Letters from Viktor Astafiev - about the war, the truth about it and the price of Victory
In the spring of 2009, a volume of letters from Viktor Astafiev (1924-2001) was released: “There is no answer for me ... An epistolary diary. 1952-2001". Before that, the compiler and publisher, Irkutsk citizen Gennady Sapronov (1952-2009), gave Novaya Gazeta the layout of the book and the right to first publish the letters selected by the editors (see No. 42, 46 for 2009). Three weeks later, at one of the organized United Russia» Meetings of Sapronov and Novaya journalists who presented the book to the audience, they offered to shoot for it; Gennady wrote to me: “That's it! I'm going to join the partisans." And a month later, having managed to prepare the second, supplemented edition of Astafiev's letters, he died.
We continue to publish letters selected by us for the newspaper.
Alexey Tarasov, Novaya, Krasnoyarsk

Viktor Astafiev. Photo: Anatoly Belonogov

1973
(I. Sokolova)
[…] In you, and in any thing where there is an “I” - it, this “I”, obliges a lot, first of all, to restraint, caution in dealing with this very “I” and, most importantly, it is necessary to portray not retell. At first, your seventeenth artillery division was on the march ... But it was our brigade, armed with howitzers of the 1908 model of the Schneider system, smelted at the Tula plant (howitzers, in which the barrel was rolled by hand for the first shot and the projectile was sent into the barrel with a banner), was at the forefront of the attack Germans. At first we were overwhelmed by our retreating units in panic and did not allow us to properly dig in. Then the tanks poured in - we held out for several hours, because Siberians stood by the old howitzers, who are not so easy to scare, knock down and crush. Of course, in the end we were smashed to dust, one and a half guns remained from the brigade - one without a wheel and something about three hundred people out of more than two thousand. But in the meantime, the tanks that broke through us were met by artillery deployed in battle formations and finished off by the rest of our division. The counterattack did not work. The Germans were defeated. Comrade Trofimenko became an army general, received another order, and my brother-soldiers have long been plowed up and sown with wheat near Akhtyrka ...
<…>
Very often our paths in the war coincided: the entire path to the Dnieper was almost shared. I was near Akhtyrka. Our brigade turned out to be that unfortunate part, which sometimes had a share to be at the moment of impact in the hottest place and die, holding back this blow. Akhtyrka, in my opinion, was occupied by the 27th Army and rushed forward, exposing the flanks. The Germans immediately took advantage of this and launched a counterattack from two sides - from Bogodukhov and Krasnokutsk, in order to cut off the army, which General Trofimenko was leading so headlessly forward.
<…>
Dnieper bridgeheads! I was south of Kyiv, on those very Bukrinsky bridgeheads (on two of the three). I was wounded there and I affirm, I will affirm to death that only those who absolutely do not care about someone else's human life could force us to cross and fight in this way. Those who remained on the left bank and, "not sparing their lives," glorified our "exploits." And we, on the other side of the Dnieper, on a piece of land, hungry, cold, without tobacco, cartridges from the account, no grenades, no shovels, were dying, eaten by lice, rats, from somewhere in a mass pouring into the trenches.
Oh, would you not hurt our pain, our grief in passing, while we are still alive. I tried to write a novel about the Dnieper bridgehead - I can’t: it’s scary, even now it’s scary, and my heart stops, and headaches torment me. Maybe I don't have the courage to write about everything like other hardened, unbending warriors! […]

December 13, 1987
(Destination not set)
[…] That's what we have lived up to, lied, stupefied! And who guarded all this, closed their eyes to the people, frightened, imprisoned, perpetrated reprisals? Who are these chain dogs? What kind of shoulder straps do they have? Where did they study and from whom? And they learned that they don’t notice that they eat, relax, live separately from the people and consider this a normal thing. You at the front, being a general, ate, of course, from soldiers' kitchens, but I saw that even Vanka, a platoon commander, strove to eat and live separately from the soldier, but, alas, I quickly realized that he would not succeed, although he is a “general” on the front line, but not “one of those”, and will quickly die of hunger or simply die - from fatigue and twitchiness.
No need to lie to yourself, Ilya Grigorievich! At least for yourself! It's hard for you to agree with me, but the Soviet military is the most frantic, most cowardly, meanest, most stupid of all that were before it in the world. It was she who "won" 1:10! It was she who threw our people, like straw, into the fire - and Russia was gone, there is no Russian people either. What was Russia is now called the Non-Black Earth Region, and all this is overgrown with weeds, and the remnants of our people fled to the city and turned into punks who left the village and did not come to the city.
How many people were lost in the war? You know and remember. It's scary to name the true figure, right? If you call it, then instead of a ceremonial cap, you need to put on a schema, kneel in the middle of Russia on Victory Day and ask your people for forgiveness for the mediocrely “won” war, in which the enemy was heaped with corpses, drowned in Russian blood. It is no coincidence that in Podolsk, in the archive, one of the main points of the "rules" reads: "Do not write out compromising information about the commanders of the Sowarmia."
In fact: start writing out - and it turns out that after the defeat of the 6th army of the enemy (two fronts!) The Germans staged a "Kharkov cauldron", in which Vatutin and others like him welded six (!!!) armies, and the Germans took only captured more than a million of our valiant soldiers, along with the generals (and they took a whole bunch, like a red radish was pulled out of the ridge).<…>Can I tell you how Comrade Kirponos, having abandoned five armies in the south, fired, opening a “hole” to Rostov and beyond? Maybe you have not heard that Manstein, with the help of one eleventh army, with the support of part of the second air army, passed the heroic Sivash and in front of the valiant Black Sea Fleet swept away everything that we had in the Crimea? And moreover, leaving the besieged Sevastopol for a short time, he “ran away” to Kerch and the “tank fist”, which was based on two tank corps, showed political instructor Mekhlis that to publish a newspaper, even Pravda, where from the first to last page He exalted the Great Leader - one thing, but to fight and lead the troops is a completely different matter, and gave him so that (two) three (!) Armies swam and drowned in the Kerch Strait.
Well, Mekhlis, we’re a toady of a courtier, a talker and a sycophant, but how in 44, under the command of Comrade Zhukov, we destroyed the enemy’s 1st tank army, and it did not allow itself to be destroyed by our two main fronts and, moreover, blocked the road to the Carpathians The 4th Ukrainian Front with the valiant 18th Army at the head and the entire left flank of the 1st Ukrainian Front, after Zhukov, fell under the leadership of Konev in a completely upset state.<…>
If you are not completely blind, look at the maps in the well-edited "History of the Patriotic War", note that everywhere, starting from the maps of 1941, seven or eight red arrows rest against two, at most three blue ones. Just don’t tell me about my “illiteracy”: they say that the Germans have armies, corps, divisions numerically larger than ours. I don’t think that the 1st Panzer Army, which was beaten all winter and spring on two fronts, was numerically larger than our two fronts, especially since you, as a military specialist, know that during hostilities this is all very, very conditional. But even if not conditionally, it means that the Germans knew how to reduce the administrative apparatus and the “small apparatus”, honestly and skillfully working specialists, controlled the armies without the mess that haunted us until the end of the war.
What is our connection alone worth?! God! She still gives me nightmares to this day.
We are all old, gray-haired, sick. Dying soon. Whether we like it or not. It's time to pray to God, Ilya Grigorievich! We cannot pray for all our sins: there are too many of them, and they are too monstrous, but the Lord is merciful and will help at least somewhat cleanse and relieve our spitting, humiliated and offended souls. What do you wish from the bottom of my heart.
Viktor Astafiev.
<…>
March 1, 1995
Krasnoyarsk
(G. Vershinin)
[…] As for the ambiguous attitude to the novel, I know from letters: from the retired commissariat and military officials - abuse, and letters of approval come from comfrey soldiers and officers, many with the words: “Thank God, we lived to see the truth about the war !..”
But the truth about the war itself is ambiguous. On the one hand - victory. Let it be a huge, hoarse, huge bloodshed and with such huge losses that we are still embarrassed to announce them. Probably 47 million is the most truthful and terrible figure. And how else could it be? When the German pilots were asked how they, the heroes of the Reich, managed to shoot down 400-600 aircraft, and Soviet hero Pokryshkin - two, and also a hero ... The Germans, who studied at our aviation schools, modestly answered that at the time when Soviet pilots they sat in the classrooms, studying the history of the party, they flew - they prepared for battles.
Three million, almost all of our regular army, were captured in 1941, and 250 thousand hungry, homeless military warriors wandered around Ukraine for a whole winter, they were not even taken prisoner so as not to be fed and guarded, and they began to unite in gangs, then went into the forests, declaring themselves partisans ...
Oh, this "truth" of war! We, six people from one artillery battalion control platoon - only three were left - got together and argued, cursed more than once, remembering the war - even one battle, one incident, transition - everyone remembered differently. But if you reduce this “truth” of six with the “truth” of hundreds, thousands, millions, you will get a more complete picture.
“Only the people know the whole truth,” said Konstantin Simonov shortly before his death, having heard this great phrase from front-line soldiers.
Having delved into the material of the war, not only from our side, but also from the opposite side, I now know that a miracle saved us, the people and God, who saved Russia more than once - both from the Mongols and in troubled times, and in 1812, and in the last war, and now the only hope is for him, for the merciful. We greatly angered the Lord, we sinned a lot and terribly, we all need to pray, which means to behave with dignity on earth, and maybe He will forgive us and will not turn His merciful face away from us, debauched, evil, incapable of repentance.
Here is the third book and it will be about our people, great and long-suffering, who, sacrificing themselves and even their future, with tears, blood, their bones and torments, saved the whole earth from desecration, and bled themselves and Russia bled. And the Russian holy village went wild, tired, embittered, the people themselves became a piece-worker, never making up for the losses of the nation, never overcoming the terrible upheavals, military, post-war persecutions, camps, prisons and forced new buildings, and in convulsions our valiant rural village was already beating economy, without the resurrection of which, as well as without a return to the spiritual principle in all life, we cannot survive. […]

1995
(to Kozhevnikov)
My dear brother in the war!
Alas, your bitter letter is not the only one on my desk. There are bundles of them, and in the editorial offices of newspapers, and on my desk, and I can’t help you with anything, except for advice.
Put all your documents in your pocket, all correspondence, put on all the awards, write a poster: “Compatriots! Compatriots! I was wounded four times in the war, but they humiliate me - I was denied disability! I receive a pension of 5.5 thousand rubles. Help me! I helped you with my blood!" Nail this poster to a stick and early in the morning, while there is no cordon, stand with it on the central square of Tomsk on May 9, on Victory Day.
The police will try to intimidate and even twist you, do not give up, say that everything is filmed - for cinema. Demand that the chairman of the regional executive committee or the military commissar of the regional military registration and enlistment office personally come for you. And until they personally arrive, do not leave the place.
This will help you right away. In three days, I assure you, your pension case will be launched everywhere and everywhere. But be courageous, as at the front. Hold on to the end!
If they start persecuting you, insulting you, give me a short telegram about this, and I will make such a scandal for these fellow Siberians that some of them will fly from their warm places.
Do one more feat, Siberian! In the name of the same humiliated and offended, in the name of their peaceful old age. I wish you courage!
Yours V. Astafiev, war invalid, writer, laureate of State Prizes
A copy of Kozhevnikov's letter, along with mine, to the Tomsk Regional Executive Committee. I have a copy of the letter.

July 26, 2000
(S. Novikova)
Dear Svetlana Alexandrovna!
I received your book a long time ago, but I never managed to read it: vanity, illness, weakening eyesight and graphomaniacs pounding at the door leave no time for reading.
You threw a book-document, albeit in a thousand copies, into the future times, like a heavy cobblestone, as another vivid evidence of our troubles and victories, which does not coincide with the demagogy that reigned, and still reigns in our decrepit society, decrepit and chest, both spiritually and morally. A necessary, important book. Of course, those who run or already hobble with portraits of Stalin through the squares and streets do not read any books and will not read any more, but in two or three generations a spiritual resurrection will be required, otherwise Russia will die, and then the truth about the soldiers will be in demand, and marshals. By the way, a soldier, even wounded three times, like me, is still rare in Russia, but it happens, and commanders, marshals, both main and non-main, have long died out, such was their “easy” life, and even this Satan, for something sent as a punishment to Russia, he drank their blood, shortened their age.
I was an ordinary soldier, I saw generals from a distance, but fate wanted me to see the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Konev, from a distance, and one day - to fate! - I saw and heard Zhukov very close under the city of Proskurov. It would be better for me never to see him, and even better not to hear him. And I had no luck with aviation. I started on the Bryansk front, and the first plane shot down I saw, alas, not German, but our “shop”, it fell not far from our kitchen into a spring birch forest, and somehow fell so awkwardly that the guts of the pilot who fell out of the cockpit stretched all over the white birch, still liquidly sprinkled with a leaf. And after that, for some reason, I saw how more often ours were shot down, and it came to the point that we could clearly distinguish between our and German planes by the outlines of the wings, so holyly lied to each other: “Here the Fritz has fucked up again!”
The story with Gorovets does not look as good as in your book, he really shot down 9 planes, but not only Yu-873, but also others, and there were those on the ground who did not shoot down even a single one, and they sent him into the air then, when the limit of his strength was over, and by evening he was shot down and accused of having fallen into the enemy’s position and surrendered. Justice triumphed many years later, triumphed by an absurd accident, and when a bust monument to Gorovets was erected on the Kursk Bulge, one mother arrived, and the father said: “They sold him, let them bury him.”
“The Ballad of a Shot Heart” was written by my old friend Nikolai Panchenko, he lives in Tarusa, near Moscow, and is almost blind. "Stalingrad on the Dnieper" - a documentary story - was written by Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, it was published in Novy Mir, but I did not see a separate edition.
Oh, how much I would like to tell you, but I am no longer enough for a long letter, and I just kiss your hands and put my palm on the place where your heart is, which has endured so much adversity and withstood such work.
Yes, of course, all wars on earth ended in turmoil, and the winners were punished. How could Satan, sitting on the Russian throne, not be afraid of the union of such people and minds as Zhukov, Novikov, Voronov, Rokossovsky, behind whom there was a robbed, impoverished people and warriors who came from Europe and saw that we live not better, but worse everyone. Indignation accumulated, and someone suggested to Satan that this could end badly for him, and he drove into the camps the saviors of his skin, and not only marshals and generals, but clouds of soldiers, officers, and they died in this merciless battle. But they haven’t gone anywhere, they all lie in permafrost with tags on their legs, and many with carved buttocks, put on food, even ate freshly frozen when it was impossible to make a fire.
Oh, my mothers, and they still want, demand that our people be able to live freely, manage themselves and their minds. Yes, everything is downtrodden, muffled, and exterminated, and humiliated. There is no longer the former strength among the people, which was, for example, in the 30s, so that they could rise from their knees at once, grow wiser, mature, learn to manage themselves and their Russia, large and bloodless.
Read the book that I am sending you, and you will see what it was like for ordinary people. My Marya, a volunteer Komsomol member, and I, God have mercy, neither in the pioneers, nor in the Komsomol, nor in the party, were dashing over the edge. My grandmother is from a nine-child working-class family, small, strong in character, and all the burdens fell mainly on her. Our two daughters died - one - eight months old, the other 39 years old, we raised her children, two grandchildren, but you will learn everything else from the book. And sorry for the handwriting, I am writing from my native village, and Marya is in the city with a typewriter, I don’t even know how to type.
I bow low to you.
Yours V. Astafiev.

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (1924 - 2001), writer, front-line soldier, Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of 5 State Prizes.

Victory Day is coming. Once, under Stalin, May 9 was not a holiday - apparently the reason was the dictator's fear of veterans and shame for the monstrous losses. Then, under Brezhnev, this day became a holiday, but “with tears in his eyes” - no parades, only meetings of veterans and flowers from everyone else in gratitude for the salvation. Today? Monstrous vulgarity in the form of a demonstration of military force on Red Square and the ubiquitous inscriptions “For the Germans!”, “To Berlin!”, “Satisfied with the ruins of the Reichstag.” It would be nice to cool the ardor of such “winners” with the memoirs of a classic of Russian literature:

“You don't have to lie to yourself. At least for yourself! It's hard for you to agree with me, but the Soviet military is the most frantic, most cowardly, meanest, most stupid of all that were before it in the world. She "won" 1:10! It was she who threw our people, like straw, into the fire - and Russia was gone, there is no Russian people either. We won the war by filling the Germans with mountains of corpses and flooding them with a sea of ​​blood. What was Russia is now called the Non-Black Earth Region, and all this is overgrown with weeds, and the remnants of our people fled to the city and turned into punks who left the village and did not come to the city.

Here is such a story

The battle for Sevastopol ended in defeat. They left the city. Together with the inhabitants and the army. There was no evacuation.

Vice Admiral Oktyabrsky handed over command to General Petrov and, together with the enkavedeshniki, boarded a plane and flew to Krasnodar.

General Petrov with party activists and jewelry from the bank an hour later sailed on a submarine to Novorossiysk. During this hour, he managed to give instructions about the explosion of the Inkerman caves. There was a huge underground hospital where up to 20,000 of our wounded lay. Everyone heard the explosion.

They blew up a bakery, a kindergarten, temporary housing for service personnel. Almost a hundred thousand troops remained at the mercy of the enemy. The pier where people waited for the ships collapsed under the weight of the crowd. The ships did not come, the chiefs decided to save the fleet. All those who were captured were later declared traitors.

On May 8, 1944, Sevastopol was recaptured. The German army for the evacuation involved the entire German-Romanian fleet. About 2000 different ships stretched in a chain across the entire Black Sea. It was a "living bridge" of continuously moving convoys - the empty ones hurried to Sevastopol, and the loaded ones to Constanta. The Luftwaffe could not provide cover, Soviet aircraft drowned everyone in a row. But the landing barges departed from Chersonese until dawn on May 12th. 21 people surrendered. While they were in captivity, in Germany they were awarded the Knight's Crosses.

https://www.site/2015-05-08/viktor_astafev_neparadnaya_pravda_o_cene_pobedy

"Everywhere simulation, vile cowardice, theft, pettiness"

Victor Astafiev: the unofficial truth about the price of the Victory (attention: heavy photos, 18+)

Today, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, in the midst of the jubilee frenzy, in places acquiring exemplary absurd, anecdotal forms (, in the form of a Khatyn memorial, in the office of a Yekaterinburg funeral company, in a Ural network of shops for intimate goods, etc.), we would like to remind you that May 9 is a day of mourning and remembrance for millions of lives ruined by the inhuman cruelty of both "strangers" and "ours" - commanders and chiefs, in fright from the pre-war Stalinist repressions"forged victory", strewn the battlefields with heaps of "cannon fodder"... Last year we published fragments of the front-line memoirs of a Leningrader (which caused a flurry of both gratitude and curses). This time - the word of the great Russian writer, warrior Viktor Astafiev. We bring to your attention fragments of his famous novel "Cursed and Killed".

“Dead Red Army soldiers lay in dugouts for weeks, and they received rations”

Viktor Astafiev, front-line youth

The willow mats were infested with bedbugs and lice. In many dugouts, the dry mats broke, sharply, like knives, pierced the body, the soldiers, having brought them down, slept in the sand, in the dust, without undressing. Ceilings collapsed in several barracks, how many soldiers were crushed there - no one bothered to take into account, if our losses were hidden at the front due to depressing statistics, then in the rear God ordered to dodge and cheat. Sandy dust storms, hunger, cold, the criminal indifference of the camp command, completely drunk, desperate, led to the fact that a month after the conscription, epidemics of dysentery broke out in the Totsk camps, mass hemeralopia, this cursed disease of distressful times and crowds of people, and tuberculosis crept up . It happened that the dead Red Army soldiers lay forgotten for weeks in half-collapsed dugouts, and living people received rations on them. In order not to dig graves, here, in dugouts, colleagues buried their comrades, pulling out crumbled mats for fuel. In the Totsk camps, there was a brisk trade in bundles of dry willow, handfuls of broken sticks. The fee is a makeweight of bread, a spoonful of porridge, a pinch of sugar, a stub of cake, a matchbox of shag. Many, many spots, sores from secret fires along the half-dried river, under scree ravines, riddled with shore swallows. From the bonfires and the remnants of the feast near them, one could guess that people had reached the most terrible extreme: somehow some managed to leave the camp, although here all the time they were all occupied with work and the appearance of it, in the steppes and ravines they dug up the burial grounds of fallen cattle, cut meat off it. And the most terrible rumor - as if one of the dead had their buttocks cut off, as if they were baked on hidden bonfires ... None of the inspecting officials dared to report upstairs about the disastrous state of the Totsky and Kotlubanovsky camps, to insist on their closure due to the complete unsuitability of the place for military town and not even suitable for prison camps. All ranks, great and small, firmly remembered the words of Comrade Stalin that "we have never had such a strong rear." And all Totsk reservists capable of standing in line, holding weapons, were sent to the front - since they did not die in such conditions, it means that they were still fit to die in the trenches.

“He was still alive, moving his mouth, from which blood was oozing out in jerks”

We lived to the last state of emergency: the twin brothers Snegirev left the second company somewhere. In fact, there were still some before lights out, but in the morning they were not in the barracks. The commander of the second company, Lieutenant Shaposhnikov, came for advice to Shpator and Shchus. They thought and said: for the time being, do not report the loss to anyone, maybe the brothers will go jacking where the brothers will get drunk, find themselves and again, in the dead of night, will appear in the company.

- Well, I told them! Shaposhnikov threatened.

On the second day, after dinner, Shaposhnikov was forced to report the disappearance of the Snegirev brothers to Colonel Azatyan.

- Oh, my God! We just didn't have enough! - the regimental commander burst into flames. - Search, please, search well.

They searched for the Snegirev brothers, declared deserters, at railway stations, on trains, on piers, in hostels, they made a request to their native village - there are no brothers anywhere, the villains hid, hid.

On the fourth day after the announcement, the brothers themselves showed up in the barracks of the first battalion with full sidors. Let's treat our colleagues with rolls, breaking them into pieces, they took out mugs of ice-cream milk, melted it in pots, picked onions from the bottom of the bags. “Eat, eat! - the Snegirev brothers shouted joyfully, childishly, carelessly. - Mom gave a lot, ordered everyone to treat. Who, he says, should I feed, all alone here is a bean.

- Where did you hang out? - Seeing the brothers, exhausted, almost not sleeping all night, gray in the face, like his greatcoat, without any anger, the commander of the second company asked the Snegirev brothers.

- But a request was made to the village council of the village.

“Ah, there was, there was,” the brothers said, rejoicing. - The chairman of the village council, Peremogin, knock-knock-knock with a piece of wood on the porch, mother hid our spade, removed our shoes, drove us to the floor, threw junk on top, threw onion bundles on top, slatted and gummed.

– What-what? Shaposhnikov asked colorlessly.

- Well, let's hum! Well, sieve! Well, this is what we call all kinds of torn, balls with rags, spindles with threads, spinning wheels, tows ...

“The boys have disappeared,” Shaposhnikov sighed, “they have completely disappeared ...”

In Skorik's special department, the Snegirev brothers were not so cheerful, they were already alarmed, they were talking seriously and not in a row, but in turn about their journey to their native village, but soon one of the brothers fell silent.

- The cow has calved, mother writes: “If we were at home, I would give milk from the new hotel, but so that I live, that I don’t, I cry for my father, for another month there is no news from him, but about you, miserable ones, all the night, sometimes I can’t close my eyes…” Seryoga and I consulted, it is his name Seryoga in honor of Tyatkin's grandfather, - one brother pointed at the other. - He is twenty-five minutes younger than me and, as the eldest, he obeys and respects me. Yes, but my name is Yeremey - in honor of my mother's grandfather. According to the holy calendar, I had a name day quite recently, in November, it was not for Seryoga soon, they will be in March. It's only sixty versts to the house, to Proshikha. And we decided: we’ll turn back and forth in a day or two, but we’ll drink milk. Well, we'll have a gubakhta ... or an outfit - we'll bear it. Mom saw us, wailed, did not let go. A day here, a day there, he says, what's wrong?

- How do you know saints?

- And all mom. She became a believer again. War, he says, is such that there is hope in God alone.

– How are you?

- Well, what are we? - Yeremey was silent for a while, flicked his nose and cheated: - When the mother forces us, we are baptized, otherwise we are unbelieving, Soviet teachers. There is no God, there is no need for a king, we will live on a bump! Heh heh!

"Oh my God! - Skorik clutched his head and looked at the brothers without blinking, bruised, and they, believing that he was thinking about something important, did not interfere. - Oh my God!" - Skorik repeated to himself and gave the brothers two pieces of paper and a pen.

- Write! Skoryk exhaled. “Here’s paper, here’s a pen, here’s ink, take turns writing. And God help you!

While the brothers took turns writing, the elder, having finished his work, dictated in an undertone to the younger, saying: “What is so special about this? Here is stupid! Write: “Mother, Leokadia Savvishna, sent a letter with a message, a cow calved ...” - Skorik looked out the window, thinking how to protect these brothers, the misfortunes of their children who do not understand, how to ensure that the trial of them was here, at the location of the twenty-first a shelf. It's closer here, in the regiment, it's easier here, here you can hope for a chance. Maybe Colonel Azatyan with his authority? Maybe a miracle will happen? And Skorik understood that this was nonsense, meaninglessness: whether here, in the regiment, or in the military district in Novosibirsk, the outcome would be the same, predetermined by Stalin's formidable order. And not only brothers - the father will suffer at the front, if he is still alive, the mother, as an accomplice and instigator, will certainly suffer, the matter for her will end in prison or exile in Narym places, otherwise even further.

They were sentenced to be shot. A week later, on Sunday, in order not to tear the Red Army men from their studies, not to waste useful things, combat time, from Novosibirsk, they ordered in writing to dig a grave in a densely populated cemetery filled with fresh wooden pyramids, to allocate an armed department for the execution of the sentence, and to line up the entire twenty-first regiment for a demonstration execution. "This is too much!" - murmured in the regiment. Regiment commander Gevork Azatyan made sure that the grave was dug behind the cemetery, on the edge of the forest, only the first battalion was led to execution - four hundred people are quite enough for such a high-ideological educational event - and a special team would be sent from the district: mine, de, serving also for plywood purposes they didn’t learn how to shoot, but here it is necessary at people.

Looking around, spreading his legs wider so as not to fall, pushing the paper far from his glasses, the major began to read out the sentence. At this point, Seryoga and Yeremey stopped tossing their noses, so as not to interfere with the major, in the performance of an important task, not to miss anything. The text of the verdict was small, but capacious, according to it it turned out that today it is worse than the Snegirev deserters, who disgraced the entire Soviet Red Army, undermined the power of the most powerful in the world Soviet state who desecrated the honor of a Soviet soldier are not in the world.

“However,” the battalion commander muttered. “Khan to the guys, Khan,” Yashkin finally decided. “The paper was skillfully drawn up, you can’t say anything, it would be so skillful to learn how to fight,” Skorik frowned.

– What are they? Shchus pushed him to the side. - Will they really sign the guys? ..

– Quiet… Wait…

The major ... wiped his glasses, planted them deeper on the bridge of his nose, and finished reading in the same voice dry from frost:

“The verdict is final, not subject to appeal and will be immediately enforced.”

All the same, no one moved, and after these words, all the same, they were still waiting for something, but the major did not utter any more words, he unhurriedly put a piece of paper in a skinny red folder, tightened the ribbons on it tighter and tighter, as if also lost without business or marveling at the fact that the case ended so soon. He tore off one ribbon, grimaced, looked for where to put it, put it in his pocket.

- I said, I said! Seryoga suddenly shouted piercingly, turning to his brother Yeremey. - Why did you deceive me? What for?!

Yeremey blindly felt with his dancing hand in space, the brothers buried themselves in each other, wept, banging their heads. The unbelted tunics, baggy trousers hanging without belts shook on them and fell lower, lower, the silver hoarfrost settled on them and still died out on their heads.

- Yes, what are you? What you? Yeremey patted his back and stroked his brother. - They are single, like in a kin ... they will scare them ... - He looked through the eyes of his commanders, comrades in the service, caught their eyes, demanding confirmation of his hopes: “Really, comrades, huh? .. Brothers, right? ..”. But Yeremey saw confusion or alienation on all faces - he carries him and his brother, carries him away from this shore, and there is no oar, no pole, no paddle to row to the crowded land, and no one, no one stretches out his hand. “Yes, what is it? We are all ours, we are ours, we are…” “Does he really not understand? Does he really still believe?.. ”Skorik was not the only one thinking in dismay, and Shchus thought, and the poor commander Shaposhnikov, completely torn to pieces by his guilt before the suicide bombers, many in the battalion thought so, according to Yeremey’s fussiness, according to the completely desperate, screaming look, understanding: he understands the eldest, he understands everything - a smart man, born of a smart man, he did not let his brother Seryoga completely despair, fall to the frozen ground in a humiliating and useless plea. The brother facilitated the last moments of the brother - oh, what a brainy, what a sleazy fighter would have turned out from Yeremey, maybe he would have survived in the war, gave birth to sensible children ... Meanwhile, three shooters went around the grave, stood in front of the brothers, two guards joined them, everything was done habitually, precisely, without words. "Five against two unarmed barbarians!" - Volodya Yashkin shook his head, and Shchus, who went to the enemy with a bayonet, was perplexed. The platoon commander saw militiamen near Vyazma, with sticks, crowbars, picks and shovels thrown at the enemy to get weapons, they were flogged from machine guns, crushed with caterpillars. And here such a fearless force on two boys! ..

How richly we live! How bravely we fight! - as if hearing Yashkin ... the commander of the first battalion Vnukov said clearly and loudly. - Why are you delaying? Butcher, if you have taken ...

- Get ready! - Hearing nothing and seeing no one, doing his job, commanded the newcomer, alien to everyone here, hated by the lieutenant. Taking the pistol out of its holster, he took it, held it up.

- Dya-adenki-s-s! Dya-adenki-s-s! - came the cry of Seryoga, and everyone swayed in the direction of this cry. Someone even stepped over, ready to rush to the scream. Shaposhnikov, not realizing it, even took a step towards the doomed brothers, more precisely, half a step, still trial, timid. The lieutenant-executor, hearing or noticing this movement with a trained eye, sharply commanded: “Blow!” ...

And there was still a brief moment when, in the ranks of the battalion and behind the ranks, they saw how Yeremey resolutely stood up for his brother, taking almost all the destructive force of the volley into his chest. He was thrown with his back across the frozen crack, he arched his whole body, scrawled into a handful of earth and immediately, breaking at the waist, flashing with his bare sunken belly, languidly fell head down into the depths of the crack. His brother Sergei was still alive, clutching the frozen lumps with his hands, scratching them, swimming down with the frozen sand, moving his mouth, from which blood was spewing out in jerks, still trying to shout to someone. But he was inexorably carried away into the earthly abyss, with his feet, from one of which a shoe fell off, he touched his brother’s body, leaned on him, lifted himself up to break out upward, towards the sun, still shining brightly, pouring golden frost dust. But his eyes, squeezed out of their sockets at a scream, began to fill with a film, his mouth was covered with a yawn, his hands calmed down, and only his fingers could not calm down, everyone felt for something, everyone was looking for someone ... brows down. The dead man fell crumpled on his older brother, clung to him. The lieutenant fired two shots into the slot, pulled the bolt of the pistol and began to holster it.

- Department-leni-e! he shouted authoritatively to the archers, heading for the sleigh. Noticing the boot that had fallen from Seryoga, he returned and sniffed it into the grave.

"Stalin habitually deceived the people, lied recklessly"

Having met the war as teenagers, many guys of the twenty-fourth year ended up in the army, already undermined by malnutrition, evacuation, overtime hard work, domestic troubles, complete confusion during the period of collectivization and the first months of the war. The country was not ready for a protracted war, not only in terms of equipment, weapons, aircraft, tanks - it did not set people up for a long, hard battle and did it on the go, in convulsions, in a hurry, shuddering from defeats at the fronts, complete mismanagement, frustration life and economy in the rear. Stalin habitually deceived the people, lied recklessly in a festive November speech that there was already complete order in the rear, which means that everything would soon change at the front too. Everything was adjusted, built and repaired on the go. By the end of the forty-second year, something and in some places had been adjusted, patched, hemmed and shaved, moved to a new place and even built, but the eternal Russian slovenliness, hope for a chance, theft, connivance, multiplied by army cruelty and rudeness, they did their job - youngsters of eighteen years of age could not withstand the onslaught of hard times and the requirements of army life. Boys of the twenty-fourth year, having learned in two weeks to walk in formation, to stab with a bayonet, to dig in, to crawl like a plastuna, to make forced marches, more and more lost interest in these activities, realizing that nowhere and no one needed them. Shoot them, lie down in the trenches under the tracks, throw real grenades and bottles of combustible mixture. But instead of genuine shooting, the clicking of the bolt of a rifle, whoever has it, instead of cars and tanks, dummies and blanks, so the Red Army soldier turns into a blockhead, into a goner, go in command of him, put things in order - everywhere there is silent resistance, simulation, vile cowardice, theft, pettiness . People are weakening - the conditions in the barracks are unbearable, not all cattle can stand it, there are many sick people, rumors, albeit exaggerated ones, about victims and cases in the companies go around the regiment ...

Yashkin has seen something worse than the execution of some snotty boys. Near Vyazma or near Yukhnov - where do you remember? - there was a dump along the entire front, he saw a tank unit advancing beyond a narrow but deep floodplain river, which was supposed to provide an organized retreat and crossing the retreating units through the water barrier, to give them the opportunity to gain a foothold on the water line. Yashkin and all the retreating troops were very happy with the armored strength, they believed that they would finally give a real battle to the fascist, stop him at least for a while, otherwise from the very arrival at the front they rush and hide, run along the ground, shoot somewhere blindly . The tanks, occupying positions across the river at night, were completely stuck in the floodplain, and in the morning, when a flock of planes flew in and began to hit and burn helpless vehicles with precision, the commander of the regiment or brigade with staff officers and court khevra abandoned their people along with the dying cars, fled across the river . Those tanks were scraped, assembled along the front, most of the vehicles were repaired and re-repaired, with fresh gray welding seams, with scratches and potholes on the armor, with sloshing caterpillars, which, skidding in swamp slurry and peat, fell down, two cars remained even after repair with wedged towers. The tankers, invigorating through force, assured the infantry: but they say, the ammunition load is full, the tank can be used as a reserved gun dug into the ground. But no one wanted to fight with them, with tankers and tanks, they were beaten, burned from the sky. When the stunted floodplain was lined with black smoke and this most complete ammunition load began to burst in burning cars, not only soot and smoke were carried along the river, but also the screams of people burning alive. Some of the surviving crews, together with the infantry, rushed across the autumn river by swimming. Many drowned, and those that made it to the shore, the angry commander of the regiment or brigade, dressed in a new black overalls, personally shot with a pistol, his eyes flashing angrily, splashing with saliva. Drunk half to death, he shouted: “Traitors! Bitches! Underpants!" - and fired, fired, barely managing to change the clips that the lackeys slipped him, also ready to righteously despise and shoot all the retreating. And in general, across the river, it turned out that there were much more of those who were eager to fight not with the fascist enemy, but with their brothers on the front than on the opposite bank of combat-ready people.

Under the cover of thick sour smoke from burning peat and cars, the scattered retreating units managed to gain a foothold behind the river. Volodya Yashkin, from a trench already dug up to his knees, saw how a shoal of cars rushed to the river, how a stocky man in a leather raglan jumped out of one car almost on the move, jumping, shouting something, waving his hand, ran to the bank of the river, nervously unbuckling her holster. He shot the drunk tank commander right there on the spot. And on the move over the river, on the ravine, so that everyone could see, they shot down, threw into the ranks the rest of the commanders in unbelted tunics with stains from torn orders and badges of honors students in combat and political training with meat. These were shot by submachine gunners from the guards of the commander, dressed in raglan. The tankers who managed to hide in the infantry cracks, seeing what kind of reprisals were being carried out on the commanders who had betrayed them, ended up on the other side of the river without prodding, repaired cars and, under cover of night, took them beyond the water line, dug three tanks into the shore. It seems that they managed to cloak themselves near the river for a day, to stop the enemy, but then, as usual, it turned out that they had already been bypassed, surrounded, and it was necessary to remove the military positions from these burnt-out, burnt meat smelling of fresh hills of graves marked beyond the river. Connoisseurs said that the commander of the tank brigade, it turned out, after all, the brigade, who fought so bravely with his fighters, was shot by the army commander, who rushed along the front, trying to organize defense, patch up numerous holes in the front that was perforated everywhere, already on the outskirts of Moscow having an order to subordinate the retreating units to his army without a rudder and without sails, and here no one spared anyone or anything.

“The losses were supposed to be large, but still not so overwhelming”

No fantasy, no book, no film, no canvas can convey the horror experienced by those thrown into the river, under fire, into the tornado, into the smoke, into the stench, into the disastrous madness, in comparison with which the biblical hellfire looks like a children's fairy tale with a fairy tale. horror, from which you can close yourself with a sheepskin coat, climb behind the chimney, close your eyes, pinch your ears.

At dawn, it was counted and reported: four hundred and sixty fighting souls had gathered and were digging in on the northern slope of the height of Sto... There was no surprise for the battalion commander Shchus, but he still swayed back and forth and groaned muffledly when he heard the number four hundred and sixty, four hundred and sixty. .. Well, they pick out the guys who hid on the shore and along the ravines, in the bushes and nooks, they gather another two hundred people ... This is out of three thousand assigned to the battle group. "My God! - rushed about, rolled, confusion beat loudly in the skull of the battalion commander, - then what are the losses of those who crossed and went straight, climbed onto a steep bank? Oh, Volodya, - wiping Yashkin's mouth with a rag, plastered with dead goosebumps, like a puff cake with poppy seeds, - we are not like the old border, we ... Yes, no, - the battalion commander convinced himself, - there is something here, some kind of then a cunning plan is hidden ... Well, not the forty-first year - to drive and drive people to the slaughter, as they drove the unfortunate militia near Moscow, hastily shot down formations, trying to fill up with meat, flood the bulk of the advancing enemy with blood. We will fight, we will fight, my brother, - the battalion commander rubbed his hands. “Here the partisans will strike, the landing will jump from the sky, our combat regiment commander will give a connection ...”.

They clarified the location of the Shchus battalion, intelligence data from neighboring regiments, and the commanders wilted sadly. It turned out: they conquered, recaptured from the enemy about five kilometers of the coast in width and up to a kilometer in depth. Shusya's group doesn't count, it doesn't even have to give a sign yet, where and how much it is. Valiant troops spent tens of thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel on this territorial conquest, not counting the damage in people - they are accustomed to counting them last in reports - there are still a lot of people in Russia, litter, kill, exterminate them - everything moves. But on the left bank there are losses from bombings, artillery shells and mortars, and considerable ones. According to rough estimates, they lost twenty thousand killed, drowned, wounded during the crossing. Losses were supposed to be large, but not so stunning. – And this is the first foothold on the Great River. What will be the price of others? breathed Avdey Kondratievich, pulling the burnt-out pipe. She sighed empty...

“The detachment guards worked earnestly, drove people into a shaking heap of fear-stricken people”

A rock rumbled under someone's boots, they fired into the air, some people whipped over stones and bushes.

Ah, fell! Ah, screwed up! - carried out of the darkness - washed away! You don't want to fight...

Bra-a-attsy-s-s! Yes, what is it, bra-attsy-s-s! ..

They are dragging a man, dragging him along a stone block, to the water. Looks like the poor fellows ended up on the left bank, they are also supposed to be on the one on the right, where the German is. They are supposed to fight. And so the people who were destined not to swim, not to drown, but to do a completely different job, caught their brother and drove him back into the water. They will beat off a convenient place in the war more fiercely than the Nazi Germans - their trenches. After all, this position and position of theirs gave them the opportunity to survive in the war. Had Rodion and Yerofey been able to settle down so well in the war, they probably would not have stood on ceremony either. It just didn’t work out for them - for the Smolensk peasant and the Vyatka peasant - a convenient device in life, they couldn’t, they didn’t know how to adapt themselves to this swaggering, wise and cruel world - they are painfully rustic, unsophisticated in mind - therefore, rise from behind stones, go into the water, under the shots, go into the fire. And when some huge, as it seemed to them, eyeless, claw-armed people, who had illuminated them with a flashlight, grabbed them and dragged them, then under the pulled up shirt, protruding vertebrae and ribs shivered like stones. Both men, young and old, had rickets in childhood, sucked rye chewing gum in a rag as babies, and even after the declared prosperous collective farm life they lived on potatoes, light-weight, with almost pulled out joints of legs and arms, dragged, breaking their faces against stones, and did not resist, like that elderly uncle, in whom there was such vitality that he jumped out of the river with screams, rushed to the shore. Then the commander, nervous from unclean work, soared in a youthful falsetto:

For a traitor to the motherland! ..

The Smolensk and Vyatka peasants were only enough to pray, to spit out with a clogged mouth along with the sand:

We ourselves... We ourselves... Don't-oh-oh.

The fact that they cannot be driven into the water at all: they do not have weapons, they have no strength, their courage has dried up - they will not be enough for one more salvation, a miracle cannot happen again - they did not speak, did not dare to speak. Scooping out sand, gruss from the mouth, vomiting water, with which not only the pumpkin-shaped stomach was full, but also every cell of the body was filled with lead, even the hair on the head was not strong enough to bear. The younger was hit in the face with a gun butt. Since childhood, teeth crumbled from malnutrition crunched like eggshells and fell into the mouth. Erofey grabbed his partner and together with him tumbled into the water, grabbed the bars, nailed to the shore by the current.

Bastards! Damned bastards! he said distinctly, and pushed the raft upstream. Rodion, covering his mouth with one hand, helped his partner to start the raft upstream with the other. The guards worked earnestly, drove, knocked down into a shaking heap of fear-stricken people, whom everything nailed and nailed to the wrong shore where they were supposed to be. The cutting-off fire of the new, heavy-caliber “desheka” machine guns, which were so lacking in the bridgehead, foamed the water in the river, preventing anything living from reaching the shore. The work of the punishers was gaining more and more confidence, firm order, and that milk-drinker, who until recently was afraid to shoot at his own people, was even afraid of his own voice, jumping up to Yerofei and Rodion, he waved a pistol at them:

Where? Where, shameful bitches?!

They will take us to the Germans.

They no longer looked back, paid no attention to anyone, falling, gurgling, shivering from the cold, dragging the tied logs along the water and dragging themselves behind the raft. The machine gunner, who does not suffer from pitiful feelings and lack of ammunition, planted - just in case - a line after them. The bullets knocked white chips out of the beams, shook another one into the water, the poor fellow had swum out of the darkness, disturbed some rags in which human flesh was no longer bleeding. The dead were not dragged out here: let everyone see - there is order in the war, let them know what they will do with those scum and cowards who confuse the right bank with the left ...

“Destroy the prisoners to hell! Shoot like dogs!”

Here's another problem! - the calculator Karnilaev said with annoyance. We don't know what to do with the prisoners. Why were they taken?

Destroy them to hell! Shoot like dogs! - Evil, in the purest Russian blurted out Syrovatko. Ponyotov shivered. Once on their native land, seeing what the occupiers had done here, the Ukrainians, these peaceful Ukrainians, began to get sick.

We can’t,” said Ponaiotov. “We can’t be rude in the same way that they are rude. We are not killers. Besides, I saw that one of the prisoners was quite a boy. Fool. It's a sin to kill a fool...

Comrade lieutenant, what to do with the name?

What to do with the name? What to do with the name? Shaposhnikov looked out of the dugout. “We have to take them to the shore. Pass.

To whom, to whom? How do I know who? There is a special unit there, a special guard ...

There is no one there. No one is guarding the prisoners there. Together with ours, they jackal along the shore, picking up wild fish.

How so? And if these from the shore go to their own? If they report our ingenious connection?

Everything is clear, Comrade Lieutenant! - the sensible Okorkin said and waved his hand, pointing with the muzzle of the machine gun at the path trodden down the ravine: - Schneller, nahhaus!

Their bin einfaher arbeiter. (I am a simple worker), the elderly signalman babbled. – Und der da var eben in der shule. Uns haben zi aingetsogen, kaine eses, ainfahe zoldaten, ainfahe leit, kain grund, uns umtsubringen... (And he just graduated from school, we are mobilized, we are not SS men, we are simple soldiers, simple people, there is nothing to kill us for. We hope...)

Schneller, Schneller! Okorkin was adamant.

Wier hoffen auf mitleid. Vir verden fur oich betten... (We hope for mercy. We will pray to God...)

Okorkin and Chufyrin pushed the prisoners in the back and, ahead of each other, sliding, stumbling and falling, the Germans hurried down the ravine. Seeing that they were being led towards the river, it meant to the rear, they began to fuss.

Shaposhnikov followed them with a shifty, timid look. Before he had time to return to the dugout for a machine gun, he heard a long burst of pepesh behind the first ledge of the ravine, a short, barking cry, and realized that the Russian signalmen had shot their fellow craftsmen.

“And wear her the “Golden Star” of the hero on a magnificent chest. But for this you have to be a submissive slave.”

And at this, precisely at this most disastrous hour, a bleating voice came from the district:

- Attention to all points! To all telephonists! On the wire, the head of the political department of the Musenok division! Sending an important message...

Comrade captain,” Shestakov turned to Ponaiotov, holding the receiver, “the head of the political department was hanging on the wire.

What to him? - Throwing a pencil on the tablet, Ponaiotov jumped up, finishing the calculations of supporting the fire of the remnants of the Beskapustin regiment, turning into a counterattack, in order to alleviate the situation of the Shchusev battalion and help his panting neighbor - Syrovatko, even if he is cunning and burning, but still a friend misfortune. The fire was needed dense, fluent and accurate, it was necessary to fire from the guns between the Kapustinites going on the attack and not cover the cut-off Shchus battalion defending in the ravines. The fire had to be adjusted, to lead it after the chains, if they, these chains, are still there, if there are people on the chains. Without looking up from the map, Ponaiotov extended his hand, pressed the receiver to his ear - the regiment commander was talking to Musenko on the phone.

Here is what the Pravda newspaper writes about you: “The Red Army stepped across the river! This new, magnificent victory clearly emphasizes the triumph of Stalin's strategy and tactics over the German one, the increased power of Soviet weapons, the maturity of the Red Army ... ". And as far as I know, you didn’t even transfer the banner ...

They were afraid to get wet, - the commander answered dryly.

Comrade head of the political department, - Colonel Beskapustin pleaded, - our battalion is dying, the advanced one, to help him, accompanied by an artillery attack, we go on a counterattack. Let's beat it - please pass it on ...

So, some battalion is more important to you than the words of Comrade Stalin himself?!

H-how is this some kind of battalion?!

And so, you understand! Nevel and Taman have been taken by our valiant troops. In honor of these brilliant victories printed orders Supreme Commander and an article by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky about the leader's inspiring word. All your fighters need to know, in order to be ashamed - you are trampling on the bank, you know, warmed up ...

What-oh-oh! - the bridgehead roared with all the telephones that were hung on the only working line, while representatives of different branches of the military toiled, contacting the left bank on terrible radios.

What is a battalion to him?! What are dying people to him? They littered the armies, surrendered the fronts.

It was Shchus who had already soared, inopportunely found himself at the phone.

Who is speaking in such a tone to a representative of the Communist Party? Musenok raised his voice.

It is necessary to meet immediately, now the big politician will begin to solicit the names of the impudent commander.

Comrade head of the political department, Lazar Isakovich, well, talk in an hour, now it’s unbearable, now the line is desperately needed ... one line is working ... - Ponaiotov interjected into the conversation.

Why one? Why alone? Where is your valiant bond? We're pissed off, you know...

Attention! interrupted Musenok by the commander of the regiment Beskapustin. - Attention to all telephone operators on the line! Turn off the head of the political department! Start working with firemen!

The telephone operators immediately vindictively knocked out the important boss, who continued to rattle into the handset of the disconnected phone:

W-well, I'll get to you! Well, I have you!

And get there! - Syrovatko thundered gloomily into the receiver, hearing everything as it is, but not entering into an argument.

What's your concern? - Colonel Beskapustin wearily besieged him. - You seem to be doing well, you have everything, only the fighting party word is missing ...

At the political department of the division, four cars were kept, it’s the same as personally under Musenok, the party servants, several of his deputies, Komsomol and other parasite bosses, comfortably settled in the war, who lived even more freely because Musenok burned at work , climbed everywhere and everywhere, loomed, spoke himself. On the "emka" he went to the rear for all sorts of very frequent political meetings, because the farther into the forest, the more commissars - and everyone is fighting, fighting, leading. On the “jeep”, intended for trips to the front line, not to the very front line, of course, to the places he had planned - somewhere in the headquarters, in the medical battalion, in the ammunition companies, in places where reserves and replenishment were concentrated. On the gas truck, where the chauffeur was a muzzy peasant Brykin, he delivered newspapers, leaflets, and a campaign installation. In the back of the "gazushka" there was a camp bed, covered with a soldier's blanket - here the big boss slept during military trips. He also had a Studebaker, equipped for more substantial housing. The typist Isolda Kazimirovna Kholedysskaya, a beauty from a repressed Polish family, reigned in the Studebaker. The head of the political department seized her from the printing house of the divisional newspaper, where she fought as a proofreader, so that he himself could dictate the most important content of secret documents, articles, instructions - the Studebaker turned into a camping house. Despised by all, Izolda Kazimirovna tried not to emerge from the camper, if she appeared to the world, she walked with her eyes lowered, but she had the Order of the Red Star and the medal "For Military Merit". Shchus knew that Nelka was collecting cases for Kholedysskaya on the battlefield with the addresses of the wounded and killed soldiers - if Nelka messed up, Isolda would protect her through her boss, get vodka, cigarettes, fresh underwear, ointment from lice. Nelka understood: oh, not in vain, not in vain is the shy front worker saving up the addresses of decommissioned soldiers. One day Musenok will help her draw up a document, indicate in the award sheet what a staggering number of wounded the brave girl carried from the battlefield - and wear it " golden star»hero on a lush chest. But for this she must be under Musenk, as under an Arab sheikh, a submissive slave, and pretend that she honors her master and fears him.

In the arsenal of anti-Soviet and neo-liberals, now sowing anger at the USSR and the Red (Soviet) Army, biased assessments of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 are in a special move.

In discussions on military topics, patented "democrats" are heavily exploiting a few gloomy statements by a prominent Soviet and Russian writer, former front-line soldier Viktor Astafiev. Two of these author's sayings are the most reckless. First: "Stalin and Zhukov burned the Russian people and Russia in the fire of war." Second: “We simply did not know how to fight. We ended the war, not knowing how to fight ... We flooded the Germans with our blood, filled up with our corpses.

About the situations in which these Astafiev's "aphorisms" appeared are described in the following materials: "Hatred is stronger than memory" [http://www.karpovo.0o. ru/ forum2/index.php/ topic,156.0.html# ixzz47W9BHEKX ] and “Cemetery Crusader” [http://www.karpovo.0o.ru/ forum2/index.php/topic, 159.0. html#ixzz47W9OD9uy]. They were written two years ago, but are still relevant today.

HATE IS STRONGER THAN MEMORY

Hatred is restrained and constant anger. (Charles Duclos)

The unfortunate is the one who is cut off from himself. (S. Kierkegaard)

A rare liberal fiction writer, especially an amateur historian-journalist, in his public speaking on the topic of the Great Patriotic War, it does without the gloomy quote of the writer Viktor Astafiev that Stalin and Zhukov "burned the Russian people and Russia in the fire of war." I must say that here we are dealing with the usual manipulation of the liberals. In complex issues, they always refer to "moral authorities" and "standards of civic honesty", which should be trusted by definition, although those are by no means unconditional, and sometimes do not inspire confidence. At the same time, only their negative assessments of certain events, slanderous statements about famous people are usually given.

Meanwhile, Astafiev's "aphorism" arose in a certain situation. This phrase is found in his letter to his friend, front-line writer, member of the board of the USSR Writers' Union V. Kondratiev. The message is dated December 27, 1987. (It was first published in Novaya Gazeta, No. 42, 2009. Viktor Astafiev died in 2001). The letter was not intended for the public press. Viktor Petrovich Astafiev, without looking back, writes to a friend about the mediocrity of the Soviet leadership, from the general to the generalissimo, who did not put the life of ordinary soldiers in a penny. Claims " eloquent mehlis" ( that is, brigade commissars and political departments). Remembers with malice« gloomy kennel"(NKVD, Smershevites, Tribunals), which killed thousands of innocent people. Along the way, he quips about Alexander Matrosov, who rushed to the embrasure of an enemy bunker (he does not consider this a feat). The entire text of the letter is obviously bitter, although it was written on the eve of the New Year celebration. It is felt - wrote an elderly man, mutilated in the war, exhausted and offended by the deformities of Russian life, a hostage of his own passions and predilections, wounded, long poisoned by the poisons of hatred, tormented by doubts and deluded in the search for truth. It is a sin to assume, but perhaps the author of the letter was under the safe.

By the end of 1987 Astafiev is an individual, not caressed by fate. His family was dispossessed and sent to cold, hungry, non-native places. He lost his parents as a child, was brought up by his grandparents, lived in an orphanage as a teenager. Being 19-22 years old, he was on the war front. From February 1943 to May 1945 served as a driver and signalman in howitzer artillery. Was badly wounded. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star and three medals. After the war, he worked at various (sometimes difficult, dirty) jobs. In 1951 Astafiev got busy literary activity; since 1958 - member of the Writers' Union of the USSR. He was published frequently, but he made his way to the central publishing houses only in 1975-1977. Widespread reader recognition came in adulthood(1978-1984). However, he was not a "literary general", did not occupy prominent positions in the joint venture, did not lead any writing or publishing organization, did not enjoy the benefits of the capital's writers. In the early 1980s, in his views on Soviet reality and the Russian people, Astafiev parted ways with his former comrades-in-arms on the “village theme” (V. Belov, V. Rasputin, E. Nosov, etc.). In 1986 he was subjected to harsh public ostracism for the rabid anti-Semitism in his books and op-eds. In August 1987 his 39-year-old beloved daughter Irina died. The writer, who had long settled in the Siberian village of Ovsyanka, was depressed by the feeling of abandonment, isolation from the big and diverse city life.

Long before the mentioned letter to V. Kondratiev, hatred for practical communism was clearly visible in the literature and journalism of Viktor Astafiev. In it, he saw the origins of all the vices and hardships of a difficult urban and especially rural life in the country, the decline of public morals, the flawed development of a person's personality. Anger towards Soviet communism - alien, guilty of all personal and social misfortunes (as the writer believed) - now colored all his works . The writer-front-line soldier completely transferred this xenophobia to the topic of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Astafiev was a controversial nature, capable of extremes. He is an excellent craftsman literary word, but he lacked a general culture and powerful intellectual energy. His worldview suffered from a limited historical and social vision. The writer - a nugget often replaced these shortcomings with the daring and daring of sensual expressions. Sometimes in his texts and oral speech, he simply played naughty, played the fool. Famous sayings of Astafiev the Great Patriotic War, which liberals like to refer to, are not reliable evidence. These are scathing and vicious statements by the writer of his own assessments of events and people of the brutal wartime that were not personally known to him (in the war - to an ordinary soldier). They are the mythological fruit of his uncritical and chaotic comprehension of the many books he swallowed, magazine and newspaper articles on the topics of the Second World War and the Red (Soviet) Army. [With the beginning of the period of glasnost, huge streams of daring "military-historical" writings poured out in the country. Once Astafiev admitted that when he took up the development of this literary direction, read a lot of contradictory publications about the past severe war].

The question is: Why, every time starting a dispute about the Great Patriotic War, amateurs who allow "war according to the charter", and all sorts of democrats - "fighters for human rights", palm off on us, as unconditional evidence, literary sources, far-fetched, or even simply blasphemous in terms of historical truth. Why should only Viktor Astafiev be trusted? There are a number of writers - front-line soldiers who created by no means a romantic picture of the war. Let's name Vladimir Bogomolov, Yuri Bondarev, Grigory Baklanov, Konstantin Simonov, Viktor Nekrasov. After reading their books, there is no feeling of total depravity great victory, mediocre stupidity, cruelty and sadism of the Soviet command, the doomed sacrifice of millions of Soviet human defenders Fatherland.

It seems that patented truth-seekers are deliberately drumming into the mass consciousness of the Russian people liberal-perverted ideas about the uselessness of the historical feat of the peoples of the USSR in the war against Nazi fascism. In any case, the mentality of radio and television programs of a number of federal (primarily metropolitan) and regional media resources is perceived as such. They act as a sewer drain of liberal false information, slandering and denigrating the people's memory of the glorious Victory of our compatriots in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Victor Astafiev could not have gone to the front. At the end of the factory school, he, as a certified railway worker - train compiler, was given a "booking".

The Igarsky orphanage and orphan Vitka Astafiev graduated from the sixth grade during the winter before the war. Further, he was not allowed to stay in a social institution, his age had passed. I had to start an independent life, think about future fate, and, therefore, to somehow get out of the North. The young man earned money for the road himself, having entered the brick factory that existed in those years in Igarka as a horse carrier. The teenager picked up sawdust at the sawmill, loaded it onto a cart and drove it to the furnaces where the bricks were fired. By the summer, the necessary amount of money to buy a ticket for a steamship had been accumulated, and in Krasnoyarsk, Viktor entered the railway school of factory training No. 1 at the Yenisei station - the prototype of a modern vocational school.

War was already in full swing in the West. Almost without rest, always hungry, in fact, still children, Victor was barely eighteen, young railway workers were constantly busy with work. Echelons with the equipment of the evacuated factories and people arrived at the Bazaikha station one after another. On one of the trains from Leningrad, they unhooked the car, into which, along the route from the besieged city, the dead were transferred and stored. Victor was included in the funeral group. As he later wrote in The Last Bow: “At the funeral, I was not just crushed, I was gutted, destroyed by them, and without going to work, I went to Berezovka, to the military registration and enlistment office - to ask for the front.” This happened after only four months from the beginning of his working biography.

Volunteer Astafyev in 1942 was first sent to the 21st Infantry Regiment, located near Berdsk, and then he was transferred to the 22nd Motor Regiment in the military town of Novosibirsk, and only in the spring of 1943 was sent to the front line ...

In the nineties, Viktor Petrovich wrote his most important work about the war - the novel "Cursed and Killed." He wrote, despite the persecution of the writer going on in the periodical press. Such a biting and mercilessly capacious assessment of the war, already contained in the very title of the novel, could only be given by a person who had great courage, endured suffering and said openly what immediately crossed out everything previously created by powerful monumental propaganda. works of art about the heroism of war.

He wrote: “I was an ordinary fighter in the war, and our soldier’s truth was called “trench” by one very lively writer; our utterances are a “bump of sight”.

And here are his "trench postulates", born from the first days of being in the training unit near Novosibirsk: no serious training, no training of young, unfired fighters was carried out. “They simply forgot about us, forgot to feed us, forgot to teach us, forgot to give out uniforms.” According to Astafiev, when they finally arrived from the reserve regiment to the front, the army looked more like vagabonds. These were not soldiers, but emaciated, tired old men with dull eyes. From a lack of strength and skill, most of them died in the first battle or were captured. “They never brought the benefit to the Motherland that they wanted, and, most importantly, they could bring.”

Most of the soldiers wore tunics with a seam on their stomachs. The same seams were on underwear. Many did not know why this seam, they were perplexed, the explanation was simple - the clothes were taken from the dead. So you can’t take it off, you just need to cut it, then sew it up. Realizing this, the soldiers themselves began to dress in this way, taking off clothes from the dead Germans - they were preparing for the war in a serious way, the cloth was solid, wore out less. Ukrainian peasant women, namely in Ukraine, the military path of the soldier Astafyev began, often mistook our soldiers for captured Germans, not understanding who was in front of them in such miserable attire. Astafiev got a tunic with a turn-down collar, apparently a junior officer, but there were more lice in it - that's all her advantage. Only in December 1943, the unit was finally equipped.

Private Viktor Astafiev fought in the 17th Artillery, Orders of Lenin, Suvorov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Red Banner Breakthrough Division, which was part of the 7th Main Artillery Corps striking force 1st Ukrainian Front. The corps was the reserve of the High Command.

"Merry Soldier" Viktor Astafiev was a driver, gunner, scout, signalman. Not a staff telephone operator, but a line overseer, ready, on the first order of the commander, to crawl under bullets, looking for a rush on the line. This is how he himself wrote about the specifics of his military position as a telephone operator later: “When a scolded, scolded, tattered, torn line signalman went alone to a precipice, under fire, he would illuminate with the last, sometimes angry, sometimes woefully envious look of the fighters remaining in the trench, and grabbing onto the parapet of the trench, he can’t overcome the steepness in any way. Oh, how understandable he is, how close at that moment and how embarrassing in front of him - you involuntarily look away and wish that the break in the line was not far away, that the signalman would return “home” as soon as possible, then it will become easier for him and everyone in his soul.

Signalers also experienced the possibility of a fatal outcome more often than others, and their joy of life was sharper. Sad statistic combat way soldiers called up by the Igarsk draft office confirms what has been said: the northerners were often appointed as signalmen, and among them there was a larger percentage of both those who died and those who received awards. The fighter Astafyev echoes this: “And when, alive, unharmed, rattling with a piece of wood from the apparatus, the signalman collapses into the trench, leans against its dirty wall in happy exhaustion, give him - out of brotherly feelings - an unsmoked cigarette. The communications brother will pull it, but not immediately, at first he will open his eyes, look at the one who gave “forty”, and you will read so much gratitude that it will not fit in your heart.

However, the work of the "lineman" was also appreciated by the government award of the command. In the battle on October 20, 1943, the Red Army soldier Astafyev corrected the telephone connection with the advanced observation post four times. “When performing a task from a close bomb explosion, it was covered with earth. Burning with hatred for the enemy, Comrade Astafyev continued to carry out the task under artillery and mortar fire, collected pieces of cable, and again restored telephone communication, ensuring uninterrupted communication with the infantry and its support with artillery fire, ”as it is written in the award sheet when introducing the senior telephone operator Astafyev to the medal "For Courage"...

If only we could now laugh at the literary opuses of the staff clerk, but Viktor Petrovich, perhaps, did not see this document in his eyes, and left his descendants memories of a completely different plan:

According to Astafiev, it was the war that caused him to take up the pen. In the early 50s, Viktor Petrovich went to a literary circle opened at the local newspaper Chusovskoy Rabochiy in the Urals, where he once heard a short story by one writer - a political worker during the war. That war was beautiful, and most importantly, what angered him was written by the one who was also at the forefront. Astafyev, according to him, already rang in his shell-shocked head from such lies. Arriving home and calmed down, he decided that the only way to fight lies is the truth. And overnight, in one breath, he wrote his first story "Civil Man" (the modern name is "Siberian"), in which he described his war as he saw and knew. And that was just the beginning.

Bringing this known fact, the writer's biographers do not always add that the former orphanage had nowhere to return from the war. Together with his wife, a front-line soldier, he went to her native Ural town of Chusovoy. Emboldened by the war, the lodgers-immigrants did not think of freeing the front-line soldier's family the wing they had occupied and unpaid in the yard. The brother-in-law major, who had returned from the war, took the best place in the house in the room on the second floor, stuffing the room to capacity with trophy rags and “through the lip” talked with the younger Victor, who was forced to huddle with his young wife in the kitchen behind the stove on the floor. Victor either shoveled snow or unloaded wagons before he got a job as a watchman at a sausage factory, where this story was born on the night shift. The writer's wife Maria Koryakina told about this. Told not only about the ups and downs family life veterans who returned from the war, but also about her daughter Lidochka, who died of dyspepsia in infancy. The young mother from constant malnutrition did not have enough milk.