About the Victory Day and the statements of the writer Astafiev. “We must kneel in the middle of Russia and ask our people for forgiveness

08.05.2016

The "unpatriotic" truth about the price of Victory from the front-line writer Viktor Astafiev, which sharply differs from the patriotic noodles, which, especially these days, are actively being hung on the ears of the people.

Behind the roar of ceremonial tanks, concerts of painted stars in tunics and the privatization of events 70 years ago by the current government (because there are no reasons for pride), the truth about the war is almost not heard.

It is somehow forgotten that that war became the greatest grief and tragedy on the verge of complete catastrophe, perhaps, in the entire history of Russia. If we compare with a person, then we can say that the country has experienced clinical death and its consequences are still visible. Only idiots or scoundrels can make this an excuse for sublimating official patriotism. Or idiots, scoundrels.

The victory in this war has nothing to do with parades, demonstrations of technology and pretentious speeches. May 9 is a day of sorrow and remembrance for millions of lives ruined by the inhuman cruelty of both "strangers" and "us".

In any case, this was the opinion of the great Russian writer, the warrior of that war, Viktor Astafiev.

We bring to your attention fragments of his famous novel "Cursed and Killed", illustrated with photographs that should not be seen by persons under 18 and impressionable people.

The text is long and scary. These are now not accepted. The media try to make clear, short, “positive” texts. The opposite is true here. It's like a bitter medicine, it doesn't taste good, but it heals ...

"The dead Red Army men lay in dugouts for weeks, and they received rations on them."

… The willow mats were infested with bugs and lice. In many dugouts, dry mats broke, sharply, like knives, pierced the body, the soldiers, having brought them down, slept in the sand, in the dust, without undressing. In several barracks, ceilings collapsed, how many soldiers were crushed there - no one bothered to take into account, if our losses were hiding at the front due to depressing statistics, then in the rear, God ordered us to trick and cheat.

Sand dust storms, hunger, cold, the criminal indifference of the command of the camps, who were all drinking and desperate, led to the fact that a month after the call in the Totsk camps epidemics of dysentery, mass hemeralopia, this damned disease of disastrous times and human congregations, broke out, and tuberculosis crept up. ... It happened that the dead Red Army men lay forgotten for weeks in half-collapsed dugouts, and live people received rations on them. In order not to dig graves, here, in dugouts, colleagues buried their comrades, pulling out crumbled mats for fuel.

Victor Astafiev at the front

In the Totsk camps there was a brisk trade in bunches of dry willow trees, handfuls of broken sticks. Fee - an appendage of bread, a spoonful of porridge, a pinch of sugar, a bit of cake, a matchbox of makhorka. There are many, many spots, ulcers from secret fires along a half-dried river, under crumbly ravines pocked by 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 labor and visibility, they dug burial grounds of fallen cattle in the steppes and ravines, cut off meat from it. And the most terrible rumor - as if one of the deceased had their buttocks cut off, as if they had been baked on secret bonfires ...

None of the checking officials dared to report to the top about the disastrous state of the Totsk and Kotlubanov camps, to insist on their closure due to the complete unsuitability of the place for a military town and even not suitable for prison camps. All ranks, big and small, firmly remembered the words of Comrade Stalin that "we have never had such a strong rear." And all the Totsk reservists capable of standing in the ranks, 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, wiggling his mouth, from which he jerked out blood."

… We lived to the extreme state of emergency: the twin brothers Snegirev left the second company somewhere. In fact, they were still there before going to bed, 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: as long as not to report the loss to anyone, maybe they will go around where the brothers get drunk, get drunk, find themselves, and again, in the middle of the night, will appear in the company.

Well I told them! - Shaposhnikov threatened.

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

Oh, Lord! We just missed this! - the regiment commander burst into flames. - Search, please, search well.

The Snegirev brothers, declared deserters, were searched for at train stations, on trains, on piers, in dormitories, they made a request to their native village - the brothers were nowhere to be found;

On the fourth day after the announcement, the brothers themselves appeared in the barracks of the first battalion with full sidors. Let's treat colleagues to kalachi, breaking them into pieces, took out mugs of ice cream milk, melted it in pots, and took the onions from the bottom of the bags. “Eat, eat! - the Snegirev brothers shouted joyfully, childishly. - The mother pushed a lot, ordered everyone to be treated. Whom, he says, should I feed, alone here, a bean. "

Where are you hanging out? - seeing the brothers, exhausted, almost not sleeping all the nights, gray-faced, like his greatcoat, the commander of the second company asked the Snegirev brothers without any anger.

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

Ah, it was, it was, - the brothers said all exulting. - The chairman of the village council Peremogin knock-knock-knock with a piece of wood on the porch, mother hid our chunk, cleaned up the shoes, drove us on the bed, threw it with old clothes, onion bunches on top, threw a lattice and paper with paper.

What-what? - Shaposhnikov asked colorlessly.

Well, with paper! Well, let's solve! Well, that's what we call all rags, balls of rags, spinning wheels with thread, spinning wheels, tow ...

"The guys are gone," Shaposhnikov sighed, "completely gone ..."

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

The cow calved, the mother writes: “If we were at home, I would drink milk from the house-to-house, but I live, that I’m not, I cry for my father, for another month there is no news from him, but about you, miserable, all night , I won't close my eyes… ”. Serega and I conferred, this is his name Serega in honor of Tyatka's grandfather, - one brother poked his finger at the other.

- He is younger than me by twenty-five minutes and I, as the eldest, listens, reads. Yes, and my name is Eremey - in honor of my mother's grandfather. According to the calendar, I had a name day quite recently, in November, but Seryoga will not have it soon, in March they will. It's only sixty miles to the house, to Proshikha. And they decided: we’ll turn around in a day or two, but we’ll drink milk. Well, the lip will be for us ... or the outfit - we will endure. The mother saw us, screamed, did not let go. Day here, day there, he says, what's wrong?

How do you know the saints?

And all the mother. She has become a believer again. War, he says, is such that there is hope for God alone.

How are you?

Well, what are we? - Eremey paused, tossed his nose and cheated: - When the mother forces us - we are baptized, and so we are disbelieving, sovetsky teachers. There is no God, there is no need for a king, we will live on a hummock! Xh-hu!

"Oh my God! - Skorik grabbed 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 handed the brothers two sheets of paper and a pen.

Write! - Skorik gasped. - Here's paper, here's a pen, here's ink, take turns writing. And God help you! ..

While the brothers were writing in turn, the elder, having finished his business, dictated to the younger in an undertone, saying: “What's so special? Here is stupid! Write: "Mother, Leokadia Savvishna, sent a letter with a message, a cow calved ..." - Skorik looked out the window, figuring out how to protect these brothers, the troubles of his children who do not understand, how to ensure that the trial over them was here, in the twenty-first a shelf.

It’s closer here, in the regiment, here it’s easier, here you can hope for luck. Maybe Colonel Azatyan with his authority? Maybe some miracle will happen? And Skorik understood that this is nonsense, meaninglessness: what is here, in a regiment, or in a military district in Novosibirsk - the outcome will be the same, predetermined in advance 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 case for her will end in prison or exile to Narym places, or even further.

They were sentenced to death.

"This is too much!" - rumbled into the regiment. The regiment commander Gevorg Azatyan made sure that the grave was dug behind the cemetery, at the edge of the forest, only the first battalion was led to execution - four hundred people are quite enough for such a highly ideological educational event - and they would send a special command from the district: my deeds were also serving for plywood purposes have not learned to shoot, but here we have to at people.

Looking around, spreading his legs wider so as not to fall, removing the paper far from his glasses, the major began to read out the sentence. At this point, Seryoga and Eremey stopped throwing their noses, so as not to interfere with the major in the execution of an important matter, not to miss anything. The text of the verdict was small, but capacious, it turned out that today there is no more terrible than the deserters Snegirevs, who disgraced the entire Soviet Red Army, undermined the power of the most powerful Soviet state in the world, outraged the honor of a Soviet soldier, is not in the world.

Well, however, - muttered the battalion commander. "Khan to the guys, Khan," Yashkin finally decided. “The paper is skillfully composed, you won’t say anything, it would be so skillfully to learn how to fight,” Skorik frowned.

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

Quiet you ... Let's wait ...

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

- "The verdict is final, there is no appeal and will be immediately executed."

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 leisurely put a piece of paper in a red skinny daddy, tightened the ribbons on it tighter and tighter, as if he had also lost business or amazed that the business ended so soon. He cut one of the straps, winced, looked for where to put it, put it in his pocket.

So I spoke, I spoke! - suddenly shouted shrilly Seryoga, turning to brother Eremey. - Why did you deceive me? What for?!

Eremey blindly felt with his dancing hand in space, the brothers buried themselves in each other, wept, banging their heads. Unbelted tunics, baggy trousers without straps shook on them and fell lower, lower, silver frost still settled on them and still extinguished on their heads.

What are you? What are you? - slapped on the back, stroked brother Eremey. - They are single, as in a cine ... they will scare ... - He looked through the eyes of his commanders, comrades in the service, caught their glance, demanding confirmation of his hopes: "True, comrades, eh? .. Brothers, right? ..".

But Eremey saw confusion or alienation on all faces - he carried him and his brother away from this shore, and there was no paddle, no pole, no pressure to swoop down to the crowded land, and no one, no one stretched out his hand. “What is it? We are all ours, we are ours, we are ... ". “Doesn't he really understand?

Does he still believe? .. "- not only Skoryk thought in confusion, and Shchus thought, and poor comrade Shaposhnikov, completely torn to pieces by his guilt before the death row, many in the battalion thought so, because of Yeremey's fussiness, because of the completely desperate, screaming look, understanding the eldest, he understands everything - an intelligent man, born of an intelligent man, he did not allow his brother Seryoga to despair completely, to fall on the frozen ground in a humiliating and useless prayer. The brother made it easier for his brother's last minutes - oh, what a brainy, what a swift fighter would turn out from Eremey, maybe he would have survived the war, gave birth to intelligent children ...

Meanwhile, three shooters walked around the grave, stood in front of the brothers, two guards joined them, everything was done as usual, as if, without words. "Five for two unarmed lobsters!" - Volodya Yashkin shook his head, and Shchus was perplexed, who went to the bayonet at the enemy. Pomkomvzvoda saw militias near Vyazma, with sticks, crowbars, picks and shovels thrown at the enemy to get weapons, they were flogged with machine guns, crushed with caterpillars. And here is such a fearless force on two boys! ..

How rich we live! How bravely we are fighting! - as if having heard Yashkina ... the commander of the first battalion Vnukov said clearly and loudly. - Why are you hesitating? Meat, if you take it ...

Get ready! - Hearing nothing and not seeing anyone, doing his job, the new, hated lieutenant, alien to everyone here, commanded. Taking the pistol out of its holster, he took it, held it up.

Dya-adenki-s! Dya-adenki-s! - there was a cry of Seryoga, and everyone swung in the direction of this cry. Someone even stepped over, ready to rush to scream. Shaposhnikov, without realizing it, even took a step towards the doomed brothers, or rather, half a step, still tentative, timid. The lieutenant-executor, having heard or noticed this movement with a trained eye, sharply commanded: "Fire!" ...

And there was still a short moment, when in the battalion line and behind the line they saw how Eremey resolutely interceded with his brother, taking in his chest almost all the striking force of the volley. His back was thrown across the frozen crevice, he arched his whole body, scrawled into a handful of earth, and then, breaking in the lower back, flashing with his bare sunken belly, sluggishly flowing down his head into the depth of the crevice.

His brother Sergei was still alive, grabbing the frozen lumps with his hands, scratching them, floating down with the chilled sand, moving his mouth, from which he jerked out blood, still trying to shout to someone.

But he was inexorably carried away into the abyss of the earth, with his feet, from one of which a shoe fell off, touched his brother's body, leaned on him, lifted himself up to climb up to the sun, still shining brightly, pouring golden dust with frost.

But his eyes, which had squeezed out of their orbits with a scream, began to tighten with a film, his mouth cracked with a yawn, his hands quieted down, and only his fingers could not calm down, everyone was feeling something, everyone was looking for someone ... brows down. The killed man fell crumpledly on his older brother, clung to him. The lieutenant fired twice in the slot, pulled the bolt of the pistol and began to put it into the holster.

Department-laziness-e! - He shouted imperiously to the arrows, heading for the sled. Noticing the boot that was sleeping from Seryoga, he returned, sniffed it into the grave.

"Stalin habitually deceived the people, he lied recklessly"

... Having met the war as teenagers, many twenty-fourth year olds ended up in the army, already undermined by malnutrition, evacuation, overtime hard work, domestic troubles, complete confusion during the collectivization period and the first months of the war.

The country was not ready for a protracted war, not only in terms of technology, weapons, aircraft, tanks - it did not set people up for a long, difficult battle and did it on the go, in convulsions, in a hurry, shuddering from defeats at the fronts, full of 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 meant that everything would soon change at the front too. Everything was adjusted, built and repaired on the fly. By the end of the forty-second year, something and here and there had been adjusted, patched up, hemmed and trimmed, moved to a new place and even built, however, the eternal Russian sloppiness, hope at random, theft, connivance, multiplied by army cruelty and rudeness, did their job - young women of eighteen years of age could not withstand the onslaught of a difficult time and the demands of army life.

The twenty-fourth-year-old lads, who in two weeks learned to walk in formation, stab with a bayonet, dig in, crawl on their bellies, make marches, grew more and more cold towards these activities, realizing that nowhere and no one needed them.

They should shoot them, lie down in the trenches under the tracks, throw real grenades and bottles with a combustible mixture. But instead of real shooting, the clicking of the rifle bolt, whoever has it, instead of cars and tanks, mock-ups and blanks, so the Red Army man turns into a blockhead, into a goner, give them orders, put things in order - everywhere there is silent resistance, simulation, cowardice, theft, petty fighting ... People are weakening - the conditions in the barracks are unbearable, not every cattle can withstand, there are many sick, rumors, albeit exaggerated, about victims and deaths in the companies are circulating around the regiment ...

The tanks, taking up positions across the river at night, were all completely stuck in the floodplain, and in the morning, when a flock of planes flew in and began to aim at and burn the helpless vehicles, the commander of a regiment or brigade with staff officers and court chevra threw their people along with the dying vehicles, fled across the river ...

Those tanks were scraped, assembled along the front, most of the machines were repaired and repaired, with fresh gray weld seams, with scratches and dents on the armor, with sloughing tracks, which, skidding in the swamp slurry and in peat, dumped, two cars remained even after repair with jammed towers. The tankers, cheering up by force, assured the infantry: on the other hand, the ammunition load was full, the tank could be used like an armored weapon dug into the ground.

But with them, with tankers and tanks, no one wanted to fight, they were beaten, burned from the sky. When black smoke covered the stunted overgrown floodplain and this most complete ammunition began to burst in the burning cars, along the river not only soot and smoke carried, 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 regiment or brigade commander, dressed in a new black overalls, shot personally from a pistol, sparkling evil eyes, splashing saliva. Drunk to death, he shouted: “Traitors! Bitches! Underpants!" - and fired, fired, barely having time to change the clips that the lackeys, who were also ready to righteously despise and shoot all the retreating ones, were slipping him. And in general, beyond the river, it was discovered: those who were eager to fight not with the fascist enemy, but with their brothers in the front, were much more than on the opposite bank of combat-ready people.

Under 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 the trench, already dug up to his knees, saw a jamb of cars rushing to the river, how a stocky man in a leather raglan jumped out of one car almost on the move, with a leap, shouting something, waving his hand, ran to the river bank, nervously unbuttoning the holster. He shot the drunken commander of the tankers on the spot.

And on the move, over the river, on a pit, so that everyone could see, they shot down, threw in the ranks of the rest of the commanders in their unbelt tunics with spots of torn orders and badges of honors in combat and political training. These were shot by submachine gunners from the guard of the commander dressed in raglan. The tankers who managed to hide in the infantry crevices, seeing what kind of reprisals were being carried out on the commanders who had betrayed them, without prodding ended up on the other side of the river, repaired their cars and, under cover of night, took them over the water line, dug three tanks into the bank.

It seems that for a day it was possible to crouch near the river, to suspend the enemy, but then, as usual, it turned out that they had already been bypassed, surrounded, and it was necessary to shoot with these fumes of the graves of the marked riverside fields, filled with fresh hills, and leave the military positions ...

Experts 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 a defense, to mend numerous holes in the everywhere perforated front, already on the approaches to Moscow having the order to subjugate the retreating units without rudder and without sails, and here no one spared anyone or anything.

"The losses were expected to be large, but still not so overwhelming."

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

At dawn it was calculated and reported: at the northern slope of Hill Hundred, four hundred and sixty fighting souls gathered and dug in ... There was no surprise for the battalion commander Shchus, but he still swayed back and forth and groaned dully when he heard the number four hundred and sixty, four hundred and sixty ... Well, they pick out the guys hiding on the shore and along the ravines, through the bushes and nooks, they gather another two hundred people ... This is out of three thousand assigned to the battle group.

"Oh my God! - the confusion rushed, rolled, thumping loudly in the battalion commander's skull, - then what are the losses of those who crossed and walked directly, climbed the steep bank? Oh, Volodya, - wiping Yashkin's mouth with a rag, covered with dead goosebumps, like a puff pastry with poppy seeds, - we are not like the old border, we ... No, no, - the battalion commander convinced himself, - there is something here, some kind the plan is hidden ... Well, not the forty-first year - to drive and drive people to slaughter, as they drove the unfortunate militia near Moscow, hastily knocked down formations, trying to fill up with meat, flood the bulk of the advancing enemy with blood. Let's fight, we'll fight, my brother, - the battalion commander rubbed his hands. - Here the partisans will strike, the landing will fly from the sky, our commander's combat commander will give communication ... ”.

The location of the Shchus' battalion was clarified, the intelligence data of the neighboring regiments was clarified, and the commanders wandered 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. Shchusya's group does not count, it does not have to give a sign yet, where and how much it is.

On this territorial conquest, valiant troops spent tens of thousands of tons of ammunition, fuel, not counting the damage to people - they are used to counting them in the reports as the last thing - there are still a lot of people in Russia, litter, mori, destroy them - everything is moving. But there are losses on the left bank from bombing, artillery shells and mortars, and considerable ones. According to rough estimates, they lost twenty thousand killed, drowned, wounded during the crossing. The losses were expected to be large, but not so overwhelming.

- And this is the first foothold on the Great River. What will the price of others be? - gasped Avdey Kondratyevich, pulling the burnt-out pipe. She was wheezing empty ...

... For two hours the battle lasted in the distance, and when it began to subside, split into separate nodes and fireplaces, above, in the night sky, planes hummed multi-engine. Stalin's falcons, who did not expect dense anti-aircraft fire from the enemy and the wind, quite strong at the top, threw out, in the literal sense of the word, the landing - a whole brigade, of one thousand eight hundred souls, still formed before the war, carefully stored for a special operation, and in this first and the last, as it will soon be found out, the operation, which finally got through ... The paratroopers were carried away wherever, but mostly to the river, into the water.

That night and in all subsequent paratroopers, two or three, crossed the front line, fell into the clutches of the Germans or under fire from the confused, troubles from the night of the waiting sentries and combat outposts of the Russians. Most of the airborne brigade settled in the surrounding forests and villages, where they were caught by the police, only individual paratroopers, safely hiding in the houses of the villagers and in forest farms, waited for the winter offensive of the Red Army, appeared in military units and were immediately arrested, convicted of desertion , sent to penal companies - someone must be to blame for the disruption of a well-thought-out operation and receive a well-deserved punishment for this ...

"The contractors worked earnestly, drove people who were defeated by fear into a shaking heap"

A pebble rumbled under someone's boots, fired into the air, some people were whipping over rocks and bushes.

- Ah, you bastard! Ah, he stuck it! - spread from the darkness, - washed away! You don't want to fight ...

- Bra-a-atz-s! What is it, bra-atz-s! ..

After all, their position and position gave them the opportunity to survive the war. If Rodion and Erofei had gotten themselves so good at the war, they wouldn't have stood on ceremony either. But they just did not succeed - the Smolensk peasant and the Vyatka peasant - a convenient device in life, they could not, they did not know how to adapt themselves to this squiggly, wise and cruel world - they are painfully simple, ingenuous in their minds - therefore, get up from behind stones, go into the water, under the shots, go into the fire.

And when some huge, as it seemed to them, eyeless, pincer-handed people who had flashed them with a flashlight grabbed them and dragged them away, under the raised shirt the protruding vertebrae and ribs shrieked like stones. Both men, both young and old, were rickety in childhood, sucked rye chewing gum in a rag as babies, and after the declared prosperous collective farm life they lived on potatoes, unloaded, with almost pulled out joints of legs and arms, dragged themselves, breaking faces on stones, and they did not resist, like that elderly man, 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:

- According to the traitor to the motherland! ..

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

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

They did not speak, did not dare to speak about the fact that they should not be driven into the water at all: they have no weapons, they have no strength, their courage has run out - they will not be enough for one more salvation, the miracle cannot be repeated. Kicking out sand, grit from the mouth, vomiting water, which was full not only of a pumpkin-shaped stomach, but every cell of the body was filled with lead, even a hair on my head was not strong enough to bear. The younger was hit in the face with a rifle butt. Since childhood, teeth crumbled from malnourishment cracked eggshells and fell into my mouth. Erofei grabbed his partner and together with him fell 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, with the other helped to start the raft upstream for his partner.
The detachment officers worked earnestly, drove them around, knocked them into a shaking heap of people defeated by fear, whom everything nailed and nailed to the wrong shore where they should be. Cutting off the fire of the new, large-caliber machine guns "deshek", which were so lacking on the bridgehead, churned the water in the river, not allowing anything living to reach the shore. The work of the punishers gained more and more confidence, firm order, and that milk sucker, who until recently was afraid to shoot at his own people, was even afraid of his own voice, jumping up to Erofei and Rodion, swung his pistol at them:

- Where to? Where, shameful bitches ?!

- It will take us to the Germans.

The bullets knocked out white chips from the bars, shook another poor fellow who had flown in from the darkness into the water, disturbed some rags in which human flesh was not bleeding. The killed here were not dragged out: 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 trouble! - 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 them like dogs! - evil, Syrovatko blurted out in the purest Russian language. Ponayotov shivered. Having got to their native land, having seen what the invaders had done here, the Ukrainians, these peaceful Ukrainians, began to become Satan.

“We can't,” said Ponayotov. - We must not rage in the same way as they rampage. We are not killers. Besides, I saw that one of the prisoners was just 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. - They must be taken to the shore. Hand over.

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

- No one is there. Nobody guards the prisoners there. They, together with ours, are jackals along the shore, collecting muffled fish.

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

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

- Their bin einfaher arbaiter. (I am a simple worker), - the elderly signalman babbled. - Und der da var eben in der shule. Uns khaben zi aingetsogen, kaine ses, einfahe goldaten, einfahe leite, kain grund, uns umtsubringen ... (And he just graduated from school, we are mobilized, we are not SS men, we are ordinary soldiers, ordinary people, we have nothing to kill. hopefully ...)

- Schneller, Schneller! - Okorkin was adamant.

- Vir hoffen auf mitliade. Vir verden für oikh 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 in the direction of the river, which meant to the rear, they fussed.

Shaposhnikov saw them off with running, fearful eyes. No sooner had he returned to the dugout for the submachine gun, when he heard a long burst of PEPs behind the first ledge of the ravine, a short, barking cry, and understood: Russian signalmen had shot their fellow workers.

“And to wear her the“ Golden Star ”of the hero on her lush 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 telephone operators! On the wire, the head of the political department of the division, Musenok! I am sending an important message ...

- Comrade captain, - holding the receiver, Shestakov turned to Ponayotov, - the head of the political department hung on the wire.

- What is he? - Throwing a pencil on a tablet, Ponayotov jumped up, finishing calculations of fire support for the remnants of the Beskapustin regiment, turning into a counterattack, in order to alleviate the position of the Shchusev battalion and help his choking neighbor - Syrovatko, even though he is a cunning, and burnout, but still a friend misfortune. The fire was needed dense, fluent and accurate, it was necessary to beat from the guns between the Kapustinians going into the attack and not cover the Shchus' battalion, cut off, defending in the ravines.

The fire had to be corrected, led it after the chains, if they, these chains, are still there, if there are enough people on the chain. Without looking up from the map, Ponayotov stretched out his hand, pressed the receiver to his ear - the regiment commander was talking to Musenok on the phone.

- This is what the newspaper Pravda writes about you: “The Red Army has stepped across the river! This new, splendid victory vividly 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 you, as far as I know, did not even ferry the banner ...

- We were afraid to dunk it, - the commander answered dryly.

- Comrade head of the political department, - Colonel Beskapustin pleaded, - our battalion is dying, the leading one, to help him, accompanied by an artillery attack, we go into a counterattack. We'll fight back - please pass on ...

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

"W-how is this - some kind of battalion ?!"

- And like that, you know! Our valiant troops captured Nevel and Taman. In honor of these brilliant victories, orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and an article by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky about the inspiring word of the leader were published. All your fighters need to know in order to be ashamed - you are stomping on the shore, you know, you have warmed up ...

- What-oh-oh! - the bridgehead roared with all the telephones that were hung on the only working line, while representatives of different types of troops toiled, communicating with the left bank via radio transmitters.

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

It was already Shchus, who happened to be at the phone inappropriately.

- Who speaks this in such a tone with the representative of the Communist Party? - Musenok raised his voice.

We need to intervene immediately, now a big politician will begin to harass the name 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 works ... - Ponayotov interjected into the conversation.

- Why alone? Why alone? Where is your valiant connection? Loose, you know ...

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

The telephone operators immediately vengefully knocked out an important boss, who continued to rattle into 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 was, but not entering into an argument.

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

... The political department of the division contained four cars, it's the same as personally with Musenka, the party servants, several of his deputies, Komsomol and other parasite chiefs, who settled comfortably in the war, who lived even more at ease because Musenok was burning on work, everywhere and everywhere climbed, loomed, spoke himself. In his "emka" he went to the rear to various very frequent political meetings, because the further into the forest, the more commissars - and everyone is at war, fighting, leading.

On the "jeep", intended for travel to the front line, not to the most advanced, of course, to their designated places - somewhere in the headquarters, in the medical battalion, in the companies of ammunition supply, in the places of concentration of reserves and replenishment. At the "Gazushka", where a muffled man Brykin was the driver, he delivered newspapers, leaflets, a propaganda installation. In the back of the "gazushka" there was a camp bed, covered with a soldier's blanket — here the big chief slept during combat trips.

He also had a Studebaker equipped for more comprehensive housing. The typist Izolda Kazimirovna Kholedyskaya, a beauty from a repressed Polish family, reigned in the Studebaker. The head of the political department withdrew her from the divisional newspaper's printing house, where she fought as a proofreader, so that he himself could personally dictate the most important contents of secret documents, articles, instructions - the Studebaker turned into a camp house.

Despised by all, Izolda Kazimirovna tried not to emerge from the caravan, if she appeared to the light, she walked with her eyes downcast, but she had the Order of the Red Star and the medal "For Military Merit". Shchus knew that Nelka was collecting covers for Kholedyskaya on the battlefields with the addresses of the wounded and killed soldiers - if Nelka got off the hook, Isolde would protect her through her boss, get vodka, cigarettes, fresh linen, and ointment from lice.

Nelka understood: oh, it was not in vain, it was not in vain that the shy front worker was saving up the addresses of the decommissioned soldiers. One day, Musyenok will help her draw up a documentary, indicate in an award sheet, what a staggering number of wounded were taken from the battlefield by a brave girl, and wear her the “Golden Star” of the hero on her lush chest. But for this she needs to be with Mussenka, as with the Arab sheikh - a submissive slave - and pretend that she honors her master and is afraid of him.

, .

Victor Petrovich Astafiev: I earned myself a medal “For Courage” and managed to get the Order of the Red Star. If I had fought to the end, I would have earned more. I value them, I just think that these are my main awards.

Alexander Kukis: Tell me, the war, is it for you even now, one might say, is not over?

Astafiev: Of course not. No no.

Astafiev: In a very bad place, in a very bad place. After the latter was injured, I was treated for a long time, I was wound even longer. I kept trying to break through to the front, to my own. But even then, apparently, there were many such gavriks. And mainly, the crowds went to Germany: both civilians and all the people were drawn there, to Konigsberg - to pull something, take away from there. And since we also carried trophies, then at the border stations all this horde was raked up and sent somewhere. And I ended up in the Rivne escort regiment. The regiment is terrible, and what it has been doing is terrible. He, in fact, fought what is called “with Bendera”. That is, the OUN people are now proud of it. The war was stirred up by ours: with this resettlement, persecution, campaigns of Kovpak and other generals there - without food and without rear services, by robbing these peasants, who lived well, by the way. But we started this forest war. We are excited! They fought until the 52nd year, everyone beat us ... They pulled out a lot of our troops, and crippled people were already in the war, they sent non-combatants there. I very quickly realized what kind of regiment it was, I described it in the last story. This is the disgusting part! People there were spoiled to smithereens: robbers, marauders, thieves, traitors, snitches there! ... Spoiled scary, terrible cowards. Anyone will substitute anyone. In general, I soon got out of there. He escaped in the most real way with a friend. I found a moment, already broken ... I got into a non-combatant unit, a post office. There I met Marya Semyonovna and got married. And already in 1945 I was demobilized for three wounds.

After all, no matter how they wriggled out on television, the best material was again Simonov's “A soldier was walking”. This is where the truth is told a little. And nothing new was given. And in old movies there is not much ...

Victory ... So I have to write, answer the questions: “By what? How did you win while on the brink of death? " The third book of the novel will be about the so-called people. Our people participate as an adjective. you know. Here the generals fought, the partisans fought - about the partisans most of all it is written, as if the partisans won the war. But we still lost about forty million people ...

Cookies: Forty million?

Astafiev: Forty-seven, they say. Well, God bless him. Someday the real figure will be told. With the civilian population with everything ... The first war in the history of wars of mankind, and there were 15 thousand of them only registered, when civilian casualties exceed military casualties! This is scary. This is scary. It overwhelmed us, and we failed to cope with it. The population of the Russian people has not yet been replenished. Everyone lied to us: it was at the expense of Kazakhs, Turkmens and other Asians, who have twenty children each, and we always trumped this figure. And the Russian people never recovered after the war. Killed 13 million privates. And the privates were always supplied by the village. Therefore, the war hit the village in the first place. For 15, for 10 years a child has not been seen in the village. There was no one to give birth and no one from! We have experienced a terrible disaster. I just read in one book that there should be 600 million of us now! On the one hand, it would, of course, be good for 600 million, but on the other, we cannot feed even one and a half hundred, with an outstretched handle we run abroad. But you have to be able to. You have to be very brilliant leaders, as one of the bourgeois said, so that a country like Russia - with its spaces, all kinds of reserves. deposits, funds and oil, coal and everything else - leave hungry. You have to be very brilliant. And I think that you just have to be super-genius to bring to such a state. This is how super-genius our communist leaders were. True, they are all spiraling now at the Democrats for the new ones, but this is so cheap already that a slightly reasonable person, a kindergartener of the older group, no longer believes it. It took a long time to collapse, Russia tightened, the ridge of the Russian people broke through the knee. They broke it - now he is spineless. He doesn't give a damn about anything. This is a very difficult topic! .. On Victory Day, I no longer want to talk about it ...

You know what, if you want to know my attitude to all this. This is how now I see that they are clattering with these medals, tinkling with their tongues, dancing, dancing, yelling uru ... go outside and pray on Victory Day for the slain. And to decide that if they have not removed them so far, then in the coming year at least remove the bones not buried in the forests - Volkhov, Leningrad, Novgorod, in all forests. Abroad, the bones of the killed soldiers were removed - they are lying around here. That's what a shame! We need to pray that the Lord would forgive us this terrible, grave sin. You know that in the Christian world (I don’t know how in the Muslim world) after a big battle there was always a prayer service. Everyone, from marshals, from commanders-in-chief to soldiers, knelt down and asked the Lord for forgiveness for the great sin of shedding blood. Do you understand? We haven't asked for forgiveness so far! The Germans at least repent - where verbally, where mentally. There are, of course, who are hiding and hate, not without it. But mostly they repent: they grievously atone for their sin - for us, it seems, there is no sin! Not for collectivization, not for the Civil War, not for internecine strife, not for the fact that in "local wars" we shed blood and kill Russian people. Well, at least repent for this! Well, at least for the fact that they did not clean up the bones of their soldiers, who saved our skins and saved the world, by the way. I think it would be the best monument if everyone prayed ....

Letters from Viktor Astafiev about the war, Stalin and Zhukov, "generals' truth", shouts of "hurray", unburied heroes and how Alexander Matrosov actually died.

New Newspaper :

The book of letters by Viktor Astafiev “I have no answer ... Epistolary diary. 1952-2001 ". Its compiler and publisher - Gennady Sapronov - gave the newspaper the right to select several letters from the 800-page volume for publication. On the eve of May 9, we publish those that, even on the joyous Victory Day, will not allow us to forget at what cost our people got it.

Dear Vyacheslav!

I read your shock to the "heirs" in "Nedelya". In vain you comfort them and yourself - we are all his "heirs", and if we were not such, he and his watchdogs would not have a foundation. We are both the victims and the perpetrators of it. I, too, only once, before our first artillery preparation, saw on the shells prepared for loading the written "For Stalin", and I never heard "hurray" at all, although I fought in more favorable times, on the front, which was foolishly advancing, but that's nothing does not decide, Vyacheslav. All of us, all our genes, bones, blood, even our shit were saturated with time and air created by Stalin. We are still in many respects his children, although we are ashamed even to admit this to ourselves. Thank God that we are no longer afraid, but only ashamed.

I quite deliberately did not join the party at the front, although during our 1944 stand, the political departments, engulfed in vigorous activity, waved their hands after the battle, clinked their teeth and chatted their tongues, driving everyone into the party, even making whole platoons communist.

And by the way, the one who “gets to Zhukov” will be a true Russian writer, not an “heir”. Oh, what a fosterling of "father and teacher"! What a poacher of the Russian people. He, he and Comrade Stalin burned the Russian people and Russia in the fire of war.

(We got there, luckily. Viktor Suvorov got there - tapirr)

It is with this grave accusation that we need to start talking about the war, then it will be true, but we will not live to see it. Our strength, our intelligence and courage are not enough to talk about the tragedy of our people, including about the war, the whole truth, and if not all, then at least the main part of it.

Churchill says in his book of journalism that the victors in wars certainly remained defeated, and not a single country, not a single people suffered such a defeat in a war as Russia and the Russian people. She, Russia, simply died. It's scary to say, but the victorious country disappeared, self-destroyed, and this disappearance and self-destruction and the continuing inexorable self-destruction were greatly helped by our brilliant leaders, starting with Stalin, and the one-party system, which recalled to save the country and the people during the agony that had already begun<…>.

Dear Alexander Sergeevich!

Oh, how sorry I am to grieve you in your old age, but you can't get anywhere from life.

I understand you and all our other generals who are boasting, for no one else will praise. Not at all ... Both you and the generals who led you were very bad fighters, and they could not be otherwise, because they were and fought in the most mediocre army since the creation of the human race. That army, like the current one, came out of the most vile society - this does not need proof any more. Now everyone knows, except for you, of course, that our losses in the war are 40-50 million, and I repeated and repeat to you this time: it was not you, not me and not the army who defeated fascism, but our long-suffering people. It was in his blood that fascism was drowned, the enemy was pelted with corpses. The first and only war of 15 thousand wars that took place on earth, in which losses in the rear exceed losses at the front - they are equal to 26 million, mainly Russian women and disabled people, children and the elderly. Only criminals could do this to their people! Only enemies could lead the army in such a way during hostilities, only scum could keep the army in fear and suspicion - all special departments, somsh, 1st, 2nd ... -teenth departments, headquarters resembling gypsy camps. And the penal companies, and the detachments? And order 227? Yes, for one thing, for this it was necessary to disperse the entire Kremlin camarilla after the war. Fearing this, fearing the regained sight of the army, your brothers, urged on by the Supreme, began reprisals against the people. We saved the skins of the bastards - no longer needed.

Oh-ho-ho-ooo, yet from rags to riches - nothing ever worked. On Victory Day I will go to church to pray for those killed and destroyed during the war. And I advise you to do the same - I assure you, there will be less malice and arrogance in you and you will not want to count the "unnecessary offenses" inflicted on our generals. There are no such words, there is no such prayer of God that would grant them forgiveness for the vile days lived (at least Brezhnev's), but if all of you, having taken off your uniforms, did not jingle with medals, would go out into the Russian field, surrounded by empty villages (one of the reasons for them devastation - war), if you kneel down and, drooping gray heads, ask for forgiveness from the Almighty, maybe he will hear you. This is the only way to save your general's soul, otherwise you will stink in the world and die with dark malice in your heart. God give you reason!

I bow. V. Astafiev

Summer 1995

Comrade Kulikovsky!

The degree of our savagery is so great and destructivethat it is no longer necessary to talk about the legitimacy of this or that judgment, and when I say "our savagery" I mean not only my own and my neighbor's drunkard and sloven, but yours too. I was constantly aware of my "wildness" and am ashamed of it. Even this is not given to you. And here you really do not know whether to envy you and your kind or not. You have lived your life so well and correctly (living seventy years in a mess, you remained intact, as one modern poet sarcastically remarked) that you have nothing to repent of. Jesus Christ had something to repent of ( i wonder where Astafiev got the information? - tapirr), but Vladimir Kulikovsky has nothing to do with it! One retired colonel, a graphomaniac, who besieged the editorial board, wrote an immortal poem at one time. I give it to you goodbye, because it most of the other works corresponds to your cheerful morality and moral criteria:

Our homeland is beautiful
And blooms like poppies,
Acre of phenomena of happiness
There are no phenomena!

Well, but seriously, remember the words of the poet Viktor Avdeev, a former machine gunner who died of wounds back in the forties: “Victory does not pay off the losses. They are only justified by the victory ”. Remember them more often when the raptures from the victorious marches and the fornication of the victorious will visit you again. I don’t know how many times you have been wounded, but I have been wounded three times, and the final book of the novel will be called Old Wounds Aching. You, according to your letter, did not hurt or hurt anything - no wounds, no soul.<…>

I don’t want to see it, it’s useless - you will not have time, and it’s painful to see it with us, but I wish the health, at least relative, at least in order to think more and look around with a clear look.

I bow. V. Astafiev
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"Simulation is everywhere, cowardice, theft, triviality."

Viktor Astafiev: an unpretentious truth about the price of Victory (attention: heavy photos, 18+)

Today, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, in the midst of the jubilee frenzy, sometimes acquiring exemplary absurd, anecdotal forms (in the form of a Khatyn memorial, in the office of the Yekaterinburg funeral company, in the Ural chain of stores of intimate goods, etc.), we would like to remind you that May 9 is a day of sorrow and memory for millions of lives, ruined by the inhuman cruelty of both "strangers" and "ours" - commanders and chiefs, frightened by the pre-war Stalinist repressions "forging victory", covering 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 - a word to the great Russian writer, warrior Viktor Astafiev. We bring to your attention fragments of his famous novel "Cursed and Killed".

"The dead Red Army men lay in dugouts for weeks, and they received rations on them."

Victor Astafiev, front-line youth

The willow mats were infested with bugs and lice. In many dugouts, dry mats broke, sharply, like knives, pierced the body, the soldiers, having brought them down, slept in the sand, in the dust, without undressing. In several barracks, ceilings collapsed, how many soldiers were crushed there - no one bothered to take into account, if our losses were hiding at the front due to depressing statistics, then in the rear, God ordered us to cheat and cheat. Sand dust storms, hunger, cold, the criminal indifference of the command of the camps, who were all drinking and desperate, led to the fact that a month after the call in the Totsk camps, epidemics of dysentery, mass hemeralopia, this damned disease of disastrous times and human congregations, broke out, and tuberculosis crept up. ... It happened that the dead Red Army men lay forgotten for weeks in half-collapsed dugouts, and live 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 bunches of dry willow trees, handfuls of broken sticks. Fee - an appendage of bread, a spoonful of porridge, a pinch of sugar, a piece of cake, a matchbox of tobacco. There are many, many spots, ulcers from secret fires along a half-dried river, under crumbly ravines pocked by 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 labor and visibility, burial grounds of fallen cattle were dug in the steppes and ravines, cut off meat from it. And the most terrible rumor - as if one of the deceased had their buttocks cut off, as if they were baked on secret bonfires ... None of the checking officials dared to report upstairs about the disastrous state of the Totsk and Kotlubanov camps, insist on their closure due to the complete unsuitability of the place for a military town and not even suitable for prison camps. All ranks, large and small, firmly remembered the words of Comrade Stalin that "we have never had such a strong rear." And all the Totsk reservists capable of standing in the ranks, 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, wiggling his mouth, from which he jerked out blood."

They lived to an extreme emergency: the twin brothers Snegirevs left the second company somewhere. In fact, they were still there before going to bed, 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: as long as not to report the loss to anyone, maybe they will go around where the brothers get drunk, get drunk, find themselves, and again, in the middle of the night, will appear in the company.

- Well, I told them! - Shaposhnikov threatened.

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

- Oh, God! We just missed this! - the regiment commander burst into flames. - Search, please, search well.

- Where were you hanging out? - seeing the brothers, exhausted, almost not sleeping all the nights, gray-faced, like his greatcoat, the commander of the second company asked the Snegirev brothers without any anger.

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

“Oh, there was, was,” the brothers said, all jubilant. - The chairman of the village council Peremogin knock-knock-knock with a piece of wood on the porch, mother hid our chunk, cleaned up the shoes, drove us on the bed, threw it with old clothes, onion bunches on top, threw a lattice and paper with paper.

- What, what? - Shaposhnikov asked colorlessly.

- Well, with paper! Well, let's solve! Well, this is what we call all rags, balls of rags, spinners with thread, spinning wheels, tow ...

"The guys are gone," Shaposhnikov sighed, "completely gone ..."

- The cow calved, the mother writes: “We would have been at home, I would have given milk to drink from the new hotel, but I live, that I’m not, I cry for my father, for another month there is no news from him, but about you, miserable, all night long, it happens that I don’t close my eyes… ”. Serega and I conferred, this is his name Serega in honor of Tyatka's grandfather, - one brother poked his finger at the other. - He is younger than me by twenty-five minutes and I, as the eldest, listens, reads. Yes, and my name is Eremey - in honor of my mother's grandfather. According to the calendar, I had a name day quite recently, in November, and not soon at Serega, in March they will. It's only sixty miles to the house, to Proshikha. And they decided: we’ll turn around in a day or two, but we’ll drink milk. Well, the lip will be for us ... or the outfit - we will endure. The mother saw us, screamed, did not let go. Day here, day there, he says, what's wrong?

- How do you know the saints?

- And all the mother. She has become a believer again. War, he says, is such that there is hope for God alone.

- How are you?

- Well, what are we? - Eremey paused, tossed his nose and cheated: - When the mother forces us - we are baptized, otherwise we are disbelieving, sovetsky teachers. There is no God, no king is needed, we will live on a hummock! Xh-hu!

- Write! - Skorik breathed out. - Here's paper, here's a pen, here's ink, take turns writing. And God help you! ..

While the brothers were writing in turn, the elder, having finished his job, dictated to the younger in an undertone, saying: “What's so special? Here is stupid! Write: "Mother, Leokadia Savvishna, sent a letter with a message, a cow calved ..." - Skorik looked out the window, wondering how to protect these brothers, the troubles of his children who did not understand, how to ensure that the trial over them was here, in the location of the twenty-first a shelf. It is closer here, in the regiment, here it is easier, here you can hope for a chance. Maybe Colonel Azatyan with his authority? Maybe some miracle will happen? And Skorik understood that this is nonsense, meaninglessness: what is here, in a regiment, in a military district in Novosibirsk - the outcome will be the same, predetermined in advance 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 case for her will end in prison or exile to Narym places, or even further.

They were sentenced to death. A week later, on Sunday, so as not to interrupt the Red Army men from their studies, not to waste useful, combat time, Novosibirsk was 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, to line up the entire twenty-first regiment. "This is too much!" - rumbled into the regiment. The regiment commander Gevorg Azatyan made sure that the grave was dug behind the cemetery, at the edge of the forest, only the first battalion was led to execution - four hundred people are enough for such a highly ideological educational event - and they would send a special command from the district: my deeds were also serving for plywood targets. have not learned to shoot, but here we have to at people.

“Well, however,” muttered the battalion commander. "Khan to the guys, Khan," Yashkin finally decided. “The paper is skillfully composed, you won’t say anything, it would be so skillfully to learn how to fight,” Skorik frowned.

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

- Quiet you ... Let's wait ...

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

- "The verdict is final, not subject to appeal and will be immediately executed."

- So I spoke, I spoke! - suddenly shouted shrilly Seryoga, turning to brother Eremey. - Why did you deceive me? What for?!

- What are you? What are you? - slapped on the back, stroked brother Eremey. - They are single, as in a cine ... they will scare ... - He looked through the eyes of his commanders, comrades in the service, caught their glance, demanding confirmation of his hopes: "True, comrades, eh? .. Brothers, right? ..". But Eremey saw confusion or alienation on all faces - he carried him and his brother away from this shore, and there was no paddle, no pole, no pressure to swoop down to the crowded land, and no one, no one stretched out his hand. “What is it? We are all ours, we are ours, we are ... ". “Doesn't he really understand? Does he still believe? .. "- not only Skorik thought in confusion, and Shchus thought, and poor comrade Shaposhnikov, completely torn to pieces by his guilt before the death row, many in the battalion thought so, because of Eremey's fussiness, because of the completely desperate, screaming look, realizing: he understands the eldest, he understands everything - an intelligent man, born of an intelligent man, he did not allow his brother Seryoga to despair completely, to fall on the frozen ground in a humiliating and useless prayer. The brother made it easier for his brother's last minutes - oh, what a brainy, what a swift fighter would turn out from Eremey, maybe he would have survived in the war, gave birth to smart children ... Meanwhile, three shooters walked around the grave, stood in front of the brothers, two guards joined them, everything was done habitually, exactly, without words. "Five for two unarmed lobsters!" - Volodya Yashkin shook his head, and Shchus was perplexed, who went to the bayonet at the enemy. Pomkomvzvoda saw militias near Vyazma, with sticks, crowbars, picks and shovels thrown at the enemy to get weapons, they were flogged with machine guns, crushed with caterpillars. And here is such a fearless force on two boys! ..

- How rich we live! How bravely we are fighting! - as if having heard Yashkina ... the commander of the first battalion, Vnukov, said clearly and loudly. - Why are you hesitating? Meat, if you take it ...

- Get ready! - Hearing nothing and not seeing anyone, doing his job, ordered the alien, hated by everyone here, the lieutenant. Taking the pistol out of its holster, he took it, held it up.

- Dya-adenki-s! Dya-adenki-s! - there was a cry of Seryoga, and everyone swung in the direction of this cry. Someone even stepped over, ready to rush to scream. Shaposhnikov, without realizing it, even took a step towards the doomed brothers, or rather half a step, still tentative, timid. The lieutenant executor, having heard or noticed this movement with a trained eye, sharply commanded: "Pli!" ...

And there was still a brief moment, when in the battalion line and behind the line they saw how Eremey resolutely interceded his brother, taking in his chest almost all the striking force of the volley. His back was thrown across the frozen crack, he arched his whole body, scrawled into a handful of earth, and then, breaking in the lower back, flashing his bare sunken belly, sluggishly flow down his head into the depth of the crack. His brother Sergei was still alive, grabbing the frozen lumps with his hands, scratching them, floating down with the chilled sand, moving his mouth, from which he jerked out blood, still trying to shout to someone. But he was inexorably carried away into the abyss of the earth, with his feet, from one of which a boot fell off, touched his brother's body, leaned on him, lifted himself up to climb up to the sun, still shining brightly, pouring golden dust with frost. But his eyes, squeezed out of their sockets with a scream, began to tighten with a film, his mouth cracked with a yawning, his hands quieted down, and only his fingers could not calm down, everyone was feeling something, everyone was looking for someone ... The lieutenant took a resolute step to the gap, pushed Seryoga off brows down. The killed man fell crumpledly on his older brother, clung to him. The lieutenant fired twice in the slot, pulled the bolt of the pistol and began to put it into the holster.

- Department-laziness-e! - He shouted imperiously to the arrows, heading for the sled. Noticing the boot that was sleeping from Seryoga, he returned, sniffed it into the grave.

"Stalin habitually deceived the people, he lied recklessly"

Facing the war as adolescents, many twenty-fourth-year-olds ended up in the army, already undermined by malnutrition, evacuation, overtime hard work, domestic troubles, complete confusion during the collectivization period and the first months of the war. The country was not ready for a protracted war, not only in terms of technology, weapons, aircraft, tanks - it did not set people up for a long, difficult battle and did it on the go, in convulsions, in a hurry, shuddering from defeats at the fronts, full of 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 meant that everything would soon change at the front too. Everything was adjusted, built and repaired on the fly. By the end of the forty-second year, something and here and there had been adjusted, patched up, hemmed and trimmed, moved to a new place and even built, however, the eternal Russian sloppiness, hope at random, theft, connivance, multiplied by army cruelty and rudeness, did their job - young women of eighteen years of age could not withstand the onslaught of a difficult time and the demands of army life. The boys of the twenty-fourth year, in two weeks learned to walk in formation, stab with a bayonet, dig in, crawl on their bellies, make marches, more and more cooled to these activities, realizing that nowhere and no one needed them. They should shoot them, lie down in the trenches under the tracks, throw real grenades and bottles with a combustible mixture. But instead of real shooting, the clicking of the rifle bolt, whoever has it, instead of cars and tanks, mock-ups and blanks, so the Red Army man turns into a blockhead, into a goner, give them orders, put things in order - everywhere there is silent resistance, simulation, cowardice, theft, petty fighting ... People are weakening - the conditions in the barracks are unbearable, not every cattle can withstand, there are many sick, rumors, albeit exaggerated, about casualties and deaths in companies are circulating around the regiment ...

Yashkin has seen something more terrible than the shooting of some snotty boys. Near Vyazma or near Yukhnov - where do you remember? - a dump along the entire front was going on, he saw a tank unit protruding beyond a narrow but deep floodplain river, which was supposed to provide an organized withdrawal and crossing the water barrier of the retreating units, to give them the opportunity to gain a foothold on the water line. Yashkin and all the retreating troops were very happy with the armor force, they believed that they would finally give a real battle to the fascist, stop him at least for a while, otherwise they rush and hide from the very arrival at the front, run on the ground, shoot somewhere blindly ... The tanks, taking up positions across the river at night, were all completely stuck in the floodplain, and in the morning, when a flock of planes flew in and began to aim at and burn the helpless vehicles, the commander of a regiment or brigade with staff officers and court chevra threw their people along with the dying vehicles, fled across the river ... Those tanks were scraped, assembled along the front, most of the cars were repaired and repaired, with fresh gray weld seams, with scratches and dents on the armor, with sloughing tracks, which, skidding in the swamp slurry and in peat, dumped, two cars remained even after repair with jammed towers. The tankers, cheering up through force, assured the infantry: on the other hand, the ammunition load was full, the tank could be used like an armored weapon dug into the ground. But with them, with tankers and tanks, no one wanted to fight, they were beaten, burned from the sky. When black smoke covered the stunted overgrown floodplain and this most complete ammunition began to burst in the burning cars, along the river not only soot and smoke, but also the screams of people burning alive, carried along the river. 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 regiment or brigade commander, dressed in a new black overalls, shot personally from a pistol, sparkling evil eyes, splashing saliva. Drunk to death, he shouted: “Traitors! Bitches! Underpants!" - and fired, fired, barely having time to change the clips that the lackeys, who were also ready to righteously despise and shoot all the retreating ones, were slipping him. And in general, beyond the river, it was discovered: those who were eager to fight not with the fascist enemy, but with their brothers in the front, are much more than on the opposite bank of combat-ready people.

Under 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 a jamb of cars rushing to the river, how a stocky man in a leather raglan jumped out of one car almost on the move, with a leap, shouting something, waving his hand, ran to the river bank, nervously unbuttoning the holster. He shot the drunken commander of the tankers on the spot. And on the move, over the river, on a pit, so that everyone could see, they shot down, threw in the ranks of the rest of the commanders in their unbelt tunics with spots of torn orders and badges of honors in combat and political training. These were shot by submachine gunners from the guard of the commander dressed in raglan. The tankers who had managed to hide in the infantry crevices, seeing what kind of reprisals were being carried out on the commanders who had betrayed them, without prodding ended up on the other side of the river, repaired their cars and, under cover of night, took them over the water line, dug three tanks into the bank. It seems that they managed to crouch near the river for a day, to suspend the enemy, but then, as usual, it turned out that they had already been bypassed, surrounded and it was necessary to shoot with these fumes of the graves of the marked riverside fields, which were filled with burnt flesh, fresh hills, and leave military positions .. Experts said that the commander of a tank brigade, it turned out, after all, the brigade, who fought so bravely with his soldiers, was shot by the army commander, who rushed along the front, trying to organize a defense, to repair numerous holes in the everywhere perforated front, already on the approaches to Moscow having the order to subjugate the retreating units without rudder and without sails, no one spared anyone or anything.

"The losses were expected to be large, but still not so overwhelming."

At dawn, it was calculated and reported: at the northern slope of Hill Hundred, four hundred and sixty fighting souls gathered and dug in ... There was no surprise for the battalion commander Shchus, but he still swayed back and forth and groaned dully when he heard the number four hundred and sixty, four hundred and sixty. .. Well, they pick out the guys hiding on the shore and along the ravines, through the bushes and nooks, they gather another two hundred ... This is out of three thousand assigned to the battle group. "Oh my God! - confusion rushed, rolled, loudly beating in the battalion commander's skull, - what are the losses then for those who crossed and walked directly, climbed the steep bank? Oh, Volodya, - wiping Yashkin's mouth with a rag, covered with dead goosebumps, like a puff pastry with poppy seeds, - we are not like the old border, we ... No, no, - the battalion commander assured himself, - there is something here, some- 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 knocked down formations, trying to fill up with meat, to flood the bulk of the advancing enemy with blood. Let's fight, we'll fight, my brother, - the battalion commander rubbed his hands. - Here the partisans will strike, the landing will fly from the sky, our regiment's combat commander will give communication ... ”.

The location of the Shchus' battalion was clarified, the intelligence data of the neighboring regiments and the commanders wandered 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. Shchusya's group does not count, it does not have to give a sign yet, where and how much it is. On this territorial conquest, valiant troops spent tens of thousands of tons of ammunition, fuel, not counting the damage to people - they are used to counting them in the reports as the last thing - there are still a lot of people in Russia, litter, mori, destroy them - everything is moving. But there are losses on the left bank from bombing, artillery shells and mortars, and considerable ones. According to rough estimates, they lost twenty thousand killed, drowned, wounded during the crossing. The losses were expected to be large, but not so overwhelming. - And this is the first foothold on the Great River. What will the price of others be? - gasped Avdey Kondratyevich, pulling the burnt-out pipe. She wheezed empty ...

"The contractors worked earnestly, drove people who were defeated by fear into a shaking heap"

A pebble rumbled under someone's boots, fired into the air, some people were whipping over rocks and bushes.

Ah, you bastard! Ah, he stuck it! - spread from the darkness, - washed away! You don't want to fight ...

Bra-a-atsy-s! What is it, bra-atz-s! ..

A man is dragged, dragged along a stone, to the water. Looks like the poor fellows got to the left bank, they are supposed to be on the right, where the German is. They are supposed to fight. And now the people who were destined not to swim, not to drown, but to do a completely different job - they caught their brother and drove him back into the water. They will fight off a convenient place in war more violently than the Nazi Germans - their trenches. After all, their position and position gave them the opportunity to survive the war. If Rodion and Erofei had gotten themselves so good at the war, they wouldn't have stood on ceremony either. But they just did not succeed - the Smolensk peasant and the Vyatka peasant - a convenient device in life, they could not, they did not know how to adapt themselves to this squiggly, wise and cruel world - they are painfully simple, ingenuous in their minds - therefore, get up from behind stones, go into the water, under the shots, go into the fire. And when some huge, as it seemed to them, eyeless, pincer-handed people who had flashed them with a flashlight grabbed them and dragged them away, under the raised shirt the protruding vertebrae and ribs shrieked like stones. Both men, both young and old, were rickety in childhood, sucked rye chewing gum in a rag as babies, and after the declared prosperous collective farm life they lived on potatoes, unloaded, with almost pulled out joints of legs and arms, dragged themselves, breaking faces on stones, and they did not resist, like that elderly man, 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! ..

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

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

Bastards! Damned bastards! He said distinctly, and pushed the raft upstream. Rodion, covering his mouth with one hand, with the other helped to start the raft upstream for his partner. The detachment officers worked earnestly, drove them around, knocked them into a shaking heap of people defeated by fear, whom everything nailed and nailed to the wrong shore where they should be. Cutting off the fire of the new, large-caliber machine guns "deshek", which were so lacking on the bridgehead, churned the water in the river, not allowing anything living to reach the shore. The work of the punishers gained more and more confidence, firm order, and that milk sucker, who until recently was afraid to shoot at his own people, was even afraid of his own voice, jumping up to Erofei and Rodion, swung his pistol at them:

Where to? Where, shameful bitches ?!

It will take us to the Germans.

They no longer looked around, paid no attention to anyone, falling, gurgling, shivering from the cold, dragging the tied logs through the water and dragging themselves behind the raft. The machine gunner, not suffering from pitiful feelings and lack of ammunition, planted - just in case - their turn after them. The bullets knocked out white chips from the bars, shook another poor fellow who had flown in from the darkness into the water, disturbed some rags in which human flesh was not bleeding. The killed here were not dragged out: 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 trouble! - 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 them like dogs! - evil, Syrovatko blurted out in the purest Russian language. Ponayotov shivered. Having got to their native land, having seen what the invaders had done here, the Ukrainians, these peaceful Ukrainians, began to become Satan.

We can’t, ”said Ponayotov. - We must not rage in the same way as they rampage. We are not killers. Besides, I saw that one of the prisoners was just 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. - They must be taken to the shore. Hand over.

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

No one is there. Nobody guards the prisoners there. They, together with ours, are jackals along the shore, collecting muffled fish.

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

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

Their bin einfaher arbaiter. (I am a simple worker), - the elderly signalman babbled. - Und der da var eben in der shule. Uns haben zi aingetsogen, kaine ss, einfahe goldaten, einfahe leite, kain grund, uns umtsubringen ... (And he just graduated from school, we are mobilized, we are not SS men, we are ordinary soldiers, ordinary people, we have nothing to kill . We hope...)

Schneller, Schneller! - Okorkin was adamant.

Vir hoffen auf mitliade. Vir verden für oikh betten ... (We hope for mercy. We will pray to God ...)

“And to wear her the“ Golden Star ”of the hero on her lush 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 telephone operators! On the wire, the head of the political department of the division, Musenok! I am sending an important message ...

Comrade captain, - holding the receiver, Shestakov turned to Ponayotov, - the head of the political department hung on the wire.

What is he? - Throwing a pencil on a tablet, Ponayotov jumped up, finishing calculations of fire support for the remnants of the Beskapustin regiment, turning into a counterattack, in order to alleviate the position of the Shchusev battalion and help his choking neighbor - Syrovatko, even though he is a cunning, and burnout, but still a friend misfortune. The fire was needed dense, fluent and accurate, it was necessary to beat from the guns between the Kapustinians going into the attack and not cover the Shchus' battalion, cut off, defending in the ravines. The fire had to be corrected, led it after the chains, if they, these chains, are still there, if there are enough people on the chain. Without looking up from the map, Ponayotov stretched out his hand, pressed the receiver to his ear - the regiment commander was talking to Musenok on the phone.

Here is what the Pravda newspaper writes about you: “The Red Army has stepped across the river! This new, magnificent victory clearly underlines 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 you, as far as I know, did not even ferry the banner ...

They were afraid to dunk them, - the commander answered dryly.

Comrade head of the political department, - Colonel Beskapustin pleaded, - our battalion is dying, the leading one, to help him, accompanied by an artillery attack, we go into a counterattack. We'll fight back - please pass on ...

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

W-how is this - some kind of battalion ?!

And like that, you know! Our valiant troops captured Nevel and Taman. In honor of these brilliant victories, orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and an article by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky about the inspiring word of the leader were published. All your fighters need to know in order to be ashamed - you are stomping on the shore, you know, you have warmed up ...

What-oh-oh! - the bridgehead roared with all the telephones that were hung on the only working line, while representatives of different types of troops toiled, communicating with the left bank via radio transmitters.

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

It was already Shchus, who happened to be at the phone inappropriately.

Who speaks this in such a tone to a Communist Party representative? - Musenok raised his voice.

We need to intervene immediately, now a big politician will begin to harass the name 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 works ... - Ponayotov interjected into the conversation.

Why alone? Why alone? Where is your valiant connection? Loose, you know ...

Attention! - interrupted Musenka regiment commander Beskapustin. - Attention to all telephone operators on the line! Disconnect the head of the political department! Start working with firemen!

The telephone operators immediately vengefully knocked out an important boss, who continued to rattle into 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 said wearily. - You seem to be doing well, you have everything, all that is missing is the militant party word ...

The division's political department contained four cars, it's like that personally with Musenka, the party servants pushed and ate sweetly, several of his deputies, Komsomol and other parasite chiefs, comfortably settled in the war, who lived even more freely because Musenok burned at work , everywhere and everywhere climbed, loomed, said himself. In his "emka" he went to the rear to various very frequent political meetings, because the further into the forest, the more commissars - and everyone is at war, fighting, leading. On the "jeep", intended for travel to the front line, not to the most advanced, of course, to their designated places - somewhere in the headquarters, in the medical battalion, in the companies of ammunition supply, in the places of concentration of reserves and replenishment. At the "Gazushka", where a muffled man Brykin was the driver, he delivered newspapers, leaflets, a propaganda installation. In the back of the "gazushka" there was a camp bed, covered with a soldier's blanket — here the big chief slept during combat trips. He also had a Studebaker equipped for more comprehensive housing. The typist Izolda Kazimirovna Kholedyskaya, a beauty from a repressed Polish family, reigned in the Studebaker. The head of the political department withdrew her from the divisional newspaper's printing house, where she fought as a proofreader, so that he himself could personally dictate the most important contents of secret documents, articles, instructions - the Studebaker turned into a camp house. Despised by all, Izolda Kazimirovna tried not to emerge from the caravan, if she appeared to the light, she walked with her eyes downcast, but she had the Order of the Red Star and the medal "For Military Merit". Shchus knew that Nelka was collecting covers for Kholedyskaya on the battlefields with the addresses of the wounded and killed soldiers - if Nelka got off the hook, Isolde would protect her through her boss, get vodka, cigarettes, fresh linen, and ointment from lice. Nelka understood: oh, it was not in vain, it was not in vain that the shy front worker was saving up the addresses of the decommissioned soldiers. One day, Musyenok will help her draw up a documentary, indicate in an award sheet, what a staggering number of wounded were taken from the battlefield by a brave girl, and wear her the “Golden Star” of the hero on her lush chest. But for this she needs to be with Mussenka, as with the Arab sheikh - a submissive slave - and pretend that she honors her master and is afraid of him.

Letters from Viktor Astafiev - about the war, the truth about it and the cost of Victory

In the spring of 2009, a volume of letters by Viktor Astafiev (1924-2001) was published “I have no answer ... Epistolary diary. 1952-2001 ". Before that, the compiler and publisher - Irkutsk resident Gennady Sapronov (1952-2009) - gave Novaya Gazeta the layout of the book and the right to first publish the letters chosen by the editors (see No. 42, 46 of 2009). Three weeks later, at one of the meetings organized by United Russia, Sapronov and Novaya's journalists who presented the book to the audience were offered to shoot for it; Gennady wrote to me: “That's it! I'm leaving for the partisans. " And a month later, having managed to prepare the second, supplemented edition of Astafiev's letters, he died.

We continue to publish the letters we have selected for the newspaper.

Alexey Tarasov, "New", Krasnoyarsk

==================================================================

(I. Sokolova)

[...] With you, and in any thing where there is an "I" - it, this "I", obliges a lot, first of all to restraint, caution in handling this very "I" and, most importantly, it is necessary to portray, rather than retelling. At first, your seventeenth artillery division was on the march ... But it was our brigade, armed with Schneider's 1908 model howitzers, melted at the Tula plant (howitzers in which the barrel was rolled by hand for the first shot and the projectile was sent to the barrel with a bannik), was at the forefront of the attack Germans. At first we were crushed by our panicked retreating units and did not allow us to bury ourselves properly. Then tanks poured in - we held out for several hours, because the old howitzers had Siberians who were 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 had broken through us were met by artillery deployed in battle formations and finished off the rest of our division. The counterstrike failed. The Germans were defeated. Comrade Trofimenko became an army general, received another order, and my fellow soldiers have long been plowed and sown with wheat near Akhtyrka ...

Dnieper bridgeheads! I was south of Kiev, on the very Bukrin bridgeheads (two out of three). I was wounded there and I affirm that I will say to my death that only those who do not give a damn about someone else's human life could have forced us to cross and fight. Those who remained on the left bank and, "sparing no life", glorified our "exploits". And we are on the other side of the Dnieper, on a piece of land, hungry, cold, no tobacco, cartridges from the account, no pomegranates, no shovels, we were dying, eaten by lice, rats, from somewhere in a mass poured 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 that is necessary to write about everything, like other hardened, unyielding warriors! […]

(Destination not set)

[…] This is what we have lived up to, lied to, and turned brown! And who guarded all this, closed the eyes of the people, frightened, imprisoned, perpetrated reprisals? Who are these chain dogs? What are their shoulder straps? Where did they study and who did they study with? And they finished their studies that they do not notice that they are eating, resting, living separately from the people and consider it a normal thing. At the front, as a general, you ate, of course, from the soldiers' kitchens, but I saw that even Vanka the platoon commander tried to both eat and live separately from the soldier, but, alas, he 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 twitching.

Don't lie to yourself, Ilya Grigorievich! At least yourself! It is difficult for you to agree with me, but the Soviet military is the most rabid, cowardly, meanest, dumbest of all that came 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 is gone, there is no Russian people either. What was Russia is now called the Non-Black Earth Region, and all this was overgrown with weeds, and the remnants of our people fled to the city and turned into a puny, who left the village and did not come to the city.

How many people lost in the war? You know and remember. It's scary to give the true figure, isn't it? If you name 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 mediocre "won" war, in which the enemy was filled 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 Soviet Army."

Indeed: start to write - and it will be found that after the defeat of the 6th enemy army (two fronts!), The Germans set up a "Kharkov cauldron", in which Vatutin and others like him cooked six (!!!) armies, and the Germans took only more than a million of our valiant warriors were taken prisoner, together with the generals (and they took a whole bunch, like a red radish was pulled out of a ridge).<…> Maybe I can tell you how Comrade Kirponos, having thrown 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 of the eleventh army, with the support of a part of the second air army, passed the heroic Sivash and, in front of the gallant Black Sea Fleet, swept away everything that we had in the Crimea? And moreover, leaving the besieged Sevastopol for a short time, "fled" near Kerch and "with a tank fist", which was based on two tank corps, showed political instructor Mekhlis that to publish a newspaper, even if "Pravda", where from the first to the last page he was a Great Leader - one thing, but to fight and lead troops is a completely different matter, and gave him so that (two) three (!) armies swam and overtook in the Kerch Strait.

Well, Mekhlis, a toady courtier, a chatterbox 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 with the maps of 1941, seven to eight red arrows abut against two, at most three blue ones. Just do not tell me about my "illiteracy": they say, the Germans have armies, corps, divisions in terms of their composition numerically larger than ours. I do not think that the 1st Panzer Army, which was beaten by two fronts all winter and spring, was numerically larger than our two fronts, especially as 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 with a "small apparatus", honestly and skillfully working specialists, they ran the armies without the chaos that pursued us until the end of the war.

What is our only connection worth ?! Lord! I still dream about it in nightmares.

We are all already old, gray-haired, sick. Die soon. Whether we like it or not. It's time to pray to God, Ilya Grigorievich! We cannot forgive all our sins: there are too many of them, and they are too monstrous, but the Lord is merciful and will help to somehow cleanse and relieve our spattered, humiliated and offended souls. What I sincerely wish you.

Victor ASTAFIEV.

Krasnoyarsk

(G. Vershinin)

[…] But the truth about the war itself is ambiguous. On the one hand - Victory. Even if it was given in huge, harsh, huge blood and with such huge losses that they are still embarrassed to disclose them to us. Probably 47 million is the most truthful and scary figure. How could it be otherwise? When the German pilots were asked how they, the heroes of the Reich, managed to shoot down 400-600 planes, and the Soviet hero Pokryshkin, two, and also a hero ... The Germans who studied at our aviation schools answered modestly that at that time the pilots sat in the classrooms, studying the history of the party, they flew - preparing for battles.

Three million, almost our entire cadre army was captured in 1941, and 250 thousand hungry, homeless warriors wandered around Ukraine for the whole winter, they were not even taken prisoner in order not to feed or protect them, and they began to unite in gangs, then went into the woods, declaring themselves partisans ...

Oh, this "truth" of war! We, six people from one platoon of the artillery division's control - only three were left - got together and argued more than once, swore, remembering the war - even one battle, one incident, a transition - we all remembered differently. But if you combine this "truth" of six with the "truth" of hundreds, thousands, millions, you 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 penetrated into the material of the war, not only from our side, but also from the opposite side, I now know that we were saved by a miracle, the people and God, who more than once saved Russia - both from the Mongols, and in times of trouble, 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, and this means to behave with dignity on earth, and maybe He will forgive us and will not turn away His merciful face from us, ragged, angry, incapable of repentance.

Here is the third book and will be about our people, great and long-suffering, who, sacrificing themselves and even their future, with tears, blood, bones and torments saved the whole earth from mockery, and bored himself and Russia, bled blood. And the Russian holy village ran wild, tired, embittered, the people themselves became a piece, and did not make up for the losses of the nation, and did not overcome the terrible shocks, military, post-war persecutions, camps, prisons and forced new buildings, and in the convulsions of our valiant rural economy, without the resurrection of which, as well as without a return to the spiritual principle in all life, we cannot survive. […]

(S. Novikova)

Dear Svetlana Alexandrovna!

... Of course, those who run or are already hobbling around the squares and streets with Stalin's portraits 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 soldiers will also be in demand , and about the marshals. By the way, a soldier, even three times wounded, like me, is still rare in Russia, but it is common, and commanders, marshals, both main and non-main, have long died out, such was their "easy" life, and even this Satan, for something sent to punish Russia, drank their blood, shortened the century.

I was an ordinary soldier, I saw the generals from afar, but fate wanted me to see the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Konev, from afar, and once upon a time! - I saw and heard Zhukov quite close to 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 downed plane saw, alas, not a German one, but our "Lavochkin", he 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 out all over the white birch, still thinly sprinkled with a leaf. And then for some reason I saw how often they shot down ours, and it got to the point that we could clearly distinguish between our and the German planes by the outlines of the wings, so sacredly lied to each other: "Here again Fritz heraked!"

The story with Horovets does not look as good as in your book, he really shot down 9 planes, but not only the Ju-873, but also others, and there were those on the ground who did not shoot down a single one, and they sent him into the air then, when the limit of his forces ran out, and by the evening he was shot down and accused of falling in the enemy's disposition and surrendering. Justice triumphed many years later, triumphed by an absurd accident, and when a monument-bust to Horovets was erected on the Kursk Bulge, one mother came, and my father said: "They sold it, let them bury it."

"The ballad about the shot heart" was written by my old friend Nikolai Panchenko, he lives in Tarusa, near Moscow, he is almost blind. "Stalingrad on the Dnieper" - a documentary story - was written by Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, it was published in "Novy mir", and I have not seen a separate edition.

Oh, how much I would like to tell you, but I am not enough for a big letter, and I just kiss your hands and put my palm to the place where your heart, which has so endured adversity and withstood such work.

Yes, of course, all wars on earth ended in turmoil, and the victors were punished. How was it not to be afraid of Satan, seated on the Russian throne, the unification of such people and minds as Zhukov, Novikov, Voronov, Rokossovsky, behind whom was a robbed, impoverished people and warriors who came from Europe and saw that we live not better, but worse everyone. Resentment accumulated, and someone prompted 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 and officers, and they perished in this merciless battle. But they did not go anywhere, they all lie in the permafrost with tags on their legs, and many with carved buttocks used for food, even ate fresh frozen when it was impossible to make a fire.

Oh-oh, my mothers, and they also want, demand that our people be able to live freely, to manage themselves and their minds. Yes, everything is hammered, drowned out, and exterminated, and humiliated. The people no longer have the former strength, which was, for example, in the 30s, so that they would at once rise from their knees, grow wiser, mature, learn to govern themselves and their Russia, large and bled.

Read the book that I am sending you, and you will see what it was like for a private. My Marya, a volunteer Komsomol member, and I, God had mercy, neither in the pioneers, nor in the Komsomol, nor in the party, did not have a dashing enough time. My baba 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 was eight months old, the other was 39 years old, we raised her children, two grandchildren, but you will learn the rest from the book. And excuse the handwriting, I am writing from my native village, but Marya with a typewriter in the city, I don’t know how to type.

I bow low to you. Yours V. Astafiev.