After briefly surveying the day’s disastrous developments, in particular, 29th Motorized Division’s penetration into the southern half of Smolensk, on the evening of 15 July, Timoshenko reported to the Stavka, “We have insufficient numbers of trained forces protecting the Iartsevo, Viaz’ma, and Moscow axis. The main thing is that there are no tanks.”⁴⁰ The Stavka, however, was already taking measures to remedy the situation. Showing marvelous foresight, on 13 July it had ordered Lieutenant General Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky, the former commander of the Southwestern Front’s 9th Mechanized Corps, to report to Moscow for a new assignment to the Western Front.⁴¹ A veteran cavalryman, Rokossovsky had displayed extraordinary skill and resolve when his 9th Mechanized Corps had participated in Zhukov’s major armored counterstroke in the Dubno region in late June. Once Rokossovsky reached Moscow, the Stavka ordered him to form a special operational group whose sole mission was to block the linkup of German panzer forces east of Smolensk. Known as the Group of Forces on the Iartsevo Axis, or more simply Group Iartsevo, the group’s mission was to recapture Iartsevo, hold open a “hatchway” to Timoshenko’s three armies struggling in the Smolensk region, and conduct offensive operations with Bogdanov’s other reserve armies to stabilize the situation at Smolensk. Eremenko later described why this improvisation was necessary, “There were no troops east of Smolensk along the Smolensk-Moscow railway, [nor] south of the railway and northeast along the Moscow-Minsk highway, to prevent the enemy from crossing the Dnepr and then advancing in any direction he pleased, creating a perilous situation for our three [encircled] armies.”⁴² The Stavka’s order creating Rokossovsky’s Group Iartsevo clearly evidenced its intent not only to defend Smolensk but also to mount a decisive counteroffensive against the Germans in the near future.

Adding further misery to Timoshenko’s and Stalin’s discomfort, on 16 July Boltenstern’s 29th Motorized Division brought the remainder of its forces forward and captured the entire city of Smolensk, other than its extreme northern outskirts, from 16th Army’s defending 129th Rifle Division. Already “beside himself” over the obvious fact that German forces had seized virtually the entire city, Stalin was especially embarrassed since his son, Senior Lieutenant Ia. I. Dzhugashvili, a battery commander in 7th Mechanized Corps’ 14th Tank Division, was taken prisoner by the Germans east of Smolensk.⁴³ Apart from his personal loss, Stalin was also anxious about the situation in the Iartsevo sector, in particular, concerning the precarious Solov’evo corridor, for he realized German seizure of either or both would seal the fate of the Western Front’s 16th, 19th, and 20th Armies.

The loss of Smolensk and the associated encirclement of a significant portion of Timoshenko’s forces prompted a characteristic reaction from Stalin. On 16 July, on behalf of the GKO, he accused all of the Western Front’s commanders of harboring an “evacuation attitude,” that is, too easily giving up the city. If this was indeed correct, Stalin declared, the GKO would consider such commanders as criminals who had committed treason against the Motherland. Stalin demanded that they, “a) Nip such an attitude, which disgraced the honor of the Red Army, in the bud with an iron hand, and b) Hold on to Smolensk at all cost.”⁴⁴

Recent Russian commentators now describe the dire conditions that prompted Stalin’s negative reactions:

In reality, after the enemy panzer groups penetrated the defenses, some of the commanders lost their heads and did not know what to do. Finding themselves in such a situation, they either abandoned their positions without orders or moved in an eastern direction, while trying to conceal themselves in the forests. According to NKVD reports to the GKO, from the beginning of military operations up to 20 July, the NKVD Special Departments in the front and the armies halted 103,876 soldiers who had lost their units and were withdrawing in disorder, on the roads. The majority of those detained were then directed to new military units and sent back to the front.⁴⁵

Several days later, to underscore its determination to rid the Red Army of any and all “evacuators,” on 19 July the Stavka issued Order No. 0436, which temporarily replaced Timoshenko as commander of the Western Front with General Eremenko, who was supposedly more of a “fighter”. To add a leavening of experience to its higher headquarters along the Moscow axis, the same order assigned Marshal of the Soviet Union Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov, the creator of the General Staff and “brain” of the Red Army during the 1930s, as the Western Direction’s chief of staff, the experienced Lieutenant General Vasilii Danilovich Sokolovsky as chief of staff of the Western Front, and Lieutenant General German Kapitonovich Malandin, a penultimate staff officer, as the chief of the Western Front’s crucial Operations Department.

Moreover, to ensure tight political control over his senior general, the order appointed Stalin’s Party sidekicks, Nikolai A. Bulganin, Panteleimon Kondrat’evich Ponomarenko, and Dmitri Mikhailovich Popov as commissar of the Main Command of the Western Direction and commissars for the Western Front, respectively.⁴⁶ Despite these disciplinary and morale problems and outright threats to Timoshenko, Stalin’s appointment of Eremenko as Western Front commander was only temporary, and the dictator retained Timoshenko as commander-in-chief of the Main Command of the Western Direction, although with a new commissar and senior staff.

Timoshenko, with his backbone stiffened by his new commissar, immediately demonstrated new resolve to carry out the Stavka’s orders to the letter and recapture Smolensk. On 17 July, in his capacity of commander-in-chief of the Western Direction, Timoshenko issued a new order that began with the direct quotes from the GKO’s decree of the day before regarding the criminal “evacuation mood:”

A special order of the GKO indicates the Western Front’s command cadre are imbued with an evacuation mood and regard the matter of withdrawing their forces from Smolensk and surrendering the city to the enemy too lightly.

If this mood accords with their actions, the GKO considers such a mood among the command cadre to be criminal, bordering on betrayal of the Motherland.

The GKO has ordered us to eliminate this mood, which discredits the name of the Red Army, with an iron hand. Do not surrender the city of Smolensk under any circumstances.⁴⁷

Getting this “off his chest,” Timoshenko ordered his subordinate forces to stiffen their defenses and conduct decisive offensive operations to destroy Army Group Center’s advancing panzers and regain control of Smolensk “at all cost.” He was also careful to add Stalin’s demand, “Do not surrender the city of Smolensk under any circumstances.” Although meant to inspire all of the Western Front’s forces, it assigned specific missions only to 16th Army and the key elements of Rokossovsky’s Group Iartsevo:

See Volume 3 (Documents), Appendix F, 1.

•	16th Army [Lukin] – prevent the surrender of Smolensk by erecting an all-round defense with all of its forces and weapons in the Smolensk region, including 19th Army’s concentrated 129th, 127th, 38th, and 158th RDs, all of the Smolensk garrison’s artillery, 16th Army’s 46th and 152nd RDs and 57th TD, and 51st Armored Train.
•	Group Iartsevo [Rokossovsky]

▪	44th RC [Iushkevich] (25th RC, 23rd MC, all units withdrawing to the Iartsevo region, an artillery regiment, and companies of T-26 tanks) – organize an antitank region in the vicinity of Zuevo, Gavrilovo, and Grishino regions and deploy it to defend the Iartsevo bridgehead and along the Dnepr River in the Iartsevo and Pridneprovskaia [along the Dnepr River] to prevent the enemy from penetrating from the Dukhovshchina region to Smolensk..
▪	101st TD [Mikhailov] – concentrate in the Svishchevo Station region by day’s end on 17 July and destroy the enemy’s motor-mechanized units in the Dukhovshchina region [25 kilometers northwest of Iartsevo and 50 kilometers north-northeast of Smolensk] by 0400 hours on 18 July by decisive attacks along the Dukhovshchina and Smolensk axis. Move the division’s forward units to Iartsevo by the end of the day on 17 July.
▪	69th Motorized Division [Domracheev] – concentrate in the Dubrovitsa region and attack the enemy’s motor-mechanized units operating toward Kiriakino and Syro Lipki [north and northeast of Smolensk] at 0400 hours on 18 July.
▪	Both divisions – direct your further actions at the destruction of the enemy’s motor-mechanized units in the Smolensk region.

•	Command and Control – Major General Rokossovsky is entrusted with directing the operations of the mechanized units, and my deputy, Lieutenant General Comrade Eremenko, will support the fulfillment of this order.
•	VVS of the Front – support 101st TD’s and 69th MD’s operations with a specially assigned group of fighter, bombers, and assault aircraft. Missions:

▪	Protect the arrival of the tank and motorized divisions in their concentration region in accordance with the instructions of their commanders.
▪	Strike the enemy’s Dukhovshchina grouping with all of the front’s aircraft at 0330 hours on 18 July.

Despite Stalin’s worse fears, the situation in the Iartsevo region actually stabilized a bit late on 17 July, largely because Rokossovsky’s group finally became operational and began deploying forces to prevent the German pincers from closing around Smolensk. To assist Rokossovsky in his defense of Iartsevo and help prevent Funck’s 7th Panzer Division from severing the narrow corridor near Solov’evo, Timoshenko ordered the Western Front to form a small composite detachment consisting of the remnants of 5th Mechanized Corps under the command of Colonel Aleksandr Il’ich Liziukov and dispatched it to reinforce Rokossovsky. Liziukov was experienced in such matters since he had previously directed a small group of forces defending Borisov on the Berezina River in early July.⁴⁸ His small detachment held the narrow Solov’evo corridor open for two weeks by fighting day and night under the most harrowing of conditions. For his distinguished service, the GKO later awarded Liziukov with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

See Map 17. Army Group Center’s situation late on 17 July 1941.

From his vantage point outside of the Smolensk pocket, Rokossovsky’s estimate of the situation was as desperate as Stalin’s, at least initially, since the Stavka had informed him, erroneously as it turned out, that the Germans had just conducted a large-scale airborne landing at Iartsevo.⁴⁹ The acute weakness of his new group also bothered Rokossovsky because, as of 17 July, Group Iartsevo consisted of two truck-mounted quad (quadruple-mount) machine guns and their crews, a radio van, and a handful of staff officers. By evening, the small convoy carrying Rokossovsky’s headquarters arrived at Timoshenko’s headquarters, which had just moved eastward out of Iartsevo ahead of the Germans. By this time, Colonel Liziukov’s composite force from 5th Mechanized Corps was defending the crossing sites over the Dnepr River at Solov’evo and Ratchino, 15 and 25 kilometers south of Iartsevo, respectively, with a force of 15 tanks. Since Timoshenko and his staff were out of touch with his three encircled armies and not certain their information on the rest of the front was accurate, he ordered Rokossovsky to gather up any and all units he could find on the way to Iartsevo and immediately organize a makeshift defense in the region. This Rokossovsky did by assembling rear service units from the armies encircled in the pocket, a few combat units which had become separated from their main forces, and stragglers from a wide variety of broken-up units.

Before long, however, Rokossovsky’s group grew into a far more credible force as reinforcements steadily flowed into the Iartsevo region. Ultimately, it included Colonel Mikhail Gavrilovich Kirillov’s 38th Rifle Division, which was a late arrival from Konev’s 19th Army; Colonel Grigorii Mikhailovich Mikhailov’s 101st Tank Division, formerly 26th Mechanized Corp’s 52nd Tank Division; an antitank artillery regiment and 240th Howitzer Artillery Regiment from Major General Vasilii Aleksandrovich Iushkevich’s 44th Rifle Corps; and various groups of soldiers which had already retreated to the Iartsevo region.⁵⁰ By this time, Iushkevich himself had managed to “scrape up” a single rifle battalion and 21 guns, which he employed to defend a vital crossing over the Vop’ River 3 kilometers south of Iartsevo.⁵¹ To Rokossovsky’s delight, Mikhailov’s 101st Tank Division, which had been converted into a 100-series tank division only two days before, fielded about 220 tanks of various types on 17 July, although primarily old and obsolete models.⁵²

With this more formidable force at his disposal, Rokossovsky deployed Kirillov’s 38th Rifle Division to defend the crossings over the Dnepr River and contain 7th Panzer Division’s bridgeheads over the Vop’ River south and east of Iartsevo and Mikhailov’s 101st Tank Division to defend the 2.5 kilometer-wide sector from the village of Lagi on the northern outskirts of Iartsevo northward to the village of Dubrovo, which covered the man railroad line and highway to the east.