Y. LUKIN
__NOTE__ Author appears above section title in original.One of the photographs in this book shows Mikhail Sholokhov at his desk, looking through some of the correspondence that takes up quite a big part of his working day. From all parts of the USSR sacks of mail arrive at the village of Veshenskaya on the Don, where the writer lives. People write to him for advice or help in matters ranging from deeply personal concerns to problems of state significance. Many want to confide their thoughts to him, and tell him about themselves as they would to a wiser, older friend. Young people write to him, budding authors, too.
Much of Sholokhov's correspondence is of a purely business character. The mail brings him proof-sheets to read of collections of his early stories; a film-studio asks him to set the date for showing a new picture, based on one of his stories, in Veshenskaya; a theatre wants his counsel on a stage adaptation of his book.
Letters and telegrams arrive from publishers and organisations abroad, inquiring if Sholokhov is planning another of the journeys that have proved so useful in furthering fruitful cultural exchange and improving mutual understanding between nations.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ On the International SceneWe had already left Tokyo far behind, and were driving in the burning sun towards the mountain area ot Nikko. We still had many miles to go, and we were very thirsty. As we drove through the main square of a small town we saw, on one side of it, an unbroken row of souvenir booths and kiosks selling cigarettes and soft drinks. We decided to break our journey for a few minutes.
The booths were selling the products of native Japanese craftsmen, gifted and industrious workers who produce a huge variety of souvenirs. As we paused at one of the stalls, wondering what to buy for a souvenir of this unknown town in which we had chanced to stop, the young salesgirl asked the interpreter where we were from. On learning that we came from the Soviet Union, she asked whether the author, Sholokhov, was 7 with us. The newspapers had reported that he was travelling around Japan. Where was Sholokhov, how could she find him? When the interpreter told her Sholokhov was right there, a flurry of excitement ran through the stalls, the salesgirls disappeared briefly, to reappear carrying handsome volumes of Sholokhov's works and autograph tablets. Sholokhov was buying cigarettes, and here he was besieged by these friendly but determined admirers, escaping only after a short authographing session.
It should be emphasised that a stop in this little town was not pre-arranged, we were hot and thirsty; that's why we stopped there. No one could have foreseen this or have made any preparations for us. This was a completely unplanned, completely spontaneous encounter with young Japanese readers.
In Nikko itself we were to see the successful conclusion of a minor feat of endurance. A school-girl admirer of Sholokhov's work had read in a newspaper that he was visiting Japan at the invitation of the Japanese Association of Writers. The approximate route he would be following was given and Nikko was included. Knowing that the ancient temple in Nikko was one of the sights which foreign tourists rarely missed, the girl decided to wait at the gates in the hope of obtaining the writer's autograph. After five hours she began to lose heart; nevertheless, she stayed on. Her patience was rewarded. To her great embarrassment, she found herself being interviewed by reporters and photographed with Sholokhov. These photographs appeared in many newspapers and magazines and in one of them the girl is seen receiving the autograph for which she had waited so long.
In this case as in so many others the interpreters who accompanied us were indispensable and they deserve separate mention. Young but already widely known for their translations of Sholokhov's works, they were not ordinary tourist guides. Two of them, Tokuya Kara and Taku Egawa, continue in the steps of their fathers, who had made the first translations of And Quiet Flows the Don in Japan. Incidentally, the father of one of them, Tetsuya Baba, had made the first ever foreign translation of And Quiet Flows the Don, doing it as the chapters appeared in a magazine before the novel was brought out in book form.
__*_*_*__Winter 1965. A mild winter. The swans do not migrate south from the bay on the shore of which stands the royal 8 palace but feed here and are always present to welcome and see off the ships.
The ship they welcomed this time was the Svea Yarl, coming from the Finnish town of Turku and bringing to Stockholm the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature---Mikhail Sholokhov.
That week in December is now a kaleidoscope of impressions and memories---of the traditional ceremonies in the Concert Hall and the Town Hall, of formal receptions and less formal gatherings, of noisy press-conferences and friendly, cordial conversations.
A press-conference was held on the day of Sholokhov's arrival and of it the newspaper Stockholms Tidningen wrote: ``On the first day of his stay in Stockholm Sholokhov has already broken all records---so many journalists have never before been gathered in the hall of the Grand Hotel.''
At a reception organised by Tiden Publishers, which have done much to bring Sholokhov's writings to the attention of Swedish readers, the general director of the publishing house, Bengt Christell, greeted the author with the following words:
``As your publishers we rejoice with you, but not simply because we sell your books.... We are happy today because a great and truthful realistic art has been given recognition.''
The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov was made ``for the artistic force and truthfulness with which, in his Don epopee, he described an historical era in the life of the Russian people''.
In his speech during the presentation ceremony at the Concert Hall Dr. Anders Osterling, President of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy, spoke of the impressive realism with which the life of the Cossacks was described in And Quiet Flows the Don. It was a work powerful in every respect. The prize, he said, had come ``late but, fortunately, not too late . . . to enrich the list of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature with the name of one of the most outstanding writers of modern times''. Turning to Sholokhov, he added: ``This prize is a just and grateful tribute to the significant contribution you have made to Soviet literature, a contribution which is as well known in our country as it is in the whole world.''
In the less formal atmosphere of a banquet at the Town Hall, Dr. K.R. Gierow, permanent secretary for literature of the Swedish Academy, made a witty and eloquent speech. Curiously, the part of his speech that was addressed to Sholokhov rested on a literary figure that had evidently been suggested by 9 an imprecise translation in a newspaper report. However, this mistake was cleverly used by Dr. Gierow to demonstrate his remarkable oratory.
``Mr. Sholokhov,'' Dr. Gierow began, ``when you were awarded the Nobel Prize, you were hunting in the Urals and, according to a Moscow newspaper, on that very day you shot two wild geese with one (!) long shot-----But if we take our hats off to you today as a crack shot among the Nobel Prize winners of the past year, this is because talk about such feats of marksmanship has a bearing on your work.
``An epic work such as yours could have been written with great sweep and breadth, with a stormy yet majestic flood of episodes and turns of speech, with a confident mastery in resolving the theme---and in virtue of all this it would already have been a masterpiece which would never be forgotten. It would have been possible to infuse it with a living feeling of the dramatic situation, with keen observation of every detail having artistic significance, with a passionate sympathy for man's fate--- and all this would have made it a work forever to be loved. The uniting of both these possibilities is a token of genius, of your genius. It happens as rarely as getting two birds lined up for a shot. You secured both `birds' with one `stone'.
``Your tale of the old regime, desperately defending its tottering positions, and the new regime, struggling as desperately for each blood-soaked inch of ground, was conceived on a grand scale. The question is constantly suggested: what rules the world? And the answer is given: the heart. The heart of man, with its love and cruelty, sadness, hopes, humiliation and pride. The heart of man, the true field of battle whence come all the victories and defeats which fall to the lot of our world. Thus your art crosses all frontiers and we take it to our hearts with deep gratitude....''
. . .Amidst all these events the writer found time to meet many young people---the students of Stockholm and the old university town of Uppsala. More than 800 students came to meet Sholokhov in the Slavonic Institute and the university in Uppsala. Students and teachers alike showed enormous interest in the work of the outstanding Soviet writer and asked him a great number of questions, receiving lively, informal answers. An atmosphere of friendliness, trust and mutual respect was immediately established that was further enhanced by the gentle humour native to Sholokhov, a humour which gives conversation an especially warm tone and always wins the sympathies of those with whom he talks.
10I remember now the auditorium of another of Europe's ancient universities. Students had gathered there to find in Sholokhov's works the answers to philosophical questions; to seek out advice on how a man should live his life. The writer was present in spirit only, yet in a sense the young people talked with him and appealed to him, asking him for support in the passionate disputes which flared up during their discussions of life's varied and important problems.
These young men and women were meeting in Jena, at the Slavonic Institute. They had come from the GDR's largest universities to take part in a conference which was to sum up the work carried out by the higher educational establishments of the entire republic. The theme of the conference was socialist humanism in the work of Mikhail Sholokhov.
The meeting, which was packed, was presided over by a young female student. Theses for discussion, which had been produced collectively by three students and circulated among all the conference's participants, and questions put by the three authors were debated. Students of all levels of seniority and from every part of the GDR spoke, some of them several times; as the discussion developed, more and more topical problems literally interposed themselves into the debate.
At one point two speakers appeared on the stage at once: opinions in the group which these two girls represented were divided and therefore two people had been given the task of defending the differing points of view.
Some of the students did not yet have a deep enough grasp of the artistic and aesthetic problems involved, nor of the essence of Sholokhov's realism, to competently analyse his consummate craft. And so some problems, such as the question of the concrete historical circumstances in which his characters were placed, took second place to discussions of their actions and patterns of thought from the point of view of the moral and aesthetic demands of our day.
However, in this very fact lay the special value of the discussions. Parallels were drawn between Sholokhov's images and the characters created by the most popular modern German writers. Debate sprang up on the responsibility of the Communist for his neighbour (the initial spur for this was the relationship between Grigory Melekhov and Mikhail Koshevoi in the novel And Quiet Flows the Don), on whether all means should be considered humane if they are directed towards a humane end, on whether the problem of the tragic exists under socialism, on what makes a character ``positive''---his intentions 11 and actions or his actions alone (disputes here centred round the person of Nagulnov) and on a variety of other questions.
Of course, these young men and women were rediscovering what has already been discovered, finding what has already been found. But never mind. The important thing was that every one of them wanted to arrive independently at the truth, to solve life's problems and to solve them for himself and his contemporaries. Reading Sholokhov's writings awoke in them the urge to discuss such vital questions as the shaping of a world outlook; it made them ponder on the place they should assume in life and their duty as citizens, and the need to affirm the moral and ethical standards upheld by people struggling for a communist tomorrow and a new world.
The salutatory address (laudatio) presented to Sholokhov by the German scholars who came to Veshenskaya to hand the writer the diploma of honorary doctorate of philosophy conferred upon him by Karl Marx University in Leipzig, concluded with the following significant words:
``The works of Sholokhov have become an inexhaustible wellspring for our people and our youth, including students, from which they draw the ideals of an authentic revolutionary spirit, firm adherence to the Party, irreproachable probity, deep humaneness and total dedication to the cause of their lives.''
__ALPHA_LVL2__ At the Bidding of the Heart``I am with you this evening not only at the call of duty, being in charge of work with young writers, but also at the bidding of my heart.''
This was how Mikhail Sholokhov began his speech in the House of Party Education in Rostov-on-Don on July 2, 1969. He was speaking to members of the Bulgarian-Soviet Club for Young Artists at one of their regular meetings; the general theme of the gathering was ``The responsibility of the artist before history and the people''. His audience included young Bulgarian and Soviet writers, journalists, actors, directors, painters, sculptors, historians, architects, musicians and also guests of the club from Hungary, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia.
He enjoyed meeting young colleagues most of all, he said, because this gave him the opportunity of coming into contact with young people, of finding out what they were thinking and of joining them in reflecting on the responsibility of the writer 12 before society. He spoke about the role of the artist in the life of society in a world of ideological clashes, and of the artist's mission and duty. Some of the things happening in literature worried him, he said, while others inspired him with confidence in the future of a literature that would serve the people, nurture patriots and internationalists and help build communism. He condemned a liberal attitude in literature towards anything that could have a corruptive influence on the youth, and talked of the fresh, healthy young voices now being heard in poetry and prose. He reminded his audience of Gorky's question, which still has an immediate application: ``Whose side are you on, master-craftsmen of culture?" Sympathetic advice, albeit uncompromising in character, and collective discussion were useful to the artist; it was essential that the writer should be extremely exacting towards himself and his art, Sholokhov said, and illustrated this by several examples drawn from his own experience while writing And Quiet Flows the Don, Virgin Soil Upturned and They Fought for Their Country. He emphasised several times that in addressing young people his aim was not to moralise but to hear what they had on their minds and to share with them the conclusions he himself had reached.
Memorable too were the words of the well-known Bulgarian poet, Lyubomir Levchev, at the meeting:
``The most important feature of this gathering has been meeting you. This has been its crown. Your books have nurtured and are continuing to nurture generations of Communists, generations of Komsomol members, generations of fighters. The most important Bulgarian writers have learned their craft from you. Some of them perished in the struggle for our freedom, others have devoted their entire lives to building socialism in our country, while still others are working and learning from you. There is a Bulgarian epic tale about 'the thousand magic wells', which give sight to the blind and strength to the soldier, that he might attain victory. In meeting you we aimed, as it were, at reaching one of those wells, from which we might draw strength for our future work. Clearly, major tasks lie ahead of us, for which some, even if only a tiny part, of Sholokhov's inspired truth and Sholokhov's talent will be needed.''
Sholokhov's conversations with young writers from the Soviet Union and the socialist countries during June, 1967 in Veshenskaya took place in a similar atmosphere. While reflecting with his younger colleagues on modern literature and its indissoluble link with the life of society, on the principal problems connected with literary development in the modern age 13 and on the moral constitution of the artist and his duty before the people, Sholokhov spoke of young writers as the hope of our literature; it was vital to strengthen creative contacts between young and old writers. He called on the coming generation of Soviet writers to follow undeviatingly the best traditions of Soviet literature and to be uncompromising towards any manifestations of bourgeois ideology, and spoke of the constantly growing responsibility of the artist before society and of the devotion of the Soviet writer to the interests of the Party and the people.
During an informal exchange of opinions on different creative problems the conversation turned to the question of the writer's right to make mistakes. Sholokhov directed especial attention to this problem:
``I think that no writer, irrespective of his eminence or age, should claim for himself a privileged position. As regards 'the freedom to make mistakes', if a collective farm team leader makes a mistake the chairman of the farm will always put him right. This is a mistake of a local character and will not harm other people. The writer, in making a mistake in a published work, leads thousands of readers into error: therein lies the danger of our profession. Freedom of the spirit and creative freedom are all very well, but for heaven's sake let us be more careful about mistakes. Every one of us is read, every one of us has, if not 'a universal readership', as someone here put it, then certainly some thousands of highly attentive and demanding readers. Restless, unsettled spirits are to be found not only among writers, and a mistake---the more so if it is important, even a mistake arising from painful ponderings and thus justified in some degree for the given individual---leads to thousands of mistakes in thousands of destinies, in the outlooks of thousands of other people. Perhaps even a surgeon, if we are talking about the moral right to make a mistake, can have such a right while carrying out an operation: only one person will suffer. But when we `operate' with specific material and make a mistake and this achieves wide currency, such a mistake, I repeat, is a thousand times more dangerous. We must be doubly cautious, and sometimes we should squash our restless spirits so that others are not harmed.''
At the end of March 1969 the 5th All-Union Conference of Young Writers, which was held in Moscow, concluded its work. Sholokhov, who was passing through the city after returning from an overseas trip, invited some of the conference's participants to visit him. They discussed the work of the conference 14 with him, its various sessions and seminars, and told him of the impressions it had made on them. Sholokhov wrote in the memorial book of the conference: ``I am delighted at the success of the conference! As always, I wish young people achievement, daring and success.''
During this meeting the conversation again turned to the many problems of life and to the creative paths along which young writers and poets were developing. Sholokhov warned them against devoting themselves exclusively to this work too early in life, and reminded them once again that no true artist could isolate himself from life. He stressed the importance of mastering every element of the writer's craft and of doggedly struggling to bring to perfection every word in a composition.
Conversations between Sholokhov and young writers revolve around the immediate problems of literature; the place of the artist in the life of the people and his duty before the present and the future are invariably discussed. The questions raised and the areas of human activity touched upon during encounters with, let us say, young factory workers or farmers, cosmonauts, soldiers, sailors, students, or in his correspondence with school-children are, of course, quite different.
But all these meetings, whether in the flesh or on the printed page, come about ``at the bidding of the heart" of a great writer and citizen, whose thoughts have always been turned towards the destiny of the younger generation, towards the future and towards the present in which the future of his own people is already being forged.
At this point it seems appropriate to note some of the salient features in the creative life of the author of And Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. Sholokhov made his debut in literature as a writer of short sketches. These were followed by stories, which may be called a prelude to his great novels, and which first appeared in Soviet youth publications. Indeed, Sholokhov began his writing career by working for the Moscow youth newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda (later re-named Molodoi Leninist), Zhurnal Krestyanskoi Molodyozhi and the journal Komsomoliya. He also contributed to an occasinal literary and artistic anthology published by the group of writers known as the Young Guard and his work appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda and in the magazine Smena.
Sholokhov has always remained faithful to the close links binding him to youth publications and publishers. In 1962 the Molodaya Gvardia (Young Guard) publishing house celebrated its fortieth anniversary and among the messages of 15 congratulation was a telegram from the writer: ``I regret profoundly that pressure of work prevents me from attending this splendid celebration. Yours is the enormously important task of bringing up our youth and for this work we, the older generation of readers and writers, hold you in warm affection, value you highly and deeply respect you. Please accept from me, too, my best wishes of happiness in life and success in work to each one of you personally. Your reluctantly ageing Young Guard, Mikhail Sholokhov.'' An inscription made in the visitors' book of the publishing house the following year gently emphasises the continuity of Molodaya Gvardia traditions and the indissoluble links between the older and younger generations: ``I am always happy to be in the company of Molodaya Gvardia's younger authors! I seem to grow younger myself... .''
The essential feature of these varied and numerous meetings is Sholokhov's readiness to address his young readers not only through his books and the characters into whom he has breathed life, but also directly, in face-to-face exchanges of opinion.
These meetings with Sholokhov are attended by all sorts of people: young writers, workers, farmers, soldiers, and also our celebrated Soviet cosmonauts. The late Yuri Gagarin, and Boris Volynov have been Sholokhov's guests in Veshenskaya.
Sholokhov is strongly averse to ``holding forth'', to adopting an academic or didactic tone and generally prefers to answer questions put to him personally. He likes to provoke a lively exchange between himself and his audience. The formal and uninterrupted method of expressing his thoughts is reserved for essays and newspaper articles, or for speeches before large audiences.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ A Humanist Is the Man Who FightsAll Sholokhov's writing is impregnated with the concept of struggle for the good of man and with the ideas of communism: this is true both of his fictional works and of the body of publicist material he has produced. The present volume brings together Sholokhov's basic writings in the latter field, including speeches and radio talks.
In 1931, he published his article ``Along the Right Bank of the Don" in Pravda, in which he wrote with concern and profound knowledge about the pressing tasks confronting the farms, and indicated the faults and the hindrances to efficiency in collective farm management.
16The article ``For Honest Work by Writer and Critic" (1934) was directed against waste in literary work. In the vigorous controversy sparked off by Gorky's criticism of the language used in Panferov's works Sholokhov stood firmly on the side of Gorky, sharply debating with Panferov and Serafimovich and condemning those literary critics whose views were coloured by their sympathies with particular cliques.
The preface to the English publication of And Quiet Flows the Don is also polemic in character. In it the author explains the basic idea of this already world-famous novel and also of his new work, Virgin Soil Upturned, and corrects the erroneous interpretation of his work then current among interested foreign readers and critics. In connection with And Quiet Flows the Don he wrote of ``the colossal changes which have taken place in life, in everyday activities and human psychology as a result of the First World War and the Revolution''; it was, he wrote, his task ``to show the different social strata of the Don population during the two wars (World War One and the Civil War) and the Revolution" and ``to trace the tragic fate of individuals drawn into the powerful vortex of events that occurred between 1914 and 1921-----"
In 1934, a month after the Ail-Union Writers' Congress, Sholokhov delivered a major speech on literature as a part of the proletarian cause before an audience of factory workers and railwaymen in Rostov-on-Don.
Next, he wrote an article demanding that the overall educational level of the collective farmer be raised to that of the worker, another article telling the heroic story of the Podkushchevka farmstead during the Civil War, of its people who formed the core of the collective farm established in that area; and then two essays devoted to the memories of Nikolai Ostrovsky and Suleiman Stalsky. Sholokhov spoke at the meeting of students and teachers on the occasion of the death of Maxim Gorky.
In his speeches as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, Sholokhov dwells on what is true and what is sham love for the homeland, on history which tests men by their deeds rather than their words, on the destinies of the Don Cossacks and on Soviet patriotism.
Highly indicative of Sholokhov's attitude were the affectionate and respectful words he wrote on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of A. S. Serafimovich: ``Serafimovich belongs to that generation of writers from whom we younger ones learnt. I owe him a great personal debt since __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---172 17 he was the first to give me support and encouragement and recognise me as a writer at the beginning of my literary career.'' On the twentieth anniversary of the YCL Sholokhov wrote that the Komsomol youth, guided by the Party, had routed the enemy in the Civil War, had struggled to set up collective farms, and had been in the vanguard of those building Soviet industry, raising high the banner of socialist competition. The seeds of Bolshevism had, he wrote, fallen on fertile soil.
A more recent anniversary took place when the Theatre of Young Cossack Collective Farmers in Veshenskaya celebrated its second birthday. Sholokhov spoke then of the theatre as a ``bright flame of art" which had been lit in a Don village and which must flare up throughout the region, so that art might penetrate ever more deeply into the broad masses of the people.
A logical conclusion to the first period of Sholokhov's activity as a publicist is formed by his famous speech to the 18th Congress of the CPSU. He spoke to the delegates about the work of poets and writers from the sister national republics of the USSR. The fresh voices of the national writers had merged with the stream of Russian literature, enriching it and making it truly the product of all the Soviet peoples. Among the examples brought forward by Sholokhov were the songs of Jambul, ``so compelling in their simplicity'', the ``enchanting sweetness of Georgian poems'', and the ``fanciful, melodious lines" of Suleiman Stalsky. He then spoke of the relations between Soviet writers and readers:
``The people whom we serve with our art never hesitate to express their opinion of us. We are criticised, upbraided when necessary, supported when we meet with failure, praised when we deserve praise, and every one of us is constantly aware of the guiding, gentle hand of the people.''
Sholokhov spoke with pride of himself and many other delegates, who were taking part for the first time in a Party congress, as the first young shoots of the Soviet intelligentsia nurtured by the Party; they would be followed, he said, by millions upon millions of people to whom culture was already second nature.
The approaching world war cast a shadow over the joyous feeling of rapid advance and ever increasing achievement in communist construction that characterised Soviet society at that time. The year was 1939, and Sholokhov's words at the congress rang in people's memories like a pledge:
18``It should be said quite frankly that Soviet writers do not belong to the sentimental breed of West-European pacifists. . .. If the enemy attacks our country, we Soviet writers shall lay down our pens and pick up another weapon in response to the call of the Party and Government.... In the ranks of the Red Army, under its glorious red colours, we shall strike down the enemy as none had done before us. ... After routing the enemy we shall write books describing how we went about it. These books will be of service to our people and will be a warning to the surviving aggressors, if any.''
All this came true.
Sholokhov's pen was replaced by another weapon, but it did not fall idle. The newspaper sketches and publicist material as well as the books Sholokhov produced during the war years served our people well and were both a warning and a grim reminder to anyone who would start a new war forgetting the inglorious fate that had befallen the initiators of World War Two.
On June 26, 1941, the newspaper Bolshevistsky Don quoted Sholokhov's words to detachments of Cossacks as they departed for the front. Speaking on June 24, the writer and patriot had reminded his fellow countrymen, who had taken up arms at the call of the Motherland, of the heroic, victorious traditions bequeathed them by history. He told them, too, of a telegram he had sent to the People's Commissariat of Defence in which he said that he was donating his State Prize to the defence fund and that he stood ready at any moment to join the ranks of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants to defend the socialist Motherland to his last drop of blood.
The conclusion of the article ``On the Don'', which appeared in Pravda on July 4, 1941, summed up what was for a long while to be the dominant theme of Sholokhov's publicist writings: ``Two feelings live in the hearts of the Don Cossacks: love for their Motherland and hatred for the nazi invaders. Their love will live forever, but may their hatred last until the enemy has been routed completely.''
The war had only just begun but even in those early days Sholokhov's words rang with absolute conviction and complete faith in his own people: ``Woe unto those who have aroused this hatred and the cold fury of the people's anger!''
On the first anniversary of the outbreak of war Pravda published a story under the title ``The Science of Hatred''. Although cast in fictional form, the story is pronouncedly publicist in character and represents new departure for 19 Sholokhov. In his own way lieutenant Gerasimov, the story's principal character, reflects the ideas expressed by Sholokhov in his first wartime sketch. It might seem, the lieutenant observes, that love and hatred can never be placed side by side and he recalls the Russian fable about the dray horse and a timid doe, which could never be harnessed together. ``Well, we have done it,'' he adds. ``And the two are pulling well together! . .. We carry the love for our country in our hearts, and while our hearts are beating it will stay there: our hatred we always carry on the tips of our bayonets.'' (We were initially doubtful as to whether a story could legitimately be included in a collection of publicist writings but decided that this was justified on the following grounds: when it first appeared ``The Science of Hatred" was not assigned by the author to a particular genre--- this in itself allowed it to be placed among his contemporaneous publicist writings; in any event, the story is so strongly publicist in character that without it a collection of Sholokhov's publicist writings from the war years would appear incomplete. Indeed, it is very difficult to conceive of such a collection without ``The Science of Hatred".)
``Armed with pencils, note-books and light machine guns, we rode in a car to the frontline....'' So begins one of the sketches Sholokhov wrote as a war correspondent. In his ``Letter to American Friends'', written towards the end of the second year of the war, he states: ``As a war correspondent I was at the Southern, South-Western and Western fronts.'' The `` Letter" holds a position of great significance among Sholokhov's publicist work. In it he tells his American readers that he is writing a novel about the Great Patriotic War to be called They Fought for Their Country, in which he wants to describe the burden falling upon the Soviet people in their battle against the German nazi invasion; in the meantime, while the novel is as yet unfinished, it is his intention to talk to his American friends not as a writer but simply as a citizen of one of the Allied countries.
Historians, a thousand or two thousand years from now, studying the nature of war---a phenomenon that will by then have long vanished---will probably feel a lump rising in their throat just as we do now when they read the words which, across an ocean both literal and metaphorical, a writer belonging to one country addressed to the people of another. Sholokhov wrote: ``The war has entered the lives of every one of us with all the grimness proper to an attempt by one nation to utterly wipe out or devour another. What is happening at the 20 front, what is happening in a total war has already left an indelible imprint on the lives of all of us. I have lost my mother, killed by a bomb dropped by a German plane during an air raid on our village, which has no strategic importance whatsoever. The operation pursued an aim appropriate to brigands ---to scatter the population so that people could not drive their cattle east in face of the advancing German army. German shells have destroyed my house and my library. I have already lost many friends---writers and fellow villagers---killed at the front. For a long time I was out of touch with my family, during which time my son was ill. and I was unable to help in any way. But, after all, these are private troubles, the personal grief most of us know. These griefs add up to a general, nationwide tragedy which people have to suffer when war comes into their lives. Our own personal tragedies cannot overshadow for us the sufferings of the people about which no writer, no artist has yet been able to tell the world.''
It was impossible to come through this war without smearing one's hands in blood, Sholokhov wrote. War demanded sweat and blood. If denied, it would take double the toll. The consequences of hesitation could be irreparable. And then, in words that are burnt into the page: ``You have not yet seen the blood of your kin on the threshold of your home. I have, and so I have the right to talk to you so bluntly.''
The writer Olga Bergholts has preserved for history---the history of our people, the history of literature and ultimately the history of humanity---a short address by Sholokhov to the sons and daughters of the hero-city of Leningrad, broadcast during the days of the blockade:
``My Leningrad comrades! We know how hard it is for you to live, work and fight while surrounded by the enemy. People remember you everywhere---on every front and in the rear. The steel founder in the far-off Urals, looking at a molten stream of metal, thinks about you and works without letup to speed the hour of your liberation; the man on the battlelines, fighting the German invaders in Donbas, strikes them down not only for his own ravaged Ukraine but also for the great sufferings which the enemy has inflicted on you, Leningraders. .. . We eagerly await that hour when the ring of the blockade will be broken and the great Soviet Land will press to its bosom the heroic sons and daughters of Leningrad---a city bathed in eternal glory.''
On May 13, 1945 Pravda published an article entitled ``A Victory Such As History Has Never Known''. If, in the history 21 of the world, there has never been so bloody and destructive a war as that which has just ended, wrote Sholokhov, then it is also true that no army has ever scored such brilliant victories as has the Soviet Army, nor ``appeared before the amazed eyes of mankind in such a radiance of glory, might and greatness.''
Some of the essential features distinguishing the creative manner of Sholokhov's publicist work as a whole, or at any rate its more outstanding examples, are clearly manifested in his wartime articles and sketches. All were written in response to immediate, pressing problems; all possess an organic combination of the qualities usually associated with epic literature--- a broad grasp of the events that go to make up the life of the people and, simultaneously, a reflective, concentrated insight into the elements of the inner life of his heroes, the ordinary people who participate in and create these historic events. With a small yet quite perceptible touch Sholokhov brings a description or a narrative to life, in a sketch or even in a newspaper account. It may be an incident seen by the writer himself, or something typical in the fate or behaviour of an individual which is, in fact, a general feature of the Soviet character.
Articles by Sholokhov devoted to the most important events and happenings in the life of his country---those aspects of contemporary reality which most stir the hearts and minds of the people---always very clearly express the attitude taken by a citizen of a socialist country to these issues and occurrences, and his assessment of them.
The clarity of thought and evaluative insight of these writings, their emotionality, their profound devotion to the interests of the Party and the people, and the simplicity of form in which the content is expressed, make these articles comprehensible to the widest possible readership. In addressing the many millions of people making up his audience, the writer talks of what concerns him personally, winning over his readers by his sincerity and increasing the impact of his words by the powerful imagery characteristic of the Sholokhov style.
The themes of socialist, militant humanism and the struggle for peace enter ever more insistently into Sholokhov's postwar publicist writings. His themes are extremely varied, as are the ways in which he handles them and his motives for raising them, but his philosophical directedness, his stand and his guiding principles are consistent and unvarying.
The article ``A Word About Motherland" fully justifies the plangency of its title, for it is, indeed, one of Sholokhov's most 22 powerful publicist works. It was written in 1948 when the painful memories of the bloody war that had ended less than three years previously were still fresh.
Why does the writer so peremptorily, so mercilessly compel us to re-live that which is already past, to suffer again that which has already been suffered, why does he reopen the wounds that have already healed? The answer is simple: so that people should not forget that which must not be forgotten while the world is divided into two camps. So that people should realise the whole vital necessity of the struggle for peace and not forget the lessons taught them by the science of hatred during the war; so that hatred for the enemies of peace should live in their hearts, hatred for those who ``in their satanic blind folly are preparing to plunge mankind, which has yet to recover from its appalling experience, into a new war''. For the time has not yet come when we can forget about the threat of new wars: therefore, let hatred for the instigators of wars ``seethe with fury doubled many times over in our hearts against those for whom there is no name in the language of humans, against those who are still not sated with the profits they have made on the blood of millions. ... It will come in useful at the right moment!''
In this article, as is usual with Sholokhov, the themes of love and hate not only exist side by side but are intermingled: love for the Motherland breeds hatred for its enemies, while love of individual man and humanity in general breeds hatred for its less than human enslavers.
``A Word About Motherland" is a means whereby the author, through the use of striking contrasts, shows how the life of the working people has changed in our country during the years of Soviet power and how great have been the transformations in the economy and in the lives and characters of men. Sholokhov writes of the Communist Party, which has nurtured the qualities of heroic struggle in the people and led them to unparalleled advances; he talks of the ``only fair system of government'', Soviet power, which the people found ``at the cost of many years of suffering and by a great revolutionary struggle. . . and consolidated with their blood and their toil" and of our people's unshakeable faith in this power.
As a humanist the writer responds with passion to events in Spain, Korea, Vietnam.... In the vigour of its attack on imperialists and their crimes his publicist writings often assume a pamphleteering flavour and tone.
23The place of the artist and his role in the modern world, the function of the writer and the writer's responsibility before his own people and the future of mankind are topics which naturally arise in the course of many of Sholokhov's writings and speeches. His addresses to Party congresses and meetings of writers and literary scholars are devoted in large part to these topics which are also raised in his articles and essays on outstanding social figures and leading personalities in the field of today's progressive culture.
Speaking before the Second All-Union Congress of Writers, Sholokhov gave a classic definition of the Party spirit which characterises the Soviet artist. ``Our malicious enemies abroad allege that we, Soviet writers, write at the bidding of the Party. The fact of the matter is rather different, since each one of us writes at the bidding of his own heart---and our hearts belong to the Party and the people, whom we serve with our art.'' The author's words to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are not only full of deep feeling but also express the essence of the Soviet writer's position as a citizen: ``We are all children of our great Communist Party. Each one of us, in thinking about the Party, always says mentally with enormous feeling: 'You are like a mother to us, you reared us, you steeled us, you are guiding us through life along the only true road.'~"
Sholokhov's speech before the 22nd Congress of the Party dealt with the creative spirit of the artist and the relationship of the author to his characters in forthright and deeply-felt terms:
``An artist cannot be cold when he creates! You will not create a real literary work if you have the blood of a fish and a heart that's so fatty it won't stir up, and you'll never find a way to your readers' hearts. I want the blood to boil in the writer's veins when he is writing, I want his face to turn pale from his controlled hatred for the enemy when he writes about him, I want him to laugh and weep together with his characters, whom he loves and who are dear to him. Only thus will a real work of art and not a counterfeit be created.''
The letter Sholokhov wrote to the magazine Inostrannaya Literatura met with a wide response among writers abroad. In it the writer suggested that the creation of a ``round table" of writers throughout the entire world should be possible since, although they possess differing views, writers are united by a common urge to be useful.
The belief is growing in certain circles that the novel as a 24 genre and a literary form is on the point of extinction. While participating in a meeting of the European Committee of Writers Sholokhov spoke on this question, introducing into his speech a sharply polemical note, although formally expressing a deeply personal point of view. His skilfully worded, dignified speech showed up how absurd and contrived was the very notion of raising the question at all. He told his audience that he wished to reserve the right to speak again if anyone ``starts planing the boards and knocking together a coffin to bury the novel in. The question of whether the novel is 'to be or not to be' simply does not arise for me, just as the question of whether to sow or not to sow his field does not arise for the peasant. In the case of the peasant the question may be put like this: 'How best to sow the field to reap a better harvest?' It is precisely the same in my case, and the question is: how to make my novel so good that it will really serve my people and my readers with honour?''
Sholokhov subsequently developed this view of the importance of the novel for himself as a writer, and as a genre of contemporary literature. In a Pravda interview given after learning he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1965, he said that while, naturally, he was pleased by the award, he wanted to make it quite clear that this was not the self-satisfaction of an individual, a professional writer, on receiving high international recognition of his work; the feeling that predominated in him was, rather, one of joy that he, albeit to a limited degree, was helping to glorify his country, the Party in whose ranks he had been more than half his life, and Soviet literature. He added that he was conscious of a feeling of gratification that ``the novel genre, the very legitimacy of whose existence in the modern world has been questioned by certain literary figures, can be said to have been vindicated''.
Later, during Nobel Week in Stockholm, he again returned to the question of the novel, emphasising the links between this genre and the realistic method of description. It was the novel, Sholokhov said, that enabled the writer to embrace the world of reality in the greatest possible breadth and depth and project upon his description of it his own attitude and that of people who shared his views on life and its pressing problems. The novel, Sholokhov said, could be said to predispose us towards striving for a more profound knowledge of the great life surrounding us, rather than towards attempts to present one's tiny ``I'' as the centre of the universe. By its very nature the genre offered the widest possible springboard for the realist.
25Sholokhov's observations on ``avantgarde'' literature---that is, ultra-fashionable experimentation, primarily in the field of form---drew considerable public attention abroad. He countered this interpretation of the term, saying that in his own view the true avantgarde were the writers who disclosed in their works the new meaning with which life in our age was infused, and characteristic features of the present day. In the course of this speech Sholokhov also expressed his attitude towards a number of the most urgent questions posed by the development of literature today, including the principles of socialist realism, the writer's responsibility to the people, the place of the writer in the modern world and the great tasks facing literature and art.
In a speech to the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union he returned to these questions:
``I have had occasion more than once to discuss the writer's role in the life of society with writers, journalists, and newspaper correspondents at big, representative gatherings. In particular, this subject formed a significant part of my speech in Stockholm Town Hall during the Nobel Prize-giving ceremony last year. The audience was essentially different from the present one. And so the form in which I clothed my thoughts was correspondingly different. The form, mind you, but not the content.
``Wherever and in whatever language Communists speak, we always speak as Communists. There are some who may not like it, but they just have to lump it. Moreover, it is this very quality that is respected everywhere. Wherever a Soviet person makes a public speech he must speak as a Soviet patriot. In defining the role of the writer in the life of society we speak as Communists, as sons of our great Motherland, as citizens of a country which is building a communist society, as spokesmen for our Party's and our people's revolutionary-humanist views.''
Speaking at the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Sholokhov said:
``The militant role played by Soviet literature and art in the world process of cultural development is determined, first of all, by the charge of communist ideology and partisanship carried in the best works of our artists.''
Questions connected with the essence of socialist and revolutionary humanism have more than once come to the fore in Sholokhov's publicist writings in recent years. ``The humanist is the man who fights, who helps to deflect the murderer's hand 26 and render harmless his evil will,'' he wrote in a letter to a writers' meeting in Baku in 1966. The concepts of humanism and love for man and mankind, he went on to say, tend to be interpreted very differently by different people, depending on which social forces they represent. Soviet writers, in accordance with their communist convictions, contend that a person who does no more than just pity the unfortunate victim of murder or robbery, and laments the fact that murder exists in the world, is no humanist. ``Our strength, the strength of writers,'' the letter stresses, ``lies in our passionate words which gain sway over minds and hearts, arouse human energies, strengthen the will and the determination to fight for man, for humanity, and for the light of freedom and brotherhood of nations, against the obscurity of imperialist barbarism.''
In August, 1968 the participants in an international literary symposium in Tashkent received a telegram from Sholokhov urging men of letters to collaborate in the noble work of promoting peace and progress throughout the world.
Two years earlier a group of French tourists had met the writer in the offices of Novosti Press Agency in Moscow.
``I am deeply gratified by the development of broad cooperation between our countries,'' Sholokhov told them.
``I am a Don Cossack. A century and a half ago Don Cossacks were in Paris. Being viticulturists, they brought back seedlings and vines and the vines have taken root in the soil of the Don. The attitude of my fellow-countrymen towards you is a very warm one.''
The tourists asked Sholokhov who was his favourite French author. This was his reply:
``It is always difficult to answer questions like that. One can talk very highly of the dead; of the living it is a bit embarrassing. Seriously, however, Russian literature, the great Russian literature, has gained much from contacts with you. This has been a mutual enrichment: Tolstoi and Stendhal are inseparable. Many things have happened to us in the course of history.... The last war, the war with nazi Germany, was a common war and the blood shed by French and Soviet people brought our nations really close together.''
And what did Sholokhov see as the principal merit of Soviet literature?
``Truth. In the entire course of our Soviet history we have lived by faith and truth: our truth. I consider, without boasting, that we have accomplished a lot.''
27 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Sholokhov's ContinuingIn Sholokhov's earlier publicist writings two basic fields of interest become immediately apparent: a wide range of vital contemporary concerns, including the urgent needs of our economy and of collective farmers; and questions of general culture, including literature and art. These two fields may be given the highly contingent definitions of ``Life'' and ``The Writer''. However, as we have seen, the war took Sholokhov's mind off these fundamental interests and started him on a series of articles in which the note of love or hate predominated: love for the socialist Motherland and hatred for its enemies. This was publicist material written in direct response to the events of the war years and later, with the ending of the war, to the struggle for peace throughout the whole world.
Sholokhov's postwar publicist writings have been characterised by a clear return to his earlier basic themes. A more and more sharply defined place has also come to be occupied by the subject of youth, of traditions handed on from one generation to the next and of the communist and patriotic education of young talent. In recent years, his personal contacts with the youth have been intensified, and articles addressed to the most varied sections of Soviet youth appear with growing frequency.
A brief survey of certain aspects of Sholokhov's literary activity in the 1920s and 1930s is highly instructive in this context. The satirical newspaper sketches ``The Test'', ``Three'' and ``The Government Inspector'', which represent his first published works, are all directly connected with the life of Soviet young people at the beginning of the 1920s.
By 1938 Sholokhov, then 33, had acquired world fame with the appearance of two volumes of stories, three books of And Quiet Flows the Don and the first book of Virgin Soil Upturned. He had the right and even to some extent the obligation to talk to young people of Komsomol age as an elder brother, as one who wished, if only humorously, to be young again:
``Dear Soviet boys and girls!
``The Komsomol is celebrating its twentieth birthday, and it's an occasion I cannot miss. An old man, walking past a crowd of merrymaking young people, will pause for a minute and as he listens to the tune played on the accordion and gazes smilingly at the happy young faces he seems to feel years younger himself. It's the same with me. I, too, feel younger just 28 thinking of you, my dear readers, and also a little sad because I am already thirty-three and will look like a pretty old bird at your wonderful holiday.''
Sholokhov devoted the most outstanding part of his speech to the 3rd Congress of Kazakhstan Writers to the problems of educating young writers and ensuring that they have the opportunity to work creatively. The author's words were imbued with a fatherly concern for those still taking their first steps; nevertheless, the views he expressed were in no way indulgent and many listeners were struck by the dominant image of his speech, characteristic of a writer whose work has always been distinguished by its soaring symbolism:
``I was once told how the golden eagle teaches its young to fly. He makes them take wing and without letting them come down forces them to climb higher and higher, driving them until they are utterly exhausted. Only thus will a young golden eagle learn to soar in the sky.. . . We have to use this method to teach our young writers, forcing them to climb higher and higher, so that eventually they'll shape into real eagles in literature and not wet crows or domestic hens. But the golden eagle does not break the wings of its young for not being able to or being afraid to climb to the required height at the first try. Nor do our critics have the right to break the budding writers' wings.''
The message that Sholokhov sent to the 13th Congress of the YCL has a ring which would be not inappropriate to a prose poem; it was printed in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and here is an extract from it:
``You are my own youth now past, you are the justified hopes of our country and our Party! Permit me on the eve of your congress to greet you, embrace you and wish you, the pride of my country, every success and happiness in your work, study and personal lives.''
At the 3rd Ail-Union Congress of Collective Farmers Sholokhov spoke again in the concluding part of his speech of Soviet youth as the hope and pride of their country. Among young writers, he said, many genuine talents were to be found from whom works of significance might naturally be expected.
In view of the features specific to Sholokhov's publicist writings this book has been divided into three sections, entitled ``Life'', ``The Writer" and ``Young People''.
The first section is naturally the most extensive, not only because of its greater thematic variety but because of the vital importance of the subjects raised. We concluded that little 29 benefit would be derived from subdividing this section further: for example, into ``Creative Work" and ``The War''. The second section is also the second in scale. The third section includes articles, speeches and messages of greeting which were either directly addressed to or relating to young people.
By assigning the material to different categories we wanted to make it easier for the reader to use this book. However, Sholokhov often touches upon a series of questions relating to the most varied fields of human activity in the course of a single speech. An article may begin with a number of general problems, and end with a message addressed directly to the youth. Included in the third section are Sholokhov's speeches made at the Lenin Prize presentation, at the 22nd Party Congress, the 4th Congress of Soviet Writers, and the 3rd AilUnion Congress of Collective Farmers as a significant part of each of these addresses is devoted to young people, their education, their duty to the people and to history, for they are the future of our Soviet state.
[30] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Part I __ALPHA_LVL1__ Life __ALPHA_LVL2__ From AN ADDRESS...The speeches of the candidates to the Supreme Soviet that have been published in our press all ring with a feeling of pride, because it is a proud thing to have the people place their trust in you. Comrades, the same feeling fills my being too. But in me this feeling of justifiable pride is mixed with personal joy because it is one of the Don election districts which has nominated me. I was born in the Don country, I grew up here, went to school and matured here as a man and a writer, and also as a member of our great Communist Party. And while being a devoted son of our great and mighty Motherland, I proudly state that I am also a patriot of my native Don region.
Comrades, yours is an old town and it has heard many a patriotic speech. In the years of the Civil War too. Ataman Krasnov and other political schemers also spoke here of their love for their Motherland and in the same breath invited the Germans to occupy our Don lands, and subsequently the socalled allies---the English and the French. They spoke of their patriotism and at the same time traded in the blood of the Cossacks, bartering it for weapons with which to fight against Soviet power and the Russian people.
History tests people by their deeds, and not their words. History tests the measure of a man's love for his country, and also what this love is worth. Krasnov and other scoundrels profaned and besmirched the concept of genuine patriotism. They traitorously misled the working Cossacks and got them involved in the Civil War.
Today, the entire multimillion population of the Soviet Union speaks of its love for the country, and everyone is ready to defend its boundaries with his very life. It is a man's sacred duty to love the country that has reared him with the tenderness of a fond mother. And our Motherland has the filial devotion of 170 million working people.
__PRINTERS_P_7937_COMMENT__ 3---172 33The Cossacks who had produced such great rebels against the autocracy as Razin and Pugachev were deceived by the generals in the years of the Revolution and dragged into the fratricidal war against the toiling Russian masses. The Cossacks understood their mistake, withdrew from the White counter-revolutionary movement, and are now building up their new and happier life under the guidance of the Bolshevik Party.
The efforts of the Bolshevik Party and the efforts of our multinational working people have transformed our povertystricken land into a wealthy state. We have built up heavy industry and socialist agriculture. With every day we are increasing our economic potential.
Look how the life of the Don Cossacks has changed in the Soviet years. In practically every family---not just in the stanitsas^^*^^ but at the lone farmsteads too---there are children who are getting a school education. Cossack collective farmers no longer want to bring up their sons as illiterate peasants capable only of working out in the fields. They want their sons to become engineers, Red Army officers, agronomists, doctors or teachers. A new Soviet Cossack intelligentsia is in the making. The Don country is taking on a new look.
We are boldly and confidently striding on towards our radiant future!
Long live the Communist Party!
Long live our great Soviet people and the working Don Cossacks!
1937
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ON THE DONThe draftees together with the friends and relatives who were seeing them off to war were hastening to the stanitsa main square. Ahead of me ran two boys of around seven and ten. Their parents overtook me and left me behind. The father was a big, sturdy chap, a tractor driver by the look of him, dressed in neatly patched blue overalls and a well-laundered shirt. The mother was a young woman with a dark complexion, sternly compressed lips, and puffed-up eyelids that betrayed her recent tears. As she passed me, she said very softly for her husband alone to hear: _-_-_
^^*^^ Stanitsa---a Cossack village.---Tr.
34``There they come at us again. Why can't they let us live in peace? Give them what's coming to them, will you, Fedya?''
The bear-like Fedya wiped his sweating hands on a handkerchief that was black and greasy with machine oil, smiled down on his wife with an air of condescension and said in a deep rumble:
``You've been lecturing me all night, and you're still at it. Enough, now. I know my job, you don't have to teach it me. What you'd better do is tell your team leader when you return home that we'll skin him alive if he goes on stacking the hay the way we saw them doing as we came past Gniloi Log. Just tell him that, will you?''
The woman tried to remonstrate, but her husband silenced her with an angry gesture, and said in an even deeper rumble:
``Shut up for heavens' sake, you've said enough. Once we're lined up, we'll be told everything in a far better way than you can ever hope to put it.''
__*_*_*__The draftees were lined up in trim rows before the speakers' platform on the square. A huge crowd had gathered to see them off. The first to speak was Yakov Zemlyakov, a tall Cossack with a powerful chest.
``I was a gunner myself, a Red partisan, and I went right through the Civil War. My son is an artilleryman like myself, he's serving in the ranks of the Red Army. He fought in the Finnish war, was wounded and is now fighting the German nazis. I couldn't stomach the treachery of the Germans, so I handed in my application asking them to enlist me as a volunteer in the Red Army and put me in my son's unit so we could give hell to the nazi bastards together, just like we gave it to the White bastards twenty years ago. I want to go into battle as a Communist, and I'm asking the Party organisation to admit me as a candidate member.''
Pravdenko, an old industrial worker, said in his turn:
``I have two sons in the Red Army. One is in the Air Force and the other in the infantry. I gave them my fatherly blessing to strike down the enemy without mercy till there's none left in the sky or on land. And if they need help, I'll take my rifle and have a go at them myself like in the old days.''
__*_*_*__ 35The winter wheat, thick and bright green, rose in a wall as tall as a stand of young reeds. The rye was taller than an average man. Its taut bluish ears were pulled down by their own weight, and swung heavily in the wind.
A man on horseback appeared on the road. He turned into the rye field to give way to our car, and instantly vanished from view. We could not see the horse nor the man's white shirt, nothing but the crimson band on his Cossack cap which showed against the green like a flowering thistle.
We stopped the car, and the horseman emerged from the rye to speak to us.
``Look at it, isn't it a beauty this year?" he said, pointing at the rye. ``And here it's threatened by that Hitler bastard, blast his soul! He'll be sorry he ever picked this fight. He sure will be sorry. Comrades, I haven't been home for two days, I've run out of tobacco, so give me a cigarette, will you? And tell me what's new at the front.''
We told him what the latest communiques had said, and as he listened he kept stroking his greying sun-bleached whiskers.
``Our young people are putting up a jolly good fight, aren't they? And what will happen when we, the old hands who've fought in three wars, are called up? We'll slash those nazis right down to their navels, right down to where the midwives tied the bastards' chords. I'm telling you they'll be sorry!''
The Cossack dismounted, squatted on the ground and lit the cigarette we gave him, turning his back to the wind and never letting go of his bridle.
``How are things at your farm?" I asked him. ``What do the older Cossacks have to say about this war?''
``Well, we figured on finishing with the haymaking and then reaping the rye and the wheat all right and proper. But if the Red Army needs us sooner, we're ready any time. The womenfolk will manage without us. You know that we've taught them how to handle tractors and combine harvesters just in case. Soviet power is wide awake too, it has no time for sleep,'' he said with a sly wink. ``Sure it's more quietlike living in the steppe here, but then Cossacks never looked for a quiet life and never tried to hide behind anyone's back. We'll gladly fight this war. People are pretty mad at this Hitler bastard. What's the matter with him anyway, does he sicken for war or something?''
He smoked his cigarette in silence, casting sidelong glances at his peacefully grazing horse.
36``When I heard about the war last Sunday, everything sort of turned over inside me,'' he resumed in a reflective tone. ``I couldn't sleep that night, I lay thinking that last year we were attacked by the Colorado beetle, and this year by Hitler. There's always some trouble or other. And I was thinking, what kind of a lousy insect was he to jump on everyone and give no one any peace? And then I remembered the first German war where I fought till the end, and I remembered how I cut down the enemies. ... I cut down eight of them with this hand here, and all during attack,'' he smiled shyly, and dropped his voice. ``Nowadays I can tell about it outloud, but it was sort of awkward before.... I earned two St. George Crosses and three medals in that war. I didn't have them pinned on me for nothing, eh? I should say not. And so, I lay in my bed thinking of the last war, and suddenly I remembered reading in a newspaper that Hitler himself had been in that German war. And a sorrow so bitter gripped my heart, that I sat up in bed and said outloud: 'Dammit, why wasn't he one of those eight who came my way that time? I'd have swung my sword just once, and he'd have been in two halves.' The wife was awakened, and she asked me: 'What are you fretting about?' I said to her: 'About Hitler, be he thrice cursed! Sleep, Nastasya, this is all above your head.'~"
He pinched out his cigarette and swung into the saddle.
``Well, never mind, he'll get what's coming to him, damn him.'' He gathered up the bridle and, turning to me, said gravely: ``If you happen to be in Moscow, you tell them that the Don Cossacks of all ages are prepared lo do their duty. Well, goodbye. I must hurry to the haymaking to help our female citizenry.''
He spurred his horse and in a minute vanished from sight. Only the light puffs of dust kicked up by his horse's hooves on the loamy slope of the ravine floated on the wind and showed us the way he had gone.
__*_*_*__That evening a group of farmers gathered on the porch of the Mokhovsky village Soviet. Kuznetsov, a middle-aged man with hollow cheeks, was speaking and I noticed his huge workworn hands which lay serenely on his knees.
``... I was wounded when I fell into their hands. As soon as I was a bit better they put me to work. They harnessed eight of us into a plough, and made us plough their German soil for 37 them. After that they shifted me to the coal mines. The daily loading quota was eight tons of coal, and we barely did two. When we didn't do the quota we got beatings. They'd stand us up, facing the wall, and hit us on the back of the head so we'd smash our noses into the wall. After these beatings they'd lock us up in barbed wire cages. The cages were so low, you had to squat on your haunches. A couple of hours like that, and you had to be pulled out with a poker because you couldn't even crawl.'' Kuznetsov glanced at his listeners with gentle eyes, and continued in the same calm manner. ``Take a look at me: I'm skinny and sick just now, but still I weigh 70 kilos, but in that prison camp I never weighed as much as 40 in all the two and a half years I was there. That's what they did to me.''
After a momentary silence, he spoke again.
``Two of my sons are fighting the nazis just now. I reckon the time has come for me to settle accounts with them too. Only, begging your pardon, citizens, I'm not going to take them prisoner. I just can't.''
A profound, alerted silence fell upon the listeners. Without lifting his eyes from his brown, twitching hands, Kuznetsov said in a softer voice:
``Begging your pardon, of course, citizens----But they drained all the strength from my body, down to the last drop. And if I have to fight, I'll maybe take their privates prisoner, but their officers---never. I just can't, and that's all there is to it. The most terrible things of all I suffered at the hands of their gentlemen officers, so you must forgive me.''
He stood up---a big, skinny man with eyes that suddenly looked brighter and younger with hatred.
__*_*_*__On the second day of war, every man, woman and child at the Vashchayevsky collective farm turned out to work. Even the very old who had long been relieved came out to do their bit. The clearing of the threshing floor was left entirely to the old men and the old women. One ancient, really mouldy-looking from old age, was scraping at the floor with a shovel, sitting on a stool with his shaking legs spread wide apart.
``Why d'you work sitting, Grandad?" I asked him.
``My back won't bend, son, and I'm happier sitting down.''
38One of the old women there said to him: ``Why don't you go home? We'll manage without you.''
At this, the ancient raised his colourless, childlike eyes and said to her sharply:
``I have three grandsons fighting in this war, so I must help them in any way I can. And you're too young to teach me, woman. Wait till you're my age, then teach me all you want.''
__*_*_*__Two feelings live in the hearts of the Don Cossacks: love for their Motherland and hatred for the nazi invaders. Their love will live forever, but may their hatred last until the enemy has been routed completely.
Woe to those who have aroused this hatred and incited the cold fury of the people's wrath.
1941
__ALPHA_LVL2__ COSSACK COLLECTIVE FARMSHarvesting was in full swing on the boundless Don fields. Tractors rumbled and roared, and the thin blue smoke over the harvesters mixed with the whitish rye dust. The reapers whirred as they squashed the tall, thick rye with their wings. A peaceful scene by the look of it, but the grim stamp of war lay over everything. The people and the machines worked at a different pace, the rhythm was faster and more tense than before. Reddish-gold Don horses, brought here from the herds, neighed at the tethering posts in the village square. Sunburnt young horsemen wearing faded cavalry caps rode off to the enlistment stations, and the women who were binding the sheaves in the field, straightened up and waved to them for a long time, shouting: ``Come back safe and sound, Cossacks! May luck be with you. Strike the nazi vipers dead! And give the Don's profound respects to Budyonny!''
Along the roads leading to the Grain Purveyance Stores came caravans of carts loaded high with sacks of newly reaped grain and majestically swaying mountains of excellent hay as green as spring onions and never touched by a drop of rain. The Red Army needed everything. And everything was being done for the Red Army. All the people's thoughts were there, 39 at the front. And all the hearts beat with the same wish: to break the nazi viper's spine as soon as possible.
An elderly farmer stood crushing a wheat ear in his hands and smiling.
``Nature herself is for us and against Hitler, let alone England and other clever nations who've become our allies. Look at the harvest this year, it's like in the fairy tale: the wheat stalks grow as thick as shafts, and potatoes are the size of cartwheels. The spring crops of wheat, the sunflowers and the millet wanted rain, and rain did fall just before reaping time! All these crops are a sight for sore eyes! Everything's to our good.''
At the Bolshevistsky Put collective farm I spoke with a combine harvester operator, Pyotr Zelenkov. The very first hectare of rye he had harvested, he told me, yielded 2.8 tons of bunker weight, and, what is more, the grain had a relatively low moisture content and there was hardly any foreign matter. In places, the yield was as high as three or three and a half tons from a hectare.
Zelenkov unloaded his harvester as he went along, and so I had to wait some time before he stopped. During this brief rest, he climbed down from his machine, after glancing into the bunker, and walked a little distance away over the bristling stubble to have a smoke.
``Have you got someone to replace you in case you have to go to the front?" I asked him.
``Naturally.''
``Who is it?''
``My wife.''
``You're quite sure she can do your job?''
Zelenkov smiled all over his sunburnt face, the darker for the film of dust on it. The young woman working at the wheel leaned over the railing and said:
``I'm Zelenkov's wife. I'm doing this job temporarily, and last year I worked as combine operator and earned more than my husband.''
Obviously, Zelenkov resented this reminder, and said rather grudgingly:
``If the worst comes to the worst, she can replace me, of course. But we've other plans: we want to go off to the front together. ...''
Marina Zelenkova wasn't the sort to let her husband do all the talking, and so she finished what he had begun to say.
``We've no children, so we can easily go off together. And I 40 can drive a tank no worse than my husband, never you worry about that!''
Zelenkov hurried back to his combine, for he had no time to waste on chat. Of the farm's 540 hectares planted to rye 417 had already been harvested with reapers, and he was anxious to make up for lost time.
The simplest reapers were extensively used at most of the collective farms in Rostov Region that year. Without waiting for the grain to ripen sufficiently for reaping with combine harvesters, they started the job with plain reapers, greatly speeding up the harvesting process and saving a lot of fuel. This is what one of the men at the Stalinets collective farm had to say about the matter: ``We stopped sweating once collective farms were started. Soviet power relieved us from backbreaking toil. And now these young fellows who work the reapers can't do a day's job without complaining of backache! Pampered, that's what they are. It was all very well in peacetime to have the tractors plough the fields for us, and the combine harvesters do the reaping and the threshing, but now that the nazis have started this fight with us it's no time to worry about your back. The way to work now is to get every joint in your body to do its bit, and save all the fuel you can for the Red Army which has more need of it than we do here. They'll put it to such good use that the nazis' joints will not only crackle but will start turning inside out.''
More or less the same thing was said to me by Vassily Soldatov of the Twenty-Six Baku Commissars collective farm who had just done double his daily quota in stacking.
``We've got a hard and stubborn enemy, that's why we must also do a hard and stubborn job. And the quota . .. we're set a quota here, but when we're sent to the front we'll go for the enemy without any quotas.''
All the collective farms I visited impressed me with their excellent labour discipline and the people's awareness of their civic duty. Everyone came out to work---youngsters and old people, even those of them who had felt too old to do much work the year before. Everybody without exception worked to the best of his ability and with tremendous enthusiasm. Vassily Tselikov, team leader at the Bolshevist Road collective farm, said the following in response to the praise he heard from one of the district committee officials:
``We just can't do less than our best. The way I see it, we're defending the country with our toil just now, and when the time comes we'll defend it with weapons. And anyway, how 41 can we work half-heartedly when practically every family has someone fighting at the front? Myself, for instance, I have two sons, and both of them are away righting. Alexei's a gunner, and Nikolai's a tankman. I'm too old to go, but I've enlisted in the home guard just the same. In the last German war I got wounded in the stomach. That German bullet's given me a lot of trouble, but I can still work.... If the need arises I'll join my sons in the fighting.''
On learning that I was going to write an article for the Krasnaya Zvezda (Army paper) he said eagerly:
``Let my boys and all the fighters out there know through your paper that we won't fail them here, in the rear. Tell them to have no mercy on those nazis, let them make it so hot for them that they'll find nothing but their graves in our land.''
When we arrived at the office of the Road the Socialism collective farm, we found no one there except an elderly bookkeeper. The chairman, he told us, was out in the field. There wasn't a soul about in the village: the entire population was busy reaping, cleaning the threshing floors or loading the grain.
``My son's at the western front,'' the bookkeeper told us, putting down his pen for a moment. ``He was in active service for three years, he was commander of a gun crew. I would write and ask what kind of gun he had, and he'd write back and say: `I'm fine, give my regards to the family, and don't ask me about guns, Dad, it's none of your business.'~" The bookkeeper said this with a pleased smile. ``Means he knows the regulations well. In the Civil War, I, too, had my share of fighting. I fought in the north, then I fought against the basmach bands, and every other brand of enemy too. I'm in the home guard now. There're about a hundred of us in the village. It's funny things are just now. There's any number of young men here, in the rear. When our hundred lines up, among us oldsters there's many a young fellow strong enough to haul a field gun. They've got the strength of stallions, they have. They're listed as volunteers, but for some reason they haven't been called up yet. It means we've got a huge army. It makes you feel good just thinking about it.''
Team No. 2 was doing the harvesting with reapers. Two pairs of oxen were harnessed into each reaper, and though the wings had been raised as far as they would go, the going was hard because the rye had grown so high and thick. The women ox-drivers urged the animals on with shouts and whips, and the tough young Cossacks who wielded the pitchforks were 42 themselves driven so hard that they couldn't spare a second to wipe the sweat pouring down their faces. When at last they made a halt, I came up to the team and asked why they were racing the oxen at such a breakneck speed.
``These oxen are used to it, no harm will come to them,'' one of the Cossacks replied. ``Our job's easier when we're going fast, and besides we've got to hurry, we might be sent to the front any day and it'll be pretty tough on the womenfolk to manage a crop like this. Why don't they draft me anyway, I'd like to know? They've drafted other chaps my age, and left me behind for some reason. Aren't I as good as the others, or what?''
The man's name was Pokusayev, a son of the local blacksmith. This hefty fellow with a barrel chest was in the artillery during his military service. From conversation with the others I learnt that they all had had military training in one arm of service or another, and I could well appreciate the impatience of these strong, healthy young men to go and give a good shellacking to the Germans, who were drunken with blood and cheap triumphs. It was an impatience shared by all the young Don Cossacks, the impatience of men whose forefathers had over the centuries watered the frontiers of our country with their blood defending it from its numerous enemies.
I remembered the words of Isai Markovich Yevlantyev, a man of eighty-three who now worked as watchman at the collective farm's threshing floor. It was a quiet night in July, with stars falling from the dark sky. He spoke in a soft, old man s voice.
``My grandfather fought against Napoleon, and he told me about it when I was just a kid. Before starting war against us, Napoleon called his generals together in the open field one fine day, and said to them: 'I have a mind to conquer Russia. What have you got to say to this, mister generals?' And these generals all said together: `Can't be done, Your Majesty, it's a mighty powerful country, we'll never conquer it.' Then Napoleon pointed to the sky and asked: 'See that star up there?' 'No,' said the generals, 'we don't. You can't see it in daytime.' Napoleon told them: 'And I can see it. That star's a good omen.' And with that he moved his armies against us. He came in through a wide gate, and left through a narrow little door, just managing to squeeze through. Our people saw him off all the way to Paris. Seems to me the same stupid star appeared to this German commander, and when he's been fixed to leave the doorway will be made so narrow for him, I don't 43 know if he'll slip through or not. Let's hope to God he doesn't. So others should never try it again for now and forever.''
1941
__ALPHA_LVL2__ VILENESSIt has been reported from the army in the field: ``Stiff fighting was going on near the village of Yelnya. The Germans had built fortifications in front of the houses, camouflaged them and returned fire for a long time. When our unit went into attack, the nazis drove all the women and children out of the village and placed them in front of their trenches... .''
This was done by soldiers of Hitler's army lauded as brave and honourable men by the nazi radio. ``Honour'' like theirs emanates a sickening stench of putrefaction. And one can't help thinking: if these soldiers survive won't they be ashamed to face their mothers, wives and sisters?
Nazi indoctrination must have been pretty thorough to have destroyed all human feeling in the soldiers, and to have transformed living creatures into automatons perpetrating inhuman, savage deeds.
I do not know what the nazis' act at Yelnya will be called in the language of Goebbels---military acumen or German resourcefulness---but in the language of all the world's civilised nations an action such as this, ignominious for a soldier, has been and always will be called vileness.
The reaction of everyone who hears about this new nazi atrocity will be a feeling of shame for the German people, loathing and hatred for those who ignominiously hide behind the unarmed civilian population.
The people of the Soviet Union and the Red Army are keeping count of the crimes perpetrated by the nazis. They shall pay with much blood for the blood shed by our people, and for their own dishonour.
1941
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ON THE WAY TO THE FRONTArmed with pencils, note-books and light machine guns, we rode in a car to the frontline, and on the road we overtook a great number of lorries carrying ammunition, provisions and 44 soldiers. All these lorries were so cleverly camouflaged with birch and spruce branches that looking down on the road from the rise one had the impression that shrubs and trees were migrating from the east to the west, moving in a fabulous procession. A whole forest seemed to be on the move.
The thunderous roar of artillery fire came louder and closer. We were nearing the front, but the way was still shown by Red Army traffic officers, waving their red or yellow flags, and the stream of lorries was advancing as rapidly along the road along the sides of which rumbled our powerful trailer tractors.
Having been warned that we might be attacked from the air any moment, my comrades and I took turns as lookouts, standing on the footboard, but no German planes appeared, and we rode on without mishap.
To me, an inhabitant of almost woodless steppe, the scenery in Smolensk Region seemed foreign, and I gazed at the landscape curiously as it unfolded before me. Pine woods rose in a wall on either side of the road, and from them came a breath of coolness and a strong pitchy smell. These woods were wrapped in twilight even in the middle of the day, and there was something sinister in their dusky silence, and this land covered with tall ferns and rotting stumps seemed hostile to me.
There were clearings, few and far between, overrun by young birches and asps, and suddenly a rowan bush covered with red berries would flash in the sun, and once again the forest would hem the road in on both sides. In the space between the treetops we would glimpse a hilly field with the rye or oats stamped out by countless soldiers' boots, and on a distant slope there would loom the charred remains of a village, burnt to the ground by the Germans.
We turned on to a country road and drove through a locality which had been in German hands until a few days ago, and which bore traces of recent fierce fighting. The land was pocked with ugly holes made by shells, mines and bombs. These holes were without number. The dead had not yet been buried, and we saw more and more dead men and dead horses. The sweetishly putrid smell made us hold our breath more and more often. Not far off the road lay the swollen carcass of a bay mare, and beside the dead mother lay a tiny dead colt with its fluffy broom of a tail flung back in quietude. This small victim looked so tragically unnecessary on that large battlefield.
The Germans' trenches and dugouts on the slope had been ploughed up by our shells. Split logs stuck from the ground, 45 and beside the parapets there were used cartridges, empty food cans, helmets, shapeless tatters of German greenish-grey uniforms, pieces of smashed weapons and intricately twisted telephone lines. A direct hit had blown up a machine-gun crew together with the machine gun. A crippled antitank gun could be seen in the door of the barn a little distance away from the ditches, completing this frightening scene of destruction caused by a squall of Soviet artillery fire.
The village over which the fighting had raged here for several days was on the other side of the hill. Before relinquishing it the Germans set fire to all the houses there. Our sappers were now building a bridge over the small river at the foot of the hill, and there was a smell of fresh pine shavings and river mud. The sappers had stripped down to their trousers, and in the sun their tanned bare backs shone with sweat and looked as smooth as the new boards they were laying down.
Very carefully we drove across the river over the timbers placed in a row. Tanks and tractors had raked the mud up on the banks with their tracks. We entered what was once the village. We saw the charred ruins of houses, blackened chimneys rising over piles of brick, charred household utensils, broken bits of pottery, a child's bedstead with warped metal rods.
A sunflower, the only one to miraculously survive, looked unnaturally, sacrilegiously beautiful against this sombre background as it turned its round face, framed in golden-yellow petals, to the sun. The flower stood in the midst of a stampedout potato patch a little way from the foundation of a burntdown house. Its leaves were slightly scorched, debris had piled up against the stalk, but it lived! It lived in spite of everything amid this general destruction and death, and this sunflower--- swaying gently in the wind---seemed the only living being in this graveyard.
But it was not so. As we walked up the street we saw a yellow cat sitting on a black, charred wall. The cat was placidly washing itself and appeared to be quite unimpressed by the frightening happenings which had left it without home and master. However, on seeing us, the cat stared motionlessly for a second and then darted, flashing like a yellow lightning, into the ruins.
Two widowed hens were happily digging for food in the wrecked kitchen garden, but the moment they saw men in khaki they dashed away without a sound and instantly disappeared 46 from view. They had grown so wild that they would not let us come to within fifty yards of them.
``With their chicken brains they mistook us for Germans,'' said one of the men who had taken part in the battles recently fought here.
He went on to tell us that the Germans staged regular fowl hunts in the villages they occupied, firing their tommy guns at the geese and chickens. They slaughtered the cows and the hogs right in their sheds.
``These two hens have, no doubt, been under fire, so you mustn't mind their manners,'' the man said with a smile.
It is really touching how attached animals and birds become to their home. In the same village I saw a small flight of pigeons wheeling sorrowfully over the ruins of the church that had been demolished by German shells. They had probably lived in the belfry, and even though they had been deprived of shelter they still regarded this place as their home and were in no hurry to leave it. In one of the side streets, a small dog came crawling towards us, wagging its tail. It did not seem to have much self-respect, but it had mustered the courage to come here alone from the forest, for this is where it used to live. We startled a flock of sparrows in the hemp field on the edge of the village. They were not at all like those jolly, busily chirping sparrows we were used to in peacetime. These were silent, pitiful things. They circled over the devastation for a bit, then came back and settled on the stalks of the hemp, looking ruffled and forlorn.
The local peasant women, it must be said, felt as powerfully drawn to the place where they had spent their lives. The men had gone off to war, and when the Germans came the women and children hid away in the nearby forests. They now returned home, and wandered among the ruins with a lost air, digging in the debris for at least something from their household. For the night they went back to the forest where soldiers from reserve troops gave them bread and soup from the regimental pot, and the next morning they were back in the de^ vastated villages again, circling like birds round their ravaged nests.
In the neighbouring village that had also been burnt to the ground, I saw children helping their mothers to rake the ashes in search of possessions that might have survived. I asked one of these peasant women how they were going to live now, and she replied:
47``Chase away the blasted Germans as far as you can, and don't worry about us, we'll build us new houses, the village Soviet will help, we'll get by.''
The red-rimmed eyes of the women and children and their wan faces, covered with a grey film from digging in the ashes, were not to be soon forgotten, and I was thinking: ``How brutally and fiendishly the nazis must hate all living things to wipe peaceful towns and villages off the face of the earth and senselessly, to no purpose, destroy and set fire to everything.''
We drove through yet another village, and once more there were forests all about us, then we caught a glimpse of unreaped wheat fields, a plot of flax with a few plants still wearing their blue flowers, and with a warning sign, nailed to a stick protruding from the flax, which said: ``Mines!" and a sentry standing at the side of the road.
Upon retreating the Germans had mined the roads, the ground along the roads, the cars they abandoned, their trenches, and even the bodies of their dead soldiers. Our sappers were busy clearing the recaptured territory, we could see their bent, searching figures everywhere, and in the meantime cars and carts were driven very carefully over the danger zone, all but scraping against one another, while the sentries stationed all around watched hawk-eyed that no one should leave the road in the bad spots.
The roar of artillery battle mounted and swelled in volume, and now we could already make out the thundering of our Soviet heavy guns, and the sound fell like sweet music on our ears.
Before long we found ourselves in the disposition of one of our reserve units. The men had just been in battle, and yet someone was already playing a soft little tune on the accordion, and about twenty soldiers stood in a circle in front of the dugout laughing merrily as a young, sturdy private strutted about in the middle of the circle. As he twitched his broad shoulders with comic languor, his shirt stretched across his back and the whitish spots of dried sweat stood out distinctly on his shoulder blades. Slapping the legs of his tall boots with the palms of his big hands, he called out cheerily to his chum, a lanky, awkward soldier:
``Come on, come on, what're you scared of? You're a Ryazan man, I'm an Orel man, so let's see who's the better dancer.''
But soon the brief twilight thickened to darkness and shadowed the forest, and quiet settled over the camp. At 48 daybreak the next day we were to go to Commander Kozlov's unit which was on the offensive.
1941
__ALPHA_LVL2__ FIRST ENCOUNTERSFor the night, my three friends and I were given a tent, carefully camouflaged with young asp trees. Fir branches laid on the ground and covered with a cape were our bedding. We huddled close together for warmth, piled our greatcoats on top of us, and fell asleep.
At 11 p.m. the earth quaked under me, and through my sleep I heard the heaving roar of an explosion. I threw aside my greatcoat and sat up. In the stillness that followed I could clearly hear the pine trees rustling in the wind and the raindrops hitting the sides of the tent. The stillness did not last long. From somewhere far away in the west came the hollow sound of a shot, and then through the noise made by the rain I heard the low, moaning wail of a shell flying over us and immediately after came the thunderous burst.
``The Germans are firing from heavy guns,'' said the sleepy voice of the young, cheerful lieutenant who lay next to me. He glanced at the glowing face of his wrist-watch and continued: ``They''re shelling the road along which we drove here. It's harassing fire, they do it every night. My advice to you is take no notice and sleep. You've got to get used to it. The Germans are a punctual breed: they fire for exactly fifteen minutes, then they stop, and after an hour or an hour and a half they start amusing us again.''
The lieutenant soon went back to his young, sound sleep, while I, hard though I tried, hadn't been able to get used to the too-near bursts of the German shells in those fifteen minutes. I didn't fall asleep until midnight, but when I did I slept like a log and no longer heard the Germans amusing us with the music of their heavy guns nor our batteries answering them. Just before daybreak I was awakened by the man on my left. He was frozen through because his greatcoat had slid off him and he shuddered so terribly, in great shudders like a dog, that I thought someone was shaking me awake. Yet he slept on throughout.
We emerged from the tent. Early-morning mist hung low over the forest. The soldiers, stripped to the waist, were rubbing themselves down with ice-cold water. Two of them, who __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---172 49 had already finished, were wrestling to get warm. They did it so earnestly that one of them had drops of sweat standing out on his forehead, and the other had become purple in his face and neck.
We had a filling army breakfast: hot soup with meat, canned pork, and tea. We thanked our kind hosts, and started off on our way.
Our heavy battery was changing its firing positions. Fastmoving prime movers rumbled past us drawing impressivelooking long-muzzled guns. We were compelled to turn off the road in order to give way to these monsters. After that we gave way to two ambulances carrying wounded soldiers, and a truck with wounded horses. I stood just off the road, and the boarded up side of the swaying truck sailed past just above me, it seemed, and close to me I saw a wounded horse's neck wet with dew and its huge, violet, weeping eye. These were the first victims of the night's fighting.
The staff of Commander Kozlov's unit was not far away. We left the car in a wooded hollow and started up the steep slope, densely overgrown with centuries-old pines. We were almost on the territory of the staff when suddenly the figure of a sentry appeared out of thin air on the path right before us, materialising as soundlessly and unexpectedly as an apparition. This apparition, however, was armed with an automatic rifle and wore a camouflage cape. He had apparently stepped out from behind a bush. Holding his rifle at the ready, he looked us over, asked to see our passes and subjected them to a very close scrutiny. I noticed that the bush behind him was stirring slightly, and through the leaves I saw the points of two bayonets aimed our way.
The ground here was cut up with slit trenches. We came upon many dugouts covered with branches. There were quite a few cars in the forest, but they were so cleverly camouflaged that one could not see them at all until one walked right into them. Sappers were at work all over the place, hammering, sawing, and digging new shelters. The forest smelt of pine needles and wet clay.
A squat captain met us at the door of the staff dugout. He told us that General Kozlov and the chief of staff were busy at the moment, and politely invited us into the commander's dugout next door.
We went down some broad steps, entered a narrow passage and opened the door before us. This was not a dugout in the usual meaning of the word. It was a spacious peasant cottage 50 sunk by magic deep into the ground. To make the illusion complete there ought to have been n big Russian stove, but for practical purposes the iron stove they had did just as well. The large room had a freshly scrubbed wooden floor, the walls were panelled with new boards, and the ceiling was dazzlingly clean. An electric lamp burnt brightly above the table. There was a smell of pine needles and, one thought, freshly baked bread. We gazed about this underground dwelling with admiration, and the captain said smiling:
``Our General is a very practical person. There's an abandoned village not far from here which the Germans shell regularly every day and they've razed half of it to the ground already. The General ordered the sappers to bring the remaining cottages over here, since they were doomed anyway. The sappers did the job in two days, and here we are.''
Artillery commander Colonel Grositsky, an energetic, jovial man, came into the room and, the introductions over, told us about the situation on this section of the front.
``We're pressing the enemy hard. At noon today we shall start preparatory bombardment and then the offensive. The height which you saw on your way here used to be called Kudryavaya (Curly.---TV.) hill, and now it's been renamed Lysaya hill (Bald.---TV.). It has really turned bald from our artillery fire, but there was a time when it was covered with forest. The leaflets which the Germans are throwing down are proof enough of the effectiveness of this fire, they say: 'Soviet infantryman, surrender! Soviet gunner, don't let us catch you.' We're not letting them catch us, you know, we try to let them catch it instead. And we're doing alright, too. We drop our observers at the frontline, where our infantry is, and they do the spotting. The team work's excellent: German guns, mortars and dugouts go up in the air one after the other! They used to roof their dugouts with three layers of logs, and now they have six or seven, they're burrowing deeper into the ground, but this doesn't help them much, we dig them out of there with our shells all the same.''
The battle which began early that morning with a lazy exchange of fire was gathering momentum. The Colonel listened to the increasing bursts of German shells, and went to the telephone. He spoke briefly, in a low voice. Immediately after, the hitherto silent nearby battery went into action, and the Germans' mortar fire noticeably abated.
The Colonel did not think much of the German artillery. He told us:
51``They're poor shots, they've no system. If they've no spotting plane over the battlefield, they can't do a thing. Hear those bursts on the left? They're shelling the section where our battery was last night. We shifted it before light, so they're firing at nothing, and will go on firing for a long time, and afterwards they'll probably report to their staff that their guns had destroyed the Soviet howitzer battery.''
It was not long before General Kozlov appeared. The General, who had fought in five wars, was a middle-aged man with grey temples and unhurried movements. He sat down wearily on a bench and placed his large, beefy hands on the map spread out on the table before him.
``Did you have tea?" he asked. ``No? Bad show. Give us some tea, and be quick about it.''
The General, who was the son of a peasant, had been in military service since the age of eighteen. He had a common Russian face, a slightly uptilted nose, and mockingly intelligent blue eyes.
``The German infantry is considerably inferior to what it was in 1914,'' he spoke unhurriedly. ``They run behind the tanks, but if there are no tanks they take up defense and stay where they are. They won't take on a bayonet attack, they're scared. The Finns were better fighters. They're nervous wrecks, that's what the German soldiers have become. You can see it from their letters home, from their diaries, and when you're speaking with the prisoners too. It makes you sick.. They cry, shiver and grovel. No, they're not the soldiers they were in the last war, not by a long shot!''
The General told us some interesting episodes, and then tea was served by the cook Anatoly Nedzelsky.
``Why don't you treat the guests to some of your jam?" the General asked him.
The tall stalwart, with the white cook's cap pushed back at a reckless angle, flew to do the General's bidding and was back in a flash with a pot of jam.
``We made it ourselves,'' he said proudly. ``There is a lot of cranberries in the forest, we picked them in our spare time, and now we've plenty of fresh jam.''
The cook, like his General, was a practical sort, and his jam was really excellent. In the course of conversation we learnt about Nedzelsky's other qualities as well. The other day the General and a group of officers were at the frontline positions, and Nedzelsky, who had stayed behind at staff headquarters, decided to bring them some hot dinner when the hour for it 52 arrived. He harnessed a horse into a two-wheeled cart and set off. A German shell exploded in the middle of the road and killed the horse, but this misfortune did not daunt the young brave. Filling a pail and a thermos flask with the hot soup, he crawled along under fierce enemy fire and safely delivered the food to his hungry General and his officers.
When the fighting got hot, Nedzelsky also joined in, running to the trenches with his rifle and some hand grenades, and leaving the staff scribe to watch the dinner and see to it that the steaks did not get burnt. In such emergencies the General's dinner was not as good as usual, but his cook's patriotic impulse deserved respect, and respected it was. Once, at the risk of his life, Nedzelsky carried a wounded lieutenant to safety from the field of battle, and he will certainly perform more feats before the war is over. Anatoly Nedzelsky---the cook and the soldier---thus lived a double life. From the trenches he'd rush back to his kitchen and, more likely than not, would find that the soup had boiled away and the meat had burnt to the blackness of anthracite. Or again, he would be making soup, and suddenly through the thunder of explosions he'd hear a mighty, rolling Russian ``Hurrah!" and then in his distress that he wasn't taking part in the attack where he belonged heart and soul, he'd absently pour sugar instead of salt into the pot, and grind almonds instead of pepper. That's how I imagine it. in any case. But, after all, it's a private matter concerning the General and his cook only, and they know best, of course.
1941
__ALPHA_LVL2__ RED ARMY MENGeneral Kozlov said goodbye to us and went off to one of his units in order to watch the offensive on the spot. We wished him luck, but even without our wishes it seemed pretty certain that luck would not turn against this peasant-general, a prudent, experienced man who had the shrewdness of a peasant and the doggedness of a soldier.
I came out of the dugout. Our preparatory bombardment was to start in fifteen minutes. I was introduced to Second Lt. Naumov who had just come from the frontline. He'd had to crawl under enemy fire for half a kilometre or so, and his sleeves, chest and knees were stained with the bright green of crushed grass. He had brushed off the road dust, however, and 53 stood before me---a calm, smiling young officer with a smart military bearing. He was 27 years old, and until two years ago he was a schoolteacher. He's been in the fighting from the very first days of war. His face was round, the cheeks covered with a young, golden fuzz, his grey eyes were kind, and his eyebrows had become faded in the sun. A sweet, shy smile was on his lips all the time. I found myself thinking that this young, modest teacher must have been very popular with his pupils, and that probably he was now as popular with the men to whom he explained their war tasks with the same thoroughness and patience with which he once explained arithmetic problems to his pupils. I noticed with astonishment that there was plenty of grey in his cropped fair hair where it showed under his helmet. I asked him if the war was responsible for this premature grey, and he replied with a smile that he was already grey when he joined up and that no shocks could affect the colour of his hair now.
We sat down on the earthen bank of the dugout for a chat, but the conversation flagged. My interlocutor did not like to talk about himself, and he only livened up when I asked him about his comrades. He spoke with admiration of his friend Lt. Anashkin who was killed in recent battle. Every now and again he broke off his story to listen to our guns and the bursts of German shells somewhere behind the territory of the staff. When I tried to bring the conversation round to himself, he grimaced and said reluctantly:
``Actually, there's nothing to tell. Our antitank battery is doing a good job. We've crippled a lot of German tanks. I do what everybody does, but Anashkin---that was really something! Near the village of Luchki we went into attack in the middle of the night, and at daybreak we discovered that we had five German tanks against us. Four were running about the field, and the fifth had no more fuel and stood still. We opened fire and got all five. The Germans were firing their mortar guns, and we just could not get at their weapon emplacements. Our infantry dropped flat, and then Anashkin and Shkalev, our scout, crept to one of the German tanks and climbed in. Anashkin took a look round and saw the German mortar battery. The gun on the tank was in order, a 76mm gun it was, and there were enough shells. He trained this German gun on the Germans, smashed their mortar battery, and then started on their infantry. Anashkin was killed together with the whole crew when they were moving their gun to a new firing position.''
54Naumov's grey eyes darkened, and his lips twitched slightly. The second time I saw his face change was when I thoughtlessly asked him if he often got letters from home. Once again his eyes darkened, and his lips twitched.
``I wrote my wife six letters in the last three weeks, and never got an answer,'' he said and, smiling shyly, asked: ``When you're back in Moscow would you please get in touch with my wife and tell her that I'm all right and also give her my new address? You see, our unit has changed its postal number, so maybe that's why I haven't been getting her letters.''
I gladly agreed to carry out his request. Soon our conversation was cut short because our preparatory bombardment had begun. The earth shook from the barrage, and the single shots and salvoes merged into a deafening, continuous roar. The Germans intensified their return fire, and the bursts of their heavy shells sounded nearer and nearer. We went down into the dugout, but came up again in a matter of minutes. The sappers, I was amazed to see, had not suspended work on the dugout they were building. One of them, a middle-aged man with ginger whiskers that stuck out like a tomcat's, was matterof-factly examining the huge pine that had just been felled, rapping the trunk with his axe, while the others were busy with their shovels and picks and the heap of bright yellow clay on which they threw the earth they dug up grew into a regular mountain right before our eyes.
One of the officers said to me, indicating with a nod a soldier who lay on the grass not far away: ``Would you like to have a talk with one of our best scouts? He's been behind enemy lines, he only came back this morning and brought some very important information.''
I said I'd be delighted, and the officer yelled in order to be heard above the roar of the cannonade: ``Comrade Belov!''
The man sprang to his feet in a quick, smooth movement, and came towards us, pulling his tunic straight as he walked.
Suddenly there was silence. The officer glanced at his watch, sighed and said: ``Our men have gone into attack now.''
There was something feline in Belov's gliding walk. I noticed that not a twig cracked under his feet, and yet the ground was cluttered with pine branches and twigs. He seemed to be walking on sand for all the noise his footfall made. It was much later when I learnt that he hailed from one of the villages near Murom---a country of impenetrable forests---that I understood how he got the hunter's knack of walking on soft, noiseless feet not to scare off game.
55The same thing happened as in the conversation I had with Second Lt. Naumov. This man, too, was reluctant to talk about himself, yet eagerly praised his comrades. Modesty, I discovered, is an essential quality of all heroes, fearlessly fighting for their Motherland.
Belov studied me closely with his sharp brown eyes for quite a long moment.
``It's the first time I'm seeing a writer in the flesh,'' he said with a grin. ``I''ve read your books, I've seen portraits of different writers, but I've never seen a live writer before.''
As curiously I studied this exceptionally brave and resourceful man who had been behind enemy lines sixteen times and who risked his life every day. He was also the first scout I had ever met.
He was slightly round-shouldered and had long arms. He smiled rarely, but when he did his whole face lit up like a child's, and one could see his white teeth, set fairly wide apart. His chocolate-coloured eyes were perpetually screwed up. Like a night bird he seemed to fear daylight and screened his eyes with his thick eyelashes. I had a feeling he could see perfectly in the dark. I found myself staring at the palms of his hands: they were completely covered with fresh and healed abrasions. I guessed that he got his hands skinned because he so often had to crawl on the ground. His shirt and trousers were stained with green, but his natural camouflage was so good that if he were to lie prone on autumn faded green grass you would not see him five feet away. He took his time telling his story, and as he talked he kept biting at a blade of grass with his strong teeth.
``I was a machine-gunner at first. Our platoon was cut off by the Germans. They were everywhere, wherever we tried to go. A friend of mine, another gunner, offered to go and scout. I went with him. We crawled to the motor road and lay low near a bridge. We lay there for a long time. We counted the German lorries that passed us, and wrote down what cargo they carried. Then a passenger car came along and stopped near the bridge. A German officer climbed out, a tall chap in a tall cap. He got the field telephone, climbed under his car, and lay there talking into the phone. He had two soldiers keeping watch, and there was the driver at the wheel of the car. My friend---a devil of a fellow---winked at me and got out a hand grenade. I did the same. We rose on our elbows and both threw at the same time. We killed all the four Germans and wrecked the car. We rushed to the dead men, pulled the map 56 case off the officer's shoulder, took out a map with some sort of signs on it, collected some of their weapons, and just then we heard a motorbike. We dropped into the ditch again. The moment the German on that motorbike slowed down near the wrecked car we threw a third grenade. It killed the German, the motorbike turned over twice and the engine was silenced. I ran to the motorbike---it was as good as new. My friend was a heroic fellow but he didn't know how to drive a motorbike. I didn't either, but it was a pity leaving it there. So we wheeled it along,'' Belov grinned at the memory. ``My arms were all numb as I wheeled that damned thing through the forest, but we brought it to our people safely anyway. We broke out of encirclement the next day, and took the motorbike along. Our signaller rides it now, and does he send the dust flying! I thought scouting was great fun, and so I asked my company commander to transfer me to the scouts. I've been over to visit the Germans lots of times. Sometimes you walk, sometimes you crawl on your belly, and there are also times when you hug the ground and lie there without stirring for several hours running. It's all in the day's work for us. We mostly go out in the night to try and nose out where the Germans have their ammunition stores, radio stations, airfields, and other such stuff.''
I asked him to tell me about his last visit to the Germans.
``There's nothing interesting to tell, Comrade writer,'' he said. ``A whole platoon of us went the day before yesterday. We crawled over some German trenches, and quietly knifed one German so he couldn't raise an alarm. After that we walked for a long time through the forest. Our orders were to blow up a bridge which the Germans had just built. That was about forty kilometres into enemy country. We had some other things to find out besides. We covered about eighteen kilometres that night, and then my platoon commander sent me back with a message. I went along a narrow path, and suddenly I saw the fresh imprints of a horse's hooves. I took a close look and saw that they were German horseshoes, not ours. Next I saw footprints: four men must have walked behind that horse. One of them had a limp in his right leg. The prints were recent. I caught up with the Germans, followed them for a long time, and then made a detour around them and continued on my own way. I could have shot them all, but I had no right to get into a fight, I had that envelope on me and couldn't risk losing that. I waited for nightfall quite near the German trenches, and was over on our side before morning. That's all.''
57He fell silent. With his eyes wrinkled up against the light he sat deep in thought, twirling a dry blade of grass in his fingers, and then, speaking as though in answer to his own thoughts, said:
``What I think, Comrade writer, is that we'll beat the Germans. It takes a lot to make our people angry, they're not really angry yet, but once they get properly angry, it'll be all up with the Germans. We'll squash them, that's for sure.''
As we walked to the car, we caught up with a wounded soldier. He was shuffling to the ambulance, swaying drunkenly every few steps. His head was bandaged, but the blood seeped through the dressing. There were trickles of dried blood on the lapels and skirts of his greatcoat, and even o