In March 1939 (80 years ago), General Franco's army took Madrid, defeating the last Republican troops. Even earlier, the last Soviet specialists left the country. Their role in the war has not yet been fully explored.
“It is a tradition to drink wine with food here. There is always a lot of wine in our canteens. At first, our people allowed themselves too much, "one of the aviation commissars writes in a report to Moscow, calling alcohol a" great threat "to Soviet pilots in Spain.
Another Soviet commissar (already of a tank battalion) testifies that he had not previously suspected that the Spaniards were allowed brothels. “I must note that many of our comrades did not immediately understand how shameful it is to be in brothels. Until December 3, about 20 people arbitrarily visited prostitutes. After the party collective banned visiting brothels, discipline increased sharply. Komsomolets Morkevich offered one woman 200 pesetas, she refused and complained to the Anti-Fascist Committee. The unstable Morkevich was later unanimously condemned at the Komsomol meeting.
In total, 1,811 military advisers and specialists from the USSR passed through the "Spanish front", 189 of this number died, died of wounds or disappeared without a trace. 59 servicemen were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their bravery, many posthumously.
Mess and indifference
The USSR sent the first military cargoes to Spain in the fall of 1936, when the troops of the putschist Franco were rushing to Madrid. The weapons were transported by sea, in the strictest secrecy. Some ships were disguised as tourist liners - “tourists” in Panamas wandered around the decks, demonstratively photographing seascapes. They sailed mainly at night - so as not to become the prey of Italian submarines patrolling the Spanish coast: the regime of Benito Mussolini openly supported the Spanish rebels. Each vessel had a code designation - the letter Y and numbers indicating the route. The first Soviet ships delivered a batch of T-26 tanks to Cartagena on October 4 and 11, 1936, and this saved Madrid from capture by the Francoists. After that, specialists began to arrive - 772 aviators, 351 tank crews, 77 sailors, 156 signalmen,130 workers and engineers of aircraft factories.
From the very beginning, the main Soviet military adviser in Spain, army commissar of the 2nd rank Jan Berzin (acting under the pseudonym "General Donizetti") in a letter to Voroshilov complained about Spanish indifference and general mess at the front. “Sometimes your hands are itching to pull these scoundrels out of the offices and put them against the wall,” Berzin writes. - Such impunity, unrestrained sabotage of necessary measures, such negligence and irresponsibility, I could not imagine. Orders are simply not carried out, but sometimes they do the opposite, and remain in the same places."
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Jan Karlovich Berzin. Photo: RIA Novosti.
The Western press pretty much inflated the participation of the USSR in the civil war in Spain, reporting that “whole divisions were being transferred from Moscow,” but that was fantastic. For example, the Italian expeditionary corps and detachments of "blackshirts" sent to Spain numbered 98,500 thugs, and 4,500 officers of the Third Reich served in the Condor legion, which bombed the city of Guernica. The USSR set itself a different task - not to get involved in a war with all of Europe, but to train “local cadres”. After all, the Republican army had no combat experience, and its officers did not even go through the usual exercises.
1937 Spain. Madrid. Volunteer internationalists Vladimir Puzeikin (left) and his fighting friend Pyotr Shevtsov participated in the national - revolutionary war of the Spanish people. Petr Shevtsov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on October 22, 1937 for his courage in Spain. He died in January 1944 during the Great Patriotic War / RIA Novosti.
Fight in a burning tank
Soviet tankmen and pilots fought in such a way that residents of the surrounding villages came to see the "Russian heroes".
On October 25, 1937, Evgeny Stepanov performed the world's first night ramming of an enemy aircraft, sending his fighter into the Italian SM-81 bomber. January 17, 1938 Stepanov was hit, jumped out with a parachute. He was seized by the Francoists, beaten and tortured, but he did not give any information about himself. The pilot was sentenced to death, but six months later, Eugene was exchanged for a captured German pilot. Less than a year later, the indefatigable Stepanov had already fought on Khalkhin Gol, shooting down several Japanese aircraft.
Soviet pilots at the Soto airfield near Madrid. 1936 year. Photo: RIA Novosti.
Pilot Mikhail Yakushin destroyed six enemy bombers, for which he received a gold watch and a Chrysler car as a gift from the Spanish government. Another Soviet pilot Anatoly Serov (who fought under the pseudonym Rodrigo Mateo) shot down 15 enemy aircraft on the Central and Aragonese fronts. Both Stepanov and Serov were awarded the highest award for military distinction - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In 1937, the driver-mechanic Viktor Novikov, in a battle near Zaragoza on a burning BT-5 tank, crushed two dozen Franco infantrymen, and then, having brought them into the car at the location of his own, lost consciousness from burns. After treatment in a hospital in Barcelona, Novikov was sent home - he also became a Hero of the Soviet Union. The commander of the tank platoon, Lieutenant Sergei Laputin near the village of Fuentes de Ebro, fired from his damaged tank from the advancing Francoists for 24 hours in a row (!)
Soviet tank crews at the graves of their comrades who died during the Spanish Civil War. 1937. Photo: RIA Novosti.
Chopped into small pieces
On November 10, 1936, a Soviet citizen (an emigrant from Italy, who moved to Soviet Russia in 1921), pilot Primo Gibelli was captured near the town of Alcorsina, and hacked to pieces by Franco soldiers. Later, during the raid of the Condor Legion, a tarpaulin bale with his remains and a note - "So it will be with every foreigner" was dropped at the Republican positions near Madrid. Since mid-1938, Soviet officers almost did not participate in hostilities in Spain - the Spanish republicans moved into our tanks and planes. Why? Some historians believe that Joseph Stalin was dissatisfied with the "heterogeneity" of the Spanish government - after all, representatives of different parties were present both at the front and in the government - communists, socialists, anarchists, and even Trotskyists condemned in the USSR. Yan Berzin also noted that Soviet officers were shocked to learnthat in Spain there are different parties, people can express their opinions, and criticize the communists. And naturally, the USSR was afraid of a "big fight". After all, "fit" the Soviet Union into this war with all its strength, the Great Patriotic War could not begin in 1941. And five years earlier.
Soviet cameraman (later - outstanding documentary filmmaker) Roman Carmen (1906-1978) (center) among the soldiers of the Spanish Republican Army. 1936 Photo: RIA Novosti.
Stirlitz, milk, party
In March 1939, the last Soviet specialists left Spain. After returning to their homeland, their fate was different.
Back in 1937, the head of the “Soviet contingent” Yan Berzin was recalled to Moscow, accused of “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities,” and a year later he was shot. His "heirs" in this post in Madrid (Grigory Stern and Kuzma Kachanov) were sent to be shot in 1941 - the first for "Trotskyist conspiracy and espionage in favor of Germany", the second - "for cowardice and unauthorized retreat." Yevgeny Stepanov, who rammed an Italian plane, fought at Khalkhin Gol and in the Finnish war, after the Great Patriotic War he served as vice president of the International Aviation Federation, died in 1996. Pilot Mikhail Yakushin went through the entire war with Germany from the first to the last day, was wounded. In the fifties he taught pilots in Egypt, died in 1999. Air ace Anatoly Serov, shortly after his arrival from Spain, crashed during a training flight - his ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall. Hero-tanker Viktor Novikov went missing in October 1941 during the battles with the Germans near Mogilev. Lieutenant Sergei Laputin in the same 41 was surrounded, went into the forest, partisan with his detachment. He rose to the rank of colonel, transferred to the reserve in 1960, died in 1985.
… Now from the open archives it is clear that these were the most ordinary people. Yes, with weaknesses about wine and women - well, only in the books about Stirlitz our officers abroad are morally stable, drink only milk and mineral water, and have fun reading the history of the CPSU (b) in their free time. Sent to Spain, they bravely performed their military duty. They simply could not do otherwise.
Author: Georgy Zotov