Unsent letters from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War are documents of enormous political, moral, moral, educational power for the next generation of our country's inhabitants. Why is that? This can be explained by the fact that letters home to family, relatives and close relatives were sent by soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, written during the lull between battles or from hospitals, contained only words of love, concern for the life of their relatives in the rear and requests to take care of themselves.
The soldiers and commanders were warned that their letters should not contain information about the upcoming battles, incoming weapons and the movement of military units. Another thing is letters that soldiers and commanders could write and keep as diaries. In them, people often expressed their thoughts about events, plans for the future, recommendations on how to complete assigned tasks, and much more. In the late 70s, on the work of the GU of my ministry, I had to come to the instrument enterprise in the city of Kalinin, this is the current city of Tver.
Director Aseev Vladimir Nikolaevich prepared everything for consideration with the Customer for the possibility of supplying products. After completing the work, they began to say goodbye, but Vladimir Nikolaevich suggested that I stay one day and go to Vyazma. He wanted to show me the place where the Soviet tank BT-7 of the times of the Great Patriotic War was recently discovered in a deep forest. “Vladimir Nikolaevich, there are a lot of such finds. You can imagine how many millions of soldiers and commanders heroically died defending our country, and there are still a lot of military equipment in the ground, under water and in the mountains,”I said quietly. “I think this is a special case. The find in the tank is very unusual,”Vladimir Nikolayevich continued to insist. In the end, I agreed, called the Minister and warned that I would stay in Kalinin for another day. The minister did not specify the reason and "gave the go-ahead." It seems that in three hours we were on the spot in that birch grove, about which Vladimir Nikolaevich spoke. He led me to a pit overgrown with grass and small bushes, and began his story. Here, seven years ago, a Soviet tank BT-7 with tail number 12 was discovered, which, after being examined by officers from the City Military Commissariat, was sent for disposal. The peculiarity of the found tank was that the commander's tablet had a map, photographs and an unsent letter to his girlfriend.
It is about this letter, Yuri Grigorievich, that I wanted to tell you. Its content was recently reported to me by the commissar of the City Military Commissariat. Vladimir Nikolaevich recounted the contents of the letter of junior lieutenant Ivan Kolosov. There was a silence, such letters, being near death, could be written only by a person who most of all appreciated his beloved, his children and the Motherland. We returned back in silence. Mentally, I returned to the personality of junior lieutenant Ivan Kolosov, to the death of tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers at Vyazma. It was they, even being surrounded, detained units of the armies "Center" of the Wehrmacht and ensured the organization of the defense of our capital. In those days, there were no Red Army units on the way to Moscow. Therefore, urgently, units of the Red Army were redeployed from the Far East and other fronts to defend Moscow.
Already in Kalinin, having moved into my company car, and sitting in the back seat, I remembered my father's letters. We found them on the table in 1944, when we returned with our mother from evacuation after lifting the blockade to Leningrad to our apartment. Father, having escorted us to the evacuation, on August 25, 1941, fought on the Leningrad front. He created heavy railroad artillery. Then, in a short time, the MU-2 and B-38 naval guns were installed on railway platforms. About 30 two-gun and 152 mm artillery batteries were created, which with their aimed fire destroyed the manpower and tanks of the fascists at a distance of more than 20 km.
Shatrakov G. A., 1941, Leningrad Front
In the Pulkovo direction, the adjustment of their fire was carried out by naval navigators and artillery sound direction finders. Adjustment points were located on the building of the meat processing plant and the House of Soviets. The firing error of suppressing our artillery was no more than 20 meters, and a quick change in the positions of the railway batteries ensured their safety. These artillery batteries were created at the Bolshevik plant (now its former name Obukhovsky is returned to it, and it is part of the Almaz-Antey Concern VKO).
On the table in our apartment, we found three letters from my father, his gold pocket watch, inkwell and pen. The last letter was dated December 20, 1941. In letters, my father told his mother about his friends, whom my mother did not know. These were the commanders of the 41st and 73rd artillery regiments, Major N. P. Witte and S. G. Gindin. He wrote that it was possible to liberate Tikhvin on December 8, 1941, to arrange the supply of food to the city, which he himself often comes under fire from Nazi batteries. And in the last letter he wrote that he felt that with such a service he could perish every second. “Nyura, take care of your children and yourself. Yura, be the stronghold of the family when you grow up, if I die. We defended the city, although it was unbearably difficult. This is the merit of residents, soldiers, commanders, and, as I think, G. K. Zhukov.
Y. Shatrakov 1944
Then my father wrote a lot of good things about the Commander of the artillery of the Leningrad Front G. F. Odintsov, and spoke extremely unflattering about G. I. Kulik. Apparently my father had to meet with them. And on December 27, 1941, my father died, as he felt. Co-workers buried my father at the Theological cemetery, one of his assistants showed the grave to his mother as soon as we returned to Leningrad. In 1979, after 15 years of work at the research institute (during this time I defended my doctoral dissertation and as the Chief Designer created a number of systems adopted for service), I was transferred to the USSR Ministry of Radio Industry as the head of the new GU.
In private conversations with the heads of the enterprises subordinate to our GU, which were located in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, we touched on the topic of letters and personal diaries of war veterans not sent from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. The opinion was the same that our people were patriots of their country. The director of the Novgorod television plant "Sadko" Pavel Mikhailovich Iudin showed me an unsent letter from the fascist officer of the 291st division of the army group "Center" Herman Weywild, who was killed on the Volkhov front. In it the fascist wrote: “Winter and artillery are deadly. Nobody will believe what we are going through here, I filled my pants three times, it is impossible to get out of the dugout, my toes are frostbitten, my body is covered with scabies. " He wrote this about himself, but we have not seen a single letter from the Nazis asking them to curse themselves and Hitler for attacking our country. They killed our children and women, burned villages and villages, and none of them felt guilty for these atrocities. This is the strength of the fascist ideology that the leaders of the Wehrmacht instilled in their people and especially young people in a short time.
In conclusion, I would like to wish the leaders of our country to decide on the moral and patriotic education of the Russian population and begin to implement it in all areas. After all, we must be worthy of our fathers and grandfathers, who defended the country's independence in a terrible battle with fascism. I would like to give for the readers of "VO" an example that happened to me back in 1956, when I was still a cadet. Another practice I had to do on the minelayer "Ural" of the Baltic Fleet. At the same time, two cadets from the GDR were practicing on this ship. Once one of them showed me a photograph taken by his father in the North Sea. In the photograph, from the bridge of a fascist submarine, a small transport was recorded, which this boat torpedoed, and a fire on the transport.
Our Emperor Alexander III was right about the choice of allies for Russia. Currently, the implementation of moral and patriotic education in the country is due to the fact that Russia is already waging an undeclared war on several fronts. The absence of their own doctrine on this issue allows liberals and sectarians to quickly fill this niche at the expense of the enemies of our country. The popular memory of the Great Patriotic War haunts many residents of the country. Monuments to mothers who saved a whole generation of children during and after the war have been erected in many cities of Russia. Older people often come to these monuments with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Fresh flowers are always at the foot of these monuments. There is no such monument in St. Petersburg, although the residents of the city have repeatedly raised the question of its installation.
In the magazine "Military Review" on September 27, 2013 my article "Recollection and Inspiration" was published. This article cited a poem by the famous St. Petersburg poetess E. P. Naryshkina “I don’t want the memory to grow into reality”, in which there are patriotic lines:
“… Bowing his head before the courage of all women.
I want this feat to be immortalized.
I don’t want the memory to come true.
We need a monument.
A family that honors both grandmothers and mothers, On the days of family anniversaries I would hurry to him sooner, With children and grandchildren, honor their sorrowful journey.
Shock work in the war.
I am not the only one who thinks so
They will understand me.
We need a monument to all mothers.
Give them a debt, and I will.
And I will never understand
Great feat - and there is no trace."
