Leonid Brezhnev, Malaia Zemlia (Little Land). 1978
Brezhnev’s legitimizing (and oft mocked) autobiography, likely ghost-written for a man of questionable literacy.
Although I didn’t keep a diary during the war, the 1,418 blazing days and nights have not been forgotten. There were episodes, encounters, battles and moments which for me, as for all front-line soldiers, will never fade from the memory.
I would like to lake you back to a comparatively small sector of the war which our soldiers and sailors called Malaia Zemlia (“the Little Land”). It is indeed “little”, less than thirty square kilometers. And it is great, as even the smallest patch of ground may become when soaked with the blood of selfless heroes. So that the reader can have an idea of the situation. I may say that on landing days every one who managed to cross the bay and set foot on Malaia Zemlia was given a medal. I don’t remember a single troop-crossing when the Germans didn’t kill, didn’t drown hundreds of our men. And yet there were always twelve to fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers on the beachhead which we had seized from the enemy.
On 17 April 1943, I had once again to get to Malaia Zemlia. I remember the date well, and I don’t think that anyone who was there will ever forget it either: it was the day the Germans began their operation Neptune. The name itself was an indication of their plans; they wanted to drive us into the sea. We were aware of this from intelligence reports: we knew what they were planning was no ordinary offensive, but a decisive, general one.
And it was my duty to be there, at the front lines, in the suburbs of Novorossiisk which jutted like a cape into Tsemesskaia Bay, on the narrow beachhead of Malaia Zemlia.
That April I was appointed Chief of the fifth army’s Political Department. Because of the fighting that lay ahead, the 18th Army was reorganized into a landing army, and reinforced with two infantry corps, two divisions, several regiments and a tank brigade. The Black Sea Fleet’s Novorossiisk naval base was operationally put under its command.
In a war one doesn’t choose where to fight, but I must admit that I was pleased with my appointment. The 18th Army was always being sent to the toughest sectors: it had to be given permanent attention, and I had been there, so to speak, day and night. Army Commander Konstantin Leselidze, member of the Military Council Semen Kolonin and I had long learned to understand one another. So my transfer from the Front Political Department to this Army simply legitimized the status quo.
Crossings were made only at night. When I arrived at Gelendzhik City Pier, or Osvodovskaia as it was also called, there wasn’t a free spot anywhere along the moorings. Vessels of all kinds crowded every inch, and people and cargo were already on board. I boarded the seine-netter Ritza, an old lub reeking through and through of fish. Its steps creaked, the sides and bulwark rail were grazed and scarred, and shell splinters and bullets had riddled the deck. It had obviously been worked hard before the war, and was having a tough time of it now too.
A fresh breeze was blowing in from the sea, and it was chilly. In general, it is harder to put up with cold weather in the south than it is in the north. I have no idea why, but it’s so. The seine-netter was being “settled” as I watched. Men were mounting machine-guns and anti-tank rifles at different points and levels. Everyone was looking for some more or less sheltered spot, even if nothing more than a thin board partition, as long as it shut out the sea. A military pilot soon appeared on board, and then everything started moving.
It was a rather strange sight, the ships headed for the roadstead in seeming disorder, but that was only for the first few minutes. Every vessel knew its exact place. The Ritza led the procession, with what we called motor boats No. 7 and No. 9 chugging behind. The seine-netter was towing them. The rest were strung out in a line at 400–500-metre intervals, and we were off for Malaia Zemlia. l here was also submarine chasers to screen us.
I had planned to talk to the new men during the three-hour journey: I wanted to know more about them. But I didn’t manage to get them together. The commandos had already settled in on deck, and I didn’t feel like asking them to get up. So I decided to move from group to group, a question here, a word there, often sitting down for a longer talk. I found most of the men battle-hardened and in a fighting mood. I realized fully that a talk with the soldiers was imperative, but I also knew that often more important than a talk was the soldiers realization that the Political worker, the Political leader, was in there with them, alongside them, enduring the same hardships and dangers. And the tougher the combat situation, the more important that became.
Far ahead, the sky was glowing over Novorossiisk. Peals of artillery thunder rolled, but they were familiar sounds. A naval battle was raging well off to our left. As I was later told, our torpedo boats and the German torpedo boats had clashed head on. I was standing beside the pilot on the open starboard wing of the bridge; his name as far as I can remember was Sokolov.
“The soldiers,” he said, “make one landing, but those manning the boats do it every night. And every night is a battle. They soon get used to it. We pilots have a particular sense of responsibility for everybody. As a matter of fact, we often have to ‘feel’ our way when piloting the ships. On land, sappers locate a mine field, clear out some lanes, and then boldly lead the men through. But the Germans are constantly re-mining our roads; both by plane and by ship. We might have got through some place safely yesterday, but take the same route today and we may run slap into a mine.”
The nearer we came to Tsemesskaia Bay, the louder the thunder of battle. The beachhead was not often bombed at night, but now enemy bombers were coming in from the sea in waves; the thunder of the explosions drowned out the drone of their engines and so it seemed as if the planes were creeping up soundlessly. They would dive and, veering away, immediately fly off. Our men braced themselves, their faces became grimmer, and soon we found ourselves in a wave of light.
The night’s darkness during crossings was an entirely relative thing. German searchlights scanned the waters from the shore, and flares dropped from planes floated almost continuously overhead. Two enemy torpedo boats suddenly shot out from somewhere to the starboard, and our sub chasers met them with heavy fire. German planes were also bombing the approaches to the shore.
Bombs kept falling, sometimes far away, sometimes close, churning up huge masses of water which, illuminated by the searchlights and the multi-colored tracer bullets, glowed with every color of the rainbow. We expected to be hit any minute; and yet even when the blow did come, we weren’t ready for it. At first I didn’t realize what had happened. There was a loud crash somewhere ahead, a column of fire rose upwards, and it seemed that the vessel had exploded. That is what had indeed happened: our seine-netter had hit a mine. The pilot and I were standing side by side, and the explosion shot us both into the air.
I wasn’t aware of any pain. Nor, I’m sure, did the thought of death occur to me. There was nothing new to me about death in its many aspects, and although a normal person can never become inured to it, war forces him to constantly realize that it may also happen to him. You sometimes read that at such a moment a person recalls his loved ones, that his entire life flashes before him, and that he is even able to understand something very important about himself. Perhaps that’s so in some instances, but the only thought that flashed through my mind then was that I must not fall back onto the deck.
Fortunately, I landed in the water well away from the seine-netter, and as I bobbed up to the surface, I saw that it was already sinking. Some of the men, like myself, had been hurled away from the ship by the explosion, others had jumped overboard. I had been a good swimmer from boyhood; after all, I grew up on the Dnepr river; and felt quite secure in the water. I caught my breath, looked around, and saw that both motor boats had cast off their tow lines and were slowly approaching us.
I found myself near boat No. 9. Pilot Sokolov also swam up to it. Holding on to the guard rail, we helped those who were weighted down with arms and ammunition and hardly able to stay afloat to climb on board first, while others in the boat pulled them up. As I remember, not one of them abandoned his weapons.
The searchlights had already found us and clung to us like grim death, while German artillery from the Shirokaia ravine west of Miumiskhako opened fire. It was inaccurate, but the boat was hurled from side to side by the explosions. Then suddenly, although the thunder didn’t subside, the shells stopped exploding around us. Our guns had probably struck at the enemy batteries. And amid that din I made out an angry yell:
“Are you deaf or something? Let’s have your handle”
As it turned out, it was Petty Officer 2nd class Zimoda who shouted at me, stretching out his arms. He couldn’t see my rank-epaulettes in the water, but at a moment like that it really didn’t make any difference. Assault boats have a small draught and run low over the surface. Grabbing the guard rail, I jerked upwards, and strong arms lifted me in.
Only then did I sense my trembling: even in the Black Sea, April is not the best time to swim. The seine-netter had already gone down. The men were wringing out their clothes and cursing under their breath: “Damn that bloody Jerry!” They all gradually quieted down, finding places behind boxes and bales. Some lay curled up or stretched out, as if that provided some sort of safety. But our real job was up ahead, the main thing the battle we were about to join.
And in these tragic surroundings, in the light of the explosions and tracers, a song suddenly welled up. One of the sailors, a very tall one I recall, began to sing. It was a song that had been born on Malaia Zemlia; it was about the bravery and strength of fighters like the men who were in the boat. I knew the song but now it seems to me that that was the time I heard it first. One of the lines has been in memory ever since: “Men of iron sail in these wooden shells.”
Heads began to rise slowly. Those who were lying on deck sat up, the seated rose to their feet, and then more people picked up the tune. I’ll never forget that moment: the song squared the men’s shoulders. Despite what they had just gone through, everyone began to feel more confident, and ready to fight.
The boat soon scraped bottom and we began jumping onto the shore.
Sharp commands were barked out, and the men began unloading the ammunition boxes, while others, hoisting them onto their shoulders, ran towards the shelters; they needed no chasing, the steady fire did that. As soon as they put down one load, they immediately ran back for another, and all the time under fire, under the unceasing hail of bombs. In the meantime wounded men, readied for evacuation, the very ones our soldiers were to replace, were already being carried from the shore on stretchers .
The sloping strip of shore was covered with pebbles, and beyond that was a hill pitted with recessed shelters. That is where the men had to head for if they were to find cover from the fire, and then, climbing another fifteen meters, jump into a trench that led to the heart of Malaia Zemlia. And though, I repeat, the real job was still up ahead, by the time they had reached this point the men had already begun to feel calm. From here, heading along communication trenches, one could get to any unit fighting on the beachhead and probably even to the sub-unit.
Crossings were always dangerous; the journey by sea itself was a risk, as was the unloading, the rush to shelter, and climbing the hill. But each time I returned to Malaia Zemlia a thought would preoccupy me: how had our men made their first landing here, when the German machine guns were mounted right where the present life-saving shelters were, and Germans armed with submachine-guns and grenades, invisible to our landing force, were running through the communication trenches? Everyone who thought for a moment how much harder it had been for the first ones probably felt a lot stronger himself.
Nevertheless, we kept our hold on Malaia Zemlia for exactly as long as the Soviet Command’s plans required, that is, for 255 days. How we lived through those days is what I want to tell you about.
Source: L. I. Brezhnev, How It Was: the war and post-war reconstruction in the Soviet Union (New York: Pergamon, 1979), pp. 3-8.