389th Howitzer Regiment at the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War: The Battle Route Reconstruction Based on the Social and Demographic Data and Higher Command Documents
The aim of the research is to reconstruct the battle route of the 389th Howitzer Regiment. In the Pamyat' Naroda Database, the 389th Howitzer Regiment is indicated as a part of the 194th Rifle Division from July 15, 1941, to October 12, 1941. In the Central Archives of the Russian Defence Ministry, there is no fund of this regiment. In the author's opinion, in early October 1941, the 389th Howitzer Regiment did not depart with the 194th Rifle Division to the new location, but remained in the previous defensive line near Vyazma and continued to fight with the 140th Rifle Division (the 13th Moscow Militia Rifle Division) and then fell in action together with many other regiments and divisions in the Vyazma Pocket. This assumption is confirmed by the results of the social and demographic analysis of the personal data of the 389th Howitzer Regiment combatants and by the documents of the higher command (the 194th Rifle Division, the 49th Army, the Reserve Front) found in the Central Archives of the Russian Defence Ministry. As of December 1, 2019, the author has found the data concerning 290 combatants of the 389th Howitzer Regiment which is about 25-30% of the regiment members. The results of the analysis demonstrate that 146 combatants (55.51%) were lost in action, 75 combatants (28.52%) were taken prisoner, and only 36 combatants (14.07%) were alive and not taken prisoner as of early November 1941. No combatants were registered killed in action or wounded, which means that such people did not get medical aid and died of wounds or were killed by the enemy, and their death was not registered. As of October, 7, 1941, the regiment headquarters were located near the village Petrovskoye, Novodugino District, Smolensk Oblast. The combatants registered lost in action were actually killed in action or died of wounds in the Vyazma Pocket in the period of October 07-14, 1941. Most of the documents introduced in this article are published for the first time. The analysis procedure the author offers may be applied to reconstruct the battle route for other regiments if their documents were lost during military operations.