Russia at war 1941-1945

On September 11, they informed Stalin that his previous instructions to despatch two infantry divisions from Kiev to stop the German advance in the north could not be carried out; that the Soviet armies in the Ukraine had been badly weakened by weeks of heavy fighting, and that, despite the Supreme Command's opinion to the contrary, they

considered the time ripe for withdrawing to a new Une in the east.

On that same day, in speaking to General Kirponos, commander of the South-Western

Front, Stalin "emphatically rejected the proposal to abandon Kiev and to withdraw the troops from the Kiev salient to the River Psyol [in the Kursk-Poltava area]. He insisted that troops be taken from other sectors of the Front and thrown against the Germans

advancing on Konotop [east of Nezhin]..." He also relieved Budienny of his command and replaced him by Timo-shenko, who arrived in Kiev on September 13 to take up his

new duties.

On that day, the bottleneck from which the four armies of the South-Western Front could have pulled out was only twenty miles wide—between Lokhvitsa and Lubny... Two days

later, German tank formations closed this bottleneck.

Here we come to the climax of the Stalin-Khrushchev controversy, of which so much is made in the present-day History:

On September 14 Major-General Tupilov, Chief of Staff of the South-West Front,

considered it his duty to inform General Shaposhni-kov, the Chief of Staff in

Moscow, of the catastrophic situation... There were, he concluded, only a couple of days left. General Shaposhnikov called this report "panicky", asked the commanders of the South-West Front not to lose their heads and to carry out

Comrade Stalin's orders of September 11.

[IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 108.]

But on September 16, the Germans closed the bottleneck, and the four Soviet armies were surrounded... One of them, the 37th, was still holding the Kiev bridgehead on the west bank of the Dnieper. All these troops, says the History, had already suffered very heavy losses, "were disorganised and had lost most of their fighting capacity. All this could have been avoided if Budienny's and Khrushchev's advice had been followed in time."

[Ibid., p. 108.]

After pointing out that the Supreme Command had a very erroneous idea of the whole

situation, the History goes on:

Since the Supreme Command still would not order a general retreat, the War

Council of the South-Western Direction accepted N. S. Khrushchev's proposal to

abandon Kiev and to lead the troops of the South-West Front out of the

encirclement. Since the enemy had not yet consolidated his front along the Psyol, this seemed the only reasonable solution. On Budienny's and Khrushchev's behalf,

this decision was transmitted verbally by General Bagramian to General Kirponos,

who was then at Priluki, the headquarters of the South-West Front... Instead of

immediately carrying out this order, Kirponos finally asked Moscow whether or not to carry out the instructions of the War Council of the South-Western Direction.

[IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 109.]

It was not till 11.40 p.m. on September 17 that Shaposhnikov replied that the Supreme Command had authorised the abandonment of Kiev, but still said nothing about breaking across the river Psyol. Thus, two days were wasted in which substantial Russian forces could have broken out, but did not. What followed was an incoherent attempt to break out of the encirclement; it was all the more incoherent since communications between the various army headquarters were non-existent. Thus, separated from the other armies, the 37th Army continued its hopeless fight for Kiev during the next few days, and only then began—without any hope of success—to fight its way out.

Only some units succeeded in breaking out—for example one of 2,000 men with General