In a field about 100 km west of Moscow, near the Dubosekovo railway station, there is a war memorial, statues in the Soviet “socialist realism” style, commemorating the Battle of Dubosekovo in which a handful of brave Soviet soldiers, known as Panfilov’s 28, stopped a column of German tanks from advancing on Moscow on September 30, 1941. The event was dramatized in 2016 in a movie, Panfilov’s 28 Men which I watched streaming on Amazon Prime yesterday.
The movie began its life as a crowd-funded project which ultimately gained corporate and government backing from Russia and Kazakhstan. I found the English language dubbing distracting so I watched it in Russian. Gave me a chance to brush up. I found it exciting, rousing.
Only the battle may never have actually taken place. It appears in no official records, Russian or German, only in an account in Red Gazette, almost certainly patriotic propaganda. But at this point its historicity cannot be challenged. As the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance put it, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
I think some digging will reveal that Comrade Ogilvy was the originator of the story. Sadly he was killed in action afterwards. His obituary was reported in the Times, the byline W. Smith.