Elijah to the anniversary

The current anniversary of the Stalingrad Victory once again demonstrated the duality of the position of the authorities in relation to this great historical event. The anniversary was preceded by an absurd decision of the Volgograd City Duma that six days a year, including the anniversary of the surrender of the Paulus army, the city would be called Stalingrad. It is not clear, however, whether it will also be possible to call the city in these days Volgograd or in trains and aircraft will have to announce arrival in Stalingrad, that is, in another era. But what about the title of hero city? Indeed, on May 8, 1965 this title was awarded precisely to Volgograd, and the phrase "Hero City Stalingrad" is an arbitrary design of Volgograd deputies. So far, we note that federal television channels were ignored by the Volgograd Duma and was still called the city of Volgograd on February 2. Speaking at the celebrations, President Putin called Stalingrad a symbol of the unity of Russians, but he did not mention the problem of renaming.

In fact, today the very word "Stalingrad" does not unite, but split the nation. According to surveys, at least 40% of the population of Russia is positive to Stalin, and for them the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad will be perceived as Stalin's rehabilitation. At the same time, the Russians, who are opponents of the totalitarian past and authoritarian present, perceive attempts to return Stalin’s name to the Russian map as mockery of millions of its victims.

Nevertheless, the Russian authorities are strong mood in favor of Stalingrad. The idea of ​​renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad on a permanent and not temporary basis was supported by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, and the speaker of the Federation Council Valentin Matvienko advocated for the city referendum, and made it clear that she herself was for Stalingrad. The idea of ​​a referendum was supported by the head of the CEC Vladimir Churov and the leader of the unicorn in the Duma Vladimir Vasiliev. The positive outcome of such a referendum in the current mood of residents is very likely. However, the last word still remains with the president, and he is in no hurry to publish his position. In my opinion, such issues should be resolved not in referenda, but by the decision of the federal authorities to eliminate totalitarian heritage on the map of our country. And then not only Volgograd will never turn into Stalingrad, but the Leningrad region will finally become Petersburg, and the Sverdlovsk region - Yekaterinburg.

An attempt to make the Great Patriotic War and its central event - the Battle of Stalingrad - the basis of the new Russian identity, which the authorities have been dreaming of for many years, inevitably leads to dominance in this identity of the Soviet and imperial component. Putin and his environment would very much like, having separated from Stalin his crime (and above all - the shooting of the nomenclature), to leave a bright image of the victorious military leader and builder of the empire. Her Putin and Putin would want to recreate - if not in its former form, then at least as a zone of pre -emptive Russian influence in the post -Soviet space and in Eastern Europe. But the story is a stubborn thing, and it is impossible to separate the crimes from victories in it.

If you watch new documentary films that federal television channels shot to the Stalingrad anniversary, it is easy to notice that a Soviet view of the great battle prevails in them. We are talking about the paintings "Stalingrad. Confrontation" (NTV), "Battle of Stalingrad" ("Russia-1") and "City in fire" (Channel One). The Germans are represented here only by criminals, and our fighters are only heroes and victims. Only in the NTV film is there a hint of a wider view of the tragedy. The letters of the Lutheran pastor and military doctor Kurt Royber are quoted here and his drawings are shown (the famous "Stalingrad Madonna" later became the emblem of the Bundeswehr medical service). In his letters from Stalingrad, he tried to evaluate what was happening from universal, Christian positions. At the end, it is reported that in January 1944, Royber died in a camp for prisoners in Elabuga. Here, it would seem, and we must talk about why, out of more than 90 thousand Stalingrad prisoners, only 5-6 thousand survived. But our documentaryists are clearly not ready for such a conversation. They do not want to admit that the Germans and their allies in Soviet camps were even worse than Soviet prisoners - in German. By mid -1943, more than two -thirds of prisoners died in the USSR. And this despite the fact that the captured countries of the axis in the Soviet Union then were an order of magnitude less than captured Red Army soldiers in Germany and in the territories occupied by it. The situation improved only in mid -1944, when in the USSR, as in Germany, rations for prisoners were significantly increased.

In Russia, usually the Stalingrad victory is represented as a victory of good over evil. But in reality, two evils fought against each other near Stalingrad. Compared to Nazi evil, the Soviet was less, but only because it fought in alliance with Western democracies. The latter can just claim the role of a certain relative good, although there are many sins behind them, starting with the "policy of peace" and "strange war" and ending with the Yalta-Potsdam section of Europe with Stalin. After Stalingrad, the Red Army carried the peoples of the USSR and Europe not only the liberation from Nazi slavery, but also the new communist oppression. It is no coincidence that in the novel of Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, the victory near Stalingrad turns into the triumph of Stalin, who can now fulfill its far -reaching plans, and the sufferings of the main characters, on which new persecutions are being drilled.

In the films they try to show smaller Stalin and talk more about the characteristics of weapons and military equipment. But we still do not really know how the Stalingrad counterattack was planned, since most documents of the bet and the General Staff are still inaccessible to researchers. And in no film they did not consider it necessary to say a good word about the Western allies, as if there were neither Lend-Lease, nor fights in North Africa.

There are shameful blunders in new films. In the film, Channel One, completely seriously, states that the 6th German army took Paris in 1939. The screenwriter of the picture and his consultants, of course, might not know that, firstly, no one took Paris, since the French government declared him an open city, and secondly, not the 6th, but the 18th Army entered the French capital. But this is what this event did not happen in 1939, but in 1940, even a schoolboy should know.

Among other errors, one can note that during the assault on Stalingrad, giant 600-mm Karl 600-mm mortars were used, which at that time were safely under Leningrad, where, however, they were never applied. Also, a mockery looks like a statement that in 1942 the Soviet IL-2 attack aircraft not only terrified the enemy’s ground troops, but also successfully fought with German fighters. Just then, our attack aircraft, deprived of the treasury, became the easy prey of the "messengers". The losses decreased, and even then not very much, only after a double IL-2 was developed at the end of 1942.

The alleged statement from the film to the film does not correspond to the statement that Paulus signed the general unconditional surrender of the 6th Army. In fact, the general surrender of the 6th Army was never signed. Paulus refused to give an order to surrender, citing the fact that he had no connection with the northern group, Colonel General Karl Shterkorer, and the command of the southern group transferred to the commander of the 71st division, Major General Fritz Rosk, who signed the surrender of the southern group on January 31. And the surrender of the northern group was signed by the Squire on February 2.

The historian Alexei Isaev in the film Channel One claims that since Hitler ordered the transfer of a full-blooded 6th Panzer Division under Stalingrad, then if the Soviet counterattack began a couple of days later, it could have ended in failure. But the 6th Panzer Division arrived at the Army Group "Don" and first joined the battle on December 4. Even if the Soviet counterattack began not on the 19th, but on November 21, how could the 6th division prevent him?

Legends about the “Pavlov’s house” are repeated in every way: as if the heroic sergeant Yakov Pavlov, with four fighters, knocked out the Germans from there, and then this house became almost a key point in the defense of the Soviet troops, and the Germans repeatedly and unsuccessfully stormed. In fact, before the arrival of the scouts Pavlov, the house was not busy with anyone. And the Germans did not storm the house, but only fired, and all three of the dead defenders of Pavlov’s house died from shells, and not from bullets. In the film of the first channel about the battles in Pavlov’s house, two are told by two, looking like impostors, since there are no surnames in the official list of defenders. The statement that the Germans were in close combat on the Stalingrad streets and in the houses were inferior to the Red Army men and tried to avoid these battles to avoid doubts. In fact, everything was exactly the opposite. With the beginning of street battles in Stalingrad, the losses of the 6th German army decreased more than doubled, since in the conditions of a more complex street fight, better trained Wehrmacht soldiers had an additional advantage over the Red Army.

It used to be said that the victory was won thanks to the leading role of the party and the superiority of socialist ideas over capitalist. Now, in any case, in the film of Channel One, it is argued that the victory near Stalingrad was won a lot thanks to Orthodoxy. Examples of all kinds of signs are given, surviving inhabitants act, recalling how the Orthodox faith helped them survive. In general, an impressive impression is created that almost everyone believed in an atheistic state in God. The elder Archimandrite Kirill, who was mistaken for the famous sergeant Yakov Pavlov, is also remembered. According to the film, historians found that in the world Kirill was Lieutenant Pavlov and really fought in Stalingrad, but had nothing to do with Sergeant Pavlov. It’s strange, however, why did it be necessary to attract historians, and not ask about this well -glorying old man? Or is Archimandrite Kirill are still convinced that he is the resurrected Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov, who peacefully died in 1981? By the way, in all films it admits that not Sergeant Pavlov, but Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev, commanded the garrison of the house, not noted for this. Perhaps, to restore justice, it would be worthwhile to posthumously appropriate the title of Hero of Russia to Afanasyev.

I, perhaps, in many ways agree with Putin, who declared in Volgograd: "The courage and heroism of the defenders were unprecedented, unprecedented, but the victims were colossal on both sides. Probably, this is the only example for the entire Patriotic War, when, despite the fact that we had terrible losses on our part, these losses had even more losses." The more realistic approach of the head of state to the problem of Soviet military losses, as well as the mention of German victims, is only worth welcome. From Putin's words it follows that in all other battles of World War II, Soviet losses killed exceeded the losses of the Germans and their allies. And this is true. According to my estimates, the ratio of those killed between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht for the entire war was approximately 10: 1. In 1941-1942, it reached 15-20: 1, and in the last year of the war fell to 5-7: 1 (however, in some battles, for example, in the battle of Balaton, it returned to the indicators of 1942). Regarding the Battle of Stalingrad, the Putin statement is true only in relation to the period of the encirclement of the 6th Army and only in relation to it and the Soviet troops surrounding it. If we take, for example, battles with Manstein's released grouping in December 1942, then there Soviet losses many times exceeded German. The films claim that from the moment the attack on Stalingrad on July 17 and before the beginning of the Soviet counterattack on November 19, German troops lost 700 thousand people. In fact, the losses of the German 6th and 4th Panzer Armies from the second decade of July and under the second decade of November 1942 amounted to only 107,906 killed, wounded and missing, which is almost 7 times less than the traditional Soviet figure. Meanwhile, according to the official and underestimated at least half the data of the collection “The Secret Strip Filmed”, the losses of the Soviet troops during the Stalingrad defensive operation amounted to 643,842 people, that is, there were 6 times more German.