Lukashov A.A.

Militarigenic landforms around Moscow, since the fall of year 1941. Pp.160–168.

UDC 551.4(47+57-25)”1941″

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.86.1.017

 

Abstract. The article deals with the natural topology and morphological traces of Moscow preparing for defense on the close approaches to the city in the fall of 1941, during the war. The German troops were stopped by the Red Army outside the territory of the capital as we know it today only by the end of November. Engineering works to create the so-called Main Line of Defense near the outskirts of Moscow had started in mid-October of the same year, chiefly on the most threatened directions. The post-war construction of the city “erased” most of the complexes of war-time relief. Only within the parks and forest parks, in some places the defensive fortifications of the first military autumn have survived in their original state. Their best state of preservation is observed in the Bitsa forest-park. It was in the southern and south-western sectors of the area that the Soviet military commandment could expect the Wehrmacht motorized units to advance towards the capital in the worst-case scenario (if the Germans broke through the defenses along the Nara River). The complex erosion terrain of the Teplostan Upland predetermined the concentration of defenses in tank-risk areas in the watershed of the Ochakovka and Chertanovka river basins. Only fragments of the Main Frontier have been preserved in the immediate vicinity of the Kaluga highway framed by post-war construction, which was laid out in the 18th century directly along the watershed. But to the southeast of the highway, civilian construction “bypassed” a significant area of Bitsa Park, where anti-tank defenses, communication routes with small arms cells, partially buried in the ground reinforced concrete machine gun caps, dugouts, etc. are preserved. All of them were placed in the terrain very competently, which could facilitate the defenders of Moscow effective defense on the created boundary. The Red Army’s counter-offensive in December and January left the prepared constructions intact, which makes it possible to perceive the militarized landmarks almost as a tangible monument to the heroism of Muscovites.

The article is based on long-term experience of expeditions and semi-stationary observations in the territory of the forest park, adding archival, literary and cartographic materials.

 

Keywords: Moscow main defense line, tank-hazard directions, Teplostan Upland, complexes of military construction topology.

 

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