Through the middle of July a vast and hard-fought battle raged along a front 1,400 kilometers long, between the Polesye region and the mouth of the Danube. On August 8 the Germans succeeded in crossing the Dnepr between Kiev and Kremenchug. Stubborn resistance continued for a month and a half. Budenny, commander of the Southwestern Direction (in Soviet terms, a "direction" included several "fronts," whereas a Soviet "front" was the equivalent of an "army group" in Western military terminology), requested authorization from General Headquarters to abandon Kiev and its fortified region and withdraw his troops from the Dnepr to the Psel river. General Headquarters refused. As a result, the Germans encircled four Soviet armies, most of whose many soldiers were killed or taken prisoner.
According to one account, General M. P. Kirponos, commander of the Southwestern Front, committed suicide, as did some of the members of his headquarters staff.14
Upon taking Kiev, the German Army Group South launched an offensive aimed at Kharkov, the Donbass, and the Crimea. East of Kiev, the Germans headed toward Bryansk and Orel, with the objective of taking Moscow. By the end of September 1941 the situation was truly critical.
THE GOVERNMENT, THE PEOPLE, AND THE WAR
Eight hours after the German invasion began, at noon on June 22, 1941, Molotov, the deputy premier, went on the radio to inform the Soviet people of the treacherous German attack. Stalin chose not to speak. He had reason enough for that decision, for his policies were now exposed as total failures, in particular his friendship and collaboration with Germany and his failure to prepare the country for war. He was in the habit of associating his name with all Soviet victories and achievements, and he certainly did not want his name identified with defeat. For several days Stalin seems to have been in shock. He secluded himself in his dacha at Kuntsevo outside Moscow and in effect withdrew from the affairs of state. Not until a number of days had passed, and after other members of the Politburo had pressured him (as was made known at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956) did he return to his duties.
It took another week before the Soviet leadership sent its first directive to party and government organizations in the front-line areas and another five days before Stalin went on the radio to announce this program of action to the population, on July 3, 1941. He was obliged to tell the people that the enemy had made deep inroads into the Soviet Union. At this moment of crisis Stalin, who had deprived millions of their homes, property, and rights during collectivization, who had created a system of slave labor camps, who had executed the best military leaders and the cream of the intelligentsia, who had shot or imprisoned millions of Soviet citizens, issued a pleading call to his "brothers and sisters."15
In this difficult hour the best and noblest instincts were aroused among the people: the spirit of self-sacrifice, the feeling of responsibility for the country, and a sense of patriotic duty. In the threatened areas, entire divisions of popular militia (opolchenie) were formed, as well as special units to guard against German paratroops, and labor battalions to build new lines of fortifications. The recruitment stations were flooded with volunteers.
In Leningrad alone ten divisions of popular militia were formed; together with other volunteer formations, they totaled 159,000.16 In Moscow there were twelve divisions, totaling about 120,000. In Kiev 29,000 joined. It was not only the industrial workers who entered these units, but the intellectuals as well—teachers, students, artists, musicians, writers, scientists. Most of them had no military training, and there was neither the time nor the necessary weapons and supplies to provide it.
To understand better the situation in which the country found itself by fall of 1941, let us hear the testimony of a major witness, Nikita Khrushchev, who was then the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist party:
The situation quickly turned very bad, mostly because there was so little help forthcoming from Moscow. Shortly after the war started, during the German advance on Kiev, there was a great awakening of patriotism among the people. The workers from the "Lenin Forge" and other factories around Kiev came to the Central Committee in droves asking for rifles so that they could fight back against the invaders. I phoned Moscow to arrange for a shipment of weapons with which to arm these citizens who wanted to join the Front in support of Red Power. The only person I could get through to was Malenkov. "Tell me," I said, "where can we get rifles? We've got factory workers here who want to join the ranks of the Red Army to fight the Germans, and we don't have anything to arm them with." "You'd better give up any thought of getting rifles from us. The rifles in the civil defense organization here have all been sent to Leningrad." "Then what are we supposed to fight with?" "I don't know—pikes, swords, homemade weapons, anything you can make in your own factories." "You mean we should fight tanks with spears?" "You'll have to do the best you can. You can make fire bombs out of bottles of gasoline or kerosene and throw them at the tanks."
You can imagine my dismay and indignation when I heard Malenkov talking this way. Here we were, trying to hold back an invasion without rifles and machine guns, not to mention artillery or mechanized weapons! I didn't dare tell anyone what Malenkov had said to me. Who knows what the reaction would have been. I certainly couldn't tell the people how bad the situation was. But the people must have figured out on their own how woefully under- equipped we were. And why were we so badly armed? Because of complacency in the Commissariat of Defense and demoralization and defeatism in the leadership. These factors had kept us from building up our munitions industry and fortifying our borders. And now it was too late.17
(Naturally Khrushchev did not say a word about the fact that in the Ukraine, particularly in the western region, in certain instances the population actually welcomed the Germans as liberators.)
Initially the mobilization affected all men born between 1905 and 1918
and capable of bearing arms; in the last year or two of the war the draft was extended to those born through 1927.
In the regions west of the Yaroslavl—Ryazan—Rostov-on-the-Don line, martial law was decreed and the organizing of popular militias and anti- paratroop units began.
On December 26, 1941, a law decreed the mobilization of all industrial and office workers in the war industry who had not been drafted. Unauthorized departure from a job in any of these enterprises was equivalent to desertion. Forced overtime was instituted; all holidays were suspended for the duration of the war. The workday was increased to between ten and twelve hours, and in the cities where a state of emergency existed, such as Leningrad and Tula, the workday had no end. Transportation workers and office workers were also mobilized.
The country's human resources were sharply reduced at the very beginning of the war, because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was quickly occupied by the enemy. Moreover, in the first few months of war millions of Soviet soldiers were either killed, wounded, or captured.
With a large percentage of the male population called off to war, they were replaced on the job by women aged sixteen to fifty-five, who had to take over the heavy work of men: stoking furnaces, handling hot metal, operating heavy machinery. People over sixty and adolescents of fourteen and older were also brought into the factories.
On June 30, 1941, the State Committee for Defense was formed, an emergency body, which concentrated all power in its hands. Stalin was its chairman, Molotov its vice-chairman, Voroshilov and Malenkov initially its other two members. Later, the committee was filled out with Beria, Bul- ganin, Voznesensky, Kaganovich, and Mikoyan. Local defense committees were also created, each consisting of the first secretary of the local party organization, the chairman of the local soviet, and representatives of the local army and state security units.18