A new story about the feat of the "Immortal Garrison"
At the end of last September on the NTV channel in the most prime time (at 19.30) a more than an hour documentary and publicistic film by Alexei Pivovarov “Brest. Serf heroes”. The demonstration was preceded by a lengthy announcement of the picture: within a week, the audience tried to convince that it was made "in the genre of a documentary drama and without mythology that hides the truth."
Pivovarov himself, giving interviews to a number of newspapers on the eve of the premiere, explained the emphatically scandalous title of his new work: “I realized that these people were caught in the millstones between two inhuman systems, absolutely indifferent to everything human, to the fate and suffering of people. The story of the survivors is a few days of defense of the fortress, and then - many years in captivity and many years in the Soviet camp. Or life in obscurity and poverty with the stigma of a person who was in captivity, which means - with the stigma of a traitor. All that was left for them was to die as heroes, which almost all the defenders of the Brest Fortress did."
WHAT CANNOT BE NOT NOTED
However, the author of the film still did not adhere to this "concept" that is still fashionable in some strata of Russian society, according to which it is imperative to question the great deeds of those who both in June 1941 and later fought to death with a cruel, skillful, well-armed enemy … For the brave who died on the battlefields, they say, had no choice: either death on the front line, or execution in the rear.
I have been to the Brest Fortress more than once, I have read a lot of literature about its unparalleled defense and therefore I can quite responsibly assert that the creator of the documentary drama did not leave the historical truth and did not distort the facts repeatedly confirmed, as his other colleagues in the television workshop do. Moreover, Pivovarov highlighted a number of episodes of the Brest epic from completely unexpected angles.
For example, there is a story about the first massive shelling of the citadel. At the same time, the recollections of chaplain Rudolf Gschepf from the 45th division of the Wehrmacht, which stormed Brest, are heard: “A hurricane of such force swept over our heads, which we had not experienced either before or throughout the entire subsequent course of the war. Black fountains of smoke rose like mushrooms over the fortress. We were sure that everything there was reduced to ashes. " And after that, the author of the film, with the help of a musical synthesizer, reproduces what Soviet soldiers could hear, and comments: “The power of the blow is really amazing - 4 thousand breaks per minute, 66 - per second … It is estimated that the human brain is able to perceive rhythm no faster 20 beats per second. If the rhythm is higher, then the sound merges into one continuous tone. This is exactly what happens in the Brest Fortress, only the volume of this sound is such that it can cloud the mind and deafen forever. And this is only the most harmless - sound effect."
It is impossible not to be amazed at the depth and accuracy of the following conclusion of Alexei Pivovarov: “The path of bitterness and hatred for the enemy, which the country will pass in a year, the defenders - so time is pressed here - pass in two days. And thrown by Ehrenburg in 1942, the appeal "Kill the German!" in the fortress they are already doing it”.
These words are supported by the testimony of the sergeant of the 9th frontier post Nikolai Morozov about the change in the attitude of the defenders of the Brest fortifications to the captured German soldiers on the second or third day of the war (the first Germans were captured by the Red Army on June 22). “They brought the prisoners into a narrow storeroom, they wanted to shoot them,” recalled Morozov. - But some foreman, so broad-shouldered, forbade us. And he ordered not to admit anyone to the Germans before his arrival. Ten minutes later, this foreman comes with a three-horned pitchfork and says: “This is what you need to shoot them with. And the cartridges will still be useful to us. " He opened the door and began to hit their fat bellies one by one with a pitchfork."
Pivovarov adds the border guard: “And this is not a special case. The prisoners taken in the dining room are also killed: they simply have nowhere to put them, you will not let go to fight further …"
KNOWN AND UNKNOWN
At the same time, the NTV company, announcing the "Brest serfs", seduced potential viewers: the authors thoroughly - for many months - studied the archives, talked with eyewitnesses and did without propaganda myths about mass heroism, friendship of peoples and the leading role of the party. And they will tell about what actually happened in the fortress. Those who cling to the screens, seduced the TV channel, will see a lot of unique things. Moreover, members of military-historical societies and clubs took part in the reconstruction of the events against the background of very reliable decorations (they were made and mounted in one of the huge pavilions of Mosfilm). Plus the original computer graphics, "stop time in the frame" and other modern television wonders.
However, Pivovarov did not present any "discoveries" of his own. He used all the same archival chronicles that could previously be seen in Nikolai Yakovlev's documentary “The Mystery of the Brest Fortress. In the lists … it appears "(2003) and the television forty-minute" Brest Fortress ", filmed by the TV and radio broadcasting organization (TRO) of the Union State (2007, producer and presenter - Igor Ugolnikov). And the testimonies of the participants in those events from the Soviet and German sides were taken from the same sources. In particular, from the detailed combat report of the commander of the 45th division of the Wehrmacht, Lieutenant General Fritz Schlieper, dated July 8, 1941.
The difference between Pivovarov's film and the above-mentioned films is that he reported on the tragic vicissitudes in the fate of a number of miraculously survived defenders of Brest. Many of them, who had been in Nazi captivity and who returned to their homeland after the Victory, were interrogated, "with passion", and sent to the Gulag. Some, like the head of the Brest hospital, 2nd rank military doctor Boris Maslov, did not survive there.
But this is not a "sensation" either. The country learned about all the terrible breaks in the life of the "Brest serfs" back in the mid-50s from the writer Sergei Smirnov (his book "Brest Fortress" was reprinted several times in Soviet times), who, in fact, scattered the veil of oblivion over them. It was he who told how the regimental commissar Efim Fomin was shot on June 30, 1941. And that Major Pyotr Gavrilov, freed from German captivity, was reinstated in rank and sent to the Far East, where he was appointed head of a camp for Japanese prisoners of war, but not for long - three years later he was dismissed with a meager pension. And that the deputy political instructor and Komsomol organizer Sergeant Samvel Matevosyan was considered killed. And the pupil of the musician platoon Petya Klypa (Smirnov called him Gavrosh of the Brest Fortress) in 1949 was sentenced to 25 years in prison for non-reporting …
To the credit of Alexei Pivovarov, he refers to Smirnov and gives him his due. It is strange, however, that after acquainting the audience with the sad details of the biographies of the above and some other people, for some reason Pivovarov did not tell about the equally amazingly dramatic fate of Samvel Matevosyan. No, the film did not pass by in silence that, on the orders of Fomin, he led the fighters in the first hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and then tried to jump out of the citadel in an armored car in order to scout out the situation around it, that the former Komsomol organizer of the 84th Infantry Regiment was the first of the defenders of Brest whom Smirnov found.
At the same time, the following remained unknown to the audience. Geological engineer Matevosyan was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1971 for his outstanding services in the development of non-ferrous metallurgy. And in 1975, on trumped-up charges, he was convicted and deprived of this award. As a result, 130 thousand copies of the reprinted book of Smirnov went under the knife. Only in 1987 the criminal case was terminated for lack of corpus delicti. In 1990, Matevosyan was reinstated in the party he joined in 1940 for the second time. The title of Hero was returned to him only in 1996 - five years after the collapse of the USSR - by decree of the President of the Russian Federation. By that time, Matevosyan had moved to Russia for permanent residence. He died on January 15, 2003 at the age of 91.
IN SPITE OF…
The name of Lieutenant Andrey Kizhevatov, who also headed one of the centers of resistance in the citadel and died, is mentioned in the film only in passing, once. But the so-called Westerners (natives of Western Belorussia who were drafted into the Red Army), whom Commissar Fomin seemed to be afraid of more than the Germans, are given as many as eight minutes. Out of fear of them, the political worker allegedly changed into the uniform of a Red Army soldier and even cut his hair baldly, like an ordinary soldier, and ordered Matevosyan to wear his uniform.
“True, Sergei Smirnov writes: Fomin had to wear the tunic of a simple soldier because Nazi snipers and saboteurs began to operate in the fortress, who hunted primarily for our commanders, and the entire command staff was ordered to change. But is it interesting …
Meanwhile, the Red Army soldier of the 81st Rifle Regiment, Georgy Leurd, in the voice of actor Serebryakov, declares: “They, these Westernizers, have betrayed our Motherland. We fought double battles. And with the Germans, and with them. They shot us in the back of the head. Red Army soldier of the 455th Rifle Regiment Ivan Khvatalin: “The Westerners got up and with a white rag tied to a stick, with raised hands, ran towards the Germans. And they gagged about something and headed in our direction in full growth. We thought everyone was giving up. When approaching a group of defectors, strong fire was opened from our side.
From what sources this is taken, one can only guess. However, it is more than obvious that by no means traitors were the main characters in the fortress that was desperately resisting from the first minutes of aggression. Therefore, Alexei Pivovarov reflects: “In Soviet times, such a question would have been impossible, but we, who live in a different era and know what we know, must ask: why did they not give up? Still hoping that theirs would do? Or, as the Germans explained, they were afraid that everyone would be shot in captivity? Or did they want to avenge their murdered friends and relatives? " And he replies: “All this is probably part of the answer. But, of course, there was something else. Something utterly worn out by propaganda, but in fact deeply personal - that without any slogans makes a person stand up and go to certain death."
By the way, Pivovarov's thoughts clearly echo the question asked back in 2003 in the film “The Mystery of the Brest Fortress”: “It is important for us to understand: what made the soldiers of the Brest garrison resist in a knowingly doomed situation? Who are they, the defenders of the Brest Fortress, the defenders of ideology … or the first soldiers of the future Great Victory?"
The answer is obvious, it is at the end of this quote. In fact, the film by Alexei Pivovarov leads viewers to the same conclusion, despite the above-mentioned shortcomings and some "new readings".
