The Panfilov Division's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen (), commonly referred to simply as Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen, Panfilov's Men (, Panfilovtsy), or just the Twenty-Eight, refers to a group of soldiers who defended Moscow against the Nazis in 1941, about whom the Soviet press invented a heroic story for the purpose of motivating the army. Internally debunked already in Soviet times, the heroic legend was kept alive by the regime by classifying the related documents. Declassified and made public in the Glasnost period, the legend was brought back in the time President Putin through a 2016 government-sponsored film launched in 2016.
The legend is based on a group of soldiers from the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division who took part in the 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow during World War II. According to an article published in the official Soviet army newspaper of the time, all were killed in action on 16 November 1941 after destroying 18 German tanks and stopping the enemy attack; the Twenty-Eight were collectively endowed with the title Hero of the Soviet Union. However, post-war investigation by Soviet authorities, carried out in 1948 and since declassified, revealed the story to be a fabrication. Neither German nor Soviet operational documents confirmed the claimed German casualties, and the Germans fulfilled their day's objectives well before the end of the day. After one of the supposedly dead men was arrested on suspicion of collaboration with the enemy and confessed to having "voluntarily" surrendered to German troops and to having later joined a German police force, it was discovered that not all twenty-eight were killed — six of the soldiers had survived and were still alive. Another one of the Guardsmen was arrested by the NKVD for allegedly "giving himself up to the enemy" and sent into a penal battalion. The findings were kept secret; the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen remained national heroes. In 1990 the files were declassified and the following year researchers published the truth. The myth returned in force in 2015, when a government-sponsored film project relaunched the fake narrative as historical truth, to great acclaim among the masses.
Fighting Background On 30 September 1941, the Wehrmacht began its offensive on Moscow. By mid-November, German units were only 100 kilometers away from the USSR's capital.
The Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, a formation that consisted mostly of recruits from the Kazakh and Kirghiz Soviet Republics, commanded by General Ivan Panfilov, was a part of Konstantin Rokossovsky's 16th Army (Western Front). The division engaged in heavy fighting in October 1941 west of Volokolamsk, restraining the German offensive on Moscow. The division suffered heavy casualties but showed high morale and good fighting qualities. General Zhukov, the commander of the Western front, recommended that the division be given a Guards Division title and the Order of the Red Banner for its performance in the battles of 20—27 October. At the end of October the 316th division was forced out of Volokolamsk and took up positions eastward of the town. Only two battalions remained in the 1075th Rifle Regiment after the fighting in October, the 2nd and the 3rd; the 1st battalion was annihilated. It was believed that the 4th company of the 2nd battalion was also destroyed, so it was formed again, but a few days later remnants of the company managed to get out of the encirclement. The new 4th company (about 100 men from the former 1st battalion) was merged with the old one (about 30 men). Captain Gundilovich remained its commander and Vasily Klochkov its politruk.
Battle of Dubosekovo
On the morning of 16 November, the 1075th Regiment's positions near the small Dubosekovo railroad station (crossing loop, literally raz'yezd)Village Dubosekovo is located 12 km to the south-west-west. 316th division had the heavy fighting in this area in October, before the loss of Volokolamsk. were attacked by units of the 2nd Panzer Division. The Germans formed three combat groups (Kampfgruppen) in the typical Panzerwaffe manner. Across the frozen earth, two of them maneuvered and attacked the weak positions on the left flank of the 1075th regiment. At 10 am (Moscow time) they already seized the villages of Petelino and Nelidovo and bypassed Dubosekovo station. No mentions were found in operational documents about heavy tank losses or an extremely stubborn resistance at this area. In the ensuing battle, the Kampfgruppen advanced further to the north, the 1075th Regiment was overwhelmed and forced to retreat from its positions. In later testimony, the 1075th's commander, Colonel Ilya Kaprov, said that his unit was engaged by German tanks and that the 4th Company of his 2nd Battalion, commanded by Captain Pavel Gundilovich, suffered over a hundred casualties in the fight against them and yet managed to destroy some tanks. Dubosekovo was occupied by the Germans until 20 December.
Glorification Krasnaya Zvezda articles On 24 November 1941, Vasily Koroteev, a war reporter for the Red Army's Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, traveled to the 16th Army headquarters to interview Rokossovsky. While in the command post, he met Commissar Sergei Egorov, the chief political officer of the 8th Guards Panfilov Division – the new name of the 316th Division, which was granted to honor the memory of its commanding general, who was killed in action on 18 November. Egorov told the reporter of a group of soldiers who, when faced by 54 German tanks, fought to the last and shot two from among their own who wished to surrender. The commissar added that he was not present at the event and heard of it from another political officer. He recommended that Koroteev write about it in the newspaper.
The article, entitled Panfilov's Guardsmen in the Battle for Moscow, was published in Krasnaya Zvezda on 27 November with the byline "West Front, 26 November. (By telegraph from our correspondent)". The report discussed the Panfilov Division's contribution to the fighting and mentioned that "A group of soldiers from the 5th company ... was attacked by a column of 54 enemy tanks, but they did not flinch", adding that a Commissar named Diev led the soldiers until all had been killed, but managed to keep the position in the face of the tank attack. Then their regiment came to the rescue and repulsed the attack of the German infantry regiment on "the Commissar Diev's position". Koroteev wrote that the enemy sustained eight hundred casualties and lost 18 tanks. Koroteev did not mention the date or place of the battle, or the exact size of the group.In fact, there was another reporter with Koroteev in the 16th Army headquarters, Chernyshev from Komsomolskaya Pravda. He filed an article with very similar details, published on 26 November, one day before Koroteev's one (with the byline "Western front, 25 November"). Chernyshev also mentioned political instructor Diev, 54 enemy tanks and similar details. However, this article attracted little attention.
On the following day, Krasnaya Zvezda ran an editorial on the front page by journalist Aleksander Krivitsky under the title "The Will of the 28 Fallen Heroes", dedicated solely to the heroic fight of Diev's group, which presented the same description of the events. Krivitsky added some historical reminiscences and the slogan "The Guard dies but does not surrender!" as a motivation for the soldiers. The exact time and place of the battle was still not named but the number of heroes was reported in this article. According to evidence from 1948, the editor of Krasnaya Zvezda, David Ortenberg, asked Koroteev how many soldiers took part in the clash. He arbitrarily replied that the company was incomplete and likely there were thirty men at all, including two traitors who wanted to surrender – thus reaching the number twenty-eight. Ortenberg decided that two would-be deserters were too many, reduced their number to one and passed this information to Krivitsky.
The Krivitsky mission
The first article got a positive response from Soviet leaders, including Stalin himself, but there was a need to identify the names of the fallen heroes. Krivitsky visited the 8th Guard Division and tried to find witnesses to the fighting. He found that nobody could identify "Commissar Diev", and Colonel Kaprov told him that he had never heard of the action of the "28 Guardsmen". In spite of this, on 22 January 1942 Krivitsky published another article in Krasnaya Zvezda, in which he changed "5th company" to "4th" and made commissar Vasily Klochkov the main hero. Krivitsky also stated that "Diev" was a nickname of Klochkov, though nicknames were never used in reports in the Red Army. Klochkov's last words in the article were: "Russia is a vast land, yet there is nowhere to retreat – Moscow is behind us!"
The second most important hero in the article was Sergeant Dobrobabin. The whole group was called "Sergeant Dobrobabin's unit" and he allegedly commanded the first clash with enemy infantry on his own. In fact, Dobrobabin commanded only one squad of the rifle platoon and there was a man with higher rank, staff sergeant Gavriil Mitin, among the "28 Guardsmen".
In an article dated January 22, Krivitsky for the first time indicated the exact time and place of action – November 16, at Dubosekovo station, on the left flank of the 1075th Regiment. Now Soviet historians were forced to look for traces of the feat there, while documents drew the opposite picture – the rapid advance of the Germans. In fact, the fighting in the following days became much harder for the 2nd Panzer Division, and on November 18 they remained 25 kilometers from the target set for that day. According to the article, the Guardsmen killed 70 enemy "submachine gunners" and destroyed 18 tanks using their anti-tank rifles, grenades and Molotov cocktails. The article claimed that the last survivor from the group, soldier Ivan Natarov, described their exploits shortly before dying of his wounds in a field hospital. The names of the dead were listed in addition. The names were not known reliably: either these names were told to Krivitsky by the commander of the 4th company, Gundilovich, as he remembered them or were taken from some lists of killed and missed in action around the date of 16 November. Captain Gundilovich was killed in action in April 1942, so he could not comment on the testimony of Krivitsky, Kuzhebergenov, Dobrobabin, and others. During the winter, only three bodies were found near Dubosekovo station, and only three more were discovered after the snow melted.
The story of the Twenty-Eight gained wide publicity. In March 1942, Nikolai Tikhonov wrote a poem entitled "A Verse to the Twenty Eight Guardsmen". Other authors followed suit and several literary works dealing with the battle at Dubosekovo were published. Consequently, the Guardsmen became celebrated heroes throughout the Soviet Union.Jörg Echternkamp, Stefan Martens. Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe. Berghahn Books (2010). . pp. 99–101.
"Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen" in the Soviet era Kuzhebergenov's arrest