Russia at war 1941-1945

In the middle of July the Leningrad Party organisation decided to mobilise hundreds of thousands of men and women to build fortifications; the work was supervised by

members of the city and provincial committees of the Party, by secretaries of the regional committees, etc. Several defence lines were built—one, from the mouth of the Luga to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then along the Neva; another, a line of

Leningrad's "outer defences", from Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushski; and then several lines in the immediate neighbourhood of the city, including one in the northern suburbs, facing the Finns.

By the end of July and the beginning of August nearly a million people were engaged in the building of defences:

People of the most different trades and professions—workers, employees,

schoolchildren, housewives, scientists, teachers, artists, actors, students, etc.—

worked with their picks and shovels. From morning till night they went on, often

under enemy fire.

[ Ibid., p. 69.]

Much of the digging done in these conditions, by people not used to this kind of work, was inevitably hasty and amateurish; many of the trenches dug were not deep enough,

and the minefields and barbed-wire defences were often laid and built in a haphazard manner. Nevertheless, when one considers that the Germans had reached the Luga line, 125 miles south of Leningrad, within three weeks of the Invasion, and that it took them over six weeks after that to reach the outskirts of Leningrad, it is clear that this building of defence lines played an important role in saving Leningrad. Altogether, the people of Leningrad succeeded in digging 340 miles of anti-tank ditches, 15,875 miles of open

trenches, and erecting 400 miles of barbed-wire defences, 190 miles of forest obstacles (felled trees, etc.), and 5,000 wooden or concrete firing points, [ Ognevyie tochki (firing points) included not only proper pillboxes, but even the most rudimentary gun and

machine-gun emplacements.] not counting the various defences built inside Leningrad

itself.

But, except for one successful Russian counter-attack in the Soltsy area at the southern end of the "Luga Line", near Lake Ilmen, on July 14-18, the most the Russians could do was to hold the various defence lines between the Luga River and Leningrad as long as possible.

The state of mind of these hundreds of thousands of people who were digging trenches and building fortifications, day after day, can well be guessed; the spirit of self-sacrifice was there, sure enough, but mixed with a great deal of bitterness. General Fedyuninsky tells how, on one occasion, some miles outside Leningrad, he saw a large group of young and elderly women digging like mad: "You are digging well, girls," he remarked. "Yes,"

said an elderly woman, "we are digging well, but you fellows are fighting badly."

[Fedyuninsky, op. cit., p. 68.]

This was perhaps unfair; the soldiers were doing what they could; but there was

everywhere a desperate shortage of both reserves and heavy equipment. Everywhere,

except along part of the Luga Line, the Germans had great superiority. Thus, Major-

General Nikishov, Chief of Staff of the Northern (i.e. Finnish) Front, wrote in August in a dispatch to Marshal Shaposhnikov:

The difficulties in the present situation arise from the fact that neither divisional commanders, not army commanders nor the commander of the Army Group, have

any reserves at all. Even the smallest enemy breakthrough has to be stopped up with improvised sub-units drawn from other parts of the Front.

Moreover, many of the opolcheniye troops had no experience at all; the kind of hardships to which they were subjected may be gauged from the example of the newly-formed 1st

opolcheniye division which, after a forced thirty-seven miles march, during which they were constantly attacked by German aircraft, was promptly thrown into battle against German motorised and panzer troops:

This first battle which the men had ever fought proved a terrible ordeal both to

them and their officers. Not only were they totally inexperienced, but they had no weapons with which to fight the enemy tanks, and when there were large-scale