1963, on the bridge of the EM "Skromny", Atlantic, ship's watch officer

« I am Gennady Petrovich Belov, born in the city of Leningrad on May 11, 1937, and in my childhood I saw hunger, cold, horrors and fear of war and human participation…»

For me, these lines of the writer’s autobiography are key. Here is the source of this man’s courage and faithful service to the Fatherland, the special care and delicacy that he shows towards his heroic fellow soldiers, towards those who shared with him the years of service in the Navy, regardless of ranks and titles. His heightened sense of justice comes from his childhood during the siege. Therefore, with such tenacity, he strives to perpetuate the memory of those who dedicated their lives and destinies to the defense of their country, and to understand the causes of the tragic events in the fleet, which exposed global destructive processes in society.

1966, on the bridge of the EM "Fire", White Sea, ship's watch officer

Gennady Belov is a retired captain of the first rank, a member of the Russian joint venture, and served in the navy for more than thirty years, eighteen of which were devoted entirely to the Northern Fleet. A man filled with love for Russia, he devotes his “civilian” life to his life’s work - serving the Fatherland.

Today, after more than twenty years since the collapse of the great country, against the backdrop of the monstrous events in Ukraine and the unprecedented campaign of persecution of Russia from Europe and the United States, books about Russia’s only allies, in the words of Emperor Alexander III - its army and navy - are being purchased special meaning, relevance and value.

Gennady Belov's literary account includes several unusual voluminous books. The debut, “Behind the Scenes of the Fleet,” was entirely dedicated to naval service in the 60s and 70s. Belov edited her manuscript about forty times, the first part was published in St. Petersburg in 2004, and the second, expanded edition was published in 2006. The narrative vividly recreates the special spirit of the military and peaceful life of the Soviet naval officers. This book is a kind of part of the chronicle of the history of the Northern Fleet from 1959 to 1977. Prominent representatives of the command staff - Vice Admiral E. I. Volobuev and Rear Admiral E. A. Skvortsov - are the heroes of his other book, “Honor and Duty,” published in St. Petersburg in 2009. The characters of outstanding military leaders, with whom the author was associated with long service in the Northern Fleet, and with E.I. Volobuev - also sailing in two military services, are written out laconically and precisely. The simplicity of the narrative makes the book unusually concentrated, strict, and capacious. You read and involuntarily envy: Belov was lucky in his life to meet real people! He understands the importance of everyone’s extraordinary individuality, he sincerely admires his commanders, admiring their courage and professionalism, their demands - first of all, on themselves.

November 1969, head of the RTS at the Sevastopol BOD

And “Extreme Navy Lexicon” is a brilliant chapter that deserves special mention. We do not even suspect that many of the “iconic” catchphrases of recent years were borrowed by our contemporaries from the monologues of outstanding leaders of the Soviet fleet. The chapter contains statements by the commanders of the Seventh Operational Squadron at headquarters briefings, meetings and debriefings, recorded by headquarters officers and Gennady Petrovich personally. Bitter, specific humor, steeply mixed with the details of naval realities, in the mouth of a commander with remarkable intelligence and erudition, is a special “weapon” and, of course, a separate branch of oral folk art. Many of these expressions, picked up by the Internet, can be said to have become national property.

I would like to pay special attention to documentary photographic materials: the book is equipped with a large number of unique photographs. Have you noticed how strikingly different the faces in old photographs are from living ones? Smart. Brave. Clear. And always - extraordinary!

1968, Yalta, Massandra, with Evgeny Evstigneev after filming the film “Strange People” by Vasily Shukshin

However, the most significant in the work of G. P. Belov is a historical and literary work - the 600-page “Atlantic Squadron”.

“The book about the Seventh Operational Squadron of the Northern Fleet is dedicated to describing the historical events of its formation and combat activities from the beginning of its formation to the last days of service in the Navy. It fully presents statistical data of all stages of the squadron’s combat activity, describes the creation, construction and development of ships of the latest projects. The described episodes of events during combat service enable all readers of the book to understand that at the forefront of protecting the interests of our Motherland were dedicated admirals, officers, midshipmen and ordinary sailors. All of them showed courage in the most difficult situations in ocean voyages and successfully completed their tasks even in the difficult conditions of the inhospitable Atlantic. In addition, the author makes an attempt to analyze complex processes in the work environment on the squadron and writes about the difficult fate of ship commanders. Unfortunately, a complex historical process expunged the squadron from the Navy, but the rich experience of the squadron in defending the geopolitical interests of our Motherland shown in the book gives hope that it will be in demand by a new generation of sailors, and this is precisely the value of this book,” writes in the preface to it the Chief of the Main Staff of the Navy, First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of the Russian Federation (1996-1998), Admiral I. N. Khmelnov.

I am sure that not only “new generations of sailors” may be interested in “The Atlantic Squadron,” but also any reader who is passionate about the history of Russia, its military glory and the eternal “maritime” theme.

1966, EM "Fiery", behind a tactical tablet

Only an impartial document painlessly allows for excess. In a work of art, the abundance of “demonstrative” heroics causes a smile. The documentary material speaks for itself. You can internally resist as much as you like, disagree with something - but these people were SUCH. They sacrificed themselves for the well-being of their homeland. They didn't discuss orders. We experienced enormous stress. They took responsibility not just for the strict execution of orders, for the life of the ship, but often for the fate of the world. Can we understand the extent of this responsibility? Gennady Belov knows this firsthand - the author had to undergo six combat services during his service in the 170th brigade and the Seventh Squadron!

The events in Panama, the extreme stress of our sailors during the conflicts of 1967, 1973 and 1986, the war in the Persian Gulf, the rescue of civilians in the front-line zones of Africa - the crews of the squadron ships defended the geopolitical interests of the USSR, brilliantly carrying out the most complex combat missions in exercises, in every possible way restraining the activity of the US and NATO naval forces in the confrontation in the vast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. After all, our most popular, simply set sore throat, post-war slogan was “Peace to the world!”, and in the West they did not intend to “coexist peacefully” for a long time.

1959, 5th year cadet of the Higher Naval Radio Engineering School (VVMIRTU)

The book “Atlantic Squadron” by Gennady Belov is, of course, a colossal memoir-scientific work, priceless and timely. Even the “Contents” are compiled in the likeness of a dissertation: chapters and subchapters, a glossary of terms, a list of references - more than 120 sources. Rare photographs, a complete list of ships of the squadron with all output data. An extensive, scrupulous study, in the work on which Belov managed to involve a large number of people, and Belov, by the way, did not forget to express gratitude to each of them in the “From the Author” address.

In essence, this book by Belov is a monument. A granite sculpture of words and meanings. Severe, heavy, devoid of frills, “ornaments”, all sharp corners - but real, for centuries!

Of course, it’s hard to read through the pages devoted to negative episodes in the fleet that resulted in human casualties - accidents, fires and flooding, often provoked by elementary bungling, the incompetence of individual team members, abuse of power, or the stubbornness of the command. Sometimes it seems that these numerous facts outweigh the pages filled with deep respect for the military hard work and feat of Soviet sailors, telling about courage and dedication, excellent performance of combat missions. However, we have facts before us. There is no hiding from the truth. The time has come to look it in the eye, evaluate the past impartially, and in the future, nurturing the best, try to avoid fatal, repeated mistakes. After all, the processes that led to the destruction of the Squadron also led to the disappearance of a huge power from the political map of the world! Today is the time to “gather stones.” The time of opportunistic overthrow and denial of the achievements of the past has finally passed. In light of the latest violent events, when the “world community” is frantically condemning Russia for the sins it has not committed, a great people has been slandered, driven into a severe inferiority complex, destroyed by various kinds of “reformers” and enemies throughout the 20th century, consisting of those same epic “quilted jackets” , “Colorados”, “Soviet” - gets up from his knees!

1959, College graduate

“Kyiv” - how painful it is to pronounce this word today. But with this glorious name a new era in the navy began. On July 21, 1970, the first Soviet aircraft carrier, named Kiev, was laid down on the zero slipway of the Black Sea Shipyard No. 198 in Nikolaev. The fate of this ship was symbolically determined. The whole country built Kiev. 169 ministries and departments, over three and a half thousand major enterprises took part in its creation. To inspect such a ship and visit each room for at least one minute, it was necessary to spend more than two and a half days of pure time. It became a breakthrough in domestic shipbuilding in many areas, but most importantly, the fleet for the first time received an aircraft-carrying ship with deck-based aircraft on board. "Kiev" was launched on December 26, 1972, and on August 28, 1994, the handsome aircraft carrier was SOLD to a private company in China and on May 20, 2000, it was taken by the tugboat "Daewoo" to Shanghai, where it was converted into a floating tourist entertainment center ...

By the beginning of the new millennium, through the efforts of the perestroika destroyers, Russia surrendered its battle fleet. Most of the ships, not having served even half their operational life, were sold for next to nothing for scrap metal to China, Turkey, South Korea and India. At the same time, the author emphasizes, even secret equipment was not removed from the aircraft carriers during the sale. Less than 30 million dollars was received for the sale of a giant armada of ships, but the construction of one destroyer costs ten times more! G. Belov bitterly summarizes: “E. A. Skvortsov rightly said in his book “Time and Fleet”: “Probably in Russia, in addition to bad roads and fools, there are also criminals.” Certainly. We even know them by name - the inspirers, “foremen” and generals of perestroika! So many years have passed, and the author’s heart is still filled with inexplicable bitterness when he lists the ships that have left the fleet: “ Be patient, absorbing every line, read this memorial list of our fleet, our power, our strength, our pride, our national respect, our strength, money, sweat, mind" The pain-filled pages of Belov’s book, dedicated to the last days of the squadron, are a high Requiem, no less strong and spiritual than the famous song “Varyag”. And farewell to the squadron here also reads quite symbolically - it is also a farewell to the past: to the country, to one’s destiny, to life itself, because the deliberate death of the squadron entailed crippled destinies.

Third course. In the photo in the middle. On school boats

« The news of the liquidation was tragic for many officers. The squadron had a 37-year history of existence. A high staff culture was developed, which was passed on from generation to generation, and any officer coming to the squadron headquarters adopted this spirit of high dedication and professionalism. The connection management organization was created and perfectly worked out. This is the invisible thing that is created and developed over many years of hard work. And suddenly all this was destroyed in an instant. Who needed this and why? The leadership of the country and the Armed Forces have once again brought the Navy to its knees. The origins of this decision and the actors involved are unknown, and even now no one will dare to reveal the whole unpleasant truth. But I’m sure that years later they will write about this and name the characters involved in this naval tragedy. The time for history has not yet come..."

In the works of Gennady Belov there are no linguistic delights, no dashingly twisted plot, no old-testament sea reckless romance, they have completely different tasks and goals. Here is life. Severe, sometimes comical, sometimes inglorious, and more often heroic. Life without embellishment, which is more fantastic than any fantasy and more dramatic than any Shakespearean tragedy. Just look at one episode of the squadron passing through the “eye of the cyclone” - a 7-point killer storm, unfortunately, as selfless as it is completely useless, not motivated by anything other than the tyranny of the higher authorities...

And what courage was shown by the commander of the Zhguchiy BOD and the entire crew, who, in order for the ship not to lose speed in a severe storm, manually scooped fuel from the bottoms of the tanks when its automatic supply ended. The actions of Captain 2nd Rank A.A. Kibkal evoke admiration: in order not to risk the lives of his subordinates, he, being on the brink of death, himself cleared the mines of a GDR cargo ship in the port of Luanda. A real feat was accomplished by the commander of the EM "Experienced" - Captain 2nd Rank Yu. G. Ilyinykh, who went to sea to free representatives of the Angolan authorities taken hostage, without permission from the Navy command (there was no time to wait).

Battleship "October Revolution"

“Atlantic Squadron” unfolds a grandiose three-dimensional panorama of the complex life of the fleet, unknown to civilians, where behind the luxurious, proud, chiseled silhouettes of warships lie the fates of not only admiral commanders, captains, first mates, midshipmen, sailors, but also the entire country.

After reading “The Atlantic Squadron” by Gennady Belov, I catch myself thinking that its realities, a southerner, suddenly became close to the roads - and the harsh landscape, and the people of the Russian North, and the characters of the sailors of the northern fleet, and the unkind sky, and the icy sea, and ships.

« …My feelings? They go back many decades to my years as a lieutenant. And even now I’m ready to live in my cold, drafty, without toilet and water apartment on the street. Eastern. Despite the hardest service, I remember with trepidation Severomorsk, hikes in the generous tundra and my struggle for honor and dignity for decades. Your phrase that after reading my books Severomorsk seems like home to you made me cry like a man... It truly was a special city. For the most part, everything was fair there. Intelligent and kind people, special garrison way of life..." - Gennady Petrovich answered my letter.

The fleet is being reborn, as is our identity. The exploits of our fathers and grandfathers were not in vain, nor was the service of the Seventh Atlantic Squadron in vain. Russia was, is and will be.

This means there will be a Northern Fleet!

Olesya Rudyagina

The fate of the admiral

Admiral Nikolai Nikolaevich AMELKO

Admiral Nikolai Nikolaevich AMELKO is from that legendary cohort of Soviet naval commanders who, having joined the navy in the 30s of the last century, acquired command skills during the Great Patriotic War, and then created the Soviet ocean-going nuclear military fleet.

Part II

WAR. 22ND OF JUNE

I learned about the beginning of the war on the tram, when I was traveling from the village of Uritsky home to my wife, as we said, for a visit (for dismissal). The man sitting next to me said in a quiet voice that the Germans had attacked us, and they would now talk about it on the radio. Approaching my house, I saw a crowd of people and my wife and dog (we had a white Spitz). Everyone stood near the loudspeaker on the pole. Molotov spoke and said that the war had begun.

We already knew quite accurately about the approach of war. On June 18, I was in Tallinn with the ship and cadets. In the evening, with the school teacher who led the practice, Captain 2nd Rank Khainatsky, we were at the Konvik restaurant on Torgovaya Street. Suddenly a cryptographer comes and whispers to me that a code has arrived from Moscow, encrypted with my commander’s code. He urgently went to the ship, took out the commander’s code from the safe and deciphered: “Fleets are on combat readiness. All ships should immediately return to their bases at their place of permanent deployment.” He gave the command to urgently prepare the ship for departure. Mechanic Dmitriev reported that he was ready. Then the senior assistant commander of the ship, in turn, having received reports from the commanders of the combat units and the boatswain Veterkov, by the way, an excellent super-conscript specialist, older than me in age, reported: “The ship is ready for battle and voyage.” We weighed anchor and moorings and went to Kronstadt. Appeared to Commander V.F. Tributsu. He says:

Your permanent location is Leningrad, near the school.

I reported that I needed to load coal.

After loading the coal (and this is a time-consuming procedure - all the personnel with baskets and shovels from the shore run along the gangplank to the ship, load coal into the hatches of the coal pits and clean the boilers), I went by boat to Oranienbaum, then by train to the village of Uritsky and further take the tram home. It was at this time that my neighbor told me that the war had begun. At home I told my wife that this war would be worse than the Finnish one. We decided that Tatochka (that’s what I called my wife) would go to visit her relatives in Moscow.

I didn’t stay at home overnight, I returned to the ship and sent the ship’s clerk - a very efficient petty officer - to Leningrad to get a ticket for my wife on the train to Moscow. Two days later I saw my wife off with a train ticket. We lived on the outskirts of the city behind the Kirov plant, very far from the Moscow station, but the clerk at the Evropeyskaya hotel got a Lincoln car. There is pandemonium at the station. We found out where the train that will be served for boarding is located and on what route. In the Lincoln we drove from Ligovskaya Street through the service entrance directly onto the platform, and at that time the train was already reversing for boarding. People rushed to the carriages as they walked; the entrances to the carriages were already packed with people. Then the clerk and I lifted my Tatochka into our arms and pushed her through the window of the carriage onto the top bunk. We said goodbye, and I saw her only three and a half years later. Sad, I went to the ship.

TALLINN TRANSITION

At the end of September 1939, the city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became the main base and location of the main basing forces for the ships of the Baltic Fleet.

I received an order to act in accordance with the mobilization plan, according to which I was to join the brigade of skerry ships, the gathering place was the city of Trongsund, if you go to Vyborg from the sea. The strait at Trongsund is narrow, and I decided to stand at the pier with my bow towards the exit. He began to turn around, the bow of the ship rested against the pier, and the stern against the opposite shore. Using cables, a windlass and winches, the ship was turned around. I fiddled around for a long time and broke one winch. Then I found the headquarters of the brigade being formed and introduced myself to the commander - Captain 1st Rank Lazo. And he says:

It’s good that you turned around to leave, the order came to the “Leningrad Council” to return to Kronstadt, and then go to Tallinn at the disposal of the Mine Defense headquarters.

The morning of June 22, 1941 arrived. The training ship "Leningradsovet", commanded by the author of these memoirs, was located in Kronstadt. Two 76-mm anti-aircraft guns were urgently installed on the ship on the bow and on the poop (at the stern) and four DShK heavy machine guns on the turrets. Until mid-July, the ship made four trips from Kronstadt to Tallinn to replenish ammunition, food, and military equipment for its defenders. This was required because on August 5, 1941, troops of the 48th German Army cut through the 8th Army of the Northwestern Front and reached the coast of the Gulf of Finland, completely blocking Tallinn from land.

At the end of July, the ship "Leningradsovet", while in Tallinn, stood at the pier of the Merchant Harbor, and the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet Mine Defense was located on it. The commander of this formation was Vice Admiral Rall Yuri Fedorovich, the chief of staff was Captain 1st Rank A.I. Alexandrov, deputy Chief of Staff - Captain 2nd Rank Polenov. All of them, as well as the flagship navigator Ladinsky, the miner Kalmykov and other specialists from the Mine Defense headquarters were located and lived at the Leningradsovet.

The training ship "Leningradsovet" was built at the Baltic Shipyard in 1889. The former name was "Verny". Displacement 1100 tons, armament - 76 mm guns on barbettes, 3 on each side. In 1927 it was modernized, the weapons were removed, and it was renamed "Leningradsovet".

The defense of Tallinn continued for three weeks: the 10th Rifle Corps of the 8th Army, subordinate to the Fleet Commander Admiral Tributs, a detachment of marines formed from the personnel of the ships (it also included 20 people from the crew of the Leningradsovet), a regiment of Latvian and Estonian workers , supported by artillery.

At night, minesweepers and tugboats arrived, and transports also approached the outer roadstead. At dawn on August 28, I received a signal from the Kirov: “For the 4th convoy, form up and leave.” Navigator Kovel and navigator "Leningradsovet" laid out passage courses on the map, as indicated in the package. I gave the order to the minesweepers to line up and gave courses. At this time, two “KM” boats approached the side of the ship - these are traveling boats of the fleet headquarters, I was familiar with their commanders before: they were in Leningrad in the Training detachment for providing practice for cadets of the school named after M.V. Frunze. The commanders and midshipmen of the boats began to ask me: “Comrade commander, take us with you, we were abandoned, and we don’t know how or where to go.” I agreed, instructed my senior assistant Kalinin to put them on bakshtov (small boats, about 10 tons of displacement), gave them a hemp cable from the stern, and they stood “in tow.”

At Voindlo Island our fourth convoy lined up and began moving. We passed Keri Island, mines began to explode in the trawls, one of the minesweepers was blown up, political instructor Yakubovsky was thrown aboard the Leningradsovet by a blast wave from one of the minesweepers, landed on a tarpaulin awning and received almost no serious injuries. We only had one pair of minesweepers left, but the trawled strip was so small that the transports heading into the wake could not adhere to it exactly and began to be blown up by mines. Transports and ships were constantly attacked by Yu-87 and Yu-88 bombers. The two boats that I had on Bakshtov picked up floating people from ships and transports and landed them on the Leningradsovet. Somewhere abeam Yuminda we saw the burning and sinking transport "Veronia", on which mainly the employees of the fleet headquarters were evacuated. Our boats picked up and brought on board several dozen people - men and women. Near our side we saw a girl floating in only a shirt, holding on to a large suitcase. When we pulled her on board, it turned out to be an Estonian cashier from Tallinn customs, and the suitcase was stuffed with Estonian kroons. When asked what this money was for, she replied that she was responsible for it. The chief mate threw this suitcase overboard, threw his overcoat over her, then they changed her into working sailor uniform. The battalion and the ship's management changed the clothes of everyone whom the boats picked up and dropped off on board.

Soon we approached the Nargen-Porkalla-Ud mine line. At this time, a squadron overtook us from the starboard side, four minesweepers "BTShch" passed, followed by the icebreaker "Suurtyl", on which, as it turned out, the Estonian government, the head of which was Ivan Keben, was evacuated. Behind the icebreaker was the cruiser "Kirov" under the flag of fleet commander Vladimir Filippovich Tributs. They passed so close that the fleet commander shouted through a megaphone: “Amelko, how are you doing?” I didn’t know what to answer, and while I was thinking, they had already left, and it was useless to shout. Behind the Kirov was the leader of the destroyers Yakov Sverdlov. At this time, from the Kirov, our signalmen read the semaphore: “There is a periscope of the submarine ahead on the bow of the Leningradsovet. Yakov Sverdlov, go out and bomb.” The latter gave off a "cap" of smoke. This means that he increased his speed, broke down and passed by the Leningradsovet at 20-30 meters. On the bridge I saw the commander - Alexander Spiridonov. I knew him well before the war, we were in the same detachment and, while in Tallinn, we met several times. He was a bachelor, and we considered him a "dude." We, young officers, did not wear the naval caps that were issued to us, but ordered them in Tallinn on Narva Mantu Street from Jacobson, a jacket and trousers from a workshop in Vyshgorod from an Estonian tailor. Somewhere in mid-August, Sasha Spiridonov came to my ship and offered to order overcoats made of castor fabric.

I suggested that since he was talking about the overcoat, apparently we would soon be moving to Kronstadt, but would we get there? Spiridonov tells me:

Well, you know, drowning in a castor overcoat is more pleasant than in the one they give us.

So, passing by me, Spiridonov, standing on the bridge in a jacket, a white shirt with a tie, a cap from Jacobson, with a cutlass and a cigar in his mouth, shouted into a megaphone: “Kolya! Be healthy!” I answered him: “Okay, scratch it Sasha!” Having passed several cable lengths ahead of me, his ship exploded on a mine and sank. The legend that the Yakov Sverdlov protected the cruiser Kirov from a torpedo fired by a submarine is not true - it was blown up by a mine. The place of the Yakov Sverdlov in the wake formation was taken by two destroyers, and behind them the submarine S-5, which exploded before reaching us. The MO-4 boat picked up five people, including Hero of the Soviet Union Egipko, the boat dropped off four sailors to us, and Egipko remained on the boat, the rest of the personnel died - torpedoes detonated on the submarine. It's already starting to get dark. At this time, the cruiser was far ahead and fired with its main caliber at the enemy torpedo boats that had left the Finnish skerries. We didn't see any boats. We approached the place of the death of the Yakov Sverdlov, lights flashed on the water - these were signals given by sailors and officers, who were picked up by boats and brought on board. It should be clarified that the ship’s personnel were wearing vests that inflated when they fell into the water. The lights on the vests were powered by batteries. Each vest also had a whistle, and the one that fell into the water whistled, attracting attention. The second pair of minesweepers we were following also exploded on mines. By 10 p.m. visibility had decreased to 200 meters. In order not to be blown up by mines, we decided to anchor before dawn. Small ships and tugboats began to approach us, asking for permission to tow the Leningradsovet, since the depth was great and their anchor chains did not allow us to anchor ourselves. At dawn we discovered about eight ships standing behind us on the bakshtov, one after another. We weighed anchor, pushing two floating mines away from the side with poles, and began moving towards the island of Gogland. Behind the "Leningradsovet" in the wake were the military transport "Kazakhstan", the floating plant "Sickle and Hammer" and two more transports. Continuous bombing of transports began, which were larger than the Leningradsovet. "Kazakhstan" caught fire, but the personnel, led by Captain Zagorulko, dealt with the fire and damage, and the transport reached Kronstadt on its own. "Hammer and Sickle" died. From the convoy, only one "Leningradsovet" and three "baby" submarines remained, which submerged and followed us under the periscope. Then the Junkers attacked the Leningradsovet, flew in groups of 7-9 aircraft, circled above us and took turns diving onto the ship. The height of the explosions of our shells forced them to circle and drop bombs one by one. If you watch carefully, you can see when the bombs come off the plane, and by turning the ship to the right or left, increasing or decreasing the speed, you can avoid the bomb directly hitting the ship. That's what we did. For the quickest reaction, helmsman Bizin was transferred from the wheelhouse to the upper bridge; the drivers were ordered to quickly follow signals to increase speed or stop the car. Thus, the ship withstood more than 100 bomber raids. Bombs exploded nearby, fragments damaged the hull, wounded some, including the commander, but a direct hit was avoided.

We approached the southern tip of Gogland Island - there is a lighthouse and a signal and observation post. They asked by semaphore: “Which fairway did the squadron with the cruiser Kirov take?” We received no answer. The fact is that the tracing paper handed to us when leaving Tallinn showed the route along the northern fairway. But there was also a mine position on the Gogland reach. I decided to take the southern channel, a very narrow strait called Hailoda. Ships rarely sailed near Cape Kurgalsky and often ran aground. But I knew this passage well and already in the evening twilight I passed it safely and emerged into Luzheskaya Bay. Night has come. After the last fierce attacks of the aircraft, the gyrocompasses failed, and there were two of them - the Geo-III and the English Sperry. There were also English gyrorudder, heading chart, and echo sounder, but they were all out of order, leaving only one magnetic compass with dubious accuracy. In short, we lost our location. We saw glimpses of a navigation buoy. After a meeting with the navigators, it was suggested that this was the buoy of the Demonstein Bank. To make sure of this, the command boat was lowered and the ship's navigator Albert Kirsch was sent to the buoy. He approached it carefully and returned to the ship, confirming our assumption. Ahead on the right we saw a fire on the shore where the Peipia torpedo boat base was. Thus, we determined our place and went to the Shepelev lighthouse, where it was necessary to walk exactly along the fairway, since in this area the entire water space was blocked by anti-submarine nets on which explosive devices were suspended. When approaching this line, we periodically dropped depth charges, considering it possible that enemy submarines from the Finnish skerries might be in this area. But everything turned out well. We entered the fairway and entered the large Kronstadt roadstead. In the roadstead, the cruiser "Kirov" stood at anchor, they played the approach, everyone stood facing the side of the cruiser, on which the bugle also sounded and there, too, everyone stood "at attention" facing us. We asked for a signal post where we were allowed to stand at the pier. And we received the answer: to go to the Ust-Rogatka pier. They dropped the anchor and moored with the stern not far from the battleship "Marat", brought the gangplank ashore and everyone raised from the water by the "Leningradsovet" from the dead ships was allowed to go ashore. And there were about 300 of them - officers, sailors, soldiers and civilians. Thus, "Leningradsovet" completed the transition from Tallinn to Kronstadt. Several crew members were awarded orders and medals, and the commander, by order of the People's Commissar of the Navy, received his first award - the Order of the Red Banner, and was awarded the rank of lieutenant commander ahead of schedule.

LENINGRAD BLOCKADE

On September 22, the Germans carried out an air raid on ships stationed in Kronstadt. One of the bombs hit the bow of the battleship "Marat", the artillery magazines of the bow tower detonated, the bow with the 1st turret was torn off, the ships standing not far from it were torn off their moorings, including the Leningradsovet.

Upon returning to Kronstadt from Tallinn, the command of the Baltic Fleet gave instructions from among the crews of the ships to form marine brigades to be sent to help the troops of the Leningrad Front in the defense of Leningrad. A total of eight brigades were formed. On my ship, we took one combat shift to defend the city back in Tallinn. None of them returned to the ship, and the second combat shift was taken off in Kronstadt. On the Leningradsovet and other ships there was only one combat shift left out of the three required by the state, mainly artillerymen, miners and signalmen. We slept in turns, right at the combat posts.

On September 24, the commander of the light forces detachment of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Vice Admiral Valentin Petrovich Drozd, called me to the cruiser "Kirov" and showed me a directive from the fleet commander V.F. Tributs, which ordered the ship to be mined in case of destruction. We discussed how to do this and decided: to put two depth charges in the artillery magazines and engine room, and keep the fuses in a personal safe in the ship’s commander’s cabin. Then Drozd unfolded the map and showed the place at the entrance to a large roadstead, where, at the signal “Aphorism,” the ship was to be blown up, next to the blown up battleship “October Revolution”. Dictation by V.P. Drozd I described all these actions on a piece of paper, Drozd endorsed it, sealed it in an envelope on which he wrote “Open personally to the commander upon receipt of the “Aphorism” signal and act according to the instructions. Store in a personal safe.”

Returning to my ship, I ordered it to be mined. I soon learned that similar actions were carried out by the commanders of all ships. This “work” was strictly monitored by the heads of special departments of the NKVD and reported to Army General G.K. Zhukov, who had taken command of the Leningrad Front. The ships fought in this condition until the blockade of Leningrad was lifted.

G.K. Zhukov commanded the Leningrad Front for 27 days. Some WWII researchers said and still say that Zhukov “saved” Leningrad. The blockade of the city lasted 900 days. It is absurd to claim that during the 27 days of his command of the Leningrad Front he saved Leningrad from the siege, especially at the beginning of the war. If we talk about personalities, L.A. did it. Govorov.

I knew G.K. well. Zhukova. As commander of the Pacific Fleet, he personally reported to him. I recognize him as the organizer of stopping the retreat of our troops on the Volga, despite Zhukov’s harsh methods of action. And, of course, I do not recognize him as a “brilliant” commander who “saved” Russia. It is known that all military operations were planned by Marshal Vasilevsky, and not Zhukov. Russia was saved by the people, our Armed Forces, with their courage, not sparing their lives.

At the end of September, "Leningradsovet" was included in the detachment of ships of the Neva River. The ship was transferred to Leningrad and placed on the right bank of the Neva at the Lesopark pier, with the task of supporting with fire the 2nd division of the people's militia (2nd DNO), which defended besieged Leningrad on the left bank of the Neva opposite the village of Korchmino, right behind the Bolshevik plant. .

In addition to the Leningradsovet, the detachment of ships of the Neva River included one destroyer of the 7-u type, gunboats Oka, Zeya and others, the names of which I do not remember. Our task is, at the request of the commander of the people's militia division, to suppress German firing points with artillery fire or to support with fire the 2nd DNO, which has repeatedly tried to storm the village of Korchmino and advance in the direction of Shlisselburg. We had few shells, and when requests were received, the detachment commander allowed us to fire only 5-6 shells.

One day the commander of the 2nd DNO called me to his command post. I crossed the Neva on a boat and approached the division commander’s dugout. The sentry stopped me, questioned me and went into the dugout. I stand at the entrance and hear a soldier report: “Comrade division commander, the commander of the steamship has come to see you, which is standing on the other side, almost opposite us, I didn’t remember his last name, and I didn’t understand the rank, either captain or lieutenant.” That's right - I was a lieutenant commander. The division commander asked if I could send a boat along the Neva at night and scout out what forces were defending the village of Korchmino. I agreed, lowered the boat, appointed senior lieutenant Kolya Goloveshkin as the navigator of the ship, sent with him boatswain Veterkov, radio operator Senya Durov and another sailor, armed them with machine guns, carbines, pistols, dressed them in camouflage suits and sent them up the river to the village of Korchmino. By dawn, our scouts reported that they had approached the pier and crawled into the village, where they found no one. They found one old woman who confirmed that, indeed, there was no one in the village except her, and that two days ago there were Germans in the village. She also said that two days ago our people approached the village and started shooting, the Germans opened fire back, and then both our people and the Germans retreated, and the village was empty. This was reported to the division commander. He said that they retreated that night due to heavy German fire and that he would take the village next time. I don't know whether he took it or not. To our knowledge, no.

Our rations were very bad. The rear of the Lenmorbaza decided that the Leningradsovet had died during the transition from Tallinn and removed the ship from allowance. But then they sorted it out and resumed the allowance. For each person they were given 250 grams of bread, if it can be called bread, 100 grams of flour, which was usually fed to calves, and a teaspoon of condensed milk - this is per person per day. On the shore, not far from where the ship was moored, there was a neutral zone, there was a potato field. I took a chance and sent three efficient sailors. At night they crawled and dug up potatoes, the “operation” was successful, but they only managed to dig up half a bag. We fried it in drying oil and ate it with pleasure.

Next to the pier where we were standing there was the so-called “Saratov colony” - a village in which German colonists lived. The Germans carried out air raids, usually after dark, planes flew from the direction of Shlisselburg, and from the houses of these colonists they launched missiles and gave target designations at our targets and ships. During the day we went around the houses, trying to find out who gave the signals, but the residents refused, saying that they didn’t do it. Once the commander of the Leningrad Front, Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov, arrived, and I told him about it. He ordered surveillance to be established and allowed a gun salvo to be fired at houses firing signal flares. Zhdanov was with him and approved this decision. The next night we loaded a 76-mm cannon, set up surveillance of the houses, and as soon as the rocket took off, we fired a salvo at this house and blew it to pieces. The houses were of the dacha type. In the morning we went to look - there was no one there anymore. They only found cow hooves, apparently the cow had been killed. A wonderful meat soup was prepared from these hooves along with the skin. Enough for the entire crew. The sailors smeared mustard on their 250 grams of bread, and then drank a lot of water and plumped up. To prevent scurvy, they prepared pine and spruce branches, infused them and drank them.

In Leningrad, on Vasilievsky Island on the 2nd line, lived his father, stepmother Anna Mikhailovna and sister Alexandra, who worked in a pharmacy. I decided to visit them. There was no transport, I went on foot, and it was very far, across the Volodarsky Bridge along the embankment to the old Nevsky Prospekt, across the Palace Bridge along Tuchkova Embankment, only 15 kilometers. But I got there. The city amazed me, at every step there were frozen corpses, snow-covered tram cars, trolleybuses and buses in the snowdrifts, Gostiny Dvor was on fire, Passage and the Eliseevsky store were also on fire. Rare people, or rather shadows, wander through the streets. On the 2nd line at the gate of each house there are several corpses. I went up to the apartment, entered the room - my father and stepmother were standing at the window and arguing which German plane had flown by: a Messerschmitt or a Focke-Wulf. They were very happy about my arrival. I brought them 400 grams of bread, one onion and a bottle of pine infusion. It was just a feast. Five families lived in a five-room apartment, eleven people in total, five died, three were in the hospital, three people remained. Mother says:

Kolya, in the room opposite - Nikolai Fedorovich, a neighbor, died, and my father and I could not carry him to the gate.

Well, I went and dragged the corpse to the gate onto the street - military vehicles were driving there, picking up the corpses and taking them to the cemetery, where they were stacked in piles. The shelling of the city began, the mother says that we need to go to the first floor under the arch of the house. The father objects and does not want to go down - the shells fall far away. I agreed with him, although the whole house was shaking and the dishes were clanking.

I rested a little and began to say goodbye to my family - I wanted to get to the ship before dark. Around 20 o'clock he returned, as they say, “without legs” and slept for a day.

New Year has arrived, 1942. They put up Christmas trees in the cabins and modestly celebrated the New Year. We drank the small bottles of vodka that were given to us, I think they were called “eights”. I didn’t drink vodka, because somehow, long before that, the ship’s supply manager brought liquid onto the ship - this is fuel for Packard engines from torpedo boats supplied to us by the Americans. This liquid was set on fire, the gasoline burned, as it was on top, the remaining “alcohol” was passed through the gas mask box, unscrewing the corrugated tube, and then diluted with water and drunk. I tried it too, and this disgusting thing made me vomit. And the vodka issued was made from wood alcohol. They joked that it was made from broken stools. From then until today I don’t drink vodka at all. Champagne, good grape wine or a glass of cognac at a party or when we have guests, I drink one, sometimes two glasses in small sips per evening, but no more. My friends laugh and call me a "defective sailor."

The Neva was covered with ice, the frosts were getting stronger. In order not to freeze the ships completely, we were ordered to move to Leningrad. I was assigned a place near Babushkin's garden, opposite the Lomonosov porcelain factory and the Vienna brewery. The Lomonosov plant made sapper blades, knives and grenades for the army, and Vienna brewed beer from burnt grain from Badaev warehouses set on fire by incendiary bombs from German planes. This burnt grain was no good, it was impossible to cook anything edible, and the beer turned out to be bitter, but quite decent. Once the directors of the Lomonosov and Vienna factories came to my ship and asked permission to take a shower. Of course, I gave permission and offered him carrot tea in the wardroom. The directors asked if I could provide them with electricity for production; they did not have autonomous electricity, and the city electricity was completely turned off throughout the city. I replied that I could provide 20 kilowatts, but I have almost no coal. The director of the Lomonosov plant said that he had coal and could give it to us. In short, wires were stretched across the road, or rather, across the embankment, and I began to give them electricity - the factories started working. And “Vienna” gave me a barrel of beer every day for this - that’s an enamel mug for each member of the ship’s crew. For half-starved people this was a great help.

On January 14, 1942, by order of the fleet commander, I was appointed commander of a division of network minelayer ships as part of new, specially built ships for setting up anti-submarine networks "Onega" and "Vyatka", a non-self-propelled network barge, the minelayer "Izhora" and the former Estonian wheeled minelayer "Ristna" ". There were only five units, all of them, except for the Ristna, were stationed at the ship repair plant opposite Smolny, where the front headquarters was located. My replacement, removed from the minefield "Marti" for some offenses, captain 2nd rank Abashvili, arrived at the "Leningradsovet". I took the parting with Leningradsovet hard, and both the officers and sailors, if I dare say, were sad too. We have experienced a lot of grief together.

He arrived at Onega - the ship was the flagship of the division - and began service. I went to "Ristna", it stood on Malaya Nevka behind the Lenin Stadium, on the Petrograd side near the "Red Bavaria" beer factory. I was “lucky” to visit breweries. I didn’t like the ship itself: big, wheeled, clumsy, but the commander and crew were good sailors and loved their ship, and this is very important in the service, when there are such concepts as loyalty and confidence that we will stand and Leningrad will not we'll rent it out.

The ships were at the ship repair yard. We chipped off the ice so that the hulls would not be crushed, camouflaged the ships with fishing nets and piled mountains of snow and ice almost to the height of the sides to make it difficult to bomb German planes, which daily (usually in the evening) in groups of 20-50 Yu-87 bombers, "Yu-88" bombed the city, bridges, Smolny and just residential buildings. In the air, our fighters conducted air battles, and our ships were assigned a sector in which we fired with naval weapons.

This winter was very difficult for Leningraders. Many died of hunger. Not far from where we stopped was the Okhtinskoe cemetery, where barely alive people on children's sleds dragged the corpses of the dead wrapped in rags across the Neva across the ice; often the person dragging them died and remained lying in front of the sled. Every morning, the sailors of the ships picked up dozens of dead people from the ice and delivered them to the shore of Okhta.

But most of all, the children upset us to the point of tears. They knew when it was lunch time on the ships, they came up to the ships in crowds, clung to the side with their frozen hands and cried and asked, holding out mugs: “Uncle, give me something, at least a little,” - and in our cabins they lay swollen from hunger sailors. He ordered the supplied flour to be diluted thinner, from which the “soup” was made, and a little was poured into the children’s mugs. And they, happy, having sipped a little, carefully carried the remains of the soup home to their mothers and relatives who could not get out of bed.

And now, when I write these lines, the faces of these children “stand” in front of me, a lump rolls up in my throat, and goosebumps crawl down my back. The Leningrad siege survivors are true heroes, many know this from books, poems, newsreels, but I saw it with my own eyes. I saw their unbending will to defend Leningrad. I saw stacks of corpses in a vacant lot where Piskarevskoye cemetery is now. I saw how sappers made holes with explosions, and bulldozers raked these piles of corpses in them.

In the spring, fearing an epidemic, at the call of the city leadership, everyone who was still moving took to the streets and cleaned up the dirt. I saw how my sister on the embankment near the NKVD house with her colleague from the pharmacy together lifted an iron crowbar and chopped ice on the sidewalk, freezing for a few seconds after each blow, but they beat and beat, exhausted from fatigue.

In the summer, in June, I was ordered to install anti-submarine nets off the island of Lavensaari - this is 150 kilometers from Leningrad in the Gulf of Finland. There was a Baltic Fleet base there, from where, having completed their last refueling, the submarines departed for the Baltic Sea and surfaced there when returning. We set up nets, leaving corridors for our returning ships and submarines. But the warning was not established, and the next day one of the boats climbed into our nets and was blown up by explosive cartridges suspended on them. Thank God, the damage was minor, and the boat was quickly repaired at a floating factory on the island. Nets were repeatedly installed along the line between the Shepelev lighthouse and Björkö Island. I commanded this division until April 1943.

10th DIVISION OF GUARD BOATS

I was appointed commander of a division of minesweeper boats, which were converted into smoke-screen boats. The mine sweeping winches were removed and two "DA-7" smoke equipments were installed at the stern, operating on a mixture of sulfonic acid and water. A DShK (large-caliber) machine gun was placed on the nose. The division also included boats with a displacement twice as large, metal ones with 25-mm cannons on the bow, and self-propelled ones with ZIS engines, tenders for transporting barrels of sulfonic acid for refueling boat equipment. Each boat, in addition to the smoke equipment, also had 20 “MDSh” bombs (marine smoke bomb). In total there were about 30 units in the division. “About” because the boats were lost while carrying out missions, as I will discuss below.

As the flagship boat of the V.F. Tributs gave me his duralumin, well-equipped, high-speed, 30 knots, with four GAM-34F aircraft engines. The division received the name "10th division of smoke-screen patrol boats" of the Baltic Fleet (10th DSKD). The need for such a connection was that our ships, convoys, submarines traveling to Lavensari on the surface due to shallow depths, when leaving Kronstadt immediately behind the Tolbukhin lighthouse, came under fire from coastal batteries from the Finnish coast - guns 180, 203, 305 and even one 14-inch (340 mm). It was necessary to protect our convoy ships going to the islands of Seskor, Lavensari, and Gogland. It should be taken into account that at that time there were no radar sights. Covering the targets with a smoke curtain made shooting useless. The task of the 10th DSKD was, following between the Finnish coast and the convoys, seeing flashes of gunfire, to put up a smoke curtain - this impenetrable wall along the entire length of the convoys did not make it possible to conduct aimed fire, and the enemy stopped firing. The boatmen became so skilled that the enemy, as a rule, did not even have time to see where the shells of their first salvo fell. The situation was worse when there was a strong wind from the north, the smoke was quickly blown towards our shore, and targets were revealed. In these cases, the boats had to follow as close to the batteries as possible. Then the enemy fire was transferred to the boats, they were hit with shrapnel shells, and the division suffered losses. Well, when it became unbearable, then at the signal “All of a sudden, 90° to the left,” they temporarily went into their own curtain, knocked down the aimed fire and again went to their places. And so every night. Some of the boats, from three to ten units depending on the length and importance of the convoy going to the islands, went out to cover it. The other part is to cover transport ships traveling from Kronstadt to Leningrad, from Lisiy Nos to Oranienbaum. The Germans were in Peterhof, Uritsk, at the typewriter factory, and the front line passed near the Krasnenkoye cemetery, this is next to the Kirovsky factory and my house. By morning, all the boats returned to Kronstadt to the Italian Pond - in the depths of the Merchant Harbor. There was a hut on the shore; it was the division headquarters, a galley, and a warehouse for barrels of sulfonate, smoke bombs, and gasoline. As soon as they returned, they immediately sent the wounded to the hospital, washed the boats, refueled the equipment with sulfonic acid, replenished ammunition, took smoke bombs until they were full, refueled with gasoline, and then had dinner and went to bed. We lived on the boats until late autumn, when the blankets began to freeze to the sides. And all this was almost under the balcony of the Fleet Commander’s office, and when the fleet headquarters moved to Leningrad on Peschanaya Street in the building of the Electrotechnical Institute, then the Chief of Staff of the Kronstadt Defense Region, Rear Admiral Vladimir Afanasyevich Kasatonov, came out onto the Fleet Commander’s balcony, with whom, in addition to official matters, I also had personal friendly relations. He was a wonderful man. The headquarters, or rather the department of the 10th DSKD, was staffed with excellent officers - Burovnikov, Filippov, Selitrinnikov, Raskin, chemist Zhukov, Doctor Pirogov, communications officer Karev and smart, well-mannered Ivan Egorovich Evstafiev (he was the deputy for political affairs of the division commander) . He was the only political worker whom I deeply respected until the last day of his life. One day before going to bed I asked him:

Ivan Egorovich, how come the Germans won’t understand that their racial theory is stupid? Recognize only Aryans as people, and burn Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Arabs in ovens?

Ivan Egorovich answers:

Nikolai, you must understand that for the Germans, fascism and Hitler are the same as communism and Stalin for us.

An extremely simple and extremely clear answer to the question posed. Ivan Egorovich died in Riga from stomach cancer and was buried there. Eternal memory to him. His family - his wife Valentina and two daughters - still live in Riga. With the collapse of the USSR, I lost contact with them.

The commanders of the boats were foremen, most of whom were called up for mobilization. Experienced sailors, devoted to the Motherland and their people - Berezhnoy, Pavlov, Mikhailovsky, Pismenny, Korol. Can you really list them all? About forty officers passed through the division. All of them were fearless and with their courage set an example for all personnel. I remember that the boats were covered by destroyers traveling from Kronstadt to Leningrad. The Germans opened heavy fire on them from Old Peterhof, Martyshkino, Uritsky, and the typewriter factory. The boats set up a smoke screen, the lead boat was the boat with the detachment commander, Lieutenant V. Akopov. The boat was hit by a six-inch shell and was blown to pieces. A window appeared in the smoke curtain. It was closed by a boat heading into the wake under the command of Ivan Benevalensky. The destroyers had already entered the fenced part of the Leningrad Canal, the boats began to retreat, dropping smoke bombs onto the water. A shell exploded near Benevalensky's boat, the boat received many holes in the hull, the helmsman, signalman, chemist, and machine gunner were killed. Only the mechanic remained unharmed, and the commander was wounded in the legs and chest. Benevalensky, seriously wounded, crawled to the stern, turned on the smoke equipment, then somehow climbed onto the bridge, took the helm in his hands and, lying down, brought the boat to Kronstadt, where we learned about what had happened.

I remember well another battle; it took place already in 1944, when the troops of the Karelian Front liberated the city of Vyborg. I was ordered to take an army battalion in Ololakht Bay and use boats and tenders to land it on the islands in Vyborg Bay. When planning the operation, Vice Admiral Rall decided that it was impossible to start from Björkö Island: there was a large garrison and a 180-mm battery there. It was necessary to break through into the bay between Björkö and the village of Koivisto, which was already ours, to land troops on the island of Peysari, capture the island, and then, having crossed a small strait from the rear, take Björkö. In the dark night we loaded up the troops and, guarded by three skerry monitors and three torpedo boats in readiness to set up a smoke screen if we were discovered from Björkö Island, we safely passed through the Björkö Sund Strait, Koivisto and landed troops on Peysari Island. In the morning, four large German landing barges (LDBs), each armed with four 4-barrel 37-mm artillery mounts, appeared from the depths of the Vyborg Bay, and began to “water” us with shells, like water from hoses. The boats began to depart to the village of Koivisto; we could not return to Ololakht Bay, since the Finnish gunboat Karjala appeared in the strait. The boat under the command of Nikolai Lebedev approached the BDB. Nikolai Lebedev was seriously wounded. Midshipman Seleznev directed the boat to our shore, and when the boat ran aground, he took N. Lebedev in his arms, jumped into the water and carried him to the shore. But a shell hit him in the back, and both he and the commander died. Our patrol ships of the "Bad Weather" division - "Storm", "Storm", "Cyclone", "Smerch" - arrived. After a short battle, the BDB and the gunboat left. A marine regiment was transferred by ships to the Koivisto area, and the islands of Björkö, Melansari, Tytensiare and all the others in the Vyborg Bay were taken. The 10th Division buried Nikolai Lebedev and all those killed on the shore near the village of Putus. After the war, the local authorities of the cities of Primorsk (formerly Koivisto) and Sovetsky (formerly Tronzund) reburied all individual graves. A monument was erected on Primorsk Square.

Every year on June 22, we, the survivors, are invited by the mayors of these cities to honor the memory of the dead. But every year there are fewer and fewer veterans, and travel is now unaffordable for many. To finish the story about the 10th division, it should be said that in the winter, during freeze-ups, when the boats could not sail, from the boat crews we formed crews of skimmers on the snowmobiles provided to us, along the sides of which we placed metal canisters for four MDS, and pipes from the canisters brought to the propeller. The snowmobile commanders were the boat commanders, the navigators were the helmsmen, the machine gunners were the machine gunners, and the chemists were in charge of the smoke. It was on these smoke-curtain snowmobiles that we covered the transfer of the 2nd Shock Army of Lieutenant General I.I. Fedyuninsky from Lisy Nos to Oranienbaum to lift the blockade of Leningrad. After the capture of the islands in the Vyborg Bay, the division was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and became known as the “10th Red Banner Division of Smoke Curtain Patrol Boats - KDSKD,” and the division commander was awarded the Order of Nakhimov. I remember this division and my comrades with great respect and pride. Some people still write letters to me.

4th MSWLEING BRIGADE KBF

In the early spring of 1945, I was called by the fleet commander, Admiral V.F. Tributs announced that the Military Council, considering personnel issues, decided that I had served enough in the 10th Red Banner Division of patrol boats. The Komflot came up to me, tapped his finger on the Order of Nakhimov and said:

Well, how did you fight - that’s an assessment! We have decided to appoint you as chief of staff of the KMOR (Kronstadt Maritime Defense Region) trawling brigade.

The brigade commander, Admiral Mikhail Fedorovich Belov, is already in his old age, and you are young and I will have first of all demand from you.

The conversation ended there. Soon the order for my appointment arrived.

I came to Oranienbaum and introduced myself to the brigade commander. Mikhail Fedorovich Belov looked at me critically and said:

Young, but they told me he was lively. Well, get down to business, the brigade is large, and the Germans and hundreds of thousands of us laid mines in the Gulf of Finland.

Mikhail Fedorovich was a kind person by nature, very punctual in his work. Having looked closely at me, he began to trust and support me completely and in everything. At first, of course, it was hard - this was a new thing for me, and there were a lot of ships and people. But I was young and tried to justify the trust of Mikhail Fedorovich.

We understood that shipping was essentially paralyzed, but the personnel of the ships did not take into account the difficulties and dangers of combat trawling. They trawled day and night in order to break through safe fairways for navigation as quickly as possible. This was very important for the country's economy, the normal operation of commercial shipping and ports.

May 9, 1945 is Victory Day, and for the personnel of minesweepers and minesweepers, the war ended only around 1950-1953. In the spring and summer of 1945, our brigade cleared up to one thousand mines per day. Of course, we suffered losses, minesweepers were also blown up. The command of the Kronstadt region, Vice Admiral Yuri Fedorovich Rall closely monitored the activities of the brigade, and the chief of staff of the region, Rear Admiral Vladimir Afanasyevich Kasatonov (his son Igor - now admiral, 1st Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy) often visited the brigade with his advice and demands , of course, helped both in planning and in providing material needs.

We dealt with anchor mines successfully. They also dealt with the defenders of the minefields - these are mines placed by the Germans at a shallow depth from the surface of the sea. Instead of a minrep (cable), they used chains (which could not be cut with ordinary trawl cutters) so that the mine did not float to the surface, where it could be destroyed, usually by shooting from cannons. They found a way out: they began attaching TNT packets to the trawl cutters, which broke the chains. This was carried out by shallow-draft boat minesweepers, and behind them came large minesweeper ships with wide-width trawls and cleared mines placed against large ships.

But we also encountered a German innovation - electromagnetic mines, which were used en masse at depths of 10 to 40 meters, including in ports and harbors even in the absence of fascist troops. The "RMH" mines were a wooden box on wheels the size of a cubic meter filled with THA (TNT-hexogen-aluminum) explosive. The explosion power of this substance is 1.6 times greater than that of TNT. Inside the mine there was a very complex mechanism with an urgency device for bringing the mine into combat position (from immediate to one month) and a multiplicity device (from 1 to 16), which reacted to a certain passage over the mine or near its ship or vessel. The initial sensitivity of the mine was 4 milliorsted (0.31 a/m). Over time, the sensitivity became rougher, and given that the vessel (ship) creates a field of several hundred milliersteds, these mines could be dangerous for several years, as I was convinced of later.

We did not have any trawls against such mines. Ships and vessels were blown up in fairways carefully cleared of anchor contact mines. The only thing we came up with was to use a small wooden minesweeper towed 500 meters long to drag a large metal barge loaded with rails and scrap metal to create a large magnetic field. Mines, as a rule, exploded in front or on the sides of this barge, but the minesweeper remained intact. But, of course, there were losses. And when these losses became frequent, they began to drag these barges side by side (the minesweeper was moored close to the side of the barge). There were cases when mines exploded very close, and both the minesweeper and the barge were lost. To consider a strip to be trawled, it had to be walked along it 16 times.

All science was “put on its feet,” or rather, “on its head”: academicians A.P. Alexandrov - in the Baltic, I.V. Kurchatov - on the Black Sea. But there was no time to wait for results. The Baltic was needed by the national economy. For the sake of fairness, it should be said that academicians created special devices that measured the magnetic field of ships leaving the harbor and at special stations they reduced the ship’s magnetic field, and then mounted a cable winding on the ship along the entire perimeter of the hull, but this did not solve the problem. The cruiser "Kirov", which had such a cable demagnetization device, was blown up by an "RMH" mine - the bow of the ship was torn off.

To the People's Commissar of the Navy I.G. Kuznetsov learned that our allies, the British, have an effective special trawl against electromagnetic mines. And by his decision he exchanged the RAT-52 torpedo (put into service in 1939) for this trawl, for which he subsequently paid in court of honor. So, we got the trawl. It consisted of two cables - one shorter, the other longer, at the ends of the cables - five copper rays, thus, in salt water, a strong electromagnetic field was created between the electrodes (long and short cable). On the ship, a special device measured the electric current supplied to the cables, changing its polarity - plus or minus. Due to the small width of the trawled strip, it was advantageous for trawling to be carried out by two ships equipped with “LAP” trawls (the name of English trawls) moving in front. Having received these trawls and installed them on two minesweepers (formerly sea tugs), we went to test the fairway in the Krasnogorsk roadstead near Kronstadt. I was present at these tests together with Academician A.P. Alexandrov. The ships lined up in front, gave the command “Turn on the current,” and immediately 11 mines exploded in front of us, on the sides and even a few behind the stern. It was a stunning sight. We turned off the trawls, reeled in the views, and returned to Oranienbaum. We sorted out the results and determined the procedure for using such trawls. Thus, a large state task began to be solved faster. The fact is that these trawls and subsequently the trawls with which the six American UMS minesweepers received by our Lend-Lease brigade were armed, and our domestic trawls, created on this principle, but more advanced, did not require 16-fold passage at the same place. Everything was resolved in one pass. To be sure, sometimes two passes were made. And more about the RMH mines. As you know, in 1955, the battleship Novorossiysk (formerly Italian Giulio Cesare) was lost in Sevastopol Bay. The cause of death has not yet been clarified; there are many versions. I am convinced that the battleship was hit by an RMH mine. My beliefs are based on additional information I received when I became a brigade commander.

RIGA BASE WATER PROTECTION SHIPS BRIGADE

I was appointed commander of this brigade in the spring of 1949. It consisted of several divisions of minesweepers, patrol ships, anti-submarine ships and boats. The brigade was based at the mouth of the Western Dvina, 15 km from the city of Riga, in the village of Bolderaja. They carried out patrol duty, cleared mines in the Gulf of Riga, and exercised control over shipping. During the naval parade on Navy Day on the Daugava River, directly in the city center, I received a report that a dredger dredging the commercial port of Milgravis, 5 km from the city down the river, scooped up some large object similar to for a minute. The dredging team swam to shore. Having finished walking around the ships participating in the parade, I, in a ceremonial uniform, with orders and dagger, patent leather boots, white gloves, with the consent of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Latvia Vilis Lacis and the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Latvia Kirchenstein, Secretary of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Gorkin, who were present on the parade boat, moved onto a spare boat and left for Milgravis. Approaching the dredge, we discovered a hanging, slightly damaged RMH mine in one of the buckets. They called in sailors from the brigade, including mechanics who knew how to operate cranes. On a tarpaulin, like a baby, the mine was carefully lowered onto a boat, taken out to the Gulf of Riga, pulled ashore and detonated. The explosion was so strong that in the neighboring villages of Ust-Dvinsk and Bolderaya, glass flew out of houses. I was presented with a colossal bill, but the leadership of Latvia, with whom I had very good friendly relations, took me under protection and paid all the expenses for the damage caused. Vilis Latsis even gave me his autographed collection of works. This incident set us a new task - to check the entire river bed from the city to the exit to the bay. Trawling is not allowed - this is a feature of the city, port, villages. Explosions on site could cause extensive damage. We decided to inspect and search for mines at the bottom with divers (this is 15 kilometers from the railway bridge in the city center to the exit to the Gulf of Riga). We formed groups of boats with divers and began work. Not without success. In total, we found, recovered and destroyed about 100 mines in safe areas. I also had a chance to participate in the neutralization of these mines. We established the presence of a hydrostat in the mechanism, onto which a secondary fuse detonator was “put on” at a depth of 10 meters. At a depth of less than 10 meters, the hydrostat did not work (low pressure), and although the urgency and multiplicity device and the fuse worked, the mine did not explode. Such mines were not neutralized by any trawls. In addition, in the complex mechanism of urgency and multiplicity instruments there is a lot of soldering and in some of them the clock mechanisms became clogged. There were cases on the Daugava when a diver peeled off a mine to lift it, moved it, jumped to the surface and gestured: “Hurry up, lift it, it’s starting to tick!” This means the clock has earned. Such mines were quickly lifted out of any queue and towed at full speed to the explosion site. There were several cases when we didn’t have time to get there and it exploded on the way. But, thank God, there were no deaths. Now let's turn to Sevastopol. The Germans, retreating, randomly scattered RMH mines in the harbors, including in Sevastopol Bay. My belief that the battleship "Novorossiysk" was blown up by the "RMH" mine is based on the assumption that when she returned from the sea and anchored, she either moved the mine with her hull or the anchor chain, the clock started working, and after some time an accident occurred. explosion. The hole received by the battleship is similar to the holes from "RMH". And the ship capsized because, having touched the ground with its nose, it lost stability. If the harbor had been deeper, it would have floated like a float. A similar incident occurred with the large tanker No. 5 in the Gulf of Finland back in 1941.

Remembering my service in the OVR brigade of the Riga base, I would like to talk about my meeting in Riga with Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, when he, removed from the post of People's Commissar of the Navy, demoted to rear admiral, in 1948, was resting in a sanatorium on Riga seaside in the town of Majori.

One day he called me on the phone from the sanatorium: “Nikolai Nikolayevich, could you send me some small boat to Majori with a helmsman who knows the Lielupe River well (it goes along the Riga coast), I want to go along the Lielupe , enter the Daugava River, walk along it to Riga, see the bay, the trading port in Milgraves and return back."

I answered him that there would be a boat, and I myself would come to Majori on it, take him and show him everything he wanted. Nikolai Gerasimovich began to object, making it clear that he did not want to tear me away from work and rest (it was Sunday).

I explained to him that I consider it an honor to meet and talk with him again, there may not be another opportunity. As for the boat, I will be on it myself, I know how to drive it, I know the rivers, it will be just the two of us - he and I. After some embarrassment N.G. Kuznetsov agreed with me and asked me to wear civilian dress.

We visited all the places that interested him. I acted as a tour guide - I was familiar with the area. We talked a lot about everyday affairs and, of course, about the fleet, its current state and future development.

After a three-hour swim we returned back along the Lielupe River. Nikolai Gerasimovich said that he had an idea not to go to Majori, and asked to be dropped off in the village of Dzintari, from which he wanted to travel to Majori by train (this is one stop). We approached the pier, then went to the Dzintari railway station. According to the schedule, there were 15 minutes left before the train arrived.

Nikolai Gerasimovich said that he was very thirsty. The weather was hot. I suggested that he go to the station cafe; we had enough time. He agreed. When we entered this cafe-buffet, we found that all the tables were occupied by naval officers (the rehearsal for the parade in honor of Navy Day had just ended). We stopped hesitantly at the entrance. After some confusion, the officers, as one, stood at attention, fixing their gaze on Nikolai Gerasimovich (let me remind you, he was in civilian clothes). He was embarrassed, thanked the officers and invited me to go to the platform.

We left the cafe, he stood on a hillock and fixed his gaze on the sea. We stood there in silence until the train arrived. They said goodbye and he left for Majori.

I described this episode in order to show how much authority was enjoyed in the fleets by the outstanding naval commander, great statesman Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, a fair, caring, tactful person who knew how to listen carefully to everyone, from the sailor to the admiral, and then calmly, without haste, but make your judgment clear.

From January 1952, I became the chief of staff of the 64th division of water area security ships, and a year later - the division commander. The fleet was commanded by Arseny Grigorievich Golovko. We were in Baltiysk (former German submarine base in Pilau) - 50 km from Kaliningrad (Konigsberg). The division's tasks are the same - primarily mine sweeping, patrol service, combat training of personnel and development of the territory and structures of the division. They built a barracks, an open-air cinema, and observation and signal posts. On the previously destroyed tower on the bank of the entrance canal, a point was installed to monitor and regulate the movement of ships and transports traveling along the Baltiysk-Kaliningrad canal. And, of course, the restoration of a city destroyed by war.

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About forty minutes later our car turned off the highway, and we drove into a forested area, and after another ten minutes we arrived at a two-story building of beautiful architecture. This was the hotel of the high military command. The staff who met us helped us get settled into our rooms and warned us that in ten fifteen minutes they were expecting us in the dining room. This time was enough for us to get ourselves in order. Entering the dining room, we saw a Colonel General of the NNA of the GDR at the table. It was the head of the military academy, who also arrived to see off Admiral Emma.

Having had a fairly hearty snack from the road and drinking a bottle of beer, we went to our rooms. I spent the remaining hours of the evening reading reference material on the GDR. We had a hard day ahead - a day of acquaintance and meetings with generals, admirals, military representatives of our country, as well as the GDR and Poland.

In the morning, when we went down to the dining room, Colonel General, the head of the military academy, and the military attache were already waiting for us. The latter gave us a program of events, according to which in two hours we were supposed to be at the military harbor of the Rostock base, where we headed immediately after breakfast.

Arriving at the base's military harbor, we saw units of the various branches of the German navy lined up on the parade ground and ready for the ceremony. The warships of the GDR Navy lined up in the harbor were decorated with colorful flags. Under the rays of the autumn sun, everything looked especially festive and solemn. We were met by the Chief of Staff of the GDR Navy and Deputy Emma, ​​our acquaintance from yesterday.

There were still about thirty minutes left before the start of the ceremony, and we were invited to board the boat of the Commander of the GDR Navy, on board which were already generals from various countries of our military commonwealth. Among the first people I met was the Commander of the PPR Navy, Admiral Piotr Kolodzeichik. Tall, with a thick figure, more like a weightlifter, with thick light brown hair and blue eyes, he looked quite attractive in his ceremonial uniform. Having exchanged greetings with those present on board, Eduard Nikiforovich and I had a conversation with them for about ten fifteen minutes on general topics of naval life. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of the conversation, Admiral Kolodzeichik said that after the celebration he would immediately leave for Poland, citing his wife’s illness. For me it was extremely incomprehensible: to arrive here and return back after a few hours?! I shared my doubts with Eduard Nikiforovich. After listening to me, he looked to the side and said quietly:

– Wait, you’ll see something else, much less hear it, when you’re with them (the Germans and Poles - S.B.) at joint training camps and maneuvers.

I didn’t think then that the painful tension and even hostility between German and Polish soldiers was so strong. But I will see and fully feel all this later, in a work and everyday environment. The approach to assessing each other “the best German is a dead German” (Polish officers) and “the best Pole is a dead Pole” (German officers) has not outlived its usefulness.

While in the company cabin of the boat of the Commander of the GDR Navy, we heard a signal for a large gathering. Coming out onto the deck, we saw ships lined up in ceremonial order with crews on board. A boat under oars departed from the side of the flagship ship and headed in our direction, towards the harbor pier. As she approached we saw that she was flying the flag of the Commander. And the closer she came to the pier, the more clearly the faces of the rowers and the admiral sitting in her were visible. As we were told, it was the Commander of the GDR Navy with his old military friends who rowed him to the pier.

As soon as the boat touched the pier, an artillery salvo thundered over the harbor, and a unanimous “Hurray!” rang out. These were personnel from various branches of the Navy who greeted their Commander as he emerged from the boat. Following the first salvo, the second, third, etc. thundered, and under this cannonade, “Hurray!” rolled along the parade ground, until Admiral Emm approached the podium. Having climbed it and stood next to the Minister of Defense, he greeted with a wave of his hand those who stood in the parade formation.

Exactly at 11.00 in the morning, to the sound of a bugle, we rose to the guest podium and, together with other guests, including representatives of the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the government of the GDR, the Minister of Defense of the NNA of the GDR, General Colonel Goffam, cordially greeted Admiral Emma. It was he who headed the GDR Navy for more than thirty years, making it a significant component of the country's defense system.

The solemn farewell ceremony was opened by the Minister of Defense of the NNA of the GDR, who spoke about the role of Admiral Emma in the creation of a modern military fleet and the use of the latter’s combat capabilities in the Baltic theater of military operations. Representatives of the leadership of the SED and the government of the GDR, who then spoke, expressed the warmest words of gratitude to the admiral for his fruitful many years of work. The speech of the hero of the occasion was brief and contained mainly words of gratitude for the assessment of his activities in the post of Commander and wishes to all health and further success in the combat readiness of the fleet's forces and assets. Having finished his speech, he came down from the podium, walked up to a group of naval officers holding the flag of the Commander of the GDR Navy, took it and handed it to his former chief of staff, Vice Admiral Hoffman, who became the new Commander. Once again, a powerful “Hurray!” echoed through the ranks of the units, echoing the artillery salvos. This is how the personnel said goodbye to their Commander.

Having received the flag, the new Commander, together with Admiral Emm, rose to the podium and made a response speech, after which the solemn passage of the troops began.

At the end of the ceremony, we were invited to the officers’ house, where tables with numerous alcoholic drinks were laid in the large hall.

Our places were not far from those occupied by the leaders: the Minister of Defense, Admiral Emm, a significant part of the generals of the General Staff of the NNA of the GDR, Soviet generals from the Warsaw Pact and the Western Direction Troops. Opposite us sat the commanders of the first, second, third and fourth flotillas of the GDR Navy. They raised their glasses together, welcoming each new toast. At the same time, every time they got up, they looked at us and, apparently, sympathized with us in a human way. What to do - the fight against drunkenness, launched in our country, made itself felt and was fully reflected in our behavior.

At the end of the gala dinner, a significant part of the guests, including us, were taken to the Commander’s boat. We had to go to sea to participate in the second, but already naval, part of the farewell ceremony for Admiral Emma. Standing on the upper deck of the boat, we enjoyed the freshness of the sea waves and the light blow of the wind, which perfectly suited our afternoon state, and did not notice how Admiral Emm approached us along with the military attaché.

– How are you feeling? – he asked, holding out his hand to us.

- Thank you! “We’re admiring the sea nature,” answered Eduard Niki Forovich, shaking the admiral’s hand.

- Well, it’s okay, we’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. The ships are built, let's say goodbye to them and go back. “We’ll go to the hotel where you’re staying, and we’ll continue our conversation there,” he said in a soft voice and walked towards the command bridge.

During these few minutes I examined this elderly man.

Slightly below average height, with a large gray head and blue eyes, he looked more like an elderly businessman than a naval commander. His relative plumpness gave him a special softness in his movements.

Twenty minutes later, our boat under the Commander’s flag stalled and began to drift. In the silence that followed, only the cry of seagulls and the hiss of waves beating against the side could be heard. Then the sounds of roaring turbines reached us, and the silhouettes of sea ships appeared on the horizon.

As they approached, the sound intensified, and we could clearly distinguish between the classes of ships. Ahead, with flags at half-mast, hovercraft rushed along the waves. These were the ships of the naval landing forces saluting their now former Commander. Torpedo and missile boats also flew behind them at full speed, then small missile ships and minesweepers. The front passage was closed by patrol ships. All of them, walking at full speed with the flag at half-mast and farewell beeps, made a rather pleasant impression. To be honest, the send-offs that we saw are fundamentally different from the send-offs that we organized when we said goodbye to our admirals and naval commanders. “There is something to learn,” I thought, standing on the upper deck... About thirty minutes later, our boat moored again to the pier of the harbor harbor, where the cars were waiting for us. About forty minutes later we were already sitting at tables full of all kinds of food and alcohol, and talking about our lives and joint activities. At the first table sat the Minister of Defense of the NNA of the GDR, the Chief of the General Staff of the NNA of the GDR, Admiral Emm, Vice Admiral Hoffman - the new Commander of the GDR Navy, two colonel generals from the Warsaw Pact and the Western Direction Forces.

Together with them at the table was Eduard Nikiforovich, who, on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov, presented Admiral Emma with a samovar.

I sat at the second table with the head of the Glavpur of the NNA of the GDR and the head of the political department of the GDR Navy. For the first time I had the opportunity to be in the circle of such responsible officials, especially the fraternal military community. From the very beginning of our conversation, I was pleasantly surprised that they knew almost everything about my previous professional activities. At the same time, those serious, problematic issues that were raised during our conversation did not allow me to relax for a minute. Moreover, I have more than once thanked fate for giving me the opportunity to study in stationary conditions at military academies and previously serve in the country’s most active fleet.

Returning to the political department of the fleet, I became familiar with the range of my upcoming responsibilities. And it was wide enough. First of all, I had to supervise all combat affairs going on in the fleet, and, first of all, the state of the forces on combat duty and combat service. Issues of practicing course tasks, live firing, various types of exercises, as well as the activities of people's control of the fleet were also my responsibility. A special place was occupied by issues of interaction with fraternal fleets, carried out according to a special plan within the framework of the United Baltic Fleet. To find out the reasons associated with emergency incidents included in lists Nos. and 2, I was assigned a leading role in the operational group created for this purpose. The level of responsibility of this group is evidenced by documents that were to be sent to the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Minister of Defense after one or three days after the “emergency”. These documents had to be sent to the fleet command with my signature. The whole urgency of this issue was not to make a mistake in assessing what had happened, since after my group the military prosecutor’s office and special departments immediately began to work. In addition to these duties, I was assigned to oversee the activities of the command of the submarine squadron, marine corps, landing forces and construction units. Understanding the extent of responsibility that was entrusted to me, I began to fulfill my new duties.

Having become acquainted with the formations and units of the main base of the Baltic Fleet - the Baltic Naval Base, the fleet aviation, units and subdivisions of the Kaliningrad garrison, the control bodies of the fleet headquarters, rear units and construction units, two months later I flew to the Tallinn naval base. Along with me were officers from the naval headquarters and construction units, who were to become acquainted with the work of the base command in improving the garrison units and analyze the progress of combat training. At this time, the head of the Tallinn naval base was Vice Admiral Yuri Pavlovich Belov, who was well known to me from his joint service in the Northern Fleet. Having become familiar with how the combat training plan is being carried out and what living conditions have been created for the personnel of ships and units, as well as having studied the progress of the construction of new facilities, we began to prepare material for discussion with the command and political staff of the base. The investigation was planned to take place on Monday, in the first half of the day.

On Saturday morning, as on the days of the work week, I arrived at the operational duty officer of the base and took from him the daily combat and political training plans for Saturday and Sunday. Imagine my surprise when I saw that these days the first course task was being accepted on one of the submarines in the brigade located in Paldisk!

And there was something to be surprised about. Firstly, I, being in charge of combat training issues in the fleet, found myself in the dark that such an event was being carried out according to plan in this formation. Secondly, from the experience of my previous service, I knew that such events, as a rule, are not carried out on weekends, since their support requires the work of all administrative bodies and rear units, and moreover, they are coordinated with the headquarters and political department fleet.

Taking into account all this, and also the fact that I had not yet been to this garrison, I decided to go to the ship, and at the same time get to know the garrison, especially since on its territory there was one of the main centers of the Navy for training crews for nuclear submarines boats.

Frankly speaking, in the territory of the submarine brigade, I expected to see the usual picture for such an event: a clean, freshly painted hull, a clean gangway with the tactical number of the ship written on a clean tarpaulin, a clean naval flag on the flagpole of the conning tower, cleanly dressed, the top watchman and the submarine duty officer with new armbands, and so on. However, no matter how hard I tried to look, I saw nothing of the kind. Silence and calm reigned everywhere. Submarines stood lonely at the piers, as if waiting for their crews.

Getting out of the car, I turned to two midshipmen passing by with a question where the submarine I was interested in was located, and headed towards it, listening to the noise that came from the durable hull of the ship. There was no top watchman visible, just as there was no naval ensign on the flagpole. Moreover, neither the jack nor the flag was raised on the boat standing at the pier under the water!!! “What kind of technique can we talk about here? – I thought, walking along the pier. “This is just a mockery of the first course task, for which the crew is given two months to prepare for the delivery.”

Seeing that there was no one on the upper deck or in the conning tower, I asked the inspector of the base’s political department, captain first rank V.V. Filippov, who was accompanying me, to go up to the conning tower and reach out to those who were inside. A few minutes later, a figure in a dark blue suit and cap appeared on the bridge. With a wave of my hand, I motioned for this man to come down. A minute later, a lean, average-height young man approached me and introduced himself. From his report, I realized that he was a retrainer, and asked him:

- What are you doing here, Comrade Senior Lieutenant? After all, you are a retrainer and are not allowed to independently perform duty on the ship.

“That’s right,” the officer answered calmly.

-You serve on the ship for two weeks? – I asked him again.

“That’s right,” he said, shifting from foot to foot.

– What is happening on the submarine now, what alarm signal did the watch personnel respond to?

“This is my assistant, the foreman of the bilge crew, he told me that I should sit in the central post and not interfere with him carrying out the work of the watch, the senior lieutenant answered, starting to get a little worried.

“Okay,” I said after a short pause. – Now you will go down, give the command to end the exercise, and bring all the mechanisms to their original position. At the same time, report to the survivability officer so that one of its commanders arrives on the ship. Until they arrive on board, he, the survivability officer, will be on board. Record all this in the logbook. Put my signature: Rear Admiral Belyaev, Deputy Chief of the Fleet Political Directorate,” I said and drove off to brigade headquarters.

Having entered the headquarters and received a report from the duty officer that everything was going according to plan, I asked him to present me with a daily plan. After looking through it and making sure that there was a method for Problem L 1, I asked the duty officer:

– What, is the submarine receiving task L 1?

“That’s right,” he answered without blinking an eye.

- And on it is the entire crew, headquarters and rear officers of the brigade?

“That’s right, everyone is there,” the duty officer answered just as briskly.

I looked at this young, handsome captain of the third rank, the first mate on one of the submarines of this brigade, who lied to me so shamelessly. What forced him to do this: ignorance of the situation or fear of his superiors, or maybe both, combined?

- Shame on you? Why are you trying to deceive me? After all, you are a naval officer and you know very well the significance of the first course task for the crew,” I said as calmly as possible. “I’ve already been on this ship, there’s no one there except an unauthorized trainee and the watch. And you here, at the break of the daily watch, did not see or did not want to see that the officer does not have permission to independently perform duty on the ship. You are a senior officer, the chief mate of a submarine, and now the unit on duty, and you are acting completely irresponsibly. Call the brigade command here,” I said, sitting down at the table of the brigade duty officer. - Yes, and give the command to bring me all the daily plans for the last month.

Looking through the journal with daily plans for combat and political training, I, to my surprise, discovered that the reception of the L 1 task on other submarines of the brigade was also carried out on Saturdays and Sundays, that is, when representatives of the headquarters of the submarine squadron, located in Liepaja, getting into the brigade is not easy. There was a simplistic approach to combat training, which discouraged the headquarters officers and ship crews, who understood that there was no need to strain themselves. “Fraud has penetrated deeply among not only the command, staff officers, but also party organizations,” I thought while waiting for the brigade command.

The first to arrive was the brigade chief of staff. About ten minutes after him, the commander of the submarine formation, Captain First Rank Bii, appeared. The last person to enter the duty room where I was was the head of the political department, captain of the second rank K.V. Of medium height and heavy build, with a round head covered with thick, blond hair parted on the left side, he made a pleasant impression. His thick and firm voice testified to his ability to command and dispose. He was in good standing with the leadership of the fleet's political department, went through administrative work and was promoted to the position of head of the brigade's political department. Moreover, his candidacy was considered for the vacant position of head of the combat service department of the political department of the Baltic Fleet. Considering that I might be working with him as my direct subordinate in the near future, I gave him a close look. At the same time, I tried to explain to myself the reasons why the political department had withdrawn itself from the process of combat training, to understand whether the collapse of the party organizations of the headquarters and submarines was happening deliberately. Reflecting on this and the responses of the brigade commander and chief of staff, I asked them how they themselves assessed the situation and its possible consequences for them personally. After a short and painful silence, the brigade commander said:

“Comrade Rear Admiral, it’s all my fault, and I have to bear responsibility.”

Frankly speaking, I wanted to hear this from the head of the political department, as they say, the “conscience” of the brigade. But “conscience” was silent, shifting from foot to foot. At the same time, it was impossible not to appreciate the direct answer of the formation commander, and, as calmly as possible, I said:

– What I encountered here, with you, namely, cynical fraud, which has a corrupting effect not only on the command and political personnel, but also on the entire personnel of the brigade, can only cause a feeling of disgust. And you, naturally, must bear responsibility for the consequences of such activities.

With a bitter aftertaste in my soul, I returned to Tallinn, to the naval base. Having openly shared his impressions with the commander, Vice Admiral Yuri Pavlovich Belov, he advised him to reconsider his attitude towards the submarine brigade, otherwise a serious “emergency” might occur.

“I understand, Yuri Pavlovich,” I said, in particular, “that the brigade is under your operational subordination, but you should at least periodically send officers from your service organization department there so that they can “shake up” the local leaders. But you and I need to think about what I should report to the commander and member of the Navy Military Council.

In saying this, I well understood the poignancy of the situation. To report as it is, the entire leadership of the brigade will lose their positions, serious measures will be taken against the command of the submarine squadron, where my college classmate and now Rear Admiral Valery Aleksandrovich Shestakov is the chief of staff, and the commander of the Tallinn naval base will get a decent living. At the same time, among the leading command and political staff of the fleet there will be many who will say: they say, again the “northerner” is digging here with might and main, trying to establish himself. (And I have already received this kind of information from some officers and admirals of the fleet headquarters that I respect).

With such divided feelings, I returned to fleet headquarters. Immediately, as soon as I appeared in my office, “walkers” came to me in defense of the head of the political department of the Kva brigade. They all tried to convince me how “correct” he was and that the brigade commander was to blame for everything, and also that I couldn’t find a better head of the combat service department. Among these “walkers” was the first deputy head of the political department of the fleet, captain of the first rank P.V. Kašauskas.

As a result, I considered it appropriate to make the report to the fleet command more streamlined, which, frankly speaking, suited everyone. As for Kva, I was forced to agree with the position of a member of the Navy Military Council, who knew him from his days as a lieutenant. Looking far ahead, I cannot help but say that this officer, apart from having a well-trained voice and the ability to gain the confidence of his superior, did not know how and did not want to do anything useful and useful for his subordinates. He directed all his energy and strength to always be in the field of view of the fleet command and immediately do what it wished. These qualities, very far from the qualities needed by an officer, and especially by an officer of educational structures, allowed him to rise “to the top” and become a vice admiral. Did the new commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral V. G. Egorov, and the First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral I. V. Kasatonov, help him in this first of all? Throughout the subsequent years of serving with him, until my illness, I saw in him a mediocre officer with low professional training, prone to forceful and quick resolution of painful issues, greedy for power and disdainful of the interests of his colleagues, especially subordinates. More than once I scolded myself for the fact that when it was necessary to remove him from his post for the collapse of the submarine brigade, I could not resist the pressure from the officers of the headquarters and the political leadership of the fleet.

At the end of May 1988, our family was given a small three-room apartment in a house located almost in the city center. Until that time, we lived in a two-room apartment of one of the officers of the political administration and, naturally, we moved quickly. The only inconvenience was that Vladik had to change school, but this problem was solved.

In July of the same year, as part of an operational group of officers from the headquarters and the Political Directorate of the fleet, I first arrived at the headquarters of our Western Direction Troops, where, under the leadership of the Commander-in-Chief of the VZN, Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov, an operational mobilization gathering of the command of the military districts (Baltic, Leningrad, Belarusian, Kiev) was carried out ), groups (Northern Group of Forces, Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, Central Group of Forces) and the Baltic Fleet.

Due to official needs, the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral Vitaly Pavlovich Ivanov, and a member of the Military Council - the head of the political department of the Baltic Fleet, Vice Admiral Anatoly Ivanovich Kornienko, were allowed to arrive at the gathering only on the third day, and I was assigned to lead the group and resolve all current issues before the command.

Headquarters of the Civil Command VZN (Commander-in-Chief of the Western Direction) Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Vasilievich Ogarkov 08/22/2001.

With the arrival at the headquarters of the VZN Civil Command, after our installation, I turned to the general on duty with a request to familiarize me with the plan for the upcoming gathering and the participation of the Baltic Fleet operational group in it. Understanding from the documents that we were assigned a passive role, as they say, “reception work,” I asked if I could meet with a classmate at the Military Academy of the General Staff named after K. E. Voroshilov, Major General Anatoly Titovich Ovchinnikov, who was passing service here at the headquarters of the VZN Civil Code. They told me that the general was currently in charge of tank firing and that he could only be contacted by radio. I certainly took advantage of this opportunity.

“I’m listening to you,” Anatoly Titovich answered, as before, in an even, calm voice.

“I’m listening to you,” I answered in a slightly raised tone. – Or don’t you recognize the sailors of the Red Fleet anymore?

- Sailor! It's you... How did you end up here?

I had to briefly explain the purpose of my visit to headquarters and my role at the moment. After listening, he said that in half an hour he would send a car for me that would take me to his home and that he would call Lyudmila Afanasyevna (his wife) now, and the live firing would soon end.

I had to explain again that I was not alone now, there were five other people with me, and it would be nice to show them the sights of the city, and, if possible, wash them after a day’s stay in the carriage. He understood me, and after a few minutes I gave instructions to my officers to be ready to leave for the city. About thirty minutes later, two black Volgas drove up to our building, and we left the administrative zone of the headquarters. Unfortunately, I was so carried away by the upcoming meeting with an old friend that I forgot to report to the general on duty about our departure and the time of return to the unit.

Upon leaving the administrative zone, our cars took different directions. The one where I was went to the house where my friend lived (A.T. Ovchinnikov was the chief of staff of the army), and the other, in which the officers were, went to the city.

About fifteen minutes later, a car with me and Ovchinnikov’s adjutant drove into the courtyard of the mansion, where we were met by a soldier, who, as it turned out later, was responsible for the maintenance of this house. While the adjutant and I were climbing onto the high porch, the front door opened and Lyudmila Afanasyevna appeared. It seemed that in the four years that we had not seen each other, she had not changed at all. The same as before, a moderately plump brunette with attentive brown eyes and a pleasant voice. She invited us into the house, informing us that Anatoly Titovich would arrive in fifteen to twenty minutes, and during this time she would show me their life and existence. I will not describe their life, I will only say that they lived in a three-story mansion with a large basement, where, in addition to coal and firewood, there was a washing machine with a dryer and a steam room with a shower. This entire complex was served by one conscript soldier, who was assigned here according to the wartime staff.

While Lyudmila Afanasyevna was showing the spacious apartments and answering my questions regarding the fate of her mother, Anna Ilyinichna, and her son Alexei, Anatoly Titovich appeared. Gray-haired, taller than average, and having burned in the fields, he looked like a true military general. Our meeting was warm and open. We talked about all issues of our official activities and personal lives. The abundant feast did not prevent us from exchanging opinions on the past and possible future... Time was quickly rolling towards midnight, and it was necessary to return. Anatoly Titovich found out where the officers of my operational group were (and they were in the sauna after sightseeing), and ordered the officer accompanying them to wait for my arrival.

Having said goodbye to the hospitable hosts, I, accompanied by an adjutant, quickly reached the place. The officers of the group were already assembled, and we left in two cars for the administrative zone of Headquarters. As soon as we drove into it and got out of the cars, the same general on duty literally ran up to me and said that Marshal of the Soviet Union N.V. Ogarkov, together with a member of the Military Council - the head of the political department of the troops of the Western direction, Colonel General V. V. Utkin visited all operational groups and expressed concern about our absence. “They,” the general added, “left a note in your room.”

The note lay on the table and read: “Tomorrow you will speak at a gathering on M.S.’s book. Gorbachev "Perestroika and new thinking in military affairs."

There is no need to say that we have not yet seen this book, but it was imperative to perform at such a high level. Everyone present understood this. Having talked enough about the difficult situation in which our task force found itself, we made a decision: both the officers and I are preparing the material, and in two hours we will meet and discuss the concept of the speech.

After escorting my comrades out of the room, I took a shower, prepared my writing materials, and began to think about the structure of my speech. It was clear that it was necessary to fully use the experience of the perestroika work of the command and political agencies of the Northern Fleet, where I had to serve all the previous years, and not the experience of the command and political agencies of the Baltic Fleet, where I was only seven months. It was through the examples of formations and associations of submarines and surface ships of the Northern Fleet that it was possible to show those special approaches in the practical work of the command and political agencies that are inherent in perestroika activities. And such examples took place both in the nuclear submarine division of the 1st flotilla and in the 4th submarine squadron, where I had to serve after graduating from the General Staff Academy.

Of course, I wanted to have a more vivid picture of the Baltic Fleet, but my information and the material that the officers presented two hours later on two pages were much poorer than the material I had on the Northern Fleet. Taking this into account, I placed the main emphasis in my speech on the experience of my previous service.

By morning the material was almost ready. I felt that the topic had been covered. It “breathed” reality and a certain freshness and corresponded to the level of those gathered in the audience. With these thoughts, I headed to the Officers’ House, where a scientific-practical conference was to take place.

As soon as I entered the foyer of the officers' house, I saw Marshal of the Soviet Union N.V. Ogarkov talking with the commanders of military districts.

The duty manager of the collections approached me and told me to introduce myself to the Marshal, and I immediately went to him. Not reaching the conversation about two meters, he stopped and, apologizing for interrupting the conversation, addressed Ogarkov as clearly as possible:

– Comrade Marshal of the Soviet Union! Rear Admiral Belyaev is the senior operational group of the Baltic Fleet. Arrived on your orders.

He turned to me and I saw a pleasant smile on his face. In a soft, calm voice, he asked me how we, the Baltic people, had a rest yesterday, unlike other operational groups. At the same time, with a slight movement of his hand, he showed the colonel generals standing next to him - the commanders of the districts of the Northwestern group of Soviet troops.

“Thank you, Comrade Marshal,” I replied. “On behalf of the officers of the group, I would like to thank you for the normal living conditions and the opportunity that was given to us to explore the local attractions.

- Okay, go to the member of the Military Council, General Colonel Utkin, and report everything to him. “He’s waiting for you on stage,” said Marshall and turned to his interlocutors.

I went on stage. Behind the scenes I met several general colonels.

“And here are the missing sailors,” one of them said when he saw me. - Come to us and report on your travels. “His voice was even and somewhat high-pitched.

Approaching them almost close, I introduced myself and, without waiting for questions, turned to the colonel general who was talking to me.

- Comrade member of the Military Council! On behalf of the officers of the operational group of the Baltic Fleet, allow me to express our gratitude to you for giving us the opportunity to get acquainted with the sights of the city. Much has been instructive for us here. “We will report everything that we saw and heard here to the command of the fleet, as well as to the commanders of formations and units to take into account in our practical activities,” I said in one breath.

“Okay,” he answered, extending his hand and looking carefully into my eyes. – Are you ready for the performance? Yesterday Marshal and I went through all the groups, but we couldn’t find yours. And so that the participants of the gathering know you, we left you a note. Have you read it? – he asked in a still calm voice.

- That's right, I read it! – I answered.

– Are you ready for the performance?

“Then you will speak third after the commander of the Belarusian Military District, but for now go to your officers,” he added and turned to his interlocutors.

Indeed, it was time for me to go to my officers, as the hall began to slowly fill up.

Despite yesterday's bath and a significant dose of alcohol, all of mine were in shape. But the absence of the fleet command and my upcoming speech still affected their state of mind. Naturally, they wanted to look decent here, among the “green army masses,” the bulk of which were colonels and generals who knew each other well. Against their background, we looked lonely, a small flock of birds covered in black and white.

After the report given by Marshal Ogarkov and a twenty-minute break, the speeches of the participants in the gathering began. The commander of the Leningrad Military District spoke first, followed by the commander of the Belarusian Military District, and then I was given the floor. Of course, I was worried, but gradually a feeling of confidence took possession of me. I saw all of our generals involved in the western (in the Soviet!) direction, I saw their attentive faces and the interest with which they listened to me. The attention was genuine, which means I was confident that I was speaking to the point.

In principle, I was talking about what we actually did during the perestroika years in the division and squadron of submarines of the Northern Fleet, and this was noted in their work by responsible employees of the Military Department of the Central Committee of the Party and numerous inspection groups. Having finished my speech, I wanted to quickly leave the podium, but the member of the Military Council, who was leading the conference after the break, detained me for several minutes on the podium, saying that much of what I said should be actively implemented by everyone in his troops. As soon as I got to my place and sat down in a chair, the hands of the officers of our group reached out to me, who were sincerely happy and grateful for not letting the Baltic Fleet down.

After the speeches of other representatives of the district and group commands, a break was announced, during which generals and colonels unknown to me also shook my hand and thanked me for my businesslike speech. I was thinking about one thing: my successful presentation on the book, which I had not yet held in my hands, was based on the good foundation that hundreds, and maybe thousands of people had laid during their joint service and study. And I must actively pass on this experience to people holding responsible positions in my troops... Two days later, as expected, the command of our fleet also arrived for training. After lunch, during a break between practical classes, the commander and a member of the Military Council - the head of the political department of the Baltic Fleet - arrived at our group. As the senior group, I reported to them about the work done during these days, after which the fleet commander, Admiral Vitaly Pavlovich Ivanov, said that we were great, we did not let the fleet down and that during lunch, Marshal of the Soviet Union N.V. Ogarkov highly appreciated my speech at the conference. I thought again that it was better not to solve such sudden problems, but to prepare for them in advance. However, as the service later showed, this desire was not destined to come true, since most often it was precisely such problems that had to be solved.

In September 1988, a telegram arrived from the Main Political Directorate of the SA and the Navy, in which I was ordered to go to Moscow for a two-month advanced training course. These courses were held on the basis of the Military-Political Academy named after V.I. Lenin. Frankly speaking, I was somewhat surprised by this challenge, since only three and a half years had passed since I graduated from the General Staff Academy.

But there was nothing to do, so I went to study. My arrival at the courses raised questions among their leaders: why did I come and who invited me to study?

In the end, I was still left on the list of listeners and, together with other admirals, generals and senior officers, was placed in the hotel of the Central House of the Soviet Army.

Over the next two months, they gave us lectures, conducted seminars with us, and organized various kinds of excursions to museums and exhibitions. On weekends (Saturday and Sunday), I usually went to visit my relatives in the city of Stupino, which is located two hours away from Moscow.

When the last week of classes began, they suddenly announced that we would have to take exams on the entire cycle we had read. Oh, what a noise there was in the audience! The overwhelming majority, trying to outshout each other, wanted to find out from whom such an initiative came. After all, all previous years the students wrote abstracts, and now suddenly there’s an exam! It turned out that this decision was approved by the Minister of Defense and the Head of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and the Navy and that the exams would be taken by our teachers - colonels. After this explanation, the noise died down, and since this surprised me somewhat, I asked the generals sitting next to me why they fell silent so quickly. The answer was discouraging:

they say, a colonel cannot know more than a general, this does not happen in the army.

In June 1989, the forces of the United Baltic Fleet (UBF) were trained on the basis of the Baltic Fleet. In accordance with the plan of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, these forces included units (ships, submarines, aviation, etc.) and units of various support forces of the Navy of the Polish People's Republic, the Naval Forces of the German Democratic Republic and Baltic Fleet. This operational formation was created in case of a new military threat in the Baltic theater of military operations. The water area of ​​the Tallinn naval base was set as the location for this gathering. The joint exercises were led by the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral Vitaly Pavlovich Ivanov, and I was his deputy for political affairs.

Training of forces in various types of combat training, artillery, torpedo and missile firing, escort of ships to landing points, combat trawling, training of ship crews for their lives and a number of other events took place in a fairly organized manner and without any emergency incidents, which political work among the personnel contributed to a large extent. We reported daily on the results of the exercise to the General Staff and the Political Directorate of the Navy.

At the end of the second week of the exercise, I received information from officers of the special department of the base about a press conference being prepared by the leadership of the Estonian Popular Front on the topic “Assessment of the non-aggression pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop.” The commander of the fleet, Admiral V.P. Ivanov, decided on my secret participation in the press conference. And here I am, in civilian clothes, sitting in a small hall of some institution and listening to the leaders of the Popular Front of Estonia talking about the insidious actions of the leadership of the Soviet Union in the pre-war period, about the alleged existence of a secret annex to this pact, discovered by the intelligence services of Western countries. The leaders of the Popular Front intend to actively convey this information to the population of their republic.

Everything we heard, of course, had to be conveyed to our leaders, and we sent a telegram to Moscow. As subsequent events showed, the theme of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the Baltic republics became fundamental in anti-Soviet (anti-Russian) propaganda, which accelerated their secession from the Soviet Union.

The question of the role of popular fronts in the Baltic republics and the consequences of their activation for the Soviet Union was somewhat clarified by the first secretary of the Kaliningrad regional committee of the CPSU. Together with the chief of staff, Vice Admiral V.A. Kolmagorov and the former commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral V.V. Mikhailin, we arrived at the regional committee to congratulate him on his birthday. A conversation began at the table about the most pressing political problems. Since the issue of the Baltic republics secession from the Soviet Union was already taking shape, Admiral V.V. Mikhailin, as an old friend, turned to the First Secretary with the question:

- Viktor Vasilievich! When will you restore order to these Balts? That they all yell and spit at us, but we endure everything and do not take any steps worthy of our state?

After a short pause and a loud sigh, he answered:

– What can I do, my dear Vladimir Vasilyevich? Last week, while at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, I posed a similar question to Brazauskas (First Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania - S. B). So he answered me that yesterday he went to see Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev (General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee - S.B.) and asked him what he should do when, upon arrival in Vilnius, he would be met at the airfield by a crowd of one hundred thousand demanding that the republic secede from the Soviet Union? In response to the question what the installations will be, A. N. Yakovlev (Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee S.

B.), who was present in the office of the Secretary General, said: what kind of instructions are needed from the Central Committee? Now is the time for democracy, so act as you see fit.

After this information there was silence. Each of us thought about what we heard.

“Well, you see how difficult everything is now,” the first secretary said again and, after being silent for a while, suddenly asked Admiral Mikhailin:

– And what way out of this situation do you see?

“It’s absolutely clear to me: in order to maintain the situation and prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, we urgently need to put a strong personality at the head of the country,” the admiral blurted out in one breath.

– And what scale figure do you see, Vladimir Vasilyevich?

“I think that at present the party and the country should be headed by a figure comparable to the figures of Stalin or Zhukov,” the former commander of the Baltic Fleet answered, again without hesitation.

Listening to this dialogue, I then thought that the admiral had taken it too harshly, that the relatively young Secretary General, with the help of healthy forces in the Central Committee, was still capable of leveling out the situation in the country. And only over the years, when everything had already happened, I realized how right Vladimir Vasilyevich Mikhailin, a sovereign in spirit, a warrior by profession, was.

The growth of negative trends in society and in the Armed Forces, in particular, was discussed in an acute form at party conferences.

At the same time, at the conference of the Baltic Military District, where I had the opportunity to represent the Baltic Fleet, the commander of the 11th Army, Lieutenant General Yuri Pavlovich Grekov, my classmate at the Academy of the General Staff, and a member of the Military Council - head of the political department of the army, Colonel Kosenkov Boris, were sharply criticized Nikolaevich, with whom we later became good friends. We must pay tribute to a number of communists who participated in the conference, who came to their defense and fought off unfair attacks.

At the conference, I had to be in the circle of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania Brazauskas (he spent the last days in this position, and then, betraying the interests of the party, went over to the side of the opposition) and the commander of the Baltic Military District, Colonel General V.V. Grishin.

The influence of the Popular Fronts, especially in the Baltic republics, on the territory of which the fleet was based, greatly affected the personnel of its ships and units, and we were fully convinced of this at the naval party conference. Speaking about pressing issues in the life of the units, the communists at the same time called on the leadership of the fleet and the political department to take decisive measures to protect socialist values ​​and strengthen the unity of party organizations. Alarm was also heard in the speeches of the First Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, Nikolai Burakevicius, and Alfred Rubiks of Latvia (I had the opportunity to accompany the latter during all the days of his stay in the navy). Soon both of them will be arrested by the new, so-called democratic government and will serve long terms in prison. In the current situation, the leadership of the CPSU was required to take specific, including tough, measures to protect the constitutional order. However, as time has shown, members of the Politburo and personally the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Gorbachev did not take such measures.

Moreover, they betrayed a multi-million dollar party. The history of the international labor and communist movement has never known such betrayal.

There is no need to say how subsequent events affected the life and condition of the fleet. Just look at the attempt to privatize the entire Baltic Fleet, which was undertaken by businessmen! This happened during the period when the new fleet commander, Admiral Vladimir Grigorievich Egorov, took office.

One October evening I went into the fleet commander’s cabin to have a little snack. And imagine my surprise when, at the company table, I saw civilians led by People’s Deputy of the USSR Bocharov. Having met them and found out the purpose of their stay in the fleet, I was even more surprised and, naturally, indignant.

“What kind of privatization of the fleet can we talk about,” I said as harshly as possible. - What is this, a patrimony or something? I don't want to hear anything about it.

At this time the commander entered the salon. Sensing the tension in the situation, he asked:

– What are you, Stanislav Nikolaevich, arguing about here?

- Yes, comrade commander, the gentlemen want to privatize the fleet.

“Well, maybe this should be done in the future,” the commander answered without blinking an eye, sitting down in his chair. And after waiting a little, he said: “Let’s gather representatives of all the structures of the fleet and talk with them.” Maybe they will be interested in this too. We can collect them in a day or two, right?

- No, it’s almost impossible to do this. We begin preparing for party conferences a month in advance. People need to comprehend what is being offered to them. All rear services must be notified in advance. Moreover, I absolutely do not understand the necessity of the upcoming event.

“Okay, let’s say in about four days we’ll gather representatives of the military collectives and discuss this topic with them.” And you, Stanislav Nikolaevich, together with General Bobrovsky, prepare all the documents necessary for the collection. I'll sign them. This event will be held at the Officers' House of the Baltic Squadron.

At the appointed time, representatives of naval subordinate units arrived at the Officers' House. Upon entering, everyone was given a small amount of money, and no one signed for receiving it. Of course, for people accustomed to order, the innovation was a novelty, like much else that happened next. Listening to the representatives who arrived at the fleet, the absolute majority could not understand why the command had gathered them here in such a hurry. What kind of privatization are we talking about? Why does the commander take so long to speak out on this matter? These and other questions flew from different ends of the hall. Attempts by businessmen to explain possible mechanisms for the privatization of ships, bases and corresponding economic structures caused laughter or loud indignation. The fleet commander, who finally took the floor, tried in every possible way to level the situation in the hall, and this also caused people to feel dissatisfaction and outright disappointment, with which they left for their garrison zones. The next day, the fleet and its potential buyers left. However, as it turned out, their visit was not accidental. Six months later, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Armed Forces, Air Marshal E. I. Shaposhnikov, issued an order to introduce the institution of sale of military property in the districts and fleets. From that time on, the process of mass plundering and plundering of property and military equipment began, embezzlement arose, including among leading officials... Speaking of the Lithuanian events, this is the mass participation of the population in the Popular Front movement and the culmination - the execution of civilians in those towers and the arrest of the leaders of the Communist Party of Lithuania, I would like to dwell on the meetings with two generals who were direct participants in these events.

I met one of them at the third DOSAAF congress of the country, which was held in Vilnius. The chairman of the republican branch of DOSAAF, Lithuanian by origin, lean, fair-haired, with a soft smile, made a pleasant impression. Therefore, I accepted his offer with pleasure when, after the conference, he invited me to his home. His wife, a Ukrainian by nationality, tried not to delve into our conversation about the political situation in the republic; she was sure that everything would end well. Unfortunately, she was mistaken: people died, and her husband was arrested by the new government.

The second meeting, with a former classmate at the General Staff Academy, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, Colonel General Vladislav Alekseevich Achalov, took place at the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet, where he arrived to participate in a meeting of the Military Council of the Fleet, dedicated to the events in Lithuania. We intended to communicate at the end of the meeting, but our plans were not destined to come true: by order of the USSR Minister of Defense V. A. Achalov urgently flew to Vilnius, where tragic events were brewing. Later, he, an active defender of the USSR, was arrested and imprisoned in “Matrosskaya Tishina”.

The peculiarities of the coup d'etat and the retention of power by the new elite include a fact that the leading command and political staff of the Armed Forces learned about later. To keep the army and navy from unrest, criminal cases were initiated against each commander, chief of staff and member of the Military Council - head of the political department. The incriminating evidence was collected urgently and secretly. And those against whom they were brought found out that there were such cases only when they arrived at the Prosecutor General’s Office to close their cases.

On the very day when the coup was carried out, the chief of staff, Vice Admiral Valery Vasilyevich Grishanov, and I remained senior in the fleet. At the same time, the fleet commander, Admiral V.P. Ivanov, was on a business trip, and a member of the Military Council, head of the political department, Vice Admiral A.I. Kornienko, was in a sanatorium in Jurmala. Through joint efforts we managed to ensure a calm pace of life for the fleet.

At this time, the issue with the appointment of the fleet commander, Admiral V.P. Ivanov, to the post of head of the A.A. Naval Academy arose with all urgency. Grechko. His documents were in the office of the USSR Minister of Defense, and it seemed that everything had been decided, but then events occurred that caused the process to be suspended. Air Marshal Evgeniy Ivanovich Shaposhnikov, my classmate at the General Staff Academy, was appointed the new Minister of Defense of the USSR, on whose decision the admiral’s future fate now depended. The decision might not have been in favor of my commander, who actively defended the Soviet system. As a people's deputy of the USSR, he spoke sharply against many politicians trying to discredit Soviet reality, and the newly born so-called democratic elite of society could not forgive him for this. I understood the complexity of the situation and thought about how to help V.P. Ivano. His rich service experience, high moral qualities, ability to remain calm in a difficult situation and take responsibility could not but arouse respect from the overwhelming majority of admirals and naval officers, and as a naval commander and skillful organizer, he had to be preserved. Vitaly Pavlovich himself, as soon as the unrest began in Moscow, immediately interrupted his vacation and arrived at fleet headquarters.

The next day after the arrest of the State Emergency Committee, I went into the office of the fleet commander. Tanned and, as always, fit, he looked calm enough for such an environment. Having sat down more comfortably in the chair offered to me, I said:

- Comrade commander! I fully understand the complexity of the situation related to your new appointment, and I sincerely would like to help resolve it positively. The fact is that the new Minister of Defense of the country and I studied together at the General Staff Academy. I know his closest friend, with whom he has maintained close ties for many years.

This is Colonel General Igor Mikhailovich Kalugin, currently the commander of long-range aviation of the USSR Armed Forces. We have been friends with him since the first days of our acquaintance and communicate constantly. I am ready to fly to Moscow, meet with him and ask him to talk with Evgeniy Ivanovich about your issue.

After listening to me, Vitaly Pavlovich silently looked away for some time. Then he thanked me and asked:

– What will you tell the member of the Military Council about your possible departure? After all, now is a special time, and the actions of each admiral are monitored by various structures.

“We need to think and find a reason to go on some kind of business trip,” I answered.

After another pause, Vitaly Pavlovich said:

- Okay, Stanislav Nikolaevich, you will go to Smolensk to check the progress of the construction of residential buildings there for the families of military personnel in our fleet, and at the same time you will stop by Moscow. Is this option suitable?

Of course, this option suited me, especially since the headquarters of one of the long-range aviation armies was located in Smolensk. Having received the consent of a member of the Military Council - the head of the political department of the fleet, I went on a business trip with an unauthorized visit to Moscow.

Arriving in the capital, he immediately contacted the commander of long-range aviation. Igor Mikhailovich was there, and within an hour I was sitting in his huge office and talking about the purpose of the visit. After listening to me carefully, Kalugin, with his characteristic directness, said that I had set him a difficult task.

“And the point here is,” he said, “that the authorities are cutting off the new Minister of Defense from any contacts and negotiations with anyone. He can't even talk to me directly.

- Igor! I understand the difficulty of fulfilling my request. But I am asking not for myself, but for a person who will be worthy of training the leading command staff of the Navy. But depending on what kind of personnel will come to replace us, the Russian fleet will be the same in many ways in the future.

We continued talking in this spirit for about an hour. In the end, Igor Mikhailovich promised me to go to Shaposhnikov’s home and tell him there about my request.

Having learned that I needed to leave for Smolensk today, I.M. Kalugin ordered to connect him with Lieutenant General Konstantinov, commander of the air army.

“Today, to you, in Smolensk,” he said to Konstantinov, “my old friend is leaving on a trip, so you give the command there so that they meet him, arrange him, or help him in resolving his issues.”

At 6.00 am my train arrived in Smolensk. Coming out of the carriage, I saw a major walking towards me. Approaching me, he asked if it was me he had been ordered to meet and bring to the army commander for breakfast.

I nodded affirmatively, and we slowly walked to the car parked in the square. About twenty minutes later we were in a military town, and I met the chief of staff of the army, who then took me to breakfast. Entering a small hall, the walls and windows of which were decorated with flowers, we sat down at the central table. To the right and left of him were two rows of laid tables, at which sat about ten generals and colonels. From the very first minutes I was somewhat surprised by the atmosphere in this small hall. I didn’t hear the jokes that are common in these morning moments.

People ate in silence, only occasionally did anyone present exchange a few phrases. At the same time, I realized that the army commander was delayed for some unknown reason.

Another fifteen minutes passed, and Konstantinov appeared, which really cheered up those present. Powerful, athletically built, he uttered curses in his thick voice as he walked. His indignation was open, very natural. Finally, sitting down in his chair and catching his breath slightly, he explained the reason for the delay. As it turned out, from the very early morning he was “tortured” by some “two pimples” about what he did during the “putsch of the State Emergency Committee”, what instructions and instructions he gave to his subordinates, what he did before that day and after the arrest of the State Emergency Committee, etc. .d. This, Lieutenant General Konstantinov, irritated the hell out of him, as he admitted. This is how the commander of the long-range aviation army remained in my memory, once sweeping in his movements, open in his judgments. As for the issue of studying the progress of housing construction, due to limited time, I was able to talk on this topic only with the command of the company of the military construction detachment.

In accordance with the combat training plan of the United Baltic Fleet (UBF), in July 1989, training of its interacting forces was carried out on the basis of the Baltic squadron of heterogeneous forces. By order of the Commander of the Baltic Fleet, I had to be with the Commander of the Naval Forces of the German Democratic Republic, Vice Admiral Hoffmann. Throughout the week, from morning to evening, I accompanied him to all planned events. As a rule, in the morning we went to the next ship, where immediately upon arrival we drank coffee, and then, after a short break, the commander of the ship and his officers began hearing about their readiness to carry out the next combat exercises or their results. At the same time, no questions or requests were ever made to the Commander of the Navy (the same thing happened in the Marine Corps and anti-aircraft missile units, where we visited after lunch). This was unusual for me, because any commander or official always has questions (requests) for his immediate superior. And, in the end, when the joint training of interacting forces was completed and we were returning from shooting, I spoke:

- Comrade commander! Being with you for a week and attending the hearings, I never once heard any request to you or any question. This is somehow unusual, since life itself forces us to pose new questions at a crucial period for us.

He looked at me with his blue eyes and, smiling slightly, said:

– I didn’t quite understand you, Comrade Admiral. Do you want to ask whether my subordinates are deceiving me when they report the situation or the result?

“No way,” I answered just as calmly and looking at him. – I want to understand: are your subordinates really doing so well or are they absolutely confident in their actions and positive results?

After a short silence, he said again:

“You know, Comrade Admiral, I cannot even imagine that my subordinates could deceive me.” And how can I, their commander, think that they are not telling me the whole truth... After these words of his, we were silent all the way to Baltiysk, where his residence was located during the training period, and everyone thought about their own. With my rather extensive experience in serving in the navy, it was difficult for me to accept the criteria that the Commander of the German Navy used to guide his assessment of subordinate officers. It's different with us. Any boss, when listening to his subordinates, will certainly try to find out whether they are telling him the truth, whether there are questions or any requests (say, speak up, don’t hide). And this, apparently, is a character trait peculiar to us, Russians, due to our way of life.

A month after the exercises of the forces of the United Baltic Fleet, in accordance with the combat training plan, I left with the chief of staff of the fleet, Vice Admiral Vadim Aleksandrovich Kolmogorov, to the city of Gdansk, Polish People's Republic, to transfer a diesel submarine and two small missile ships to the PPR Navy.

At the appointed time, we crossed state borders in a service Volga. On the territory of the People's Republic of Poland we were immediately met by responsible persons from the Ministry of Defense of the Republic and its Navy, as well as our military attaché and translator. Two hours later, passing the cities of Bronievo, Skopice, Gdynia, we entered the territory of the naval harbor, at the piers of which our warships stood, ready for transfer.

The command of the PPR Navy, the crews of the ships were lined up on the pier next to their ships. There were many civilians in the harbor invited to the ceremony of handing over and receiving warships. After the lowering of the USSR Navy and State flags, the flags of the PPR Navy were raised on the ships handed over to the Polish side.

According to tradition, when a ship is launched into the water and the flag is raised on it, a bottle of champagne is broken on its side, and this is usually done by a woman, who among sailors is called the “mother of the ship” (“the lady of the ship”). This role was performed by the governor's wife. With the second blow, she cut the rope with the hatchet, at the end of which the bottle was hanging. However, either because of the small amplitude or because of the thickness of the wall of the bottle, the latter, having hit the side of the small rocket ship, did not break, but began to sway at the side. Amid noise, laughter and loud discussion of failure, the bottle was hooked and handed over to the “mother.” Smiling, she swung the rope toward the ship again. The bottle that hit the side remained intact. The people were noticeable but quietened down. And the duty team again hooked the bottle with the hook and again handed it over to the “mother.” This time she swung wide and forcefully threw away the rebel bottle, which, hitting the side of the ship, scattered into several pieces. People applauded. The military brass band began to play a march. The fun began, and we headed to the House of Officers, where a reception was organized for the special occasion, and then to the hotel of the Minister of Defense, located on the very shore of the Gulf of Gdansk.

Having settled into the sea view room offered to me, I went out into the garden to be in the fresh air and relax a little. But for some reason the memory of how a bottle of champagne hit the side of the ship and did not break did not leave me. There was a feeling that the ships did not want to leave their native sailors, did not want someone else’s flag hanging on their masts. With these thoughts, I left the next day for my home in Kaliningrad.

According to the plans of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, during the 1990s the Baltic Fleet was supposed to be replenished with four diesel submarines. These ships were part of the 9th submarine squadron of the Northern Fleet, and to receive them, by order of the commander of the Baltic Fleet, a group of officers was created from among the flagship specialists of the fleet and various logistics managers. I also joined this group as one of its leaders. Over the course of a year and a half, several times we flew or traveled by train to Murmansk and then traveled to the village of Vedyaevo on a bus specially allocated for our group. It was especially pleasant for me to once again visit the places that had become dear to me, where I began my life as a sailor, and where my eldest son Andrei began his lieutenant service. And the command of the squadron was well known to me. Its commander, Vice Admiral Anatoly Ivanovich Shevchenko, once served as a senior assistant on the nuclear submarine "K 313", where I was deputy commander for more than three years, and I knew the chief of staff, Rear Admiral Nikolai Vasilyevich Ermakov, at that time the commander of a nuclear submarine. lieutenant's time before leaving for the General Staff Academy. And now, years later, military fate brought us together again.

Naturally, being in the north, I could not help but visit the places of my former service - Zapadnaya Litsa (1st nuclear submarine flotilla), Polyarny (4th submarine squadron), Severomorsk (headquarters and political department of the KSF;

7th operational es cadre of surface ships). It was with great pleasure that I met with those whom I knew well over the years of service together. One of these people was Rear Admiral Dmitry Pavlovich Voynov, commander of the 7th operational squadron of surface ships. I met him on board the most modern nuclear-powered cruiser Kirov in the USSR Navy, where the headquarters of the Socialist Squad was located. He was appointed to this high position after graduating from the Military Academy of the General Staff. We talked with him for a long time about our years at the academy, about our former teachers, about our colleagues, about the state of affairs in the navy. Knowing that his kidneys often bothered him, I asked how he was feeling at the moment. Without thinking twice, he calmly answered:

– You know, Stas, before graduating from the academy, I underwent a medical examination and was declared completely healthy. And in general, I think that we, military people, have this peculiarity: when we are offered a higher position, we quickly recover. Probably, some forces simply crush all the sores inside us when it comes to career advancement. This is apparently what happens to me too.

I didn’t think then that literally a few days later I would have to repeat these words in a conversation with the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral V.P. Ivanov. After returning from the North, I reported to him about the results of the work of the task force for receiving submarines, he suddenly asked:

- Stanislav Nikolaevich! Do you know that Vladimir Aleksandrovich (chief of staff - S.B.) was appointed to the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Direction Troops?

“That’s right, Comrade Commander, I already know,” I answered.

- So, I need a new chief of staff. Can you suggest someone for this position?

Without hesitation, I nominated Rear Admiral D.P. Voinov.

– You, comrade commander, are a submariner, and our fleet largely consists of surface ships and aircraft. And here Dmitry Pavlovich has extensive experience. As a true surface commander, he constantly interacted with aviation. He enjoys high prestige among the leading command and political personnel of the Northern Fleet. This person takes a blow with dignity, is reliable and knows how to value trust.

“So he’s sick, as far as I know, his kidneys hurt,” the commander interrupted me.

“We all have our sores to one degree or another, Comrade Commander,” I answered. “But when we are offered a higher position, we quickly recover. And I met with Dmitry Pavlovich the other day, he is healthy and, moreover, upon graduation from the General Staff Academy, he was thoroughly examined at the Central Hospital of the Ministry of Defense named after Burdenko.

After my words there was a short silence. Fixing his gaze out the window, Vitaly Pavlovich apparently considered my arguments.

- Fine. “I’ll take Voinov as my chief of staff,” he said in a calm and firm voice and picked up the closed-circuit phone.

When he was connected to the Commander-in-Chief, the fleet commander confidently said:

- Comrade Commander-in-Chief! Regarding the candidacy of a new chief of staff, I would like to ask you to appoint Rear Admiral Voinov, commander of the 7th operational squadron, to me.

At the other end of the phone, apparently, it was said that Voynov was not entirely healthy, to which Vitaly Pavlovich replied:

“He was examined at the Central Hospital of the Ministry of Defense and found to be completely healthy, Comrade Commander-in-Chief.” And in terms of its qualities and degree of preparation, it is suitable for the Baltic theater of military operations.

“Well, that’s all,” Vitaly Pavlovich said, hanging up. – While the personnel officers are moving papers, we will be preparing for a meeting with the new chief of the fleet headquarters.

Leaving the comflot office and going into my room, I couldn’t resist and immediately called Voinov.

- Dima! I just visited the fleet commander. He spoke with the Commander-in-Chief regarding your appointment as our chief of staff. The head of the committee agreed. Now personnel officers will call you and offer you this position. So don’t you dare give it up! – I finished speaking and hung up.

A month and a half later, by order of the USSR Minister of Defense, Rear Admiral Dmitry Pavlovich Voynov was appointed chief of staff of the Baltic Fleet. He quickly grew into the situation, made responsible decisions, and skillfully directed the work of the staff apparatus. With his high professional training and responsible attitude to the performance of duty, he gained high authority not only among the staff officers, but also among the entire leadership of the command and political staff of the fleet.

This continued for seven-eight months of his tenure... In accordance with the combat training plan, during the winter training period, the fleet conducted an operational strategic command staff exercise for the troops of the Western direction. The control of the fleet forces was transferred to the main command post, located several tens of kilometers from Kaliningrad, since its underground structures met all modern war requirements. And here, under these conditions, on the third day of his stay, the chief of naval staff again developed kidney disease. Due to severe attacks, he could not direct the actions of the headquarters, and the fleet commander had to take on a significant part of his functions. Frankly speaking, I felt quite bad in this situation. After all, it was I who convinced the fleet commander that Dmitry Pavlovich was healthy and reliable, but in reality this is how it all turned out. However, the commander never broached this topic and continued to remain in a trusting relationship with me. As for Dmitry Pavlovich, six months after his recovery he suffered a stroke. After recovering at the Burdenko Central Hospital of the Ministry of Defense and going through a four-month adaptation period, he was dismissed from the Armed Forces. Vice Admiral Valery Vasilyevich Grishanov, commander of the Kola Flotilla of heterogeneous forces, with whom I had the most friendly relations while serving in the Northern Fleet, was appointed to his position. And here, in the Baltic, having taken up his duties, he became a truly distant person for me, with whom we interacted closely until the end of our service in the Baltic Fleet.

Remembering the reception of submarines of the Northern Fleet, I cannot help but talk about two events that happened to me on New Year’s days of the year. Upon arrival in Murmansk, as one would expect, I was met by a midshipman from the submarine squadron, who was assigned to accompany me in the future. In a UAZ 469 company car, we safely arrived at the plant in the village of Rosta, where the submarine on which Andrei served was being repaired. Having learned from the brigade command that he was going on duty this New Year's Eve, I naturally met with him. After talking about business and immediate plans, we decided that I would go to Vedyaevo, to see his wife Natasha, and celebrate the New Year with her, and the next day I would return here to pick him up after duty. Already in the car, I explained to my escort and driver our further route and at the same time asked if there was enough gasoline, to which the driver, a young sailor, clearly reported to me:

– Don’t worry, Comrade Admiral, both tanks are filled, so getting to Vedyaevo and then to Polyarny is quite enough for us.

I was satisfied with this answer, and we left the territory of the crew of ships being repaired into the blue of the polar frosty evening. Imagine my surprise when, an hour later, the car’s engine first began to choke, and then completely died out. After rummaging through it for several minutes, the driver said in a plaintive voice:

- Comrade Admiral! There is no more gasoline in both tanks; you need to ask the drivers of oncoming cars.

- How come there is no gasoline? After all, you reported to me that both tanks are completely filled. In addition, you have a dashboard where you can see the level of fuel consumption. You and the midshipman could not help but notice this, especially since I asked you and received the answer that everything was in order. How are you supposed to understand all this?

I looked sadly at the snow-covered tundra. Well, who can appear here a few hours before the New Year? If only some kind of private car with a driver late for the festive table. And even then, does he have a can of gasoline that he can sacrifice for us? I don’t know what my fellow passengers were thinking about, but there was silence in the car. Finally, after a long pause, the midshipman said:

- Comrade Admiral! To be honest, what we told you was not true. The fact is that as soon as we left Polyarny, I noticed: the instruments showed a low level of gasoline. In response to my question, the driver replied that he had filled both tanks, but apparently the old ones had pumped out the gasoline. For fear that he would be punished, he did not report this to me. We thought: there would be enough fuel to reach Vedyaevo, and there we would refuel. That's all I can report on this matter.

The midshipman was clearly worried about his mistake. And I had no choice but to accept what happened as a fait accompli. We had to think about what to do in our conditions in order not to freeze here, in the wind and frost, which were felt more and more every minute. The car quickly cooled down, and we began to slowly freeze. According to the law of meanness, not only were there no matches, but also a shovel and an ax - the constant companions of experienced northern drivers.

Reflecting on the current situation, I estimated that we stopped about five kilometers from the border post located near the Ura Guba River.

Behind it, a little more than three kilometers away, are the fishing collective farm and the village of Ura Guba itself. It’s not far from the Vedyaevo garrison. Is it worth sitting here and freezing in this case?

“Then we’ll do this,” I said, looking at my silent travelers. – The driver and I will go towards Ur Guba. I think we will reach the border post in about an hour and a half. And you, Comrade Midshipman, remain here, in the car, and wait for us or those who come for you. In any case, we will meet at the headquarters of the submarine squadron or in another place where I will be located, as the squadron duty officer will inform you about. Do not leave the car without permission under any circumstances,” I finished the instructions, and the sailor and I set off – in the dark, along the winding road of the tundra. I don’t think there’s any need to explain what it was like to walk in light shoes, and even on the slippery ice cover of the road in the polar night. And, nevertheless, after an hour and a half of grueling walking, we approached the bridge crossing the Ura Guba River. At that time, a car was driving along it towards us, brightly illuminating the road. Standing in the middle of the road and raising my hand high, I waited for her to stop. A man got out of the car, and in the light of the headlights I only managed to see that it was the admiral.

- Stanislav Nikolaevich! – I heard a familiar voice. - It is you! What kind of wind was it, and why did you end up here at such a late time? “He continued talking, but because of the headlights his face was not visible. “And I, as a senior, go around the guards on New Year’s Eve. As I see it, you have some problems, since you are walking across the tundra at such a time?

That’s how I met my colleague from the 1st flotilla of nuclear submarines, who was currently the commander of a division of nuclear submarines. After explaining the situation to him, I asked him to take us back to the car and help us get to the military camp.

“We’ll do it differently,” he said. - We’ll take you to the squadron now, there I’ll give you another car, which with your driver will go to the place, and you will rest. By the way, the New Year has already arrived, for which I sincerely congratulate you.

Twenty minutes later we were approaching the checkpoint. And after a few more minutes, our savior, having called the squadron commander and chief of staff, turned to me:

- Stanislav Nikolaevich! The entire leadership of the squadron has gathered at the chief of staff’s apartment, and they are waiting for you there. So go and take a break from walking on the tundra. And now a duty car will pick up the driver, in which he will go to the parking lot of his car. As soon as they are delivered to the garrison, we will inform you about it.

Having thanked him for his help and attention, I went to the apartment of Nikolai Vasilyevich, formerly my subordinate and colleague, and now an admiral - chief of staff of the submarine squadron. Here I saw many acquaintances, those with whom I had the opportunity to serve for many years on the 1st flotilla of nuclear submarines. The warmth and cordiality with which I was greeted gave me an influx of acute nostalgia for the North and service in it. After spending a little time with friends, I hurried to Natasha, who had been warned in advance about my arrival at the garrison, and she and her neighbors continued to celebrate the New Year.

The next morning I was woken up by the doorbell. It was the midshipman - the senior vehicle, who reported to me that he was ready to go to the city of Polyarny.

Driving past the snow-covered hills and admiring the harsh beauty of the tundra, I thought about all the events that had happened over the past 24 hours and specifically on New Year’s Eve. After all, for the first time in my life I had to celebrate the New Year in the complete darkness of the polar night. And the driver of the car walked silently next to me, leaving it on the road... The second event that happened on these New Year’s days was connected with a meeting with the first deputy commander of the Northern Fleet, which took place in his apartment in Severomorsk. I came to him at his invitation along with my eldest son Andrei (lieutenant), whom, in agreement with the brigade command, I took with me after he passed his duty on the submarine. By the way, a funny incident happened in the brigade. During my conversation with the brigade commander, the duty officer from the checkpoint called him in his office and reported that a Volga had arrived at the gate.

Vice Admiral Kasatonov. Hearing this, the commander rushed to the hanger and quickly began to put on his overcoat. Knowing that I.V. Kasatonov sent his car to pick me up, I told the brigade commander about this, but he still came out, supposedly escorting Andrei and me to the car.

I, as before in Polyarny, was pleased to be again in the circle of Igor Vladimirovich’s family. His wife Yulia and their children were at home. Sitting at the festive table, we talked about a wide range of problems. Igor Vladi Mirovich told us in detail about the results of the voyage of a group of warships on a friendly visit overseas to the United States of America, which was carried out under his flag. In memory of this campaign, he gave me two issues of the naval newspaper “On Guard of the Arctic” and more than a dozen different photographs. These materials are still kept at home, in our family museum.

The book is dedicated to the historical events of the formation and combat activities of the 7th operational squadron from the beginning of its formation to the last days of service in the Navy. It provides statistical data from all stages of the squadron's combat activity, describes the creation, construction and development of the latest ships and collects the memories of officers and admirals about the outstanding events of service on the ships of the squadron.

about the author

Belov Gennady Petrovich, born in Leningrad on May 11, 1937. In childhood I saw hunger, cold, horrors and fear of war and human participation. He graduated from school - the former Aleksadrinskaya gymnasium in 1954. In 1959, he graduated from the Higher Naval Radio Engineering School with a diploma as a naval radio engineering engineer and, at his own request, was assigned to the Northern Fleet. In the Navy, he served as the head of the radio technical service for 13 years from 1959 to 1972 on the destroyers “Nakhodchivy”, “Nastoychivy”, “Modest”, “Fiery” and the large anti-submarine ship “Sevstopol” under the command of 9 ship commanders, 10 brigade commanders and 3 commanders of the 7th squadron. Completed six combat tours. From 1973 to 1977, he served in the 5th Department of the Northern Fleet Headquarters as head of the combat training group for surface ships. In 1977, he finished his service in the Northern Fleet and moved to serve at the 14th Institute of Radio Electronics of the Navy as a senior researcher. While working at the institute as head of the laboratory, he supervised the design support of surface ships in terms of radio-electronic weapons in all design bureaus of the USSR. These were the ship projects of recent years - 1155, 956, 1164, 1144.2, 1144.3, 1143.4, 1143.4, 1143.5. He personally supported the design of the aircraft-carrying ships "Baku" and "Admiral Kuznetsov" and participated in the state tests of the Udaloy and "Baku" aircraft carriers. He completed his service at the 14th Naval Institute as deputy head of department in 1988 and retired to the reserve with the rank of captain of the first rank. He began his literary career in 1997 when he began work on the book “Behind the Scenes of the Fleet.” It describes the events, conflicts that arose between him and the command of the ship, and between his crew and, most importantly, the people, and was published in St. Petersburg in 2004. The second updated edition of the book was published in 2006. The book is written only from memory and has a volume of 422 pages. In his opinion, this is the most successful book. The third book, “Honor and Duty,” published in 2009, also in St. Petersburg, tells the story of two outstanding admirals of the modern fleet, Vice Admiral E.I. Volobuev and Rear Admiral E.A. Skvortsov, with whom the author had a long service in the Northern Fleet. In December 2012, his fourth book in the historical and literary genre about the 7th operational squadron of the Northern Fleet “Atlantic Squadron” was published. It provides a retrospective of the squadron's combat activities, military services and its military merits.

Deserved attention is paid to the development of the aircraft-carrying ships "Kiev", "Admiral Ushakov", "Admiral Kuznetsov" and the nuclear cruisers "Kirov", "Nakhimov" and "Peter the Great" as well as the combat activities of the squadron ships in combat service in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. The book does not forget the commanders of ships, brigades, divisions and squadrons who selflessly gave their strength and energy to the Northern Fleet. This book summed up the first result of the literary and historical narratives about the 170th brigade and the 7th operational squadron, with which he was associated for 10 years of service. His efforts in the literary field were appreciated by the Union of Writers of Russia, where he was admitted in May 2010. In the same year, he became a laureate of the “Golden Pen of Rus'” competition - awarded a diploma named after A. Tvardovsky from the Union of Battle and Marine Painters Writers and the Military Art Studio of Writers of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for the book “Behind the Scenes of the Fleet.” He created the website of the 7th operational squadron - atlantika.ucoz.ru, by visiting which anyone can find information about him and his work. He is currently working on a fifth book about the sailors, petty officers, midshipmen and officers who created the glory of the 7th squadron on the decks of ships.

From the author

I express my sincere gratitude to everyone who helped me create this book. First of all, I thank Viktor Romanovich Kartsev, without whose help this book would not have been published. He believed me and took a sincere part in my creative plans and searches. A talented, honest and purposeful man, direct and uncompromising, who commanded two ships and did not bend under the pressure of unfavorable professional and life circumstances. His views on service on the squadron and confessional materials about the difficult years as a commander on the Moskovsky Komsomolets ship helped me to better understand the personality, psychology and inner essence of the ship’s commander, his level of responsibility at sea and largely influenced my assessment of many of the events described. It was only thanks to him that the book became a reality - he became a generous sponsor in its publication.

At the center of my communication with a huge number of admirals and squadron officers were I.N. Khmelnov and A.A. Kibkalo, who helped me in this communication, found admirals and officers, supported and encouraged me in the hard work of collecting materials for the book and did not allow retreat from the work started. I express my sincere gratitude to Igor Nikolaevich for his enormous support in the difficult work of collecting materials about the squadron and his willingness to help, regardless of the circumstances.

We are connected with A. A. Kibkalo, the former commander of the Zhguchiy BOD, by a fleeting acquaintance during service on the squadron, two meetings in Moscow and two years of correspondence on the Internet. But, despite this, he was the link in my contacts with so many people and responded to every call and message. It was to him that I poured out all the negative aspects associated with people’s refusal of the help I needed so much. He understood me and supported me in difficult moments of doubt in further work on the book. Perhaps it was thanks to him that I resisted the desire to quit this job. “Gennady, write, no matter what! No one will write this book except you,” he repeated these words to me more than once in his letters. Thank you, Alexander Alexandrovich, for your support and help.

I am grateful to Nikolai Naumovich Melnik, the former deputy commander of the 170th brigade for political affairs, whom I never knew while serving on the squadron. For the section on party political work, he prepared 28 pages of material, written in small calligraphic handwriting, which took him more than 14 hours of work just to present the text. Dear Nikolai Naumovich, low bow and sincere gratitude to you.

Sincere gratitude to Vladimir Nikolaevich Pykov, the second commander of the Kyiv TAVKR, who kindly responded to my request and sent a large handwritten work of his memoirs.

Completely unexpected for me was the warm and kind response to my numerous requests from the moderators of the websites of the ships Project 1134, 1134A and the cruiser “Murmansk” A.V. Kavun and A.M. Vlasov. A.V. Kavun always reacted in a naval manner to any of my requests for information search according to the principle: “We won’t flog you in the heat of the moment, but so that it’s done by morning,” finding and sending the requested information, and advised on many issues. Thank you, dear friends.

Invaluable help and support in the process of writing the book was provided to me by Evgeniy Antonovich Kreskiyan, a former political officer of the Admiral Yumashev BOD and my colleague at the Sevastopol BOD. Thanks to his help, I found many of those who helped in collecting materials for the book. He helped in solving many practical matters during my trips to Moscow on creative matters related to the book, and I found shelter in his house. He, together with N. N. Melnik, helped me write a difficult section on party political work.

Former squadron commanders Yu. G. Ustimenko, V. G. Dobroskochenko, G. Ya. Radzevsky, and chief of staff of the 7th OPEC I. N. Khmelnov responded to my request for help sincerely and with understanding. They generously shared their memories of events from the squadron’s combat activities, corrected me and gave me the necessary advice. Former squadron commanders Yu. G. Ustimenko, V. P. Eremin, V. F. Bessonov readily contributed their photographs to the book.

E.A. Murashov, Y.V. Khokhlov, A.I. Tolstik and A.B. Averin sincerely believed in me, who responded to numerous requests and shared everything that remained in their memory of serving on the squadron. Not one of them ever referred to employment or everyday problems, and all of them responded and responded to my letters and appeals immediately. I would like to especially thank Andrei Borisovich Averin, who generously shared information about the combat activities of the squadron. Thank you, dear friends.

In the process of writing the book, the need arose to analyze complex internal events in the squadron and in the fleet. My second conscience and good advisers in this were extraordinary and talented people - the former chief of staff of the 120th brigade of the Northern Fleet and the chief of staff of the 5th squadron V.V. Platonov, and the political officer of the Sovremenny EM Yu. A Chistyakov, giving wise advice and correcting me. Communicating with them was a learning experience for me and, sometimes, an epiphany.

I thank my colleague in the 170th brigade, 7th squadron and 5th Directorate of the Northern Fleet Headquarters and good friend V.L. Gavrilov. My honest and strict critic of everything I wrote, and for many years who lent me his shoulder and a helping hand.

I express my gratitude and sincere gratitude to A. I. Frolov, V. S. Yarygin, S. V. Kostin, S. V. Lebedev, G. A. Bronnikov, A. V. Belyaev, B. P. Ponomarev, M. A Partala, V. A. Gokinaev, O. Yu. Guryanov, V. L. Belkin, B. G. Shmukler, I. V. Kots, Yu. S. Savchenko, V. F. Lyakin, A. V. Platonov , G.I. Vlasov, A.I. Tolstik, A.N. Skok, who provided their memories and gave me countless consultations on various issues of the squadron’s activities. I also thank my old colleagues and good naval friends S. Ya. Kurgan, V. I. Galenko, Yu. E. Aleksandrov, V. L. Nabokov, N. M. Moiseev for their kind participation and constant support.

I would like to thank the families of our comrades who passed away, who responded and sent photographs of their husbands and fathers - A. I. Skvortsov, V. I. Zub, E. A. Skvortsov, V. A. Kolmagorov, V. G. Barannik, Yu. G. Ilyinykh, A. K. Zhakhalova, R. A. Sausheva, P. G. Puntusa.

My words of gratitude to those who responded to my letters and requests, providing all possible assistance and not leaving any of my requests unattended. These are V. V. Masorin, I. M. Kapitanets, P. M. Uvarov, P. G. Svyatashov, V. I. Rogatin, V. P. Zatula, A. A. Penkin, E. A. Martynovich, A V. Semin, M. R. Gotovchits, V. I. Kazakov, V. P. Larin, V. G. Pravilenko, V. V. Shchedrolosev, M. A. Balashov, A. N. Borodavkin, B. S Kondratyev, P. A. Glagola, I. S. Godgildiev, V. A. Grishonkov, V. P. Rudzik, G. A. Revin, D. S. Ogarkov, S. F. Ivanov, N. S. Koryagin , M. N. Kobets, V. A. Kotyukh, N. A. Melakh, G. Ya. Sivukhin, V. T. Milovanov, V. A. Nechipurenko, Yu. D. Orudzhev, V. V. Pitertsev, A P. Romanko, A. A. Svetlov, A. F. Azarov, B. P. Chernykh, S. V. Shevchenko, V. S. Shifrin, N. A. Skok, F. P. Tereshchenko, S. I Tsyura, V. I. Voitsekhovsky, N. A. Marchukov, V. I. Loshakov, A. V. Korenny, S. A. Malyshev, V. A. Khaiminov.

Thanks to all the commanders of the ships of the 7th operational squadron who sent their photographs and contributed to the creation of the book. These are: V. A. Zvada, E. M. Slomentsev, V. D. Veregin, V. A. Nechipurenko, V. G. Milovanov, V. V. Peregudov, E. V. Sedletsky, B. D. Sannikov, K. S. Vinogradov, N. S. Zhorov, P. D. Kostromitsky, B. N. Nashutinsky, A. V. Bazhanov, S. V. Leonenkov, V. K. Chirov, Yu. N. Shalnov, P. Gray-haired.

In addition, I express my gratitude to the users of websites about the Navy and all the colleagues of the ships Project 1134 and 1134A who responded to requests for help with materials on the squadron and sent short memories and photographs. These are Alexander Fedorov, Artur Kurvyakov, Vladimir Karlyshev, Nikolay Kolesnichenko, Dmitry Serous, Andrey Sotnik, Sergey Fedorov, Victor Lapikov, Alexey Koltsov, Alexey Salnikov, Sergey Romashov, Pavel Razorenov, Victor Grishin, Mikhail Efimov, Vladimir Tishkin, Alexander Dubrovsky, Vyacheslav Khlyntsev, Vyacheslav Fedorovsky, Yuri Rubtsov, Yuri Shilov, Vladimir Titarenko, Evgeniy Brulin, Vladimir Kiselev, Sergei Voschilko, Alexander Lagno, German Maksimov, Vitaly Khegai, Bator Tsybendorzhiev, Valery Karashchuk, Sergei Belov, Evgeniy Kezik, Andrey Ushakov, Roman Moskovtsev, Sergey Tevyashev, Georgy Konkov, Sergey Rubachev, Vadim Pitertsev, Victor Tretyakov, Vladimir Kurilov, Nikolay Lomanov, Roman Baldin, Sergey Voschilko, Alexander Lagno, Alexander Razhev, Ilya Dzhaksumbaev, Mikhail Goncharov, Igor Savelchev.

I cannot ignore those who either flatly or under various pretexts did not want to cooperate and come into contact with me regarding materials about the 7th squadron. Thank you all for making me even more persistent in searching for new people, sources and stimulating me in difficult work.

I would like to express my gratitude to my wife Evgenia for stoically enduring my three-year absence from family and social life, understanding the importance of the work to which I devoted myself.

His addresses:

[email protected];

[email protected];

[email protected].

Introduction

First of all, I congratulate all the veterans of the 7th operational squadron of the Northern Fleet on the publication of a book about its combat activities. This is the first book that makes a serious attempt to describe all aspects of service on the squadron and show the hard work of the command, ship commanders and their crews to improve its combat power. The book about the 7th operational squadron of the Northern Fleet is devoted to a description of the historical events of its formation and combat activities from the beginning of its formation to the last days of service in the Navy. It fully presents statistical data of all stages of the squadron’s combat activity, describes the creation, construction and development of ships of the latest projects. The given memoirs of officers and admirals about the events of service on the ships of the squadron are written vividly and truthfully. The described episodes of events during combat service enable all readers of the book to understand that at the forefront of protecting the interests of our Motherland were dedicated admirals, officers, midshipmen and ordinary sailors. All of them showed courage in the most difficult situations in ocean voyages and successfully completed their tasks even in the difficult conditions of the inhospitable Atlantic. In addition, the author makes an attempt to analyze complex processes in the work environment on the squadron and writes about the difficult fate of ship commanders. Unfortunately, a complex historical process expunged the squadron from the Navy, but the rich experience of the squadron in defending the geopolitical interests of our Motherland shown in the book gives hope that it will be in demand by a new generation of sailors, and this is precisely the value of this book. It is precisely this gap in the recent history of the Navy, when not only people far from naval service, but even the current generation of sailors have little idea of ​​what “combat service” is, for what purpose and in what areas of the World Ocean it was carried out, is filled by the book written. We must not lose hope that in the shortest possible time in history there will be a revival of the power of the Russian fleet and a new Atlantic squadron will enter the oceans for the third time. I express my sincere respect to all veterans of the combat service of the squadron and the Navy.

Chief of the Main Staff of the Navy -

First Deputy Commander-in-Chief

Navy of the Russian Federation

(1996–1998)

Admiral I. N. Khmelnov

Preface

I dedicate this book to my wife Evgenia and daughter Irina, who steadfastly and resignedly endured the difficulties of the difficult years of my naval service.

Dear readers and colleagues in 7 OPESK and the Navy. It is difficult for me to say how each of you will react to this preface, but many experiences during the writing of this book prompted me to write this way. First of all, I want to say that I have been living in America for 18 years. Life was so difficult for me during the difficult times of perestroika. BUT! I am still a citizen of Russia and I still love her to tears. This is my homeland and there is not and will not be another. This book, like the previous one, “Honor and Duty,” was very difficult for me, not so much in the sense of the writing work associated with searching for materials in the open press and technical work, but because I met furious rejection from very many people I asked for help with materials. Let me start with the fact that my appeal to the Main Headquarters of the Navy for admission to the Naval Archive remained unanswered. From some whom I turned to for help, without hiding my place of residence, I received a polite refusal due to being busy, from some - promises that lasted from one to two years, and some officers flatly refused to contact me. A number of people who knew me before anathematized me because of where I lived. A number of people referred to the secrecy of the materials that they could disclose, a number of people openly said that they were afraid of being exposed to the security authorities because of their contacts with me, a Russian citizen. From one colleague, who in the past held a high position in the squadron and in the leadership of the Navy, I received the answer: “I am not interested in this topic.” Many politely brushed me off like an annoying fly when I sent them written material for review. They politely wrote that they had read it, without giving a word of comment and returning the material in its original form. And finally, an incident occurred that simply shocked me. The FSB received a signal that the book could reveal state secrets. I had a meeting with employees of this service. They were convinced of the sincerity of my intentions, and this meeting did not end in anything for me. I know the name of the person who gave this signal, but I cannot understand the motives for which he did it. The Lord is the judge of them all. BUT! Fortunately, there were a lot of people who sincerely supported me, helped me, shared information and memories, and I express my sincere gratitude and gratitude to them.

The book was also difficult for me because I wrote it in America and came to St. Petersburg and Moscow four times to meet with admirals and officers to talk about myself and win them over not so much to myself as to the idea of ​​writing a book about the squadron. I had more than fifty such meetings. While working on the book, I sent about 2,000 pages of letters and appeals to my respondents, had close correspondence with more than 160 of them, and made more than 1,500 phone calls from America to Russia related to the search for materials. For me, writing itself is not difficult in terms of putting my thoughts on paper. But searching for material, analyzing it, carefully working on the text sent by others is a tedious and long-term process that requires a lot of patience. I thank the Lord that I had enough to complete the book. Dear colleagues, I once again repeat my gratitude to all of you for your sincere help and support in working on the book. The book provides statistical data on various aspects of the squadron’s activities as of January 1, 2011, and they may differ from the current ones. Unfortunately, due to a lack of factual material, the book does not fully reflect the combat and daily activities of the squadron, and many points are described sparingly. Some events in the book may have been missed due to lack of information, and there may certainly be inaccuracies. Some of the materials may cause disagreement and harsh criticism, but they are all taken from official sources. In bringing these “inconvenient” materials into the book, I was guided by my civic position - that even from the shameful facts of our biography we must learn so as not to repeat them again. I tried to cover all aspects of the squadron’s activities, and to what extent I was able to do this, you, dear readers, can judge.

I am happy that, having finished this book and bringing it to the attention of readers, I was able to fulfill my duty to the squadron and the Navy by making my small contribution to the description of their history. Thank God for giving me strength and patience, but I have decided that this is my last book about the Navy. I hope for feedback from everyone who reads the book, and I will gladly accept criticism, all suggestions and additions, and will republish it in the form that readers recommend. Thanks again to everyone who helped me, and God bless you. I look forward to your critical feedback. With sincere respect to future readers,

During my subsequent service I did not see such enthusiasm from the team. By the time the ship was inspected, it really shone like a brand new nickel. The order on the ship and the mood of the crew amazed the brigade commander. He said: “A ship with such a crew will sail!” In his relationships with the ship's officers and subsequently with the brigade and squadron headquarters officers, he was gently demanding and polite. None of the officers perceived this as his weakness, but noted it as a strength of his character. In the service, Vitaly Ivanovich was guided by the principle of not delaying the promotion of officers, regardless of their value as specialists, and always monitored the service of his subordinates. He always repeated that no one is irreplaceable. He got into tactical situations easily and quickly and was an excellent and very prudent navigator. He did not curse his subordinates for mistakes, but persistently and demonstrably taught and explained. Dissenters, of whom, as a rule, there were very few, were not persecuted. But gradually they also became like-minded people in his service. His amazing trait was to make his subordinates like-minded people and make each of them feel their place and importance in the common cause. He always succeeded in this. His life motto was: “If you want to live until you’re ninety, look at things simply, and then any conflict will be resolved by itself.” Despite the fact that his father held a high position in the political apparatus of the Armed Forces and had personal merits to the state and enormous connections, Vitaly Ivanovich was promoted regardless of this and went through all the official levels at full speed. Having become the chief of staff of the 170th brigade at the beginning of 1964, he received his next promotion to the position of brigade commander only 8 years later, and as a squadron commander he broke all records, holding this position for 7 years. It was not easy to command such a formation and withstand strong physical and psychological stress. While working at the General Staff, he did not change his life principles in relationships with people.

4. 3. Vice Admiral Vadim Aleksandrovich Kolmagorov

1943–1953 high school student.

1953–1957 – cadet at the Severomorsk Higher Naval School

1957–1962 – commander of the BC-3 torpedo group, commander of the BC-3 EM “Spokoiny”, Northern Fleet.

1962–1964 – assistant commander of the Spokoiny ship.

1965–1966 – commander of PLK-5 (project 159)

1966–1967 – student of the command courses of the VSOOLK Navy.

1967–1968 – commander of the TFR^7.

1968–1971 – commander of the Sevastopol BOD.

1971–1973 – student of VMOLUA named after. Grechko.

1973–1975 – chief of staff of the 10th brigade of anti-submarine ships.

1975–1979 – commander of the 10th brigade of anti-submarine ships.

1979–1982 – commander of the 2nd division of anti-aircraft ships.

1982–1985 – commander of the 7th OPEC.

1985–1989 – Chief of Staff of the DKBF.

1987 – student of the Higher Attestation Commission at the Academy of the General Staff.

1989–1990 – Advisor to the Commander of the NVMF of the GDR.

Retired since 1991.

Awards:

Two Orders of the Red Star, Order “For Service to the Motherland in the USSR Armed Forces” 3rd degree, Order “For the Glory of the Russian Navy” 2nd degree, 16 medals, 2 foreign orders.

Everyone who served or had close contact with Vadim Aleksandrovich agrees in their assessment of his personality and speaks only positively about him. Like everyone who aspired to achieve great command heights, he had an excellent memory and good health. He was certainly a talented person and had a statesman's mentality, able to weed out the unimportant and focus on the main goal. He was very collected at work and quickly made decisions on current affairs, freeing himself from continuous routine issues. In his interactions with his subordinates he was gentle, but demanding and never humiliated their personal dignity. He never demanded that his subordinates complete tasks at any cost, so as not to exhaust the headquarters and crews of ships, thereby averting possible accidents and emergencies. Finding himself in difficult situations at sea and in everyday service, Kolmagorov maintained an enviable calm and clear mind, making informed decisions. His insightful mind and resourcefulness allowed him to make quick and correct decisions. Possessing excellent qualities as a navigator, he did not have a single case of emergency conditions when operating a ship during his command of three ships. According to reviews from staff officers of the 10th brigade, 2nd division of the PLC and 7th OPESK, he quickly delved into any tactical situation and was well versed in the tactical situation, making informed and correct decisions. Vadim Aleksandrovich had great patience, was unforgiving and never persecuted those who disagreed or dissented. Having assumed the post of commander of the 2nd Division, on the very first day he forbade staff officers from appearing on ships after 7 p.m.: “Go home and raise your children and be ready to work tomorrow.” There was always a businesslike and creative atmosphere in the headquarters he led. It was easy and interesting to serve with him. One more strong feature of his character should be noted. He never imposed his commander's opinion, allowing his subordinates to take the initiative, and skillfully infecting them with his ideas. All the officers of the headquarters he led became his like-minded people. In everyday life and communication he was simple, intelligent, tactful and extremely polite. Everyone who served or worked closely with him remembers the time spent together as the best times of their service. Vadim Aleksandrovich worked until the last days of his life, heading the unit for demining the territories of the Kaliningrad region, which in 2011 neutralized more than twenty thousand pieces of wartime ammunition. He was an extraordinary and talented person with a clear vision of the processes taking place and had a high capacity for work. Vadim Aleksandrovich loved the profession of a military sailor, had a great understanding of people, loved and appreciated life and strived to make it better and brighter. It is a pity that life takes such people away from us too early.

4. 4. Vice Admiral Vladimir Grigorievich Dobroskochenko

Born on March 17, 1949 in Ukraine in the village of Vodyano, Sinelnikovsky district, Dnepropetrovsk region.

Education:

1966 to 1971 – cadet at ChVVMU named after. Nakhimov.

1980 – courses for commanders of the VSOOLK Navy.

1986 to 1988 – Naval Academy named after. A. A. Grechko, command faculty with honors and a gold medal.

1998 – Higher academic courses at the All-Russian Academy of Artillery School in the specialty “command and staff, operational and strategic.”

Military ranks:

Lieutenant - June 1971

Senior Lieutenant – July 1973

Lieutenant Commander - July 1976

captain 3rd rank – July 1979

captain 2nd rank – July 1983

captain 1st rank – September 1988

Rear Admiral - July 1992

Vice Admiral - December 1996

Passage of service:

1971–1974 – commander of the BC-2 control group on the Boiky BOD.

1974–1976 – commander of the warhead-2 BPK “Boikiy”.

1976–1977 – senior assistant commander of the Zorkiy BOD.

1977–1979 – senior assistant commander of the Zhguchiy BOD.

1979–1980 – student of the VSOOLK Navy command courses

1980–1983 – commander of the Gremyashchiy BOD.

1983–1984 – commander of the Admiral Nakhimov BOD.

1984–1986 – student of the VMA named after. Grechko.

1986–1989 – chief of staff – deputy commander of the 170th brigade of anti-submarine ships.

1989–1991 – commander of the 170th brigade of anti-submarine ships. 1991–1993 – commander of the 44th division of anti-submarine ships. 1994 – Chief of Staff – Deputy Commander of the Belomorsk Naval Base.

1994–1998 – commander of the 7th operational squadron of the Northern Fleet.