Etruscans on the Apennine Peninsula The name of this people, accepted in historical science, was taken from Roman authors. Latin writers called this people “Etruscans” or “Tusci”, as well as Lydians, Greek writers called them “Tyrrenians” or “Tyrsenians”, but they themselves were Etruscans

E. VOISKUNSKY.

The Hanko Peninsula (Gangut in Russian), located at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, became the most important strategic point from the first days of the Great Patriotic War. The defenders of Hanko not only did not allow a single large enemy ship into the Gulf of Finland, which could pose a serious threat to Leningrad, but also drew significant enemy forces onto themselves at the most decisive moment. The defense of the peninsula lasted 164 days and ended on December 2, 1941. The defenders left undefeated. They left the outpost, obeying the orders of the Supreme Command. For various reasons, not much is known about the heroic pages of the war in the Gulf of Finland. Writer Evgeny Lvovich Voiskunsky, a participant in the fighting on the Hanko Peninsula, tells how it happened. The name of E. Voiskunsky is also familiar to readers from books written in collaboration with I. Lukodyanov in the fantasy genre - “The Crew of the Mekong” (1962), “The Very Distant Tartessus” (1968), “The Splash of the Starry Seas” (1970), “ Ur, son of Sham" (1975), as well as from those works that have appeared in recent years: "Kronstadt", "It's a Small World", "Girls' Dreams". And our long-time subscribers probably remember his story "Chimera", which published in the magazine (see "Science and Life" No. 7-11, 1995).

Writer Evgeny Lvovich Voiskunsky. Photo by A. Moiseev. 2004

Hanko Peninsula on the map. The defenders of this outpost - it was also called the "Baltic Gibraltar" - left undefeated.

Poems by Mikhail Dudin with drawings by artist Boris Prorokov, published in the newspaper "Red Gangut". 1941

“Children of Captain Granin” - that’s what the Ganguts called the naval paratroopers. October 1941. Photo by V. Rudny.

In response to the appeal: “Give up!” - the defenders of Gangut wrote a caustic (in the spirit of the “Letter of the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan”) “Response to Mannerheim.” October 1941. The paratroopers left these scathing leaflets on enemy territory at night.

Science and life // Illustrations

Fighter pilot senior lieutenant Grigory Semenov. Hanko, 1941. And his miraculously surviving note written to E. Voiskunsky.

Memorial sign for the defense of Hanko.

Monument on the Hanko Peninsula in honor of the Gangutians.

Now few people remember Hanko. Meanwhile, in the first year of the Great Patriotic War, the 164-day defense of this small peninsula in southwestern Finland resounded throughout the country.

Hanko was taken on a long-term lease by the Soviet Union in March 1940, after the end of the Finnish ("winter") war. Hanging over the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, the peninsula occupied a strategically advantageous position on the distant approaches to Leningrad, so the construction of a naval base for the Red Banner Baltic Fleet began here.

There are few of us left, participants in the defense of Hanko. Sometimes I can’t even believe that I was there in my early youth. It looks like a dream. Just headaches from the concussion... and the bitter smell of a burning forest, as if stuck in the nostrils for life, and, of course, the night mine explosions in the Gulf of Finland are etched in my memory. All this was, was...

When, in October 1940, we, young recruits, were taken by ship to the Hanko Peninsula, we knew nothing about it. Then we saw it on the map - such a little boot at the junction of the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia, sprinkled, like cereal, with many small islands.

These islands and rocks, like seal heads sticking out of the water, floated past both sides of the steamer. And a strange feeling arose: the edge of the earth, its fragments...

The steamer moored at the granite wall in the port of Hanko (Ganges in Swedish). We descended onto the rain-wet soil of the peninsula, which was destined to become for us the line dividing life into peace and war.

We piled into trucks and drove along cozy streets through a scattering of colorful cottages. We, who come from urban communal apartments and rural huts, have never seen such housing. Beyond the crossing, the reddish dirt road was surrounded by a pine forest.

This beautiful country corner seemed to consist of pine trees, granite and silence. Now, abandoned by the Finnish population, he seemed to be joining the military guard, obliged to keep the sea approaches to Leningrad under control. The posters called: “Let’s turn the Hanko Peninsula into an impregnable Soviet Gibraltar!”

The construction of the naval base proceeded at a rapid pace. On the coast, among gray and rusty rocks, batteries were installed. They were strengthening the land border with Finland, which ran along a narrow isthmus - here once, as they said at the base, Peter I ordered a clearing to be cut...

Petrovskaya clearing! Well, of course, we could have guessed earlier: this is Gangut! Hanko, Gange-udd, Gangut. The same one, off the coast of which more than two hundred years ago the young Russian fleet won a famous victory over the Swedish squadron. This is where it has taken us!

The battalion, which was joined by young recruits, was building a railway with concrete platforms. We worked hard on the track and in the quarry. Mountains of sand were thrown over our shovels, loading the platforms and dumping ballast onto the insatiable embankment. The battalion worked all winter, and all spring.

That last peaceful spring, starlings sang madly on the forest edge. At sunset, the slender pines shone like battle copper. At the beginning of June, the finished track hummed under the wheels of heavy transporters carrying two batteries of long-range guns - Gangut's main caliber.

And as soon as we, as they say, straightened our tired backs, war broke out.

Finland entered the war on June 25. A barrage of artillery fire fell on Hanko. Thirty-one Finnish batteries struck. There were days when more than four thousand shells and mines exploded on a small peninsula with an area of ​​115 square kilometers. There was not a piece of land here that was inaccessible to fire. There was no rear on Hanko. The town was on fire, beautiful cottages were burning. Smoke drifted over the peninsula. The summer was dry and hot - just right for a fire.

The garrison burrowed underground, bunkers and dugouts were built everywhere. We dug dugouts and trenches on the shore of Tvermine Bay, fenced it off with a barbed wire of two stakes: our area of ​​defense. Every night a Finnish landing was possible.

One day in July, the Finns set fire to the forest adjacent to our defense area with incendiary shells. The battalion was sent to put out a forest fire. The forest was burning terribly. Tongues of fire jumped from pine to pine, from branch to branch with an ominous crackling sound. Old fallen pine needles and peaty soil under its flooring smoldered suffocatingly. Fire sparkled in the clouds of smoke: incendiary shells continued to explode.

We dug ditches to block the path of the fire: after all, it could spread to the entire forested area of ​​the peninsula.

The heat was unbearably scorching. Dripping with sweat, choking from the smoke, we frantically threw away the earth with shovels. The Finns switched from incendiary shells to high-explosive shells. Lying at the bottom of the ditch, I listened with dull indifference to the roar of explosions approaching, to the dull sound of fragments hitting the ground and tree trunks.

The return fire from the Khankov batteries silenced the enemy, and we took up our shovels again...

We must have looked like ghosts as we walked towards our trenches on the shore in the twilight. The native overcoat served as both a mattress and a blanket. We fell asleep to the sound of mosquitoes, and the white night, like a caring mother, enveloped us in a blanket of fog.

Why are we sitting here, feeding mosquitoes? - grumbled soldier Agapkin, the simple-minded “strategist” of our platoon. - We would move to their Helsinki at once.

No, they objected to him. - We need to be transferred to Tallinn. The German is pressing hard on Tallinn.

The huge front was retreating under the harsh onslaught of German army groups, and the Hanko garrison held tightly to its granite “boot”. On the isthmus, Captain Sukach's battalion had already repelled several Finnish assaults. The artillery divisions of captains Granin and Kudryashov fought an intense counter-battery fight. We often heard the bass roar of twelve-inch guns: the heavy batteries of captains Zhilin and Volnovsky were hitting the Finnish rear - under these batteries the rails of the railway built by our battalion hummed.

The Hanko garrison was eager for combat activity. When it was necessary to repel the threat looming over the defense from its island flank, almost all Ganguts - sailors and infantrymen - asked to join the formed landing force. Hanko's offensive spirit was truly amazing, and this spirit was strongly supported by the base commander, Lieutenant General Sergei Kabanov, and the base commissioner, Arseniy Raskin.

Captain Granin, an artilleryman who placed the first battery on Hanko, was appointed commander of the landing detachment. With a dashing blow, the detachment knocked the enemy out of Horsen Island, here Granin “cut” his command post into granite, and from here he began operations to capture the surrounding skerry islands.

His paratroopers were a match for the commander. Here, on the edge of the earth, where the islands are closely packed together, where the straits are narrow and winding, Granin’s paratroopers seemed to be trying to push apart the cramped skerries. The enemy could not withstand their onslaught when they were thrown out of motorboats and boats and burst onto the steepness of Horsen, onto the rocks of Elmholm, Gunholm and other “hills”.

“Children of Captain Granin” was the name given to the paratroopers who captured 19 islands in the skerries surrounding the peninsula. This was the most striking feature of the Gangut defense: deep behind enemy lines, cut off from supply bases, people were rushing into an offensive battle.

“Hanko stands like a rock,” the Baltic Fleet newspaper wrote that “fiery” summer.

Autumn burst in with squally winds. Cold rains fell on the TNT burns of the rocks and on the black conflagrations of Hanko. After the loss of Tallinn and the Moonsund Islands, our peninsula turned out to be the only center of resistance in the west of the Baltic theater of operations. For us, besieged Leningrad became the mainland.

What could the Gangut people count on? Only on the strength of the defense. We tightened our belts: rations were sharply reduced. The artillerymen saved shells - they responded to a hundred Finnish shells with one. They installed homemade gas generators on cars to save gasoline. We understood that the enemy was waiting for the skerries around Hanko to freeze to resume the assault.

In October, I was taken from the battalion to the editorial office of the base newspaper "Red Gangut". Military circumstances turned this newspaper from an ordinary large circulation into the only source of information for the garrison, cut off from the mainland. "Red Gangut" was published daily on four pages. A third of it was filled out by operational reports, messages from the fronts - all of this was received by radio by Sergeant Grisha Syrovatko, a former teacher. The rest of the newspaper space was occupied by local material - a chronicle of the Gangut defense, and this chronicle was created by a small strong team, including the professional artist Boris Prorokov and the young, but also professional, poet Mikhail Dudin. Misha and I immediately became friends for life.

For some time, our beds stood next to each other in one of the closets in the editorial basement. We heated the temporary hut, climbed under the blankets and had long night conversations. The stove quickly burned out, not having time to warm the closet; the frozen walls reeked of cold, from which even greatcoats thrown over the blankets did not help.

“Oh, you southerner, you Caspian freezing creature,” said Misha. - Is it cold? It was cold, do you know where? On the Karelian Isthmus.

The Finnish War, which Dudin went through, shocked him and, I think, determined the fate of the poet. What was in his youthful pre-war poems? The world is “crisp, snowy, in carved, patterned silver”; “snowy” of course rhymed with “gentle”, and that was very good. But the menacing years passed, gunpowder smoke wafted from the borders. I don’t know whether Dudin even then recognized himself as a spokesman for the generation that had grown up to war. But then he wrote about his fate:

We only dreamed of the smoke of battles
And the darkness is alarming.
And here's a life without regrets
I took it, stopped for books,
And she brought me and said: “Touch it,
Take a rifle, a bowler hat..."

He wrote:

Walk, my verse, from the ledges
Finnish rocks
With an elastic step of a military gait
And tell me what you didn't tell me
The terse language of the operational summary.

Dudin's voice rang as he read poetry. There was deafening silence in the basement, only the rhythmic clapping of the printing machine could be heard from behind the thick walls. It was as if the tiles of a paddle steamer were clapping on the dark water. And we seemed to be sailing through the night and the storm. Uneducated, unread, unloved, unencumbered by property, ready for a change of place, we sailed to unknown shores...

I walk along the forest road towards the airfield and think with sadness about my leaky boots. Autumn, cold... They say that those of us who were taken to the editorial office from army units will be changed into naval clothes. Hurry up! This is how it happened, I think, stomping through puddles covered with ice - I was afraid of a five-year naval service in order to quickly return to my studies at the institute, but still I decided to join the navy...

The roar of engines overhead! Almost touching the crowns of the pine trees, two “donkeys” that have just taken off - I-16 fighters - go steeply into the gray sky. And then other, well-known sounds arose - a whistle approaching, as if aimed at you, ending in a roar. Through the palisade of pine trees I see black bushes of explosions flying up on the yellow grassy field of the airfield. I lay on the shuddering cold ground at the edge of the airfield and waited for the Hankov batteries to respond to the Finns.

Finally! Cannons roared nearby. The artillery duel went on for some time, and suddenly everything fell silent.

I wandered to squat buildings on the edge of the airfield, everything here was hidden underground: warehouses, fuel containers, and airplanes were in underground shelters. But takeoff and landing always took place under fire. Hearing the sound of the engines starting, the Finns immediately began shelling. As if with a giant plow, the enemy artillery was plowing the airfield - a “bald patch” in the middle of the forest. But as soon as the fire began to subside, a lorry loaded with bricks and sand drove onto the field, the airfield commandant, Lieutenant Mukhin, jumped out of the cabin and the soldiers of the airfield company ran with a stretcher. They threw bricks into the smoking craters, poured earth, and compacted them with “women.” By the time the fighters returned, the landing strip was level again. They also sat down under fire. The technicians ran out to meet them, grabbed the cars by the bridle and rolled them into the hangars.

In the history of wars, it seems that this is the only airfield that was constantly under fire. There was nowhere to move it.

The sky of Hanko was covered by a squadron of "gulls" of Captain Belousov and "donkeys" of Captain Leonovich. And not only the Gangut sky. Khankovsky pilots fought in the fire-scorched sky of Tallinn and over the islands of the Moonsund archipelago. They shot down dozens of German and Finnish aircraft. A brilliant galaxy of air fighters, whose names thundered throughout the Baltic: Antonenko, Brinko, Belousov, Tsokolaev, Golubev, Baysultanov and others - almost all became Heroes of the Soviet Union.

One of them, Grigory Semenov, sent a drawing to the editor: a naval battle seen from above through the eyes of a pilot. Under the drawing there is a caption: “Sketch of a future painting.”

“We need to write about this battle,” said the editor, battalion commissar Edelstein. And, having probably read the silent request in my gaze, he concluded: “Go to the airfield to see Semenov. We’ll give you an essay with a drawing.”

I found senior lieutenant Semyonov - thick-set, wide-cheeked, with light eyes - in one of the dugouts near the airfield. I was afraid that he would speak in the spirit that, they say, some boy was sent as a correspondent. But Semyonov sat me down near the bat lamp, treated me to Belomor, we lit a cigarette, and he began to tell me.

There was a battle on the island of Ezel - tragic and bloody. A flotilla of German ships entered Luu Bay and rained fire on the positions of the island’s defenders. A group of Soviet torpedo boats under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Gumanenko attacked German ships. The boats were covered from the air by Semenov and his wingman Dorogov in two Seagulls. Between the shreds of smoke, Semenov saw how the boats broke through the barrage and slammed torpedoes into the light cruiser of the Cologne class. A giant pillar of fire and smoke! The cruiser, having broken apart, is sinking. The boats turn to attack other ships, and then the Messerschmitts and Heinkel-115, nicknamed the “Lapotnik” for its huge floats, swoop in. Semyonov throws his "seagull" into a low-level flight and hits the "bast shoe" with long bursts. Black smoke poured out thickly, and the Heinkel crashed into the water. And Dorogov fights off the “Messers”, and Semenov hurries to help his wingman. There is an aerial carousel in the sky, lines of queues criss-crossing. "Seagulls" are inferior to "Messers" in speed, but take advantage of their advantage in maneuverability. Meanwhile, the boats are breaking through to new targets...

Semyonov, telling the story and, as is usual with pilots, pointing with his hands, relives this amazing battle, his excitement is transmitted to me.

Why did you write “Sketch for a future painting” under your drawing? - I ask.

I don’t know myself,” Semyonov does not answer right away. - It’s all very clear before my eyes... Maybe someday I’ll try it with paints... I used to draw in my school years...

Prorokov’s student, Red Navy man Vanya Shpulnikov, transferred Semenov’s sketch onto linoleum (we didn’t have zincography), and the drawing was published in the newspaper along with my essay.

Soon Semyonov stopped by the editorial office, but did not find me (I was on the islands) and left a note in which he thanked me for the essay and asked me to get him a Finnish knife in memory of Hanko.

In 1942, Grigory Semenov died in an air battle over Ladoga. His note has survived to this day. I also keep the miniature photo card that Semenov gave me. Wide-cheeked, sternly knitted eyebrows, he looks at me with fearless light eyes from the distant 1941.

After the November holidays, I went on instructions from the editors to the islands of the western flank.

There were cold, moonless nights, stitched with colored trails of machine-gun fire. The flashes of rockets illuminated the gloomy rocks and pines of the skerry islands and the narrow straits between them with a ghostly light.

On Elmholm, when I walked from the pier to the command post dugout, spent cartridges clinked under my boots: it seemed that the whole island was covered with them.

Älmholm, an islet northwest of Horsen, was given the code name "Mill". It is no coincidence that this pile of rocks covered with pine forests was so named. Granin's paratroopers captured Älmholm back in July. The Finns tried to take it away several times. In August there were stubborn battles on the island, and this accursed “Mill” crushed many lives. Here, one of the bravest fighters of Gangut, Lieutenant Anatoly Fetisov, died: he stood up to his full height to signal the boats with reinforcements, which, not knowing exactly the situation, were approaching the shore captured by the Finns - and he was struck down by machine gun fire. From here, in the midst of the battle, when the telephone connection was cut off, Alyosha Gridenko, a Baltic eaglet, swam under fire to Horsen to report the situation. Here, after the death of Fetisov, the Red Navy man Boris Barkhatov took command and managed with a handful of fighters to hold the island until reinforcements arrived - the platoon of Ivan Shcherbanovsky. Midshipman Shcherbanovsky, a former merchant sailor, was, one might say, a born paratrooper. Bold and brave, black-bearded, like the commander of the detachment, he, with a captured Suomi machine gun and lemons in the pockets of his pea coat, threw himself ashore with his guys and, running from rock to rock, went ahead.

The northern cape of Elmholm was separated from the large Finnish island of Storholm by a strait 50-60 meters wide. He went there at night to check the posts of the Sakhno platoon commander, and I, throwing my rifle behind my back, tagged along with him. We climbed onto a narrow, bare, rocky isthmus leading to the northern cape and crawled. You can’t walk here even at night: it’s an open place, and rockets hang like chandeliers, and a machine gun fires from Storholm. It is unpleasant to feel like a living, slowly moving target. Bullets whistled overhead and clicked against the stone.

Finally we crawled to the toe, rolled into a crevice in the rock - there was a well-camouflaged caponier. A smokebox burned dimly on the cartridge box - a wick inserted into a flattened cartridge case from a 37-mm projectile.

I met the commander of the squad keeping watch here, on the toe, Sergeant Nikolai Kravchun. Impetuous in his movements, with hot brown eyes, he bombarded me with questions: what's new on the mainland? (For the islanders, the mainland was the Hanko Peninsula.) How is it near Moscow? Why do our people now respond to the Finns not with one shell per hundred, but also: as they lay, fragments sometimes rain down on us - is it that they have stopped saving shells?

Kravchun pulled out a can of canned food and captured biscuits from somewhere. He told how one day a soldier was crawling here, to the cape, dragging a large thermos of borscht tied to his back, a machine-gun burst pierced the thermos, and the soldier was doused with everything - it’s good that the borscht was not too hot. The fighter jumped up out of anger and, swearing at the whole of Finland, walked the rest of the way at full height. The Finns were probably gasping in amazement - they didn’t cut it off. Previously, they used to carry grub in thermoses. Every lunch is like a military operation. Well, now we’ve gotten the hang of cooking here on the cape. “Tell me what,” Kravchun fixed a demanding look on me. “The Dates have buzzed our ears: the commissars are fleeing from Hanko, abandoning you, ordinary soldiers. Moscow is about to fall, St. Petersburg too. I know it’s nonsense. But where did the rumor come from? , that we will be removed from Gangut?

That’s right, before the holidays ships arrived from Kronstadt. It was rumored that there would be more convoys that would take out part of the garrison. But, of course, I really didn’t know anything.

A soldier looked into the caponier and said in a hoarse whisper:

Something is wrong on the Tail. Come out and listen, Sergeant.

Following Kravchun, I climbed out of the caponier. Shielding myself from the icy wind, I lay on the rocky ground and stared at the huge, ominously black hump of the island right in front of me, across a narrow strait: Storholm, code-named “Tail”. We listened into the night, but heard nothing except the howling of the wind and the splashing of the surf.

Suddenly there was a slight rustling sound... a muffled voice, as if they were swearing... again suspicious silence...

Kravchun ducked into the caponier and twisted the handle of the field telephone. And - in an undertone:

Kravchun reports. There is a faint noise on the "Tail". It’s as if something was dragged along the pebbles... Yes! “When he returned, he whispered to me: “They’ll report to the command post now.”

About ten minutes later, two rockets took off from Horsen, one after another. The cannon gasped and shells began to explode on the Tail. With flashes of fire, we saw dark figures running along the shore, boats capsized, and heard furious screams.

Satan perkkala! - came between two gaps.

They whistled and shards hit the stone.

To the caponier, quickly! - Kravchun shouted. - The concert will begin now!

He struck a match in the caponier and lit the extinguished fuse.

Have you seen it? The Horsen forty-five hits the “Tail”. We thwarted the landing of the "dates". They were already boarding the boats.

The night seemed to explode. Mines flew from Storholm with a devilish howl. The Finns hammered at Cape Elmholm for at least an hour: they knew who had thwarted their plan. It seemed as if our shelter was about to collapse. But it survived.

Did we worry about the question: how long can we hold out, how long will food and ammunition last? Only the authorities knew about this, but the daily work of the war did not allow us to relax and drove away disturbing thoughts.

And Gangut was not so much worried for himself as for Moscow. On the isthmus, on the islands, the participants in the defense heard radio horns shouting on the other side: “German troops will enter Moscow tomorrow! Your resistance is pointless, throw down your weapons, surrender!”

Baron Mannerheim himself addressed the Gangutians with a special message. "Valiant defenders of Hanko!" - the message began with such unusual words. Further, the baron assured the Ganguts that he highly appreciated their military valor, but since the situation was hopeless, he called for an end to resistance and surrender, promising good treatment.

Poleshchuk, an instructor from the political department, came to the editorial office:

Brothers, we need to draw up a response to Mannerheim!

The idea aroused enthusiasm. It was decided to carry out a response message in the spirit of a “letter from the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan.” And it turned out to be biting; they didn’t mince words. Prorokov supplied the “manifesto” with such drawings that it was impossible to look at them without laughing. They said that even our stern base commander, General Kabanov, laughed when they showed him the “manifesto.”

Printed in, I don’t remember in what edition, the “answer to Mannerheim” the scouts delivered to enemy territory and, it seems, they were still scattering it from the plane.

The defense of Hanko in scale and historical significance is, of course, incomparable with the gigantic battle of Moscow, but suddenly they found themselves side by side, in the same newspaper line.

In October, Moscow journalist Vladimir Rudny arrived at Hanko with the opportunity, with a detachment of boats. He crawled around all areas of the defense, his myopic eyes behind the glasses could see. Before again having the opportunity to leave Hanko, Rudny wrote on a piece of Whatman paper the text of a letter from the defenders of Gangut to the defenders of Moscow. This letter, signed by General Kabanov and many other Gangutians, heroes of the defense, was published in Pravda on November 2. I remember how our permanent radio operator Grisha Syrovatko ran into the editorial basement, shaking a stack of scribbled sheets of paper: “Advanced Pravda! About us!”

We read, almost unable to believe our eyes:

“In yesterday’s issue of Pravda, a document of enormous power was published: a letter from the defenders of the Hanko Peninsula to the heroic defenders of Moscow. This letter cannot be read without excitement. It seems to be written in blood - through the courageous lines of the letter one can see the unprecedented and unheard of struggle of the Soviet people in history, about whose resilience the people will create legends..." And further: "Moscow must repeat this valiant, heroic feat of the defenders of the Hanko Peninsula on a grand scale!"

The editorial of Pravda, like the response letter from Muscovites to the Ganguts, truly cost many tons of ammunition. "Great honor and immortal glory to you, heroes of Hanko!" - this is how the letter from Muscovites ended.

The pathos makes me cringe. But I will not delete a single loud word from the above texts. They belong to that tense time when the fate of the country was being decided. They have been consigned to the archives of history, but even now I am worried when re-reading these lines.

Our departure from Hanko also belongs to history. Headquarters decided to evacuate the base and transfer its garrison to Leningrad and Kronstadt. 28 thousand fired, not knowing retreat, undefeated fighters are a serious reinforcement for the Leningrad Front and the fleet fighting in the blockade ring.

Well, the “Baltic Gibraltar” has fulfilled its task. He pinned down part of the Finnish army. Not a single large ship of the German fleet entered the Gulf of Finland.

So, evacuation. The ships of the Baltic Fleet squadron had already broken through to Hanko twice and taken part of the garrison to Kronstadt. More caravans were expected.

The enemy, of course, knew about this: the arrival of ships cannot be hidden. Anticipating a situation where only small final barriers would remain on Hanko that would need to be removed covertly, the base command resorted to cunning tactics. For many hours and even days the front line was silent: no shot, no smoke, no voice. It was as if everything had died out. Several times the Finns made forays and probed our defenses: maybe the Russians had really left the peninsula? And then the firing points came to life, once again pushing back the Finnish reconnaissance groups. The trick helped keep the enemy in tense ignorance.

On December 1, the last issue of “Red Gangut” was published. The day before, the editor assigned me to write an editorial - its title spoke for itself: “We’ll be back!” The front line, of course, was full of pathos, hatred, and threats. “Here, every stone, every granite cliff,” it said, “is covered in the glory of Russian weapons... Listen, enemies, wait to gloat: we will return! We will meet with you again! Let this thought burn you with a red-hot iron of horror! We are leaving on our own, undefeated, proudly bearing the glorious name of the Gangut people. We are leaving to beat the German fascist bastard, and we will beat them just as hard as we beat you, in Gangut style...”

(Here I would like to note that half a century later, in June 1991, I visited Hanko with a group of Gangut veterans at the invitation of Finnish veterans, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the battle. It was an exciting trip. Yes, we returned to Hanko - but, of course , not at all as that editorial “promised”. It was not a meeting of enemies, but of friends. And thank God!)

The Gulf of Finland, both shores of which were occupied by the enemy, was swarming with mines. “Soup with dumplings” is what the Baltic people called it. The image is not very funny, but it is accurate.

Part after part they left Gangut, leaving on ships. There were losses. But still there were significantly fewer of them than there could have been.

The farewell salute was a hurricane of fire from the Gangut batteries. Under the roar of cannonade, artillerymen blew up heavy guns that could not be transported to the mainland. The terrible work of destruction was also going on in the port: cars, locomotives, and carriages were dispersed and pushed into the water.

The last convoy left the Hanko roadstead on the evening of December 2. The peninsula is deserted. We left the “cold Finnish rocks” home - to Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, sandwiched by the blockade ring.

"Joseph Stalin" was the name of the turbo-electric ship that took on board the Gangut rearguard, more than 6 thousand soldiers, including our team - the editorial office and printing house of "Red Gangut" led by Boris Prorokov. The transport was filled to capacity, with the bulkheads creaking, filled with people and loaded with boxes and bags of food. Not only in the cabins, but also in the holds and corridors there is terrible cramped space. Yesterday's fighters, who had so unexpectedly turned into passengers, were buzzing and smoking shag everywhere.

At 21 o'clock the transport set off, took its place in the marching order, and soon the caravan of ships headed east. The log counted off the first of two hundred and thirty miles that separated us from Kronstadt.

Dudin and I spent a long time hanging out on the upper deck. The snow-covered shore of Gangut attracted the eye like a magnet. Here and there on the shore the wind shook crimson tongues of fire. Then the night swallowed Hanko. There was a pitch black darkness all around. No moon, no stars. The icy nor'easter hit my face with prickly snow pellets. The transport was moving heavily from side to side. Misha and I went down to the cabin.

Much has already been written about the tragedy that unfolded a few hours later on board the Joseph Stalin. In particular, in Dudin’s story “Where Ours Didn’t Disappear” and in my novel “It’s a Small World.”

Briefly: "Stalin" was blown up in a minefield. The first burst at two o'clock in the morning. The lights went out. It was unclear whether we were walking or standing. They gave an emergency light - dim, lifeless. It thundered a second time. Soon the third. The transport slowly tilted to the left side.

Time flowed away like sand from an hourglass. Everyone has scattered somewhere. Dudin and I stayed together all the time. There were many wounded in the holds. Misha and I carried them on a bloody stretcher to the wardroom, where the doctors set up an operating room.

The fourth explosion was especially strong and long-lasting. It resonated in my brain no longer with horror, but with dull fatigue. It was as if the ship's iron had groaned. I heard screams, moans, snatches of phrases burst into my shocked consciousness: “Stalin” lost speed... The ships of the convoy tried to take the transport in tow, but the last explosion broke the wound cable... They said that minesweepers were approaching the side and taking people off...

Dudin dragged me into our empty cabin, nodded at the rifles stacked in the corner, and said very clearly:

There are rifles, cartridges too... Come on... It’s better this way than feeding the fish.

The pockmarks on his face appeared black. I don't remember what I answered. I grabbed Misha by the hand and forcefully pulled him out of the cabin. It was as if his words spurred both of us on: we wedged ourselves into the crowd at the door leading to the spardek, and finally made our way out.

At the side of the "Stalin", although settled, but still high, a minesweeper danced on the storm waves. People jumped from the transport, people fell, and some ended up in the water, because the minesweeper was thrown back and then thrown back again, and it was not easy to calculate the jump. How long can you survive in the icy December water?

The minesweeper hit the side of the transport with a clang. Here is his narrow deck, crowded with people, just below us. Misha jumped, I saw how he was picked up by a minesweeper. Having climbed onto the bulwark, I also prepared to jump - but at the same moment the minesweeper was abruptly thrown back.

I also heard Misha shout:

Zhenya, jump! Jump-ay!

Standing on the bulwark and clutching the post with my hand, I hung over the raging water, as if over an abyss. I don’t remember how long I hung like that - a minute, an hour or an eternity. Some kind of memory loss...

Another minesweeper approached, people began to fall again, I jumped, and someone’s hands caught me.

Such jumps happen once in a lifetime.

The base minesweeper BTShch-217 was the last of the convoy ships to approach the Stalin. Dawn was beginning to break when the 217th rolled off and set off at full speed to catch up with the caravan that had gone ahead. There were still many, many people left on the slowly sinking transport. But, probably, nothing more could be done: the convoy ships, which had been circling around the transport all night, were filled to capacity with the rescued.

Damned mines of the Gulf of Finland... Their explosions on the night of December 2-3 changed the fate of many Gangut residents. More than 3 thousand fighters remained at “Stalin”. The ship, riddled with explosions, sank, but slowly: a system of watertight compartments kept it afloat. The drift carried the uncontrollable ship towards the southern coast.

They waited for December 3, they waited for the 4th - their ships would come, take them off the sinking transport, and not let them die. Did not come. On the morning of December 5, the Stalin ran aground near the Estonian coast. And then the ships came - German ones. All the Ganguts remaining on board the Stalin were captured.

Their fate was terrible. Those who survived - in the German camps, and then in their native "filtration camps" - never understood why they were not saved and abandoned to the mercy of an merciless fate.

Why didn’t the ships of the rescue team that were moored at the berths of Gogland, an island in the middle of the Gulf of Finland, come to the scene of the disaster? This question tormented me throughout the war and in the post-war years.

But this is a subject for another conversation.

We, the survivors, were incredibly lucky. On December 6, with the last caravan of ships that left the island of Gogland, we arrived in Kronstadt. On a cloudy day, our minesweeper moored in Srednyaya Harbor. We set foot on the snow-covered Kronstadt soil. The Gangut column reached the red corps of the Training Detachment.

A feeling indescribable in words possessed us - we had returned home from the ends of the earth!

City boys lined up at the side of the column.

Hello, guys! - someone barked.

In response we heard:

Guys, bread!.. Rusks...

The column became silent. We were ready to give everything to them, the hungry boys of Kronstadt. But we didn't even have a stale crust.

I peered at one of the teenagers, at his tight cheekbones, at his unchildish sad eyes under his pulled-down cap.

This is how the blockade looked at us for the first time.