Dubosekovo

From the book "The Retreat--Hitler's First Defeat" by Michael Jones (John Murray 2009) "On the 16 November (1941) a group of Panfilov's soldiers made a stand against the Germans at a small railway crossing at Dubosekovo. It was said that they were inspired by the slogan 'There is nowhere left to retreat-Moscow is behind us!' "An anti-tank platoon destroyed a number of enemy tanks, and held off superior German forces for several hours. Soviet propaganda later inflated this episode into a heroic legend, where 28 Red Army soldiers fought to the last man. "The details were incorrect. The group were not wiped out but forced to withdraw that same evening, and their commander and commissar were temporarily suspended from their posts for retreating without permission. There was, however, heroism in the reality of the event." A bleak and dismal place, especially in the grip of winter, but a place where Russian patriots held up the advance of the invader for long enough to make a difference. Were they all wiped out or not? One hesitates to take at face value anything that came out of the Bolshevik era, but at the same time, one still regards the sacrifice of these men as heroic and Patriotic. Best to remember the 28 as regular soldiers fighting to save their country from invasion and its capital from occupation, and who gave their lives to save their families from a brutal murderous enemy. That they helped save their families only for them to live under a different brutal murderous system is the real tragedy.

A heroically memorable place.