War does not have a woman's face. separate chapters. from what the censorship threw out. War does not have a woman's face... Svetlana Alekseevich war does not have a woman's face

Svetlana ALEXIEVICH

WAR HAS NOT A WOMAN'S FACE...

Everything we know about a woman is best summed up in the word “mercy.” There are other words - sister, wife, friend, and the highest - mother. But isn’t mercy also present in their content as the essence, as the purpose, as the ultimate meaning? A woman gives life, a woman protects life, a woman and life are synonymous.

In the most terrible war of the 20th century, a woman had to become a soldier. She not only saved and bandaged the wounded, but also shot with a sniper, bombed, blew up bridges, went on reconnaissance missions, and took tongues. The woman killed. She killed the enemy, who attacked her land, her home, and her children with unprecedented cruelty. “It’s not a woman’s lot to kill,” one of the heroines of this book will say, containing here all the horror and all the cruel necessity of what happened. Another will sign on the walls of the defeated Reichstag: “I, Sofya Kuntsevich, came to Berlin to kill the war.” It was the greatest sacrifice they made on the altar of Victory. And an immortal feat, the full depth of which we comprehend over the years of peaceful life.

In one of Nicholas Roerich’s letters, written in May-June 1945 and stored in the fund of the Slavic Anti-Fascist Committee in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution, there is the following passage: “The Oxford dictionary has legitimized some Russian words that are now accepted in the world: for example, add one more the word is the untranslatable, meaningful Russian word “feat”. Strange as it may seem, not a single European language has a word with even an approximate meaning...” If the Russian word “feat” ever enters the languages of the world, that will be part of what was accomplished during the war years by a Soviet woman who held the rear on her shoulders , who saved the children and defended the country together with the men.

…For four painful years I have been walking the burned kilometers of someone else’s pain and memory. Hundreds of stories of women front-line soldiers have been recorded: doctors, signalmen, sappers, pilots, snipers, shooters, anti-aircraft gunners, political workers, cavalrymen, tank crews, paratroopers, sailors, traffic controllers, drivers, ordinary field bath and laundry detachments, cooks, bakers, testimonies of partisans and underground workers “There is hardly a single military specialty that our brave women could not cope with as well as their brothers, husbands, and fathers,” wrote Marshal of the Soviet Union A.I. Eremenko. Among the girls there were Komsomol members of a tank battalion, and mechanic-drivers of heavy tanks, and in the infantry there were commanders of a machine gun company, machine gunners, although in our language the words “tanker”, “infantryman”, “machine gunner” do not have a feminine gender, because this work never before done by a woman.

Only after the mobilization of the Lenin Komsomol, about 500 thousand girls were sent to the army, of which 200 thousand were Komsomol members. Seventy percent of all girls sent by the Komsomol were in the active army. In total, during the war years, over 800 thousand women served in various branches of the military at the front...

The partisan movement became popular. In Belarus alone, there were about 60 thousand courageous Soviet patriots in partisan detachments. Every fourth person on Belarusian soil was burned or killed by the Nazis.

These are the numbers. We know them. And behind them are destinies, entire lives, upside down, twisted by the war: the loss of loved ones, lost health, women’s loneliness, the unbearable memory of the war years. We know less about this.

“Whenever we were born, we were all born in 1941,” anti-aircraft gunner Klara Semyonovna Tikhonovich wrote to me in a letter. And I want to talk about them, the girls of the forty-first, or rather, they themselves will talk about themselves, about “their” war.

“I lived with this in my soul all the years. You wake up at night and lie with your eyes open. Sometimes I think that I will take everything with me to the grave, no one will know about it, it was scary...” (Emilia Alekseevna Nikolaeva, partisan).

“...I’m so glad that I can tell this to someone, that our time has come...” (Tamara Illarionovna Davydovich, senior sergeant, driver).

“When I tell you everything that happened, I will again not be able to live like everyone else. I'll become sick. I came back from the war alive, only wounded, but I was sick for a long time, I was sick until I told myself that I had to forget all this, or I would never recover. I even feel sorry for you that you are so young, but you want to know this...” (Lyubov Zakharovna Novik, foreman, medical instructor).

“Man, he could take it. He is still a man. But I myself don’t know how a woman could. Now, as soon as I remember, horror seizes me, but then I could do anything: I could sleep next to the dead man, I shot myself, I saw blood, I really remember that the smell of blood in the snow was somehow especially strong... So I say, and I already feel bad... And then nothing, then I could do anything. I started telling my granddaughter, but my daughter-in-law reprimanded me: why would a girl know this? This, they say, the woman is growing... The mother is growing... And I have no one to tell...

This is how we protect them, and then we are surprised that our children know little about us...” (Tamara Mikhailovna Stepanova, sergeant, sniper).

“...My friend and I went to the cinema, we have been friends for almost forty years, we were underground together during the war. We wanted to get tickets, but there was a long line. She just had with her a certificate of participation in the Great Patriotic War, and she went to the cashier and showed it. And some girl, probably about fourteen years old, said: “Did you women fight?” It would be interesting to know for what kind of feats you were given these certificates?”

Of course, other people in line let us through, but we didn’t go to the cinema. We were shaking as if in a fever...” (Vera Grigorievna Sedova, underground worker).

I, too, was born after the war, when the trenches were already overgrown, the soldiers’ trenches were swollen, the dugouts “in three rolls” were destroyed, and the soldiers’ helmets abandoned in the forest turned red. But didn’t she touch my life with her mortal breath? We still belong to generations, each of which has its own account of the war. My family was missing eleven people: Ukrainian grandfather Petro, my mother’s father, lies somewhere near Budapest, Belarusian grandmother Evdokia, my father’s mother, died during the partisan blockade from hunger and typhus, two families of distant relatives along with their children were burned by the Nazis in a barn in my native in the village of Komarovichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region, my father’s brother Ivan, a volunteer, went missing in 1941.

Four years of “my” war. More than once I was scared. More than once I was hurt. No, I won’t tell a lie - this path was not within my power. How many times have I wanted to forget what I heard. I wanted to, but I couldn’t anymore. All this time I kept a diary, which I also decided to include in the story. It contains what I felt, experienced, and the geography of the search - more than a hundred cities, towns, villages in various parts of the country. True, I doubted for a long time whether I had the right to write in this book “I feel,” “I suffer,” “I doubt.” What are my feelings, my torment next to their feelings and torment? Would anyone be interested in a diary of my feelings, doubts and searches? But the more material accumulated in the folders, the more persistent the conviction became: a document is only a document that has full force when it is known not only what is in it, but also who left it. There are no dispassionate testimonies; each contains the obvious or secret passion of the one whose hand moved the pen over the paper. And this passion, many years later, is also a document.

– When did women first appear in the army in history?

– Already in the 4th century BC, women fought in the Greek armies in Athens and Sparta. Later they took part in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: “Slav women sometimes went to war with their fathers and spouses, without fear of death: during the siege of Constantinople in 626, the Greeks found many female corpses among the killed Slavs. The mother, raising her children, prepared them to be warriors.”

- And in the New Age?

– For the first time, in England in the 1560-1650s, hospitals began to be formed in which female soldiers served.

– What happened in the twentieth century?

- Beginning of the century... During the First World War in England, women were already taken into the Royal Air Force, the Royal Auxiliary Corps and the Women's Legion of Motor Transport were formed - in the amount of 100 thousand people.

In Russia, Germany, and France, many women also began to serve in military hospitals and ambulance trains.

And during World War II, the world witnessed a female phenomenon. Women have served in all branches of the military in many countries of the world: in the British army - 225 thousand, in the American army - 450-500 thousand, in the German army - 500 thousand...

About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most “masculine” ones. Even a language problem arose: the words “tanker”, “infantryman”, “machine gunner” did not have a feminine gender until that time, because this work had never been done by a woman. Women's words were born there, during the war...

From a conversation with a historian

Man is greater than war
(from the book's diary)

Millions killed for cheap

We trampled the path in the dark...

Osip Mandelstam

1978-1985

I'm writing a book about the war...

I, who did not like to read military books, although in my childhood and youth this was everyone’s favorite reading. All my peers. And this is not surprising - we were children of Victory. Children of the winners. The first thing I remember about the war? Your childhood melancholy among incomprehensible and frightening words. People always remembered the war: at school and at home, at weddings and christenings, on holidays and at funerals. Even in children's conversations. A neighbor boy once asked me: “What are these people doing underground? After the war there are more of them there than on earth.” We also wanted to unravel the mystery of the war.

Then I started thinking about death... And I never stopped thinking about it, for me it became the main secret of life.

Everything for us began from that terrible and mysterious world. In our family, the Ukrainian grandfather, my mother’s father, died at the front and was buried somewhere in Hungarian soil, and the Belarusian grandmother, my father’s mother, died of typhus in the partisans, her two sons served in the army and went missing in the first months of the war, from three returned alone. My father. This was the case in every home. Everyone has. It was impossible not to think about death. There were shadows everywhere...

The village boys played “Germans” and “Russians” for a long time. They shouted German words: “Hende hoch!”, “Tsuryuk”, “Hitler kaput!”

We did not know a world without war, the world of war was the only world we knew, and the people of war were the only people we knew. Even now I don’t know another world and other people. Have they ever existed?

* * *

The village of my childhood after the war was all women's. Babya. I don't remember male voices. This is how it remains with me: women talk about the war. They're crying. They sing as if they are crying.

The school library contains half of the books about the war. Both in the countryside and in the regional center, where my father often went to buy books. Now I have an answer - why. Is it by chance? We were always at war or preparing for war. We remembered how we fought. We have never lived differently, and we probably don’t know how. We can’t imagine how to live differently; we will have to learn this for a long time.

At school we were taught to love death. We wrote essays about how we would like to die in the name of... We dreamed...

For a long time I was a bookish person who was frightened and attracted by reality. From ignorance of life came fearlessness. Now I think: if I were a more real person, could I throw myself into such an abyss? What was all this due to – ignorance? Or from a sense of the way? After all, there is a sense of the way...

I searched for a long time... What words can convey what I hear? I was looking for a genre that would correspond to how I see the world, how my eye and my ear work.

One day I came across the book “I am from the village of fire” by A. Adamovich, Y. Bryl, V. Kolesnik. I experienced such a shock only once, while reading Dostoevsky. And here is an unusual form: the novel is assembled from the voices of life itself. From what I heard as a child, from what is now heard on the street, at home, in a cafe, on a trolleybus. So! The circle is closed. I found what I was looking for. I had a presentiment.

Ales Adamovich became my teacher...

* * *

For two years I didn’t meet and write so much as I thought. I read it. What will my book be about? Well, another book about the war... Why? There have already been thousands of wars - small and large, known and unknown. And even more has been written about them. But... Men also wrote about men - this became clear immediately. Everything we know about the war comes from a “male voice.” We are all captive of “male” ideas and “male” feelings of war. "Male" words. And the women are silent. Nobody but me asked my grandmother. My mom. Even those who were at the front are silent. If they suddenly start talking, they are not talking about their own war, but about someone else’s. Another one. They adapt to the male canon. And only at home or when they cry in the circle of friends at the front, do they remember the war (I heard it more than once on my journalistic trips), which is completely unfamiliar to me. Just like when I was a child, I am shocked. In their stories, a monstrous grin of the mysterious is visible... When women speak, they do not have or almost do not have what we are used to reading and hearing about: how some people heroically killed others and won. Or they lost. What kind of equipment was there - what kind of generals. Women's stories are different and about different things. “Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting and its own space of feelings. Your own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are just people who are busy with inhumanly human work. And not only they (people!) suffer there, but also the earth, the birds, and the trees. Everyone who lives with us on earth. They suffer without words, which is even worse...

But why? – I asked myself more than once. – Why, having defended and taken their place in the once absolutely male world, did women not defend their history? Your words and your feelings? They didn't believe themselves. The whole world is hidden from us. Their war remained unknown...

I want to write the history of this war. Women's history.

* * *

From the first recordings...

Surprise: these women’s military professions are medical instructor, sniper, machine gunner, anti-aircraft gun commander, sapper, and now they are accountants, laboratory assistants, tour guides, teachers... There is a mismatch of roles here and there. They talk as if not about themselves, but about some other girls. Today they surprise themselves. And before my eyes, history “humanizes” and becomes similar to ordinary life. Another lighting appears.

There are amazing storytellers who have pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics. So that a person can see himself so clearly from above - from heaven, and from below - from earth. I walked the way up and the way down - from the angel to the beast. Memories are not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a vanished reality, but a rebirth of the past when time turns back. First of all, it is creativity. By telling stories, people create, “write” their lives. It happens that they “add on” and “rewrite”. You have to be careful here. On guard. At the same time, any falsehood gradually destroys itself and cannot withstand the proximity of such naked truth. This virus is not survivable here. Temperature too high! More sincerely, as I have already noticed, ordinary people behave more sincerely - nurses, cooks, laundresses... They, how to define this more precisely, get words from themselves, and not from newspapers and books they read. From someone else's. But only from my own suffering and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, oddly enough, are often more susceptible to the processing of time. Its general encryption. Infected by other people's knowledge. Common spirit. Often you have to walk for a long time, in different circles, to hear a story about a “women’s” war, and not about a “men’s” one: how they retreated, advanced, on what part of the front... It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. As a persistent portrait painter.

I sit in an unfamiliar house or apartment for a long time, sometimes all day. We drink tea, try on recently purchased blouses, discuss hairstyles and culinary recipes. We look at photographs of our grandchildren together. And then... After some time, you will never know after what time and why, suddenly that long-awaited moment comes when a person moves away from the canon - plaster and reinforced concrete - like our monuments, and goes to himself. Into yourself. He begins to remember not the war, but his youth. A piece of your life... You need to capture this moment. Don't miss it! But often, after a long day filled with words and facts, only one phrase remains in the memory (but what a phrase!): “I went to the front so little that I even grew up during the war.” I leave it in my notebook, even though I have tens of meters on the tape recorder. Four or five cassettes...

What helps me? It helps that we are used to living together. Together. Cathedral people. We have everything in the world – both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and talk about suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and awkward life. For us, pain is art. I must admit, women bravely set out on this journey...

* * *

How do they greet me?

Names: “girl”, “daughter”, “baby”, probably, if I were from their generation, they would have treated me differently. Calm and equal. Without the joy and amazement that the meeting of youth and old age gives. This is a very important point that they were young then, but now they remember the old ones. Through life they remember - after forty years. They carefully open their world to me, they spare me: “I’m sorry that I was there... That I saw it... After the war, I got married. She hid behind her husband. She hid herself. And my mother asked: “Be quiet! Shut up!! Don’t confess.” I fulfilled my duty to my Motherland, but I am sad that I was there. That I know this... And you are just a girl. I feel sorry for you...” I often see them sitting and listening to themselves. To the sound of your soul. They compare it with the words. Over the years, a person understands that this was life, and now he must come to terms with it and prepare to leave. I don’t want to and it’s a shame to disappear just like that. Carelessly. On the go. And when he looks back, he has a desire not only to talk about his own, but also to get to the secret of life. Answer the question for yourself: why did this happen to him? He looks at everything with a slightly farewell and sad look... Almost from there... There is no need to deceive and be deceived. It is already clear to him that without the thought of death nothing can be discerned in a person. Its mystery exists above everything.

War is too intimate an experience. And as endless as human life...

Once a woman (a pilot) refused to meet with me. She explained over the phone: “I can’t... I don’t want to remember. I was at war for three years... And for three years I didn’t feel like a woman. My body is dead. There was no menstruation, almost no female desires. And I was beautiful... When my future husband proposed to me... This was already in Berlin, at the Reichstag... He said: “The war is over. We survived. We're lucky. Marry me.” I wanted to cry. Scream. Hit him! What's it like to get married? Now? Among all this - get married? Among the black soot and black bricks... Look at me... Look at what I am! First, make a woman out of me: give flowers, look after me, speak beautiful words. I want it so bad! So I'm waiting! I almost hit him... I wanted to hit him... And he had a burnt, purple cheek, and I see: he understood everything, tears were flowing down his cheek. By the still fresh scars... And I myself don’t believe what I’m saying: “Yes, I will marry you.”

But I can’t tell you. I have no strength... I have to live it all again..."

I understood her. But this is also a page or half a page of the book that I am writing.

Texts, texts. There are texts everywhere. In apartments and village houses, on the street and on the train... I listen... More and more I am turning into one big ear, always turned to another person. I "read" the voice...

* * *

Man is greater than war...

What is remembered is exactly where it is larger. He is guided there by something that is stronger than history. I need to take it more broadly - write the truth about life and death in general, and not just the truth about the war. Ask Dostoevsky’s question: how much person is there in a person, and how to protect this person in yourself? There is no doubt that evil is tempting. It is more diverse than good. More attractive. I am plunging deeper and deeper into the endless world of war, everything else has faded slightly and has become more ordinary than usual. A grandiose and predatory world. I now understand the loneliness of a person who returned from there. Like from another planet or from the other world. He has knowledge that others do not have, and it can only be obtained there, near death. When he tries to convey something in words, he has a feeling of disaster. The person goes numb. He wants to tell, others would like to understand, but everyone is powerless.

The Soviet and Belarusian writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 for her documentary and essay collection of stories “War Has Not a Woman’s Face.” The book itself was written in 1983, but some of the memories were crossed out by censors who accused Svetlana Alexievich of “pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman.”

“Will I find such words? I can tell you how I shot. But about how she cried, no. It will remain unspoken. I know one thing: in war, a person becomes terrible and incomprehensible. How to understand it? You are a writer. Come up with something yourself. Something beautiful. Without lice and dirt, without vomit... Without the smell of vodka and blood... Not as scary as life...”

Soldiers. (wikipedia.org)

Nonna Alexandrovna Smirnova, private, anti-aircraft gunner:

“Now I watch films about the war: a nurse on the front line, she walks neatly, clean, not in padded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a cap on her crest. Well, that's not true! How could we pull out a wounded man if there were people like that... It’s not very easy to crawl around in a skirt when there are only men around. But to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war as elegant ones. At the same time, we also received underwear instead of men's underwear. We didn’t know where to go from happiness. The gymnasts were unbuttoned so that you could see...

Anti-aircraft gunners. (wikipedia.org)

Zinaida Vasilievna Korzh, medical instructor of a cavalry squadron:

“People didn’t want to die... We responded to every groan, every cry. One wounded man, when he felt that he was dying, grabbed me by the shoulder like that, hugged me and did not let go. It seemed to him that if someone was near him, if his sister was nearby, then life would not leave him. He asked: “If only I could live for five more minutes. Just two more minutes..." Some died silently, slowly, others shouted: “I don’t want to die!” They swore: motherfucker... One suddenly began to sing... He sang a Moldavian song... A man dies, but still doesn’t think, doesn’t believe that he’s dying. And you see how the yellow-yellow color comes from under the hair, how the shadow first moves across the face, then under the clothes... He lies dead, and there is some kind of surprise on his face, as if he is lying and thinking: how did I die? Am I really dead?

Wounded. (wikipedia.org)

Klara Semenovna Tikhonovich, senior sergeant, anti-aircraft gunner:

“After the war... I lived in a communal apartment. The neighbors were all with their husbands and they insulted me. They mocked: “Ha-ha-a... Tell me how you are... with the men...”. Vinegar will be poured into my saucepan with potatoes. They'll add a spoonful of salt... Ha-ha-ah...

My commander was demobilized from the army. He came to me and we got married. We signed up at the registry office, and that’s it. No wedding. And a year later he left for another woman, the head of our factory canteen: “She smells of perfume, but you smell of boots and foot wraps.” So I live alone. I have no one in the whole wide world. Thank you for coming...”

To Berlin. (wikipedia.org)

Valentina Kuzminichna Bratchikova-Borshchevskaya, lieutenant, political officer of the field laundry detachment:

“They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers looked: some with mockery, some even with anger, and others would shrug their shoulders like that - everything was immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, supposedly, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: “Uh-uh-uh...”. One even spat: “Ugh!”

And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me.

With awards. (wikipedia.org)

Ekaterina Nikitichna Sannikova, sergeant, gunner:

A guy escorts me from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What's wrong with you?" - “Nothing. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty.”

Nurses. (wikipedia.org)

Natalya Ivanovna Sergeeva, private, nurse:

“I collected from my soldiers everything they had, what was left of their rations, any piece of sugar, and gave it to German children. Of course, I didn’t forget... I remembered everything... But I couldn’t look calmly into the hungry children’s eyes. Early in the morning there was already a line of German children near our kitchens, they were giving first and second courses. Each child has a bag for bread slung over his shoulder, a can for soup on his belt and something for the second - porridge, peas. We fed them and treated them. They even stroked me... I stroked it for the first time... I was scared... I... I! I am petting a German child... My mouth is dry from excitement. But I soon got used to it. And they got used to it...”

Group portrait. (wikipedia.org)

“Will I find such words? I can tell you about how I shot. But about how I cried, no. It will remain unspoken. I know one thing: in war, a person becomes terrible and incomprehensible. How to understand him?

You are a writer. Come up with something yourself. Something beautiful. Without lice and dirt, without vomit... Without the smell of vodka and blood... Not as scary as life..."

Anastasia Ivanovna Medvedkina, private, machine gunner

“I reached Warsaw... And all on foot, the infantry, as they say, is the proletariat of war. They crawled on their belly... Don’t ask me anymore... I don’t like books about war. About the heroes... We walked sick, coughing, sleep-deprived, dirty, poorly dressed. Often hungry... But we won!”

Lyubov Ivanovna Lyubchik, commander of a platoon of machine gunners

“During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen years old. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream!..

I reached Berlin. She signed on the Reichstag: “I, Sofya Kuntsevich, came here to kill the war.”

Sofya Adamovna Kuntsevich, sergeant major, medical instructor of a rifle company

“It’s terrible to remember how terrible the first march was. I was ready to accomplish the feat, but I was not ready to wear size forty-two instead of thirty-five. It's so hard and so ugly! So ugly!

The commander saw me coming and called me out of formation:

Smirnova, how do you march in combat? What, you weren't taught? Why don't you raise your feet? I announce three outfits out of turn...

I replied:

There are, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, three squads out of turn! - turned to walk and fell. Fell out of my shoes... My feet were bleeding...

Then it turned out that I could no longer walk. The company shoemaker Parshin was given the order to sew me boots from an old raincoat, size thirty-five...”

Nonna Alexandrovna Smirnova, private, anti-aircraft gunner

Sofya Konstantinovna Dubnyakova, senior sergeant, medical instructor

“I close my eyes, I see everything in front of me again...

The shell hit an ammunition depot and a fire broke out. The soldier was standing nearby, guarding, and he was scorched. It was already a black piece of meat... He just jumps... Jumps in one place... And everyone is watching from the trenches, and no one will move, everyone is confused. I grabbed a sheet, ran up, covered this soldier and immediately lay down on him. Pinned to the ground. The ground is cold... Like this... He left until his heart broke and fell silent...

And then the battle began again... Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. There is no other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I chewed it up, bandaged it... I bandage it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I will fight again." In a fever..."

Olga Yakovlevna Omelchenko, medical instructor of a rifle company

“They gave me some special coupons for my orders and medals so that I could go to the military store and buy something. I bought myself rubber boots, the most fashionable at that time, I bought a coat, a dress, and boots. The overcoat decided to sell. I'm going to the market... I came in a light summer dress... With a hairpin in my hair... And what did I see there? Young guys without arms, without legs... All the people who fought... With orders, with medals... Those who have whole hands sell homemade spoons. Women's bras, panties. And the other... Without arms, without legs... He sits and washes himself with tears. He asks for a pretty penny... They didn’t have any wheelchairs, they rode on homemade boards, pushing them with their hands, whoever had them. Drunk. They sang "Forgotten, abandoned." These are the scenes... I left, I didn’t sell my overcoat. And for as long as I lived in Moscow, probably five years, I couldn’t go to the market. I was afraid that one of these cripples would recognize me and shout: “Why did you pull me out from under the fire then? Why did you save me?” I remembered one young lieutenant... His legs... One was cut off by shrapnel, the other was still hanging on something... I bandaged him... Under the bombs... And he shouted to me: “Don’t delay! Finish off! ! Finish off... I order you..." Do you understand? And so I was always afraid of meeting this lieutenant...”

Zinaida Vasilievna Korzh, medical instructor of a cavalry squadron

“People didn’t want to die... We responded to every groan, every cry. One wounded man, when he felt that he was dying, grabbed me by the shoulder like that, hugged me and did not let go. It seemed to him that if someone was near him, if his sister was nearby, then life would not leave him. He asked: “If only I could live for five more minutes. Just two more minutes...” Some died silently, slowly, others shouted: “I don’t want to die!” They swore: motherfucker... One suddenly began to sing... He sang a Moldavian song... A man dies, but still doesn’t think, doesn’t believe that he’s dying. And you see how the yellow-yellow color comes from under the hair, how the shadow first moves across the face, then under the clothes... He lies dead, and there is some kind of surprise on his face, as if he is lying and thinking: how did I die? Am I really dead?

“When the war was going on, we were not rewarded, but when it ended, they told me: “Reward two people.” I was indignant. She took the floor and spoke out that I was the political officer of the laundry detachment, and what hard work it is for laundresses, that many of them had hernias, hand eczema, and so on, that the young girls worked more than machines, like tractors. They ask me: “Can you present the award material by tomorrow? We will reward you again." And the detachment commander and I sat overnight over the lists. Many girls received medals “For Courage” and “For Military Merit,” and one laundress was awarded the Order of the Red Star. The best laundress, she did not leave the trough: it happened that everyone no longer had the strength to fall, and she washed. It was an elderly woman, her whole family died.”

Valentina Kuzminichna Bratchikova-Borshchevskaya, lieutenant, political officer of the field laundry detachment

And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me.

Appolina Nikonovna Litskevich-Bairak, junior lieutenant, commander of a sapper and mine platoon

“We were at logging sites, carrying boxes of ammunition. I remember I was dragging one box and I fell, it was heavier than me. This is one thing. And secondly, how many difficulties there were for us as women. For example, this. I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment... Can you imagine?

Petty Officer of the first article Olga Vasilievna Podvyshenskaya

“If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly person and he understood everything, did not take any excess linen from his duffel bag, and if he was young, he would definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves..."

Klara Semenovna Tikhonovich, senior sergeant, anti-aircraft gunner

“After the war... I lived in a communal apartment. The neighbors were all with their husbands and they insulted me. They mocked me: “Ha-ha-a... Tell me how you are... with the men...” They will pour vinegar into my pan with potatoes. They'll add a spoonful of salt... Ha-ha-ah...

So I live alone. I have no one in the whole wide world. Thank you for coming..."

Ekaterina Nikitichna Sannikova, sergeant, gunner

Claudia S-va, sniper

“Do you understand this? Can this be understood now? I want you to understand my feelings... You won’t shoot without hatred. This is war, not hunting. I remember how during political classes we were read Ilya Ehrenburg’s article “Kill him!” The number of times you meet a German, the number of times you kill him. The famous article, everyone read it then and memorized it. It made a strong impression on me, I had this article and my father’s “funeral” in my bag throughout the war... Shoot! Fire! I must take revenge..."

Valentina Pavlovna Chudaeva, sergeant, anti-aircraft gun commander

“You never know your heart. In winter, captured German soldiers were led past our unit. They walked frozen, with torn blankets on their heads and burnt overcoats. And the frost was such that the birds fell in flight. The birds were freezing. There was one soldier walking in this column... A boy... Tears were frozen on his face... And I was carrying bread in a wheelbarrow to the dining room. He can’t take his eyes off this car, he doesn’t see me, only this car. Bread... Bread... I take and break off one loaf and give it to him. He takes... He takes and doesn’t believe. He doesn’t believe... He doesn’t believe!

I was happy... I was happy that I couldn’t hate. I surprised myself then...”

Natalya Ivanovna Sergeeva, private, nurse

“We came to some village, children were running around - hungry, unhappy. They are afraid of us... They are hiding... I, who swore that I hate them all... I collected from my soldiers everything that they had, what was left of the ration, any piece of sugar, and gave it to the German children. Of course, I didn’t forget... I remembered everything... But I couldn’t look calmly into the hungry children’s eyes. Early in the morning there was already a line of German children near our kitchens, they were giving first and second courses. Each child has a bag for bread slung over his shoulder, a can for soup on his belt and something for the second - porridge, peas. We fed them and treated them. They even stroked me... I stroked it for the first time... I was scared... I... I! I am petting a German child... My mouth is dry from excitement. But I soon got used to it. And they got used to..."

Sofya Adamovna Kuntsevich, medical instructor

“I don’t like military toys, children’s military toys. Tanks, machine guns... Who came up with this? It turns my soul... I have never bought or given military toys to children. Neither ours nor strangers. One day, someone brought a military airplane and a plastic machine gun into the house. I immediately threw it in the trash... Immediately!”

Tamara Stepanovna Umnyagina, guard junior sergeant, medical instructor

Svetlana Alexievich’s book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face”

This work of literature came into my hands after watching the news. You may be wondering, “What does news have to do with books?” It's very simple. It was the news that distracted me from my daily activities (I don’t watch TV, but use it as a background) when I heard that a Belarusian woman had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. A feeling of patriotism, no, rather pride, made me listen more attentively. I heard right, on the main Italian channel - Rai1 (and on all the others) the news of the day was the presentation of the Nobel Prize to the citizen of the Republic of Belarus Svetlana Alexievich.

After such stunning news, I immediately wanted to meet (albeit in absentia) the heroine of my former homeland. Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in Ivano-Frankovsk (Ukraine). His father was Belarusian, his mother was Ukrainian, both were school teachers. Since her school years, Svetlana has been interested in journalism, so her choice of higher education fell on the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University in Minsk. After graduating from university, Alexievich began working in her specialty, gradually climbing the career ladder, but this was not the main thing for her.

In one of the interviews, Svetlana formulated what she was looking for: “I searched for myself for a long time, I wanted to find something that would bring me closer to reality, torment, hypnotize, captivate, it was reality that was curious. Capturing authenticity is what I wanted. And this genre - the genre of human voices, confessions, testimonies and documents of the human soul was instantly appropriated by me. Yes, this is exactly how I see and hear the world: through voices, through the details of everyday life and existence. This is how my vision and ear work. And everything that was in me immediately turned out to be necessary, because I needed to be at the same time: a writer, a journalist, a sociologist, a psychoanalyst, a preacher..."

And she was able to find herself and her style. This is how the critic Lev Anninsky described her books: “This is a living story, told by the people themselves, and written down, heard, chosen by a talented and honest chronicler.” Unfortunately, honesty in Soviet times, and even in today’s post-Soviet Belarus, is not encouraged. Alexievich was forced to emigrate because of her political views and the artistic style of writing her works. And only 15 years later, and only thanks to the Nobel Prize, the woman finally received what she deserved - the opportunity and right to freely express her views (unfortunately, in some democratic countries, freedom is just an empty word). And this amazing woman (I’m just sure) has a lot more to say.

And quite a lot has already been said in 5 books published to date. The main theme of Alexievich’s literature is military. I’m not a fan of books about war, but from the first pages of Alexievich’s book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” I realized that the work would leave a mark on my perception of the world.

My view on the book by Alexievich War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face

This book is a cry from the soul, the female soul. This is not a story, not a narrative, and not a war, which we are accustomed to hearing about from childhood. “War does not have a woman’s face” - these are emotions, truth, life, pride, fear, faith and love of women who went through and defeated the Second World War. But they were silent, silent for a very long time, no one knew about their war.

And it was Alexievich’s book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” that became their voice. These voices of hundreds and even thousands of women shared with us their most intimate things - their souls. True, it is heavy and sometimes we are afraid to look into its eyes, but it gives us the opportunity to look at our world, at ourselves, differently.

Page after page, what emerged in my perception was not just war, but the soul of a person, the soul of a Russian woman, who, like no one else, was able to convey the entire horror of war, to describe in a few words the entire history of Soviet times and the boundless danger of an idea. Of course, the book is not for the school curriculum, it is not enough just to read it, you need to feel it and comprehend it word by word. After all, in the simple words of these women, everyone will find their own answers.

Quotes from the book by Alexievich War does not have a woman's face

“Many of us believed...

We thought that after the war everything would change... Stalin would believe his people. But the war was not over yet, and the trains had already left for Magadan. Trains with the winners... They arrested those who were captured, those who survived in German camps, those who were taken by the Germans to work - everyone who had seen Europe. I could tell you how the people live there. Without communists. What kind of houses are there and what kind of roads are there? About the fact that there are no collective farms anywhere...

After the Victory, everyone fell silent. They were silent and afraid, as before the war...”

“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? I’ll tell you now... We went on the attack, and let’s mow us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were rewarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From under bullets..."

“And when he appeared for the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and somehow my hands began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It’s not a woman’s business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"

“We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us, some with headscarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. Before the fight I kissed the medallion..."

“We are advancing... The first German villages... We are young. Strong. Four years without women. There is wine in the cellars. Snack. They caught German girls and... Ten people raped one... There were not enough women, the population fled from the Soviet army, they took young people. Girls... Twelve to thirteen years old... If she cried, they beat her, they forced something into her mouth. It hurts her, but it makes us laugh. Now I don’t understand how I could... A boy from an intelligent family... But it was me...

The only thing we were afraid of was that our girls wouldn’t find out about it. Our nurses. It was a shame in front of them...”

“The world immediately changed... I remember the first days... Mom stood at the window in the evening and prayed. I didn't know that my mother believed in God. She looked and looked at the sky... I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I went out of a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village could see that his daughter was at the front...”

“The Germans rode into the village... On big black motorcycles... I looked at them with all my eyes: they were young, cheerful. We laughed all the time. They laughed! It stopped my heart that they were here, on your land, and still laughing.

I only dreamed of revenge. I imagined how I would die and how they would write a book about me. My name will remain. These were my dreams..."

“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, because of this shock my whole body tensed up, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”

“The most unbearable thing for me were amputations... Often they did such high amputations that they would cut off my leg, and I could barely hold it, I could barely carry it to put it in the pelvis. I remember that they are very heavy. You take it quietly, so that the wounded person does not hear, and carry it like a child... A small child... Especially if it is a high amputation, far behind the knee. I couldn't get used to it. The wounded under anesthesia moan or curse. Three-story Russian obscenities. I’ve always had blood... It’s cherry... Black... I didn’t write anything to my mom about it. I wrote that everything was fine, that I was warmly dressed and wearing shoes. She sent three of them to the front, it was hard for her...”

“They organized nursing courses, and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen years old, and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all I can give to win. My girls..." There was no other thought then. A year later I went to the front..."

“My husband, a holder of the Order of Glory, received ten years in the camps after the war... This is how the homeland greeted its heroes. Winners! I wrote in a letter to my university friend that it was difficult for him to be proud of our victory - our own and other people’s land was littered with Russian corpses. Covered in blood. He was immediately arrested... They took off his shoulder straps...

Returned from Kazakhstan after Stalin's death... Sick. We don't have children. I don’t need to remember the war, I’ve been fighting all my life...”

“Eh-eh, girls, how vile this war is... Look at it with our eyes. Like a woman... So she’s scarier than scary. That’s why they don’t ask us...”

You are a writer. Come up with something yourself. Something beautiful. Without lice and dirt, without vomit... Without the smell of vodka and blood... Not as scary as life..."

“Even now I speak in a whisper... About... This... In a whisper. More than forty years later...

I forgot the war... Because even after the war I lived in fear. I lived in hell.

Already - Victory, already - joy. We have already collected bricks and iron and started cleaning the city. We worked during the day, we worked at night, I don’t remember when we slept or what we ate. They worked and worked."

“I’m at home... Everyone at home is alive... Mom saved everyone: grandparents, sister and brother. And I returned...

A year later our dad arrived. Dad returned with big awards, I brought an order and two medals. But in our family it was set up like this: the main character is the mother. She saved everyone. Saved the family, saved the house. She had the most terrible war. Dad never put on any orders or medal pads; he believed that it was a shame for him to show off in front of his mother. Awkward. Mom has no awards...

I have never loved anyone as much in my life as I love my mother...”

“How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, but the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there! They lured our men with young p...s. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy escorts me from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What's wrong with you?" - “Nothing. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. I was waiting for kind words, but I didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin."

“It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was a shame... It’s unclear..."

P.S. I don’t know if Svetlana will ever read my words, but I want to say: “Thank you so much for the truth, for your courage, for your sincerity. True, she is scary, but we need her, she helps the world become a better place. And I am incredibly proud that there are still people in Belarus who are not afraid to speak. I wish you creative success!”