The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

  Those who were in the war remember that it took three days for a civilian to turn into a military man. Why are three days enough? Or is that also a myth? Most likely. A human being in war is all the more unfamiliar and incomprehensible.

  I read in all the letters: “I didn’t tell you everything then, because it was a different time. We were used to keeping quiet about many things…” “I didn’t confide everything to you. Not long ago it was impossible to speak about it. Or embarrassing.” “I know the doctors’ verdict: my diagnosis is terrible…I want to tell the whole truth…”

  And recently this letter came: “For us old people life is hard…But not because our pensions are small and humiliating. What wounds us most of all is that we have been driven from a great past into an unbearably small present. No one invites us anymore to appear at schools, in museums, we are not needed anymore. In the newspapers, if you read them, the fascists become more and more noble, and the Red soldiers become more and more terrible.”

  Time is also the Motherland…But I love them as before. I don’t love their time, but I do love them.

  —

  EVERYTHING CAN BECOME LITERATURE…

  In my archives I was interested most of all in the notebooks where I wrote down the episodes crossed out by the censors. And my conversations with the censors as well. I also found there pages that I had thrown out myself. My self-censorship, my own ban. And my explanation—why I had thrown them out. Many of these and other things have been restored in the book, but I would like to give these few pages separately—they also make a document. My path.

  FROM WHAT THE CENSORS THREW OUT

  —I just woke up in the night…It’s as if somebody’s…crying nearby…I’m at the front…

  We’re retreating…Beyond Smolensk some woman gives me her dress, and I manage to change my clothes. I’m alone…among men. I was wearing trousers, but now I march in a summer dress. Suddenly I begin to have my…woman’s thing…It started early, probably from the agitation. From being nervous, upset. There was nowhere to find what I needed. I was embarrassed! So embarrassed! People slept under bushes, in ditches, on stumps in the forest. There were so many of us, there was no room in the forest for everybody. We went on bewildered, deceived, trusting nobody anymore…Where was our air force, where were our tanks? Everything that flew, drove, rumbled—was all German.

  In that state I was captured. On the last day before I was captured, both of my legs got broken…I lay there and peed under myself…I don’t know where I found strength to crawl away by night to the forest…The partisans chanced to pick me up.

  I’m sorry for those who will read this book, and for those who won’t…

  —

  —I was on night duty…Went to the ward of the badly wounded. There was a captain there…The doctors warned me before I started my shift that he would die during the night. Wouldn’t make it till morning…I ask him: “How are things? Anything I can do for you?” I’ll never forget it…He suddenly smiled, such a bright smile on his haggard face: “Unbutton your coat…Show me your breast…I haven’t seen my wife for so long…” I was totally at a loss, I’d never even been kissed before. I gave him some answer. I ran away and came back an hour later.

  He lay dead. And still had that smile on his face…

  —

  —Near Kerch…We went on a barge at night under shelling. The bow caught fire…The fire crept along the deck. Our store of ammunition exploded…a powerful explosion! So violent that the barge tilted on the right side and began to sink. The bank wasn’t far away, we knew the bank was somewhere close by, and the soldiers threw themselves into the water. There was machine-gun fire from the bank. Shouts, moans, curses…I was a good swimmer, I wanted to save at least one of them. At least one wounded man…This was in the water, not on dry land—a wounded man perishes at once. Goes to the bottom…I heard somebody next to me come up to the surface, then sink down again. Up—then down. I seized the moment and grabbed hold of him…Something cold, slimy…I decided it was a wounded man, and his clothes had been torn off by the explosion. Because I was naked myself…Just in my underwear…Pitch dark. Around me: “Ohh! Aiie!” and curses…I somehow made it to the bank with him…Just then there was the flash of a rocket, and I saw that I was holding a big wounded fish. A big fish, the size of a man. A white sturgeon…It was dying…I fell down beside it and ripped out some sort of well-rounded curse. I wept from rancor…And from the fact that everybody was suffering…

  —

  —We were trying to get out of an encirclement…Wherever we went, there were Germans. We decided that in the morning we would fight our way through. We were going to die anyway, it was better to die with dignity. In combat. There were three girls with us. They came during the night to each of us who could…Of course, not everybody was able to. Nerves, you understand. That sort of thing…Each of us was preparing to die…

  A few of us survived till morning…Very few…Well, maybe seven men, and we had been fifty, if not more. The Germans cut us down with machine-gun fire…I remember those girls with gratitude. In the morning I didn’t find a one of them among the living…Never ran into them again…

  FROM A CONVERSATION WITH THE CENSOR

  —Who will go to fight after such books? You humiliate women with a primitive naturalism. Heroic women. You dethrone them. You make them into ordinary women, females. But our women are saints.

  —Our heroism is sterile, it leaves no room for physiology or biology. It’s not believable. War tested not only the spirit but the body, too. The material shell.

  —Where did you get such thoughts? Alien thoughts. Not Soviet. You laugh at those who lie in communal graves. You’ve read too much Remarque…*9 Remarquism won’t get you anywhere with us. A Soviet woman is not an animal…

  —Somebody betrayed us…The Germans found out where the camp of our partisan unit was. They cordoned off the forest and the approaches to it on all sides. We hid in the wild thickets, we were saved by the swamps where the punitive forces didn’t go. A quagmire. It sucked in equipment and people for good. For days, for weeks, we stood up to our necks in water. Our radio operator was a woman who had recently given birth. The baby was hungry…It had to be nursed…But the mother herself was hungry and had no milk. The baby cried. The punitive forces were close…With dogs…If the dogs heard it, we’d all be killed. The whole group—thirty of us…You understand?

  The commander makes a decision…

  Nobody can bring himself to give the mother his order, but she figures it out herself. She lowers the swaddled baby into the water and holds it there for a long time…The baby doesn’t cry anymore…Not a sound…And we can’t raise our eyes. Neither to the mother nor to each other…

  —

  —We took prisoners, brought them to the detachment…We didn’t shoot them, that was too easy a death for them; we stuck them with ramrods like pigs, we cut them to pieces. I went to look at it…I waited! I waited a long time for the moment when their eyes would begin to burst from pain…The pupils…

  What do you know about it?! They burned my mother and little sisters on a bonfire in the middle of our village…

  —

  —I don’t remember any cats or dogs during the war, I remember rats. Big…with yellow-blue eyes…There were huge numbers of them. When I recovered from a wound, I was sent back to my unit from the hospital. The unit was stationed in the trenches near Stalingrad. The commander ordered: “Take her to the girls’ dugout.” I entered the dugout and first of all was surprised that there was nothing in it. Empty beds of fir branches and that’s all. They didn’t warn me…I left my knapsack in the dugout and stepped out. When I came back half an hour later I didn’t find my knapsack. Not a trace of anything, no hair comb, no pencil. It turned out the rats instantly devoured everything…

  In the morning they showed me the gnawed hands of the badly wounded…

  Not even in the most horrible film did I see how the rats leave before the bombing of a town. T
his wasn’t at Stalingrad…This was already near Vyazma…In the morning swarms of rats went through the town, heading for the fields. They sensed death. There were thousands of them…Black, gray…People watched this sinister spectacle in horror and pressed against the houses. And precisely at the moment when the rats disappeared from sight, the bombing began. Planes came flying. Instead of houses and basements only rubble was left…

  —

  —There were so many people killed at Stalingrad that horses stopped being afraid. Usually they’re afraid of the dead. A horse will never step on a dead man. We gathered our own dead, but there were Germans lying about everywhere. Frozen…Icy…I was a driver, I transported crates of artillery shells, I heard their skulls crack under the wheels…the bones…And I was happy…

  FROM A CONVERSATION WITH THE CENSOR

  —Yes, we paid heavily for the Victory, but you should look for heroic examples. There are hundreds of them. And you show the filth of the war. The underwear. You make our Victory terrible…What is it you’re after?

  —The truth.

  —You think the truth is what’s there in life. In the street. Under your feet. It’s such a low thing for you. Earthly. No, the truth is what we dream about. It’s how we want to be!

  —We advance…The first German villages…We’re young. Strong. Four years without women. There’s wine in the cellars. Food. We’d catch German girls and…Ten men violated one girl…There weren’t enough women, the population fled before the Soviet army, we found very young ones. Twelve or thirteen years old…If she cried, we’d beat her, stuff something into her mouth. It was painful for her, but funny for us. Now I don’t understand how I could…A boy from a cultivated family…But I did it…

  The only thing we were afraid of was that our own girls would find out about it. Our nurses. We were ashamed before them…

  —

  —We were encircled…We wandered in the forests, over the swamps. Ate leaves, tree bark. Some sort of roots. There were five of us, one a very young boy, just called up for the army. At night my neighbor whispers to me: “The boy’s half dead, he’ll die anyway. You get me…” “What do you mean?” “An ex-convict once told me…When they escaped from the labor camp, they purposely took a young man with them…Human flesh is edible…That’s how they stayed alive…”

  I didn’t have strength enough to hit him. The next day we ran into some partisans…

  —

  —In the afternoon the partisans rode into the village on horseback. They led the village headman and his son out of their house. They beat them on the head with iron rods till they fell down. And finished them off on the ground. I sat by the window. I saw everything…My older brother was among the partisans…When he came into our house and wanted to embrace me—“Sister dear!”—I shouted: “Don’t come near me! Don’t come near me! You’re a murderer!” Then I went dumb. Couldn’t speak for a month.

  My brother was killed…What would have happened if he had stayed alive? And come back home…

  —

  —In the morning the punitive forces set fire to our village…Only those who fled to the forest survived. They fled with nothing, empty-handed, didn’t take even bread. No eggs or lard. During the night Aunt Nastya, our neighbor, beat her daughter because she cried all the time. Aunt Nastya had her five children with her. Yulechka, my friend, was the weakest. She was always sick…And the four boys, all of them little, also asked to eat all the time. And Aunt Nastya went crazy: “Ooo…Ooo…” And in the night I heard…Yulechka begged, “Mama, don’t drown me. I won’t…I won’t ask to eat anymore. I won’t…”

  In the morning there was no Yulechka to be seen…

  Aunt Nastya…We went back to the embers of the village…It had burned down. Soon Aunt Nastya hanged herself from the charred apple tree in her garden. She hung very, very low. Her children stood around her asking to eat…

  FROM A CONVERSATION WITH THE CENSOR

  —This is a lie! This is slander against our soldiers, who liberated half of Europe. Against our partisans. Against our heroic people. We don’t need your little history, we need the big history. The history of the Victory. You don’t love our heroes! You don’t love our great ideas. The ideas of Marx and Lenin.

  —True, I don’t love great ideas. I love the little human being…

  FROM WHAT I THREW OUT MYSELF

  —1941…We were encircled. With our political instructor, Lunin…He read us the order, that Soviet soldiers do not surrender to the enemy. With us, as Comrade Stalin said, there are no prisoners, there are only traitors. The boys drew their pistols…The political instructor ordered: “Don’t. Go on living, boys, you’re young.” And he shot himself…

  And now it’s 1943…The Soviet army is advancing. We’re moving through Belorussia. I remember a little boy. He ran out to us from somewhere under the ground, some basement, and shouted, “Kill my mama…Kill her! She loved a German…” His eyes were round from fear. An old woman in black ran after him. All in black. She was running and crossing herself: “Don’t listen to the child. The child’s gone crazy…”

  —

  —I was summoned to school…A teacher who had just returned from evacuation talked to me:

  “I want to transfer your son to another class. In my class I have the best pupils.”

  “But my son has high grades.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The boy lived under the Germans.”

  “Yes, it was hard for us.”

  “That’s not the point. All those who were in occupied territories…They are under suspicion…”

  “What? I don’t understand…”

  “He tells other children about the Germans. And he stutters.”

  “That’s because he was frightened. The German officer who was billeted with us gave him a beating. He didn’t like how my son polished his boots.”

  “You see…You yourself admit…You lived alongside the enemy…”

  “And who let that enemy get as far as Moscow? Who left us here with our children?”

  I was in hysterics…

  For two days I was afraid the teacher would denounce me. But she kept my son in her class…

  —

  —During the day we were afraid of the Germans and the polizei*10 and during the night of the partisans. The partisans took my last cow, I had only a cat left. The partisans were starved, angry. They took my cow, and I followed them…I walked about seven miles. I begged them to give it back. I left three hungry children at home by the stove. “Go back, woman!” they threatened. “Or else we’ll shoot you.”

  Try finding a good man during the war…

  People turned against each other. The children of the kulaks*11 came back from exile. Their parents had been killed, and they served the German forces. They took their revenge. One of them shot an old teacher in his cottage. Our neighbor. This neighbor had once denounced his father and had taken part in dispossessing him. He was a fervent Communist.

  At first the Germans disbanded the kolkhozes and gave people the land. People breathed more freely after Stalin. We paid quitrent…Paid it accurately…And then they began to burn us. Us and our houses. They drove the livestock away and burned the people…

  Aie, daughter dear, I’m afraid of words. Words are scary…I saved myself by doing good, I didn’t wish evil on anyone. I pitied them all…

  —

  —I went with the army as far as Berlin…

  I came back to my village with two Medals of Honor and some decorations. I spent three days there, and on the fourth my mother got me up early, while everybody was asleep: “Daughter dear, I’ve prepared a bundle for you. Go away…Go away…You have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everybody knows you spent four years at the front, with men…”

  Don’t touch my soul. Write, as the others do, about my decorations…

  —

  —War is war. It’s not some kind of theater…

  They had our unit form up in a clearing; we stood
in a ring. In the middle were Misha K. and Kolya M.—our boys. Misha was a brave scout, he played the accordion. And nobody sang better than Kolya…

  They spent a long time reading the sentence: in such-and-such village they had demanded two bottles of moonshine, and at night…raped their host’s two daughters…And in such-and-such village they robbed a peasant of an overcoat and a sewing machine…which they went and exchanged for drink at the neighbors’…

  They were sentenced to be shot…The sentence was final and without appeal.

  Who will do the shooting? The unit is silent…Who? We’re silent…The commander himself carried out the sentence…

  —

  —I was a machine gunner. I killed so many…

  For a long time after the war I was afraid to have children. I gave birth to a child when I calmed down. Seven years later…

  But I still haven’t forgiven anything. And I won’t…I was glad when I saw German prisoners. I was glad that they were pitiful to look at: footwraps on their feet instead of boots, footwraps on their heads…They were led through the villages and they asked, “Mother, give brot…Brot…” I was astonished that peasants came out of their cottages and gave them—one a piece of bread, another a potato…Boys ran after the column and threw stones…But the women wept…

  It seems to me that I’ve lived two lives: one a man’s, the other a woman’s…

  —

  —After the war…Human life was worthless. I’ll give you an example…I’m riding on a bus after work; suddenly there’s shouting: “Stop thief! Stop thief! My purse…” The bus stops…A crowd forms at once. A young officer takes a boy outside, puts his arm on his knee and—whack!—breaks it in two. Jumps back on the bus…And we go on…Nobody defended the boy, nobody called a policeman. A doctor. The officer had his whole chest covered with combat decorations…I was getting off at my stop, he hopped down and gave me his hand: “Allow me, Miss…” Such a gallant one…