Myasnoy Bor Memorial

In spring 1942, one of the great tragedies of the Great Patriotic War unfolded in the Novgorod forests near Myasnoy Bor. The 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front was tasked with breaking the blockade of the northern capital and advancing to link up with the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front, but it was encircled. Soldiers of the 52nd and 59th armies fought to the death to keep open a corridor only 300-400 meters wide and enable troops to escape. In several hours, only twenty thousand soldiers made it out. Tens of thousands remained in the forest, fighting to their last round and last breath. On 25 June 1942, German troops completely closed the corridor used by the remaining units of the II Shock Army, bringing the unsuccessful Lyuban operation to an end. More than one hundred thousand dead were left unburied in the Novgorod forests. Despite the tragedy, the enemy abandoned hopes of taking Leningrad. The 2nd Shock Army destroyed 6 German divisions transferred from near Leningrad to the Volkhov sector, as well as the Netherlands and Flanders legions; large amounts of artillery and equipment and tens of thousands of enemy soldiers were lost in the marshes. The 2nd Shock Army was not destroyed, and its combat record remains part of the history of the Great Patriotic War. The land around Myasnoy Bor is known as the “Valley of Death” and the “Valley of Pain”: tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were killed or captured here. Novgorod District became the birthplace of the search movement. In the 1960s, Nikolai Ivanovich Orlov began searching for and reburying the remains of Soviet soldiers and commanders in Myasnoy Bor; he led the Novgorod search movement for 35 years. The first and largest burial dates to 1956 and contains about 3 thousand fallen soldiers. In 1989, the first All-Union Memory Watch was held, and the Dolina search expedition was established in memory of Nikolai Ivanovich Orlov. Remains found by search teams are reburied every year. More than 37,000 thousand Soviet soldiers are buried in the military mass cemetery, and only a small number have been identified by name.