Front-line writers: about time and about yourself

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This year we are celebrating the 71st anniversary of the Great Victory. We not only remember the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. We still have to defend ourselves with all our might against attacks on our military memory. And there have been a lot of these attacks lately. Let us recall, for example, the "tricks" of the Polish Foreign Minister, from whom only Ukrainians liberated Auschwitz, and Russia is the main culprit in the outbreak of World War II.

Or recall today's Ukraine, where the Nazis from the OUN-UPA became heroes of the war, and the Victory Day holiday for many Ukrainians is no longer such …

This has largely become possible not only thanks to the intrigues of hostile external forces, but also to our Western liberals, like the initiators of the so-called “de-Stalinization” of Russian society, who regularly question our Soviet past. And such a doubt simply could not but lead to the denial of the Great Victory! The West has simply developed this idea of our home-grown anti-Soviets to its logical end and is now brazenly rewriting history, turning it literally upside down.

But, no matter how they try to tarnish history, in our country the memory of the war is considered sacred. Every Russian person of any nationality in our country grows up in an atmosphere of unconditional respect for the great national feat.

Tragedy and greatness, sorrow and joy, pain and memory … All this is Victory. It shines with a bright, inextinguishable star in the horizon of Russian history. Nothing can overshadow her - not years, not events. It is no coincidence that Victory Day is a holiday that not only does not fade over the years, but takes an increasingly important place in our life.

As there was nothing equal to this war in the history of mankind, so in the history of world art there was not so many different kinds of works as about this tragic time. The theme of the war sounded especially strongly in Soviet literature. From the very first days of the grandiose battle, our writers stood in one formation with all the fighting people. More than a thousand writers took part in hostilities on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, defending their native land "with a pen and a machine gun". Out of more than 1000 writers who went to the front, more than 400 did not return from the war, 21 people became Hero of the Soviet Union.

In this article, we will tell you about some of the front-line writers: how they fought in the war, how participation in specific hostilities was reflected in their works.

Here is what the writer M. Sholokhov said about them:

They had one task: if only their word would strike the enemy, if only it would hold our soldier under the elbow, ignite and prevent burning hatred for enemies and love for the Motherland in the hearts of Soviet people.

Time does not diminish interest in this topic, drawing the attention of today's generation to the distant front-line years, to the origins of the feat and courage of the Soviet soldier - hero and liberator. Yes, the word of the writer in the war and about the war can hardly be overestimated. A well-aimed, striking, uplifting word, poem, song, ditty, a vivid heroic image of a soldier or commander - they inspired the soldiers to feats, led to victory. These words are full of patriotic sounding today, they poeticize service to the Motherland, affirm the beauty and greatness of our moral values. That is why we return again and again to the works that made up the golden fund of literature about the Great Patriotic War.

A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by front-line writers who entered mainstream literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, Yuri Bondarev at Stalingrad burned Manstein's tanks. The gunners were also E. Nosov, G. Baklanov; poet Alexander Yashin fought in the marines near Leningrad; poet Sergei Orlov and writer A. Ananiev - tankers, burned in a tank. Writer Nikolai Gribachev was a platoon commander and then a sapper battalion commander. Oles Gonchar fought in the mortar crew; infantrymen were V. Bykov, I. Akulov, V. Kondratyev; mortar - M. Alekseev; a cadet, and then a partisan - K. Vorobyov; signalmen - V. Astafiev and Yu. Goncharov; self-propelled gunner - V. Kurochkin; paratrooper and scout - V. Bogomolov; partisans - D. Gusarov and A. Adamovich …

We present to our readers the front-line writers who brought to us the truth about those harsh years.

ALEXANDER BEK (1902 - 1972)

Participant in the battles near Moscow

When the Great Patriotic War began, putting aside the novel about the life of aircraft designer Berezhkov (this novel was completed after the war), he became a war correspondent. And he spent the first months of the war in the troops that defended Moscow and the environs of Moscow.

At the beginning of 1942, he went to the Panfilov division, which had already risen from the Moscow region borders almost to Staraya Russa. In this division I began to get to know each other, relentless inquiries, endless hours in the role of "conversationalist", as required by the correspondent. Gradually, the image of Panfilov, who died near Moscow, was formed, who knew how to manage, to influence not with a cry, but with his mind, in the past an ordinary soldier who retained soldier's modesty until his death hour.

The tale of the Panfilov heroes

Observation data, personal meetings, notes, and served for writing the story "Volokolamskoe highway". The story of the events of the defense of Moscow was written in 1943-1944. The main character, a Kazakh by nationality, is a real person.

His name is Baurjan Momysh-Uly, a Kazakh by nationality. He, the senior lieutenant, really commanded the Panfilov battalion during the days of the battle near Moscow.

The story "Volokolamskoe Shosse" is a peculiar, but accurate chronicle of bloody defensive battles near Moscow (as he himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why the German army, having reached the walls of our capital, could not take it. And the most important thing is to tell about the Panfilov heroes.

Marginal notes

The victory of the Soviet Union does not give rest to Western liberals in any way. So, in Komsomolskaya Pravda on July 7, 2014, under the general heading "Secrets of the State Archive", an interview was published with the director of this archive, Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergei Mironenko, who, answering the correspondent's questions, shamelessly ridiculed the feat of twenty-eight Panfilov heroes - defenders of the capital, calling it a myth, arguing that "there were no heroically fallen Panfilov heroes." The feat of the Panfilovites, according to Mironenko, is “historical inventions of the Soviet regime”, and these “non-existent idols” should not be worshiped.

On August 3 of the same year, Mironenko's attack on the memory of Panfilov's men continued with renewed vigor. Now in an interview with such a "friendly" Russian radio station as Radio Liberty. In this interview, the head of the State Civil Aviation of the Russian Federation pathetically again called the feat of the Panfilovites a fantasy "invented to please the rulers."

And here the question arises: why in the current, very alarming time, when clouds are gathering over Russia and the threat of a global military confrontation seems very likely, why at this time did Mr. Mironenko need to crush the universal shrine in the souls of our people, a great feat in the name of the Motherland?

They want to convince us by denying the feat of the Panfilov heroes: do not comfort yourself with hope: you are not a great people, the exploits of your fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers are not even a myth, a falsification. In conclusion, one very characteristic phrase of Mr. Mironenko in an interview with Radio Liberty. But it is not about Panfilov's men. The Guardian of the People's Memory discusses one of the most despicable figures in Russian history: General Vlasov.

Vlasov, Mironenko argues, hated Soviet power, believed that collective farms were horror, Stalin was horror. He went his own way.

That is, the feat of the Panfilovites is a falsification, and Vlasov's actions are not a betrayal, but "their own way"?..

Well, everyone has their own heroes and their own path: for some, this is the path of the Panfilovites, who gave their lives for their Motherland at the Dubosekovo junction, for others, the traitor Vlasov, who ended up on the gallows in Lefortovo.

On March 16, 2016 "mister" Mironenko was dismissed from his post.

What is very important and significant: for a writer in the center is a Man at War

Behind the professionally army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics, in which Momysh-Uly is absorbed, for the writer there are moral, universal problems, aggravated to the limit by the circumstances of war, constantly putting a person on the brink between life and death: fear and courage, selflessness and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal.

The main idea that A. Beck puts in this work is: education of the military spirit of soldiers and human behavior in war.

The world wants to know who we are. East and West ask: who are you, a Soviet man? It was to this question that the writer wanted to answer with the story "Volokolamskoe Highway", to show what Motherland means to the Soviet people and to show how they defended their capital, shoulder to shoulder - people of different nationalities.

YURI BONDAREV (BORN IN 1924)

Participant in the battles of Stalingrad

Born in the city of Orsk, Orenburg region, the first years of his life were spent in the South Urals, in Central Asia (his father worked as an investigator, so the family moved to his place of destination). In 1931 they moved to Moscow.

In 1941, together with thousands of his peers, he participated in the construction of defensive fortifications near Smolensk. Then he studied at an infantry school in the city of Aktyubinsk, and then ended up near Stalingrad and became the commander of a mortar crew. In the battles he was wounded, received frostbite and a slight wound in the back. Then he participated in the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kiev, reached Poland and Czechoslovakia.

At the end of the war, he was demobilized from the army and returned to Moscow, entered a driver's course, but was already seriously thinking about higher education and decided to go to college. At first he entered the preparatory department of the Aviation Technological Institute, but soon realized that it entailed something completely different, and entered the Literary Institute. M. Gorky (graduated in 1951). At the Literary Institute, I was lucky: I got into a creative seminar led by Konstantin Paustovsky, who, according to the writer, did a lot for him: he instilled love for the great mystery of art and speech, inspired that the main thing in literature is to say your own.

The novel Hot Snow, published in 1969, tells the story of the heroic defense of Stalingrad. The writer managed to tell so truthfully and documentarily about the battles on the outskirts of Stalingrad, to show what is the strength of the Russian spirit and the Soviet people

Yuri Bondarev never embellishes, does not heroize the war, he shows it exactly as it really was. The events of the novel Hot Snow unfolds near Stalingrad, south of General Paulus's 6th Army, which was blocked by Soviet troops, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies withstood the strike of Field Marshal Manstein's tank divisions in the Volga steppe, who was trying to break through the corridor to Paulus's army and take her out of the environment. The outcome of the battle on the Volga and maybe even the timing of the end of the war itself largely depended on the success or failure of this operation.

The main characters of the story are “little great people”. Major Bulbanyuk, Captain Ermakov, Senior Lieutenant Orlov, Lieutenant Kondratyev, Sergeant Kravchuk, Private Sklyar never utter loud words, never take heroic poses and do not strive to get on the tablets of History. They just do their job - they defend the Motherland. Heroes go through a number of trials, including the main trial - the trial by battle. And it is in battle, on the verge of life and death, that the true essence of each person is revealed.

Why is the novel called that?

The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death contains a high tragedy and evokes a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of "Hot Snow" are dying - the medical instructor of the battery Zoya Elagina, the shy sled Sergunenkov, a member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others are dying … And the war is to blame for all these deaths.

The novel expresses the understanding of death - as a violation of the highest justice and harmony.

Yuri Bondarev wrote many works on military topics, a significant place in his creative biography is occupied by work in the cinema - screenplays have been created based on many of his own works "The battalions are asking for fire", "Hot snow", "Silence", "The Shore", the script of the epic "Liberation "(1970 - 1972). What is the main thread of the writer's works?

Here is what Yuri Bondarev says:

I would like my readers to learn in my books not only about our reality, about the modern world, but also about themselves. This is the main thing when a person recognizes in a book something that is dear to him, what he went through, or what he wants to go through.

I have letters from readers. Young people report: after my books they became military men, officers, they chose this life path for themselves. It is very expensive when a book affects psychology, which means that its characters have entered our life. War is oh-oh-oh, it's not a wheel on the asphalt to roll! But someone still wanted to imitate my heroes. This is very dear to me and has nothing to do with bad feelings of complacency. This is different. So you worked for a reason! It was not for nothing that you fought, fought in completely inhuman conditions, it was not for nothing that you passed through this fire, remained alive … I paid the war with an easy tribute - three wounds. But others paid with their lives! Let us remember this. Is always.

What do we, the modern generation, think?

All in this war, above all, were Soldiers, and each in his own way fulfilled his duty to his homeland, to his people. And the Great Victory, which came in May 1945, became our common cause.

Nevertheless, the capitalists have not learned the lessons of the past, blood is shed again in different parts of the world, and the snow is getting hot again. We must remember the lessons of the past and treat the history of any country with care.

BORIS VASILIEV (1924 - 2013)

On the roads of the Smolensk region

In 1941, after finishing the ninth grade, Boris Vasiliev volunteered for the front as part of the Komsomol fighter battalion and was sent to Smolensk. He was surrounded, left it in October 1941, then there was a camp for displaced persons, from where, at his personal request, he was sent first to a regimental cavalry school, and then to a regimental machine gun school, which he graduated from. He served in the 8th Guards Airborne Regiment of the 3rd Guards Airborne Division. During the combat discharge on March 16, 1943, he fell on a mine-line and was taken to the hospital with a severe concussion. After graduating from the Faculty of Engineering in 1946, he worked as a tester of wheeled and tracked vehicles in the Urals. He retired from the army in 1954 with the rank of engineer-captain. In the report, he named the desire to study literature as the reason for his decision.

The novel "The Dawns Here Are Quiet …" brought fame and popularity to the writer, published in 1969 (magazine "Youth, No. 8). In 1971, the story was directed by Yuri Lyubimov on the stage of the Taganka Theater, and then in 1972 it was filmed by director Stanislav Rostotsky. Why is the story so called and what did the writer want to emphasize with this?

The title of the story is the complete opposite of the events of the story itself. The feat of Sergeant Major Vaskov and five female anti-aircraft gunners rises to a symbol, both heroic and tragic at the same time. The maximum disclosure of a person's capabilities in his business, which is at the same time a national cause, is the meaning of the generalization we draw from the history of a terrible and unequal struggle in which Vaskov, wounded in the hand, won and every one of his girls who died. had to learn the joy of love, motherhood.

Having called the story that way, B. Vasiliev wanted to emphasize that war does not fit in with the surrounding nature, with these beautiful girls, that the meaning of their existence is completely different, not war, and that dawns should only be quiet.

How does a writer characterize his generation?

We became soldiers … I say "we" not because I want to snatch a crumb of your military glory, my acquaintances and unfamiliar peers. You saved me when I rushed about in the Smolensk and Yartsevsky encirclements in the summer of 1941, fought for me, when I wandered around regimental schools, marching companies and formations, gave me the opportunity to study at the armored academy, when Smolensk was not yet liberated … The war … me, a part of my being, a charred sheet of biography. And yet - a special duty for leaving me safe and sound.

Yes, the world must not forget the horrors of war, separation, suffering and death of millions. It would be a crime against the fallen, a crime against the future. Remembering about the war, about the heroism and courage of those who have gone through it on the roads, to fight for peace is the duty of all living on Earth.

ALEXANDER FADEEV (1901 - 1956)

Who was in the war? And how did the idea of writing the novel "Young Guard" come about?

During the Great Patriotic War he worked as a publicist. As a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and the Sovinformburo, he traveled around a number of fronts. On January 14, 1942, he published in Pravda the correspondence “Fiends-destroyers and people-creators”, in which he told about what he saw in the region and the city of Kalinin after the expulsion of the fascist invaders. In the fall of 1943 he went to Krasnodon, liberated from enemies. Subsequently, the material collected there formed the basis for the novel "Young Guard" (1945).

What is the novel about?

The novel is based on the real patriotic deeds of the Krasnodon underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard". The novel glorifies the struggle of the Soviet people against the German fascist invaders. In the images of Oleg Koshevoy, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov and other Young Guard, the writer embodied the bright socialist ideal. He wanted to tell that the liberation struggle was fought not only on the fronts of the war, that those who ended up in the territory occupied by the Nazis continued the struggle underground. This novel is about Komsomol members who, despite their young age, were not afraid to resist the Nazi invaders.

What is the significance of the era in which they lived?

In our present society, people oppressed by American "values" plunged into horoscopes, detective fiction, horror stories, "cultural" vulgarity, sectarianism, enjoy the spectacles of violence, show sex, gay parades, thousands of crowds of nudists, glutton contests and viciously, insultingly mock over the human-loving Soviet past, trumpeting the illusory "freedom of speech" and "independence."

But that was an era in which a high life cause with extraordinary power carried people away, aroused a feeling of excitement, and inspired. All forms of art, literature and media have contributed to this.

This novel is about the events during the war in Ukraine. Why is the current government trying to denigrate the feat of the Young Guard?

In the current dishonorable times in Ukraine, the work and the name of A. Fadeev as the author of this book are trying to be consigned to oblivion, and if the need arises to refer to the events associated with the novel "Young Guard", then he is remembered with an evil loud word. Why? For what? And all because the slanderers and ignoramuses who have thrived in the conditions of "democracy" have no conscience. I just want to shout: “Ukraine! Think about it!"

SERGEY SMIRNOV (1915 - 1976)

Participant of the Great Patriotic War

Volunteer of the fighter battalion, graduated from the school of snipers near Moscow. In 1942 he graduated from the school of anti-aircraft artillery in Ufa, from January 1943 commander of a platoon of the 23rd anti-aircraft artillery division. Then the literary officer of the newspaper of the 57th Army. After the war he worked as editor of the Military Publishing House, remaining in the ranks of the Soviet Army. Dismissed from the army in 1950 with the rank of major.

The radio and television programs conducted by Sergei Smirnov over the course of several years gave rise to a massive patriotic movement to search for unknown heroes. The writer received over a million letters. What was the purpose of this activity?

Here's what the writer says:

The main goal of my search is to comprehend the spiritual, moral experience of the Great Patriotic War, the true facts, documentary episodes that I discovered, sometimes surpass any fiction and legend.

The feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress, as it were, illuminated everything I saw with a new light, revealed to me the strength and breadth of the soul of our man, made me experience with special acuteness the happiness and pride of the consciousness of belonging to a great, noble and selfless people, capable of doing even the impossible.

I managed, as far as the conditions of that time allowed, to tell about the drama of Soviet prisoners of war, much was done to restore the good name of many specific people who were in Nazi captivity.

Before writing the story "Brest Fortress" (1964), the writer did a great job of collecting documentary material, looking for participants in the defense of the fortress, published "Tales of Unknown Heroes" (1963), which were the prologue to the story. What pushed him to this job?

And here is the writer's answer:

While I was looking for the defenders of the Brest Fortress and collecting material about this heroic defense, I had a conversation with one of my comrades, also a writer.

- Why do you need it?! - he chided me - Look for hundreds of people, compare their memories, sift through a lot of facts. You're a writer, not a historian. You already have the main material - sit down and write a story or a novel, not a documentary book.

I admit, the temptation to follow this advice was very strong. The main outline of the events in the Brest Fortress has already become clear, and if I wrote a story or a novel with invented heroes, the sacred right of a writer to fiction would be on my side and I would have, in military terms, “complete freedom of maneuver” and would be spared from the "chains of documentary". Needless to say, the temptation was great, and besides, in our literary environment, it somehow happened that a novel or story is already considered the first grade in itself, and a documentary or essay book - the second or third. Why voluntarily become a third-rate author, if you can step higher by the very definition of the genre.

But when I thought about all this, another thought came to my mind. After all, if I write a novel or story with fictional characters, the reader will not distinguish in this book what actually happened and what was simply invented by the author. And the events of the Brest defense, the courage and heroism of the serf garrison turned out to be such that they surpassed any fiction, and it was in their reality, truthfulness that the special force of the influence of this material lay. In addition, the fate of the heroes of Brest, difficult and sometimes tragic, became much more impressive when the reader knew that they were real people, not invented by the writer, and that many of them now live and live next to him.

But the work of a documentary filmmaker is very difficult, and the path is very difficult and thorny. What prompted him to engage in such a complex research activity?

Sergey Smirnov answers us like this in years:

I remembered a witty comparison of our wonderful writer Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak.

“Suppose the writer has been to the moon,” he once said jokingly.- And suddenly, returning from there, he sat down to write a novel from the lunar life. What for? The reader wants to simply, "documentarily" tell him what the lunar inhabitants are, how they live, what they eat, what they do.

In the heroic history of the Great Patriotic War, due to complex historical reasons, there are still many "white spots" like the defense of the Brest Fortress, about which we knew almost less then than about the Moon. And simply, "documentarily" telling readers about this was and remains, in my opinion, a very important matter.

That is why I didn’t write a "novel from the moonlit life."

THE AFTERWORD

We talked about some of the front-line writers, their works telling about those terrible trials that fell on our country. But most importantly, they showed the strength of the spirit of the Soviet people and the love of ordinary people for the Motherland.

Such books should be read, especially for boys of 14-16 years old … It contains the truth about war, about life and death, and not slogans and fairy tales. Playing computer games, they completely lose touch with reality, do not appreciate what they have. The only question is how to help them start reading these books, how to help them take the first step. Since you just need to start, because these are unique writers, they reveal even such terrible topics in an accessible and exciting way, the reader seems to dive into the plot, becomes an involuntary spectator, an accomplice …

MATERIALS:

Frontline Writers: War As Inspiration …

Front-line writers

Prose about the Great Patriotic War

Prose about the Great Patriotic War

From the memories of the war veterans

Sergey Smirnov. Book: Stories about unknown heroes.