Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (45 page)

Then there was something he could not help but learn from Stalin: the Supreme Commander was always interested to hear about enemy casualties, but he never asked about our own. He simply shrugged them off with a four-fingered wave:
“
That
’
s what war means.
”
He certainly didn
’
t want to learn how many had surrendered. He ordered that the surrender of Smolensk not be announced for almost a month, still hoping that it might be won back and frantically sending more and more divisions there to be ground to pieces. Zhukov learned that if you first consider the potential casualties and then the actual losses, you will truly never be a military commander. The commander cannot weaken himself by compassion, and all he needs to know about casualties is the number of replacements to be sent up from the reserve and when to send them. There
’
s no point calculating whether the casualties suffered in winning over some little Yelnya Salient were justified.

He had to learn how to instill in all the generals serving under him the cold-bloodedness he had himself achieved. (More and more stories were repeated about him: How harsh he was! A will of iron! Give him your hand and he
’
ll want your whole arm! A voice that rings like steel! But how else could you manage such a huge military machine?)

And so Zhukov saved Leningrad in September 1941. (The blockade, though, went on for 900 days . . .) Then, the day after Guderian took Oryol, Stalin called him back, now to save Moscow itself.

Before a day had passed, our troops had been caught in the huge encirclement at
Vyazma
, more than half a million of them ... a catastrophe. (Stalin had decided to put Konev on trial for the collapse of the western front; Zhukov stood up to him and saved Konev from Stalin
’
s rage.) All the roads to the capital were open to the enemy. Did Zhukov himself believe that Moscow could hold out? He no longer hoped to maintain a defensive line along the
Mozhaysk-Maloyaroslavets
arc and was preparing a defense from
Klin
to
Istra
and Krasnaya
Pakhra
. But after summoning up his iron will (what about Stalin
’
s will? He had one, though it was shaken more than once. In October, he would bring up some of the benefits of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and speculate whether it now might be possible to arrange a truce with Hitler . . .), Zhukov rushed here and there (and it must have been the finger of fate that led him past his own Kaluga village, from which he managed to extricate his mother, sister, and nephews). He summoned up strength
he never realized he had, and after five days of battles near
Yukhnov
,
Medyn
, and Kaluga itself, he had broken the German advance on Moscow.

At the same time, twelve divisions of the Home Guard were marching westward (to be swallowed up, some at Smolensk, others in the encirclement at
Vyazma
). They were all in addition to the regular mobilization. And now, squelching through the autumn mud, a quarter million women and youths had hauled up three million cubic meters of heavy, wet earth as they dug trenches. A scorching wave of panic from the approaching front blew over them. On October 13, the diplomats and staff of the central administrative bodies began being evacuated from Moscow; at the same time, some of those not being evacuated began running away and, shameful to admit, there were even some communists from the Moscow regional committees among them. Uncontrollable panic broke out in Moscow on October 16, when everyone believed that the city was already lost.

It had always remained a mystery why, precisely during this terrible, decisive week, the Supreme Commander never once gave Zhukov a sign, a word, or even a telephone call. Zhukov never dared approach Stalin himself. And it remained another mystery just where Stalin was in the middle of October. Certainly he did not appear in Moscow until the end of October, when Zhukov and Rokossovsky (and even Vlasov) had stopped the Germans along the arc from
Volokolamsk
to
Naro-Fominsk
. At the beginning of November, Stalin was on the phone demanding an immediate counterattack along this whole line so as to have a victory in hand for the November 7 anniversary. He would not listen to Zhukov
’
s objections and hung up the receiver as he had done more than once before, simply crushing your soul.

A counterattack like that now, given our weakness, was utterly senseless. Zhukov decided not to do it. The Germans themselves were exhausted and had temporarily halted their advance. And Stalin, as if nothing had happened, called Zhukov to ask him to release some troops from the front for the parade through Red Square on November 7.

And now here he is, sitting on his veranda with a view over the peaceful Moskva River, looking at the meadows on the opposite bank where the water laps at the city beach in
Serebryanny
Bor
, trying to make sense of it all. So this is the problem: Should he write about
all this
? In fact,
could
he write about it?

It
’
s not easy.

But a communist should be able to do it, because a communist sees by the light of a truth that never fails. And always and in everything you tried to be a worthy communist.

That was so from the beginning. In those days we had a weak grasp of Marxist-Leninist theory. Studying it was a long and hard job. It was only later that I achieved a deeper understanding of the organizing role of our party and realized that the brain of the Red Army, from the very first days of its existence, was the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). Young people today, unfortunately, don
’
t have much of a grasp of statistics, but they show that
our growth rate before the war gave solid evidence of our progressive system. Industrialization, though, can
’
t take place without some limits to mass consumption. (And long before that, when I was young in the time of the tsar, there was poverty and starvation in the villages, and the kulaks were sucking the blood of the village poor. Isn
’
t that true? It certainly is.)

What about that awful year of 1937? You know it yourself, and you have to remind others, that those groundless violations of legality were not an expression of the essence of our system. The Soviet people trusted the party and followed steadfastly in its footsteps. The damage came from the unprincipled suspicions of some of the leaders. But the superiority of the socialist system and our Leninist principles still emerged victorious. And our people were unequalled in their endurance.

And what happened when war broke out? Sending
political officers
— communists with years of training in propaganda—to the army meant a decisive strengthening of our ranks. Then there was the important directive from the Political Directorate of the Red Army—to strengthen the role of communists in the leadership. Yes, I remember what a huge effect that directive had. It
’
s
true,
there still were cases when our troops didn
’
t put up as much resistance as they should have. Yet why did our GHQ emerge stronger than Hitler
’
s?
Precisely because it was based on Marxism-Leninism.
And our troops showed amazing fortitude. They fought to the death, just as the Central Committee and the High Command expected them to do.

The Germans, though, had a first-class army. We never write about that or, if we do, it
’
s done with contempt. Yet an attitude like that only cheapens our victory.

In the middle of October, when the Germans halted their advance because their front lines and their communications had grown too extended, we should have been doing the very same thing in the smaller arc that we were holding: bringing in reinforcements, weapons, and supplies, and strengthening our defense. Then we could have faced the next German offensive in mid-November, perhaps without having to fall back much at all. But the Supreme Commander clung to his unfortunate idea of winning some quick victories by November 7, and he insisted on a counterattack on
every
sector of the front, from
Klin
to Tula. Who could ever accomplish that? Zhukov now felt bold enough to object and argue, but the Supreme Commander wouldn
’
t listen. And so he had to throw poorly armed and completely untrained divisions into battle. We wasted those precious two weeks on unnecessary counterattacks that achieved nothing; they won us not a single kilometer of ground, but they did sap our last strength. Then, on November 15, the Germans began the second stage of their attack on Moscow, and on the 18th they attacked near Tula. Guderian took
Uzlovaya
and was advancing on
Kashira
. He had come as far as
Mikhailov
, in Ryazan: he was moving eastward to encircle Moscow! That would have ended it all.

On November 20, Stalin phoned Zhukov. He could not hide his alarm. In a tone that Zhukov had never heard before, his voice cracking, he asked:
“
Are you
certain that we can hold Moscow? I ask with pain in my heart. Tell me frankly, like a communist.
”

Zhukov was shaken that Stalin was unable to conceal his panic and his pain and was not even trying to do so. And he was moved to hear the trust he had in his general. Summoning up every single ounce of his truly iron will, Zhukov, as if swearing an oath before Stalin, the Motherland, and himself, replied:
“
We will hold it!
”

Carefully calculating the days remaining, Zhukov set the possible date of his counteroffensive for December 6. Stalin at once tried to bargain with him: it had to be December 4. (This was not because he had made his own calculations; he wanted it for Constitution Day on the
6th, that
was it.)

Meanwhile, every day brought news of more defeats:
Klin
was lost;
Solnechnogorsk
was lost; the Germans had crossed the canal near
Yakhroma
, and now the way to the eastern parts of the Moscow region was open to them. It was one huge mass of confusion and catastrophe; we were no longer fighting in military units but in chance groups of soldiers and tanks. And he had scarcely any will left to believe, to force
himself
to believe: No, we will not let it collapse! We will hold on. (During these days of the battle for Moscow he slept only two hours a day, no more. When Molotov phoned and threatened to have him shot, he gave him a very insolent reply.)

Stalin
’
s call was a final blow:
“
Are you aware that
Dedovsk
has been taken?
”

Dedovsk
?
That
’
s halfway between here and
Istra
.
Absolutely impossible.

“
No, Comrade Stalin, I
’
m not aware of that.
”

Over the phone came Stalin
’
s malicious jeer:
“
A commander ought to know what is happening on his front. Go there yourself, immediately, and take back
Dedovsk
!
”

To abandon your command post, your communications with all the units on the march, to leave all your preparations at a time like this? No, the Supreme Commander has learned nothing over these six months of war. (Zhukov himself treated the generals under him no differently, however. That was the only way to win battles.)

“
But Comrade Stalin, abandoning the army group headquarters in such a critical situation is not a wise move.
”

Stalin
’
s reply, now with an angry sneer:
“
Never mind, we
’
ll get by somehow without you there.
”

In other words, you count for nothing. That
’
s what he thinks you
’
re worth.

Zhukov rushed to phone Rokossovsky and learned that, of course,
Dedovsk
had not fallen. As Kostya guessed, they probably meant the village of
Dedovo
, much farther away and in a different area.

You needed a lot of courage to argue with Stalin. But now Zhukov hoped that he could ease the tension and even offer Stalin a bit of amusement with his phone call. But Stalin immediately flew into a rage: Go at once to Rokossovsky, and the two of you will recapture
Dedovo
! And take the army commander with you!