On November 7, 1941 there was the usual USSR military parade in Moscow to celebrate the Socialist Revolutionary Day. On that day, even the weather cooperated as it was a particularly cold day, good for the Red Army in their fur coats and hard on the Germans in their summer uniforms. There were fresh, strong, well-equipped troops from Siberia, and Moscow provided more new troops, recent military academy graduates and anyone else who could be found, including large numbers of over-aged civilians called the People’s Volunteer Corps who were armed and ready for combat. All of these Red Army Divisions participated in the Red Square parade and even Comrade Stalin waved his greeting from the Kremlin Wall as he made one of his few public appearances. After the troops passed in review, they all kept marching right on to the outskirts of Moscow where they were immediately placed in the front line trenches. The Germans were some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) away. Many of these troops did not survive their first taste of combat. Those who did were gratefully remembered in future victory ceremonies.
People’s Volunteer Corps advance to the front lines
Moscow was the hub of Soviet railroads, communications, and government, and its capture might have crippled the Soviet effort to reinforce the front from the Asian hinterland and possibly have undermined the Communist regime. The battle for Moscow was very important and its successful defense would be the turning point in the unbroken series of German victories.
Referring to the battle for Moscow just before it occurred, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.” He went so far as to order the newspapers to keep their headline blank so that it could later carry the wonderful news that Moscow had fallen and the Germans were victorious.
When all seemed lost for the USSR, Red Army General (later Marshal) Georgi K. Zhukov was placed in charge. He was well known as he led successful tank battles against the Japanese Imperial Army to win the Battle of Khalkin-Gol in Mongolia. The outspoken General Zhukov also became the hero of the Battle for Moscow after he led the first major counterattack and the enemy reeled back 100 to 250 kilometers, shivering in the Russian winter. It was here that the Soviet Union’s organization, leadership, and individual resolve became resolute. The turning point had been reached. The desertion rate dropped drastically and wounded soldiers kept their rifles when they were taken to aid stations. With greater confidence in winning, morale was going up.
Stalin’s radio broadcast the previous July was now becoming believable as he had stated, “History shows that invincible armies do not exist and have never existed.” Hitler had fallen far short of his goals. His strategy was to capture Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the area up to the Volga River, including Stalingrad before the winter slowdown when the Red Army could reorganize and reequip itself.
Female medic at work on the battle line.
Of particular interest to me was the fate of an 18-year-old Russian rifleman named Fyodor Lapshin, the only son of my beloved Uncle Andre. Andre and his wife and daughter stayed in Moscow during the entire war. Fyodor was severely wounded in the battle for Moscow and he spent many long months in hospitals. However, he did survive and served in the military until the war’s end. Fyodor is alive to this day but he paid a high price as he still needs regular treatments for his injuries.
Fyodor Lapshin just prior to the Battle for Moscow.
Meanwhile, my parents still lived in Uluntsiric. This was their home for a long time and their life stabilized. Mareika worked in the small military medical unit while Mikhail continued his military duties. In spite of the war, the young lovers were happy to be together. More than two years later, their joy expanded as their son was born on March 19, 1943 at the medical unit where Mareika worked.
The new baby boy was handsome and incredibly large, weighing five kilos, 200 grams (eleven pounds, seven ounces). It was a difficult labor requiring oxygen and blood transfusions and it almost cost the new mother her life. Mikhail had the same blood type as his wife and he was a very willing donor. When, after a couple of hours, Mareika regained consciousness and opened her eyes she saw a pair of huge black eyes watching her. It would seem that the baby realized his mom was in serious trouble because he made no sound.
Mareika smiled and said, “Hi! You look exactly like your daddy!” The baby must have decided that it was all right to make his presence known as his mama was now okay and he cried so loud that an alarmed doctor and a frightened nurse ran to the new mother’s room.
Mikhail was very proud and entertained thoughts that his son would grow as large as his own father, Ivan Coupriyanovich Sariechev. The happy parents picked a name for their son: Vyacheslav, in honor of Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, the prime minister of Russia from 1930 to 1941 who was very popular in the USSR. Many new parents gave this name to their sons in honor of Molotov who was Stalin’s right hand.
The new Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Sariechev did not pay any attention to this very respectable name and behaved very badly; he cried day and night. It was almost as though he knew that dark clouds were ready to move over his head.
28. Roads
Little Slahva, Vyacheslav’s nickname, was the only child in the entire underground military town of Uluntsiric. The Russian word Slahva translates as glory in English. Everyone was saying, “This boy is our glory! If we can have a child here, then we can survive and win!”
The name Vyacheslav actually means “a Slavic person who belongs to the Vyatichi Tribe.” However, it translates more like “glory to the Vyatichi.” The Vyatichi was a strong, independent Slavonic Tribe that established the city of Ryazan and was known to fiercely defend their turf, even killing strangers. They were considered the last tribe to submit to the Kievan Authority in ancient times.
Three months after Slahva’s birth my mother Mareika became a victim of a small Typhus outbreak. An infected soldier who brought in supplies passed it on to an officer who then passed it on to Mareika. The camp medical doctor caught on quickly and isolated them all in the medical unit. The two men subsequently died and Mareika was close to dying.
A troop buildup was underway, which included medical personnel and civilians to do routine camp work like cooking and washing so, at this time, there were almost 20 Russian women in the camp. The gravely ill Mareika was unable to nurse her infant and none of the women were lactating so no one was able to nurse three-month-old Slahva. No other milk was available and he only had adult food to eat such as soup and sausage. Therefore, the base general ordered an emergency requisition to buy a cow from the Mongolians. A lactating cow was eventually delivered along with the cow’s food supply, and life improved for the infant.
Everyone in the medical unit believed that my mother would die and they informed my dad of this. Originally, a nurse started taking care of Slahva. The young nurse understood that Mareika was in poor condition and after several days she told my father Mikhail that if anything should happen to his wife she was ready to be with him.
He showed the young woman the door and thereafter did both his military duty and the nursing duties for his precious son. An older soldier with some previous experience with babies was now available full time and he helped where he could. It was at this point that my father joined the countless Russians smoking cigarettes. Nicotine has a temporary calming effect on stress and Mikhail was rapidly addicted. It would be many long years before he finally cast off the deadly habit.
Three months later Mareika was sitting near her son’s bed enjoying his tiny hands clasping her forefinger. The base medical unit had just released the young woman following her long illness. She did not even look in the mirror. Mareika knew that she looked ugly with her shaved head, hollow cheeks, sharp nose, and sunken eyes. She wore a headscarf and looked like a sad ancient peasant woman.
During her deliriums, Mareika had a vision of two children, a boy and a girl, who were begging her, “Please, please, do not die because if you die then we will also die!”
Mareika responded, “I am not going to die
, my children. I will not die; do not worry.” Mareika always believed that she’d had a vision of both my brother and me at that time. I was not born for another seven and a half years.
I find this especially intriguing as I saw a vision of my son during the first trimester of my own pregnancy and I could describe how my unborn son would look. I bought boy’s baby clothes based on that vision. Russian women during this period usually declined the amniotic fluid test to determine the sex of their unborn.
Slahva was a Soviet national born in a foreign country and the Red Army did not issue birth certificates. This obviously triggered another round of red tape. The same year that he was born, in 1943, one of my father’s friends had to journey to the USSR Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital. Father gave him the equivalent of a power-of-attorney and this friend was able to return with a USSR birth certificate for Slahva. It is noteworthy that Slahva’s place of birth is listed on his passport as Uluntsiric. That is the only place where I have seen that name documented. It is not shown on any current map—it’s as if Uluntsiric never existed.
The Red Army had issued Mikhail a military booklet when he joined. However, when he came to Mongolia in 1939, officers did not carry their military booklet when stationed out of the Soviet Union. They carried only a Komsomol booklet or, for those who were members of the Communist Party like my dad, they would carry their Communist Party booklet.
About the time that war with Germany broke out, the Red Army re-issued Mikhail’s military booklet. In 1941 they issued an item previously unknown to Russians: dog tags, which are now common to military personnel of most nations. Many countries use a system similar to America’s, with two small steel rounded rectangles imprinted with the first name, middle initial, last name, military identification number, blood type, branch of service, and religious preference. The USSR system was much simpler. They carried a small metal cylinder with a screw cap in their shirt pocket. The cylinder contained a paper with their name and a civilian address inside. However, officers seldom checked Soviet soldiers to see if they carried this identification.
Mikhail was legal and in good shape, according to the paperwork. Unfortunately, my poor mother could not say the same. The hospital system, in the chaos of wartime, could not find the documentation of her years of work in Mongolian hospitals and this caused a few problems in her later years. The government greatly reduced her retirement pay because she could not prove that she was a war veteran. The field hospitals where she worked were semi-mobile and could expand or contract in size as the situation demanded. Personnel records were within the system, but the hospital number was necessary to find a personnel record. This number code consisting of both numbers and letters was an efficient system. The problem was that mother could not remember the number code used at the time she worked there. Therefore her personnel record could not be accessed. No only did she not receive her rightful pension but she was denied the many privileges granted to war veterans that can make their life easier, such as free public bus transportation and prescription drugs, half off the monthly telephone bill and the yearly apartment tax, a yearly no-cost vacation, and more.
Similar problems arose years later during the Soviet-Afghanistan War when some of the wounded war veterans returned home to the USSR and could not prove that their wounds were war-related. The government paid for treating their wounds but the disability pension money was not always there. A son of one of my girlfriends had this problem and finally they just gave up on the disability payments since it cost so much money to correct the error.
However, my mother’s record problems were larger that just that. When a Soviet military wife went overseas, she would carry a Soviet Union passport, but mother did not have one. Most Soviets citizens obtain this on their 16th birthday. City workers always had one but peasants on a collective farm often did not, which was an effective way to “keep them down on the farm.” Farm boys who went into the military did obtain a passport after their military duty. Mother was single when she went to Mongolia. She probably obtained a military booklet when she joined the Red Army and turned 18 while living in Mongolia. Again, Mom is not here to ask and Dad does not remember; to him it was not important. At that time, records did not have the detail and accuracy that they presently do. The custom of the Red Army at that time was to make entries only in the man’s records. When she was married, she carried only her Komsomol booklet and her birth certificate (which was the illegal one with the pseudo name of Maria Ivanovna Kondratyeva that she had prepared years before with Olga Olegovna in St. Petersburg). This pseudo name was used on Slahva’s birth certificate.
When mother was finally clear of typhus and released from the medical unit, the soldier who had been helping Mikhail after the baby’s nurse left told Mareika the whole story of her son’s survival. She could see that her son did not look healthy. He was colorless, skinny, and weak. Slahva also had very few baby clothes. There were no baby shoes, long socks, baby underwear, or baby coats available to purchase, and no yarn available to make them. Mother fashioned what she could with what she had.
Some months later, in January of 1944, my father and mother discussed sending her and their baby to his parents. He had raised the subject before, but only now did she agree. It was a difficult decision because travel was dangerous but staying in Mongolia appeared to be certain death for the baby who now had rickets from a shortage of Vitamin D. These early nutritional deficiencies may explain why Slahva did not grow to the huge size of his paternal grandfather as his birth weight might have indicated. As an adult, Slahva was well proportioned and strongly muscled but only 169 centimeters (5 feet, 6 inches) tall.
My mom and my brother had to travel the long distance across Mongolia and Siberia to reach the family home, even as World War II raged on. The first step would have to involve a passport for Mareika. They traveled almost due north to the city of Chita in Chita Oblast, which is a province in Russia. There, my mother got her first passport and said farewell to my father. Russian trains were dependable and heavily used, reflecting people’s confidence in them. Mom and Slahva boarded the Trans-Siberia Railway train and headed west for the long trip to Moscow.
My dad’s oldest sister Tania had been living in an apartment in Moscow while her husband fought on the Western Front, but she evacuated to Ryazan to stay with her parents in 1941 as the war came to Moscow, so she was unable to meet Mareika. Father informed one of his close friends, an officer stationed in Moscow, about Mareika’s arrival. This friend was to meet her at Moscow’s Kazanskie train station and help her to get her ticket processed with the military. Then, he would help her change to a different platform and board the train for the next leg of her journey, to Ryazan. He was to bring locally available food, vitamins, medicine, baby clothes, and wool-lined boots for the baby as the rest of their trip would be colder since they would be on a local train without the comforts and heating found on the more luxurious long distance trains. The officer took a jeep to the train station and began to search for Mareika who he had never met; he did not even have a picture of her. The officer walked through Moscow’s huge Kazanskie train station, searching and searching through thousands of people. How could he find a needle in a haystack? He considered using the station’s loudspeaker system, if he could convince the officials that it was an emergency. But even if Mareika heard him, she could not communicate back to him or even move with all her gear.
Moscow’s huge Kazanskie train station.
The officer, however, was determined and suddenly his sight locked on a quiet, black-eyed boy who hung his head on a young blond woman’s shoulder. The little one, especially his eyes and black eyebrows, looked exactly like Mikhail! He had found the needle. Mareika and her baby had spent long hours in the crowded, freezing station. She was afraid to speak to strangers. As time got shorter for her connecting train she realized that she might have to abandon the suitcases. To her credit, she did not lose a thing on that long trip, partly due to luck and partly thanks to the friend
ly army officer who had found her. This was a dangerous time to travel in the war-torn Soviet Union. There were gangs of desperate criminals and assorted hungry con-men about, a phone call was difficult to set up, and bad things could and did happen rapidly. The officer got her loaded on the new train for the short trip to Ryazan. This smaller town did not pose the difficulties of the huge Moscow train station. Yevdokia, the wife of Vassily, Mikhail’s older brother, was living in Ryazan and a telegram alerted her of Mareika’s arrival. Using Yevdokia’s friendly advice and a paid porter, my mother easily changed trains on the same platform and then it was just a short ride to the rural station of Denezhnikovo where she met her father-in-law.
About a month after Mareika arrived with her son, Mikhail’s sister Tania took her three children and tried to return to her apartment in Moscow. She did this in February as the snow was stable and her father could drive them to the train station in the farm sled. Tania was leaving the comfort of friends and family, as well as a consistent supply of farm food, during wartime for an uncertain future in Moscow. However, she felt the need to get her own family independent. On arriving in Moscow she found another family occupying her apartment. Tania went to the bureau that assigns people to housing. The government owned most of the apartments and houses. The housing bureau informed her that those people who had stayed in Moscow would keep the apartments they were in and those who left during the invasion threat could not regain either their apartments or their furniture and possessions. The people who had stayed dug earthen tank barriers, helped as rooftop watchers for enemy planes, and worked as volunteers in the hospitals or wherever they could help.
My Russian Family Page 19