Stalingrad Civilians Were Not Counted

Sixty years after the battle of Stalingrad, which took the lives of half a million Soviet soldiers and about 150,000 German troops, historians still cannot say how many civilians died as the city was pounded to rubble during the 200 days of fighting. But it was tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

Some had stayed voluntarily to help defend their city. Others were discouraged or prevented from evacuating to escape the Nazi onslaught.

More than 400,000 civilians were in Stalingrad when the battle began on July 17, 1942, academician historian Alexander Samsonov said in his 1983 book "Stalingrad Battle."

By the time the battle was over on Feb. 2, 1943, only 10,000 to 60,000 remained, according to other Russian historical sources. In the six districts occupied by German troops, only 7,500 civilians survived, according the film "Undefeated," shown over the weekend by Rossia television.

Many civilians presumably were killed by the bombing and shelling, or succumbed to starvation and cold. But others were evacuated during the battle, sent to toil in Germany as slave laborers or managed to flee the besieged city on their own.

"We don't have any accurate data on the losses of the civilian population in Stalingrad," Colonel General Grigory Krivosheyev, military historian with the Center of Military History of Russia, said in an interview.

Anna Leontyeva, 84, who was among the survivors, said those in the city center who lived through the inferno of the massive bombardment that began Aug. 23 were not able to stay in their ruined homes.

More airstrikes followed, and the buildings that were still standing had soldiers fighting in them. In some, Russians were on the top floors and Germans in the basement, in others it was the other way around, she said by telephone from Volgograd.

Many people, mostly women and children, made rough dugouts in their courtyards and hid there.

Anastasia Ryapina, 90, said she did not manage to escape the city before the Germans attacked. She and her 1 1/2-year-old son lived in a house not far from the Barrikady plant, which produced heavy weaponry.

"In the fall, the city was constantly shelled and bombed," she said in an interview. "We made a dugout together with our neighbors in our courtyard and covered it with logs. Stalingrad was all on fire. After it rained, the smell of burning was overwhelming. The sirens [warning of airstrikes] howled almost nonstop. We could not sleep. Once I was so exhausted that I asked my sister to sit with my son and went home to sleep. I was prepared to die, so much did I long to sleep.

"We left only in October, when my husband's brother, who worked at Barrikady, was evacuated with his plant. We went with him some of the way -- across the Volga River," Ryapina said. "After that we had to make our own way. There was no evacuation organized for us."

Tamara Kuznetsova said as the Germans marched on Volgograd in the summer of 1942, she and many others wanted to stay in the city and volunteered to help build trenches and bunkers for the city's defenders.

"I was not a Komsomol member, but I still was brought up in patriotic surroundings, and we all loved our Motherland and did everything not to surrender our city to the Germans. I worked there too," she said. "We believed that our city would not give up."

Civilians dug 2,750 kilometers of trenches and tunnels and 1,850 kilometers of anti-tank trenches, according to historians. They built 6,500 bunkers and 3,300 dugouts for the troops. Four circles of trenches surrounded Stalingrad.

People slept in the trenches when they were building them. Only after the German bombardment began were they allowed to go home.

"We were allowed to leave Aug. 25 after we finished camouflaging firing positions for our army," Kuznetsova said. "We could not leave the city -- nothing was organized for us. But around Nov. 19 when the main [Soviet Army] offensive started, I heard that mothers with children were evacuated from the city. Old people and those without children were left in the city."

Kuznetsova stayed. She lived in the only district that remained clear of Germans -- Kirovsky -- and laundered clothes for Russian officers who lived in her house, and they fed her.

Others stayed in Stalingrad to keep the city's industries running. The Stalingrad Tractor Factory continued to turn out T-34 tanks literally until German troops burst into the plant.

The book "Battle for Stalingrad," issued late last year by the Institute of War History together with the Defense Ministry, confirms that the state wanted civilians to stay in Stalingrad.

"There was no talk about the evacuation of Stalingrad. More than that, in its appeal to Stalingraders, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party told people to "decisively put an end to the evacuation mood and make sure that industry works non-stop."

In his book, Samsonov quotes an official letter written by the first secretary of the Stalingrad Communist Party to the people's commissar of the River Fleet dated Aug. 5 saying what should be moved across the Volga to safety.

"All these pontoon bridges must be used only to move livestock, the property of the collective and state farms and the people who accompany them," the letter said. The state's priorities were clear.

Samsonov says the decision not to evacuate the civilian population was wrong. "It had a negative effect on the safety of the population of Stalingrad and the region, which without any harm to the defense could have been evacuated to the east well in advance," he wrote.

One veteran of the battle of Stalingrad, a Hero of the Soviet Union, said he understood the official reasoning.

"One of the reasons for that unofficial ban on the evacuation of the people from Stalingrad, was the fear to leave the city empty," he said on condition of anonymity.

"With the people inside, Russian soldiers had much more motivation and responsibility than if they were fighting for empty buildings."

Another veteran of Stalingrad, however, said it is not true that civilians were not evacuated.

"It is libel," Valentin Varennikov, a Hero of the Soviet Union and president of the Association of Heroes of Russia, said angrily at a news conference in Moscow last week.

"The people, especially children and women, were evacuated in July. And the remaining were taken out in September," he said.

Margarita Zolina from Vedomosti contributed to this report.