Impregnable city

46


9 May 2014, we celebrated not only the next, sixty-ninth anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, but also the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Sevastopol. 9 May 1944, exactly one year before the Victory, the legendary city was finally cleared of the Nazis.

It is noteworthy that many significant dates for Sevastopol end with the number four. 1854 year. Crimean War. Anglo-French troops landed on a peninsula near Evpatoria. Sevastopol, which had not been defended for more than a week, lasted almost a year, from October 1854 to September 1855.

Hold on despite death fleet, the technical superiority of the enemy, the total incompetence and corruption of the rear services of Tsarist Russia. In these months, the naval ingenuity and courage of the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet was fully manifested. And when the enemy finally occupied the city, which had been completely destroyed, he was so exhausted that there was no question of going deep into Russia. Thanks to the heroism of the sailors and soldiers of Sevastopol, Russia's losses from defeat in the war were minimized, and Crimea was ultimately returned to it by the Allies. Unfortunately, no proper conclusions were made in the Russian Empire, and the same thing repeated half a century later in Port Arthur ...

In the years of the first defense of Sevastopol, the names of the brilliant admiral Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov, engineer Edward Totlebin, outstanding surgeon and innovator Nikolai Pirogov, the first Russian sister of mercy Darya Mikhailova (Sevastopol), became known. The legendary sailor Peter the Cat many times made forays into enemy positions and got and brought into the city six enemy "tongues" and was twice presented to the award. The beginning writer Leo Tolstoy was also a direct participant in the events.

During the years of revolution and civil war, Crimea more than ten passed from hand to hand. In Sevastopol, about ten times the government changed, it was under occupation of Kaiser Germany, then the Entente, until the power of the Bolsheviks was finally established over it.

On the eve of World War II, the Black Sea Fleet was the second most powerful after the Baltic. It consisted of a battleship, five cruisers, eleven destroyers.

On the night of June 22, 1941, the planes of Nazi Germany approached Sevastopol from the sea. Their goal was to bomb the ships and mine in the fairway. It was on the city that one of the mines dropped on a parachute fell, which claimed the lives of the first Soviet citizens - the twelve-year-old girl Lena Sokolova, her mother Barbara Sokolova and grandmother Alexandra Belova. That is how the Great Patriotic War began for us. It happened even before the guns crashed and roared across the western border of the Soviet Union, ripping up the sky, the Junkers engines. Before at least one Soviet soldier died.

Black Sea Fleet and Navy aviation they met the enemy with dignity, showing him what war with the Russians was. The first German aircraft was shot down in the morning of June 22 just under Sevastopol, and then Soviet aircraft bombed the oil fields of Romania, an ally of the Third Reich, from Crimean airfields.

Then, from October 1941 to July 1942, the months-long, bloody defense of Sevastopol ended with its occupation. In those days, German propaganda called the city "the most impregnable fortress in the world." The second defense of Sevastopol was an even more impressive example of mass heroism than the first. True, the names of most of the characters, we will never know.

Only in May 1944, finally, did the liberation of the city and the whole peninsula from the Nazi invaders take place. In those days, Sevastopol resembled a picture of the apocalypse: black ruins on land and parts of submerged ships and ships sticking out of the water.

In 1948, rebuilt Sevastopol became a separate administrative unit within the RSFSR from the Crimea. In 1954, on the personal initiative of N. S. Khrushchev, the Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. And although the decision was more than controversial, at that time no one dared to object to the dear Nikita Sergeyevich ...

It is noteworthy that the transfer of the Crimea from Russia to Ukraine took place in violation of the then effective legislation. In addition, according to Sevastopol, which, as we remember, was a separate administrative unit, there were no transfer documents at all. That is, formally, he remained in the RSFSR. Nevertheless, contrary to all laws and common sense, the main base of the Black Sea Fleet was in the Ukrainian SSR.

Did not return the Crimea to the RSFSR and subsequent general secretaries. Of course, within the framework of a single country, this was merely a convention, but everything changed when state borders were erected in place of purely conditional administrative borders.

1991 year. With the division of the USSR, Crimea and Sevastopol find themselves on the territory of independent Ukraine. The Supreme Council of the already sovereign RSFSR was going on quite legitimate reasons to demand back if not all of Crimea, then at least Sevastopol. But the overthrow of the Supreme Council put an end to these plans. Russia actually came to terms with the loss of Sevastopol and agreed to pay rent to Ukraine for basing the fleet there.

Twenty three long years Sevastopol remained the most Russian city outside of Russia. Until 2014 year. The leaders of the Ukrainian state and nationalists all the years sabotaged the activities of the Black Sea Fleet and never hid their dream of finally squeezing it out of Sevastopol and introducing NATO ships there. But all bad things come to an end. For the legendary hero city, it ended the eighteenth of March two thousand and fourteenth year. Therefore, it is particularly noteworthy that the new liberation took place on the eve of the anniversary of the liberation of the previous one. Over one story - and began another.
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  1. +17
    12 May 2014 13: 35
    Before the gala concert, Putin's speech was interrupted by applause from the crowd and shouts of "THANKS".
    The tears in the eyes of the GDP were from the wind or ...?
    1. +4
      12 May 2014 13: 37
      Tears in the eyes and GDP were from the wind or ...?

      I think with joy and pride in Russia!
    2. Validator
      +32
      12 May 2014 13: 38
      There were people in our time! The 77-year-old veteran tore everyone in the contest, press the Victory !!!
    3. +10
      12 May 2014 13: 55
      Quote: The Officer's Wife
      The tears in the eyes of the GDP were from the wind or ...?

      By the way, the wind of happiness dampened the eyes of many Crimeans. And my thanks to them for their loyalty and steadfast love for the motherland.
    4. +10
      12 May 2014 14: 00
      From the wind ... from the wind of change ... wink
    5. +9
      12 May 2014 14: 50
      Children sing about Crimea wink

    6. +5
      12 May 2014 15: 10
      For which the Americans cannot stand Putin. Crimea in Russia and Mariupol in Ukraine on MAY 9, 2014. Feel the difference. They bastards broke when we feel good.
      1. +4
        12 May 2014 15: 39
        ... here at the TV "tears welling up !!!!
        good are tears ....
        I think - how much Russia could manage and succeed if it were not for decades of drift !!!
  2. +9
    12 May 2014 13: 36
    Hurray to SEVASTOPOL AND CRIMEA !!!!. DONBAS AND LUHANSK WAITING FOR YOU WITH PATIENCE AND RESPECT !!
  3. +3
    12 May 2014 13: 36
    never hid their dream to finally squeeze it out of Sevastopol and bring NATO ships there


    But bite it !!! tongue
  4. +6
    12 May 2014 13: 38
    Sevastopol is the city of Glory, if anyone forgot .... we can remind you!
  5. +6
    12 May 2014 13: 38
    Sevastopol, my childhood love, which I carried through the years.
    Awesome city of awesome people.
  6. Alex 241
    +37
    12 May 2014 13: 39
    French letter on the defense of Sevastopol

    A letter from a French soldier from Crimea addressed to Paris to a certain Maurice, a friend of the author:

    “Our major says that by all the rules of military science, it is high time for them (Russians. - Yu. D.) to surrender. For each of their guns - we have five guns, for each soldier - ten. And you should have seen their guns! Probably, our grandfathers who stormed the Bastille, and that was the best weapon. They have no shells. Every morning, their women and children go out into the open field between the fortifications and collect the kernels in bags. We are starting to shoot. Yes! We shoot women and children. Do not be surprised. But the kernels they collect are for us! But they do not leave. Women spit in our direction, and the boys show languages.

    They have nothing to eat. We see how they divide small pieces of bread into five. And where do they get the strength to fight from? They respond to each of our attacks with a counterattack and force us to retreat for the fortifications. Do not laugh, Maurice, at our soldiers. We are not cowardly, but when a Russian bayonet holds a tree, I would advise him to leave the road. I, dear Maurice, sometimes stop believing in a major. It begins to seem to me that the war will never end. Yesterday, before the evening, we attacked for the fourth time this day and retreated for the fourth time. The Russian sailors (I wrote to you that they got off the ships and now defend the bastions) chased after us. A stocky fellow with a black mustache and an earring in one ear ran ahead. He knocked down two of ours - one with a bayonet, the other with a butt - and was already aiming at the third, when a pretty shot of shrapnel hit him right in the face. The sailor’s hand flew off, blood spattered a fountain. In haste, he ran a few more steps and fell to the ground near our rampart. We dragged him to us, somehow bandaged the wounds and put him in the dugout. He was still breathing: “If he doesn’t die before morning, we will send him to the infirmary,” the corporal said. “And now it's late.” Why bother with him? ”

    At night, I suddenly woke up as if someone had pushed me to the side. It was completely dark in the dugout, even though the eye was poked out. I lay for a long time, without tossing and turning, and could not sleep at all. Suddenly there was a rustle in the corner. I lit a match. And what would you think? The wounded Russian sailor crawled to the keg of gunpowder. In his only hand he held a tinder and a flint. White as a canvas, with gritted teeth, he strained the rest of his strength, trying to carve a spark with one hand. A little more, and all of us, together with him, with the whole dugout would fly into the air. I jumped to the floor, pulled out a flint from his hand and screamed not in my voice. Why did I scream? The danger has passed. Believe me, Maurice, for the first time during the war I was scared. If the wounded, bleeding sailor, whose arm was torn off, does not give up, but is trying to blow himself and the enemy into the air, then the war must be stopped. It’s hopeless to fight such people. ”
    1. +16
      12 May 2014 14: 28
      “And they ask a Russian soldier why you don’t cling to life in war. The answer discouraged everyone. When the enemy tramples your land, burns your houses and kills your loved ones, life becomes for us just a tool, a weapon, like a rifle, for example, serving only in order to use this tool to kill as many enemies as possible. And protects her soldier as a weapon, just simply. And if the situation requires, he sacrifices it. And there is no talk of any life for the sake of life in the war of liberation. Hope can be only if the aggressor is ready for the same. But there are very few such examples in history, and they do not belong to the current aggressors. "
      This was a veteran who told me about 8-9 years ago.
      1. Alex 241
        +3
        12 May 2014 14: 55
        Quote: Mareman Vasilich
        When the enemy tramples your land, burns houses and kills your near and dear ones, life becomes for us just a tool, a weapon

        And still, every time they try on weakly, what if it works out!
    2. +5
      12 May 2014 14: 51
      5 points! Excellent photos, and the letter is so beyond praise. When enemies write this! in our hearts pride grows and grows stronger for our ancestors, for those who defended and fought back from the adversary the city of Russian military glory - Sevastopol.
  7. jjj
    +7
    12 May 2014 13: 39
    The first channel showed a film about the defense of Sevastopol in World War II. They concluded that the city was taken by the Germans solely due to the fact that the defenders ran out of ammunition. The Germans managed to sink a large part of the transport fleet, delivering ammunition. Warships could not provide transportation. And the most curious thing is that the Germans were running out of power. But they managed to get the reserves taken from the northern theaters. This helped to defend Leningrad and Moscow, delayed the attack on the Caucasus and Stalingrad
    1. koshh
      0
      12 May 2014 17: 11
      "THE LEGENDARY SEVASTOPOL IS THE PRIDE OF RUSSIAN SEAFARERS ..."
    2. 0
      12 May 2014 18: 38
      Quote: jjj
      The Germans managed to sink a large part of the transport fleet, delivering ammunition

      I read one book, like "The Fleet That Destroyed Khrushchev" it says that initially there was a lot of ammunition, but some clever guy decided to take them out in the days of the first defense, and they took them out ... and then they began to bring them back ...
  8. +11
    12 May 2014 13: 40
    The Crimea was not returned - he himself came home. Corrected the error of Khrushchev, and all subsequent ones.
  9. +3
    12 May 2014 13: 50
    Crimea, genetically ours !!!, and its glory was made by us ...
  10. +7
    12 May 2014 13: 58
    Thank God it came true. Sevastopol is ours!
  11. -14
    12 May 2014 14: 05
    I read about the defense of Sevastopol, passed it on the orders of Stalin. They blew up all the underground communications that had been building for decades. The city could hold defense for a long time. Apparently someone did not have the courage or inaccurate information came from the situation.
    Tula was also ordered to surrender, but the Tula did not surrender their city, there was no longer an army, no factories. But Tula is certainly not Sevastopol, much closer to Moscow.
    By the way, they were almost shot before the regional committee of Zhavoronkov for not fulfilling the order of Stalin.
    1. +6
      12 May 2014 14: 12
      I don’t know what you read there. I doubt that Stalin gave city orders to take
      1. 0
        12 May 2014 14: 16
        I have known about Tula since childhood, from school.
        1. +1
          12 May 2014 15: 32
          Any evacuation or retreat was carried out only by order. Without an order, the troops did not retreat under pain of execution. And there was an evacuation from Sevastopol, so there WAS an order to leave the city!
          On July 4, 1942, the Sovinformburo reported on the pages of the newspaper Pravda that on the orders of the Supreme Command of the Red Army on July 3, 1942, Soviet troops left the city of Sevastopol.

          http://www.bigyalta.com.ua/node/3245
  12. +2
    12 May 2014 14: 07
    The error of the past is corrected, Sevastopol and Crimea again became Russian. And no force can take them from us. All our enemies should remember this.
    1. koshh
      0
      12 May 2014 17: 16
      [quote = Giant of thought] Sevastopol and Crimea became Russian again [/ quote

      Stalin’s order to start the operation to liberate the Crimea was signed on April 16, 1944, exactly 70 years before the Crimean referendum, and this is very significant.
  13. +8
    12 May 2014 14: 18
    A week after the referendum in Crimea, I called my mother, the first words: "Hello, daughter, here we are at home, in Russia." And the son after the referendum (lives in Sevastopol) sent a text message: "Everything is calm in Russia." Reading ukroSMI, comments on ukrosaytah, I admire the courage and resilience of the Crimean people, they endured all this for 23 years and did not give up.
  14. +4
    12 May 2014 14: 26
    But Little Russia and New Russia do not want to go home? good
    1. +1
      12 May 2014 16: 18
      Quote: VNP1958PVN
      But Little Russia and New Russia do not want to go home?

      They are waiting for MOMMA to drive home! feel
  15. +6
    12 May 2014 14: 53
    A. Merkel: We are very unhappy with the parade in the Crimea.
    Vladimir Putin: Well, what do you want in Berlin again?
  16. +6
    12 May 2014 15: 03
    The GUARANTEE

    For the hundredth day grenades crash
    In Malakhov, a bloodied mound,
    And the ginger British soldiers
    They go on an assault under a hoarse drum.

    No letters, no news, no matter how you ask them,
    They forgot there, over the seven seas,
    What is here, at the very tip of Russia,
    The lieutenant lives with a company of huntsmen ...

    The lieutenant, squinting against the light for a long time,
    Looked south at sea, where in the distance -
    Will there really be a relay race? -
    Shipped in the fog ships.

    He took the pipe. Swell, then green,
    That white from excitement, here,
    Built by a wake column,
    Went to shore British ships.

    Why did they come from Albion?
    What do they need? There came a distant thunder
    And the waves at the foot of the bastion
    Boiled, burned by the core.

    Half a day they fired at random.
    Threatening the whole city to turn into a fire
    Holding in my pocket the demand for change
    The delegate ascended the bastion.

    The lieutenant in his limp seeing
    Danger to the dignity of the country,
    Arrogantly accepted the British, sitting
    On a bench by the fortress wall.

    What to protect? Rusted guns
    Two streets in puddles, then in dust
    Oblique garrison huts
    A scrap of land that nobody needs?

    But still, after all, something is there,
    What a pity to give the Briton from the ship?
    He rubbed a handful of earth with his hand:
    Forgotten, but still land.

    Leaky, weathered flags
    Noise above the roofs among the branches ...
    - No, I will not sign your paper,
    So tell your Victoria!

    .................................................
    1. dmb
      0
      12 May 2014 15: 20
      You would then bring the poem to the end.
    2. +3
      12 May 2014 15: 39
      you won’t throw words out of a song, yet it was not written about Sevastopol:

      ... And the fortress of Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka
      Immersed in the usual peaceful sleep
      The white-haired lieutenant pulling on gloves
      In the morning he goes around the local garrison ...

      (K.M.Simonov)
      1. bilibom
        0
        12 May 2014 22: 14
        Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka are two borders of one country.
        Two lines of RUSSIA!
  17. +1
    12 May 2014 15: 16
    Sevastopol was once again confirmed by RUSSIAN and no one else, this is OUR PEARL!
    Salava to the heroes! Heroes are not proud of them even in tagging.
  18. sanek0207
    +1
    12 May 2014 15: 18
    GLORY TO SEVASTOPOL CITY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT AND MILITARY GLORY !!!
  19. arch_kate3
    +1
    12 May 2014 15: 21
    Glory to the heroes-liberators of Sevastopol!
  20. +1
    12 May 2014 15: 31
    Glory to Sevastopol and its heroes! good
  21. +3
    12 May 2014 16: 08
    The longest defense of Sevastopol lasted 21 year
    Forgive us Crimeans
    For the stupidity of our former rulers
    1. +1
      12 May 2014 18: 48
      Forgive us Crimeans

      The Crimeans did not separate "themselves" from "us". This is their (and ours!) Main Victory. And we all celebrated it on May 9, along with the Victory of 1945 and the Liberation of 1944.

      I was there ... It's hard to compare - I didn't see the jubilation of 1945, or even 1961, when Gagarin flew. But there was something incredible: hundreds of thousands of people united by common joy, common pride and common feeling. We won! Then, now and always! We congratulated each other, fraternized, shouted in chorus "Glory to Russia", "Glory to Crimea", "Glory to Sevastopol". I have never seen such unanimity of such a huge number of people gathered in one place before. And I will never forget.
      I am happy that the Almighty allowed me to be with my people at such a historic moment!
  22. +4
    12 May 2014 16: 15
    "And if it seems to you that the Russians are retreating, you can be sure they just retreated for the bullets."
  23. 0
    12 May 2014 16: 52
    And for the verses, though not about Sevastopol, a separate THANKS !!!
  24. 0
    12 May 2014 17: 04
    A joyful event in the life of Russia, Crimea is with us and this is FOREVER !!! My grandfather liberated the Crimea from the Nazis, forced the Sivash, took Sapun Gora, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree.
  25. +1
    12 May 2014 17: 10
    And I kept thinking, and what is it all the time since the fall I come across Gorodnitsky's song everywhere ... Well, that one, "Sevastopol will remain Russian" ... Nothing happens just like that))) And it's great!
  26. 0
    12 May 2014 17: 27
    Poems for the soul take ...
  27. 0
    12 May 2014 17: 41
    This is my land and I am proud to be her son !!!
  28. 0
    12 May 2014 18: 04
    Sevastopol was, is and will be a Russian city of glory now and forever.

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