Nikolay Vatutin. Front Grandmaster

From topwar.ru

Kiev City Council voted to rename General Vatutin Avenue. From now on, it will be Roman Shukhevych Avenue. Instead of the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, who liberated Kyiv from the Nazis, today's Kyiv salutes the commander of the so-called insurgent army.

In 1945, one could hardly imagine that the time would come when the people of Kiev would want to revise the results of the Great Patriotic War, turn the history of the 20th century on its head, and the winners would become “persona non grata” for them, and war criminals would become heroes. Not everyone in Ukraine agrees with the ideology of "crooked mirrors". However, today the ball is ruled by those for whom Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin is not a hero, the Red Army is not a liberator, and our common Soviet past is only an object of hatred ...

How did Vatutin differ from other generals of the Red Army of his generation? According to the roots, according to the initial biography, everything is standard. He is from the middle peasants, from the rural majority. The future front commander was born into a large peasant family in the village of Chepukhino (now Vatutino!) in the Belgorod Region. The main battles of the Civil War did without him. Vatutin was drafted into the Red Army in the spring of 1920, at the age of eighteen. He served in Lugansk and Kharkov, participated in the hostilities against the Makhnovists. He joined the party, continued his education at the Poltava Infantry School. He liked the army way of life, he decided to become a professional military man, a commander, and by 1937 he graduated, as expected, from two academies. He distinguished himself in 1939, when an operation was being developed to occupy Western Ukraine. That operation and modern Ukraine owes its western borders.

In February 1941, General Vatutin was appointed First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Georgy Zhukov. Further - as in the song:

Where are these guys beardless,

With whom in the forty-first year

Somewhere under Staraya Russa

We froze on ice.

With whom in the heat and in the cold

We walked stubbornly forward.

Our military youth is

the North-Western Front.

He became chief of staff of the Northwestern Front, which held back the advance of the Nazis in Pskov and Novgorod. These were the months of the most bitter lessons of the war. Vatutin developed a reputation as a competent and hard-working staff general. But in July 1942, he was unexpectedly appointed commander of the Voronezh, and then - the South-Western Front - and he did not disappoint. The Southwestern Front played an important role in the Stalingrad operation. A commander capable of commanding a front was seen in Vatutin by Alexander Vasilevsky.

Vatutin's talent as a commander was especially evident in the development of the Kursk strategic defensive operation. He developed a multi-level plan for deliberate defense - to bleed the enemy on pre-prepared defensive lines and at the same time prepare the conditions for a subsequent counteroffensive on Kharkov. This large-scale and risky task was successfully solved. As a result, the exhausted enemy could not withstand the counterattack of the Soviet armies. Since that time, the strategic initiative in the war has finally passed into the hands of the Red Army. And Vatutin is undoubtedly involved in this glorious turning point.

It so happened that the troops under the command of Vatutin on different fronts defeated the German armies several times, led by Field Marshal Erich Manstein. In a tense confrontation, Army Group South was unable to hold back the advance of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army. 

In the early morning of November 6, 1943, General Vatutin entered liberated Kyiv. The city lay in ruins, but Vatutin had no doubt: “We will rebuild!”. In Kyiv, the enemy was no longer in charge. But after that autumn, Vatutin's troops had to suffer defeats and retreat. Although the three offensive operations of Zhytomyr-Berdychiv, Rivne-Lutsk and the brilliant Korsun-Shevchenkovskaya (then Manstein managed to arrange Cannes!) created Vatutin's reputation as a "general from victory." His role in the liberation of Soviet Ukraine can hardly be overestimated.

And he was mortally wounded on “Kasyanov Day”, February 29, 1944, a leap year ... Smershevites overlooked the crazy attack of the sabotage hundred of the UPA. At the entrance to the village of Milyatin, Ostrozhsky district, Rivne region, the general’s car was fired at, Vatutin was seriously wounded in the leg. For the enemies, it was an unexpected stroke of luck, a happy coincidence. This happens in war.

The best surgeons led by the famous Nikolai Burdenko fought for Vatutin's life. He kept repeating: “I’ll be bored in a hospital bed for three weeks, and then I’ll come to the front. On crutches, but I'll get there! Penicillin did not help (contrary to the recollections of Nikita Khrushchev, it was still used), and amputation of the leg did not help either.

On April 15, 1944, Army General Vatutin died in a Kiev hospital. He was buried in the Ukrainian capital, in the Mariinsky park. Both Kyiv and Moscow paid their last respects to the commander with 24 artillery volleys. Already in January 1948, a majestic monument by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich stood over the general's grave. There is an inscription in Ukrainian on the pedestal. 

The people loved and revered Vatutin, because he honestly shared the fate of a soldier with millions of fallen soldiers. In addition, two of his brothers, Athanasius and Fedor, died at the front. Such an ordinary, heroic and woeful fate of a peasant family. But all of them not only died, but died for the Victory.

Even in his youth, he earned the respectful nickname of Psychologist. And after the capture of Kyiv, both enemies and comrades-in-arms called him the Grandmaster. Thoughtful, prone to analytical work, the general cannot be called otherwise. This inquisitive nugget became a real army thinker. Khrushchev in his memoirs recalled such a feature of Vatutin: “Almost a non-drinker!”. And also - not giving himself concessions, not knowing fatigue and mood swings.

Vasilevsky recalled his student as follows: “General Vatutin deservedly earned himself general recognition and popular love. His name - the name of an outstanding master of driving troops, an ardent patriot of the Fatherland, a communist, a favorite of soldiers - is forever associated with our victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, during the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kiev, in Right-Bank Ukraine.

Vatutin's legacy is the property of military academies and history textbooks. And the preservation of the memory of the hero is a matter of honor for posterity.

Author:

Arseny ZAMOSTYANOV