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Примечания [1] Слуцкий Б. Записки о войне. Стихотворения и баллады.
СПб., 2000. С. 174. |
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Сенявская Елена Спартаковна — доктор исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Института российской истории РАН, профессор кафедры истории России новейшего времени Российского государственного гуманитарного университета, лауреат Государственной премии РФ, действительный член Академии военных наук
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At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, after liberating Soviet territory occupied by the Germans and their satellites and pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army crossed the state border of the USSR. From that moment began its victorious advance through the countries of Europe—both those that had languished under fascist occupation for six years and those that had fought in the war as allies of the Third Reich—and through the territory of Hitler's Germany itself. In the course of this westward advance and the inevitable variety of contacts with the local population, Soviet servicemen, many of whom had never before been outside their own country, acquired many new and often contradictory impressions of representatives of other peoples and cultures. From these impressions, ethnopsychological stereotypes of Europeans later took shape. Among them, the image of European women occupied an especially important place. Mentions, and sometimes detailed accounts, appear in letters and diaries and on the pages of many veterans' memoirs, where lyrical and cynical judgments and tones often alternate.
The first European country entered by the Red Army, in August 1944, was Romania. In the front-line poet Boris Slutsky's Notes on the War we find very frank lines: “Suddenly Constanța opens before us, almost pushed into the sea. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and of ‘after the war.’ Restaurants. Baths. Beds with clean linen. Shops with reptilian salesmen. And women—smartly dressed city women, the girls of Europe—the first tribute taken by us from the defeated…” [1] He goes on to describe his first impressions of “abroad”: “European barbershops, where they lather with their fingers and do not wash the brushes; the absence of bathhouses; washing from a basin ‘where first the dirt from the hands remains and then they wash the face’; featherbeds instead of blankets—from the disgust provoked by everyday life, generalizations were made immediately… In Constanța we first encountered brothels… The first enthusiasm of our men at the fact that free love existed soon passed. It was not only fear of infection and high prices, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person… Many boasted of stories such as this: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant's office that our officer failed to pay his wife the agreed fifteen hundred lei. Everyone had a clear feeling: ‘That could never happen with us’… Our soldiers will probably remember Romania as a country of syphilitics…” [2] Slutsky concludes that it was precisely in Romania, this European backwater, that “our soldier most strongly felt his superiority over Europe.” [3]
Another Soviet officer, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Fyodor Smolnikov, recorded his impressions of Bucharest in his diary on September 17, 1944: “The Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see the idle public enjoying itself; they have nothing to do, they are waiting. They look at me as if I were a curiosity. ‘A Russian officer!!!’ I am dressed very modestly, more than modestly. Never mind. We shall be in Budapest anyway. That is as certain as the fact that I am in Bucharest. A first-class restaurant. The public is dressed to the nines; the most beautiful Romanian women stare provocatively {here and below, emphasis by the author of the article}. We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The capital street is seething. There is no music; the public waits. A capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising…” [4]
In Hungary the Soviet army encountered not only armed resistance but also treacherous attacks from behind by civilians, when “drunken men and stragglers traveling alone were killed on farms” and drowned in silage pits. Yet “the women, not as depraved as the Romanian women, yielded with shameful ease… A little love, a little debauchery, but most of all, of course, fear helped.” [5] Quoting one Hungarian lawyer—“It is very good that the Russians love children so much. It is very bad that they love women so much”—Slutsky comments: “He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians; that alongside the dark fear that spread the knees of matrons and mothers of families there was the tenderness of girls and the desperate affection of soldiers' wives who gave themselves to the killers of their husbands.” [6]
Grigory Chukhrai described an episode in Hungary in his memoirs. His unit was quartered in a small town. During a meal, the owners of the house where he and his men were staying “relaxed under the influence of Russian vodka and admitted that they were hiding their daughter in the attic.” The Soviet officers were indignant: “Who do you take us for? We are not fascists!” “The hosts became ashamed, and soon a thin girl named Marika appeared at the table and eagerly began to eat. Then, once she had relaxed, she started flirting and even asking us questions… By the end of dinner everyone was in a friendly mood and drank to ‘barátság’ (friendship). Marika took that toast far too literally. When we went to bed she appeared in my room wearing only a nightshirt. As a Soviet officer I immediately realized: a provocation was being prepared. ‘They expect me to be tempted by Marika's charms and then they will raise a scandal. But I will not fall for the provocation,’ I thought. Besides, Marika's charms did not tempt me—I showed her the door.
“The next morning the hostess banged the dishes as she put food on the table. ‘She is nervous. The provocation failed!’ I thought. I shared this thought with our Hungarian interpreter. He burst out laughing.
“‘It was no provocation! They offered you a sign of friendship, and you rejected it. Now they do not regard you as a man in this house. You have to move to another billet!’
“‘Then why did they hide their daughter in the attic?’
“‘They were afraid of violence. Among us it is customary that, before marrying, a girl may, with her parents' approval, try intimacy with several men. We say: you do not buy a cat in a tied sack…’” [7]
Young, physically healthy men naturally felt drawn to women. But the looseness of European morals corrupted some Soviet soldiers while persuading others, on the contrary, that relations should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin recorded his impressions after visiting—out of curiosity—a brothel in Budapest, where his unit was stationed for a time after the end of the war: “…After I left I felt a disgusting, shameful sense of lies and falseness; I could not get out of my head the picture of the woman's obvious, open pretense… Interestingly, this unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel remained not only with me, a youngster raised on principles such as ‘do not give a kiss without love,’ but with most of our soldiers with whom I happened to speak… Around the same days I spoke with a pretty Hungarian woman (she somehow knew Russian). When she asked whether I liked Budapest, I answered that I did, except that the brothels disturbed me. ‘But why?’ the girl asked. Because it is unnatural, savage, I explained: a woman takes money and immediately afterward begins to ‘love’! The girl thought for a while, nodded in agreement and said: ‘You are right: taking the money in advance is ugly’…” [8]
Poland left different impressions. According to the poet David Samoilov, “…in Poland they kept us under strict discipline. It was difficult to slip away from our quarters. And mischief was severely punished.” [9] He described a country in which the beauty of Polish women was almost the only positive impression: “I cannot say that we greatly liked Poland,” he wrote. “At that time I found nothing noble or chivalrous in it. On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois and provincial—both ideas and interests. And in eastern Poland they looked at us warily and half-hostilely, trying to squeeze whatever they could out of the liberators. The women, however, were consolingly beautiful and coquettish; they captivated us with their manners and cooing speech, in which everything suddenly became understandable, and they themselves were sometimes captivated by rough masculine strength or a soldier's uniform. And their pale, emaciated former admirers, grinding their teeth, withdrew into the shadows for the time being…” [10]
Not every assessment of Polish women was so romantic. On October 22, 1944, Junior Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand wrote in his diary: “In the distance I could make out the town I had left behind, with the Polish name [Władów], with beautiful Polish women, proud to the point of disgust… I had been told about Polish women: they lured our soldiers and officers into their embraces, and when it came to bed they cut off genitals with a razor, strangled men by the throat with their hands, scratched out their eyes. Mad, wild, hideous females! One has to be careful with them and not be carried away by their beauty. And the Polish women are beautiful, the scoundrels.” [11] Yet other moods appear in his notes as well. On October 24 he recorded this encounter: “Today my companions on the way to one of the villages were beautiful Polish girls. They complained that there were no men in Poland. They too called me ‘pan,’ but remained untouchable. I gently patted one of them on the shoulder in response to her remark about men and comforted her with the thought that the road to Russia was open to her—there were plenty of men there. She hurried to step aside and answered that she would find men here as well. We said goodbye with a handshake. So we reached no agreement, but they were fine girls, though Polish.” [12] A month later, on November 22, describing the first large Polish town he had encountered, Mińsk Mazowiecki, he devoted special attention to its women among observations about the architecture and the astonishing number of bicycles: “A noisy idle crowd; the women, every one of them, in special white hats apparently worn against the wind, which make them look like magpies and surprise by their novelty… Painted lips, penciled eyebrows, affectation, excessive delicacy. How unlike natural human life this is. It seems that people themselves live and move only so that others may look at them, and that they will all disappear when the last spectator leaves the town…” [13]
Not only Polish townswomen but village women made a strong, though contradictory, impression. “The love of life among Poles who had survived the horrors of war and German occupation was astonishing,” recalled Alexander Rodin. “Sunday in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant Polish women in silk dresses and stockings, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, rake manure barefoot and work tirelessly around the farm. Older women also look fresh and young. Though some have dark rings around their eyes…” [14] He then quotes his diary entry of November 5, 1944: “Sunday; the residents are all dressed up. They are gathering to visit one another. Men in felt hats, ties, sweaters. Women in silk dresses and bright, unworn stockings. Rosy-cheeked girls—‘panienki.’ Beautifully curled blond hairstyles… The soldiers in the corner of the cottage are also animated. But anyone sensitive will notice that it is a painful liveliness. Everyone laughs too loudly to show that it means nothing to them, does not touch them in the least, does not make them envious at all. What, are we worse than they are? Damn it, what happiness peaceful life is! I never really saw it as a civilian!” [15] His fellow soldier, Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov, wrote the same day: “Today is a holiday; the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one cottage and sit in pairs. It somehow makes you feel uneasy. Could I not have sat like that too?…” [16]
Much harsher in her judgment of “European morals,” reminiscent of “a feast during the plague,” was servicewoman Galina Yartseva. On February 24, 1945, she wrote from the front to a friend: “…If it were possible, one could send wonderful parcels of their trophy belongings. There are some things. They would be useful to our people without shoes and clothes. What cities I have seen, what men and women. And looking at them, such anger, such hatred takes hold of you! They walk around, love, live, while you go and liberate them. They laugh at Russians—‘Schwein!’ Yes, yes! Scum… I love no one but the USSR, but the peoples who live with us. I believe in no friendship with Poles or other Lithuanians…” [17]
In Austria, which Soviet troops entered in the spring of 1945, they encountered “wholesale capitulation”: “Entire villages were headed by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands when they met a man in Red Army uniform.” [18] It was here, according to Slutsky, that the soldiers “finally got at the fair-haired women.” At the same time, “Austrian women did not prove excessively resistant. The overwhelming majority of peasant girls married after having had sexual experience. Soldiers on leave felt completely at ease. In Vienna our guide, a bank employee, was surprised by the Russians' insistence and impatience. He believed that gallantry was enough to obtain from a Viennese woman whatever one wanted.” [19] In other words, in the author's interpretation, fear was not the only factor; certain features of national mentality and traditional behavior were also involved.
And finally Germany. The women of the enemy—the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of those who from 1941 to 1944 had abused civilians in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did Soviet servicemen see them? Vladimir Bogomolov's diary describes German women moving among crowds of refugees: “Women—old and young—in hats, in scarves wound like turbans or simply draped like those of our peasant women, in smart coats with fur collars and in worn, strangely cut clothing. Many women wear dark glasses so as not to squint in the bright May sun and thereby protect their faces from wrinkles…” [20] Lev Kopelev recalled meeting evacuated Berlin women in Allenstein: “On the pavement, two women. Elaborate hats, one even with a veil. Good-quality coats, and they themselves smooth and well cared for.” [21] He reproduced soldiers' comments: “hens,” “turkeys,” “wouldn't mind one so smooth…”
How did German women behave on meeting Soviet troops? A report of April 30, 1945 by Shikin, deputy head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, to G. F. Alexandrov of the Central Committee of the VKP(b), concerning the attitude of Berlin's civilian population toward Red Army personnel, stated: “As soon as our units occupy one or another district of the city, residents gradually begin to come out into the streets; almost all of them wear white armbands. On meeting our servicemen many women raise their hands, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they become convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all what fascist propaganda depicted them to be, this fear quickly passes; more and more of the population comes into the streets and offers its services, trying in every possible way to emphasize its loyal attitude toward the Red Army.” [22]
What impressed the victors most, according to these testimonies, was the submissiveness and calculation of some German women. Mortarman N. A. Orlov later recalled an incident that shocked him: “No one in the mortar battalion killed German civilians. Our counterintelligence officer was a ‘Germanophile.’ If such a thing had happened, the punitive organs would have reacted quickly. As for violence against German women, it seems to me that some people describing it ‘lay the colors on a little too thick.’ I remember an example of another kind. We entered some German town and quartered ourselves in houses. A ‘Frau,’ about forty-five, appears and asks for ‘Herr Kommandant.’ They took her to Marchenko. She said she was responsible for the quarter and had assembled twenty German women for the sexual (!!!) servicing of Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood German, and I translated what the woman said for the political officer Dolgoborodov standing beside me. Our officers reacted angrily and with profanity. The German woman was driven out, together with her ready-to-serve ‘detachment.’ German submissiveness generally astonished us. We expected partisan warfare and sabotage from the Germans. But for this nation order—‘Ordnung’—is above all. If you are the victor, they are on their hind legs before you, consciously and not under compulsion. That is the psychology…” [23]
David Samoilov gives a similar episode in his wartime notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by an enormous moustached German woman about fifty years old—Frau Friedrich. She announced that she was a representative of the civilian population and asked that the remaining residents be registered. We answered that this could be done as soon as a commandant's office appeared.
“‘That is impossible,’ Frau Friedrich said. ‘There are women and children here. They must be registered.’
“The civilian population confirmed her words with cries and tears.
“Not knowing what to do, I suggested that they occupy the cellar of the house in which we were quartered. Reassured, they went down into the cellar and began settling there while waiting for the authorities.
“‘Herr Commissar,’ Frau Friedrich said to me amiably (I wore a leather jacket), ‘we understand that soldiers have little needs. They are prepared,’ she continued, ‘to set aside several younger women for them for…’
“I did not continue my conversation with Frau Friedrich.” [24]
After speaking with women in Berlin, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary on May 2, 1945: “We enter one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock and ask them to open. We can hear whispering in the corridor, muffled, agitated talk. At last the door opens. Women of indeterminate age, crowded into a tight group, bow fearfully, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us; they have been told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, will rape and kill them… Fear and hatred are on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like being defeated—their behavior is so attentive, their smiles so ingratiating and their words so sweet. These days stories circulate about a soldier of ours entering a German apartment and asking for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lying down on the sofa and taking off her tights.” [25]
“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against sleeping with them.” [26] Such an opinion circulated among Soviet troops and was reinforced not only by many examples that soldiers believed they had witnessed, but also by unpleasant consequences soon observed by military doctors.
A directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front, No. 00343/Sh of April 15, 1945, stated: “During the period in which the troops have been on enemy territory, cases of venereal disease among servicemen have increased sharply. Study of the causes shows that venereal diseases are widespread among Germans. Before retreating, and now as well in territory occupied by us, the Germans have embarked upon the artificial infection of German women with syphilis and gonorrhea in order to create large centers for spreading venereal diseases among Red Army servicemen.” [27]
On April 26, 1945, the Military Council of the 47th Army reported that “…in March the number of venereal diseases among servicemen increased fourfold in comparison with February of this year… The female population of Germany in the districts examined is affected by 8–15 percent. There are cases in which the enemy deliberately leaves German women suffering from venereal diseases in order to infect servicemen.” [28]
To implement Resolution No. 056 of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front of April 18, 1945 on preventing venereal diseases, the 33rd Army issued a leaflet:
“Comrade servicemen!
“You are being tempted by German women whose husbands visited every brothel in Europe, became infected themselves and infected their German women.
“Before you are also those German women whom the enemy deliberately left behind to spread venereal diseases and thereby put Red Army soldiers out of action.
“You must understand that our victory over the enemy is near and that soon you will have the opportunity to return to your families.
“How will a man who brings home an infectious disease look his loved ones in the eye?
“Can we, warriors of the heroic Red Army, be a source of infectious diseases in our country? NO! For the moral image of a Red Army soldier must be as pure as the image of his Motherland and family!” [29]
Practical-minded Germans, the article continues, were most concerned with food supplies, for which some were allegedly prepared to do virtually anything. Thus a certain Doctor of Medicine Kalisturkh, discussing the Red Army's attitude toward the German population with colleagues, said: “One cannot conceal that I personally saw improper behavior by individual Russian soldiers toward our women, but I said that the war was to blame, and most importantly that our soldiers and especially the SS behaved much worse toward Russian women.” Without transition he added: “I was very worried about the food question…” [30]
Even Lev Kopelev's memoirs, which angrily describe violence and looting by Soviet servicemen in East Prussia, include lines reflecting another side of “relations” with the local population: “They told stories about German submissiveness, servility and ingratiation: look at them, for a loaf of bread they sell their wives and daughters.” [31] The disgusted tone in which Kopelev conveys these “stories” implies that he regarded them skeptically. The author of the article, however, says they are corroborated by many sources.
Vladimir Gelfand described in his diary his courtship of a German girl (the entry was made half a year after the end of the war, on October 26, 1945, but is still characteristic): “I wanted to enjoy pretty Margot's caresses to the full—kisses and embraces alone were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare demand or insist. The girl's mother remained pleased with me. Of course! On the altar of trust and favor from her relatives I had offered sweets and butter, sausage and expensive German cigarettes. Half of those products would have been enough to give one every basis and right to do anything one liked with the daughter in front of her mother, and the mother would say nothing against it. For food today is dearer even than life, and even than that of such a young and sweet sensual creature as the tender beauty Margot.” [32]
The Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who was in Europe with George Patton's Third U.S. Army in 1944–45, left interesting diary notes. In Berlin in May 1945, only a few days after the end of the assault, he wrote: “I made the rounds of the night cabarets, starting with the Femina near Potsdamer Platz. It was a warm, humid evening. The air smelled of sewage and decomposing corpses. The façade of the Femina was covered with futuristic pictures of nudes and notices in four languages. The dance hall and restaurant were filled with Russian, British and American officers accompanied by women (or hunting for them). A bottle of wine cost 25 dollars, a hamburger of horse meat and potatoes 10 dollars, and a packet of American cigarettes an astonishing 20 dollars. The cheeks of the Berlin women were rouged and their lips painted as though Hitler had won the war. Many women wore silk stockings. The mistress of ceremonies opened the show in German, Russian, English and French. This prompted a quip from a Russian artillery captain sitting beside me. He leaned toward me and said in decent English: ‘Such a rapid transition from the national to the international! RAF bombs are excellent professors, are they not?’” [33]
The overall image of European women formed among Soviet servicemen, the author argues, was of women who were well cared for and smartly dressed (compared with compatriots exhausted by war in the half-starved Soviet rear, women in liberated territories, and front-line women in washed-out tunics), accessible, self-interested, promiscuous or fearfully submissive. Yugoslav and Bulgarian women were seen as exceptions. Severe, ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades-in-arms and considered untouchable. Given the strict morals of the Yugoslav army, “partisan girls probably looked upon PPZh [the colloquial abbreviation for ‘field wives’] as creatures of a special, disreputable kind.” [34] Slutsky recalled Bulgarian women this way: “…After Ukrainian good nature, after Romanian debauchery, the stern inaccessibility of Bulgarian women astonished our men. Almost no one boasted of conquests. It was the only country where officers out for recreation were very often accompanied by men and almost never by women. Later the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians planned to return to Bulgaria for brides—the only ones in the world who had remained pure and untouched.” [35]
Czech women who joyfully welcomed Soviet liberators left a pleasant impression. Embarrassed tank crewmen on combat vehicles coated in oil and dust and decorated with wreaths and flowers said among themselves: “…A tank is no bride, damn it, to be decorated. But their girls just keep putting things on. Good people. I have not seen such warm-hearted people for a long time…” The friendliness and hospitality of the Czechs seemed sincere. “…If it were possible, I would kiss every soldier and officer of the Red Army for liberating my Prague,” a female Prague tram worker said amid general approving laughter. [36] Boris Polevoy thus described the atmosphere in the liberated Czech capital and the mood of residents on May 11, 1945.
But in the other countries through which the victorious army passed, the female population, in Slutsky's account, did not inspire respect. “In Europe women surrendered, betrayed first of all…” he wrote. “I was always shocked, confused, disoriented by the ease, the shameful ease, of love affairs. Respectable women, certainly not mercenary, resembled prostitutes in their hasty availability, their desire to avoid intermediate stages, their lack of interest in the motives pushing a man toward intimacy with them. Like people who had learned only three obscene words from the entire lexicon of love poetry, they reduced the whole matter to a few bodily movements, provoking hurt and contempt among even the most inexperienced of our officers… The restraining motives were not ethics at all, but fear of infection, fear of publicity, fear of pregnancy.” [37] He added that under conditions of conquest “general corruption covered and concealed specifically female corruption, made it invisible and unashamed.” [38]
Among the motives that promoted the spread of “international love,” despite prohibitions and strict orders by the Soviet command, the author also names women's curiosity toward “exotic” lovers and the Russians' unusual generosity toward those they liked, which compared favorably with what was seen as the stinginess of European men.
Junior Lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin ended the war in Denmark, on the island of Bornholm. In an interview he said that Russian men and European women were mutually interested in one another: “We had not seen women, and we needed to… And when we came to Denmark… it was free, please. They wanted to check, test, try a Russian man—what it was, how it was—and apparently it worked out better than with the Danes. Why? We were unselfish and kind… I gave a box of sweets as big as half a table, I gave a hundred roses to a woman I did not know… for her birthday…” [39]
Few, however, thought about serious relationships or marriage, because the Soviet leadership had made its position clear. A resolution of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front of April 12, 1945 stated: “1. Explain to all officers and all personnel of the front's troops that marriage with foreign women is illegal and categorically prohibited. 2. Report immediately through the chain of command all cases of servicemen entering into marriage with foreign women, as well as connections of our people with hostile elements of foreign states, so that those responsible may be held accountable for loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet laws.” [40] A directive of the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front dated April 14, 1945 stated: “According to the head of the Main Personnel Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense, the Center continues to receive applications from officers of the active army requesting authorization for marriages with women citizens of foreign states (Polish, Bulgarian, Czech women, etc.). Such facts should be regarded as a dulling of vigilance and patriotic feelings. Therefore, in political and educational work, attention must be paid to a thorough explanation of the inadmissibility of such acts by Red Army officers. Explain to all officers who fail to understand the lack of prospects for such marriages the inadvisability of marrying foreign women, up to direct prohibition, and permit not a single case.” [41]
Nor did the women deceive themselves about their suitors' intentions. “At the beginning of 1945 even the most foolish Hungarian peasant girls did not believe our promises. European women already knew that we were forbidden to marry foreigners and suspected that there was a similar order about appearing together in restaurants, cinemas, etc. This did not prevent them from loving our womanizers, but it gave that love a purely ‘ouaidum’ [physical] character,” Slutsky wrote. [42]
Overall, the author concludes, the image of European women that formed among Red Army soldiers in 1944–45, with rare exceptions, was very far from the suffering chained female figure looking hopefully from the Soviet poster “Europe Will Be Free!”
Elena Spartakovna Senyavskaya — Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor in the Department of Contemporary Russian History at the Russian State University for the Humanities, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, and full member of the Academy of Military Sciences.
