Help-report "About 28 Panfilov"

As indicated at the very beginning of the document, in November 1947, “The Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Kharkov Garrison was arrested and held criminally liable for treason against Mr. Ivan Yevstafyevich DOBROBABIN” .

In November 1947, the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Kharkov Garrison was arrested and held criminally liable for treason against I. Ye. Dobrobabin . According to the case file, being at the front, Dobrobabin voluntarily surrendered to the Germans and in the spring of 1942 entered his service. He served as police chief of the village of Perekop, Valkovsky district, Kharkov region, temporarily occupied by the Germans. In March 1943, during the liberation of the area from the Germans, Dobrobabin, as a traitor, was arrested by the Soviet authorities, but he fled from custody, went back to the Germans and again got a job in the German police, continuing active traitorous activities, arrests of Soviet citizens and the direct implementation of forced sending labor to Germany ^[1] .

During his arrest, Dobrobabin found a book about 28 Panfilov heroes, and it turned out that he was listed as one of the main participants in this heroic battle, for which he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. By the interrogation of Dobrobabin, it was established that in the Dubosekova area he was indeed slightly wounded and captured by the Germans, but he did not perform any feats, and everything that is written about him in the book about the Panfilov heroes does not correspond to reality ^[1] . In this regard, the USSR Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office conducted a thorough investigation into the history of the battle at the Dubosekovo junction. The results were reported by the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Armed Forces of the country Lieutenant-General of Justice N. P. Afanasyev to the Prosecutor General of the USSR G. N. Safonov on May 10, 1948. On the basis of this report, on June 11 a certificate was drawn up signed by Safonov, addressed to A. A. Zhdanov ^[1] .

For the first time publicly about the authenticity of the history of the Panfilovs were doubted by E. V. Cardin , who published the article “Legends and Facts” ^[2] in the journal “ New World ” (February 1966). After that, however, he received a personal rebuke from Leonid Brezhnev , who called the denial of the official version “slander the heroic history of our party and our people” ^[3] .

In the late 1980s, a number of new publications followed. An important argument was the publication of declassified materials from the investigation by the military prosecutor’s office of 1948. In 1997, the article “New about Soviet heroes” was published in the journal “New World” by Nikolai Petrov and Olga Edelman, stating (including on the basis of the top secret reference “About 28 Panfilovs” cited in the article) On May 10, 1948, the official version of the feat was studied by the USSR Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office and was recognized as a literary fiction ^[1] .

In particular, these materials contain the testimony of the former commander of the 1075th rifle regiment I. V. Kaprov : ^[1]

... There was no battle between 28 Panfilovs and German tanks at the Dubosekovo junction on November 16, 1941 - it was a complete fiction. On this day, at the junction Dubosekovo, as part of the 2nd battalion, the 4th company fought with German tanks, and really fought heroically. More than 100 people died from the company, not 28, as it was written in the newspapers. None of the correspondents turned to me during this period; I never told anyone about the battle of 28 Panfilovs, and I couldn’t speak, since there was no such battle. I did not write any political reports about this. I do not know on the basis of what materials they wrote in the newspapers, in particular in the Red Star, about the battle of 28 guardsmen from the division to them. Panfilov. At the end of December 1941, when the division was assigned to the formation, the Red Star correspondent Krivitsky came to my regiment, along with representatives of the political department of the division Glushko and Egorov. Here I first heard about 28 Panfilov guardsmen. In a conversation with me, Krivitsky said that it was necessary that there be 28 Panfilov Guardsmen who were fighting with German tanks. I told him that the whole regiment, and in particular the 4th company of the 2nd battalion, fought with German tanks, but I don’t know anything about the battle of the 28 Guardsmen ... The memory of Krivitsky was given by Captain Gundilovich , who led him on this topic, there were no documents about the 28 Panfilov’s combat in the regiment and there could not be. Nobody asked me about the names. Subsequently, after lengthy clarifications of the names, it was not until April 1942 that the divisional headquarters sent ready-made award sheets and a general list of 28 guardsmen to my regiment for signature. I signed these sheets for assigning the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to 28 guardsmen. I did not know who initiated the list and award lists for 28 guardsmen.

The materials of interrogation of the correspondent Koroteev are also given (number 28 clarifying the origin): ^[1]

Around November 23-24, 1941, I was with the war correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper Chernyshev at the headquarters of the 16th Army ... When we left the army headquarters, we met the commissar of the 8th Panfilov Division, Egorov, who spoke about the extremely difficult situation at the front and reported that our people are heroically fighting in all areas. In particular, Egorov cited the example of a heroic battle of a company with German tanks, 54 tanks attacked the line of the company, and the company detained them, having destroyed some. Yegorov himself was not a participant in the battle, but told from the words of the regimental commissar, who also did not participate in the battle with German tanks ... Yegorov recommended writing in a newspaper about the heroic battle of a company with enemy tanks, having first got acquainted with the political message received from the regiment ...

The political replay talked about fighting the fifth company with enemy tanks and that the company was “dead” - dead, but not retreating, and only two people turned out to be traitors, raised their hands to surrender to the Germans, but they were destroyed by our fighters. The report did not mention the number of soldiers of the company who died in this battle, and did not mention their names. We did not establish this either from conversations with the regiment commander. It was impossible to get into the regiment, and Egorov did not advise us to try to enter the regiment ^[1] .

Upon arrival in Moscow, I reported the situation to the editor of the newspaper “Krasnaya Zvezda” Ortenberg , told about the battle of the company with the enemy tanks. Ortenberg asked me how many people were in the company. I answered him that the composition of the company apparently was incomplete, about 30-40 people; I also said that two of these people were traitors ... I did not know that the front line was preparing for this topic, but Ortenberg once again called me and asked how many people were in the company. I answered him that about 30 people. Thus, the number of 28 people who fought appeared, since two out of 30 turned out to be traitors. Ortenberg said that it was impossible to write about two traitors, and, apparently, after consulting with someone, he decided to write about one traitor in the front line ^[1] .

Interrogated secretary of the newspaper Krivitsky showed: ^[1]

When I was talking in PUR with comrade Krapivin, he was interested in where I got the words of political instructor Klochkov written in my basement: “Russia is great and there is nowhere to retreat behind Moscow,” I replied that it was me who invented it ...

... In terms of sensations and actions, the 28 heroes are my literary speculation. I did not talk to any of the wounded or surviving Guardsmen. Of the local population, I spoke only with a boy of about 14–15, who showed the grave where Klochkov is buried.

... In 1943, from the division, where 28 Panfilov heroes fought, they sent me a certificate of conferring the rank of guard on me. In the division I was only three or four times.

The conclusion of the investigation of the prosecutor's office: ^[1]

Thus, the investigation materials established that the feat of 28 Panfilov Guardsmen, highlighted in print, is a figment of the correspondent of Koroteyev, the editor of the Red Star Ortenberg, and especially the literary secretary of the newspaper Krivitsky.

The main military prosecutor's office of the USSR was engaged in the circumstances of the feat in 1988, as a result of which the chief military prosecutor, Lieutenant-General of Justice A. F. Katusev, published the article “Alien glory” in the Military Historical Journal (1990, No. 8-9). In it, he concluded that “the massive feat of the whole company, the whole regiment, the whole division by the irresponsibility of not entirely bona fide journalists downplayed to the scale of a mythical platoon” ^{[4] [5]} . Director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Historical Sciences S. V. Mironenko ^[6] shares the same opinion. ]] ^[6] .

The marshal of the Soviet Union, D. T. Yazov , spoke in defense of the official version, relying, in particular, on the study “Academic feat and forgery” by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, G. A. Kumanyov . In September 2011, the newspaper “ Sovetskaya Rossiya ” published the article “Shamelessly ridiculed feat”, which included a letter from the Marshal criticizing Mironenko ^[7] . Komsomolskaya Pravda published the same letter with small abbreviations ^[8] :

... It turned out that not all "twenty-eight" were lost. <...> The fate of D. A. Kuzhebergenov and I. Ye. Dobrobabin, also survivors, but for various reasons excluded from the list of Heroes and who have not been reinstated in this capacity for the time being, although their participation in the battle at the junction was not easy. Dubosekovo, in principle, is beyond doubt, as GA Kumanyov, a doctor of historical sciences, convincingly proved in his study, who personally met them. <...> By the way, the fate of these very “resurrected from the dead” Panfilov heroes was the reason for writing in May 1948 the letter of the Chief Military Prosecutor Lieutenant General of Justice N. P. Afanasyev to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B) A. A Zhdanov ... However, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov ... immediately determined that all the materials of the “investigation of the case of 28 Panfilovs”, set out in the letter of the Chief Military Prosecutor, were too clumsy, the conclusions, as they say, are “sewn with white threads”. <...> As a result of further progress, the “case” was not given, and it was sent to the archive ...

D.T. Yazov and G.A. Kumanyov refer to the correspondent of the “Red Star” A.Yu. Krivitsky, who (later, in the 1970s) recalled the course of the investigation ^[9] :

I was told that if I refused to testify that I completely invented the description of the fight at Dubosekovo and that I did not speak to any of the seriously injured or survived Panfilov before publishing the article, I would soon find myself in Pechora or Kolyma. In such a situation, I had to say that the fight at Dubosekovo is my literary fiction.

The fact that 28 Panfilov’s troops at the junction of Dubosekovo were unjustly questioned about the fact of the battle with German tanks was also noted by Academician Yu.A. Polyakov ^[10] . In 2012 and. about. Head Candidate of Historical Sciences KS Drozdov ^[11] published the scientific archive of the IRI RAS and published documents from the scientific archive of the Institute of Russian History (IRI) of the RAS, including transcripts of conversations with Panfilov members of the battles near Moscow, which were recorded by the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War in 1942-1947. Based on them, he called the conclusions of the military prosecutor’s office insolvent and raised a number of questions: ^{[12] [13]}

1. Why did the Dobrobabin case suddenly lead the investigators of the military procurators in 1948 to such far-reaching conclusions that the feat of the 28, which the whole country knew by that time, did not exist at all, that it was a solid legend and fiction?
2. Why did the former commander of the 1075th regiment, Kaprov, in 1948 show that there was no battle of 28 Panfilovs at the junction Dubosekovo, although in January 1942 he himself sent documents for awarding the dead?
3. Why were the surviving direct participants in the battle at the Dubosekovo Vasilyev and Shemyakin junction, who were awarded state awards back in 1942, not were questioned as witnesses in this case? The question is - who was it profitable?

Under the assumption of K. S. Drozdov, this case was of a “custom-made” character against G. K. Zhukov , who was one of the main initiators of the award ceremony for 28 Panfilov members. Thus, using the compromising material collected in 1948, one could additionally charge him with the fact that it was he who invented the feat of Panfilov ^{[12] [13]} .

In particular, according to the research of the writer V.O. Osipov ^[14] and the testimony of the fighters of the Panfilov division ^[13] , it is stated that the authorship of the phrase “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat behind Moscow!” Belongs to political officer Klochkov and not to Krivitsky’s correspondent: Klochkov’s personal letters remained to his wife, in which he expressed his feelings of special responsibility for Moscow, moreover, about the same appeals were printed in Panfilov’s appeals and in the numbers of the divisional newspaper. But the text of the letters or appeals with similar phrases Osipov does not lead.

In October 2016 , Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky criticized skeptics who questioned the “ holy legend ” of 28 Panfilovs, since, he said, is a symbol of the heroism of the people in the Great Patriotic War , regardless of historical reality ^{[15] 16]} :

My deepest conviction is that even if this story were invented from beginning to end, even if there were no Panfilov, even if there was nothing, this is a holy legend that you simply cannot touch. And the people who do it are gibberish. [...] Their feat is symbolic and is in the same series of exploits as 300 Spartans

Panfilov

• Commission on the history of the Great Patriotic War of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR "Warriors of the 8th Guards Rifle Division of I. V. Panfilov in the battles of the fall of 1941 near Moscow"
• Help-report "About 28 Panfilov" State Archive of the Russian Federation . F.R. - 8131 sch. Op. 37. D. 4041. Ll. 310–320 ( Archived from the original July 8, 2015 )

• Help-report of the Chief Military Prosecutor N. Afanasyev "About 28 Panfilov"
• V. Cardin . Legends and facts. Years later. " Questions of literature ", № 6, 2006
• N. Petrov, O. Edelman . New about the Soviet heroes. "New World", № 6, 1997