January 21, 2014

In 2005 the book Deutschland Tagebuch 1945–1946 (“German Diaries 1945–1946”) was published in Berlin. The book could hardly go unnoticed. First, as German literary scholars wrote, it was the first memoir by a Soviet soldier to be printed in reunified Germany. Second, the print run of the German Diaries was quite unprecedented—50,000 copies. The author of the diaries was our fellow countryman, Lieutenant Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand, a mortar-platoon commander. In fact, he kept a diary from June 22, 1941 until demobilization, but Europeans were naturally most interested in the years 1945–46. Later Gelfand's diaries, together with his letters, were reissued in Germany and twice published by the Swedish publishing house Ersatz. Today, as the author's son Vitaly Vladimirovich Gelfand told UC, Oleg Budnitsky, professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia, is preparing the Diaries for publication in Russia—in full.

Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand was born on March 1, 1923 in Novoarkhangelsk. As Dr. Elke Scherstjanoi of the Institute for Contemporary German History writes in her article “A Red Army Soldier in Germany,” the family lived very modestly and “belonged to the proletarian Jewish minority that immediately joined the communist movement.” His mother, Nadezhda Vladimirovna Gorodynskaya (1902–1982), had been a member of the RSDLP(b) since 1917 and took part in the Civil War; his father, Natan Solomonovich Gelfand (1894–1974), was a worker. At the end of the 1920s the Gelfands left Novoarkhangelsk, first for Essentuki to stay with Natan's parents, but two years later returned to Ukraine and settled first in Dneprodzerzhinsk and then in Dnepropetrovsk. It was Dnepropetrovsk, as Vladimir Natanovich's recollections show, that he considered his home city, and it was there that he returned after the war. He writes very little about childhood:

“I remember myself in childhood from photographs and from the recollections of relatives. A round, wide-eyed little fellow, I would climb onto raised places and deliver speeches in a confused Russian-Ukrainian patter. People clapped and carried me in their arms.

“A young neighbor, Aunt Fenya, loved me tenderly. She would hug me tightly and ask while kissing me: ‘And where is little Vovochka?’ ‘Which one?’ I would ask in the same tone. ‘The one who is bathing,’ she would say, pointing toward the shaggy Sinyukha River that bent somewhere around the side of the town.

“In the distance, far beyond Novo-Arkhangelsk, where I was born and which I am speaking about, a winged mill stood alone […]. It turned continuously and filled the air with dust from empty sunflower husks. Dust reigned completely in the stifling steppe air, […] from its violent whirl, while inside the mill mountains upon mountains of still-living seeds were piled all the way to the wooden ceiling. More and more cartloads were constantly being brought in.”

After finishing school in Dnepropetrovsk, Vladimir Gelfand entered a workers' preparatory faculty. In 1941 he moved to Essentuki to live with his father's sister. On May 6, 1942 he became a serviceman of the Red Army, trained at an artillery school in the western Caucasus, and went to the front as a sergeant. In mid-July 1942 his unit was encircled near Rostov. With a group of soldiers Vladimir joined a military unit fighting near Stalingrad. Later he was sent to a rifle officers' school and in August 1943, as a junior lieutenant, was transferred to the 248th Rifle Division as commander of a mortar platoon. In autumn 1943 the 248th Rifle Division became part of the Third Ukrainian Front. In 1944 it fought south of the Dnieper, in Transnistria and Bessarabia. In autumn 1944 his unit was in Poland. At the beginning of January 1945 Gelfand, now with the 301st Rifle Division of the First Belorussian Front, took part in offensives on the Pilica River and on the west bank of the Oder. At the end of April the 301st Rifle Division entered Berlin. Thus Gelfand's diaries contain the whole history of the Great Patriotic War—and at the same time the story of one young man's coming of age, enthusiasm and disappointment.

Gelfand was demobilized on September 10, 1946 and returned to Dnepropetrovsk. A year later he entered the university's philology faculty and married Berta Koifman, whom he had known since school and with whom he had corresponded throughout the war. This marriage, in which a son, Alexander, was born, ended, and in 1958 Vladimir Natanovich married for a second time, to Bella Shulman. Their sons were Gennady, born in 1959, and Vitaly, born in 1963. Vladimir Natanovich taught at a vocational school, organized a museum of the Great Patriotic War there, and published frequently in local newspapers. In 1980 a very small fragment of Gelfand's wartime diaries appeared in the collection We Must Not Forget These Roads: Veterans' Recollections. Vladimir Natanovich died in 1983. In 1995 his family emigrated to Germany. Today Bella Efimovna, Gennady and Vitaly live in Berlin. Vladimir Gelfand's son from his first marriage, Alexander, lives in Israel.

Now, to the diaries themselves.

In the radio program “Home Is Where There Is No Hatred,” broadcast on German radio in 2010, Vitaly Vladimirovich Gelfand said:

“After Dad died, there were at least ten suitcases of his papers—newspapers, clippings, everything. Among all this I found the diaries. I sorted them and began to copy them out. First by hand. Then I repaired Dad's German trophy Mercedes typewriter and used that. Then I bought a modern typewriter especially for this. It all began, I think, around 1985.

“Before that I had read everything. I decided: I will type it out and publish it as a book. I did not doubt for a gram that there would be a book. In Russian, of course. I decided I would publish it clandestinely if necessary, like Solzhenitsyn's books. Glasnost was not even in the air then. The USSR still existed.”

Vitaly Vladimirovich explained to us: “It was difficult and impossible to publish the diaries. When they had been completed in electronic form and I offered them to publishers, everyone refused me: Ukrainian, Russian and German. None of the Ukrainian or Russian publishers even answered; all the German publishers answered with rejections. After that I posted my father's diary on the Internet wherever I could. In 2003 Elke Scherstjanoi, a researcher at the Institute for Contemporary German History, found me. She knows Russian well. We went to a publishing house together; she told them about the diaries, and after some time I signed a contract. Later, in 2005, the book appeared.”

Gelfand's diaries leave a far from simple impression. So ambiguous, in fact, that after reading them in full I even asked Vitaly Vladimirovich whether his father had reread the entries, edited them, wanted them published, and whether they might have been conceived as a literary work in the first place.

“Of course he reread them,” Vitaly writes. “There are postwar diaries where he sometimes analyzes what he wrote during the war. Whether my father would have wanted them published in precisely this form, without editing, I honestly do not know. But I believe that if today he had the chance to be asked ‘publish them like this, or do not publish them at all?’ he would definitely agree to publication. He always dreamed of writing a book about the war using the diaries as material. Sometimes he began to write—there are notebooks—but nothing substantial came of those attempts. He did not have enough time, or enough life.”

But more about the diaries themselves and the impression they make later. For now, the floor belongs to Vladimir Gelfand.

July 2, 1941. (…) On the 22nd of last month I went with Olya and her friends Valya Iashkova and Maya Belokopytnaya to the Maly Theater, which was touring here at the time. Ostrovsky's comedy Truth Is Good, but Happiness Is Better was being performed. Famous People's Artists of the Union and the republic were in it, and despite the weakness of plot characteristic of early Ostrovsky the comedy was a great success.

Cheerful and excited by the performance, we left the auditorium of the Gorky Drama Theater. Crowds of people bustled through the streets. The trams were packed and people hung from the running boards, so it was only with difficulty that we got aboard and managed to get off at the right stop. At Olya's we learned that Germany had declared war on us. It was terrible and unexpected.

September 18, 1941. Essentuki. Today marks a month since I left Dnepropetrovsk. On August 17 my city, the city of parks, the beautiful city, was bombed for the first time since the beginning of the war. I saw destruction and smoke from several fires caused by the bombing. I heard about the casualties—many killed and wounded at the railway station, and children left orphaned.

The city gradually emptied; its population thinned every day. The flight of residents from the city seemed absurd. (…) I continued buying books, collecting newspaper articles, visiting the regional library and the workers' faculty library, and I did not even think of collecting my documents from the institute. (…) But the city was anxious. Unexpected events occurred every day. The families of city-council members and police officers began to be evacuated. Automobile horns sounded continually—day and night thousands of residents left the city. Rumors began to spread. Those remaining looked indignantly at those departing.

Bad news was also coming from the front. Our troops were abandoning city after city: Smolensk, Gomel, Korosten, Bila Tserkva and Zhytomyr. The front drew inexorably closer; German air raids intensified. Every day, every moment, was full of tension and anxiety. The Petrovsky, Lenin, Kaganovich and Molotov plants, the machine-tool plant and many others stopped. The industry of this giant city was rapidly being reduced to nothing. Train after train departed carrying machine tools and equipment from the stopped factories. Evacuation intensified; obtaining a railway ticket became completely impossible.

Our family began to bustle about. We too started preparing to leave. I laughed at the preparations—the front was still hundreds of kilometers away. But a few days later I had bitter cause to regret my disbelief that enemy troops could occupy the city.

October 6, 1941. Yesterday I attended universal military training for the first time. Classes began at nine. We were assigned four instructors. They divided the platoon into four squads. (…) The commander of our first squad was a former cavalryman from the Civil War. He is probably the best of the commanders—better educated and, it seems, stricter than the others.

October 23, 1941. In the streets and in the park, in the bread shop, in the queue for kerosene—everywhere one hears whispering. Terrible whispering, cheerful yet hateful. They are talking about the Jews. For now they speak timidly, looking around.

(…)

I love the Russian language. Perhaps I love it more than the Jewish language—I am hardly acquainted with the latter. I do not want to divide people by nations. A good person of any nation or race is always dear and pleasant to me; a bad person is hateful.

Whenever I hear antisemitic remarks, even when they are not directed at me, my soul fills with uncontrollable anger, indignation and hurt.

May 6, 1942. Today the decisive event of my life occurred—I was called into the army. A regular Red Army soldier.

May 7, 1942. On the train. I am traveling to the army from Essentuki to Maykop.

Everything is turning green, everything is blooming across the broad expanses of Soviet land. One wants to live, work and enjoy nature, and therefore one becomes still more deeply filled with hatred for Hitler's gang of robbers. Revenge, sacred revenge, I carry in my heart.

June 6, 1942. Evening is falling. We are approaching Kupiansk. We are now in the near-front zone. My native Ukrainian land stretches broadly in every direction. But this country is unfamiliar to me—I have never been here.

I burn with the desire to get to the Dnepropetrovsk front, if such a thing exists. How comforting and easy it would be to fight for my home city. But wherever I have to fight the enemy, I will not retreat and I will not lose my nerve.

I intend to submit an application to join the Party. I want to go into battle as a Communist.

(…)

I am not going to die; I am going to live, to win victories, to beat the enemies of my Motherland. I will beat them with the mortar and with words—such are my thoughts and hopes. I do not think about death, for I believe in my fate; may it preserve me from enemy bullets.

June 28, 1942. The war has ruined the peasants and poisoned their lives. They are dissatisfied both with the Germans who sow bombs and with us. Someone stole a chicken; two others took geese from local residents. Some men, during artillery shelling, smashed the windows in one little house and wanted to climb inside.

(…)

Shells explode here as if at the front line, although the combat positions are at least five kilometers away. Yesterday a shell fragment killed a cow; another tore off a leg. The soldiers bought up the meat. We were too late, although our battalion mortars are positioned not far from there. The shooting so deafened our mortar men and confused them so much that, though usually first in situations like that, they returned empty-handed.

The shop is destroyed, the school is destroyed, and many other buildings have suffered from the shelling. I watched the entire bombardment with my own eyes. I saw the dead cow and the damaged buildings. Military targets and the troops were unharmed, so it follows that the Germans fired those shells in vain; the damage caused did not repay their cost. Pitiful, foolish Fritzes! Our Katyusha will show you how to shoot, and the artillery will support her with its roaring music of fire.

I have just been told that we are going to the front line. At last it has begun! I will smell gunpowder! Time to get ready.

(…) I need to move forward. My slogan is courage or death. Death rather than captivity. Fate must preserve my life for me. Let it take care of that; my job is to win immortality for myself.

July 2, 1942. I recently returned from the village where we were before coming here. The lieutenant allowed me to go and look for something to eat. It turns out the inhabitants are being evacuated—or, speaking more frankly, forcibly removed. For three days I have watched a terrible scene: broken windows in abandoned dwellings, boarded doors and shutters, feathers and heads of recently slaughtered chickens, crying women and naked children subdued by the constant shouting of angry mothers.

It turns out all the cows were driven away without even receipts being issued to the villagers. A lieutenant shot one woman who refused to part with her cow, wounding her in the stomach, and she is now dying. No one is even trying to save her.

The villagers say that our soldiers and commanders arbitrarily and forcibly take chickens, geese and other livestock from them. As if illustrating their stories, a cart appeared ahead of me, loaded to the top with vegetables and slaughtered geese. Our men lacked bread, and soldiers led by a lieutenant went from cottage to cottage asking the residents for bread. The villagers—and only old people, women and children remain there—are indignant and threaten to come here to the front line and demand protection from the soldiers.

March 13, 1943. Salsk. (…) Here too all the Jews were exterminated without exception. Communists were registered and the most responsible ones were shot. The rest they did not have time to kill. They also shot a Pioneer leader and two Komsomol members. The wives of Communists worked without rest for the occupiers and received only 200 grams of bread, but according to this woman the local residents sympathized with the Germans. When the Germans occupied their territory, people began handing Jews, Communists, and simply one another over to the enemy. The village elder left with Hitler's forces, fearing retribution. For a long time the local woman told me about the Germans, about the atrocities they committed on our land.

These accounts of mass executions of innocent Jews make me think with even greater anxiety about my dear relatives in Essentuki, about their fate. If only I could go there and find out something; from Salsk to Mineralnye Vody is really very little. I will ask the commandant at the transit point for permission to go to Essentuki, though I am unlikely to succeed. As for the Germans, I have decided forever: there are no enemies more evil or deadly for me than they are. Until the grave, until my last breath. (…)

All of Vladimir Gelfand's relatives who remained in Essentuki did indeed perish, though he learned about it much later.

October 1, 1943. The very foremost of all front lines.

We have different meanings for the word “front line.” Native inhabitants of the rear call “the front line” an area ten to fifty kilometers behind it. Front-line rear troops, five to ten kilometers away, call the strip two or three kilometers from the foremost lines “the front line.” And we mortar men consider “the front line” to be territory eight hundred meters from the nearest Germans.

But all of that, of course, is not the front line in the full sense, because there are still people ahead. The true front line is the trench in which I am sitting now. There is not a single one of our men ahead of me. Ahead, among dense trees, in the green curly grass creeping over the earth, in the sunflowers, folds of the ground and deep earthen trenches, the enemy is hiding.

It is three hundred meters to the Germans from here, no more. I stared for a long time toward the enemy but saw not a single Fritz, although they ought to be clearly visible. They are camouflaged.

I intended to reveal the enemy firing points by shooting my submachine gun, but in vain—I fired an entire magazine and used up the cartridges. The enemy did not answer. It has grown quiet in its animal hatred and lies treacherously hidden in the earth.

Beside me are replacements. To my left, right and rear. They were sent here only yesterday. They are still in civilian clothes. Yesterday I took command of a “platoon.” I put platoon in quotation marks because the number of men is smaller than a normal mortar crew—five men and one mortar.

(…)

Despite heavy artillery preparation, the attack and advance failed. The Germans opened powerful fire from every kind of weapon after letting the infantry approach. The lieutenant colonel telephoned and asked that we return to our old positions, although the objective had been achieved and the tree belt was in our hands. Seeing that we had left, the Germans hurried back into the tree belt. Few men remained in our infantry: more than forty were wounded, four killed and as many missing—about sixty men remained in the whole battalion.

All this time Vladimir Gelfand was “cultivating the talent of a writer,” as he had promised himself at the beginning of the war: he wrote poems and essays for the divisional newspaper Kirovets. He wrote to his mother that he sent his poems only to the divisional paper because he was not yet capable of more, adding: “I ask for no objections. I have learned to value myself.” At the same time he was constantly corresponding with the editors of Kirovets:

“Dear Comrade Major Shchetinin! While I can still agree with changing the title, I cannot possibly agree that the word udostoen is spelled udostoin.” Or: “Dear Comrade Editor! I read the poem ‘Forward, Soviet Soldiers!’ in your newspaper. (…) This is not the first time I have been published in newspapers, but never before have my verses been distorted to such an extent that I could no longer recognize my own hand in them. The poem ‘Forward, Soviet Soldiers!’ has, among other things, been shortened by your paper. Words have been replaced by illiterate forms such as bezhat when begut is required (from the word beg; only in pobezhali does the root change). ‘They run, they run, the fascists—the executioners.’ The phrase ‘Only a fat backside gleams’ outraged me terribly. After all, my signature stands under all this! It is not enough that the rhyme ‘backside’ has been forced in here (of course, backside–back—an excellent rhyme (!)); the ‘backside’ is both inappropriate and unnecessary here. And why must a Hitlerite's backside necessarily be fat? And why does it gleam?”

November 4 or 5, 1943. Chekhovo. Near the experimental station of the village of Akimovka, in the tree belt in front of the station, we took up defenses. Soon orderlies from the 2nd Battalion came there and settled in foxholes three bayonets deep. Among them was Marika, the same Maria Fyodorova with whom I had often talked while I was in the 2nd Battalion and who so often amused the mortar men with her chatter and laughter. Not pretty and slightly hook-nosed, but an appealing girl from Astrakhan, she had been a regular visitor to our mortar battery.

Now I saw her again and we talked for a long time with interest. We sat in one foxhole. She showed me her TT pistol and asked me to put on the safety. Then the boys from my platoon brought me pickled cucumbers with pepper, and I treated Maria to them. Shells exploded, boomed and whistled all around, raising thick gray smoke from bursts near and far. Maria, usually not at all fearful and quite decisive, was now dejected and confused. Suddenly she began talking about death and many other terrible, melancholy things: “I feel that none of us will live through today… It is so terrible here… Why did I come here at all… I could have stayed there, in the medical battalion… You know, I am so afraid alone… I cannot bear sitting in the trench.” I promised I would dig a trench for two and calmed her as best I could. Then shells began ricocheting just over our heads with such a terrible hiss that it seemed they were deliberately frightening us, mocking human nerves.

Two people could not sit in one foxhole because of the danger of fragments and explosive bullets cracking right by the ear. I decided to move into another foxhole nearby. It was shallower and about a meter from the first. I had only just changed trenches when a new shell growled, hissed furiously and struck the ground savagely. I fell backward in the trench, feeling a terrible blow suddenly in my ears and head. For a minute I could not come to myself, and when I recovered I understood that a shell had exploded. My side cap was gone, blood spurted from my nose, and my temples hurt maddeningly. Shaking off the earth that had covered me, I stood up and began calling Maria. She did not answer. It was already dark, and I decided that she had been buried in her trench. Orderlies came at my call and found a single mangled mass where Maria and her foxhole had been. (…) Maria was dug out the next morning. They found one leg, the kidneys, and nothing more. Yes—they also found the TT pistol. The orderlies buried Maria and left her in the earth without any trace or memorial. I ordered my men to make a T-shaped marker; I wrote a short obituary on it in Maria's memory and had it placed there. “Thus ended the life of Maria Fyodorova, born in 1919, from Astrakhan, a medal holder and candidate member of the VKP(b), senior sergeant of the medical service. Recently, during the October anniversary days, by regimental order Maria was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd Class.”

November 18 or 19, 1943—I do not know exactly. Following Zhytomyr, Fastiv and a number of other cities, today I learned that Rechytsa and some other town have fallen.

(…) Our task is to take Chapaevo, then Shevchenko, then seize the numbered height whose designation I have forgotten, and straddle the graded road. When we shall attack is unknown, but it is clear that it will be in these days—today or tomorrow—and we must be ready.

We received vodka and canned food—that is always the way before an important operation. The soldiers guess that something is coming. The Germans apparently guess too and are very nervous. At night they were nervous as usual, but fired less; during the day they hardly fired artillery at all—apparently they are saving shells. They fire at intervals of one or two hours, for the first time, especially in this sector where they had never stopped shelling for more than twenty minutes.

(…) I dream constantly of a sweet girl and blissful love. Before my eyes appears a tender, smooth maiden's breast, so broad and dear that one could drown in it and forget grief and hardship. When will I at last encounter the affection and love of a dear creature and feel the tremor of awakened happiness in my heart? Oh, girls, send me an angel (there are many among you) capable of caressing my youth, capable of making my life happy and beautiful.

(…) If only I am not wounded, if only I do not become a cripple—that is my one dream now. And my second dream is to become a writer. What is needed for that? Talent, diligence and time.

I still lack a decoration. I have fought for so long and no one has appreciated my efforts. Nurse girls, entertainers, mediocre divisional warehouse managers—even they wear medals on their chests, and I? Apparently I have not deserved one…

December 26, 1943. Yesterday I received another letter from Mother. She writes that she was rewarded with a pair of felt boots.

Captain Chertovskoy was wounded the day before yesterday. I remember how he walked along the front line at full height. I told him that snipers were firing and pointed to a corpse bent over in the communication trench and to other bodies of soldiers lying around—all killed by snipers. But Chertovskoy merely waved his hand. Apparently he was drunk. Later I learned that he had been wounded in the leg and stomach.

The newspapers contain a new anthem instead of the “Internationale.” Here, of course, one can see the influence of the Allies.

May 23, 1944. The first extraordinary event at the front is parcels. For the first time in my service in the Red Army I was lucky enough to receive a parcel from peaceful Soviet citizens: a piece of lard, biscuits, paper. It was sent by residents of Odessa. I answered them with a letter. But of course not everything the people of Odessa sent was in the parcel. And in today's batch of parcels there was nothing at all except paper and soap. The first parcels at least came in little sacks, though the sacks had been opened. Yesterday's parcels did not even have sacks; the paper in which they had been wrapped was torn apart. Clearly the sacks or bags in which the parcels had been sent were opened and half, if not more, of their contents stolen. The bags had apparently been ripped open so badly that they could no longer be used. Those rear-area scoundrels had to wrap what remained in paper, but that too, after being opened repeatedly, reached us completely torn and the contents fell out. With difficulty I managed to make six more or less decent parcels out of nine and hand them to the soldiers. One parcel contained a note saying that socks and handkerchiefs had been sent to a soldier. Naturally none of these was there—only paper, envelopes and soap. That is how rear-area men take away the last pleasure, diversion and comfort of our riflemen, shamelessly robbing even their parcels. Some parcels contained shaving brushes, lathering cups, blades, yet no razors, and so on and so forth.

Zabortsev in his company also skims whatever he can. He drives the soldiers out of the room, opens the parcels and takes valuables. On the first day he felt awkward doing it himself. He sent away all the runners and everyone who had carried the parcels, saying that only he and the Party organizer—that is, me—were to remain. Under the pretext of distributing the parcels he opened each one, taking for himself handkerchiefs and mirrors, combs, sweets, matches, pencils, toilet soap, toothbrushes and tooth powder, toothpaste, and whatever else had survived the rear-area thieves. I felt terribly uncomfortable being present, but there was nothing I could do. There was nowhere to complain either. He tried to bribe me. I did take one little mirror. Now I regret taking it—I feel weak, humiliated and worthless.

May 24, 1944. Yesterday during my duty shift a machine gunner seriously wounded a senior lieutenant from the newly arrived Unit 88, which had arrogantly positioned itself without the command's agreement. The wounded man died.

I was walking through the trench around the company positions, checking the vigilance of sentries and the day's defensive digging. Suddenly I heard noise and hurried toward it. When I was already close I heard: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant, why are you hitting me?” and another voice: “Do you know that I am a deputy battalion commander?! Jump into the trench! You are f…ed! I'll shoot you! You are still going to take me to your platoon commander?! You're finished now!” A struggle began.

The soldiers present later said that at that moment the senior lieutenant grabbed the soldier's rifle and began pulling it toward the trench. The rifle was cocked. As I ran close through the shouting and swearing I heard a shot, then a loud “O-oh!” People ran about in agitation. I went down to see. The soldier who had fired was in tears: “Comrade lieutenant, bandage the man… the rifle was loaded… I don't know how it happened… he was pulling it… I am not guilty…” An orderly came and began bandaging the lieutenant.

Then the men told me what had happened before I arrived. Machine gunners from Toloknov's group were carrying back to their old place boards that had been stolen from them by soldiers of the newly arrived 88th Guards Rifle Division, which had taken up the defenses. The machine gunners were roofing a dugout. The senior lieutenant came and ordered them to carry everything back at a run. The soldier began explaining that it all belonged to them and refused.

The soldier selflessly defended the timber the officer wanted to take, even at the cost of the senior lieutenant's life. All the soldiers and commanders, including the deputy company commander, noted with satisfaction that the soldier had done right, because everyone hated this deputy battalion commander: he struck soldiers with the grip of his revolver and threatened many soldiers and commanders with execution for no reason.

August 19, 1944. The most melancholy thing in war, the most nightmarish thing in battle, is to sit in a trench, in a slit, watching smoke from shells bursting nearby, feeling the earth tremble, smelling burning, and sensing the uneven beating of your own heart. Out in the open, in battle, at the moment of a clash with the enemy, you forget both fear and danger and never experience the unpleasant sensation that comes from sitting motionless, inactive, obsessed by the thought of being uncomfortably close to the utter hell of mortal, merciless fury.

(…)

About thirty men remain from the company. There were seventy. Two platoon commanders were killed, one wounded. I was present when they received their orders. The two who were killed—lieutenants, Uzbeks or Kalmyks—were pale, and on their faces I read the mortal shadow of the dead. I was frightened when I looked at the indifferent, deathlike face of one and heard his even, lifeless answers, and at the other's hurried, uneven questions and frightened blinking, and I understood that they would not live. I wanted then to cry out, shake their hands and calm their hearts before battle, but I did not dare—after all, I am not a child. The junior lieutenant answered briskly, a little fearfully but confidently; in his words there was life and the ability to fight for it. I do not know whether he is alive, but I think he is.

I did not see the third platoon commander, Junior Lieutenant Eliseev, before the battle.

A great deal of weaponry remained on the battlefield. The surviving infantrymen showed great heroism. Today I saw one such hero who will evidently remain unknown and unrewarded. He was wounded in both arms but with those wounded arms he bandaged other wounded men—there were no orderlies—and with the same arms carried out ten submachine guns and an eleventh, his own. He had no strength left for more, and when I met him he was bleeding heavily.

To be continued. Prepared by Olga Stepanova, UC.

January 28, 2014

Conclusion. Beginning in UC No. 4.

The wartime diaries of our fellow countryman Vladimir Gelfand can easily be found in full in Russian in electronic libraries. Journalists also frequently quote Gelfand: the diaries contain enough material to illustrate claims of “this is what the war was really like”—about commanders' drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, undisguised antisemitism in the army, unworthy behavior by Soviet soldiers in Germany, and so on. But they also contain much else: Poles greeting the liberators as if they were their closest kin, Soviet officers placing German families under their protection, the horrors of war, and genuine heroism.

Any selection, including ours, will inevitably be subjective, while the diaries are so extensive that publishing them in full in a newspaper is impossible. I will offer a hypothesis, perhaps mistaken, that this is nevertheless closer to an autobiographical novel in diary form, or material for a novel. Vitaly Vladimirovich Gelfand writes that his father not only wanted to be a writer but, until about the age of thirty-five, was certain he would become one. First, Gelfand includes a detailed description of his own appearance in the diaries. Second, there are fragments that are not merely undocumented but fantastic and fairy-tale-like, not marked off separately but simply entered with a date like everything else:

November 27, 1943. (…) Once, after a brief respite following an artillery-and-mortar duel with the bloodthirsty Hitlerite robbers, while I was on one of the southern fronts of the Patriotic War, I found a thick book written in a language unknown to me, with a cover worn by time. For a long time I turned the book this way and that before my eyes, but all my attempts to understand the meaning contained in those 1,501 pages of astonishing squiggles, so unlike the letters and words of human languages, were in vain.

The book seemed so interesting to me, so enticing, that I decided at any cost to understand and read at least a little of what was written in it.

And in our company, I should say, there were very many nationalities: Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Jews, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Greeks, and even one Turk.

So I showed this book to the soldiers and commanders of our mortar company. But something unexpected happened: at first sight not one of them could understand or read a single word. My boys, I must admit, were dismayed by such an unexpected embarrassment; they became confused and saddened and for the first minute could not utter a single sound from their many-voiced collective.

(…)

By evening the enemy had been driven out of the settlement, and our company took firing positions on one of its outskirts. Night brought a lull, an honestly earned respite. As I settled down to sleep I again remembered my unsolved discovery, when Sergeant Panas, a Ukrainian, approached me. He too had been thinking all the time about this curious book. (…)

“You know what, Comrade Lieutenant,” Panas said. “To read this book we absolutely must consult Nikolai Fyodorovich.”

I looked carefully into his eyes because I thought he was joking. Nikolai Fyodorovich was a large gray dog of some breed, whom we had found as a puppy in one of the cities liberated near Stalingrad the previous winter. Panas had managed to tame this clever, understanding dog and feed him up; in time, the ungainly puppy grew into a large, stately dog resembling a wolf.

From the first day, while raising his adopted pet, Panas taught him all the wisdom of canine sciences. We laughed at Panas's daily lessons with his pupil, but he insisted on the correctness and necessity of his work and, ignoring our jokes, painstakingly and persistently continued training the dog.

After naming the dog Nikolai Fyodorovich and letting him become properly accustomed to his new name, Panas gradually began teaching him human language. Incredible as it may seem, Nikolai Fyodorovich now speaks human language fluently, though his speech retains an inborn canine accent. Panas could do nothing about that—after all, one cannot go very far against nature!

But let me return to my story. When Panas suggested using Nikolai Fyodorovich as a decipherer, he was serious and his intentions inspired complete trust.

“This book, I think, is written in the language of animals, and Nikolashka is the most literate and learned of all the dogs we know. I am sure we cannot manage without his intervention.”

After thinking it over, I agreed, and the dog, who happened to be nearby, began examining and reading the book.

Panas was right. Only our dog could understand and read this work of animal literary art.

I was quartered in a deep, spacious dugout where civilians had apparently once hidden from the Germans. Now, after the Germans had driven all the villagers away with them, the dugout stood empty and belonged to no one. It contained a table, two beds and many objects showing that it had been inhabited only recently. We lit captured German candle-lamps and spent the entire night over the book, which turned out to be a chronicle of animal states.

Nikolai Fyodorovich read with enthusiasm and translated whole chapters for us that had been written in his native language. I remember one of those stories well and will try to tell it to you…”

And right beside this fantasy are thoughts and actions described in the first person that people usually do not admit even to themselves. Gelfand writes simply and clearly about relationships with German women, abuse of power, and how he contracted gonorrhea in Berlin, neither excusing himself nor indulging in self-flagellation. His fervent desire for heroic deeds gives way to apathy, and “angel girls” become “wenches,” while at the same time Vladimir Gelfand continues to dream of meeting his one true beloved and tries to recognize her in every girl he meets. One can also see the young lieutenant's sincere interest in a foreign country and culture, and his disgust with violence in every form, with meanness and boorishness. All this, in our view, gives reason to suppose that the diaries do not always speak only of the real person Vladimir Gelfand, but sometimes of a lyrical hero who is of course very similar to the author, yet not entirely identical with him.

Judge for yourselves.

“Germany is burning, and I am glad to watch this evil spectacle.”

January 19, 1945. Beleva. A great many trophies are scattered here. Fires burn all around.

Our Slavs have overeaten. They walk around holding their stomachs. They found whole buckets of jam, lard, honey.

I found the most important thing—paper. Now I have something to write on. There are many pencils, good ones too, indelible pencils of the finest grades. I found eighty Polish zlotys and bought sweets with them. Shops begin working immediately after a battle. The German left here yesterday at dawn.

The Poles are stingy and greedy. They sell at high prices, but not everything. They hold back vodka, wine and food, waiting for prices to rise. They will not give you a piece of bread for free; you must pay for everything.

January 22, 1945. Świątkowo village (near Janowiec and Żnin). This night's lodging can be called successful, though I slept badly—I rubbed my feet badly and they hurt, and I sweated under the featherbed. How can the Poles sleep like this? It is insanely hot.

The houses here are stone. In these parts people are incomparably kind; they have suffered grief, they greet us as relatives, and we live as if at home in Nikolaev or Odessa, and better than in Rostov—there the population has nothing left.

The German colonist masters abandoned everything as they fled: horses, livestock, property. Our regiment has turned into transport—literally all the infantry mounted horses. The regimental commander said he would allow the men to ride temporarily, but by the first battle everything had to be as before, because with so few men it was impossible for everyone to become a driver—who would fight?

There is unlimited vodka. In every village, every German colonist had a distillery, all now abandoned. People drink ordinary raw spirit until they are senseless. Many burn out their insides, but that does not stop them. One soldier burned himself out—died.

January 28, 1945. Germany. Thirty-eight kilometers from our previous (yesterday's) lodging. Thus ninety kilometers in two days. Germany greeted us inhospitably—with a blizzard, savage wind, and empty, almost extinct villages. The people here are Germans; they fear Russian wrath. They flee, abandoning all their households and property.

The border lies along a very wide river, and on this side what an abundance of forests and hills! The terrain is broken. Berlin is not far. Germany is burning, and for some reason I am glad to watch this evil spectacle. Death for death, blood for blood. I do not pity these haters of humanity.

January 30, 1945. No one forbids anyone to take or destroy from the Germans what they looted from us before. I am very satisfied. The only thing I dislike is Shitikov's senseless hooliganism and especially Kanonenko's. Yesterday, for example, Rysev smashed a bust of Schiller and would have destroyed Goethe too if I had not torn it from the madman's hands and hidden it, wrapped in rags. Geniuses cannot be equated with barbarians, and destroying their memory is a great sin and disgrace for a normal person.

Kanonenko is an idiot in the literal sense. Today, and probably every day, he drinks himself unconscious and begins firing any weapon that comes to hand, throwing at people whatever he can grab.

I have stocked up on money—seven thousand (!) German marks. They will not disappear from circulation, and later they will be useful. Among the German money I found ten of our rubles.

February 16, 1945. They say there is one Frankfurt on the Oder and another on the Main… But the lice!… How many I have bred during these days in Germany! Neither in Poland nor in Bessarabia nor at home in Russia have I ever had so many lice. Now I have so many that they crawl over my body like piglets in a German farmyard: small ones, big ones and enormous ones; alone and in lines… They will probably eat me… Carrying them on one's body is utterly unbearable, and this trial seems to me sharper and more refined than combat. I simply want to scream myself hoarse and tear my hair out. My whole body is bruised from the bites of these disgusting creatures.

I have not changed my underwear since December 1944. It is all dirty and already tearing—the lice gnaw through it, and the wadding remains rolled into lumps against my body.

(…)

Yesterday two self-inflicted wounders were shot, so I was on night duty. All day I was occupied with courts. During my duty a soldier named Kolyada, one of our eight, was brought to battalion headquarters for having shot himself. The senior adjutant ordered me to watch him all night: “You answer with your head if he disappears.” There are few men. One sentry was at my disposal, but he stood in the yard, so I had to remain there without leaving and keep the criminal under my personal observation. First thing in the morning he was tried and shot behind the shed in our yard.

The other self-inflicter was a lieutenant (!). It is the first time I have heard of an officer shooting himself out of cowardice—he shot himself through the left arm. Young, awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the medal for the Defense of Stalingrad. His decorations were taken away, his personal property confiscated, all privileges removed, and he himself was shot like a dog.

I did not pity either of them, but their emotions passed to me. Especially at the final moment when the commandant ordered the guards: “Fire on the traitor to the Motherland!” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, contracted his whole body, and at that same moment three submachine-gun bullets bit sharply into his head. He collapsed to the ground, streams of blood pouring out.

April 13, 1945. Bridgehead beyond the Oder, west of Küstrin. The postman has just brought me the most tragic and bitter of all the foreign news I have received: Roosevelt has died. How I always respected and valued him for his charming, intelligent nature, for the exceptional popularity among Americans that allowed him to rise above all American politics and all the politicians of the anti-democratic opposition. He alone managed to turn American policy sharply and fundamentally away from fascism and reaction, to make the American citizen turn away from all the great and small anti-Soviet slanderers and national renegades who wanted to return civilized America to the old laws of slavish, inhuman existence.

Roosevelt is an all-American, a universal human being; therein lies his enormous strength and greatness. In recent decades life has known no greater, more powerful figure.

Who will replace Roosevelt? What will America's political face now become (I deliberately do not say the USA)? Will the fierce political struggle between democrats and reaction resume, and how will it end if it does? Many fears now arise, but there is also something reassuring—the development of our allies' military operations at the front. It will now be difficult for reaction to turn back the wheel of history, whatever efforts it may make; and may the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, grievous and unwelcome as it is to every honest person, not affect our great victorious advance toward happiness, greatness and life.

April 25, 1945. Berlin. The Spree. The infantry crossed the Spree during the nights before yesterday and yesterday and began fighting by the railway line. We—the divisional headquarters—have until now settled on one of the riverside streets in a Berlin suburb, in large, half-destroyed multistory buildings.

The day before yesterday in the Berlin suburbs, while riding a bicycle (incidentally, the previous day I learned to ride this remarkable machine, as it seemed to me), I met a group of German women carrying bundles, suitcases and packs. They are returning home, I thought—local residents.

(…)

They talked for a long time and explained a great deal, their words merging and melting in German rapid speech that I could not catch at once. In broken German I asked where they lived and why they had left their home, and with horror they described the grief that the front-line men of the Red Army had caused them on the first night of its arrival.

They lived not far from where we were stationed and where I rode my bicycle, so I could easily go to their home and sort out the whole story in detail, especially because I was most strongly drawn by a wonderful girl. I went with them.

An enormous two-story house with luxurious furniture, magnificent interior decoration and painted walls and ceiling. The family was large. When our soldiers came, they forced everyone into the cellar. And the youngest of the adults and perhaps the most beautiful they took away with them and abused.

(…)

“Stay here,” the girl suddenly threw herself toward me. “You will sleep with me. You can do anything you want with me.”

She showed everything and spoke of everything, not because she was vulgar. Her grief and suffering had exceeded shame and modesty, and now she was ready to undress naked in public if only no one touched her tormented body.

Her mother begged me along with her.

“Don't you want to sleep with my daughter?! The Russian comrades who were here—all of them wanted to!”

May 8, 1945. The orchestra under bandmaster Senior Lieutenant “Grichin” thundered its marches across the entire square.

(…)

I walked in the third row behind the colonel. I was pleased by even this kind of closeness to the man. Suddenly everything froze: men in special military dress with red stripes approached a table covered with red cloth. Several passenger cars drove up to the square.

“Attention!” Antonov commanded. Dismounting and baring his saber, he saluted the guests—generals and colonels. A tall, stately major general, Hero of the Soviet Union, accompanied by two colonels and the short, stout commander of the 248th Rifle Division, Major General Galai, walked along the ranks, greeting each regiment and unit separately.

They came to us: “Officers without orders—what, are there none?” Antonov began making excuses, and I wanted so much to step forward and say for everyone to hear: “Yes, Comrade General, there are no orders, nothing to be proud of; only pain and bitterness have I carried out of so many bloody, risky battles.” But I restrained myself because I understood that I would compromise the divisional commander.

The parade began.

(…)

Black with dust and dirt, scorched by powder and smoked by fire, men in dirty, worn uniforms entered blazing Berlin. During our stay here additional soldiers' uniforms arrived. The men were dressed, washed in the bathhouse, and once again acquired a fresh, festive appearance. Yesterday's front-line soldiers changed beyond recognition and are now quite capable of astonishing the Germans with their bearing, neatness, vigor and cheerfulness.

There is surprisingly little poetry in the poet Gelfand's diaries, perhaps because he himself regarded his verses as exercises, training. As noted above, he sent poems only to the divisional newspaper, believing himself not yet worthy of more, but he did send them to writers asking for advice. The Gelfand family archive contains a letter from Yevgeny Dolmatovsky written in May 1945:

“Dear Comrade Gelfand!

“The poem ‘Spring’ is not badly written, but it is still too weak for publication. You have not succeeded in joining the first and second parts of the poem. You convincingly described the spring idyll and unconvincingly (poetically unconvincingly) spoke of the battles to come. The word namedni is used unsuccessfully. Here the word sounds like parody.

“Greetings, Yevg. Dolmatovsky.”

At least one quatrain, however, Gelfand repeats several times in the diaries—not because he considered it especially successful. He wrote these lines at the Reichstag on May 9, 1945:

On the balcony of a Berlin building
I stand with my soldier friends,
And I look, and I spit upon Germany,
I spit upon defeated fascism.

We have already written that in Europe only the diaries of 1945–46 were published. Around the same time as the War Diaries, the anonymous memoirs of a woman who lived with Soviet soldiers during those years appeared in Germany; she was simultaneously proud of her position and considered herself a prisoner. Many German journalists and literary scholars draw parallels between these works. Director Aglaya Romanovskaya (France) staged the play Russian-German Phrasebook based on the two books. Berlin journalist Anna Westphal, describing the War Diaries, notes perhaps Gelfand's most important characteristic—the detachment of an observer: “Gelfand finds the racial theories of a beautiful ‘Fräulein’ rather strange, although the Germans gassed most of his family.”

Gelfand writes surprisingly little about victory: “Yesterday morning an unforgettable event occurred. The Germans agreed to complete unconditional surrender. The newspapers reported it briefly but solemnly.”

And that is all. Far more is devoted to everyday life.

June 16 or 17, 1945. What a job has fallen to my lot. Plundering the Academy of Sciences! I would never have thought myself capable of such dirty work, but people and circumstances force me. Filth in the temple of science, that is all it is!

June 23, 1945. Dear Mother! I received your letter. I want to answer and lose myself in thought; there is so much to tell, but with my wordiness it is difficult to fit it into the quickly escaping scrap of time I have accidentally seized in my hands.

Soon perhaps I will come home for a visit, but apparently I shall not leave the army until I lose my youth. And, to tell you the truth, I very much dislike military life—everything here weighs on me and torments me. (…)

August 6, 1945. My hidden, painful dream is to see and feel Berlin at least once more—not the front-line, burning city but the postwar city, somewhat refreshed, shamed and humiliated by its inhabitants, now servilely currying favor with foreigners, throwing open all its gates—from the Brandenburg Gate to the last little gate on the city outskirts—to Soviet people, Russian soldiers.

The second event is a new order from Marshal Zhukov, commander of the front. (…) Now it is time to rest at least a little, to see what I have never seen—the world abroad; to learn about what I knew so little and of which I had no clear idea—the life, morals and customs of foreign countries; and finally to see people, talk, travel freely, enjoy some tiny share of happiness, if there is any in Germany. But we were forbidden to talk with Germans, forbidden to spend the night in their homes, forbidden to buy things. Now we are forbidden the last thing—to appear in a German city, to walk its streets, to look at its ruins. But that is impossible! We are human beings; we cannot sit behind bars, especially since our army service does not end here, and barracks status and barracks life have already bored us to hell.

In autumn 1945 Gelfand found an undemanding job—as engineer-captain of a transport regiment that had no transport. He was accepted on condition that he conduct political work, which he had dreamed of since the beginning of the war, make wall newspapers and correct spelling errors in all visual propaganda. Vladimir Gelfand was pleased: now he had access to books and newspapers, whose absence had caused him great suffering, and some opportunity, however small, to see Germany and talk with Germans. This part of the diary contains more portraits and short stories than reflections.

October 16, 1945. Before me is an almost finished type of prostitute. Her eyebrows are penciled, lipstick is plastered on her lips, and she smells of mildew and eau de cologne. She is not without beauty, but the hand of an ugly artist—vulgarity—has taken all freshness and attractiveness from her. Her body is tender, her breasts large and fallen, but with firm nipples that one might enjoy taking hold of.

I found her on the street at Alexanderplatz and met her quite unexpectedly and by chance. It was not very late. The trams were running and I could easily reach the hotel in Weissensee. But suddenly the idea of looking for adventure at the entrance to the underground attracted me.

October 21, 1945. We traveled for a long time. The train was dark and packed with people. In the darkness and crush everyone pressed together, but it was cheerful. Residents of Berlin's suburbs talked about lard, butter, chocolate. Then they moved on to politics. Someone shouted at a woman:

“You have adopted Russian habits! Du hast die russischen Gewohnheiten übernommen.” Those words struck straight at my heart, and I decided not to let them pass unnoticed. Addressing all the passengers at once, I asked: “Are Russians really so bad, and are their habits worse than yours?” Everyone shushed the woman who had dropped the careless expression, some hypocritically, others out of fear of me. There were even those who placed Russians above Germans culturally—and not without reason—giving examples and proofs. The conversation did not stop all the way to Kremmen and continued with no less intensity on the road from the train. I tried as best I could to establish a better opinion among Germans of my Motherland and people, to evoke respect for our culture. I do not know how far I succeeded; in any case they no longer dared speak badly of Russia, and only one old woman, smiling ingratiatingly and looking obsequiously into my face, quietly said: “And at my place, Herr Officer, the ‘comrades’ stripped the apartment the day before yesterday,” and disappeared into the crowd.

January 6, 1946. Kremmen. This girl is truly worthy of love and respect. She is a year older than I am and already had a husband, with whom she lived no more than thirteen days. She is a human being in the fullest sense of the word, although she is a woman and a German, although she works in the theater where it is very difficult for a person of her sex to preserve moral purity.

(…)

I am always comfortable with her, and any question, however delicate, does not become vulgar in her presence, because like an angel she makes everything around her divine.

Do I love her? Not in the least! And could I truly love her as, for example, one of our own girls from the USSR? No. I simply respect her madly for her purity, value her for her humanity, sympathize with her for her beauty and freshness, for the gentleness of her soul. But why praise her? It sounds like justification. Perhaps in reality I want to drive away from my conscience the frightening truth of my infatuation.

February 14, 1946. Political studies. Once again I reread Comrade Stalin's speech on the eve of the elections of candidates for deputies of the Supreme Soviet and am struck yet again by the clarity of mind and simplicity with which Stalin's thought is expressed. “It is for you to judge how correctly the Party worked and is working (applause), and whether it could have worked better (laughter, applause),” Comrade Stalin says to the voters at the end, and everyone rewards him with such warm applause and love that from the outside it becomes simply moving. Yes, he has deserved it, my Stalin, immortal and simple, modest and great, leader, teacher, genius, my great sun.

And now it is no surprise when a little two-year-old child from defeated Germany, seeing on my chest the medal “For Victory,” with the image of Comrade Stalin, joyfully and touchingly exclaimed “Stalin!” and pointed at the medal with a little finger. Perhaps the child's mother was displeased; perhaps she concealed in her soul the anger and hatred of a defeated people, but the future looked otherwise—the future throughout the world, in every language and dialect, is for us, for our Party, for Comrade Stalin.

July 1, 1946. Kremmen. Hospital.

Under the influence of Tolstoy, his War and Peace, and the heavy thoughts hanging over me about the illness from which I try so vainly to distract myself and which nevertheless oppresses my capricious heart. I want to remember the past, not always carefree but somehow naïve and simple, like everything on earth in spring.

War entered my world with large, uncertain steps, not as it left, with the familiar, tired tread known to everyone. It appeared and stood before me strong, boundless and full of mysteries and surprises. It was hard to see, to look into its depths, to understand its development and turns. Thus it stood indecisively, allowing me to become accustomed to it but not revealing itself to me. In the first days I was glad, calm, certain that everything would end well and Germany would receive what it deserved from the very beginning. It is a good thing, I thought, that at last there is an opportunity to settle accounts with the Germans, always our malicious, strong and treacherous enemies. That danger with which this aggressor had threatened us from the first day would finally be ended. I was saturated with patriotic feelings and imagined nothing other than the defeat of the Germans, their retreat and destruction. Everything seemed so simple to me, and according to my understanding the war had to end joyfully and happily.

Without thinking, I went to the collective farm. For almost two months I worked brazenly hard gathering an unbearable harvest. Then evacuation and bombing—the war bared its teeth and showed its face. There was no fear, only confusion and bewilderment.

Digging trenches, night alarms, Grandmother's most terrible moans, women's cries, anxiety for Mother. A desire to see her beside me and not there where the factories and bombing were thirty kilometers away. I sent her to work with anguish and met her joyfully in the evenings. Life, however, did not improve; grief did not unite us, need did not force reconciliation, and family scenes and quarrels, with the grumbling evil grandmother playing the main part, did not stop. I could be maliciously gleeful. I knew how to irritate with my laughter and grimacing, but on the other hand I was compassionate and devoted to everyone without distinction whenever I noticed understanding and sympathy from them.

Mother was nervous and difficult. Rarely could she caress me as I had once loved, but almost always she scolded and was cold. In my heart I felt that she loved me warmly and tenderly, but in my mind such love did not fit with her treatment of me. In childhood too I had not been spoiled by genuine emotional warmth, but then I had not yet encountered such cruel coldness from Mother; loving feelings outweighed all others, and therefore the savage beatings (sometimes my head against the wall), angry reproaches and every kind of boycott were quickly forgotten.

September 19, 1946. Berlin. Now everything is settled. I am going home. (…)

I bought a great many provisions, two bottles of vodka. I decided to celebrate. About a thousand marks were spent. There is everything: snacks, fat, even onions. Only I forgot bread; I do not know what to do now. The Germans helped: I exchanged one packet of cigarettes for a loaf.

A raincoat is being sold for five and a half thousand. Good, large, new, red leather. I want to have it, want it so much my mouth waters, but the money has other needs… I bought a typewriter—such an elegant one… What joy it will be for Mother, and useful for me. I will be able to type my writings. It is small, in a little case, so it fit into one of my suitcases. Now I have seven suitcases, an eighth small one, two greatcoats, a bicycle, a radio receiver, and so much trouble and worry ahead.

Germany—you have not become tiresome, but I leave you gladly, depraved and empty. There is nothing astonishing in you, nothing joyful. Yet life in you is cheerful and carefree, cheap, full of noise and chatter. And Russia—I no longer remember what she looks like, do not know how she lives or what is interesting there now. Her soil is dear to me; I feel ready to gnaw it like chocolate without end with my greedy teeth, lick it with my tongue twisted by German, kiss it with hard lips, washed with blood and tears. It will not be easy for me, I know. I will sacrifice labor and health, reason, endurance and will. But I will achieve it! I want it so much; it is necessary!

Life has turned its face toward me.

Prepared by Olga Stepanova

© All-Ukrainian weekly Ukraine-Center, 2014