Page 211 - The Chief Culprit

172 y e Chief Culprit

the Trans-Baikal region. ose field strongholds are still in use today, in the twenty-first century.
In 1990, the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda described one of the active military
buildings: “ is is mono-concrete. Solid cast. e depth of the walls is up to one and a half me-
ters. For half a century, they have been there, but even today not a single shell could take them.
. . . Roofs of casemates have a low-profile. Ammunition. Command. Diesel engines. Batteries.
Filters. An automatic heating system. . . . In this shell, filled with instruments and arms, one
feels as if [one is] in a giant buried tank or a submarine hidden underground.” 1
Each FR consisted of “pillboxes,” each equipped with its own defenses and each capable
of independently defending itself if fully encircled by the enemy, diverting to itself significant
enemy forces and attention. e main fighting unit of the fortified region was the LFP—long-
duration firing point. Krasnaya Zvezda described one of the standard LFPs from the Stalin
Line, the LFP #112 of the Mogilyov-Podolsk FR, as follows: “ is was a complicated fortified
underground structure, consisting of communication passages, caponiers, and compartments.
In there, one could find arms, ammunition, foodstuffs, a mess hall, running water (by the
way, still in working condition), a ‘red corner,’ [and] observation and command posts. e
2
LFPs are armed with a machine-gun post of three embrasures in which, on stationary rollers,
were three ‘Maxim’ machine guns and two half-canopies with 76-mm cannon in each.” Such
3
an LFP can be considered average. ere were also thousands of small, armed constructions
with one or two machine guns, as well as giant fortified ensembles.
Major General P. G. Grigorenko, a participant in the construction of the Stalin Line, de-
scribed in his memoirs one of the field strongholds built in the similar Mogilyov-Podolsk FR: “Nine
firing points, connected by underground passageways, were on the high shores of the Dnestr and
kept the river and the opposite shore under dense gun and machine-gun fire.” Another partici-
4
pant in the construction of the Stalin Line, Colonel R. G. Umanskyi, wrote of multi-kilometer
underground structures in the Kiev fortified region. Yet another participant, Colonel General
5
A. I. Shebunin, said that many concrete defensive structures in the Proskurov fortified region
were protected by artificial water barriers. In this FR was raised “a mighty line of defense,
which counted more than a thousand various military field strongholds. Many objects were so
thoroughly masked that even from close up it was difficult to guess their real designation.” 6
Construction of the Stalin Line was not publicized like the construction of the French
Maginot Line. e Stalin Line was built in secrecy. During the construction of each field
stronghold, NKVD units put cordons around several areas. e construction went on simul-
taneously in all areas, but it was the real thing only in one—the rest were decoys. Not only the
local population but also the construction workers had a very vague understanding of what
was being built and where.
ere were many differences between the Soviet Stalin Line and the French Maginot
Line. e Stalin Line could not be bypassed: its flanks went right to the Baltic Sea in the
north and the Black Sea in the south. e Stalin Line was built not only to stop infantry, but
mostly to stop tanks. e Stalin Line was much deeper. Aside from concrete, the Soviets also
used huge quantities of steel, and granite boulders.
Unlike the Maginot Line, the Stalin Line wasn’t built at the very border, but deeper
into Soviet territory. A line of fortified regions in the depth of the country means that the
first enemy artillery strike will be carried out against an empty space rather than the defend-
ing army. erefore, during a surprise attack, defending garrisons have a minimum of several
days to take their places in the casemates and prepare their arms and defense. If the fortified