The Mannerheim Line could have been taken with almost no losses
It turns out that the Soviet command had detailed schemes of the "Mannerheim line". They were included in the so-called Black Album. But at the beginning of the Winter War, it was not used. While the Red Army suffered monstrous losses on the Mannerheim Line, this invaluable album was gathering dust in a trash can in the basement of the intelligence department of the Leningrad Military District. And its compiler was repressed one and a half months before the start of the Winter War.
87-year-old Alexander Zvonitsky spoke about the "Black Album" in 2012.
Who is the pest?
Intelligence was made the main scapegoat in the Finnish War. It was done by those who were directly responsible for the failures and huge sacrifices at its first stage - Stalin himself, the People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov, and the commander of the Leningrad Military District Kirill Meretskov (he personally commanded the 7th Army, which unsuccessfully stormed the Mannerheim Line). Meretskov in 1960 in his memoirs accused the intelligence of the fact that some of its employees even considered this defense line to be nothing more than Finnish propaganda.
All this, of course, is a lie. And Meretskov himself in 1940, at a meeting of the command staff in the Kremlin, where the results of the Winter War were being examined, let slip about the "Black Album".
“The agents cannot always be blamed,” Meretskov said then. “For example, we had an album of the UR (fortified area - ed.) Of the enemy, and we were guided by it.
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- Where did he lie? - asked from the audience.
“On my desk, on the left side,” Meretskov explained.
“In the archive,” Stalin added.
The Black Album was named for its black cover. It was composed by the Latvian Julius Grodis, the head of intelligence of the Leningrad military district. Here is what he himself wrote about the contents of the album: “The fortifications of the Mannerheim Line have been studied for years by all means of reconnaissance, including strategic intelligence. Each point (DOT) was checked several times before setting its coordinates, plotting it on the map and including it in the design album …"
Julius Grodis (1899-1963).
In the "Black Album" there were photographs and characteristics of each Finnish bunker: wall thickness, roll, weapons. Moreover, it turns out that in the "Mannerheim line" there were passages for infantry and equipment, which could well be used during the assault! These passages were laid by the Germans who participated in the construction of the "line". The German command left them in case of an offensive by their troops on the territory of the USSR from Finland.
But in September 1937, the NKVD arrested Yuliy Grodis, and then many of his subordinates, and the unique information they had collected was declared sabotage and dumped in the basement of the district headquarters.
The layout of the bunker Ink-4.
Poor Grodis
This story is a true historical detective story. I managed to write it down in 2012 from the words of 87-year-old Alexander Zvonitsky, whose father, the head of the Medical and Sanitary Directorate of the Leningrad Military District, was friends with Yuli Grodis and was also repressed. Grodis was sentenced to death, but he miraculously survived. After going through prisons and camps, he achieved rehabilitation in 1956. But only in 1963, before his death, he told Alexander Zvonitsky about the "Black Album", warning that it was a state secret.
“During the Civil War, Julius Grodis was the commander of the Latvian riflemen,” said Alexander Zvonitsky. - Then he captured the gold of the Emir of Bukhara in Central Asia. He worked as a military attaché in Berlin. He performed special missions during the Spanish Civil War, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Grodis's last position was the head of the intelligence department of the Leningrad District. For three years, he and a small group went through the entire "Mannerheim Line" under the guise of representatives of the German company that participated in its construction. I drew the sectors of shelling of bunkers, indicated where the "line" can be passed, and where to drive. The album compiled by him turned out to be more accurate and detailed than the same plan that was available in the Finnish General Staff. Grodis carried out this reconnaissance operation while officially on vacation. Our families rested together in the Crimea in the military sanatorium of the district. In the last two years before his arrest, Grodis did not go to the sanatorium. But he asked my parents to inadvertently tell that he was with us too. That is, he was on vacation, and he himself worked on the "Mannerheim Line".
In 1937, Julius Grodis was accused of creating a subversive organization of Latvians. At first, during interrogations, he confessed everything, since in the next office his pregnant wife was tortured (she, according to Alexander Zvonnitsky, gave birth while standing in prison and then died somewhere in the North), threatened to kill his 14-year-old daughter. But at the end of 1938, Grodis refused all testimony.
On August 15, 1939, he was sentenced to death. On October 17, the death penalty was replaced by 15 years in the camps. At least that's the official version. But Alexander Zvonitsky told another:
- Julius Grodis told me that during rehabilitation he saw with his own eyes a document about his own execution signed by a doctor. Grodis did not admit that this was a mistake. He assumed that he was saved by one of the not yet destroyed old KGB officers - he sent someone else to death instead of him.
When Grodis was released from the camp in the early 1950s and left in an "eternal settlement" near Vorkuta, he returned to Leningrad at his own risk.
- In the city he had no one left, he had nowhere to go. He came to me, - recalls Alexander Zvonitsky, - Late in the evening the doorbell of our huge communal apartment rang. I saw a tramp in torn clothes on the threshold. I wanted to close the door, but I heard: "Alik, you don't recognize me?" We fed him, dressed him. Then he went to Moscow to seek the truth. When he returned, he said that he had achieved a meeting with the chief military prosecutor.
Here is what Grodis wrote in a letter to the Chairman of the Party Control Committee under the CPSU Central Committee Nikolai Shvernik about his Black Album: "In the second half of the war with the White Finns, when a copy of the Mannerheim line album was found, they began to use it …"
According to Alexander Zvonitsky, this happened thanks to the commander Semyon Timoshenko, who was appointed to lead the re-assault on the "Mannerheim Line" instead of Meretskov.
- Apparently, Tymoshenko heard something about the "Black Album" and ordered to look for it. The document was found in a basket with a pile of other papers to be destroyed as sabotage. They say that it even adorned the resolution of the People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov: "Nonsense!" Seeing this, Tymoshenko said: "Poor Grodis." He ordered to immediately reproduce the album and distribute it to the unit commanders.
This version, by the way, is confirmed by Stalin's remark to Meretskov's words that the album was allegedly lying on his table (see above). "In the archive," - said the leader. And not at all on the table …
Every secret has its time
Tymoshenko easily and confidently broke through the "Mannerheim line". A month and a half after the successful end of the Winter War, he was awarded the Order of Lenin, became a Hero of the Soviet Union and replaced Voroshilov as People's Commissar of Defense. And Julius Grodis continued to sit. He spent 18 years in prisons and camps. 1956 achieved a review of his case. The audit found that they had convicted him illegally, and "Grodis's intelligence materials along the" Mannerheim line "played a big role in defeating the enemy in the Finnish war."
But they did not advertise this fact. The history of the "Black Album" cast a shadow on the top leadership of the army and the country.
Soon after his release, Grodis was “quietly” awarded the Order of Lenin. He was given a modest two-room apartment in Leningrad, in which he died of cancer in 1963.
“A few days before his death, Grodis called me, asked me to come and talked about the“Black Album,”recalled Alexander Zvonitsky. - He strictly warned that it was a state secret, and ordered not to rush to make it public. Said, “It's not time yet. Sometime later…"
Scouts
At a command staff meeting in 1940, two more offensive intelligence questions surfaced. It turns out that the Finnish Suomi machine gun, which became an unpleasant discovery for the Red Army, was known and even tested in the USSR since 1936. And the materials on the tactics of the Finnish troops, obtained long before the Winter War, lay in the archive for several years and were published only two weeks after its end!
When Stalin asked why this happened, the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, Ivan Proskurov, replied that the archive contains a whole basement with a colossal amount of literature, which there are not enough people to sort through. Isn't this one of those basements where the "sabotage" documents were taken after the repressions in the intelligence, where Grodis's "Black Album" was located? At the meeting, Proskurov did not say a word about the repressions, but admitted that there are not enough people in his department, and they are inexperienced.
Author: Vladlen Chertinov
