Hero of the Soviet Union Malik Gabdullin by M.I. Ritman-Fetisov: a story on the participation of Kazakhstan soldiers in the Battle of Moscow

This article is a new source on the history of Kazakhstan's participation in the Battle of Moscow in 1941. The author discovered a manuscript of the novel Hero of the Soviet Union Malik Gabdullin by M.I. Ritman-Fetisov in the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The novel presents the biography of M. Gabdullin, but most significant is the participation of M. Gabdullin in the defense of Moscow in August and December 1941. The manuscript is interesting as the evidence of Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen heroic feat in November 1941. The author describes the feat not of Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen but of the whole regiment that blocked the enemy on the way to Moscow. Perhaps, the author's opinion, different from the official interpretation of events, led to the fact that the manuscript was locked in the Archive since 1943 to the present. Successful actions of the political instructor M. Gabdullin and his13 submachine gunners on 16 November 1941 as part of the heroic battalion of captain Gundilovich were certainly an element of the battle scene which inspired the Krasnaya Zvezda correspondents to create a propaganda masterpiece about the heroism of Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen who defeated, as fairy-tale characters, the much stronger enemy. M.I. Rit-man-Fetisov's picture of the battle is different from the official version of Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen heroic feat in essential details; yet it coincides with it in the main point: the Soviet soldiers became invincible heroes, batyrs, because they defended their country from foreign invaders, sparing their life. The manuscript shows that the idea and feeling of patriotism were sources of force of the Soviet soldiers who belonged to different ethnic groups, but they were the sons of one country - the Soviet Union. The novel suggests that the heroism of the Soviet soldiers was not an invention of communist propaganda, but a real fact in the victory, which the unfair criticism of Soviet history did not want to recognize, claiming that the Soviet soldiers are not heroes, but cattle driven to slaughter by cowardly commissars. The feat of Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen was in the focus of confrontation between Russia and Kazakhstan patriots and their enemies. Published in 2011, the 1948 report of the military prosecutor's office with a conclusion that there was no Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen feat was an attempt to deny the heroism of the Soviet soldiers. The organizers of this action did not want to see the feat of the entire division of Panfilov's Guardsmen and preferred to rest on the report of the Stalinist prosecutor's office, finding in it an ally in the depreciation of Soviet history. The novel by M.I. Ritman-Fetisov, according to the author, is worthy of attention of historians of the Great Patriotic War and historians of Russian-Kazakh relations.

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