On July 4, 1941, General of the Army Dmitry Pavlov, Hero of the Soviet Union, who commanded the troops of the Western Front, was arrested in the village of Dovsk, Gomel Region, Byelorussian SSR. A participant in the Spanish Civil War, only yesterday considered one of the most successful and promising generals of the Red Army, in an instant found himself in disgrace with the Supreme. Pavlov was taken to Moscow, to the Lefortovo prison. Somewhere in the past there were parades and exercises, victories and defeats, and there was nothing ahead …
District and Front Commander
Exactly one year before Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, on June 7, 1940, Stalin appointed Colonel-General of Tank Forces Dmitry Grigorievich Pavlov as the new commander of the Belarusian Special Military District. Four days later, on July 11, 1940, the Belarusian Special Military District was renamed the Western Special Military District. The territory of the Smolensk region, which was previously part of the abolished Kalinin military district, was annexed to it.
In the defense system of the Soviet state, the okrug really played a very important, special role. It covered the western borders of the Soviet state, and after the incorporation of Western Belarus into the USSR and the occupation of Poland by the Nazis, it directly bordered on the territories controlled by Germany. In the event of war, the district was the first to receive a blow from enemy troops.
Preparations for war were in full swing on the territory of the district - fortifications were being built, exercises were constantly held for personnel of the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and tank forces. Naturally, the post of commander of the front-line troops assumed enormous responsibility and anyhow someone would not have been appointed to it in the pre-war year.
Why did Stalin choose General Pavlov? Colonel-General Dmitry Pavlov was 42 years old when he was appointed commander of the district troops. He received a Hero of the Soviet Union back in 1937 for battles in Spain, in which he participated as the commander of a tank brigade of the Republican Army and was known under the pseudonym "Pablo". It was during the Spanish Civil War that Pavlov showed himself to be a talented commander, participating in the most important Haram and Guadalajara operations.
In July 1937, Pavlov was summoned from Spain to Moscow and appointed deputy head of the Red Army Armored Directorate, and in November 1937, Corps Commander Pavlov was appointed head of the Red Army Armored Directorate. He was in this position for almost three years and it was from this position that he was appointed to command the troops of the Belarusian Special Military District. The take-off in his career was amazing. Pavlov went to Spain from the post of commander of a mechanized brigade, receiving the rank of brigade commander in 1935.
The rank of corps commander Pavlov received, stepping over one step - the rank of division commander. And Pavlov was appointed to the post of commander of the district, in fact, having behind him only the experience of commanding a tank brigade. Commander Pavlov never commanded an army, corps or even a division. It turns out that the position was given to Pavlov "in advance", hoping that the fearless commander-tanker would cope with the duties of the commander of the district troops. And before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it really was so - Pavlov established a high level of training for the personnel of the district, especially the tank units dear to his heart. Even when he was the head of the Armored Directorate, Pavlov paid special attention to the development of tank forces.
Profession - to defend the Motherland
Of the 43 years of his life, Pavlov spent 26 years in military service. In fact, it was in the army that his formation as a person took place. Dmitry Pavlov was born on October 23 (November 4), 1897 in the village of Vonyukh (now Pavlovo, Kologrivsky district, Kostroma region). The peasant's son, Dmitry Pavlov, nevertheless, was a very capable guy - he graduated from the 4th grade of the parish school, the 2-grade school in the village of Sukhoverkhovo, and then as an external student he was able to pass the exams for the 4th grade of the gymnasium.
But the First World War broke out and the 17-year-old boy asked to volunteer for the army. He was enlisted in the military immediately after the outbreak of the war, in 1914. Pavlov served in the Serpukhov 120th Infantry Regiment, then in the Alexandria 5th Hussar Regiment, in the 20th Infantry Regiment, 202nd Reserve Regiment, rose to the rank of senior non-commissioned officer, which was very good, given the very young age of Dmitry and the fact that the tsarist army did not spoil the soldiers with stripes. In June 1916, the wounded Pavlov was taken prisoner by Germany, he was released only in January 1919. Pavlov returned to his homeland and worked in the Kologriv district labor committee, until August 25, 1919, he returned to his usual occupation, joining the Red Army.
Pavlov began his service in the Red Army with "unsightly" positions - he was a soldier of the 56th food battalion, then a clerk in the food detachment. However, at the end of 1919 he was sent to courses in Kostroma, after which he began serving as a platoon commander in the 80th Cossack Cavalry Division. And Pavlov's military career went uphill: he soon became a division commander, from October 1920 - an inspector for assignments in the cavalry inspection of the 13th Army, and after graduating in 1922. Omsk infantry school named after the Comintern was appointed commander of the cavalry regiment of the 10th cavalry division. Twenty-four years old and the regiment commander is not Gaidar, of course, but still not bad.
Since June 1922, Pavlov fought against anti-Soviet partisans in the Barnaul district, as an assistant to the commander of the 56th cavalry regiment of the Altai separate cavalry brigade. In 1923, the brigade was transferred to Turkestan and Pavlov fought with the Basmachs, commanding a fighter detachment, and then the 77th cavalry regiment in Eastern Bukhara. Then Pavlov again became assistant commander of the rifle unit of the 48th cavalry regiment, then - assistant commander of the 47th cavalry regiment. In 1928, Pavlov graduated from the Military Academy of the Red Army. M. V. Frunze and was appointed commander and commissar of the 75th cavalry regiment of the 5th separate Kuban cavalry brigade, stationed in Transbaikalia. In this capacity, he took part in the armed conflict at the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1929.
After completing technical improvement courses for command personnel at the Military Technical Academy, Pavlov "retrained" as a tanker and was appointed commander of the 6th mechanized regiment stationed in Gomel. So Pavlov began his service with Belarus, with which he was associated until the end of his days.
In February 1934, he was appointed commander and commissar of the 4th mechanized brigade stationed in Bobruisk. Under the command of Pavlov, the brigade quickly became one of the best in the Red Army, after which Pavlov was noticed, promoted to brigade commander, and then awarded the Order of Lenin.
But the real name Pavlov was made by Spain. It was there that he received a Hero of the Soviet Union, after which he became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It was the height of the "purges" of the commanding staff of the Red Army and Stalin needed new commanders. So the brigade commander of a tank brigade "jumped" to the post of chief of the Armored Directorate, and then became the commander of the district.
As head of the Armored Directorate, Pavlov made a great contribution not only to equipping the Red Army with new combat vehicles, but also to rethinking the strategy of using tank forces. He believed that the role of tank forces in modern warfare would grow at a rapid pace and insisted on the production of more powerful and maneuverable tanks. But the general's dream was realized after his death, when T-34 tanks began to be mass-produced for the Red Army.
In 1940, I came to Kharkov to see the tests of the T-34 tank. This tank was tested by the commander of the armored forces of the Red Army Pavlov. This is a glorified man, a hero of the Spanish war. There he stood out as a battle tanker, a fearless man who knows how to own a tank. As a result, Stalin appointed him commander of the armored forces. I admired how he literally flew on this tank through the swamps and sands …, - Nikita Khrushchev recalled about Pavlov.
War and death
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The day before the attack, the Western Special Military District, commanded by Dmitry Pavlov, was transformed into the Western Front. Pavlov himself by this time, from February 1941, already bore the rank of army general. His career went up and if it were not for the circumstances of the first month of the war, perhaps Pavlov would have become a marshal.
Almost from the first days of the outbreak of the war, the troops of the Western Front began to suffer defeat after defeat. The Nazis were advancing at a rapid pace to the east, to Minsk.
No matter how Pavlov tried to stop the advance of the Nazis, it did not work. In despair, the commander of the district threw bombers against the tank columns without fighter cover, going to certain death. But the heroism of the pilots, tankmen, and infantrymen alone could not stop the enemy.
The main reason for the breakthrough of the Nazis to Minsk was the presence of a "window" in the zone of the North-Western Front, through which the 3rd Panzer Group under the command of Herman Goth managed to break through. This "window" was formed as a result of the fact that Hitler's tank groups defeated the 8th and 11th armies defending the border and entered the Baltic states. Panzer group of Hermann Hoth struck in the rear of the Western Front. The 29th territorial rifle corps of the Red Army was supposed to resist the Nazis here. In fact, the 29th Rifle Corps was the former army of the Republic of Lithuania.
The Soviet command hoped that it was worth replacing the Lithuanian officers with Soviet commanders, and the "class close" mass of Lithuanian soldiers - "workers and peasants" - would turn into Red Army soldiers. But that did not happen. The Lithuanian army, when the offensive of the Nazis began, fled, and part of it completely interrupted the commanders and turned their weapons against the Soviet regime.
A week after the start of the war, on June 28, 1941, enemy troops took Minsk, the capital of the Byelorussian SSR. Stalin, having learned about the capture of Minsk by the Nazis, flew into a rage. The fall of the Belarusian capital actually predetermined the fate of General of the Army Pavlov, although the war lasted only a week.
In the defeat of the Western Front, Pavlov's guilt was no more than the guilt of those who were in Moscow, in higher military and government positions. Many other Soviet military leaders suffered no less severe defeats - after all, Odessa, and Kiev, and Sevastopol, and Rostov-on-Don, and many other cities fell.
On June 30, 1941, a day after the fall of Minsk, Pavlov was summoned to Moscow, but on July 2 he was returned to the front. However, on July 4, 1941, he was arrested and again taken to Moscow - this time finally. Together with Pavlov, the chief of staff of the Western Front, Major General V. E. Klimovskikh, the chief of communications of the front, Major General A. T. Grigoriev and the commander of the 4th Army, Major General A. A. Korobkov.
Then everything developed according to the usual and "run-in" scenario. Initially, they tried to accuse Pavlov and his generals of treason and "sew" on them participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy, but then they nevertheless decided that this was too much - Pavlov was really an honest warrior. Therefore, Pavlov and his deputies were tried under the articles of "negligence" and "failure to fulfill official duties." They were accused of cowardice, alarmism and criminal inaction that led to the defeat of the troops of the Western Front.
By the Supreme Court of the USSR, Pavlov D. G., Klimovskikh V. E., Grigoriev A. T. and Korobkov A. A. were stripped of their military ranks and sentenced to death. On July 22, 1941, Dmitry Pavlov was shot and buried at the training ground in the village of Butovo. This is how the life of a brave and honest soldier ended, all of whose fault was that he, perhaps, was not in his place, having received, after the experience of commanding a brigade, a whole district - the front.
In 1957, Pavlov was posthumously rehabilitated and reinstated in military rank. His native village was renamed in his honor, and a street in Kologriva bears the name of Pavlov.
