evening ring:
Day Parade Among Stalin's controversial actions, one act stands out, according to Rodina magazine, - the decision to hold a military parade on November 7, 1941 in Red Square. General Pavel Artemyev, who received an order to command the parade, dared to oppose the Commander-in-Chief: "Regarding the situation, I expressed doubt about the feasibility of holding a parade. In addition, only infantry could participate in it, since artillery units were in firing positions, and there were no tanks in the garrison at all." Stalin, whose intuition defeated the professional calculations of the military leader, ordered to find everything and prepare the parade in the utmost secrecy. Secrecy was the main condition for the survival of both the state leadership and the participants of the parade. If the German air force broke into the center of the capital, the death of the senior leadership on the stage of the mausoleum would be a matter of minutes. Army General Georgi Zhukov gave highly professional advice: "Against aviation, it is necessary to strengthen air defense and bring fighter planes to Moscow from neighboring fronts." The most important symbolic gesture was Stalin's decision to unveil the Kremlin's ruby stars, which had been reliably camouflaged a month earlier. As long as the stars burn above the Kremlin, the country exists. This sign was clear without words. Like the other, Stalin stood on the stage of the mausoleum in a simple overcoat. The security chief suggested putting on a warm winter hat, but the leader refused: not all the soldiers at the front have yet received winter uniforms, and what will they see when they open the newspapers? This expressive detail, at first glance small, acted as a precise psychological signal: the commander in chief shares the army's difficulties. The parade achieved what neither the police nor the NKVD officers could do after the "Moscow panic" in October - it restored the verticality of the state's meaning in the confused capital. Ruby stars in the Kremlin are the finest hour of the Supreme.