the defense of petrozavodsk

Regular readers--all five of you--might remember I mentioned that I attended a reenactment in town a few weeks back.  It was my first time actual witnessing a reenactment in person, and I have to say it was quite interesting.  I don't know how they do things stateside, but in Russia they let you stand basically on the battlefield, which is naturally where I planted myself.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it was actually quite intense.  Despite the fact that they're using blank rounds, the rifle fire is still extremely loud up close.  I could certainly appreciate the intimidation one must have felt upon hearing the infamous MG 34 open fire.  You feel the sound in your chest as much you hear it in your ears.  I won't be volunteering to lead a charge on one of those bad boys anytime soon.

 Me with one of the good guys.

The reenactment itself was of the defense of Petrozavodsk during the Continuation War in 1941.  Sadly, Finnish forces, with the aid of Nazi Germany, captured Petrozavodsk on 1 October 1941 and held the city for three years.  This wasn't really reflected in the reenactment, as there was no real choreographed conclusion as far as I could tell.  Everyone just sort of stood up once they'd run out of ammunition.

That said, they had clearly planned a number of set pieces, the most entertaining of which featured an armored vehicle leading a charge on a nest of Finnish/German mortars.  It suffered a direct hit from one of the mortars, and a small band of Soviet soldiers dashed forward in a daring attempt to save the tank driver's life.

I took some video with my digital camera and compiled the best bits into the 2-minute clip embedded below.  Unfortunately, I didn't capture the tank driver rescue, but I did get them blowing up an actual tree.  You can see the explosion at around 1:34.  I panned away, as I thought it was just some kind of effect, but you can see when I pan back after about three seconds the thing's already gone timber.  The let us walk the battlefield afterward, and I can confirm that it was, in fact, a real tree.  Was being the operative term.