless attempts to capture the Ukrainian capital by means of frontal attacks forced Hitler to suspend the advance on Moscow in mid-September and throw Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group in an attack designed to capture Kyiv from the north. At the same time divisions of Kleist’s 1st Panzer Group, stationed to the south of Kremenchuk, were also ordered to attack Kyiv. This created a dangerous situation in which the forces in Kyiv and those on the Southwestern Front found themselves under threat of encirclement. The only solution was to pull back the forces immediately, but this was not done. Why?

In his book, Spohady i rozdumy (Reminiscences and Reflections), Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgi Zhukov writes that he anticipated this course of events and supposedly advised Stalin to pull back the forces from Kyiv. But Stalin disagreed and ordered Zhukov to “stop babbling nonsense.” Zhukov responded by offering his resignation as Chief of Staff, which Stalin duly accepted. However, a simple comparison of the date of this alleged conversation with the timeline of the critical situation in Kyiv casts doubt on Zhukov’s story. It is common knowledge that Stalin fired Zhukov from his post on July 29, 1941. Thus, according to Zhukov’s own words, this conversation took place that same day. However, in late July the situation in Kyiv was not critical enough to begin pulling out the forces. Hitler decided to stop the advance on Moscow and redirect his forces toward Kyiv only during the third week of August, and the operation to capture Kyiv did not begin until early September. At that point Semen Budenny, Commander in Chief of the Southwestern Front, proposed that the Supreme Commander in Chief order the withdrawal of forces from the area. However, Stalin waffled, which would make him ultimately responsible for the destruction of the entire front. But things are not all that simple.

Let us consult Volume Seven of The History of the Ukrainian SSR. To prevent the attack on the Kyiv formations from the north, “General Headquarters ordered General A[ndrei] I. Yeremenko, commander of the Briansk Front, to launch a flank attack on Guderian’s panzer group. Speaking with Stalin over a hot line, Yeremenko assured Stalin that Guderian’s panzer group would be defeated. Based on this assessment, Stalin rejected the proposal from the command of the Southwestern Front to withdraw forces from Kyiv immediately” (p. 41). We all know the price of the guarantees given by Yeremenko, a future Marshal of the Soviet Union: his excessive self- confidence (or chest-thumping) resulted in one of the biggest military catastrophes in the history of warfare. Interestingly enough, Yeremenko escaped punishment despite an existing precedent: the commander of the Western Front, General Dmitriy Pavlov, and the entire front command were executed for a similar fiasco in Belarus in June 1941. Could this be another historical enigma? General Headquarters permitted the withdrawal of forces from Kyiv only on the night of Sept. 18, three days after Guderian and Kleist’s tanks closed the circle around the Southwestern Front in the vicinity of Lokhvytsia. However, the command and headquarters of the Southwestern Front failed to ensure an organized pullout. Uncoordinated, the front’s armies broke into smaller groups that tried to fight their way out of the encirclement, each one on its own. It took Vlasov six weeks to break out of the encirclement. He fought his way through the enemy’s rear all the way from Kyiv to Kursk.

Once outside the circle, Vlasov received orders from Stalin to command another army. Under his command the 20th Army distinguished itself in the battle of Moscow. Twice in a single month Vlasov’s picture was published in central newspapers alongside those of Moscow’s other heroic defenders. In January 1942 he organized an offensive operation on the Lama River and carried it out according to all the rules of advanced warfare. For decades thereafter this operation was studied by cadets in military academies across the USSR as an example of how to plan battles and organize reconnaissance, engineering and logistics support, and aircraft defense. This earned Vlasov a promotion to Lieutenant-General and the ultimate Soviet decoration, the Order of Lenin. On Feb. 7, 1942, he was appointed (for one month) deputy commander of the restored Southwestern Front. In March Stalin appointed Vlasov deputy commander of the Volkhovsk Front and sent him to rescue the encircled 2nd Shock Army, which was later abandoned by General Headquarters without ammunition and food. Certain works, among them a collection of documents and essays on the history of the Vlasov movement, which was published in Moscow by the Historical Archives Institute of Russian State Humanitarian University (11th ed., 1997) indicate that, contrary to the claims of Russian historians, Vlasov did not surrender. Instead, residents of a village in Leningrad oblast found him weak and exhausted after trying to break out of the encirclement. They later handed Vlasov over to the Germans.

What happened next is common knowledge. Soviet propaganda blackened General Vlasov’s reputation. But who knows how the general’s life would have turned out if he had not been betrayed twice by his own leaders.