Neil Short. The Stalin and Molotov Lines. Soviet Western Defences 1928-41. Osprey Publishing Limited, 2008. Illustrated by Adam Hook.
The layout of the book is traditional for Osprey’s Fortress series. As usual, the design and printing are quite satisfactory.
The author has attempted to create a serious book. He put together a lot of diverse information, including archival sources. The source list contains the majority of the latest Russian publications, including Vladimir Kaminsky’s article in the first and unfortunately last issue of Redoubt, and articles from Fortress Russia, Issue 2. The acknowledgements note that Eugeny Khitriak, Ivan Volkov, and Valery Tadra have provided a lot of useful information and photos, along with the opportunity to visit many structures in Byelorussia, and the author also was very appreciative to Tomasz Idzikowski for the possibility to visit structures in Poland. The illustrations of the Kiev Fortified Region were provided by Andrey Kainaran, as noted in the captions. The author visited the Stalin Line Museum (part of the Minsk Fortified Region) and the Brest Fortified Region. Hence, he had a serious base for creating more than an average. Unfortunately, he did not take full advantage of this opportunity.
The biggest problem is that the general organizational concept of the book is fatally flawed. It combines the description of two absolutely different fortification systems, and it improperly subdivides the periods of the Soviet defensive construction. This construction ought to be subdivided into the First Period of Fortified Regions Construction (1927–1937), Second Period of Fortified Regions Construction (1938–1941), and WWII period (1941–1945), not into the “Stalin Line” (1927–1938) and “Molotov Line” (1939–1941). Such official subdivision of the First and Second Periods is documented in Soviet military records and seems obvious to anyone knowledgeable enough in the subject, because it reflects the change of general fortification conceptions, not political events.
The author notes that something changed in Soviet fortifications in 1938 (e.g., a dramatic increase in the proportion of artillery structures), but writes that general principles of defensive organization at the tactical level remained the same, except that battalion defensive regions were renamed centers of resistance. (More accurately translated battalion “knots of defense.”) He was unable to find serious differences between the knots of defense in the new fortified regions formed by compact strongholds with separate but close structures, convenient to each other, and the diffused battalion defensive regions in the fortified regions during the First Period of Construction that were only conventionally subdivided into company defensive domains. The author supports his misunderstanding of fortified region organization by his selection of illustrations: He provides a scheme of one part of any fortified region of the Second Period of Construction (probably a knot of defense composed of three strongholds) but does not provide the scheme of any battalion defensive region in an old fortified region for comparison.
The author missed a very significant point: the main organizational principles of the firing system were changed in 1938, and the proportion of flanking structures was dramatically increased in the new fortified regions. He did not see that, in contrast to the old fortified regions, the structures of the new fortified regions were built strictly from type designs. The necessary flexibility in the new fortified regions was provided by increasing the number of type designs.
Because of this main, central flaw, the author’s organization is wrong, mixing the description of individual defensive structures belonging to absolutely different periods of construction and fortification systems and creating a jumble. As result, it seems impossible to discern when a structure was designed, as occurred with the structure with T-26 tank turret.
Some problems with the book
The first shock was the map at the Page 7, which placed the Karelian Fortified region in the mouth of River Svir! I can easily understand the author’s reason: what is the article by Kaminsky in the Redoubt, with its very detailed map of the Karelian Fortified Region (including separate battalion defensive regions) clearly shown at the Karelian Isthmus between Gulf of Finland and Ladoga Lake, if Joe Kauffman has placed it in the mouth of Svir! It seems obvious that the author relied more on material in English than an article by Kaminsky in an unfamiliar alphabet – the horrific Cyrillic noted by the author in the introduction. But seriously, Chinese hieroglyphs cannot prevent a focused investigator from understanding the local geography. The positions of other fortified regions are also uncertain, especially in Lithuania (page 11). One colleague from Lithuania wrote about these maps: “The author and publishing company think that their readers are mentally retarded, and will be satisfied even by such map.”
Describing the events of the Great War, the author notes only that two Russian Fortresses, Warszawa and Brest were very quickly captured by Germans but this is correct only for Brest. The defensive line of Warszawa played a very significant role during the campaign of 1914. The author forgot to note the greatest Russian fortress, Novogeorgievsk (Modlin), as well as Kowno, Ivangorod (Deblin), etc. and the very successful defense of Osowiec Fortress that significantly influenced Russian and Soviet engineers. Nevertheless the author’s conclusion that the experience of the Civil War was more significant in the creation of the Soviet fortified regions than experience of the Great War seems to be correct and well elucidated. The author writes that significant part of the officers participating in the Great War were among the Whites or were killed and so could not pass their combat experience to the Red Army and the character of the combat operations at the East was different than in France and Belgium. However, the author did not explore farther conclusions about serious flaws in the first Soviet fortified regions caused by insufficient use of the experience of the Great War.
The separate parts of the book are not well correlated to each other, and the book appears to have been compiled hastily, with insufficient attention to accuracy. For example, on Page 13 the author presents an archival photo of a casemate machine gun mount PSK-2, from “Soviet Archives.” This reference on archival documents is incorrect and violates the copyright of the corresponding archives (Russian State Military Archive in Moscow). Such irresponsible behavior by one foreign investigator may prevent further work in this archive by other foreign authors. The author would not refer to the “US Archives” or “British Archives”; why do so for Russian archives?
The caption description is normal, but there is no information on this mount, specifically that it was a modernization of the old loophole knots P-31 and changed the PS-31 machine gun carriage in the fortified regions of the First Period of Construction and there is no any word in the text about this machine gun casemate mount. It is just a pretty picture from some “Soviet archives”!
The information about early variants of the classification of fortification structures of the First Period of Construction seems unnecessary for this book aimed at a popular audience. It seems more than enough to provide the 1931 classification. On Page 20, the commentary on a photo of the rear part of a machine gun bunker says that one of the two exits was closed with a steel gate but the other, narrower one was open to vent the blast if a charge was blown out AFTER the gate, i.e. inside the space after the gate! But for normal cranked protecting lobby (passageway) the author writes that the both exits were closed with steel gates and the space after the gates is a gas lock. It appears the author thinks that the cranked protecting lobby (passageway) is a gas proof lock! The question is, why vent the blast in the first case and not in other cases. Even on the three-dimensional pictures, the door apertures are closed not with heavy steel gates, but with grids, allowing the blast to dissipate without problems. Here, the author demonstrates his ignorance of the simplest military engineering questions.
The title of the chapter “Machine Gun Shelters” is unfortunate, because the subject is firing structures, not shelters for inactive armament or personnel. I do not wish to teach the author English, but before and after this chapter he describes the combat structures as “bunkers” and “casemates,” which seem more correct.
The author’s description of the history of machine gun casemate mounts should be the subject of special attention. He writes that initially a metal carriage by Yushyn was used, but it was too expensive and the carriage was redesigned by Kondakov (famous ordnance designer) but erroneously named the Yushyn carriage! Actually, only one Yushin carriage was used and was changed later to a less expensive wooden carriage. He then, correctly, writes about the wood carriage by Gornostalev but notes that there were three version of this carriage: P-31; P-31a, stationary version; and PS-31, movable version used in observation structures. This absurd version of the history of carriages seems very strange and mixes the names of armoured loophole flaps (P-31 and P-31a) with the name of carriage PS-31. This is very funny, because the author writes about armoured loophole flaps in the next paragraph. This indicates very poor editorial work, because an editor should have noticed this obvious error.
The color picture on Page 23 presents a gunner sitting at a machine gun on the PS-31 carriage, where the exhaust gas pipe is connected to the airproof GPP device box. (It seems unbelievable but it is so!) The author was in the Stalin Line Museum where he could have seen where the pipes were actually connected, but it apparently did not help him.
The author erroneously described the gas-proof system of the artillery structures armed with 76.2 mm casemate artillery mounts M1932. He writes that the gas-proof system functioned only at when the armoured loophole flaps were closed, but when the flaps were opened during combat, the system did not function. The cause of this error seems to be obviously: a mockup instead of a genuine gun having no shield in the Stalin Line Museum he visited. The foreign visitor did not understand that it is just a mockup having no shield-obturator and the locals did not explain it him. Not understanding that this was only a mockup of the gun, the author ignored the drawings of the real M1932 artillery mount in the books and journals cited in the sources. The author’s note that 76.2 mm L-17 artillery mount as an enlarged version of machine gun mount NPS-3 induces a little shock. The differences are very serious: the machine gun in the NPS-3 is placed after the loophole “apple” (ball mount) but the barrel of L-17 passed through the shield-mask but not an “apple” and its outer part is protected by an armoured tube. This indicates the extremely low technical competence of the author. The 45 mm /7.62 mm artillery-machine gun casemate mount has lost its designation, DOT-4, which seems strange because all other armament systems were named. The left loophole at the picture of the artillery flanking casemate on Page 26 is rotated in so as to make it non-functional.
A casemate for a 45 mm anti-tank gun on wheeled carriage was described correctly but when he noted that such structures were widely employed in the Molotov Line, the author forgot to note that they were used only at fore-post positions but not in strongholds of the knots of defense.
In the discussion concerning use of tank turrets in Soviet fortification the author writes that initially the bodies of T-18 tanks were used as firing posts but special structures were later built for T-26 tank turrets. In fact, the opposite was true: the structures with T-26 tank turrets were built in 1933 and later the bodies of obsolete T-18 tanks were used. The text does not explain when the structures with T-26 tank turrets were built.
The author uses the term “turret” both for rotating tank turrets and armoured cupolas. This may not be an error, but because the discussion concerning both types of structures is on the same page it would have been better to use the words cupola and turret.
The author erroneously named Comcor N.N. Petin as a general, but he was shot before the rank of general was introduced in the Red Army.
On Page 36, the author presents his own photo of an inverted machine gun bunker and comments on the details of the basement but says that he does not know what happened to the structure. It seems very strange that the author did not find out from his local guide that the excavation of sand under its walls and had caused the bunker to fall into this improvised quarry. Was he afraid to risk his authority with his colleagues by asking too many questions?
The author’s knowledge of Byelorussian geography is limited and he located the Zaslawl Machine Gun Bunker Museum in Borisov, which is after the Minsk Fortified Region and has no machine gun bunkers. He puts that the Stalin Line Museum in Zaslawl, but it is not there. The author noted the Luga and Mozhaisk Defense Lines but forgot to note that these are not the “Stalin Line” but defenses built during the war. The author also forgot to note the Karelian Fortified Region among the structures available for visits.
The list of sources needs to be corrected. For example, the article by N.V. Gavrilkin about artillery mount L-17 published in Cytadel No. 12 was somehow converted into an independent book published in Moscow.
The list of errors and imperfections may be continued but it seems unnecessary.
Nevertheless the book has several achievements.
The author quite satisfactorily describes the construction history of the Soviet boundary fortified regions and analyzes their proposed application on strategic, operational, and tactical levels (the last not quite adequately). It can be concluded that the author may write history well but cannot describe fortification structures. The combat in the fortified regions seems to be well described but the author forgot about the Karelian Fortified Region. There are petty imperfections in the history essay but none as fatal as in the technical part and the book will be useful for English-speaking readers as an introduction to the historical events related to the Soviet fortified regions. This is not surprisingly, because the author worked with very impressive set of Soviet literature and used the works of famous military historian Col. David Glantz, the most knowledgeable American specialist on Soviet military history.
The author provides an excellent advertisement for the Stalin Line Museum. This in itself is very helpful and the book may attract the attention of many people to Soviet fortifications despite the unsatisfactory nature of the technical portion of the book.
The basic cause of the errors seems to be that the author did not ask the necessary questions of his Byelorussian colleagues and did not provide the manuscript for review by any competent specialist. The same objection may be addressed to Osprey, who ought to organize independent review of manuscripts.
My general conclusion about the book is that the description of the fortifications is inadequate and seems to be a collection of anecdotes. However the book has some usefulness as a brief introduction into the history of Soviet defenses before WWII.
Concerning the colleagues who provided materials to Neil Short, delivering published sources to colleagues is honest and useful and cannot be a subject of discussion. However, delivering exclusive information from national archives to a foreign colleague who is not a specialist in the subject without clear and thoughtful conditions concerning the use of these documents seems undesirable. To my mind, the best condition for such collaboration may be co-authorship. The second element of collaboration is for the colleagues providing information to check the final manuscript before publication. If the colleague does not agree to such collaboration, assistance ought to be withdrawn, because providing exclusive information to a colleague having no corresponding experience may lead to creation of “information noise,” requiring significant time to correct the consequences of the publication of wrong information.
The general recommendation for those who would donate information is, let us write our own history by ourselves, even for foreign readers!
Vladimir Kalinin,
Vladivostok, Russia
December 12, 2008
The English text was corrected by Bolling Smith, USA
December, 24, 2008