Page 26 - Excerpts from the diary

called up for military service. Letters reach me badly compared with how much I write. Only Mother, Father, Nina S., and Anya K. write
regularly. The others rarely do. Yesterday I received a dull, illiterate letter. Someone had apparently intercepted my letter to Galya Kazus
and decided to astonish me with her wit: “You are cheating on me,” and similar nonsense. That would be nothing, if only they did not get
it into their heads to send Galya the same sort of pill.

Today was even better: I received back my own letter that I had written to the editorial office of Soviet Fighter. Evidently divisional
censorship considered it undesirable to send a note about the newspaper and returned it to me. I wrote it again, this time in proper form,
with the field-post number. I do not think they will return it again. I also wrote to TASS. I learned about Romain Rolland.

They say a pine forest is good for one’s health. Its air is used to treat people with lung ailments and other diseases. The battalion
commander is looking at me as I write and smiling. How I would like to be freed from his supervision and, in general, to be treated a
little more like a human being than I am here.
The regiment commander looks at his watch and says to the chief of staff, “You’re late; it’s time for the front-line training.” The chief of
staff hurriedly finishes dressing and puts on his things.

I realized there was no time to hesitate and asked:

“Comrade Major, may I report to the head of the personnel section that I have been attached to the regiment?”

“Certainly, certainly...”

Pleased, I went to the personnel section. The assistant chief of staff for personnel was away somewhere. I waited for him a long time.

Night. A film is being shown at the regiment; I do not yet know which one. I have settled myself in a convenient place in the village,
rather brazenly, despite some people’s objections.

There are still no letters, and I am very curious what my new correspondents will answer.

28.09.1944
In my opinion, the purpose of the film is not merely to give Americans an idea of the courage, heroism, and love of country shown by our
people in this war, but also to dispel forever the notion of our country as a land of barbarians—a notion that still prevails in many
American minds. Our advanced technology, our intelligentsia, our youth, and our inexhaustible cultural monuments...

But more than anything else, it was our blood and our struggle—and above all our victories—that shaped world opinion about us. When
the Germans, having passed so easily across Europe, decided to make an equally swift and successful march across Russia, the whole
progressive world, as the film states unequivocally, believed that Russia’s days were numbered. One after another, towns and villages fell
under the force of the German blow. The Germans advanced easily and energetically and arrogantly believed that Russia would be
brought to its knees within a few weeks. But then a miracle occurred.

The film shows the Battle of Moscow, which ended in the Germans’ defeat. Before us are the liberated towns of the Moscow and Tula
regions, meetings between the population and the Red Army, tears, joy, kisses. Victims of German barbarity: orphaned children, crippled
children, dead children and innocent adults. The message is clear: Russians will never forget.

The routed enemy runs. Now they look entirely different. Fatigue and doubt have taken hold of them; the images speak eloquently. For
the first time in the war the Germans are forced to retreat.

Leningrad continues to hold out under blockade amid the indescribable suffering of its inhabitants. The pictures of destruction caused by
the Germans are staggering. Hunger, a ration of one hundred grams of bread a day—none of this needs comment. Yet people do not stop
working. To every German shell, the citizens of Leningrad answer by increasing output and improving the quality of their work. Their
self-sacrifice knows no bounds. Across the ice of the lake a road has been laid, and vehicles continue to travel over it even when the ice
has begun to thaw badly.

Bombing and shelling stop neither the Soviet drivers nor the patriots. The people of Leningrad even lay a railway across the ice—the
deeds of Russians truly seem astonishing, almost miraculous. And then comes liberation. Two systems of military tactics are revealed
more clearly than ever in the advance of the Leningrad Front.

The film shows Soviet and German generals on the screen at the same time. Here their strategies confront one another. The Germans
retreat; the blockade of Lenin’s city is broken. The Caucasus is freed of Germans; the Germans are driven from Stalingrad.

Two armies confronted each other, and the film shows both on the screen. Russian strategy proves the best in the world. The Germans
occupied the countries of Europe because those countries had concentrated all their forces at their frontiers, and in 1941 the Germans
broke through them. But Soviet generals opposed the German tactic of lightning destruction of the enemy’s main forces and sudden
encirclement with a strategy based on sustained defense and resistance. The Germans, certain they would destroy Russia in a few weeks,
found themselves facing a prolonged, positional war. Their old methods did not work here, under Russian conditions.

Here their army of millions rushed into the Soviet Union. The Germans managed to break through the first line, surrounding and
capturing a small part of it, but ahead stood a second, a third, a fourth. Again the same thing happened: the troops withdrawing from the
first line merged with the second, the second with the third, the third with the fourth, until at last there formed a line of such depth and