To Protect Native Moscow
About To Protect Native Moscow
Soyuzkinozhurnal No. 104, titled Na zashchitu rodnoy Moskvy, is an eight-minute newsreel of Moscow preparing for a German attack. Red Army units march across Red Square, Sverdlov Square, and past the Bolshoi Theatre while a commandant’s patrol keeps the streets. Civilians dig anti-tank ditches, trenches, and barricades. Volunteers are signed up and issued weapons and uniforms; a factory turns out shells, a sewing shop cuts greatcoats, and anti-aircraft batteries stand ready.
Cast & crew
More about To Protect Native Moscow
The Central Newsreel Studio issued the reel as Soyuzkinozhurnal No. 104, dated 6 November 1941. Russian Wikipedia credits Leonid Varlamov as director of that issue and dates its release 15 November. Cameramen listed on the reel are T. Bunimovich, Iosif Veinerovich, P. Kasatkin, V. Shtatland, A. Shchekutyev, and A. Elbert.
Themes
Background
The reel is dated in the middle of the defensive phase of the Battle of Moscow, before the Red Army’s December counteroffensive. It shows enlistment, ditch-digging, and factory work in the city rather than combat at the front.
Making
Issue No. 104 is a single Soyuzkinozhurnal number, not the nine-part winter magazine that took its name. The first issue of that magazine, “Defense of the City. The People’s Militia,” was ready at the end of November and opened in seven Moscow theaters on 3 December 1941.
Look
Operators T. Bunimovich, Iosif Veinerovich, P. Kasatkin, V. Shtatland, A. Shchekutyev, and A. Elbert filmed troops on the central squares, civilians on the earthworks, and batteries and workshops around the city.
Preservation
A public-domain copy of the reel dated 6 November 1941 is on the Internet Archive, running about eight minutes.
Notes
- Wikidata times the item at 500 seconds, 8 minutes 19 seconds. A reel catalog gives 8 minutes 17 seconds.
- The issue date printed with the journal is 6 November 1941, the day before the Red Square parade, which this reel does not show.
- A separate magazine, also called Na zashchitu rodnoy Moskvy, borrowed the title. Nine issues ran from late November 1941 to a double number on 1 March 1942.
- Directors credited on that later magazine include Varlamov, Boris Nebylitsky, Rafail Gikov, Nikolay Karmazinsky, Ilya Kopalin, and Sergei Gurov.
- Konstantin Rokossovsky appears in issues 1 and 4 of the later magazine, on horseback with Dovator and at a map with his commanders. He is not named in the shot list for No. 104.
- Most of the later magazine’s footage was reused in the 1942 feature The Defeat of the German Forces Near Moscow.
Scenes
- Infantry marches past the Bolshoi while a commandant’s patrol watches Sverdlov Square.
- Civilians cut anti-tank ditches and pile barricades at the edge of the city.
- A shell line and a uniform shop run beside footage of anti-aircraft guns on duty.
Also available
- Internet Archive (1941-no-104-6)
- Wikimedia Commons (На защиту родной Москвы- Союзкиножурнал № 104 (1941) документальный фильм.webm)
