To the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory Lieutenant-General L. S. Skvirsky If I were asked what was the most important thing in my life, what left the most vivid memories, left an indelible mark on itself and still excites the mind and soul, I would not hesitate to answer: the Great Patriotic War. Yes, among people of my generation, many and many would probably say the same. The heavy and grandiose, extremely intense and heroic epic of the Soviet people and its Armed Forces in 1941-1945 has forever gone down in history. Its pages, large and small, are already thoroughly filled. Still, there are still some gaps. Even direct participants in the war did not always naturally have the time and opportunity to cover not only the details, but sometimes quite large events to which they were concerned. These gaps are gradually being closed. Already known and still unknown names of people emerge from the past, various facts hidden in a kaleidoscope of cases become common property, and what was considered established and familiar is viewed and evaluated from a different angle. Conversely, many facts are further confirmed, acquire "eternal" meaning, and sound even stronger and more convincing than before. Flipping through and re-reading what is written about the Great Patriotic War, I should note that one of the relatively least illuminated aspects of it is the prehistory and history of the Karelian Front. Probably, this happened because it was not there that the cardinal problems of that war were solved, the fate of our Motherland as a whole was not determined. But try to "take it out" of the general situation of the Soviet-German front, from the events of those years, and they will be abruptly disrupted: the circumstances of a stable defense from the north of Leningrad blocked by the Nazis, the course of the armed struggle in Karelia and the Soviet Arctic, the land support of the most important sea communications between the participants of the anti-Hitler coalition, sever ... Read more