From Leningrad to Hungary: Notes of a Red Army Soldier, 1941-1946 (Soviet (Russian) Study of War)

265 Pages·2005·3.11 MB·English

by  Evgenii D. Moniushko

FROM LENINGRAD TO
HUNGARY
This book is a chronological narrative of the experiences of Evgenii
Moniushko, who lived through and survived the first year of the siege of
Leningrad and who served as a junior officer in the Red Army during the
last 18 months of war and the first year of the Soviet occupation of
Czechoslovakia and Hungary. As such, it provides an intensely human
view of daily army life both in combat and garrison duty, and unique
perspectives on the conditions he and other junior officers and common
soldiers endured while in army service.
Evengii D. Moniushko is a native of the city of Leningrad. As a teenager,
Moniushko was evacuated and conscripted into the army, and served as a
lieutenant in a tank destroyer artillery regiment along the Vistula River in
late 1944. Later, he served as an artillery forward observer during the
fighting in Silesia and Czechoslovakia from March through May 1945, and
was demobilized in 1946 while serving in the Southern Group of Forces in
Hungary.
David M. Glantzhas been described as the West’s foremost expert on the
military aspects of the Red Army’s performance in the Great Patriotic
War. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of
North Carolina, he is the founder and former director of the US Foreign
Military Studies Office, Combined Arms Command, Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas. Founder and editor of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, he
has written and edited numerous books on Soviet and Russian military
affairs.
SOVIET (RUSSIAN) MILITARY EXPERIENCE
Series Editor: David M. Glantz
This series focuses on Soviet military experience in specific campaigns or
operations.
1. FROM THE DON TO THE DNEPR, SOVIET OFFENSIVE
OPERATIONS, DECEMBER 1942 TO AUGUST 1943
David M. Glantz
2. THE INITIAL PERIOD OF WAR ON THE EASTERN
FRONT, 22 JUNE–AUGUST 1941
David M. Glantz
3. THE SOVIET INVASION OF FINLAND, 1939–40
Carl Van Dyke
4. THE SOVIET PARTISAN MOVEMENT 1941–1944
Edited and with a foreword by David M. Glantz
Leonid Grenkevich
5. RACE FOR THE REICHSTAG
The 1945 battle for Berlin
Tony Le Tissier
6. RUSSO-CHECHEN CONFLICT 1800–2000
A deadly embrace
Robert Seely
7. FROM LENINGRAD TO HUNGARY
Notes of a Red Army soldier, 1941–1946
Evgenii D. Moniushko, translated by Oleg Sheremet and edited by
David M. Glantz
8. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN (NOV. 1942–MARCH 1943),
VOL. IV
Forgotten battles of the German-Soviet War
David M. Glantz
(forthcoming)
FROM LENINGRAD
TO HUNGARY
Notes of a Red Army soldier, 1941–1946
Evgenii D. Moniushko
Translated by Oleg Sheremet
Edited by David M. Glantz
First published 2005
by Frank Cass
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Frank Cass
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Frank Cass is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2005 Evgenii D. Moniushko, translated by Oleg Sheremet and
edited by DavidM.Glantz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Moniushko, Evgenii D.
From Leningrad to Hungary : notes of a Red Army soldier,
1941–1946 / Evgenii D. Moniushko ; edited and translated by David
M. Glantz.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Soviet (Russian) military experience)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Eastern Front.
2. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, Soviet.
3. Moniushko, Evgenii D. I.Glantz, David M. II.Title. III.Series.
D764.M634 2005
940.57(cid:1)213(cid:1)092—dc22
ISBN 0-203-32290-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-35000-X (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-35067-0 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of figures vi
Introduction 1
DAVID M. GLANTZ
1 The beginning of the war: Nachalo voiny 3
2 In Siberia 45
3 Along the Vistula 89
4 In Silesia and Czechoslovakia during 1945 127
5 Demobilization 190
Index 249
v
FIGURES
1.1 People digging trenches 6
1.2 A bomb shelter, which was almost identical to those built in
allcivilhouses 9
1.3 The house on the corner of the Kriukov channel and
EkaterinhofProspect 10
1.4 The conflagration at the Badaev food warehouses in
September1941 12
1.5 A house located on the corner of Malkin Avenue and the
Griboiedov Canal 14
1.6 An overall view of the Pioneers’ Palace building 15
1.7 A view southward from the fire post situated at house
no. 146 18
1.8 The extinguishing of an incendiary bomb on the roof of a
residentialbuilding 20
1.9 Leningrad 1941. A security [commandant’s] patrol on the
streets 22
1.10 We spent our shifts in the attics and on the roofs in this
fashionduring cold fall and winter nights waiting for the
“Allclear” signal 24
1.11 The “burzhuika” metal stove that faithfully served us
throughoutsiege during the winter of 1941–1942 25
1.12 A street in besieged Leningrad 29
1.13 The Admiralty plant 33
1.14 The type of boat produced by the 8th Factory Shop used to
crossLake Ladoga during 1942 37
1.15 Pleasure motor boats often served as auxiliary ships in the
LadogaFlotilla 43
2.1 A map of Western Siberia and the Altai region 46
2.2 Staro-Azhinka village in 1942 47
2.3 Inside Chirkov’s hut 48
2.4 Work on a winnowing machine [kleiton] 50
2.5 A grain dryer in the village of Staro-Azhinka 52
vi
FIGURES
2.6 A homemade manual mill constructed by the old man
Konyshka,which has survived to this day 53
2.7 The interior layout of the Tomsk Academy barracks, with a
dutysoldier present at his post 62
2.8 Artillery pieces in the academy’s museum 72
2.9 The academy’s crest 81
3.1 To the Vistula front 91
3.2 Soldiers’ native wit 100
3.3 The hospital in Vasiurinskaia 109
3.4 The “fashion house” at “Ust’-Labinskaia” 111
3.5 A group photo at Evacuation Hospital no. 5456 in
Labinskaiadistrict [krai] on November 18, 1944 116
4.1 A telephone operator in a dugout shelter 133
4.2 From Neisse to Waldenburg 139
4.3 The area of operations during the second half of February
1945(1:50,000 scale) 142
4.4 The 2nd Battery, 9th Artillery Regiment’s forward OP
nearthetown of Dankvic on the northern slope of Hill 188.1
onFebruary 1, 1945 145
4.5 The relocation of the 2nd Battery, 9th Artillery Regiment’s
observation post during the Upper Silesian operation 151
4.6 The fighting for Gross-Briezen, March 15, 1945 154
4.7 “Go there, I don’t know where...” 160
4.8 A battery observation post at Marksdorf during April 1945 165
4.9 The area of operations of the 2nd Battery, 9th Artillery
RegimentinApril and early May 1945 166
4.10 An observer correcting artillery fire from a forward
observationpost 168
4.11 Red Army anti-tank troops and gun entering a German town 171
4.12 A German Tiger tank destroyed by a Red Army
self-propelled gun 172
4.13 Red Army artillery in its firing position 176
4.14 Red Army machine gunners opening fire on Germans in a
building 178
4.15 Red Army soldiers gathering at a grave of their fallen
comrades 182
4.16 The artillery battery on the move during the spring of 1945 185
4.17 The 9th Artillery Regiment’s area of operations at the
beginningofthe Prague operation 187
5.1 The 9th Artillery Regiment’s movement from
CzechoslovakiatoHungary 191
5.2 My movements in Hungary 206
5.3 The Gabor Aron Camp in Nagykanizsa, where the 113th
GuardsRifle Division’s regiments were stationed 209
vii
FIGURES
5.4 The 25th Artillery Penetration Division’s camps in Hungary 218
5.5 A monument to Soviet soldiers in Nagykanizsa 222
5.6 E. Moniushko (1) 225
5.7 E. Moniushko and a comrade 228
5.8 E. Moniushko (2) 236
5.9 A monument to Soviet soldiers 245
viii
INTRODUCTION
David M. Glantz
In terms of the scope, scale, and ferocity of the fighting, the staggering
human and material costs incurred, as well as the impact it had on the
course of the war as a whole, arguably no combat during the Second
World War was more decisive than that which took place on the
Soviet–German front. With the possible exception of the China theater, no
theater of war exacted a greater human toll than the Soviet–German
theater of war. As a gruesome measure of this conflict’s intensity, out of
over 30 million Soviet soldiers who served in the Red Army during this
immense struggle, well over 8.9 million perished on the field of battle or in
German prisoner-of-war or labor camps. Tragically, while death prevented
many Red Army soldiers from sharing their experiences with the genera-
tions that followed, the Soviet Union’s political system prevented most of
the many millions of soldiers who survived the ordeal of war from telling
their stories as well.
Today, after passing decades have muted the voices of too many of
these survivors, a precious few have finally overcome their own personal
inhibitions and the pervasive political constraints restricting them from
putting pen to paper to share their recollections of this terrible war with
succeeding generations. To date, none has done so more eloquently than
Evgenii Dmitrievich Moniushko, a young lad who began the war in the
city of Leningrad, who survived the terrible siege of that city, and emerged
at war’s end as a senior lieutenant in the victorious Red Army.
Moniushko’s memories of his long personal hegira form an accurate,
immensely personal, human, and often touching mosaic portraying civilian
life in the wartime Soviet Union and military service in the Red Army
during the war. Beginning with his grueling trials during the Germans’
siege of Lenin’s namesake city, Moniushko survived that cauldron of
misery and death by escaping across the waters of Lake Ladoga on the
famous “Road of Life” and became a refugee of war in distant Siberia.
After reaching military age at mid-war, Moniushko was conscripted as an
officer cadet in an artillery academy in Tomsk and, after his graduation,
served a precarious and dangerous existence as a junior officer in an
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