Telegram to the Commander of the Leningrad Front, Lieutenant-General M. Popov, 28 August 1941

Source: Tom 18

Source: Tom 18

Your submissions today resemble blackmail. Your army commanders are intimidating you, and you, in your turn, have apparently decided to intimidate the Stavka with all manner of horrors about breakthroughs, the worsening of the situation, and the like. If you do nothing to demand action from your subordinates and merely serve as a statistician relaying the complaints of the armies, then you will indeed have to surrender Leningrad within a few days. But the Stavka exists not to indulge blackmail-like demands and proposals.

The Stavka authorizes you to withdraw your units from the Vyborg line, but the Stavka orders you at the same time to ensure that your units under no circumstances abandon the prepared defensive line along the Mannerheim Line. The Stavka forbids you to strip the Luga Bay and hand it over to the enemy. Even if the 8th Army has to retreat a little, it must at all costs cover the Luga Bay together with the peninsula.

The Stavka demands that you finally cease being a statistician and a specialist in retreating and assume the role befitting you as a commander who inspires the armies and raises the morale of the troops.

STALIN

Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal. 1992. No. 6-7. P. 16.

TsAMO RF. F. 3. Op. 11556. D. 2.