If Stalingrad is one of the most significant symbols of the Great Patriotic War, then Pavlov's House is the cornerstone of this symbol. It is known that for 58 days the international garrison held the building in the city center, repelling numerous German attacks. According to Marshal Chuikov, Pavlov's group destroyed more Germans than they lost during the capture of Paris, and General Rodimtsev wrote that this ordinary Stalingrad four-story building was listed on Paulus' personal map as a fortress. But, like most of the wartime legends created by GlavPUR employees, the official history of the defense of Pavlov's House has little in common with reality. In addition, much more significant episodes of the battle for Stalingrad remained in the shadow of the legend, and the name of one person remained in history, leaving the names of others in oblivion. Let's try to correct this injustice.
Birth of a legend
The real events that took place in the autumn of 1942 on January 9 Square and a narrow strip along the banks of the Volga in the city center were gradually erased from memory. For many years, only separate episodes were as if encrypted in the most famous Stalingrad photographs of the correspondent Georgy Zelma. These pictures are necessarily present in every book, article or publication about the epoch-making battle, but almost no one knows exactly what is depicted on them. However, the participants themselves, the soldiers and commanders of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, attached much more importance to these events than to the notorious legend. They deserve to be told.
The layout of the objects mentioned in the study, on a German aerial photograph taken in March 1943: 1 - State Bank; 2 – ruins of a brewery; 3 - a complex of buildings of the NKVD; 4 - school number 6; 5 - military trade; 6 - "Zabolotny's House"; 7 - "Pavlov's House"; 8 - mill; 9 - "Dairy House"; 10 - "House of railwaymen"; 11 - "L-shaped house"; 12 - school number 38; 13 - oil tanks (German strong point); 14 - oil and butter plant; 15 - factory warehouse. By clicking on the photo, a larger version is available
After a series of heavy blows from two German divisions, which reached their peak on September 22, the 13th Guards Division found itself in a very difficult position. Of its three regiments, one was completely defeated, in the other of the three battalions, only one remained. The situation was so critical that on the night of September 22-23, Divisional Commander Major General A.I. Rodimtsev, together with the headquarters, was forced to evacuate from the adit opposite the complex of buildings of the NKVD to the area of the Banny ravine. But the division, semi-encircled and pressed against the Volga, held out, holding several blocks in the center of the city.
Soon the long-awaited reinforcements arrived: the 685th regiment of the 193rd rifle division was transferred to Rodimtsev's disposal, and the 34th Guards regiment, Lieutenant Colonel D.I. Panikhin, in which on the evening of September 22 there were 48 "active bayonets", was replenished by sending a marching company of about 1300 people.
For the next two days, relative calm set in on the division’s sector, only to the south was frequent cannonade heard: there, in the area of the City Garden and the mouth of the Tsaritsa, the German units finished off the remnants of the left flank of the 62nd Army. To the north, beyond the ravines of Dolgiy and Krutoy, oil tanks smoked, a fierce firefight was heard - these were sailors from the 284th SD recapturing the burning Oil Syndicate and Metizny Plant from the Germans.
Fragment of the map "Plan of the city of Stalingrad and its environs" 1941–1942. Rodimtsev’s division headquarters was very lucky that they had at hand one of the copies of the map, from which they made a tracing paper - the staff workers of many units of the 62nd Army drew layout diagrams literally “on their knees”. But this plan was largely conditional: for example, strong multi-storey buildings, which play a decisive role in street battles, were not marked on it.
On September 23 and 24, the opponents probed the front line - in the course of short skirmishes and skirmishes, the front line gradually loomed. The left flank of Rodimtsev's division rested on the Volga, where the high-rise buildings of the State Bank and the House of Specialists, captured by the Germans, stood on a high cliff. A hundred meters from the State Bank were the ruins of a brewery, where soldiers of the 39th Guards Regiment occupied their positions.
In the center of the front of the 13th Guards Rifle Division stood a huge complex of departmental and residential buildings of the NKVD, which occupied an entire block. Labyrinths of ruins, strong walls and huge cellars of the prison were the best suited for urban battles, and the NKVD buildings became the core of the defense of Rodimtsev's division. Opposite the complex, separated by a wide Republican street and scorched wooden quarters, there were two German strongholds - a four-story school No. 6 and a five-story building of a military department. By that time, the buildings had repeatedly passed from hand to hand, but on September 22 they were again captured by the Germans.
View from the German side. School No. 6 by September 17 will already burn out during the fighting. Photograph from the Dirk Jeschke collection courtesy of Anton Jolie
A little north of the NKVD buildings was Mill No. 4, a sturdy four-story building with secure basements. The positions of the last of the battalions of the 42nd Guards Regiment, the 3rd battalion of Captain A.E., were equipped here. Zhukov. Behind the warehouse buildings and the wide neutral zone of Penzenskaya Street, a huge wasteland of January 9 Square began, where two as yet nameless and unremarkable buildings could be seen.
The right flank of Rodimtsev's division was held by soldiers of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment. The defense line was extremely unsuccessful - it passed along the edge of a high cliff. Very close by were huge five- and six-story buildings occupied by enemy German infantry - the “Railwaymen's House” and the “L-shaped House”. The skyscrapers dominated the surrounding area, and the German spotters had a good view of the positions of the Soviet troops, the bank and the section of the river nearby. In addition, on the site of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, two deep ravines came out to the Volga - Dolgiy and Krutoy, literally cutting off the 13th Guards Rifle Division from the 284th Rifle Division of Colonel N.F. Batyuk, a neighbor on the right, and the rest of the 62nd Army. Very soon these circumstances will play their fatal role.
The positions of the units of the 13th Guards Rifle Division on September 25. The diagram also shows the 685th Infantry Regiment attached to Rodimtsev. On the right side of the map near the ravines, the actions of units of the 284th SD are visible. On the left side, surrounded in the department store area, the 1st battalion of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, Senior Lieutenant F.G. Fedoseeva
Transferred to an aerial photograph, the layout of the units of the 13th Guards Rifle Division on September 25, 1942. On the left flank were the lines of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment of Major S.S. Dolgov, in the center - the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, Colonel I.P. Elin, on the right flank, the fighters of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel D.I. Panikhina
On the morning of September 25, units of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, following the order of the army headquarters, "in small groups, using grenades, Molotov cocktails and mortars of all calibers" tried to improve their position. The third battalion of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment managed to get out and gain a foothold at the turn of Republicanskaya Street, and the fighters of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment managed to clear several wooden houses in the area of the 2nd Embankment. The 685th SP attached to the division advanced in the direction of January 9 Square and School No. 6, but, suffering losses from heavy machine-gun and artillery fire from the western side of the square, was not successful.
Guardsmen of the 3rd battalion of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment from the group of junior lieutenant N.E. Zabolotny, digging a trench across Solnechnaya Street, managed to occupy the ruins of a four-story building, which will later be referred to as "Zabolotny's House". There were no losses: there were no Germans in the ruins. The next night, junior sergeant Ya.F. Pavlov received an order from the commander of the 7th company, Senior Lieutenant I.I. Naumov to scout a four-story building on January 9 Square, which stood next to the ruins of the "Zabolotny's house". Pavlov has already managed to establish himself as an excellent fighter - a week earlier, together with Zabolotny and a group of fighters, he cleared the house of the military office from the Germans, for which he later received the medal "For Courage". The day before, Pavlov returned alive from an unsuccessful search, the task of which was to break through to the encircled 1st battalion.
The 25-year-old junior sergeant chose three soldiers from his squad - V.S. Glushchenko, A.P. Alexandrova, N.Ya. Chernogolov, - after waiting for darkness, he began to carry out the task. Battalion commander Zhukov, who a little earlier received an order from the regimental commander to seize the house on the square, followed the actions of a small group from the NP. The entire regiment supported the group with machine-gun and mortar fire, then the neighbors on the right and left joined. In the turmoil of the battle, rushing from funnel to funnel, four fighters passed the distance from the mill warehouses to the four-story building and disappeared in the entrance doorway.
On the left is the House of Zabolotny, on the right is the House of Pavlov. The video was shot by cameraman V.I. Orlyankin with a real risk of catching a bullet - the positions of the Germans in a hundred meters of open space on Solnechnaya Street
What happened next is known only from the words of Yakov Pavlov himself. Combing the next entrance, four Red Army men noticed Germans in one of the apartments. At this moment, Pavlov made a fateful decision - not only to reconnoiter the house, but also try to capture it on his own. Surprise, F-1 grenades and a burst of PPSh decided the outcome of a fleeting fight - the house was captured.
In Zhukov's post-war memoirs, everything looks somewhat different. In correspondence with fellow soldiers, the battalion commander claimed that Pavlov captured "his" house without a fight - there were simply no Germans in the building, as well as in the neighboring "Zabolotny House". One way or another, but it was Zhukov, who, having designated a new landmark for the gunners as "Pavlov's House", laid the first stone in the foundation of the legend. A couple of days later, the regiment's agitator, senior political instructor L.P. Root will write a small note about a rather ordinary episode of those days to the political department of the 62nd Army, and history will begin to wait in the wings.
Little island of tranquility
For two days, Pavlov and three fighters held the building, while the battalion commander Zhukov and Naumov's company commanders gathered fighters in a thinned battalion for a new stronghold. The garrison was composed of: the calculation of the machine gun "Maxim" under the command of Lieutenant I.F. Afanasyev, a squad of three PTR sergeant Andrey Sobgaida and two crews of company mortars under the command of junior lieutenant Alexei Chernushenko. Together with machine gunners, the garrison consisted of about 30 soldiers. As a senior in rank, Lieutenant Afanasyev became commander.
On the left of the Guard, junior sergeant Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov, on the right of the Guard, lieutenant Ivan Filippovich Afanasyev
In addition to the fighters, civilians huddled in the basement of the house - the elderly, women and children. In total, there were more than 50 people in the building, so general rules of life and the position of commandant were required. They rightfully became junior sergeant Pavlov. When it turned out that German positions were visible from the upper floors of the house for several kilometers, a communication line was installed in the building, and spotters settled in the attic. The stronghold received the call sign "Mayak" and became one of the main NPs in the defense system of the 13th Guards Rifle Division.
On September 26, the first assault on Stalingrad ended, during which the Germans destroyed the last pockets of resistance on the left flank of the 62nd Army. The German command rightly believed that the tasks of the infantry divisions in the center of the city had been fully completed: the banks of the Volga had been reached, the main Russian crossing had stopped its work. On September 27, the second assault began; the main events and hostilities moved to the workers' settlements north of Mamaev Kurgan. South of the mound, in the central and southern districts of the city captured by the Germans, the command of the 6th Army left the 71st and 295th infantry divisions, which were bled dry in the September battles and are only suitable for defense. The small bridgehead of the 13th Guards Rifle Division eventually turned out to be away from the main events, literally in the backyard of the epoch-making battle for Stalingrad.
At the end of September, the Rodimtsev division was tasked with the attached 685th joint venture and two mortar companies "hold the occupied area and destroy the enemy in the buildings he has captured by the actions of small assault and blocking groups." I must say that the commander of the lieutenant general V.I. Chuikov, by order of command, forbade offensive operations by entire units - a company or a battalion - which resulted in heavy losses. The 62nd Army began to learn urban combat.
Two photographs taken by photojournalist S. Loskutov in the autumn of 1942 in the trenches east of the ruins of the NKVD building complex. Judging by the direction of the barrel, the mortar crew is shelling the area of the military
Like ticks, Rodimtsev's division was clamped on both sides by German strongholds located in strong and tall buildings. On the left flank stood the four- and five-story "Houses of Specialists" and the building of the State Bank. On September 19, the Red Army already tried to recapture the last from the Germans - the sappers blew up the wall, and the assault group managed to occupy part of the building - however, during the offensive on September 22, the German infantry recaptured it. In a few days, the Germans managed to thoroughly strengthen themselves: not only machine-gun points were equipped in the ruins, but also positions of small-caliber guns, and barbed wire was pulled along the walls.
On the night of September 29, the scouts of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment managed to stealthily get close to the building and threw KS bottles at the windows. Several rooms were engulfed in fire, a heavy machine gun and a 37-mm cannon were destroyed, the advance group started a firefight. But the bulk of the soldiers were newly arrived recruits from Central Asia, and they did not go on the attack. The squad leaders literally pulled the stubborn soldiers out of the trenches to help the dying assault group, but it was too late. It was not possible to seize the State Bank, many old fighters, honored scouts died. The problem of the quality of replenishment during this period was very acute: at the end of September, in the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment, six “Uzbeks” were shot for “crossbows” - this is how all immigrants from Central Asia were called in the 62nd Army.
Unique video: the building of the State Bank after the August bombing. In September, there were fierce battles for him, but after an unsuccessful assault on the night of September 29, no more attempts were made to recapture the State Bank. The stronghold remained with the Germans
On the right flank, where the positions of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment were located, the situation was even worse. Not far from a steep cliff rose two huge buildings captured by the Germans - the so-called "Railwaymen's House" and "L-shaped house". The first one was not completed before the war, only the foundation and the northern wing were completed. The "L-shaped house" was a five-six-story "stalinka", from the upper floors of which the German spotters could view almost the entire bridgehead of the 13th GSD. Both huge structures were heavily fortified and looked more like impregnable fortresses. In this area, the positions of the 295th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht came closest to a steep cliff, under which only a narrow strip of the coast connected Rodimtsev's division with the rest of the 62nd Army. The fate of the division hung in the balance, and the capture of these two German fortified points for the next three months became a real fix idea for the headquarters of the 13th Guards Rifle Division and its commander.
Detachment as the last argument
September was coming to an end. Exhausted opponents dug deeper into the ground. Every night was heard the clanging of shovels and the sound of pickaxes, and combat reports were full of figures of dug cubes of earth and running meters of trenches. Barricades and communication passages were erected across the streets and open spaces, sappers mined dangerous directions. Window openings were laid with bricks, loopholes made their way in the walls. Spare positions pulled out away from the walls, as many soldiers died under the rubble. After the fire in the State Bank, the Germans began to close the windows of the upper floors with bed nets - the probability of burning out at night from a bottle of KS or a thermite ball from an ampoule gun was very high.
The calm did not last long. The day of October 1 almost became the last for the defenders of the small foothold. The day before, the 295th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht received reinforcements and the task of finally reaching the Volga in its sector. To support the offensive, an engineer battalion arrived from the group of the commander of the engineering troops of the 6th Army, Oberst Max von Stiotta ( Max Edler von Stiotta). The strike was planned in the most vulnerable place of the defense of the Rodimtsev division - the area of \u200b\u200bthe Dolgiy and Krutoy ravines, where there was a junction with the 284th SD. In addition, the Germans decided to abandon their favorite tactics of massive artillery raids and air strikes, followed by clearing the quarters. Success was to bring a sudden night attack.
At 00:30 Berlin time, units of the 295th Infantry Division and attached units secretly accumulated to the west of the tram bridge and began to seep through the drainage pipe in the embankment along the slopes of the Krutoy ravine to the banks of the Volga. Having crushed the outposts, the German infantry came close to the positions of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment. Shooting the Red Army men taken by surprise, the Germans captured one trench after another, quickly moving forward. Explosions of grenades and concentrated charges were heard: sappers blew up dugouts with blocked Soviet soldiers. From the bunker on the slope, "Maxim" rattled measuredly - in response, a flamethrower jet splashed towards the embrasure. A hand-to-hand fight was going on at the headquarters dugouts, Russians and Germans, faces twisted with rage, were killing each other. Increasing the intensity of madness, a jazz melody was suddenly heard in the darkness, and then calls to surrender sounded in broken German from the banks of the Volga.
By five o'clock in the morning, a critical situation had developed at the turn of Rodimtsev's division. The shock groups of the 295th Infantry Division, having crushed the defenses of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, reached the Volga near the mouth of the Krutoy ravine. The commander and commissar of the 2nd battalion were killed in the battle. Continuing the offensive, the German infantrymen began to advance in two directions: to the north, where the headquarters of the 13th Guards Rifle Division was located, and to the south, to the mortar positions and rear areas of the surrounded 39th and 42nd Guards Rifle Regiments. Soon Rodimtsev lost contact with the rest of the division - the Germans cut the cable running along the coast.
One of the mortar companies was commanded by Senior Lieutenant G.E. Brik. The Germans came close to the positions of the company - the opponents were separated only by railway tracks filled with wagons. In violation of all instructions, the commander ordered the mortar barrels to be set almost vertically. Having fired the last mines, the calculations under the command of Grigory Brik climbed onto the taken aback Germans in a bayonet attack.
On the left in the photo is Grigory Evdokimovich Brik (post-war photo). He was lucky to survive the night battle on October 01, for which he was awarded the second Order of the Red Star. Brik went through the entire war, and in 1945 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On the right is the commander of the 2nd battalion of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Arsentyevich Loktionov. On the morning of October 1, his mutilated body was found near the broken headquarters dugouts. The senior lieutenant was 23 years old.
Transferred to an aerial photograph of the scheme of the night battle of the 13th Guards Rifle Division from the book of the General Staff "Fights in Stalingrad" in 1944. In addition to the main attack on the Krutoy ravine, units of the 295th Infantry Division attacked the positions of the 3rd Battalion of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment on Republicanskaya Street, hit the battalion from the side of the unfinished "Railwaymen's House" at the junction between the 3rd Battalion of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment and 2 th battalion of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment. At the bottom right, the destroyed building of the oil refinery is highlighted.
The last reserve of Rodimtsev was 30 fighters of the defensive battalion under the command of the platoon commander Lieutenant A.T. Stroganov. He received the task from the mouth of the Dolgiy ravine to dislodge the Germans from the positions of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment. Having stopped the retreating and demoralized soldiers of the 3rd battalion, he led a counterattack on the Germans breaking through to the headquarters of the division. The skirmish began under a cliff of a steep bank, where there were warehouses and moorings of an oil refinery and a coastal railway. The Germans could not go further. Lieutenant Alexander Stroganov was presented with the Order of Lenin, but the command of the 62nd Army reduced the award to the medal "For Courage".
The bank of the Volga in the area of warehouses and the building of the oil and butter plant. The ruined wall of the factory is visible from the top of the cliff. Shooting cameraman Orlyankin
By 06:00, having pulled up the collected reserves, units of the 13th Guards Rifle Division launched a counterattack. Finally managed to contact the gunners on the other side of the Volga - the area of the Krutoy ravine, along which the Germans pulled up reinforcements, was shrouded in dust from explosions of large-caliber shells. The units of the 295th Infantry Division, which broke through to the Volga, fell into a trap on the shore, faltered and began to retreat along the ravine back to the tram bridge. Pursuing the enemy, the fighters, among other things, were able to repel several groups of Red Army soldiers who had previously been captured. Soon the situation at the turn of Rodimtsev's division was restored. In the combat log of the 6th Army, the unsuccessful attack of the 295th Infantry Division is marked with sparing lines:
“The offensive of the 295th Infantry Division, supported by the Stiotta group, was at first a serious success, but then was stopped under heavy fire. As a result of small-arms fire from the north and from unsuppressed pockets of resistance in the rear, it was necessary to withdraw to their original positions. The front line of defense is under constant artillery fire.
Later, according to reports from the field, interesting distinctive signs were found among the Germans killed on the shore - paratroopers, veterans of the landing on Crete, participated in the night attack. It was also reported that some of the German soldiers were dressed in Red Army uniforms.
For two days, the 13th Guards Rifle Division put itself in order, the soldiers counted and buried their dead comrades. The 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, which came under the pressure of the German offensive for the second time, suffered the greatest damage. The regiment's reports of irretrievable losses noted: on October 1, 77 Red Army soldiers went missing and 130 died, on October 2 - another 18 and 83 people, respectively. By an evil irony of fate, it was on October 1 that the article “Heroes of Stalingrad” was published in the central newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda with an oath letter from Rodimtsev’s guardsmen, which turned out to be literally sealed with blood.
After the unsuccessful offensive on the night of October 1, the Germans no longer undertook such large-scale hostilities in the sector of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, limiting themselves to local attacks. The struggle for a small section of the city center took on a positional character: the opponents exchanged artillery and mortar shelling, the number of those killed from sniper fire increased sharply.
At night, a small bridgehead came to life and resembled an anthill: the soldiers hurriedly unloaded boats with ammunition, the commanders bred small groups of replenishment in positions. After the landing, the rear of the division was able to establish supplies, and Rodimtsev had his own small fleet - about 30 rowing boats and boats. It was the inability to independently provide for themselves in the conditions of the city cut off by the river that killed the 92nd OSBR in September.
During the day, the streets and ruins of the city died out. Any movement - be it a soldier running from door to door, or a civilian in search of food - caused fire. There were cases when German soldiers changed into women's clothes in order to cross the area under fire. All places of enemy concentration, field kitchens and water sources became the objects of close attention of well-aimed shooters from both sides. Huge ruins of buildings, open spaces and a stable front line made the ruined city center a suitable arena for sniper duels.
Among the snipers of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, the commander of the squad of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment, Sergeant A.I. Chekhov. Having graduated with honors from the Central School of Sniper Instructors, Chekhov was not only a good shooter, but also knew how to train his comrades in his specialty, many of whom later surpassed him. When Vasily Grossman visited Rodimtsev's division, he talked for a long time with a modest and thoughtful guy who, at the age of 19, became an excellent killing machine. The writer was so struck by his sincere interest in life, thoughtful approach to his work and hatred of the invaders that Grossman dedicated one of the first essays on the Battle of Stalingrad to Anatoly Chekhov.
Sniper Anatoly Chekhov at work, filming cameraman Orlyankin. The location and circumstances of the shooting have not yet been determined.
It so happened that the sergeant lost his last sniper duel. He and the German fired at the same time; both missed, but the enemy bullet ricocheted to the target. Chekhov, with a blind chest wound, was literally forcibly transported to a hospital on the left bank, but a few days later the sergeant reappeared at the regiment's positions and chalked up three more Germans. When the rising temperature knocked the guy off his feet in the evening, it turned out that Chekhov had escaped from the hospital, and he had not yet been operated on.
exemplary defense
On October 11, at the site of the 34th GSP, a group of 35 Red Army soldiers tried to storm an unfinished four-story building by storm. Thus, an epic began in the division with two buildings, the names of which from that moment on became more common than others in combat reports and reports - "Railwaymen's House" and "L-shaped House".
For two months, units of the 34th and 42nd Guards Rifle Regiments tried to drive the Germans out of these fortified points. In October, two attempts to capture the "Railwaymen's House" ended in failure. In the first case, with the support of artillery and mortar fire, the assault squad was able to reach the building and even get inside, starting a grenade battle. But the approach of the main part of the fighters was blocked by unsuppressed German firing points from the flanks, from the neighboring "L-shaped house" and other buildings. The assault group had to retreat, during the assault the company commander was killed and the battalion commander was wounded.
A collage from an aerial photo of October 2, 1942 and an August video of a panorama of the Volga coast
On October 24, during the second attack, the "House of Railway Workers" was previously fired upon by 152-mm howitzers from the left bank of the Volga. After artillery preparation, 18 fighters of the assault group rushed to the huge ruins on the run, but were met by flanking machine gun fire, and then the approaches to the house were fired upon by mortars from the depths of the German defense. Bearing losses, the group retreated this time as well.
The third assault followed on 1 November. At 16:00, after heavy shelling with high-powered guns, units of the 34th and 42nd Guards Rifle Regiments in small groups again tried to capture the "Railwaymen's House", but on the way to the building they were met with dense rifle and automatic fire and returned to their original positions. At 20:00 the attack followed again. Having reached the wall, the Soviet soldiers stumbled upon a wire fence and came under cross machine-gun fire. From the ruins, the Germans threw heavy sabers, bundles of grenades and bottles of combustible mixture at the guards pressed to the ground. Having no success, the surviving fighters of the assault group were only able to crawl out to their trenches at night.
Despite the fact that they failed to capture the main German positions in the built northern wing of the "Railwaymen's House", the Red Army men managed to take the foundation of the southern wing, predetermining the tactical plan of the next assault.
One of a series of famous Stalingrad photographs by G. Zelma. The picture was taken in a trench leading out of the unfinished southern wing of the "Railwaymen's House", behind the fighter, the "Pavlov's House" standing nearby is visible. In the first photo from the “killed” series, the fighter in the lower right corner is still “alive”. According to the author of the article, this series of photos of Zelma is a kind of reconstruction of the hostilities of the 13th Guards Rifle Division and was shot after the end of the fighting, in the spring of 1943. Linking the location to the photo of D. Zimin and A. Skvorin
During October, when the 13th Guards Rifle Division tried to improve its position on the bridgehead, north of Mamaev Kurgan, Army Commander Chuikov suffered defeat after defeat. During the second and third assaults on the city, the Germans captured the workers' settlements "Red October" and "Barricades", the village of them. Rykov, the Sculpture Park, the Mountain Village and the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. By the end of October, the Barrikady and Krasny Oktyabr factories were almost completely occupied by the enemy. German large-caliber artillery swept away the wooden quarters of workers' settlements, high-rise buildings and huge workshops, aviation of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet mixed the positions of Soviet troops with the ground with heavy bombs - in the October battles, suffering huge losses, entire divisions burned out in a few days: the 138th, 193rd and 308th SD, 37th GSD ...
All this time, the site of the Rodimtsev division was the calmest place on the line of defense of the 62nd Army, and soon writers and journalists were drawn there. Stalingrad was practically lost - which means that evidence to the contrary was required, examples of a long and successful defense. Newspapermen visited the positions, talked with commanders and political workers, among whom was Leonid Koren, an agitator of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment. The strongholds of the division in the ruins of the brewery and in the cellars of the NKVD prison did not fit well for an article about the heroic defenders of Stalingrad, the Germans were firmly seated in the "House of Railway Workers" and the "L-shaped House". The story told by the political instructor about the capture of a four-story building on January 9 Square at the end of September was a real find for the GlavPUR of the Red Army.
The first publication appeared on October 31, 1942 - in the newspaper of the 62nd Army "Stalin's Banner" an article was published by junior political instructor Yu.P. Chepurin "Pavlov's House". The article took up a full spread and was an excellent example of army agitprop. It colorfully described the battle for the house, noted the initiative of the junior and the role of the senior command staff, highlighted the international garrison, and even listed its fighters - “Russian people Pavlov, Alexandrov, Afanasiev, Ukrainians Sobgaida, Glushchenko, Georgians Mosiyashvili, Stepanoshvili, Uzbek Turgunov, Kazakh Murzaev, Abkhazian Sukba, Tajik Turdyev, Tatar Romazanov and dozens of their fighting friends.” The author immediately brought to the fore the “houseowner” junior sergeant Pavlov, and the commander of the garrison, Lieutenant Afanasiev, was left out of work.
In early November, capital journalists D.F. crossed over to the 13th Guards Rifle Division. Akulshin and V.N. Kuprin, who stayed in the dugout of Leonid Koren, an agitator of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment. Once Root went to his room and found the guests leafing through his diary notes. The combat political instructor wanted to hang the capital's hacks on the neck, but they not only reassured him, but also persuaded him to publish in the central newspaper. As early as November 19, Pravda published a series of essays by Koren "Stalingrad Days", the last of which was called "Pavlov's House". The series quickly became popular; Yuri Levitan read it on the radio. The example of an ordinary sergeant was really inspiring for ordinary fighters, and the whole country recognized Yakov Pavlov.
What is significant - in the first stories about the capture of house No. 61 on Penzenskaya Street, it was clearly stated that the Germans were not there. However, all the other components of the future legend were already in place, and this moment was subsequently corrected.
While the employees of GlavPUR were working on the ideological front, in the positions of the Rodimtsev division, events went on as usual. In late October - early November, exhausted opponents of active hostilities in the city center practically did not conduct. The risk of being killed at any moment was still great - judging by the testimony of the doctors of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, most of the fighters died from shrapnel wounds. The operating room was located in a sewer pipe in the slope of the steep bank of the Volga, near the mouth of the Dolgiy ravine was the headquarters of the division. The seriously wounded were transported to the other side at night, where, under the leadership of Colonel I.I. Okhlobystin, the divisional medical battalion worked.
Nurses of the 13th Guards Rifle Division. The photographs were taken near the ruins of a four-story building that stood east of the mill - now this place is a panorama museum. Ahead is Maria Ulyanova (Ladychenkova), a full-time nurse at the Pavlov's House garrison.
The holiday came on November 7th. On this day, in the 13th Guards Rifle Division, guards badges were handed out and distinguished fighters were awarded, a divisional ensemble performed, meetings were held in dugouts and basements of strongholds, baths were organized for the fighters and winter uniforms were issued on the shore. Despite daily artillery and mortar shelling, life continued on the bridgehead.
Divisional Ensemble of the 13th Guards Rifle Division. The photo was taken near the mouth of the Dolgiy ravine. Above you can see the destroyed warehouse of the oil refinery
The vain work of sappers
While the guards were preparing for the celebration of November 7, at the defense sector of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, the engineer platoon of Lieutenant I.I. Chumakova worked tirelessly. From the southern part of the foundation of the "House of Railway Workers" captured from the Germans, at a depth of five meters, a mine gallery was dug in the direction of the northern wing held by the Germans. The work was carried out in complete darkness with a lack of air; due to the lack of special tools, sappers dug with small infantry shovels. Then, three tons of tola were placed in the chamber at the end of the 42-meter tunnel.
On November 10, at two o'clock in the morning, there was a deafening explosion - the "Railwaymen's House" took off into the air. The north wing was half swept away by the blast. Heavy pieces of the foundation and frozen earth fell on the positions of the opposing sides for a whole minute, and right in the middle of the unfinished building there was a huge funnel with a diameter of more than 30 meters.
In the photo, Ivan Iosifovich Chumakov, in Stalingrad, is a 19-year-old commander of a sapper platoon. His fighters undermined the State Bank and the "House of Railwaymen", Grossman enthusiastically wrote about Lieutenant Chumakov in Krasnaya Zvezda. An aerial photo of March 29, 1943 clearly shows the crater from the explosion, on the right - a diagram of an underground mine attack from the book "Fighting in Stalingrad", published in 1944
A minute and a half after the explosion, assault groups rushed to the attack from covered trenches 130-150 meters from the object. According to the plan, three groups with a total of about 40 people from three directions were supposed to break into the building, but in the darkness and confusion of the battle it was not possible to act in a coordinated manner. Some of the fighters stumbled upon the remains of a wire fence and could not reach the walls. Another group tried to get into the basement through a smoking funnel, but the surviving wall of the boiler room prevented them. Due to the indecision of the commander, this group did not go on the attack, remaining in cover. Time was running out inexorably: the Germans were already pulling up reinforcements along the trenches to help the stunned and shell-shocked garrison. A series of rockets illuminated the ruins of the building and the battlefield in front of it, German machine guns came to life, pinning the hesitant Red Army soldiers to the ground. An attempt to capture the "House of Railwaymen" this time was unsuccessful.
The answer was not long in coming - on November 11, in the section of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment southeast of the State Bank, the German infantry tried to shoot down the Soviet military outposts, but the attack was repulsed by rifle and machine-gun fire. Artillery shelling of the night crossing intensified, three boats with food were sunk. As a result of a German air raid, depots with ammunition and uniforms located on the coast burned down. The division began to experience major supply shortages.
On November 11, junior sergeant of the machine-gun battalion A.I. was killed in battle. Starodubtsev. Alexey Ivanovich was a well-known machine gunner in the division, an old honored fighter. During the battle, a shell exploded near his position and a fragment of the wall crushed the machine gunner's head. The second number was wounded. A unique case - the funeral of Starodubtsev was filmed by cameraman Orlyankin, then these shots were included in the film "Stalingrad" in 1943. Shooting location - the eastern part of the complex of buildings of the NKVD
In the harsh conditions of the onset of frosts and meager rations in the ruined city, the Red Army men equipped their modest life. Gunsmiths worked on the shore, craftsmen repaired watches, made potbelly stoves, lamps and other household items. In the frozen basements, dugouts and dugouts, the Red Army dragged everything from the destroyed apartments that could create at least the appearance of comfort: beds and armchairs, carpets and paintings. Musical instruments, gramophones and records, books, board games - everything that helped brighten up leisure were considered valuable finds.
So it was in Pavlov's House. In their free time from duty, outfits and engineering work, the garrison gathered in the basement of the building. For a couple of months of positional defense, the fighters got used to each other and were a well-coordinated combat mechanism. This was greatly facilitated by intelligent junior commanders and competent political workers; as a result, newly drafted, often uneducated and poorly speaking Russian recruits became good and reliable fighters. By the will of fate, the Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, Kazakhs, Georgians, Abkhazians, Uzbeks, Kalmyks gathered on a piece of Stalingrad land were more united than ever in the face of a common enemy and were tied by the death of their comrades.
The commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, Major General Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev and his soldiers
The first half of November passed, sleet began to fall, slush began to fall along the Volga - small pieces of the first autumn ice. Food became very tight, there was not enough ammunition and medicines. The wounded and sick could not be evacuated - the boats could not break through to the shore. The fact of desertion was recorded in the division - from the positions of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment, two Red Army men ran across to the Germans.
From defensive to offensive
On the morning of November 19, an unusual animation was noticeable at the headquarters dugouts: the commanders kept coming out, stood and smoked for a long time, as if listening to something. The next day, the political officers were already reading out to the fighters the order of the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front - the Soviet troops launched a long-awaited counteroffensive. Operation Uranus has begun.
On November 21, in accordance with the order of the 62nd Army, Rodimtsev's division proceeded to active operations. The command of the encircled 6th Army of the Wehrmacht was forced to form a new front in the west, withdrawing units from positions in the city. It was necessary to identify the composition of the German units opposing the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and in the morning a reconnaissance group of 16 fighters and four flamethrowers raided the German dugout of the enemy in order to capture a prisoner. Alas, the scouts were discovered, the Germans called in mortar fire, and, having suffered losses, the reconnaissance group returned.
On November 22, in the areas of the upcoming offensive, division units conducted reconnaissance in battle - seven reconnaissance groups of 25 fighters each, under the cover of mortars and machine guns, simulated an attack, opening the fire system of the 295th Wehrmacht Infantry Division. It was established by observation that the system of fire remained the same, with the beginning of the attack, the enemy pulled groups of 10-15 people to the front edge, but the artillery fire noticeably weakened.
The number of fighters in the 13th Guards Rifle Division, as in other formations of the 62nd Army, was very far from the standard
If the search to capture the “language” had been successful, then the headquarters of the 13th Guards Rifle Division would have learned that the 517th PP of the 295th Infantry Division and the headquarters units were removed from their positions by the command of the 6th Army. The battle formations were compacted at the expense of parts of the 71st Infantry Division, which stood on the left flank.
Despite a significant shortage of personnel, the 13th Guards Rifle Division, like the rest of the formations of the 62nd Army, received an order to go on the offensive "with the task of destroying the enemy and reaching the western outskirts of Stalingrad." Rodimtsev planned, with the reinforced 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, to attack the positions of the 295th Infantry Infantry Division from the side of the January 9th Square, break through the German defenses and reach the railway line. The 34th and 39th Guards Rifle Regiments were to support the advance of their neighbors in the center with fire. Also, one company of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment and a company of a training battalion participated in the offensive in their sector. The German strongholds were supposed not to be stormed, but to block with fire and move forward. The divisional artillery was tasked with suppressing the German fire system in the areas of the Krutoy and Dolgiy ravines, the “House of the Railway Workers” and the northern part of the January 9 Square, providing fire for the advance of the infantry and preventing enemy counterattacks.
On the night of November 24, there was no crowding in the "Pavlov's house" - the infantry occupied not only all the compartments of the basement, but also the rooms on the first floor. The sappers cleared the passages on January 9 Square, the soldiers at their starting positions prepared weapons, stuffed pouches and overcoat pockets with ammunition. A little further away, the details of the upcoming attack were discussed by the commanders of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment: the commander of the 3rd battalion, Captain A.E. Zhukov, commander of the 7th company, senior lieutenant I.I. Naumov, commanders and commissars of divisions senior lieutenant V.D. Avagimov, Lieutenant I.F. Afanasiev, junior lieutenant A.I. Anikin and others. The Pavlov's House garrison was disbanded that night, and the fighters formally returned to their units.
A piercing wind with wet snow was blowing from the Volga. It was still dark when the guardsmen of the 7th company crawled out onto the square, dispersing at the turn in craters and ruins. Lieutenant Afanasyev led the fighters out of the Pavlov's House, and junior lieutenant Alexei Anikin from the neighboring ruins of the Zabolotny House. Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Zabolotny himself died on the eve of reconnaissance in battle. By 07:00 everything was ready.
Bloody "Milk House"
At 10:00 an order was given, and under the cover of artillery, the battalions of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment went on the attack. However, it was not possible to completely suppress the German firing points, and in the open space of the square, the soldiers of the 3rd battalion immediately came under crossfire from the south, from the buildings of the military office and school No. 6, and from the north, from German positions in the burned-out wooden quarters of Tobolskaya Street. By 14:00 the 2nd Battalion of Captain V.G. Andrianov managed to crawl and capture the trenches on the streets of Kutaisskaya and Tambovskaya to the north of a huge wasteland. The companies of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment and the training battalion advancing near the ravines advanced only 30-50 meters. They were prevented from going further by intense machine-gun fire from the German resistance center - two huge oil tanks surrounded by a concrete fence. In the evening, the battalions made two more unsuccessful attempts to move forward.
The results of the first day of the offensive were disappointing: it was not possible to break through the defenses of the 295th Infantry Division at once. The Germans had equipped and improved their positions for two months, and Rodimtsev's bloodless division could not reach the railway line. But no one canceled the order, so the tasks should be solved. The main problem was the firing points in the area of the military department and school No. 6, so the capture of these strongholds in order to cover the left flank of the advancing 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment became a priority goal.
View of the German positions from the observation post of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment, located in the ruins of the NKVD building complex
Early in the morning of November 25, the assault group of the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment managed to clear the five-story building of the military department. Wasting no time, a group of machine gunners under the command of Senior Lieutenant I.Ya. Undermining ran to the brick two-story buildings on Nizhegorodskaya Street and began to throw grenades at the Germans in the building of school No. 6. Unable to withstand the onslaught, the infantrymen from the 518th PP of the 295th Infantry Division retreated to the neighboring ruins and, having regrouped there, launched a counterattack. The Germans tried twice to recapture the school building, but both times they were thrown back with salvo fire.
WITHA series of photographs by G. Zelma, on which, according to the author, a reconstruction of the storming of school No. 6 was filmed
In the morning twilight, the Red Army soldiers of Naumov's company under fire were able to reach the tram tracks on the western side of January 9 Square. Directly behind them, a ruined three-story building, covered with peeling plaster, was blackened with window openings, for its color it was designated in the reports of the 13th Guards Rifle Division as the "Dairy House". On the upper floor of the surviving left wing, a German machine gunner sat down, pressing the guardsmen into the pitted asphalt in long bursts. At 30 meters in front of the house there was a burned-out skeleton of a "lorry", in a funnel nearby, a machine-gun crew of senior sergeant I.V. was hiding. Voronova. After waiting for a moment, the soldiers carried the "Maxim" out of hiding, and the senior sergeant fired several bursts into the window opening, where the flashes of shots flickered. The German machine gun fell silent and, wheezing with cold throats “cheers”, the Red Army soldiers burst into the Dairy House.
The Germans who did not have time to leave were finished off in hand-to-hand combat. An order was issued by Captain Zhukov to hold the Dairy House at all costs, and the entire 7th company moved into its ruins. The fighters hastily filled up the openings in the western wall with debris and prepared firing points on the upper floors. Grenades were already flying from the German trenches approaching the building, mortar shelling intensified. At that moment, an unpleasant circumstance became clear: the house did not have a basement. Arriving mines and grenades, exploding in a burnt-out box, flogged the fighters with fragments, from which there was no escape. Soon the dead and wounded appeared - the Dairy House became a death trap.
The battle for the ruins continued all day. The German infantry tried several times to get inside, but each time they were thrown back. Then mortar fire followed, grenades flew through the windows - and several defenders were out of action. Under the stairs, where it was possible to somehow hide from the fragments, the wounded were dragged by 23-year-old nurse Maria Ulyanova. With the onset of the day, it became deadly dangerous to throw reinforcements and ammunition through a wasteland that was being shot through. The Germans rolled out a cannon into the destroyed end of the three-story building next to the Dairy House and smashed the last heavy machine gun of Ilya Voronov in the company with a direct fire shot. The sergeant received multiple wounds and subsequently lost his leg, Idel Khait's crew number was killed on the spot, and Niko Mosiashvili was wounded. The commander of the mortars, Lieutenant Aleksey Chernyshenko, and the commander of the armor-piercing squad, Sergeant Andrey Sobgayda, were killed, the corporal Glushchenko, machine gunners Bondarenko and Svirin were wounded. At the end of the day, Junior Sergeant Pavlov was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and Lieutenant Afanasyev was seriously concussed.
Senior Lieutenant Ivan Naumov was killed, trying to dash across the square and report on the desperate situation of his company. By the end of the day, when grenades and cartridges ran out, the surviving defenders of the Dairy House literally fought off the advancing Germans with bricks and shouted loudly, creating the appearance of their numbers.
Seeing the catastrophic situation, battalion commander Zhukov convinced the commander of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, Colonel I.P. Elina gave the order to withdraw, and with the onset of darkness, a messenger managed to get to the building with the order to leave the ruins conquered with such difficulty. In the battle for the Dairy House, most of the soldiers of the 7th company, from which the Pavlov's House garrison was formed, were killed or wounded, but there was no place for these circumstances in the canonical legend of the "heroic defense".
Perhaps the only photo of the ruins of the Milk House that have not yet been demolished, which stood in the northwestern corner of January 9 Square. Now at this place at the address "Prospect Lenina, 31" in Volgograd is the House of Officers
On November 26, the battle on the square began to subside. And although the tasks set by the command remained the same, the bloodless regiments of Rodimtsev were not able to fulfill them. Leaving the military outposts at the captured line, the company commanders withdrew the surviving soldiers to their former positions. By the end of the day, after repeated attacks, the German infantry still drove the Red Army soldiers out of school No. 6: “The enemy attacked the school building occupied by the 39th Guards Rifle Regiment several times. In the last attack, with a force of up to a company with two tanks, he destroyed the defending group and took possession of it. Moreover, they acted brazenly, they were drunk.” According to the reports of the 13th GSD upstairs, the Red Army men managed to hold the five-story building of the military department that stood nearby.
Transferred to an aerial photo, the scheme of actions of the 13th Guards Rifle Division on November 24-26. Three selected objects are school No. 6, the military department and the Dairy House. The scheme is inaccurate due to lack of intelligence: in place of the 517th PP should be the 518th PP, and instead of the 518th PP - the 71st PD
In the November attacks, Rodimtsev's division suffered terrible losses. For example, on November 24-26, 119 fighters and commanders, not counting the wounded, were killed, died of wounds and went missing in the units of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment. In the report of the 62nd Army to the headquarters of the front, following the results of the offensive, only a mean line appeared: "The 13th Guards Rifle Division did not fulfill its task."
The overall results of the offensive were disappointing: none of the units of the 62nd Army, with the exception of the group of Colonel S.F. Gorokhova did not achieve her goals. At the same time, only the actions of the 13th GSD were given a negative assessment. Almost more was written about the famous division and its commander in the central newspapers than about the entire 62nd Army, and the ambitious Chuikov began to annoy the fame of his subordinate. Soon the irritation of the commander turned into open hostility.
Army-scale victory
On December 1, Chuikov signed an order to resume the offensive. The divisions and brigades of the 62nd Army were assigned the same tasks - to defeat the enemy and reach the western outskirts of Stalingrad. The goals of the 13th Guards Rifle Division remained the same - to reach the railroad with the right flank, to the line of Sovnarkomovskaya and Zheleznodorozhnaya streets, and to gain a foothold at the achieved line.
Rodimtsev was well aware that, first of all, it was necessary to solve the problem, which had been the headache of the division for two months - to take the German strongholds in the ruins of the “House of Railway Workers” and the “L-shaped House”. Numerous attempts to storm them failed. In an unsuccessful offensive on November 24-26, they tried to block these strongholds with artillery fire, bypass and cut off communications. But the houses adapted for all-round defense snarled with fire, and unsuppressed machine guns shot the Red Army soldiers advancing across the square and along the ravines in the back. Turned into ruins, two beautiful examples of the "Stalinist Empire" literally dreamed of the headquarters of the 13th Guards Rifle Division and its commander.
Preparations for the decisive assault began immediately after the unsuccessful offensive. The reasons for the failures were analyzed, a detailed diagram of the German defense and firing points was drawn up. To capture the "L-shaped house" from the fighters of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, a detachment of 60 people was assembled under the command of Senior Lieutenant V.I. Sidelnikov and his deputy lieutenant A.G. Isaev. The detachment was divided into three assault groups of 12 people each (machine gunners and flamethrowers), as well as a reinforcement group (gunners, anti-tank rifle crews, easel and light machine guns), a support group (sappers and scouts) and a service group (signallers).
At the same time, in the second battalion of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, they were preparing to storm the "Railwaymen's House". Groups of fighters were also divided into three echelons. In order to bring the line of attack as close as possible, trenches were secretly dug to the buildings - the work was carried out at night, during the day the trenches were masked. It was decided to concentrate on the starting line before dawn, break inside under the cover of darkness, and fight in the building in the light of day.
Organization and composition of the assault detachment under the command of Senior Lieutenant Sidelnikov. Scheme from the book "Fighting in Stalingrad", published in 1944
On December 3, at four o'clock in the morning, assault groups began to advance to the front line. Suddenly, heavy snow began to fall. Large flakes of snow quickly swept the earth pitted with funnels; the commanders had to urgently look for camouflage suits and change the clothes of the fighters. The final preparations were being completed, the guards were dismantling hand and anti-tank grenades, bottles of KS and thermite balls from ampoules. Calculations of anti-tank rifles under the command of Lieutenant Yu.E. Dorosha aimed at the windows in the eastern wing of the “L-shaped house”, the flamethrowers crawled to the end of the building and took aim at the loopholes punched in the wall. By 06:00 everything was ready.
At 06:40, three red rockets took off into the sky, and in a moment the German machine-gun points at the end of the "L-shaped house" were flooded with flamethrowers. Sidelnikov was the first to jump out of the trench and rushed to the house, the submachine gunners of the advanced detachment silently ran after him. The idea was a success - the Germans did not have time to come to their senses, and the Red Army soldiers, throwing grenades into the windows and breaches in the walls, burst into the building without loss.
“Street Fight” is the canonical photograph of Georgy Zelma. The visual symbol of the Battle of Stalingrad, present on the front page of many domestic and foreign sites, books and publications dedicated to the epoch-making battle. Actually, the interest of the author of the article in this topic began with a clue to the place and circumstances of the famous photo. There is a whole series of pictures: on the first of them, the fighter in the center is still “alive”. The German strongholds have already been completely destroyed, there is no snow - according to the author, this is a reconstruction of the assault on the "Railwaymen's House" and the "L-shaped House", filmed in late February - early March 1943
In a huge building, in a labyrinth of burnt-out apartments, narrow corridors and collapsed stairwells, small groups of Red Army soldiers were slowly clearing the rooms and floors of the east wing. The garrison, which had come to its senses, was already occupying positions in the barricaded passages: inside the German stronghold was divided into sections and perfectly adapted for defense. The fierce battle broke out with renewed vigor. Squad commanders, firing rockets, illuminated rooms and dark corners - in the reflections of short-term flashes, the Germans and Russians threw grenades at each other, colliding at point-blank range, converged in hand-to-hand combat, the outcome of which was decided by a knife pulled out in time, a brick tucked under the arm or a comrade who came to the rescue. In the walls of the apartments where the Germans were shooting back, Soviet soldiers punched holes with crowbars and threw bottles with a combustible mixture and thermite balls inside. Ceilings were undermined by charges, flamethrowers burned rooms and basements.
By 10:00, the assault groups of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment completely occupied the eastern wing of the "L-shaped house", having lost half of their composition. The wounded commander of the detachment, senior lieutenant Vasily Sidelnikov and his deputy lieutenant Alexei Isaev, were pulled out of the ruins, lieutenant Yuri Dorosh was dying with a twisted jaw and an empty “TT” in his hand on a pile of bricks. The sergeants took the initiative, taking command.
While the battle for the "L-shaped house" was in full swing, at 08:00 the neighboring "Railwaymen's House" was subjected to heavy shelling by an artillery battalion and mortar companies. By the end of a two-hour artillery preparation, sappers from the nearest trenches threw smoke bombs at the approaches to the building, a series of red rockets soared into the sky. The mortar shelling was moved behind the smoking ruins, blocking the reinforcements' approach to the strong point, and the assault groups went on the attack.
Schemes from the "Brief description of the defensive battles of the 13th Guards Rifle Division"
The vanguard soldiers, breaking into the building and crushing the guards of the garrison, occupied the premises of the first floor. The German infantry, retreating to the second floor and sitting in the basement, desperately resisted. The groups of the second echelon that came up next blocked the remnants of the German garrison, destroying pockets of resistance with explosives and flamethrowers. While the battle was still going on in the basement and on the upper floors, the reinforcement group had already equipped positions for heavy and light machine guns, cutting off the German infantry trying to come to the aid of dying comrades with fire. By 13:20, the "Railwaymen's House" was completely cleared of the Germans. The fighters of the second echelon also managed to capture five dugouts located near the building. Repeated German counterattacks were repulsed.
Post-war aerial photo. On the left are the ruins of the northern wing of the "House of Railwaymen", on the right below are the remains of the "L-shaped house"
In the "L-shaped house" a fierce battle dragged on until the evening. Having occupied the eastern wing, the Red Army could not move further - a solid load-bearing wall interfered. It was not possible to go around it from the outside: the Germans occupied a well-fortified basement, keeping the approaches to the northern wing at gunpoint. At night, when the shooting died down, the sappers dragged boxes of explosives and laid 250 kg of tola against the wall on the ground floor. While preparations were underway, the fighters of the assault detachment were taken out of the building.
On the morning of December 4 at 04:00, there was a massive explosion, and an entire section of the huge house collapsed in a cloud of dust. Without wasting a minute, the Red Army men rushed back. Making their way through the huge rubble, groups of fighters again occupied the eastern, and then cleared the northern wing - the remnants of the garrison retreated without a fight, only in the littered basement the German soldiers buried alive were shouting something.
The long-awaited news about the capture of the enemy's main center of resistance was so stunning that the division headquarters did not believe it. Only when from the divisional NP they noticed Red Army soldiers waving their hands in the windows of the L-shaped house, it became clear that the goal had been achieved. For two months, drenched in sweat and blood, Rodimtsev's guards unsuccessfully stormed the German strongholds, losing their comrades in numerous attacks. Through trial and error, in a fierce struggle, the Soviet soldiers won.
The success achieved was a significant event not only for the division, but for the entire 62nd Army. In hot pursuit, cameraman V.I. Orlyankin filmed a reconstruction of the assault on both German strongholds, then these shots were included in the documentary film "The Battle of Stalingrad" in 1943. In the excerpt, all episodes of numerous attacks on both houses were combined, and the order to capture was given by the commander of the army, Chuikov himself.
Images from the film "Battle of Stalingrad". Fathers-commanders wisely frown and draw arrows on the diagram, Soviet fighters go on the offensive to peppy music. When you know what blood paid for the capture of these ruins, the video looks completely different.
Having cleared the "House of Railway Workers", the assault groups of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment tried to build on their success and quickly knock out the Germans from another strong point - the four-story school No. 38, which was located 30 meters from the "L-shaped house". But this task was no longer possible for the bloodless units, and the Red Army captured the ruins of the school only three weeks later, on December 26. On the section of the ravines Dolgiy and Krutoy, the training and barrage battalions of the Rodimtsev division that participated in the offensive on December 3-4 also did not achieve their goals and retreated to their original positions.
Scheme of the assault from the book "Fighting in Stalingrad" and a German aerial photo of the area
Recent fights
After the fighting on December 3-4, silence fell in the center of Stalingrad. The wind swept snow into the earth pitted with funnels, the disfigured ruins of buildings and the bodies of the dead. It was calm on the bridgehead of the Rodimtsev division, artillery and mortar shelling of the enemy stopped - the Germans were running out of ammunition and food, the agony of the 6th Army was approaching.
In the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, on the positions of which the "Pavlov's house" was located, a lot has changed. Senior Lieutenant A.K. became the commander of the 7th company instead of the deceased Naumov. Dragan, who returned after being wounded, a participant in the battle for the Central Station. There was practically no one left from the old garrison, most of the fighters were killed or wounded in the battle for the Dairy House. In three months, Pavlov's house, which stood at the forefront of the regiment's defense, turned into a real fortress. Washing their hands in blood, with every minute risk of being killed by a stray bullet or shrapnel, the soldiers of the garrison dug trenches, underground passages and communication passages for days, equipped spare positions and bunkers, sappers installed mines and barbed wire on the square. But ... no one tried to storm this fortress.
A shooting map of Pavlov's House compiled by Lieutenant Dragan from memory and a February aerial photograph of the area. Judging by the recollections, long-term earthen firing points with communication passages were unearthed along the perimeter of the building. An underground passage was dug to the ruins of the gas storage facility (built on the foundation of the church of St. Nicholas), which stood in front of the Pavlov's House, and a remote position for heavy machine guns was equipped. The scheme sins with inaccuracies: by January 5, 1943, the "L-shaped house" had been liberated for a month
The year 1943 has come. In the first half of January, the regiments of Rodimtsev's division were transferred to the right flank of the 284th Infantry Division north of Mamaev Kurgan, instructing them to drive the enemy out of the workers' settlement of the Krasny Oktyabr plant and advance in the direction of height 107.5. The Germans resisted with the despair of the doomed - in the burned-out ruins of wooden quarters covered with snow, each basement or dugout had to be cleared with a fight. In the January offensive, in the last days of the battle for Stalingrad, the division again suffered heavy losses - many soldiers and commanders were wounded and killed, who managed to survive in the fierce battles of September and the positional battles of October-December 1942.
On the morning of January 26, on the northwestern slopes of Mamaev Kurgan, Rodimtsev's guards met with the soldiers of the 52nd Guards Rifle Division, Colonel N.D., who had overcome the Tatar Wall. Kozin. The northern German grouping was cut off from the main forces of the 6th Army, but for another whole week, until February 2, led by the will of its commander, General Strecker (Karl Strecker), stubbornly resisted the attacks of the Soviet troops.
At the same time, the Red Army soldiers of the 284th SD advanced from the southern slopes of the mound to the center of Stalingrad, breaking the defenses of the 295th Infantry Division from the flank. From the side of the Tsaritsa, units of the 64th Army, Lieutenant General M.S., rushed to the center. Shumilov, as if anticipating his main trophy: on January 31, in the basement of a department store on the Square of the Fallen Fighters, Field Marshal Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, surrendered to army representatives. The southern group capitulated.
An excerpt from the film "Battle of Stalingrad" 1943. Soviet fighters are driving demoralized Germans out into the cold, not just somewhere in Stalingrad. Shooting location - the courtyard of the same school number 6. There were fierce battles for this building, its ruins, which cost a lot of blood to the guardsmen of Rodimtsev, were subsequently removed by Zelma. Linking the location to the photo of A. Skvorin
In February, the 13th Guards Rifle Division was returned to its old positions in the center of Stalingrad. The sappers cleared the ground littered with metal, removed wire barriers. The guards gathered and buried their fallen comrades - a huge mass grave appeared on the square on January 9th. Of the about 1,800 soldiers and commanders buried there, only 80 people's names are known.
A series of photographs by Georgy Zelma, February '43. On the left, a squad of sappers marches against the background of the ruins of school No. 38, on the right photo, the same fighters against the background of the L-shaped house and the Railwaymen's House. These majestic ruins and the heroic history associated with them simply fascinated the photographer.
Soon, the remains of buildings and former strongholds were covered with many inscriptions. Political workers armed with paint drew slogans and appeals, noted the numbers of the units that had recaptured or defended one or another line. On the wall of the "Pavlov's House", by that time famous throughout the country through the efforts of writers and journalists, its own inscription also appeared.
In the summer of 1943, the city, disfigured by long months of fighting, began to be restored from ruins. One of the first to be repaired was Pavlov's House, which practically did not suffer during the Battle of Stalingrad: only the end facing the square was destroyed.
After the November offensive and the battle for the Dairy House, the wounded soldiers of the garrison were scattered around the hospitals, and many did not return to Rodimtsev's division. Guards junior sergeant Yakov Pavlov, after being wounded, fought with dignity as part of an anti-tank artillery regiment and was awarded more than one award. The newspapers published articles about the famous Stalingrad house, the legend was overgrown with new heroic details. In the summer of 1945 overtook the eminent "homeowner" and more weighty glory. The stunned Pavlov, along with lieutenant shoulder straps, was awarded the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin - the past "fire and water" Yakov Fedotovich pulled out his lucky ticket.
Award list of Ya.F. Pavlov most of all resembles another article by journalists from GlavPUR. The authors of the award did not particularly hide this, indicating at the end of one of the creators of the story about the "heroic defense". The award sheet describes in detail a completely fictional battle for the building on January 9 Square - otherwise it would not be clear why to give the title of Hero
After the war, the history of the legendary defense of Pavlov's House was revised more than once in literature, and the four-story building itself became the center of the architectural ensemble on the new Defense Square. In 1985, a memorial wall-monument was erected at the end of the house, on which the names of the soldiers of the garrison appeared. By that time, the bulbat fighter A. Sugba, who deserted on November 23, was removed from the canonical lists, whose name also appeared on the lists of the ROA - in the first books of Pavlov's memoirs, the Red Army soldier Sugba died heroically. The defense of the house was limited to 58 days, during which the garrison really had minimal losses - they preferred not to remember the bloody massacre that followed in the Dairy House. The edited legend fit perfectly into the pantheon of the Battle of Stalingrad being created, eventually taking the main place in it.
The true history of the military operations of the 13th Guards Rifle Division of General Rodimtsev, with all the many days of fierce assaults on strongholds, unsuccessful attacks, heavy losses and hard-won victories, gradually faded into oblivion, remaining in long unclaimed mean lines of archival documents and nameless photographs.
Instead of a postscript
If we talk about the value of "Pavlov's House" for the German command, then it was practically absent. At the operational level, the Germans not only did not notice a separate house on the square, but also did not attach any importance to the small bridgehead of the Rodimtsev division. Indeed, in the documents of the 6th Army there are mentions of individual Stalingrad buildings, for which there were especially stubborn battles, but Pavlov's House is not among them. The story of the “Paulus map”, on which the house was marked as a fortress, was told to colleagues by Yu.Yu. Rozenman, head of intelligence of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, who allegedly saw this map himself. The story is more like a bike - there is no mention of the mythical map in other sources.
In the documents of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, the phrase "Pavlov's House" occurs only a couple of times - as an observation post of artillerymen (combat order) and as the place of death of one of the soldiers (report on losses). There is also no information about numerous enemy attacks across the square on January 9; according to operational reports, the Germans mainly advanced in the area of the State Bank (71st PD) and near the ravines (295th PD). After the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, Rodimtsev's headquarters compiled a "Brief description of the defensive battles of the units of the 13th Guards Rifle Division"; in this brochure, the “Pavlov's House” object appears on the map of strongholds - but by that time the building had already gained all-Union fame. During the fighting in the fall of 1942 - winter 1943. "Pavlov's House" in the division of Rodimtsev did not attach much importance.
In the postwar years, the topic of "legendary defense" was scrupulously studied by the writer L.I. Savelyev (Soloveichik), collecting information and corresponding with the surviving veterans of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment. In the repeatedly reprinted book "The House of Sergeant Pavlov" in an artistic form, the events that took place on the site of the Rodimtsev division in the center of Stalingrad were described. In it, the author collected invaluable biographical data about the soldiers and commanders of the 42nd Guards Regiment, his correspondence with veterans and relatives of the dead is stored in Moscow in the State Archives of the Russian Federation.
It is worth mentioning the famous novel by Vasily Grossman "Life and Fate", where the defense of the building on Penzenskaya Street became one of the main storylines. However, if we compare the diary that Grossman kept during the battle and the novel written later, it is clear that the behavior and motivation of Soviet soldiers in the diary notes are strikingly different from the post-war reflection of the famous writer.
Any good story has its collision, and the defense of Pavlov's House is no exception - former comrades-in-arms, the commandant of Pavlov's house and the commander of the garrison Afanasyev became the antagonists. While Pavlov was rapidly moving up the party ladder and reaping the fruits of the glory that had fallen on him, Ivan Filippovich Afanasyev, blinded after a concussion, was groping for a book in which he tried to mention all the defenders of the famous house. The test of "copper pipes" did not pass without a trace for Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov - the former commandant was increasingly removed from his colleagues and stopped attending post-war meetings, realizing that the number of places in the official pantheon of the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad was very limited.
It seemed that as a result, justice triumphed when, after a long 12 years, Afanasyev's sight was restored through the efforts of doctors. The book, in defiance of the official "Pavlov's House", called "The House of Soldier's Glory", saw the light of day, and the commander of the "legendary garrison" himself accompanied the torch of eternal flame at the opening of the memorial complex on Mamaev Kurgan, taking a place of honor in the solemn procession. However, in the mass consciousness, the “Pavlov’s House” still remained a symbol of the heroism and selflessness of the Soviet soldiers.
The Volgograd journalist Yu.M. Beledin, who published the correspondence of the participants in the defense of the famous house. It covered many inconvenient details for the official version. In the letters of the soldiers of the garrison, there was open bewilderment at how Pavlov became the main character of their common history. But the position of the leadership of the museum-panorama of the Battle of Stalingrad was unshakable, and no one was going to rewrite the official version.
Along with the surviving fighters of the garrison, the former commander of the 3rd battalion, Alexei Efimovich Zhukov, wrote to the museum management, who saw with his own eyes the events that took place on January 9 Square. The lines of his letter, more reminiscent of the cry of the soul, are true to this day: "Stalingrad does not know the truth and is afraid of it."
Know the Soviet people that you are the descendants of fearless warriors!
Know, Soviet people, that the blood of great heroes flows in you,
Those who gave their lives for their Motherland, without thinking about the benefits!
Know and honor the Soviet people the exploits of grandfathers and fathers!
The inconspicuous house of pre-war Stalingrad, which was destined to become one of the symbols of perseverance, heroism, military feat - Pavlov's house.
“... On September 26, a group of scouts of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment under the command of Sergeant Ya.F. Pavlov and a platoon of Lieutenant N.E. Zabolotny of the 13th Guards Rifle Division took up defense in 2 residential buildings on January 9 Square. Subsequently, these houses entered the history of the Battle of Stalingrad as "Pavlov's house" and "Zabolotny's house" ... ".
During the days of the Battle of Stalingrad, the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment of Colonel I.P. held the defense on the square on January 9th. Elina.
The commander of the 3rd battalion, captain A.E. Zhukov was ordered to carry out an operation to capture two residential buildings. For this, two groups were created under the command of Sergeant Pavlov and Lieutenant Zabolotny, who successfully coped with the task assigned to them.
The house, captured by the fighters of Lieutenant Zabolotny, could not withstand the onslaught of the enemy - the advancing German invaders blew up the building together with the Soviet soldiers defending it.
The group of Sergeant Pavlov managed to survive, they stayed in the House of the Regional Consumer Union for three days, after which reinforcements under the command of Lieutenant Afanasyev arrived to help them, delivering ammunition and weapons.
The building of the Regional Consumer Union has become one of the most important strongholds in the defense system of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment and the entire 13th Guards Rifle Division ....
Before the war, it was a 4-storey residential building of workers of the regional consumer union. It was considered one of the prestigious houses of Stalingrad: it was surrounded by the elite House of Signalers, the House of NKVD Workers. Specialists from industrial enterprises and party workers lived in Pavlov's house. Pavlov's house was built in such a way that a straight, flat road led from it to the Volga. This fact played an important role during the Battle of Stalingrad.
In mid-September 1942, during the fighting on January 9 Square, Pavlov's house became one of two four-story houses that it was decided to turn into strongholds, since from here it was possible to observe and fire at the part of the city occupied by the enemy to the west up to 1 km, and on north and south are further away. It was for this house that the most fierce battles unfolded.
September 22, 1942 a company of sergeant Yakov Pavlov approached the house and entrenched in it - only four people remained alive at that time. Soon, on the third day, reinforcements arrived: a machine-gun platoon under the command of Lieutenant I.F. Afanasyev, who, as a senior in rank, led the defense of the house. But, nevertheless, for the gunners, the house was named after the person who first entrenched in it. So the house became Pavlov's house.
With the help of sappers, the defense of Pavlov's house was improved - the approaches to it were mined, a trench was dug to communicate with the command located in the Mill building, a telephone with the call sign "Mayak" was installed in the basement of the house. The 25-man garrison held the position for 58 days, repelling endless attacks from vastly superior enemy forces. On the personal map of Paulus, this house was marked as a fortress.
“A small group, defending one house, destroyed more enemy soldiers than the Nazis lost during the capture of Paris,” said Army Commander-62 Vasily Chuikov.
Fighters of 10 nationalities defended Pavlov's house - Georgian Masiashvili and Ukrainian Lushchenko, Jew Litzman and Tatar Ramazanov, Abkhaz Sukba and Uzbek Turgunov. So Pavlov's House became a real stronghold of friendship between peoples during the Great Patriotic War. All the heroes were awarded government awards, and Sergeant Ya. F. Pavlov, who was wounded during the storming of the "dairy house", after which he was sent to the hospital, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The second house on January 9 Square was occupied by a platoon of Lieutenant N. E. Zabolotny. But at the end of September 1942, German artillery completely destroyed this house, almost the entire platoon and Lieutenant Zabolotny himself died under its ruins.
Pavlov's House:
Defenders of Stalingrad near Pavlov's House
House of Zabolotny:
Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov:
From me.
I consider it important to filter the information from this video material, discarding historical lies aside.
TVC is a Western broadcasting company operating in the Russian telecommunications space. As always, such structures, telling about the exploits of our grandfathers and grandmothers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, will definitely add a spoon "psychological tar" into historical "barrel of honey" heroic battles of the Red Army for our great Soviet Motherland.
Remember that any information, even a feat, emotionally negatively colored, involuntarily leaves a person with a negative aftertaste during perception.
Thus, our psychological enemy gradually convinces us that "The Nazis were people too" and it doesn't matter to them that they considered themselves superhumans and us subhumans, with all the ensuing consequences. and it doesn’t matter to them that there are no cases of atrocities of the Red Army soldiers in history, but the atrocities of the Nazis are known to all mankind and are presented to the Nuremberg court. Some say that “If Hitler captured us, then we would now drink Bavarian beer and eat Bavarian sausages”, and it doesn’t matter to them that only Belarusians were killed by the Nazis every fourth, which exists, which provides for the disposal (extermination) of extra Slavs and the conversion into slaves of the survivors, "Stalin is the same tyrant and murderer as Hitler", but it doesn’t matter to them that Stalin defended the multinational Soviet people from destruction and enslavement, and it was Hitler who invaded the territory of the USSR, destroying cities, villages, Soviet citizens ... Does anyone know such a case that a Nazi soldier or officer shouting “For Germany! For Hitler! rushed to the embrasure of the Soviet pillbox, covering his body with a machine gun spewing deadly fire, in order to save his colleagues and complete a combat mission? When will we stop believing the lies of Western specialists in Psychological Warfare and learn to identify a "spoon of psychological tar" in our historical heroic "barrel of honey"?
After the war, the square on which the Pavlov's House, was named Defense Square. A semicircular colonnade by the architect I.E. Fialko was built near Pavlov's house. It was planned to build a monument to the soldier of Stalingrad in front of the house, but the memory of the soldier's feat was immortalized. In 1965, according to the project of sculptors P.L. Malkov and A.V. Golovanov, on the end wall of the house from the side of the square, a memorial wall-monument was erected in honor of the military feat of the defenders of Stalingrad. The inscription on it reads:
“This house at the end of September 1942 was occupied by Sergeant Pavlov Ya.F. and his comrades Alexandrov A.P., Glushchenko V.S., Chernogolov N.Ya. 1st Battalion of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 13th Guards Order of Lenin Rifle Division: Alexandrov A.P., Afanasiev I.F., Bondarenko M.S., Voronov I.V., Glushchenko V.S., Gridin T. I., Dovzhenko P. I., Ivashchenko A. I., Kiselev V. M., Mosiashvili N. G., Murzaev T., Pavlov Ya. F., Ramazanov F. 3., Saraev V. K., Svirin I. T., Sobgaida A. A., Torgunov K., Turdyev M., Khait I. Ya., Chernogolov N. Ya., Chernyshchenko A. N., Shapovalov A. E., Yakimenko G. I.
Defenders of Pavlov's house:
Data on the number of defenders range from 24 to 31. (At one time, about 50 people claimed the name of the Unknown Soldier who defended the House of Soldiers' Glory.) There were also more than thirty civilians in the basements, some were seriously injured as a result of the fires that broke out after German artillery attacks and bombardments. Pavlov's house was defended by servicemen of different nationalities:
| № | FULL NAME. | Rank/ job title |
Armament | Nationality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1
reconnaissance group |
Fedotovich |
sergeant |
gun- | Russian |
| 2
reconnaissance group |
Glushchenko Sergeevich |
corporal |
manual | Ukrainian |
| 3
reconnaissance group |
Alexandrov Alexander P. |
red army soldier |
manual | Russian |
| 4
reconnaissance group |
Chernogolov Yakovlevich |
red army soldier |
manual | Russian |
| 5
commander garrison |
Afanasiev Filippovich |
lieutenant |
heavy | Russian |
| 6
department mortars |
Chernyshenko Nikiforovich |
junior lieutenant |
mortar | Russian |
| 7
department mortars |
Gridin Terenty Illarionovich |
mortar | Russian | |
| 8
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Ravens Vasilevich |
Art. sergeant |
machine gun | Russian |
| 9
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Hite Yakovlevich |
gun- | Jew | |
| 10
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Ivashchenko Ivanovich |
heavy | Ukrainian | |
| 11
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Svirin Timofeevich |
red army soldier |
manual | Russian |
| 12
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Bondarenko |
red army soldier |
manual | Russian |
| 13
machine gun senior sergeant Voronova I.V. |
Dovzhenko |
red army soldier |
heavy | Ukrainian |
| 14
department armor-piercers |
Sobgaida |
Art. sergeant |
PTR | Ukrainian |
| 15
department armor-piercers |
Ramazanov Faizrakhman Zulbukarovich |
corporal |
PTR | Tatar |
| 16
department armor-piercers |
Yakymenko Gregory Ivanovich |
red army soldier |
PTR | Ukrainian |
| 17
department armor-piercers |
Murzaev |
red army soldier |
PTR | Kazakh |
| 18
department armor-piercers |
Turdyev |
red army soldier |
PTR | Tajik |
| 19
department armor-piercers |
Turgunov Kamoljon |
red army soldier |
PTR | Uzbek |
| 20
submachine gunner |
Kiselyov |
red army soldier |
gun- | Russian |
| 21
submachine gunner |
Mosiashvili |
red army soldier |
gun- | Georgian |
| 22
submachine gunner |
Sarajevo |
red army soldier |
gun- | Russian |
| 23
submachine gunner |
Shapovalov Egorovich |
red army soldier |
gun- | Russian |
| 24 | Khokholov Badmaevich |
red army soldier |
rifle | Kalmyk |
Among the defenders of the garrison, who were in the building not constantly, but only periodically, it is worth noting the sniper sergeant Chekhov Anatoly Ivanovich and medical instructor Ulyanov Maria Stepanovna, which took up arms during the German attacks.
In the memoirs of A. S. Chuyanov, they still appear in the defenders of the house: Stepanoshvili (Georgian), Sukba (Abkhazian). In his book, the spelling of some surnames is also different: Sabgayda (Ukrainian), Murzuev (Kazakh). -1 -2
Rodimtsev with the heroic garrison "Pavlov's House".
Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov(October 4, 1917 - September 28, 1981) - the hero of the Battle of Stalingrad, the commander of a group of fighters who, in the fall of 1942, defended a four-story residential building on Lenin Square (Pavlov's house) in the center of Stalingrad. This house and its defenders have become a symbol of the heroic defense of the city on the Volga. Hero of the Soviet Union (1945).
Yakov Pavlov was born in the village of Krestovaya, finished primary school and worked in agriculture. In 1938 he was drafted into the Red Army. He met the Great Patriotic War in combat units in the Kovel region, as part of the troops of the Southwestern Front.
In 1942, Pavlov was sent to the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 13th Guards Division, General A.I. Rodimtsev. He took part in defensive battles on the outskirts of Stalingrad. In July-August 1942, Senior Sergeant Ya. F. Pavlov was reorganized in the city of Kamyshin, where he was appointed commander of the machine gun section of the 7th company. In September 1942 - in the battles for Stalingrad, he carried out reconnaissance missions.
On the evening of September 27, 1942, Pavlov received a combat mission from the company commander, Lieutenant Naumov, to reconnoiter the situation in a 4-story building overlooking the central square of Stalingrad - January 9th Square. This building occupied an important tactical position. With three fighters (Chernogolov, Glushchenko and Alexandrov), he drove the Germans out of the building and completely captured it. Soon the group received reinforcements, ammunition and telephone communications. Together with the platoon of Lieutenant I. Afanasyev, the number of defenders increased to 26 people. Far from immediately, it was possible to dig a trench and evacuate civilians hiding in the basements of the house.
The Germans constantly attacked the building with artillery and air bombs. But Pavlov avoided heavy losses and for almost two months did not allow the enemy to break through to the Volga.
On November 19, 1942, the troops of the Stalingrad Front launched a counteroffensive. On November 25, during the attack, Pavlov was wounded in the leg, was in the hospital, then was a gunner and commander of the reconnaissance squad in the artillery units of the 3rd Ukrainian and 2nd Belorussian fronts, in which he reached Stettin. He was awarded two Orders of the Red Star and many medals.
June 17, 1945 to junior lieutenant Yakov Pavlov was awarded title of Hero of the Soviet Union (medal No. 6775). Pavlov was demobilized from the ranks of the Soviet Army in August 1946.
After demobilization, he worked in the city of Valdai, Novgorod Region, was the third secretary of the district committee, graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Three times he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR from the Novgorod region. After the war, he was also awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution.
He repeatedly came to Stalingrad (now Volgograd), met with the inhabitants of the city, who survived the war and restored it from ruins. In 1980, Ya. F. Pavlov was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of the Hero City of Volgograd."
In Veliky Novgorod, in a boarding school named after him for orphans and children left without parental care, there is a Pavlov Museum (Derevyanitsa microdistrict, Beregovaya Street, 44).
Ya.F. Pavlov was buried on the alley of heroes of the Western cemetery of Veliky Novgorod.
Glushchenko Vasily Sergeevich, corporal, member of the reconnaissance group that captured Pavlov's House.
At the end of October 1942, the squad of Sergeant Yakov Pavlov was ordered to knock out the enemy who had settled there from the four-story House of Specialists and hold the object until reinforcements arrived. There was a daring fight with a clearly outnumbered enemy. Due to the desperate onslaught and courage of a handful of Soviet fighters, the Nazis decided that they were being attacked by a large unit. But the attackers were nothing at all: Sergeant Pavlov, privates Alexandrov, Chernogolov and the Stavropol collective farmer, infantryman Vasily Glushchenko. On the fourth or fifth day, a small reinforcement approached, and the garrison of Pavlov's House, which for 58 days held an unparalleled defense of only one building, entered the history of the great battle on the Volga. They stood to the death, the enemy did not manage to knock them out of the fortress house.
After the war, Vasily Glushchenko settled with us in Maryinskaya. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Victory, the Hero of the Soviet Union Yakov Pavlov himself came to the village to meet with him. Some of the old-timers still remember this. They remember how, straightening his mustache with a slight movement, Vasily Sergeevich said:
“There were, however, rarely moments of calm. And then a kind of barking voice was heard from their German shelters:
"Rus, give up."
I give them all the strength in response:
"Don't make a mistake, you fascist bastard! It's not just Russians. If I start listing everyone, you will die without listening.”
Indeed, the defenders of Pavlov's House included representatives of many nationalities. Together with the Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Jews, and Tatars fought hand in hand. They were hard workers before the war, and in the war, in general, they remained essentially the same workers: they fought as they worked.
Until his death, Glushchenko kept a letter from Marshal Vasily Chuikov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. The illustrious commander, years after the war, personally greeted and thanked the soldier:
“Dear Vasily Sergeevich, friend on the front, hero of the Stalingrad epic! Your feat is inscribed in golden letters in history. HousePavlova, which you courageously defended for all 58 days, remained an unconquered fortress ... Thank you, soldier and comrade-in-arms.
This year marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of Vasily Glushchenko. In honor of this date, a memorial evening was held at the Maryinsky House of Culture. Lev Sokolov, Chairman of the Council of Veterans of the village, told about the Battle of Stalingrad itself to the audience, among whom there were many students of the village school. And the history teacher and head of the stanitsa museum Alexander Yaroshenko introduced the biography of our heroic countryman.The guests of the meeting saw photographs of Vasily Glushchenko, including front-line ones.
Ivan Filippovich Afanasiev(1916 - August 17, 1975) - lieutenant, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, participant in the Battle of Stalingrad. He led the defense of Pavlov's House.
Born in the village of Voronezhskaya, Ust-Labinsky District, Krasnodar Territory. Russian.
October 2, 1942, during street fighting in Stalingrad, lieutenant Ivan Filippovich Afanasiev led the defense of one of the houses, (five days before, the house was occupied by the reconnaissance group of Sergeant Yakov Pavlov. Later this house will become known as Pavlov's House. The defense of the house lasted 58 days.
Despite the continuous attacks of the Nazis and bombing from the air, the garrison of the house held its object until the start of the general offensive of the Soviet troops.
November 4, 1942 Ivan Filippovich Afanasiev led his fighters on the offensive through the area on January 9th. By 11 o'clock, the guards had captured one of the houses on the square, repulsing four enemy attacks. In this battle, Lieutenant Afanasiev was shell-shocked (with loss of hearing and speech) and sent to the hospital. January 17, 1943 in the battle for the factory part of the city, he was again wounded.
By order of the 13th Guards Line Division No.: 17 / n dated: 02/22/1943, the commander of a machine-gun platoon of the 42nd Guards Line Regiment of the 13th Guards Line Division, Lieutenant Afanasyev, was awarded the Order of the Red Star for the fact that in the battles for the city of Stalingrad near the village of Krasny Oktyabr, together with his platoon, he destroyed about 150 enemy soldiers and officers, destroying 18 soldiers with fire from personal weapons, and blocked 4 dugouts, allowing the infantry to conduct a counterattack.
After the Battle of Stalingrad, he participated in the battles on the Oryol-Kursk Bulge, near Kiev, Berlin and ended the war in Prague.
By order of the 111th brigade No.: 6 dated: 07/23/1943, the commander of a bullet platoon of a rifle company of the 111th tank brigade of the guard, Lieutenant Afanasyev, was awarded the Order of the Red Star for the fact that, while repelling an enemy counterattack, he destroyed his platoon with machine gun fire up to 3 enemy platoons, personally suppressing one enemy mortar from a machine gun.
By order of the 111th brigade No.: 17 / n dated: 01/15/1944, Lieutenant Afanasyev was awarded the Order of the Red Star for destroying up to 200 enemy soldiers and officers with machine gun fire from his platoon in the battle for Chenovichi station, while Afanasyev himself destroyed about 40 soldiers, replacing a wounded machine gunner.
By order for the 25th Tank Corps: 9 / n dated: 05/09/1944, the party organizer of the battalion of machine gunners of the 111th brigade of the guard, Lieutenant Afanasyev, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree for selflessness and courage shown in the course of fulfilling his direct duties as a party organizer, directed to maintain the morale of the battalion soldiers.
By order of the ptrb 173 of the 25th Panzer Division, Senior Lieutenant Afanasyev was awarded the medal "For the Liberation of Prague".
By order of the commander of the 25th Panzer Division, Senior Lieutenant Afanasyev was awarded the medal "For the Capture of Berlin".
By order of the 230th AZSP of the 53rd Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front No.: 3/1074 dated: 10/07/1946, Senior Lieutenant Afanasyev was awarded the medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
As a result of a shell shock received during the war in 1951, Ivan Afanasiev lost his sight, which was partially restored after operations.
Afanasiev settled in Stalingrad after the war. Despite problems with his eyesight, he managed to write his memoirs, as well as correspond with other defenders of the Pavlov House.
On October 15, 1967, at the opening of the monument of the ensemble on Mamayev Kurgan, together with Konstantin Nedorubov, he accompanied a torch with eternal flame from the Square of Fallen Fighters to Mamayev Kurgan. And in 1970, together with Konstantin Nedorubov and Vasily Zaitsev, he laid a capsule with a message to posterity (which will be opened on May 9, 2045, on the centenary of the Victory).
Died Ivan Filippovich Afanasiev August 17, 1975, and was buried in the central cemetery of Volgograd. However, in his will he indicated that he would like to rest with other fighters on Mamaev Kurgan. In 2013, he was reburied at the memorial cemetery of Mamaev Kurgan. There is a memorial plaque on his grave.
Chernyshenko Alexey Nikiforovich member of the defense of Pavlov's House and commanded the department of mortars.Junior Lieutenant Chernyshenko Alexei Nikiforovich was born and lived in the village of Shipunovo, Altai Territory, and from there in 1941 at the age of 18 he was drafted into the Red Army and went to the front.
Aleksey Nikiforovich Chernyshenko died in 1942 a heroic death in one of the battles for Stalingrad and was buried in a mass grave in the city of Stalingrad.
Sergeant Khait Idel Yakovlevich was born in the village of Khashchevatoe, Odessa region, in 1914. He was called up to the ranks of the Red Army Gayvoronsky RVC. Red Army soldier, shooter, 273 joint venture, 270 rifle division.
Khait Idel Yakovlevich died heroically on November 25, 1942, on the last 58th day of the defense of the "Pavlov's house" in Stalingrad.
Khait Idel Yakovlevich was buried in a mass grave near the Volga, not far from the Gergart mill, located next to Pavlov's house in the city of Stalingrad.
Red Army soldier of the Red Army Ivan Timofeevich Svirin. The war tore Ivan Timofeevich away from the peaceful profession. Before the war, he worked on a collective farm with. Mikhailovka, Kharabalinsky district. From there he went to the front. A wife and four children remained at home.
As it becomes clear from the documents, Ivan Timofeevich was a machine gunner in the garrison of Pavlov's House. He, along with everyone else, repulsed enemy attacks, went to the command post of a rifle company with combat reports, equipped positions for firing points, and stood at his post. By age, Ivan Timofeevich was the oldest, then he was 42 years old. He had years of civil war behind him. Often, in between battles, he talked with newcomers, helped them understand much that was happening in the garrison.
In January 1943, he died in the battles for the workers' settlement "Red October". In the Svirins' house, as a memory of her husband and father, books are kept that tell about the heroes of the immortal garrison.
Sobgaida Andrey Alekseevich was born in 1914 in the village of Politotdelskoe, Nikolaevsky district, Stalingrad region. At the age of 27, he went to the front. Behind him were already several months of front-line life, he participated in the battles near Kharkov. He was wounded, was treated in the Kamyshin hospital. Only two days were given to the fighter Sobgaide to visit his family.
In the morning he was already on his way. On the way to the burning Stalingrad. There were fights here for every meter of land, for every house.
Sobgaida Andrei Alekseevich was one of the defenders of Pavlov's house. In one of the defensive Andrey was wounded. Only he did not leave the garrison, he tried to help his comrades. He dug trenches with other fighters from the house to the mill. The last, most fierce attack was repulsed in mid-November. Company commander Naumov was killed, many were wounded, including Pavlov. Attack ahead. Andrey Alekseevich Sobgaida died in one of the offensive battles.
Corporal, armor-piercer Ramazanov Faizrakhman Zulbukarovich, born in 1906. Born in Astrakhan.
Ramazanov Faizrakhman Zulbukarovich, a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, including the defense of Pavlov's house, liberated Hungary and took Berlin.
He was seriously wounded, but to the evil of all deaths he survived. He was awarded the Order of Military Glory, medals "For Stalingrad", "For Kharkov", "For Balaton" and other awards.
One of the best snipers of the 13th Guards Sergeant fired at the enemy from Pavlov's House Anatoly Ivanovich Chekhov, which destroyed more than 200 Nazis.
General Rodimtsev, right on the front line, presented nineteen-year-old Anatoly Chekhov with the Order of the Red Banner.
The Nazis managed to destroy one of the walls of the house. To which the fighters jokingly replied:
“We have three more walls. A house is like a house, only with a little ventilation.”
Gridin Terenty Illarionovich was born on May 15, 1910 in the village of Blizhneosinovsky of the Second Don District of the Don Cossack Region.
In 1933 he graduated from the Nizhne-Chirsky Agricultural College. Worked as an agronomist.
Called to the Red Army on March 24, 1942. Kaganovichi district military registration and enlistment office (now Surovikinsky) and was sent to the Astrakhan military school. After that, he was assigned to the 13th Guards Rifle Division.
After the Red Army soldiers were fixed in Pavlov's house, mortars arrived there with junior lieutenant A.N. Chernyshenko, among them Gridin T.I.
A copy of the book "The House of Soldier's Glory" is stored in the funds of the Surovikinsky Museum of Local Lore, on the title page of which a dedicatory inscription was made by the author:
“To a fighting friend in the Stalingrad battles T.I. Gridin from the commander and author, May 9, 1971, Afanasiev.
Terenty Illarionovich read the book with a pencil in his hands and underlined the brightest episodes, made notes in the margins. For example:
“I was with mortarmen in the house at a time when the 8th company of the 3rd battalion was also in the building of the military department” (p. 46)
“The entire western end wall of our House of Soldiers' Glory collapsed from the explosion. At this time, our company commander was standing in the basement window. During a strong explosion of a heavy shell, I was shell-shocked, hit my head with rubble and tore off the door to the basement” (p. 54).
“We witnessed how the building of the military department turned into a pile of ruins. During the day, an L-shaped house stood, and in the morning only smoke came out of the ruins” (p. 57).
“Mortar gunners were in the House at the head of senior sergeant Gridin, and at that time they sent us the commander of a platoon of company mortars, Comrade Alexei Chernyshenko, a young Siberian who had just graduated from 10 grades and the command staff school” (p. 60).
On December 2, 1942, Gridin T.I. was seriously wounded in the right hand and sent to the hospital. After being seriously wounded, he did not take part in hostilities.
After the war, Terenty Illarionovich lived in the city of Surovikino, Volgograd Region, worked at the plant protection station as an agronomist, actively corresponded with his comrades in arms, and came to the city of Volgograd to meet with fellow soldiers.
Died Gridin Terenty Illarionovich April 23, 1987, buried in Surovikino.
Art. sergeant of the Red Army machine-gun crew commander Voronov Ilya Vasilievich. The Stalingrad epic of the machine gunner Voronov began like this. After being seriously wounded on the Don coast in May 1942, Ilya Voronov fought off the doctors as best he could, who tried to send him to recover in the warm rear, away from the battles. In September, from the hospital evacuated to Astrakhan, undertreated soldiers, among whom was twenty-year-old Ilya, went to fight in the burning Stalingrad. Machine gunners were worth their weight in gold, and even such aces as Voronov, who treated thirty-kilogram "maxims" like toys, even more so.
Guards Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, who was instructed by the command of the 3rd Battalion of the 42nd Infantry Regiment of the 13th Guards Division to hold the most important strategic object of access to the Volga - Pavlov's house, asked Voronov for help.
The peasant son Ilya Voronov - about ninety meters tall, with pood fists - could choose the best position for his machine gun to attack, and the most inconspicuous place to dig in and wait out if the combat situation required it. He was not only a machine-gun crew commander, an assistant platoon commander, but also a real ringleader. Voronov taught his machine gunners the song “Forward, we are dashing Stalinists” and he himself was the leader.
“Yasha, if it’s difficult, I’ll be at the mill,” he said to Pavlov before he went to the house.
At that time, the Voronov machine gun was working at the same mill, which still stands in Volgograd as a destroyed reminder of the Battle of Stalingrad.
“Send me Voronov,” Pavlov asked and demanded from his command.
And in the end, the battalion commander called Voronov and ordered:
"You are going to Pavlov's house."
“At first I did not understand: in which house? - Ilya Vasilyevich recalls.
- This house was then officially called the House of Specialists. It turns out that the messenger is “guilty”. Yasha told him:
"Tell Voronov to come to Pavlov's house."
And the messenger to the commanders said:
"To Pavlov's House". That's how it's been since then."
“Well, now you can fight,” Pavlov hugged Voronov, who finally arrived.
Few people know that when the house was in the hands of the Nazis, 34 civilians remained in it and drank grief in full.
Having seized the house, the Germans mocked people: they beat the elderly, raped women. And when Sergeant Pavlov and his comrades kicked out the invaders, they told him so:
"If you leave us here, we will not forgive you."
They could not leave this house after such words! This is tantamount to betrayal. How then to look into the eyes of children who have become almost family. One of the elders, ten-year-old Vanya, brought cartridges, water, and helped bandage the fighters.
And once Voronov came into one of the rooms, and there a naked woman was sitting and wrapping a baby in her dress.
“Why naked? Why are you embarrassing my fighters?" machine gunner Ilya Voronov was surprised.
“I have nothing to swaddle a child with,” the woman replied. "Get dressed, I'm going now," the machine gunner replied.
And he brought new changeable footcloths to the woman for diapers.
After many, many years, that child turned, according to Ilya Vasilyevich, into a beautiful woman. She set the table and met the defenders of Pavlov's House in her Volgograd apartment. She knew perfectly well that she was alive because the machine-gunner Voronov, sergeants Pavlov and Ramazanov, and Private Glushchenko gave her mother their rations, while they themselves climbed to the wheat warehouse located between the house and the mill. There were problems with food and ammunition: the command would send 10-12 boats, but only two or three would arrive. So the soldiers chewed the wheat they got under shelling. For water, they made their way to the Volga, overflowing with oil from tanks bombed by the Nazis. Then, through rags and footcloths, the water was filtered six times. She still smelled like kerosene. They drank themselves, and cleaned it for a machine gun.
What the Nazis did to take this house: they fired at it from machine guns, bombed it with planes, and threw grenades at it. And ours, as if from the ashes, rose: they “patched” the broken windows and doorways with bags of earth - and answered. They did not sleep for several days - and therefore the Nazis lost count. They imagined that the house was not a wounded platoon, but almost a regiment.
The moment came when the Nazis could not stand it. "Hey Rus, how many of you are there?" - came from the fascist loudspeaker, which was installed a few meters from Pavlov's house.
“A full battalion and a makeweight,” answered the Pavlovtsy.
When the general offensive began, five people survived in a dilapidated house.
They lasted 58 days! What are the components of heroism? Sergeant Voronov knows them. Here, the Nazis shot a simple Russian girl in the arm and sent her to ours for data on the location of parts, and took her mother hostage. Heroism was made up of fearlessness: when you leaned out of the house almost to the waist and poured fire on the Nazis, revenged yourself for breaking a fragile Russian girl, forcing you to choose at the age of ten: life or Motherland, mother or soldiers-liberators.
This is how the defense of Pavlov's House ended for Voronov.
“Once during a battle in the city center, an enemy grenade fell at my feet,” the veteran said. - I quickly threw it back, but then another one exploded, and I was wounded in the face and stomach. I felt no pain and continued to fight, wiping the blood from my eyes. During the next counterattack of the enemy, I was wounded again, but I was in such an evil passion that, even when the cartridges ran out, I tore out the rings from the grenades with my teeth and threw them towards the Fritz. When a nurse crawled up, while bandaging, she counted more than twenty shrapnel and machine-gun wounds on the body.
He lay in hospital beds for no less than 15 and a half months, underwent dozens of operations. He returned to his native village of Glinka in 1944, and his mother and sisters live in a dugout. It was as if his heart was pinched with ticks: it was necessary to rebuild the village, build a house for the family, and he was on one leg. Harnessed. He worked as a storekeeper, head of a milk farm, a security guard at a grain stock, so much so that others could not keep up even on two legs. Didn't let anyone down.
After the war, Ilya Vasilievich cried only once, in the eighty-first. A telegram came from Nizhny Novgorod from Pavlov's son:
"Dad is dead".
Natalya Alexandrovna is the daughter of the legendary commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division A.I. Rodimtseva - in her book about the war and about her father she wrote about the Russian soldier Ilya Voronov:
"This man is a diamond of the highest standard."
For three years he has not traveled to the city on the Volga. He was younger - every year he was there. I sat at the same table with Marshal Chuikov, and he repeated:
"If it were not for you, the defenders of the house, it is not yet known how the war would have turned."
Afanasiev I. F., Voronov I. V., Ulyanova M. S.
LADYCHENKO (ULYANOVA) Maria Stepanovna "Chizhik".
"IN ce 58 days of the defense of Pavlov's House from the first to the last day, Masha, an affectionate and skillful nurse, was part of our garrison. And if the enemy was advancing? .. Masha took a machine gun and grenades, stood next to her, fought and shouted:
"Beat, guys, filthy, fascist - the enemy!".
L. I. SAVELYEV "PAVLOV'S HOUSE". Tale-tale about Soldier's glory:
“... the Nazis started another “concert” and now everyone is at the firing points. There is Naumov, who brought the artillerymen to the house ... the medical officer Chizhik - commanders, prudently took her with him when he equipped the expedition for a gun ... everyone was sure that when needed, Chizhik would definitely be there ... Chizhik hurried - the medical instructor Marusya Ulyanova, who provided Dronov with the first help.... But the platoon commander Ivan Filippovich Afanasyev had the most guest-soldiers, ... and Maria Stepanovna Ulyanova-Ladychenko - after all, she also lives in Volgograd. For her front-line friends, she remained so: MARUSYA - CHIZHIK. (S. 136-138, 144, 206).
"STALINGRAD. 1942-1943. Stalingrad battle in documents. Moscow. 1995. P. 412. VGMP funds, folder No. 198, inv. No. 9846, original:
“FROM THE POLITICAL REPORT OF THE 62nd ARMY ON THE INCLUSION OF THE ARMED WORKING TEAM OF STALINGRAD FACTORIES INTO THE ARMY.
... Ulyanova Maria Stepanovna, an employee of the Krasny Oktyabr plant, is considered to be in the 42nd joint venture of the 13th guards. with the best nurse. Under any fire, she coolly performs her duties. She was recently awarded the Medal for Courage...
The head of the political department of the 62nd Army, Brigadier Commissar Vasiliev. TsAMO, f. 48, op. 486, d. 35, l. 319a-321. (S. 321-323. KP).
Ulyanova Maria Stepanovna: Medal for Courage fund 33 inventory 686044 case 1200 l. 2 I am sending a piece of the award order:
"14. Medical instructor of the 3rd rifle battalion of the Guards of the Red Army ULYANOVA Maria Stepanovna for the fact that in the battles for the city of Stalingrad from November 22 to November 26, 1942 she carried 15 wounded soldiers and commanders and 15 rifles from the battlefield and provided first aid to 20 wounded commanders and soldiers. Born in 1919, Russian member of the Komsomol, in the Patriotic War since December 1941, has 2 wounds, in the spacecraft since 1941 ..., has no awards ... ".
Volgograd Regional Committee of the CPSU, Institute of Military History of the USSR Ministry of Defense. "HISTORICAL FEAT OF STALINGRAD". Moscow. 1985. S. 219:
“In the legendary house of Sergeant Ya. F. Pavlov, TOGETHER WITH HIS DEFENDERS FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END OF THE FIGHTS, Maria ULYANOVA WAS RESIDENT, who provided medical assistance to many soldiers.”
The museum of the HISTORY OF THE KIROV DISTRICT has a record about a participant in the Great Patriotic War and the Battle of Stalingrad, a participant in the battles of the legendary garrison of the House of Soldiers' Glory ("Pavlov's House") Ladychenko (Ulyanova) Maria Stepanovna:
“Ulyanova had three combat medals:
- "For courage";
- "For the defense of Stalingrad";
- "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
Battle path Gary Badmaevich Khokholov started in 1941. 1941 - when the war began, Garya worked at a fish cannery:
“... I had armor, and all my comrades went to the front. Well, I think everyone is at war, and I will catch carp?
Before I had time to leave Kalmykia, they turned me back - I didn’t fit for health reasons. On the second attempt, he nevertheless broke through to the front, ”the veteran later recalled.
IN 1 
942, as an 18-year-old boy, Garya leaves for the army. It falls into the training battalion of the 139th Infantry Division, located in the Astrakhan region (Kharabali). I managed to study for a mortar for 1.5 months. Undergraduate recruits are sent on a 5-day forced march (on foot at night) and young mortar cadets find themselves on the left bank of the Volga.
Meanwhile, fierce battles are going on in the very center of Stalingrad. For more than two months, the fighters of the 42nd regiment of the 13th Guards Division have been holding back the onslaught of the enemy. Stone buildings - the House of Sergeant Y. Pavlov, the House of Lieutenant N. Zabolotny and Mill No. 4 - were turned into strongholds. "No step back!"- Following this order and the dictates of the soul, the guards did not want to retreat.
Pavlov's House or, as many today call it, the House of Soldier's Glory, had a favorable, dominant position in this area (the territory occupied by the enemy was well shot through). That is why the commander of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment I.P. Yelin orders the commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion, Captain A.E. Zhukov to seize the house and turn it into a stronghold. Warriors of the 7th rifle company, commanded by senior lieutenant I.P., were sent to carry out this task. Naumov. At the end of September 1942, this house was captured by Sergeant Ya.F. Pavlov with his squad (3 fighters).
At the same time:
“On September 20 we crossed the Volga ...” - the entry was made with a simple pencil by the hand of G. Khokholov himself on 1 sheet of a Red Army book.
Reinforcements arrived at the House on the third day of Pavlov's stay with his comrades: a machine-gun platoon of 7 people, led by Lieutenant I.F. Afanasiev, a group of armor-piercers of 6 people under the command of senior sergeant A.A. Subgaida, four mortarmen under the command of Lieutenant A.N. Chernushenko and three machine gunners. I.F. was appointed commander of the group. Afanasiev.
In the book "Guards fought to the death" General A.I. Rodimtsev recalls:
“Jokely, Afanasiev called his assault group an international brigade. If the machine gunners represented only three nationalities - Russians, Ukrainians and Uzbeks, then an even more complex national family was represented by the armor-piercing squad of A.A. Subguides".
It was in this group that G. Khokholov was also listed.This is how Khokholov himself describes his appearance in the battalion.
“On the night of September 20, we crossed on a barge to a burning city. And immediately into battle. Then they stopped. They took us to the basement of a house. An oil lamp burned and by its light they wrote down by name. I spoke Russian poorly, but I still have a Red Army book with the personal signature of commander-7 I.I. Naumov: 13th GSD, 42nd GSP, 3rd GSB, 7th rifle company, date - September 20, 1942. After a short clerical procedure, we were taken further - bullets were already whistling here, rockets were flashing, a front line was felt ... About twenty of us gathered. The platoon commander explained that almost the entire city belongs to the Germans, but we will stay in this house.
From the memoirs of G. Khokholov:
“I remember the endless fascist attacks: German planes circled over the house, artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire did not subside. The Germans stormed the house several times a day. For the rest of my life I remember the smell of burning, lime dust that corrodes the eyes. And also the piercing autumn wind and burnt wheat, which he chewed to satisfy his hunger.
In the book of Alexander Samsonov "The Battle of Stalingrad" there are lines:
“Often, the famous sniper of the division A.I. came to Pavlov’s House. Chekhov and conducted well-aimed fire at the enemy from the attic.
And Khokholov, in his letter, tells how exactly Chekhov taught him sniper art in a besieged house. Lessons, apparently, were not in vain. Proof of this is an entry in the book of a Red Army soldier, especially dear to a veteran:
“Awarded with the “Excellent Sniper” badge.
The date of delivery - November 7, 1942 - clearly indicates that for the first time Khokholov used his marksmanship skills in defending the house that later became famous.
In one of his last interviews, the veteran said:
“One day, the company commander handed me a sniper rifle and ordered me to shoot at the gas tanks of enemy vehicles and drivers, but not to give myself away. He took up his post in the northwest side of the house. At another observation post, a second soldier was on duty. I extended a wire to him in order to keep the connection in this way. When one of us took a break, the second took aim at the enemy. One of us should have been killed. I live. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of that Ukrainian guy.”
The brave Soviet soldiers held out for 58 days and nights. They left the building on November 24, when the regiment launched a counteroffensive.November 21-24 were the most bloody battles in the defense of Stalingrad.Morning of November 25 - attack on the enemy. In the battle, G. Khokholov was wounded, crawling to the shelter. At night, the wounded are taken to the Volga to be transported to the other side. Here is how he himself recalls it:
“The last fight was early in the morning on November 25th. Komroty spent the night with us, explained the task. He was the first to attack - jumped out the window and shouted:
"Follow me, forward!"
The Germans opened heavy mortar fire. A few steps from the house, a machine gun slashed my legs, and I fell like a sheaf. It felt like a lot of us were killed.
We, the wounded, were taken to the Volga. But the crossing did not work - there was broken ice on the river. No one bandaged us, I experienced terrible torment for five days. Thought it was the end. And only in the hospital EG-3638 in the city of Ershov, Saratov region, I believed in my salvation.
After a hospital in the Saratov city of Ershov, Khokholov falls into the 15th Airborne Division, in which he takes part in the battles on the Kursk Bulge. In the terrible battles on the Kursk Bulge, 8 thousand people fought, of which 400 people survived. Garya Khokholov receives a second wound in these battles. A bomb explodes next to him - he receives severe injuries to both arms and legs. The unconscious soldier is sent by train to the Chita region, to the Trans-Baikal-Petrovsky hospital. And inIn 1943, after treatment with a certificate of the 2nd group of disability on 2 crutches, he returned home to restore the post-war Motherland.
Kamoljon Turgunov was called to the front at the end of 1941, where he mastered the specialty of an anti-tank gunner (armor-piercer). After the Battle of Stalingrad, he took part in the liberation of Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, and Hungary.
I met the victory in the German Magdeburg. Returning home with two wounds, he worked as a tractor driver in his native collective farm in the village of Bardankul, Turakurgan district, Namangan region, where he lived with his family - his wife and 16 children. A documentary is dedicated to him in Uzbekistan "Long way home" filmed by a well-known cinematographer and director Davran Salimov in the country.
On March 17, 2015, the last defender of the Pavlov House, Kamoljon Turgunov, passed away at the age of 92 in Namangan.
Pavlov's house has become a symbol of not only military, but also labor prowess. It is from the restoration of this house - and Pavlov's House became the first home of the restored Stalingrad - the famous Cherkasov movement began to restore the city in his spare time. Women's brigade of builders A.M. Cherkasova restored Pavlov's house immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, in 1943-44 (the beginning of the restoration is June 9, 1943).
The Cherkasov movement quickly expanded among the masses: by the end of 1943, over 820 Cherkasov brigades worked in Stalingrad, in 1944 - 1192 brigades, in 1945 - 1227 brigades. This is told by the memorial wall-monument, opened on May 4, 1985 on the end wall of the house from the side of Sovetskaya Street. Authors: architect V. E. Maslyaev and sculptor V. G. Fetisov. The inscription on the memorial wall reads:
"In this house, the feat of arms and labor merged".
Every year the number of veterans, witnesses of the Second World War is getting smaller. And after some ten years, they will not be alive. Therefore, it is now so important to find out the truth about these distant events in order to avoid misunderstandings and rumors in the future.
Gradually, the declassification of state archives is being carried out, and military historians have access to secret documents, and therefore, to accurate facts that make it possible to find out the truth and dispel all speculation that relates to some moments of the military. The Battle of Stalingrad also has a number of episodes that cause ambiguous assessments of both the veterans themselves and historians. One of these controversial episodes is the defense of one of the many dilapidated houses in the center of Stalingrad, which became known to the whole world as "Pavlov's house."
In the process of defending Stalingrad in September 1942, a group of Soviet intelligence officers captured a four-story building in the very center of the city and entrenched themselves there. The group was led by Sergeant Yakov Pavlov. A little later, machine guns, ammunition and anti-tank rifles were also delivered there, and the house turned into an important stronghold of the division's defense.
The history of the protection of this house is as follows: during the bombing of the city, all the buildings turned into ruins, only one four-story house survived. Its upper floors made it possible to monitor and keep under fire that part of the city that was occupied by the enemy, so the house itself played an important strategic role in the plans of the Soviet command.
The house was adapted for all-round defense. Firing points were moved outside the building, and underground passages were made to communicate with them. The approaches to the house were mined with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. It was thanks to the skillful organization of the defense that the warriors were able to repel the attacks of enemies for such a long period of time.
Representatives of 9 nationalities fought a staunch defense until the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive in the Battle of Stalingrad. It would seem, what is unclear here? However, Yuri Beledin, one of the oldest and most experienced journalists in Volgograd, is sure that this house should be called the "House of Soldiers' Glory", and not at all "Pavlov's House".
The journalist writes about this in his book, which has the title "Shard in the Heart." According to him, the battalion commander A. Zhukov was responsible for the capture of this house. It was on his orders that the company commander I. Naumov sent four soldiers, one of whom was Pavlov. During the day they fought off the attacks of the Germans. All the rest of the time, while the defense of the house was carried out, Lieutenant I. Afanasyev was responsible for everything, who came there along with reinforcements in the form of a machine-gun platoon and a group of armor-piercers. The total composition of the garrison located there consisted of 29 soldiers.
In addition, on one of the walls of the house, someone made an inscription that P. Demchenko, I. Voronov, A. Anikin and P. Dovzhenko fought heroically in this place. And below it was attributed that he defended the house of Y. Pavlov. The result is five people. Why, then, of all those who carried out the defense of the house, and who were in absolutely equal conditions, only Sergeant Ya. Pavlov was awarded the star of the Hero of the USSR? And besides, most records in military literature indicate that it was under the leadership of Pavlov that the Soviet garrison held the line for 58 days.
Then another question arises: if it is true that it was not Pavlov who led the defense, why were the other defenders silent? At the same time, the facts show that they were not silent at all. This is also evidenced by the correspondence between I. Afanasyev and fellow soldiers. According to the author of the book, there was a certain “political situation” that did not make it possible to change the established idea of the defenders of this house. In addition, I. Afanasiev himself was a man of exceptional decency and modesty. He served in the army until 1951, when he was dismissed for health reasons - from wounds received during the war, he was almost completely blind. He was awarded several front-line awards, including the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad". In the book "House of Soldier's Glory" he described in detail the time spent by his garrison in the house. But censorship did not let it through, so the author was forced to make some corrections. So, Afanasiev cited Pavlov's words that by the time the reconnaissance group arrived, there were Germans in the house. Some time later, evidence was collected that no one was actually in the house. In general, his book is a true story about a difficult time when Soviet soldiers heroically defended the house. Among these fighters was Y. Pavlov, who at that time was even wounded. No one is trying to belittle his merits in defense, but the authorities very selectively singled out the defenders of this building - after all, it was not only Pavlov's house, but first of all the house of a large number of Soviet soldiers - the defenders of Stalingrad.
Breaking through the defense of the house was the main task of the Germans at that time, because this house is like a bone in the throat. German troops tried to break the defense with the help of mortar and artillery shelling, air bombardment, but the Nazis failed to break the defenders. These events went down in the history of the war as a symbol of the steadfastness and courage of the soldiers of the Soviet army.
In addition, this house has become a symbol of the labor prowess of the Soviet people. It was the restoration of Pavlov's house that marked the beginning of the Cherkasov movement to restore buildings. Immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the women's brigades of A.M. Cherkasova began to restore the house, and by the end of 1943, more than 820 brigades worked in the city, in 1944 - already 1192, and in 1945 - 1227 brigades.
Pavlov's house in Volgograd. Photo from www.wikipedia.org
It just so happened that during the year a private (by the standards of war) object of defense and its defenders became the object of attention of two creative teams at once. Directed by Sergei Ursulyak, he staged a wonderful multi-part television film "Life and Fate" based on the novel of the same name by Vasily Grossman. Its premiere took place in October 2012. And in February of this year, a television film is shown on the Kultura TV channel. As for the blockbuster "Stalingrad" by Fyodor Bondarchuk, which was released last fall, this is a completely different creation, with a different concept and approach. About his artistic merits and fidelity to historical truth (or rather, the absence of such) is hardly worth spreading. Enough has been said about this, including in a very sensible publication “Stalingrad without Stalingrad” (“NVO” No. 37, 10/11/13).
Grossman's novel, his television version, and Bondarchuk's film show the events that took place in one of the strongholds of the city's defense - albeit to a different extent, albeit not directly. But literature and cinema are one thing, and life is another. Or rather, history.
FORTRESS TO THE ENEMY DOES NOT SURRENDER
In September 1942, fierce battles broke out in the streets and squares of the central and northern parts of Stalingrad. “The fight in the city is a special fight. It is not strength that decides the issue, but skill, dexterity, resourcefulness and surprise. City buildings, like breakwaters, cut the battle formations of the advancing enemy and directed his forces along the streets. Therefore, we firmly held on to especially strong buildings, created in them a few garrisons capable of conducting all-round defense in the event of an encirclement. Especially strong buildings helped us create strongholds, from which the defenders of the city mowed down the advancing fascists with machine guns and machine guns, ”general Vasily Chuikov, commander of the legendary 62nd Army, later noted.
Unparalleled in world history in terms of scale and ferocity, the Battle of Stalingrad, which became a turning point in the course of the entire Second World War, ended victoriously on February 2, 1943. But street fighting continued in Stalingrad until the end of the battle on the banks of the Volga.
One of the strongholds, the importance of which the Commander-62 spoke about, was the legendary Pavlov's House. Its end wall overlooked January 9 Square (later Lenin Square). The 42nd regiment of the 13th Guards Rifle Division operated at this turn, which joined the 62nd Army in September 1942 (commander General Alexander Rodimtsev). The house occupied an important place in the defense system of the Rodimtsev guardsmen on the outskirts of the Volga. It was a four-story brick building. However, he had a very important tactical advantage: from there he controlled the entire surrounding area. It was possible to observe and fire at the part of the city occupied by that time by the enemy: up to 1 km to the west, and even more to the north and south. But the main thing is that from here the paths of a possible breakthrough of the Germans to the Volga were visible: it was within easy reach. Intense fighting here continued for more than two months.
The tactical significance of the house was correctly assessed by the commander of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment, Colonel Ivan Yelin. He ordered the commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion, Captain Alexei Zhukov, to seize the house and turn it into a stronghold. On September 20, 1942, the fighters of the squad, led by Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, made their way there. And on the third day, reinforcements arrived: a machine-gun platoon of Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev (seven people with one heavy machine gun), a group of armor-piercers of senior sergeant Andrey Sobgaida (six people with three anti-tank rifles), four mortarmen with two mortars under the command of Lieutenant Alexei Chernyshenko and three machine gunners. Lieutenant Ivan Afanasiev was appointed commander of this group.
The Nazis almost all the time conducted massive artillery and mortar shelling around the house, attacked it from the air, and continuously attacked it. But the garrison of the "fortress" - this is how Pavlov's house was marked on the headquarters map of the commander of the 6th German army, Paulus - skillfully prepared him for all-round defense. The fighters fired from different places through loopholes pierced in bricked-up windows and holes in the walls. When the enemy tried to approach the building, he was met by dense machine-gun fire from all firing points. The garrison steadfastly repelled enemy attacks and inflicted significant losses on the Nazis. And most importantly, in operational and tactical terms, the defenders of the house did not allow the enemy to break through to the Volga in this area.
At the same time, Lieutenants Afanasiev, Chernyshenko and Sergeant Pavlov established fire cooperation with strongholds in neighboring buildings - in the house that was defended by the soldiers of Lieutenant Nikolai Zabolotny, and in the mill building, where the command post of the 42nd Infantry Regiment was located. The interaction was facilitated by the fact that an observation post was equipped on the third floor of Pavlov's house, which the Nazis could not suppress. “A small group, defending one house, destroyed more enemy soldiers than the Nazis lost during the capture of Paris,” said Army Commander-62 Vasily Chuikov.
INTERNATIONAL SQUAD
DEFENDERS
Pavlov's house was defended by fighters of different nationalities - Russians Pavlov, Alexandrov and Afanasiev, Ukrainians Sobgaida and Glushchenko, Georgians Mosiashvili and Stepanoshvili, Uzbek Turganov, Kazakh Murzaev, Abkhaz Sukhba, Tajik Turdyev, Tatar Romazanov. According to official figures - 24 fighters. But in reality - up to 30. Someone dropped out due to injury, someone died, but they got a replacement. One way or another, Sergeant Pavlov (he was born on October 17, 1917 in Valdai, Novgorod region) celebrated his 25th birthday in the walls of “his” house along with his fighting friends. True, nothing is written about this anywhere, and Yakov Fedotovich himself and his fighting friends preferred to remain silent on this score.
As a result of continuous shelling, the building was seriously damaged. One end wall was almost completely destroyed. In order to avoid losses from blockages, part of the firepower, by order of the regiment commander, was moved outside the building. But the defenders of the House of Sergeant Pavlov, the House of Lieutenant Zabolotny and the mill, turned into strongholds, continued to steadfastly hold the line, despite the fierce attacks of the enemy.
It is impossible not to ask: how did Sergeant Pavlov's brother-soldiers not only manage to survive in a fiery hell, but also effectively defend themselves? Firstly, not only Lieutenant Afanasiev, but also Sergeant Pavlov were experienced fighters. Yakov Pavlov has been in the Red Army since 1938, and this is a solid period. Before Stalingrad, he was the commander of the machine-gun squad, gunner. So he does not need experience. Secondly, the reserve positions they equipped helped a lot. In front of the house was a cemented fuel depot, an underground passage was dug to it. And about 30 meters from the house there was a water tunnel hatch, to which an underground passage was also made. Ammunition and meager supplies of food came to the defenders of the house through it.
During shelling, everyone, except for observers and outposts, descended into shelters. Including civilians who were in the basements, who for various reasons could not be evacuated immediately. The shelling stopped, and the entire small garrison was again in their positions in the house, again firing at the enemy.
For 58 days and nights the garrison of the house held the defense. The fighters left it on November 24, when the regiment, along with other units, launched a counteroffensive. All of them were awarded government awards. And Sergeant Pavlov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. True, after the war - by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 27, 1945 - after he had joined the party by that time.
For the sake of historical truth, we note that most of the time the defense of the outpost house was led by Lieutenant Afanasyev. But he was not awarded the title of Hero. In addition, Ivan Filippovich was a man of exceptional modesty and never stuck out his merits. And “above” they decided to present the junior commander to the high rank, who, together with his fighters, was the first to break through to the house and take up defense there. After the fighting, someone made a corresponding inscription on the wall of the building. She was seen by military leaders, war correspondents. Under the name "Pavlov's House" the object was originally listed in combat reports. One way or another, the building on January 9 Square went down in history as Pavlov's House. Yakov Fedotovich himself, despite being wounded, fought with dignity after Stalingrad - already as an artilleryman. He ended the war on the Oder in the uniform of a foreman. He was later promoted to an officer's rank.
FOLLOWING THE PARTICIPANTS
DEFENSE OF STALINGRAD
Now in the hero city there are about 8 thousand participants of the Great Patriotic War, of which 1200 direct participants in the Battle of Stalingrad, as well as 3420 combat veterans. Yakov Pavlov could rightly be on this list - he could remain in the restored city that he defended. By nature, he was very sociable, many times he met with the inhabitants who survived the war and restored it from the ruins. Yakov Fedotovich lived with the cares and interests of the city on the Volga, participated in events for patriotic education.
The legendary Pavlov's House in the city became the first restored building. And the first was telephoned. Moreover, part of the apartments there were received by those who came to the restoration of Stalingrad from all over the country. Not only Yakov Pavlov, but also other surviving defenders of the house, which went down in history under his name, have always been the dearest guests of the townspeople. In 1980, Yakov Fedotovich was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of the Hero City of Volgograd". But...
After demobilization in August 1946, he returned to his native Novgorod region. Was at work in party bodies in the city of Valdai. Received higher education. Three times he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR from the Novgorod region. Peaceful ones were added to his military awards: the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and medals.
Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov passed away in 1981 - the consequences of front-line wounds affected. But it just so happened that there were many legends and myths around the “House of Sergeant Pavlov” that went down in history and himself. Sometimes their echoes can be heard now. So, for many years the rumor was that Yakov Pavlov did not die at all, but took monastic tonsure and became Archimandrite Kirill. But at the same time, they say, he asked me to convey that he was not alive.
Is it so? The situation was investigated by the staff of the Volgograd State Panorama Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad. And what? Father Kirill in the world really was ... Pavlov. And he really participated in the Battle of Stalingrad. That's just with the name of the problem came out - Ivan. Moreover, Yakov and Ivan Pavlov were sergeants during the battle on the Volga, both ended the war as junior lieutenants. Ivan Pavlov served in the Far East in the initial period of the war, and in October 1941, as part of his unit, he arrived at the Volkhov Front. And then - Stalingrad. In 1942 he was wounded twice. But survived. When the fighting in Stalingrad died down, Ivan accidentally found among the rubble a gospel burnt by fire. He considered this a sign from above, and Ivan's war-scorched heart suggested: keep the volume with you!
In the ranks of the tank corps, Ivan Pavlov fought through Romania, Hungary and Austria. And everywhere with him in a knapsack was a burnt Stalingrad church book. Demobilized in 1946, he went to Moscow. In the Yelokhov Cathedral I asked: how to become a priest? And as he was, in military uniform, he went to enter the theological seminary. They say that many years later, Archimandrite Kirill was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office of the city of Sergiev Posad near Moscow and asked what to report “upstairs” about the defender of Stalingrad, Sergeant Pavlov. Kirill asked to be told that he was not alive.
But this is not the end of our story. During the search, the employees of the panorama museum (it is located just opposite the Pavlov House, across Sovetskaya Street, and I have been there many times as a student, as I studied at a nearby university) managed to establish the following. Among the participants in the Battle of Stalingrad were three Pavlovs, who became Heroes of the Soviet Union. In addition to Yakov Fedotovich, this is a tankman captain Sergei Mikhailovich Pavlov and an infantryman of the guard senior sergeant Dmitry Ivanovich Pavlov. On the Pavlovs and Afanasievs, as well as on the Ivanovs and Petrovs, Russia is holding on.
Volgograd–Moscow
Pavlov's house became one of the historical objects of the Battle of Stalingrad, which still causes controversy among modern historians.
During fierce fighting, the house withstood a considerable number of counterattacks from the Germans. For 58 days, a group of Soviet soldiers bravely held the line, destroying more than a thousand enemy soldiers during this period. In the post-war years, historians carefully tried to restore all the details, and the composition of the commanders who carried out the operation led to the first disagreements.
Who was on the defensive
According to the official version, Ya.F. Pavlov, in principle, is associated with this fact and the name of the house, which he received later. But there is another version, according to which Pavlov led the assault directly, and I.F. Afanasyev was then responsible for the defense. And this fact is confirmed by military reports, which became a source for restoring all the events of that period. According to his soldiers, Ivan Afanasyevich was a rather modest person, perhaps this pushed him a little into the background. After the war, Pavlov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In contrast, Afanasiev was not awarded such an award.
The strategic importance of the house
An interesting fact for historians was that the Germans marked this house on the map as a fortress. And indeed the strategic importance of the house was very important - from here a wide view of the territory was opened, from where the Germans could break through to the Volga. Despite the daily attacks from the enemy, our fighters defended their positions, reliably closing the approaches from the enemies. The Germans who took part in the assault could not understand how the people in Pavlov's house could withstand their attacks without food and ammunition reinforcements. Subsequently, it turned out that all provisions and weapons were delivered through a special trench dug underground.
Is Tolik Kuryshov a fictional character or a hero?
Also, a little-known fact that was discovered in the course of research was the heroism of an 11-year-old boy who fought along with the Pavlovians. Tolik Kuryshov helped the soldiers in every possible way, who, in turn, tried to protect him from danger. Despite the commander's ban, Tolik still managed to accomplish a real feat. Having penetrated into one of the neighboring houses, he was able to get documents important for the army - a plan of capture. After the war, Kuryshov did not advertise his feat in any way. We learned about this event from the surviving documents. After a series of investigations, Anatoly Kuryshov was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
Where were the civilians?
Was there an evacuation or not - this issue also caused a lot of controversy. According to one version, civilians were in the basement of the Pavlovsk house for 58 days. Although there is a thorium that people were evacuated through dug trenches. Yet modern historians adhere to the official version. Many documents testify that people really were in the basement all this time. Thanks to the heroism of our soldiers, none of the civilians suffered during these 58 days.
Today, Pavlov's house has been completely restored and immortalized with a memorial wall. On the basis of the events associated with the heroic defense of the legendary house, books have been written and even a film has been made that has won many world awards.
