The effect of "memory aberration" in M.T. Kalashnikov's memoirs about the Great Patriotic War.

The designer of small arms Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov and his inventions have become a kind of "cultural brand" of Russia and a world cultural phenomenon. They have long and clearly gone beyond the boundaries of the narrow phenomenon of military-technical history ^{[4, 8, 9, 13, 15, 29]}.

The success story of M.T. Kalashnikov, "the sergeant who armed half the planet", attracts public attention not only in Russia, but also abroad ^[31].  However, we note that the life path of the great designer is interesting not only in itself, but also because it is a certain "anthropological slice" of the life of our country in one of the most dramatic and important periods of its history – the middle of the XX century. At the same time, scientific, in the strict sense of this concept, the biography of M. T. Kalashnikov has not been written at the moment. Mikhail Timofeevich himself left many memories of his life, which continue to be the main source of information about his biography in wide public circles. In fairness, it is worth noting that the work within the framework of the scientific study of the designer's biography is gradually being carried out, which is facilitated by the publication of documents and their study in the last decade. However, this process is only in its initial stage.

One of the most important facts of M. T. Kalashnikov's biography is his participation in the Great Patriotic War. It is widely known that the future designer served as the commander of the T-34 tank with the rank of senior sergeant. It also follows from his memoirs that in one of the battles in 1941 in the Bryansk Front, he was seriously wounded, after which he never returned to the front, starting a career as a designer-gunsmith. M. T. Kalashnikov himself often stressed that participation in the war had a decisive impact on him and pushed him to become a developer of small arms ^{[12, p. 379]}.

First of all, let's consider the memoirs of M. T. Kalashnikov. The designer himself, and in some cases co-authored 5 books of memoirs, not counting reprints. The most important ones can be considered the very first, "Notes of a designer – gunsmith", published back in 1992 ^[11], as well as "Trajectory of Fate" ^[12], first published in 2004. All the others, in fact, are variants of these works, differing only in the style of editing.

Actually, the memories of participation in the war in the "Notes of the designer – gunsmith" are divided into two fragments. The first one is like a prologue to the whole book. Briefly, it can be retold as follows: M. T. Kalashnikov, together with the crew of the tank, is in a dugout near the forest, it is raining in autumn, shells are periodically exploding nearby. The driver-mechanic transmits the order of the platoon commander to appear to the latter. M. T. Kalashnikov is distracted by remembering the identity of the driver-mechanic: "I thought: where did the strength come from in this skinny Vologda boy. Together with the entire crew, he fell asleep like a dead man when they returned from a mission in the morning, but he managed to get up before everyone else and already brought the tank into proper shape" ^{[11, p. 4]}. M. T. Kalashnikov goes to the platoon commander and receives an order to be ready to act in an hour to support infantry in battle ^{[11, p. 4]}. 5].

Further, having outlined his biography before 1941, M. T. Kalashnikov proceeds to the second and main of the two fragments of memories of the battles. We will conditionally divide it into two parts. The first is a description of the fighting itself as part of a tank unit. The second is a story about getting out of the environment. On June 22, Sergeant M. T. Kalashnikov was in Leningrad, where the tank engine life meter developed by him was being refined. Due to the outbreak of war, he had to return to the 12th Tank Division (hereinafter - td), in which he had previously served. However, in fact, there was nowhere to go: "... leaving by train to the south with the hope of getting to my unit. Just how to do it? According to the Sovinformburo reports, it was already known that the city of Stryi in Western Ukraine, where the unit was stationed, was abandoned by our troops" ^{[11, p. 12]}. Nevertheless, he set off on a journey that led him a couple of weeks later to one of the stations near Kharkov.

The designer pointed out that it was largely by chance that in July 1941 he found his colleagues at one of the stations in the Kharkov area. Judging by the description, they were returning from the Urals, where they were sent to receive new tanks, T-34: "It turned out that the mechanics-drivers of the unit left for the Urals shortly before the war to receive new equipment" ^{[11, p. 13]}. However, by that time, 12 td in the fighting in western Ukraine was almost completely destroyed and disbanded on August 15. Thus, the author himself and his comrades were poured into a new part, the name of which he did not give: "During the formation of crews, I was appointed a tank commander, by order of the part I was awarded the rank of senior sergeant. A new page was beginning in my biography — the frontline" ^{[11, from 13]}. Then the designer goes directly to the description of the fighting.

His story about the battles takes 2 pages and is characterized by an abundance of general descriptions, does not contain any specific indications of the numbers of units, the names of commanders, geographical points (except for the indication of "distant approaches to Bryansk"), it does not maintain a logical sequence of events, etc. Here are a few quotes that are important from the point of view of chronology:

"It's hard to remember every combat episode now… Our battalion fought sometimes it is not even clear where: either behind enemy lines, or on the front line. Endless marches, flank strikes, short but fierce attacks, exits to their own. They threw us mainly where the infantry had a hard time...

It was in September 1941, still on the distant approaches to Bryansk. The company came to the edge of the forest. The ground is streaked with caterpillar scars. These traces were left by us tankers in the morning, participating in a counterattack.

... One day in September, we received an order to occupy the starting line in a dense grove, disguise ourselves well and be ready for a counterattack...

I didn't have a chance to participate in military operations for long. At the beginning of October 1941, near Bryansk, I was seriously wounded. It happened in one of the many counterattacks when our company, entering the flank of the Germans, ran into an artillery battery ..." ^{[11, p. 13-14]}.

The details of the second part, the story about getting out of the environment, are not of great importance for this work. However, we note that it is much more extensive than the descriptions of the battles and takes up more than five pages. If in the previous part M. T. Kalashnikov wanted, apparently, to describe a certain general image of front-line everyday life, then in this case he tried to compose a quite intelligible event story. It is much more specific, the events in it are mostly arranged in a logical sequence. What is important, the chronology of this part of the story is also much more specific, at the beginning the author directly points to the time interval: "We left the territory occupied by the Fascist occupiers for seven days" ^{[11, p. 15]}.

It is also necessary to mention another story – a stay in the hospital. M. T. Kalashnikov notes: "In the hospital, I kind of relived everything that happened during the months of participation in the battles..." ^{[11, p. 18]}.

In a much later book, Trajectories of Fate, the memories of the war were corrected. First of all, the sketch about being in the dugout and receiving an order from the platoon commander was completely removed. The rest of the text more or less corresponds to the "Notes ...". There are only two significant differences.

M. T. Kalashnikov added the following episode: "I remember one day our lieutenant ordered me to climb a tall tree and try to examine enemy positions. Having climbed to a sufficient height, I saw that the Germans were very close. So close that I could not remain unnoticed by them – they immediately started firing at me. Bullets whistled next to me, cutting off tree branches and showering foliage" ^{[12, p. 88]}.

In "Notes ...", talking about the moment of injury, he reports one hit in the tank, as a result of which he immediately lost consciousness:

"The tank of the company commander caught fire first. Then suddenly a booming echo hit my ears, an unusually bright light flashed in my eyes for a moment... I don't know how long I was unconscious. Probably for quite a long time, because I woke up when the company had already left the battle" ^{[11, p. 15]}.

 In the "Trajectory of Fate", the number of hits in the tank increased to two, and the general description was changed:

"The tank of the company commander caught fire first. Then there was a bang on our car, and then suddenly there was complete silence. Perhaps we were just stunned, but at that moment it seemed to us that the fight had died down. As a tank commander, I decided to open the hatch and see what was going on around. I had just climbed out of the hatch when a shell exploded nearby. For a moment, an unusually bright light flashed in my eyes..." ^{[12, pp. 90-91]}. Further, the texts are identical.

Thus, all the memoirs of M. T. Kalashnikov clearly indicate that their author participated in the battles for at least a few weeks in September and October 1941. However, a comparison of these testimonies with objective sources, primarily documentary ones, shows their radical divergence.

By now it is well known that M.T. Kalashnikov fought as part of 108 td. Back in 2005, at the request of FSUE "Rosoboronexport" (at that time M. T. Kalashnikov was listed in this organization), TSAMO prepared a certificate that from July 22 to July 31, 1941, he served in the 20th training tank battalion in the Kharkov area. Then he and his crew were enlisted in the 3rd company of the 2nd battalion of the 216th Tank Regiment (hereinafter - tp) as part of the 108 td ^{[27, p. 27-28]} of the 3rd Army of the Bryansk Front.

The mass publication of documents of military units and formations of the Red Army from the funds of the TSAMO at the moment allows you to compare the memoirs of the designer with them. Detailed reconstruction of the battle of 108 td in August – September 1941 . is not the subject of this work. In addition, the history of this compound, like many others, is carefully studied by historians, search engines and local historians ^[22]. The general course of the Roslavl-Novozybkov operation, during which 108 td entered the battle for the first time, is also well described at the operational and strategic level ^{[3, p. 93-120]}; ^[5]; ^{[21, pp. 86-105]}.

In general, the course of the division's battles is restored according to its combat log (case – JBD) ^[24], the report of September 4, 1941 ^[25], the report of the headquarters of September 6, 1941 ^[23] and the scheme-report of February 12, 1942 ^[26]. Hastily formed and not fully equipped (instead of two tank regiments, it included only one, the 216th, which consisted of the crew of Sergeant M. T. Kalashnikov ^{[24, L. 2-4]}) 108 td was included in the mobile group of the front of Major General A. N. on August 28, 1941. Ermakova. It was supposed to deliver a flanking counterattack on the 2nd tank group of Guderian from the east, from the area north of Trubchevsk ^{[24, l.12]}. The offensive was organized exceptionally poorly ^[26]. On the morning of August 30, the division moved to the southwest in two columns and soon came across parts of the 17th TD of the Wehrmacht near the villages of Chekhov - Karbovka – Romanovka. Units of the 108 td, without intelligence, without air support, were subjected to massive air strikes and were forced to engage in sporadic counter-battles with the enemy. During them, on August 30-31, north of the village of Romanovka, the 216th tp, reinforced by other parts of the division, conducted several heavy maneuver battles with tanks of the enemy's 17th Tank Division and suffered heavy losses. Already on September 1, the division found itself in an actual encirclement and only by September 4, its remnants managed to break out in an organized manner ^{[24, l. 12-19]}. 17 tanks, 11 guns, 1,200 people and all the rear were able to be withdrawn from the encirclement. Irretrievable losses of the division in tanks amounted to 53 vehicles, in personnel – about 500 people. ^{[3, p. 102]}; ^[25]. Despite the fact that the Roslavl-Novozybkov operation ended in obvious failure and heavy losses for the forces of the Bryansk Front, it cost Guderian's 2nd tank group very dearly. According to the apt expression of the Western researcher D. Glantz, such operations of the Red Army in 1941 were what caused the Barbarossa plan to "go off the rails" ^[30].

In addition to these data, it is necessary to provide another evidence, namely documents indicating the stay of M. T. Kalashnikov in the hospital after being wounded. Back in 2009, the first biographer of the designer, A. E. Uzhanov, gave in his book an answer to his request from the archive of the Military Medical Museum. According to him, Senior Sergeant M. T. Kalashnikov was wounded on August 31, 1941 ^{[21, p. 95]}.

The point in this question was put by an article in 2012 by the staff of the Military Medical Museum A. A. Budko and D. A. Zhuravlev, in which they published the text of the hospital journal and the conclusion of the commission of the evacuation Hospital No. 1133, which at that time was in Yelets, and where M. T. Kalashnikov was being treated. The documents testified that the future designer entered the hospital on September 13 and was discharged on October 2, 1941 (actually left on October 4) ^[1].

Thus, we see that from the point of view of chronology, the memoirs of M. T. Kalashnikov completely contradict the entire complex of documentary sources. The future designer was wounded not in October, as he himself wrote, but on the last day of August 1941. His participation in combat operations as a tanker was reduced to two days, not several weeks. One has only to guess how M. T. Kalashnikov could have allowed such serious distortions in the dates, and give out a 2-day participation in the battle for several weeks or even months of fighting. This also applies to the first part of the "Notes of the designer-gunsmith": there could be no question of any dugouts or other field fortifications mentioned by the author, since the battle was counter, and the division entered the battle from the march.

Have there been cases of scientific analysis of this part of M. T. Kalashnikov's memoirs? The result of studying historiography on this topic can be called depressing: despite the seemingly great interest in the figure of M. T. Kalshnikov, there are few works that are really of serious scientific interest. Most of the available works are either general discussions on the topic, or they are compilations of long-known, but scientifically unreflected information ^{[2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28]}.

The first serious attempt to describe the biography of M. T. Kalashnikov was made during his lifetime. In 2009, the book "Mikhail Kalashnikov" by the already mentioned A. E. Uzhanov was published ^[21]. In 2015, the work was republished in the "ZhZL" series. Despite the fact that the author in many cases attracted documents, this work is written on the basis of the memories of the designer himself, and, in fact, is popular science. Nevertheless, A. E. Uzhanov described in relative detail the fighting 108 td. At the same time, the biographer simply mechanically mixed fragments of the designer's memoirs and his reconstruction of the battles of 108 td west of Trubchevsk, as if not "noticing" such a serious discrepancy ^{[21, pp.86-105]}.

As already mentioned, an article by A. A. Budko and D. A. Zhuravlev was published in 2012, in which documents were published about the stay of M. T. Kalashnikov in the hospital ^[1]. In 2015, a book by Altai author A. S. Muravlev was published. In essence, it is also not a scientific study, pursuing popular science goals. At the same time, an important advantage of the work is that the author immerses the designer's biography in a historical context. In particular, we can note a good essay on the social and administrative history of the Altai Territory in the first half of the XX century. However, A. S. Muravlev does not add anything new about the participation of M. T. Kalashnikov in the battles, in fact, retelling the work of A. E. Uzhanov ^{[14, pp.133-145]}.

The famous historian of the Second World War A.V. Isaev, in a report devoted to this period of M. T. Kalashnikov's life, simply explained the phenomenon we noted by the forgetfulness of the designer, who first sat down to pen 40 years after the war ^[10].

Finally, in 2021, from the pen of the Candidate of Technical Sciences, an employee of VIMAIVS and one of the most prominent Russian weapons scientists, R. N. Chumak, the largest study of the creative biography of M. T. Kalashnikov "AK-47" was published today. The history of the creation and adoption of the Soviet Army". The content of the book is much broader than the title and is, in fact, the first truly scientific work on the entire creative biography of M. T. Kalashnikov in the period from 1942 to 1949. At the same time, the author also touches on the question of the participation of the future designer in the war, however, he does not add anything new in this regard. He notes a significant discrepancy between the chronology of memoirs and reality, but uses this fact to clarify the general chronology of the biography of M. T. Kalashnikov ^{[27, pp. 27-28]}.

Based on the above, it can be concluded that a special study that would be directly devoted to the analysis and source criticism of M. T. Kalashnikov's memoirs about the fighting has not been conducted at the moment.

Thus, from a chronological point of view, the memoirs of M. T. Kalashnikov are completely unreliable. In some cases, we can confidently say that false descriptions were deliberately included by the author, in particular, in the first fragment of the book "Notes of the designer-gunsmith". In addition, in subsequent editions of the memoirs, M. T. Kalashnikov slightly changed the text, removing some of the passages, but partially adding details in individual fragments. Of course, the designer allowed himself a certain artistic fiction in these cases, but otherwise it is impossible to confidently assert that the distortions were made due to forgetfulness or consciously.

At the same time, it is, in our opinion, too early to say that the considered narrative monument has no value as a historical source. In the future, it is necessary to conduct a thorough internal analysis of the memoirs of M. T. Kalashnikov, compare them in much more detail with the data of the documents, as well as other memories of the participants in the battles west of Trubchevsk in August-September 1941. These problems will be the subject of the following works.

In the final, we note that the creation of a scientific biography of the great Russian designer, thus, continues to be an urgent task. In any case, widely available biographical information about M. T. Kalashnikov, including the official websites of museums ^[16], continue to repeat the thesis about the designer's participation in the battles from September and his injury in October 1941. Moreover, in the biographical feature film "Kalashnikov", released on February 20, 2020 (directed by K. Buslov), the battle scene already takes place in winter. Thus, a scientific, reliable look at the biography of the great creator of the world's most famous automaton has not yet been reflected in the broad information environment.