On March 2, 1969, a battle began for a small island on the Ussuri River, which became a symbol of the great courage of the Russian border guards.
In the post-war history of Russia, there was only one case when its soldiers had to repel an attack by regular enemy troops on their own soil. The Soviet soldiers emerged victorious from that battle. Although they got this victory at a high price: on March 2, 1969, three dozen Russian border guards were killed, reflecting the treacherous attack of Chinese troops on Damansky Island. And 12 days later, everything repeated, and as a result, the total number of losses of the Soviet side reached 58 people. True, China paid much more for its provocation: according to unofficial data - and the official Chinese are carefully hiding it to this day! - between 300 and 1000 PLA soldiers and officers were killed.
The history of China's attempts to hurt Russia by taking away from it a barren island in the middle of the Ussuri River flooded with floods begins with a three-century-long demarcation of the Russian-Chinese border in this area. Under the terms of the Treaty Act of 1911, the border between the two countries passed along the Chinese bank of the Ussuri. But the principle of the "border river", adopted eight years later as a worldwide principle, along which the border is drawn in the middle of the main fairway or simply in the middle of the river, if it is not navigable, in one fell swoop turned the Ussuri border into a controversial one. In any case, from the point of view of China, which, after years of weakening of the central government and a protracted civil war, has again begun to claim the role of a world power.
Political contradictions between Moscow and Beijing, aggravated after the death of Joseph Stalin, also played a role in the catastrophic development of events around Damansky Island, named so in 1888 in honor of Stanislav Damansky, a railway engineer from the Russian expedition who died off the island shores. The PRC, which was experiencing the Great Cultural Revolution with a colossal whipping up of national and political hysteria, then quickly found the main culprit of its internal problems, accusing the Soviet Union of betraying the ideals of communism and forcing the population to hate Russia more than its own politicians. And at that moment they were rushing about between the two main enemies in the Cold War - the USSR and the USA - in search of a new ally and sponsor. It was these rushes, according to many historians, that became the true cause of the conflict in Damanskoye. Allegedly, Beijing has found the most radical way to demonstrate to Washington its hopelessly deteriorating relations with Moscow. And the Chinese leadership was forced to choose Damansky by purely strategic considerations: the island is located at a significant distance from the military centers of Primorye, at the junction of two outposts, poorly accessible for heavy equipment and is located much closer to the Chinese coast, which facilitated access for the Chinese troops.
In 1964, Soviet diplomats, realizing how dangerous the situation with the uncertainty of the state border on the Ussuri, proposed to China to transfer the disputed island to its disposal. However, Beijing simply did not respond to this proposal, hoping to use Damansky as a trump card in a political game - and immediately began to play it. Over the next few years, the number of provocations on this section of the border increased from hundreds to several thousand a year. At first, Chinese peasants simply began to land on the island (as Chinese politicians later admitted in their memoirs, with full approval from the capital), who mowed hay and grazed cattle, declaring to the Soviet border guards who expelled them that they were on Chinese territory. Then they were replaced by red guards - youth activists of the Cultural Revolution, ideologically muzzled so much that they ceased to adhere to generally accepted human morality. These "red guards" began to openly attack the border patrols, hiding at the first danger. However, the Russian border guards retained an amazing restraint: until the fateful night of March 2, 1969, they never - let’s emphasize, not once! - did not use weapons. Later, the Chinese themselves admitted that they very much counted on the first shots, but for some reason the Russians preferred a fist fight. From which, as the provocateurs bitterly stated, our border guards invariably emerged victorious due to superiority in height and, most importantly, in muscle mass: at that time in China it was very bad with nutrition …
Desperate to provoke the Soviet side to the first shots, Beijing decided to spit on political decency and gave the command to launch Operation Retribution, which was led by the deputy commander of the Shenyang Military Region, Xiao Quanfu. As part of this purely military plan, on the night of March 2, 1969, about 300 soldiers of the Chinese National Liberation Army under cover of darkness crossed the ice to Damansky Island and organized several ambushes. The goal was simple: wait for the border patrols to appear, demonstrate to them the military presence of China on the island, force the personnel of the nearest border post "Nizhne-Mikhailovka", as usual, to go to Damansky, and then destroy them with dense automatic fire, supported from the Chinese coast by machine guns and artillery …
The first stage of the conflict, it must be admitted, proceeded in full accordance with the Chinese plans. At 10:30 in the morning, a technical observation post noticed how armed people began to cross from the Chinese coast to the island. At 10:40 am, as follows from the documents of the investigation, two groups of Chinese - of 30 and 18 people - reached the island, and immediately after that the outpost was raised in a gun. The border guards acted in the same way as they had thousands of times before: without removing from their shoulders the machine guns, which were on the safety lock, they went to meet the Chinese in order to literally push them out of the island, since they could not count on persuasion. But this time everything went differently: when the head of the outpost, senior lieutenant Ivan Sinelnikov, accompanied by other commanders and soldiers, approached the violators and began to explain to them why they should leave the island (presumably, he pronounced the text literally by heart, no longer thinking about it), the first row of the Chinese suddenly parted, and the second opened fire literally point-blank. Almost simultaneously, the reserve group of the outpost, which was marching to the flank of the invading intruders, fell into another ambush. As a result, no more than half of the 32 soldiers and officers of Nizhne-Mikhailovka survived, and even those were forced to lie down under heavy enemy fire.
Head of the 1st border outpost Vitaly Dmitrievich Bubenin. Photo: damanski-1969.ru
Only two hours later, when the soldiers of Nizhne-Mikhailovka came to the aid of the few remaining in the ranks, despite the wounds, maneuver groups from the Kulebyakiny Sopki outpost under the command of its chief, Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin, the future creator of the Alpha group of the KGB of the USSR, the Chinese began to retreat. After they left the island, they began to search and collect the bodies of the dead border guards on Damanskoye. Their appearance horrified even seasoned officers and doctors: Chinese soldiers did not take prisoners, finishing off the wounded with shots at point-blank range and mocking the dead, disfiguring and shredding bodies with bayonets. In the same horrifying state, the body of the only captured border guard of Nizhne-Mikhailovka, Corporal Pavel Akulov, was returned home after a month and a half …
In total, 31 Soviet border guards died in the battle for Damansky Island that day, and 14 were wounded. And 12 days later, in battles on March 14 and 15, another 27 soldiers and officers were killed, and 80 were wounded. To finally leave the island, which was attacked by the PLA 24th Infantry Regiment, numbering 5 thousand people, the Chinese were convinced only by shells of the then secret weapon - the Grad MLRS - and the decisive counterattack of Soviet motorized riflemen and border guards that followed this shelling. As a result of the events at Damanskoye, many of their participants were awarded high awards - and many, alas, posthumously. Five people became Heroes of the Soviet Union: the commander of the 57th border detachment, Colonel Demokrat Leonov, the head of the Nizhne-Mikhailovka outpost, senior lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov, senior sergeant Vladimir Orekhov (all three posthumously), as well as senior lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin and junior sergeant Yuri Babansky … In addition, during his lifetime and posthumously, 148 more soldiers and officers of the Soviet army and border troops were awarded. Three - the Order of Lenin, 10 - the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, 31 - the Order of the Red Star, 10 - the Order of Glory III degree, 63 - the medal "For Courage", 31 - the medal "For Military Merit".
Until the end of the year, small skirmishes in Damanskoye and around it happened more than once, but the matter did not come to an open clash. On September 11, 1969, Moscow and Beijing agreed to leave the troops in their former positions, and the island became completely deserted. In fact, this meant that the Soviet Union refused to retain this piece of land, abundantly watered with the blood of Soviet soldiers. In 1991, this decision was legalized, and the island completely came under the jurisdiction of China. But the loss of Damansky does not mean that his defenders are forgotten - Russian soldiers, who in an unequal battle won an unconditional victory over their many times superior enemy.
