Svetlana Alexievich

I grew up with this... I grew up gloomy and mistrustful, I have a difficult character. When someone cries, I don't feel sorry; on the contrary, I feel better, because I myself don't know how to cry. I've been married twice, and twice my wife has left me. No one could stand me for long. It's hard to love me. I know it... I know it myself...

Many years have passed... Now I want to ask: Did God watch this? And what did He think? [This person was 8 in 1941.]

I remember a little boy lying there, his arm hanging from the bed, bleeding. And other children crying... Every two or three weeks new children came. Some were taken somewhere, they were already pale and weak, and others brought. Fattened up.

German doctors thought that the blood of children under five years old contributed to the speedy recovery of the wounded. That it had a rejuvenating effect. I found this out later... of course, later... [This person was 5 in 1941.]

Still we did set up some sort of Christmas tree. It was mama, of course, who remembered that we were children. We cut bright pictures out of books, made paper balls - one side white, the other black, made garlands out of old threads. On that day we especially smiled at each other, and instead of presents (we didn't have any), we left little notes under the tree.

In my notes I wrote to mama, "Mama dear, I love you very much. Very, very much!" We gave each other presents of words. [This person was 7 in 1941.]

We talked non-stop, afraid that they were listening in, thinking they must be listening. There'd always be someone who'd halt mid-conversation and point to the ceiling light or the power outlet with a little grin, "Did you hear that, Comrade Lieutenant?" It felt a bit dangerous, a bit like a game.

Does anyone care about any of this anymore? Show me - who? It hasn’t been useful or interesting to anyone for a long time. Our country doesn’t exist any more and it never will, but here we are… old and disgusting… with our terrifying memories and poisoned eyes. We’re right here! But what’s left of our past? Only the story that Stalin drenched the soil in blood, Khrushchev planted corn in it, and everybody laughed at Brezhnev. But what about our heroes?

That’s what we’re like… Imagine a victim and an executioner from Auschwitz sitting side by side in the same office, getting their wages out of the same window down in accounting. With identical war decorations. And now, the same pensions… [...] ...I’m very sad about our elderly, of course… They collect bottles in the stadiums, sell cigarettes in the metro at night. Pick through rubbish dumps. But our elderly are no innocents… That’s a terrifying thought! Seditious. I’m scared just thinking about it.

I even put up flyers. We talked and read and read and talked. What did we want? Our parents wanted to say and read whatever they wanted. They dreamt of humane socialism… with a human face. And young people? We… we also dreamt of freedom. But what is it? Our idea of freedom was purely theoretical… We wanted to live like they do in the West. Listen to their music, dress like them, travel the world. “We want change… change…” sung Viktor Tsoi. We had no clue what we were hurtling towards. We just kept on dreaming...

When Gorbachev came to power, we ran around mad with glee. We lived in our dreams, our illusions. We wanted a new Russia… Twenty years down the line, it finally dawned on us: where was this new Russia supposed to come from? It never existed, and it still doesn’t today. Someone put it very accurately: in five years, everything can change in Russia, but in two hundred - nothing.

We went to die for life, without knowing what life was. We had only read about it in books. I liked movies about love…
Medical assistants in tank units died quickly. There was no room provided for us in a tank; you had to hang on to the armour plating, and the only thought was to avoid having your legs drawn into the caterpillar tread. And we had to watch for burning tanks… To jump down and run or crawl there… We were five girlfriends at the front: Liuba Yasinskaya, Shura Kiseleva, Tonya Bobkova, Zina Latysh, and me. The tank soldiers called us the Konakovo girls. And all the girls were killed...

[...]

In the morning the whole battalion lined up, those cowards were brought and placed before us. The order that they be shot was read. Seven men were needed to carry out the sentence… Three man stepped forward; the rest stood there. I took a submachine gun and stepped forward. Once I stepped forward… a young girl… everybody followed me… Those two could not be forgiven. Because of them such brave boys were killed!
And we carried out the sentence… I lowered the submachine gun, and became frightened. I went up to them… they lay there… One had a living smile on his face.
I don’t know, would I have forgiven them now? I can’t tell… I don’t want to lie.

[...]

We clothed the soldiers, laundered, ironed for them - that was our heroism. We rode on horseback, less often by train. Our horses were exhausted, you could say we got to Berlin on foot. And since we’re remembering like this, we did everything that was necessary: helped to carry the wounded, delivered shells by hand at the Dnieper, because it was impossible to transport them. We carried them from several miles away. We made dugouts, built bridges…
We fell into an encirclement, I ran, I shot, like everybody else. Whether I killed or not, I can’t say. I ran and shot, like everybody else.

[...]

There was another woman, Zajarskaya. She had a daughter, Valeria; the girl was seven years old. We had to blow up the mess hall. We decided to plant a mine in the stove, but it had to be carried there. And the mother said her daughter would bring the mine. She put the mine in a basket and covered it with a couple of children’s outfits, a stuffed toy, two dozen eggs, and some butter. And so the girl brought the mine to the mess hall. People say that maternal instinct is stronger than anything. No, ideas are stronger! And faith is stronger! I think… I’m certain that if it wasn’t for such a mama and such a girl, and they hadn’t carried that mine, we wouldn’t have been victorious. Yes, life - it’s a good thing. Excellent! But there are things that are dearer…

[...]

And everybody was waiting for that moment… Now we’ll understand… Now we’ll see… Where do [Nazis] come from? What is their land like, their houses? Could it be that they are ordinary people? That they lived ordinary lives? At the front, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to read Heine’s poems again. My beloved Goethe. I could never listen to Wagner… Before the war, I grew up in a family of musicians, I loved German music - Bach, Beethoven. The great Bach! I crossed all this out of my world. Then we saw, they showed us the crematoriums… Auschwitz… Heaps of women’s clothing, children’s shoes… Gray ash… They spread it on the fields, under the cabbage. Under the lettuce… I couldn’t listen to German music anymore… A long time passed before I went back to Bach. Began to play Mozart.