I had long wanted to learn about the events of the opening of the war in 1941 in Belarus. Perhaps the interest arose thanks to Ivan Stadnyuk's novel War, which I read at some point. Back then, however, the matter went no further than vague references to the "Bialystok pocket" and the unenviable fate of the command of the Western Front. Neither the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, nor the History of the Great Patriotic War, nor the multi-volume History of the Second World War contained the information I needed. There was no Internet. The memoirs of participants in those events that were available to me (G. K. Zhukov, I. V. Boldin) explained nothing. The topic was clearly shrouded in an information vacuum.
The publication in 1991 of the recollections dictated by I. S. Konev shortly before his death, concerning the beginning of the war and his arrival at the Western Front, probably provided a new impulse for studying the events of the war's opening period. They conveyed more of the "smell of war" than the bravura accounts of certain other memoirists.
Konstantin Simonov's Notes of a Man of My Generation allowed me to understand something of the atmosphere of that period. Dmitri Volkogonov's book Triumph and Tragedy, about Stalin, appeared and contained shocking information about generals who had been taken prisoner, killed, or repressed.
The appearance of Viktor Suvorov's books finally inflamed my interest in the opening period of the war and made it possible to look at the causes of the Red Army's defeats in 1941 in a completely different way, although they contained little concrete information about events on the Western Front specifically. But the numbering of divisions, corps, and armies, the names of commanders, the advance of the Second Strategic Echelon from the depths of the country…
Attempts to systematize information about the events in Belarus in 1941 (my model was Franz Halder's War Diary, in which events were set out in chronological order) ran up against a shortage — indeed, an almost total absence — of data.
The search was "too costly" from the standpoint of a man whose life's work lies in an entirely different field (by profession I am an intensive-care physician; by 1995 I already had two children, who had to be fed, raised, and so on…).
A new development was connected with Belarus gaining independence. An article on the Lepel counterattack appeared in the Belarusian Encyclopedia. In accordance with a decree of the Belarusian government, every city and district of the Republic was to publish its own Book of Memory. My model in this regard was the two-volume Book of Memory of my native Vitebsk, which presented a great deal of material gathered by local historians about events in their native region, including the events of 1941.
Finally, I sat down to compile my own chronology. While in Minsk, I studied all the numerous Books of Memory published up to that time, and became acquainted with Iraida Makeeva's two-volume In the Battles near Grodno, which collected the recollections of participants in those events. In Vitebsk, a similar book appears never to have been published; L. N. Brueva's materials simply turned out to be freely available on the Internet at http://kraj.vitebsk.net/?page=vov (now defunct). They are now available at https://people.vlib.by/files/Brueva-LN/poka-ne-pohoronen-poslednij-pavshij-soldat.pdf
The Internet. It was evidently what settled everything. For it was through the Internet, without leaving my native city and, so to speak, "without interrupting my regular work," that I became acquainted with the SBD (Collections of Combat Documents of the Great Patriotic War) and many other important documents, found the memoirs I needed, and was able to use Evgeny Drig's materials (the "Mekhkorpusa" website), arranged exactly as I needed them…
In addition, I became acquainted by correspondence with Dmitry Egorov and Alexander Dudarenok, who were also working on the question of the Bialystok "pocket" (and had even been at it more seriously and earlier than I had), and so on and so forth.
In 2005, Dmitry Egorov even sent me his material—essentially a finished but as yet unpublished book, In the Footsteps of a Lost Battle (in the course of publication it came to be called The Destruction of the Western Front)—for which he has my special thanks!
Also thanks to the Internet, I became acquainted with Nikolai Kazakov from Velizh, who shared his own material. Later I became acquainted with the materials of local historians from other towns of the Russian hinterland: Roslavl, Velikiye Luki, Sebezh…
In the end, in 2006, in the online journal Idiot, I published my latest opus magnum, Belarusian Chronicles. 1941.
That would seem to be that.
Yet the topic would not let go. New materials accumulated. Many details (sometimes important ones) required clarification. By this time, a translation of the book by the German military commander G. Geyer had appeared, the diaries of Field Marshal F. von Bock had been published, as had studies by P. Carell (published in the author's homeland in 1963) and W. Haupt (1983), and excerpts from Heidorn's book (1989) had appeared.
Thanks to materials "from the other side," the LOGIC of the combat operations became clearer.
In 2009, the time came to update my study.
And the very next year, Alexei Isaev's book The Stopped Blitzkrieg came out, which provided new food for thought. Of course, after his previous books (for example, Georgy Zhukov), it was no surprise that a man who had gained access to materials of which Egorov and I had been deprived could make so many blunders!
At the same time, excerpts from German wartime documents were worth a great deal (in the first chapter, devoted to the Bialystok-Minsk battle, my references to Isaev turned out to be far more numerous than references to D. Egorov's book—30 to 18!).
In the autumn of 2010, the new edition of the study was completed.
As in the first edition, the study consists of five chapters. Each chapter is divided into two unequal parts.
The larger part is the CHRESTOMATHY: a description, day by day, of events in individual (in some sense independent) sectors of the front.
In essence, it is a compilation of data that are for the most part already known (though not to everyone and not always :).
The Chrestomathy is rich in details, unit and formation numbers, and the names of commanders, and is difficult for the unprepared reader to absorb.
Should the reader encounter difficulties, he or she can turn at once to the second part—the "CRITIQUE" (the text following the five asterisks).
In that case, however, the reader may skip the reasoning behind an opinion that may seem to him or her controversial or may provoke immediate rejection ("resistance").
The sources I have used can in principle be divided into several unequal groups. In order of their importance for understanding the logic of events, I present them as follows.
The first group consists of wartime diaries kept by high-ranking commanders as events unfolded. They are especially valuable from the standpoint of my study's approach. This group includes the diary of the Chief of the German General Staff of the Land Forces, Colonel-General F. Halder, and the diary of the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Center, Field Marshal F. von Bock.
Unfortunately, Soviet commanders of a comparable rank left no such diaries. There were reports in the press of diaries kept by A. I. Eremenko despite Stalin's explicit prohibition, but they are not yet accessible.
The second group consists of the memoirs of commanders at the level of corps or higher.
On the German side, these are the memoirs of H. Hoth (commander of the 3rd Panzer Group), H. Guderian (commander of the 2nd Panzer Group), and also G. Geyer (commander of the 9th Army Corps).
On the Soviet side, I could not use memoirs of that level.
Reminiscences and Reflections by G. K. Zhukov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff (as of 22 June 1941), is practically unusable. The Commander of the Western Front, D. G. Pavlov, was shot; only his testimony before the Military Tribunal has survived; the memoirs of his deputy, I. V. Boldin, are utterly uninformative with regard to combat operations in Belarus in 1941.
The army commanders of the 1941 Bialystok salient, K. D. Golubev and V. I. Kuznetsov, left no memoirs. Two more army commanders of the Western Front's "first composition," A. A. Korobkov and P. M. Filatov, perished that same year, 1941 (Korobkov, like Pavlov, was shot; Filatov died in an air raid). In the end, all that remained were the recollections of the chief of staff of the 4th Army, L. M. Sandalov, and of the chief of the operations department of the 13th Army, S. P. Ivanov—a colonel and a lieutenant-colonel of 1941.
In describing the events of July–August 1941, a more extensive body of material could be used: the memoirs of A. I. Eremenko, I. S. Konev, K. K. Rokossovsky, A. V. Gorbatov, and M. F. Lukin.
The third group consists of wartime documents at the level of corps or higher. For the most part I used materials from the Soviet side, most often the Collections of Combat Documents. However, the rout of Soviet forces in a number of the battles of 1941 (in the Bialystok-Minsk battle, at Smolensk, Mogilev, Gomel, and later at Kiev, Vyazma, and Bryansk) deprived posterity of a great many documents.
I am aware that I have made far too little use of German documents. I hope, however, that this is a temporary difficulty. It is not impossible that mastering German documents will provide the impetus for a next, third edition of the study.
The fourth group consists of memoirs and documents that make it possible to clarify events at the level of individual divisions and sectors of the front (the recollections of K. N. Galitsky, I. I. Russiyanov, Ya. G. Kreizer, N. I. Biryukov, A. S. Zhadov, S. S. Biryuzov, and officers of lower rank). References to the literature of this group are scattered throughout the text.
The fifth group consists of materials collected by local historians (the books of I. Makeeva and L. N. Brueva, already mentioned, stand out), as well as those published in Books of Memory and on regional websites.
Adjacent to this group are books devoted to a particular formation.
Finally, the sixth group consists of modern studies. There are not many of them.
D. Egorov has presented as yet unsurpassed material on the Bialystok-Minsk battle.
E. Drig has also presented excellent material for analysis.
B. Khazanov has well described the destruction of Soviet aviation.
R. Aliev (The Storming of the Brest Fortress) has published excellent material on a small but important episode of the combat operations in Belarus.
A. Isaev is, rather, a donor of information "from the other side." His own thoughts about the events in Belarus are often erroneous, biased, and, as it seems to me, cannot serve as a basis for analysis.
As for L. N. Lopukhovsky, I simply wish to take off my hat to him. His caliber is felt even when he speaks on a very concrete and narrow topic (such as "The 120th Howitzer Artillery Regiment of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command of the Red Army in Battle")…
Finally, I shall answer a question that seems strange to me but that constantly arises with regard to people like me: can I be considered a historian?
I don't know.
Probably I can. Possibly I can't. It depends on how you look at it.
I will answer this way:
"I am a historian.
There will be an interesting story today at Patriarch's Ponds…"
