Panfilovtsy
Encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the Panfilovtsy
in general.
The Panfilov Division's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen (Russian
: Двадцать восемь гвардейцев дивизии Панфилова), commonly referred to simply as Panfilov's Men (Панфиловцы, "Panfilovtsy"), were a group of soldiers from the Red Army
's 316th Rifle Division
that took part in the defense of Moscow
during the Great Patriotic War. According to official Soviet history, they have all been killed in action on 16 November 1941, after destroying 18 German tanks. The Twenty-Eight were collectively endowed with the title "Hero of the Soviet Union
". An investigation by Soviet authorities at 1948 revealed that the description of the events was exaggerated, and that six of the soldiers were still alive. The findings were kept secret, and the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen were considered national heroes until the collapse of the USSR.
commenced its offensive on Moscow. By mid-November, German units were only 100 kilometers away from the USSR's capital.
The Red Army's 316th Rifle Division
- a formation which consisted mostly of recruits from the Kazakh
and Kyrgyz Soviet Republics, commanded by General Ivan Panfilov
- took up defensive positions in the vicinity of Volokolamsk
as part of Konstantin Rokossovsky
's 16th Army
. On the morning of 16 November, the positions of the Division's 1075th Regiment near the village of Dubosekovo were attacked by German forces from the 11th Panzer Division. In the ensuing battle, The Regiment was overwhelmed and retreated from the area. In a later testimony, the 1075th commander, Colonel Ilya Kaprov, told that his unit was engaged by German tanks, and that the 4th Company of his 2nd Battalion - commanded by Captain Pavel Gundilovich - suffered over a hundred casualties in the fight against them, and yet managed to destroy some. Dubosekovo was occupied by the Germans until 20 December.
- traveled to the 16th Army headquarters to interview Rokossovsky. While in the command post, he met Commissar
Sergei Egorov, the chief political officer of the 8th Guards Panfilov Division - the new name of the 316th Division, which was granted to honor the memory of its commanding general, who was killed in action on 18 November. Egorov told the reporter of a group of soldiers who, when faced by 54 German tanks, fought to the last and shot two from among their own who wished to surrender. The commissar added that he was not present at the event, and heard of it from another political officer. He recommended that Koroteev would write about it in the newspaper.
Upon returning to Moscow, Koroteev spoke with the editor of Krasnaya Zvezda, David Ortenberg, and when asked how many soldiers took part in the clash, he arbitrarily replied that there were thirty in whole, and two traitors who wanted to surrender - thus reaching the number twenty eight. Ortenberg decided that two would-be deserters were too many, and told him to reduce their number to one. On 27 November, an article by Koroteev, entitled "Guardsmen in the Battle for Moscow", was published in Krasnaya Zvezda. The report discussed the Panfilov Division's contribution to the fighting, and mentioned that "A group of soldiers... were attacked by a column of 54 enemy tanks, yet they did not flinch..." and adding that a Commissar named Diev led the soldiers until they have all been killed. Koroteev wrote that the enemy sustained eight hundred casualties and lost 18 tanks. On the following day, Krasnaya Zvezda ran an editorial by journalist Aleksander Krivitsky, under the title "The Will of the Twenty Eight Heroes", dedicated solely to the incident in Dubosekovo which presented the same description of the events, adding that all the Guardsmen were buried in a mass grave in the village.
The story of the Twenty-Eight gained wide publicity. On March 1942, Nikolai Tikhonov wrote a poem entitled "A Verse to the Twenty Eight Guardsmen". Other authors followed suit, and several literary works dealing with the battle at Dubosekovo were released. Consecutively, the Guardsmen became celebrated heroes throughout the Soviet Union.
On May 1942, the NKVD
arrested a soldier of the Western Front, Danil Kuzhebergenov, for allegedly 'giving himself up to the enemy' by trying to surrender. When he was interrogated, the suspect claimed that he was the same Danil Kuzhebergenov that was listed as one of the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen. The NKVD discovered that he indeed served in the 4th Company of the 1075th Regiment's 2nd Battalion. Kuzhebergenov claimed that during 16 November he was knocked unconscious by an explosion and picked up by a German burial detail who presumed he was dead. He later managed to escape and joined General Dovator's Cavalry Division. The man was later recognized by other participants as one of the soldiers in Dubosekovo.
The NKVD forced Kuzhebergenov to sign a confession in which he professed to have been an impersonator who was never present at the area of the battle and based his claims on material gleaned from the newspapers. Commissar Muhamedyarov wrote a letter in which he claimed to have erroneously ascribed Danil Kuzhebergenov as one of the Guardsmen instead of another soldier, Askar Kuzhebergenov, who was henceforth listed among the Twenty-Eight in official publications. According to the division's records, a soldier by that name joined it during January 1942 and was killed shortly after. Danil Kuzhebergenov was imprisoned on charges of impersonation and cowardice, and later sent to a penal battalion. His criminal record as a 'traitor to the Motherland' was never expunged.
On 21 July 1942, the Guardsmen were all posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union
.
, for being a suspected collaborator with the enemy. Dobrobabin told the investigators that he was one of the Panfilov Guardsmen. His claim was verified; he indeed was the same Ivan Dobrobabin who was listed as one of the dead in Dubosekovo. Dobrobabin claimed that during the clash at 16 November, he was captured by the Germans but managed to escape. He then decided to return to his native town of Perekop
, in Ukraine, that was under German occupation. There, Dobrobabin joined the local Hilfspolizei and was made its chief. He was accused of participating in anti-partisan
activity and of assisting the deportation of forced laborers
to Germany. At 1944, when the German defeat was imminent, he fled his village and re-enlisted into the Red Army. Upon his return to Kant, he found a monument to himself as one of the city's heroes. Dobrobabin was convicted and sent to fifteen years in prison.
The Dobrobabin affair led to an official investigation of the Panfilov's Guardsmen story. A military judge, Lieutenant-General Nikolai Afanaseev, supervised the process. When he interviewed Kaprov, the Colonel told him that although heavy fighting took place in Dubosekovo, the Guardsmen did not perform the deeds attributed to them by the press. When questioned, Krivitsky admitted that he made up most of the details which were published in his articles, including Klochkov's famous last words and the dying Natarov's tale - documents from the 1075th Regiment's staff later revealed that Ivan Natarov was killed two days before the battle. Ortenberg and Koroteev told the judge that their main motive was to boost the morale of the Soviet troops, and they have therefore published Egorov's story.
In addition to Kuzhubergenov - which the investigation confirmed to have a been one of the Twenty-Eight - and Dobrobabin, four other surviving Guardsmen were located by the commission: Grigory Shemiakin and Illarion Vasileev were injured severely in the 16 November incident and evacuated to hospitals; Dmitry Fomich and Ivan Shadrin were taken prisoner but eventually repatriated to the Soviet Union. In his report, submitted to the Procurator General of the Soviet Union at 10 May 1948 and passed on to Joseph Stalin
and Andrei Zhdanov
, Afanaseev concluded that the Panfilov Guardsmen's last stand "did not occur. It was a pure fantasy."
In spite of the Afanaseev report, the wartime version of the events was upheld. The 1965 official History of the Great Patriotic War claimed that the Twenty-Eight Panfilov Guardsmen knocked out 18 tanks and killed 70 enemy soldiers. Memorials to the fallen heroes were built throughout the Soviet Union, including five 12-meter tall statues near the site of the battle and the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen Park in Alma Ata. The municipal anthem of Moscow
makes a reference to the city's "twenty-eight brave sons".
During the Perestroika, the still-living Ivan Dobrobabin petitioned the Military Prosecuter General for rehabilitation, claiming that he never hurt anyone during his service in the Hilfspolizei. Dobrobabin's plea attracted media attention to the case, which resulted in the eventual declassification of the Afanaseev report.
8th Guards Rifle Division
The 8th Guards Panfilov Division originally the 316th Rifle Division, is a motorized infantry division of the Military of Kyrgyzstan,...
in general.
The Panfilov Division's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen (Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: Двадцать восемь гвардейцев дивизии Панфилова), commonly referred to simply as Panfilov's Men (Панфиловцы, "Panfilovtsy"), were a group of soldiers from the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
's 316th Rifle Division
8th Guards Rifle Division
The 8th Guards Panfilov Division originally the 316th Rifle Division, is a motorized infantry division of the Military of Kyrgyzstan,...
that took part in the defense of Moscow
Battle of Moscow
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of...
during the Great Patriotic War. According to official Soviet history, they have all been killed in action on 16 November 1941, after destroying 18 German tanks. The Twenty-Eight were collectively endowed with the title "Hero of the Soviet Union
Hero of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.-Overview:...
". An investigation by Soviet authorities at 1948 revealed that the description of the events was exaggerated, and that six of the soldiers were still alive. The findings were kept secret, and the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen were considered national heroes until the collapse of the USSR.
The Battle of Dubosekovo
On 30 September 1941, the WehrmachtWehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
commenced its offensive on Moscow. By mid-November, German units were only 100 kilometers away from the USSR's capital.
The Red Army's 316th Rifle Division
8th Guards Rifle Division
The 8th Guards Panfilov Division originally the 316th Rifle Division, is a motorized infantry division of the Military of Kyrgyzstan,...
- a formation which consisted mostly of recruits from the Kazakh
Kazakh SSR
The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Kazakh SSR for short, was one of republics that made up the Soviet Union.At in area, it was the second largest constituent republic in the USSR, after the Russian SFSR. Its capital was Alma-Ata . Today it is the independent state of...
and Kyrgyz Soviet Republics, commanded by General Ivan Panfilov
Ivan Panfilov
Not to be confused with Major General Alexei Pavlovich Panfilov, who is known for negotiating the creation of the Anders Army.In Allen Paul's book Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth , page 172, it is written that the name of the assistant chief of the General Staff of the Red Army...
- took up defensive positions in the vicinity of Volokolamsk
Volokolamsk
Volokolamsk is a town and the administrative center of Volokolamsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Gorodenka River, not far from its confluence with the Lama River, northwest of Moscow. Population: -History:...
as part of Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstantin Rokossovskiy was a Polish-origin Soviet career officer who was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, as well as Marshal of Poland and Polish Defence Minister, who was famously known for his service in the Eastern Front, where he received high esteem for his outstanding military skill...
's 16th Army
16th Army (Soviet Union)
The 16th Army was a Soviet field army active from 1940 to 1945.-First Formation, 16th Army:Before Operation Barbarossa, HQ 16th Army was formed in July 1940 in the Transbaikal Military District . General Lieutenant М. F. Лукин took command...
. On the morning of 16 November, the positions of the Division's 1075th Regiment near the village of Dubosekovo were attacked by German forces from the 11th Panzer Division. In the ensuing battle, The Regiment was overwhelmed and retreated from the area. In a later testimony, the 1075th commander, Colonel Ilya Kaprov, told that his unit was engaged by German tanks, and that the 4th Company of his 2nd Battalion - commanded by Captain Pavel Gundilovich - suffered over a hundred casualties in the fight against them, and yet managed to destroy some. Dubosekovo was occupied by the Germans until 20 December.
The Krasnaya Zvezda articles
On 24 November 1941, Vasily Koroteev - a front reporter of the Red Army's newspaper, Krasnaya ZvezdaKrasnaya Zvezda
Krasnaya Zvezda is an official newspaper of Soviet and later Russian Ministry of Defence. It was founded on January 1, 1924. Today its official designation is "Central Organ of the Russian Ministry of Defence."...
- traveled to the 16th Army headquarters to interview Rokossovsky. While in the command post, he met Commissar
Political officer
Political officer may refer to:*Political officer , Occasionally, a synonym for political commissar*Political officer , in the context of the British Empire, for a pseudo-ambassadorial role in areas bordering imperial territories...
Sergei Egorov, the chief political officer of the 8th Guards Panfilov Division - the new name of the 316th Division, which was granted to honor the memory of its commanding general, who was killed in action on 18 November. Egorov told the reporter of a group of soldiers who, when faced by 54 German tanks, fought to the last and shot two from among their own who wished to surrender. The commissar added that he was not present at the event, and heard of it from another political officer. He recommended that Koroteev would write about it in the newspaper.
Upon returning to Moscow, Koroteev spoke with the editor of Krasnaya Zvezda, David Ortenberg, and when asked how many soldiers took part in the clash, he arbitrarily replied that there were thirty in whole, and two traitors who wanted to surrender - thus reaching the number twenty eight. Ortenberg decided that two would-be deserters were too many, and told him to reduce their number to one. On 27 November, an article by Koroteev, entitled "Guardsmen in the Battle for Moscow", was published in Krasnaya Zvezda. The report discussed the Panfilov Division's contribution to the fighting, and mentioned that "A group of soldiers... were attacked by a column of 54 enemy tanks, yet they did not flinch..." and adding that a Commissar named Diev led the soldiers until they have all been killed. Koroteev wrote that the enemy sustained eight hundred casualties and lost 18 tanks. On the following day, Krasnaya Zvezda ran an editorial by journalist Aleksander Krivitsky, under the title "The Will of the Twenty Eight Heroes", dedicated solely to the incident in Dubosekovo which presented the same description of the events, adding that all the Guardsmen were buried in a mass grave in the village.
The Krivitsky mission
At January 1942, after the region in which the fighting took place was cleared of German forces, Krivitsky - accompanied by Kaprov, Gundilovich and the 1075th Regiment's Commissar, Akhmetzhan Muhamedyarov - went to Dubosekovo on Ortenberg's behest. The local villagers had found six corpses of Red Army soldiers in the area, one of which was that of the 4th Company's political officer, Vasily Klochkov, nicknamed "Diev", who allegedly led the twenty-eight soldiers. Gundilovich and Muhamedyarov compiled a list consisting of the names of the soldiers which they identified as the Guardsmen. On 22 January 1941, Krivitsky published another article on Krasnaya Zvezda, writing that Klochkov's last words were: "Russia is a vast land, yet there is nowhere to retreat - Moscow is behind us!" and that the Guardsmen destroyed the 18 tanks using their few anti-tank guns and Molotov cocktails. The article claimed that the last survivor from the group, soldier Ivan Natarov, described their exploits shortly before dying of his wounds in a field hospital. The names of the dead were listed in addition.The story of the Twenty-Eight gained wide publicity. On March 1942, Nikolai Tikhonov wrote a poem entitled "A Verse to the Twenty Eight Guardsmen". Other authors followed suit, and several literary works dealing with the battle at Dubosekovo were released. Consecutively, the Guardsmen became celebrated heroes throughout the Soviet Union.
Kuzhebergenov's arrest
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
arrested a soldier of the Western Front, Danil Kuzhebergenov, for allegedly 'giving himself up to the enemy' by trying to surrender. When he was interrogated, the suspect claimed that he was the same Danil Kuzhebergenov that was listed as one of the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen. The NKVD discovered that he indeed served in the 4th Company of the 1075th Regiment's 2nd Battalion. Kuzhebergenov claimed that during 16 November he was knocked unconscious by an explosion and picked up by a German burial detail who presumed he was dead. He later managed to escape and joined General Dovator's Cavalry Division. The man was later recognized by other participants as one of the soldiers in Dubosekovo.
The NKVD forced Kuzhebergenov to sign a confession in which he professed to have been an impersonator who was never present at the area of the battle and based his claims on material gleaned from the newspapers. Commissar Muhamedyarov wrote a letter in which he claimed to have erroneously ascribed Danil Kuzhebergenov as one of the Guardsmen instead of another soldier, Askar Kuzhebergenov, who was henceforth listed among the Twenty-Eight in official publications. According to the division's records, a soldier by that name joined it during January 1942 and was killed shortly after. Danil Kuzhebergenov was imprisoned on charges of impersonation and cowardice, and later sent to a penal battalion. His criminal record as a 'traitor to the Motherland' was never expunged.
On 21 July 1942, the Guardsmen were all posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union
Hero of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.-Overview:...
.
The Afanaseev report
On November 1947, the Kharkov Military Prosecuctor's Office arrested Ivan Dobrobabin, a resident of the Kyrgyz town KantKant, Kyrgyzstan
Kant is a city in the Chuy Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, some 20 km from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.It is the administrative center of the Ysyk-Ata District ....
, for being a suspected collaborator with the enemy. Dobrobabin told the investigators that he was one of the Panfilov Guardsmen. His claim was verified; he indeed was the same Ivan Dobrobabin who was listed as one of the dead in Dubosekovo. Dobrobabin claimed that during the clash at 16 November, he was captured by the Germans but managed to escape. He then decided to return to his native town of Perekop
Perekop
Perekop is a village located at the Perekop Isthmus connecting Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian mainland. It is known for the Fortress Or Qapi that served as the gateway to Crimea...
, in Ukraine, that was under German occupation. There, Dobrobabin joined the local Hilfspolizei and was made its chief. He was accused of participating in anti-partisan
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
activity and of assisting the deportation of forced laborers
OST-Arbeiter
OST-Arbeiter was a designation for slave workers gathered from Eastern Europe to do forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Ostarbeiters were mostly from the territory of Reichskommissariat Ukraine . Ukrainians made up the largest portion although many Belarusians, Russians, Poles and...
to Germany. At 1944, when the German defeat was imminent, he fled his village and re-enlisted into the Red Army. Upon his return to Kant, he found a monument to himself as one of the city's heroes. Dobrobabin was convicted and sent to fifteen years in prison.
The Dobrobabin affair led to an official investigation of the Panfilov's Guardsmen story. A military judge, Lieutenant-General Nikolai Afanaseev, supervised the process. When he interviewed Kaprov, the Colonel told him that although heavy fighting took place in Dubosekovo, the Guardsmen did not perform the deeds attributed to them by the press. When questioned, Krivitsky admitted that he made up most of the details which were published in his articles, including Klochkov's famous last words and the dying Natarov's tale - documents from the 1075th Regiment's staff later revealed that Ivan Natarov was killed two days before the battle. Ortenberg and Koroteev told the judge that their main motive was to boost the morale of the Soviet troops, and they have therefore published Egorov's story.
In addition to Kuzhubergenov - which the investigation confirmed to have a been one of the Twenty-Eight - and Dobrobabin, four other surviving Guardsmen were located by the commission: Grigory Shemiakin and Illarion Vasileev were injured severely in the 16 November incident and evacuated to hospitals; Dmitry Fomich and Ivan Shadrin were taken prisoner but eventually repatriated to the Soviet Union. In his report, submitted to the Procurator General of the Soviet Union at 10 May 1948 and passed on to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
, Afanaseev concluded that the Panfilov Guardsmen's last stand "did not occur. It was a pure fantasy."
The Panfilov Guardsmen in the post-war era
Moya Moskva
Moya Moskva is the Anthem of the City of Moscow since 1995. The music was composed in 1941 by Isaak Dunayevsky and the lyrics were written by Sergey Agranyan and Mark Lisyansky.The original lyrics had four verses, of which the last pertained to Stalin...
makes a reference to the city's "twenty-eight brave sons".
During the Perestroika, the still-living Ivan Dobrobabin petitioned the Military Prosecuter General for rehabilitation, claiming that he never hurt anyone during his service in the Hilfspolizei. Dobrobabin's plea attracted media attention to the case, which resulted in the eventual declassification of the Afanaseev report.
The Twenty-Eight Guardsmen
- Vasily "Diev" Klochkov (8.3.1911 - 16.11.1941)
- Ivan Sheptekov (1910 - 16.11.1941)
- Abram Kriuchkov (1910 - 16.11.1941)
- Gavril Mitin (1908 - 16.11.1941)
- Alikbai Kosaev (11.5.1905 - 16.11.1941)
- Grigory Petrenko (22.11.1909 - 16.11.1941)
- Nursutbai Esebulatov (1913 - 16.11.1941)
- Dmitri Kalenik (1910 - 16.11.1941)
- Piotr Dutov (6.8.1916 - 16.11.1941)
- Nikita Mitchenko (3.4.1910 - 16.11.1941)
- Duishenkul Shopokov (19.5.15 - 16.11.1941)
- Grigory Konkin (1911 - 16.11.1941)
- Ivan Moskalenko (1912 - 16.11.1941)
- Piotr Emtsov (14.5.1909 - 16.11.1941)
- Nikolai Trofimov (9.5.1915 - 16.11.1941)
- Yakov Bondarenko (1905 - 16.11.1941)
- Grigory Bezrodnikh (1909 - 16.11.1941)
- Musabek Sengirbayev (10.3.1917 - 16.11.1941)
- Nikolai Maximov (5.7.1911 - 16.11.1941)
- Nikolai Ananiev (19.11.1912 - 16.11.1941)
- Nikolai Belashev (1911 - 16.11.1941)
- Ivan Natarov (1910 - 14.11.1941)
- Danil Kuzhubergenov (1917 - 1976)
- Grigory Shemiakin (25.12.1906 - 25.10.1973)
- Ivan Shadrin (17.6.1913 - 21.10.1985)
- Dimitry Fomich (5.2.1907 - 6.6.1950)
- Ilarion Vasileev (5.11.1910 - 6.10.1969)
- Ivan Dobrobabin (21.6.1913 - 19.12.1996)