Russia at war 1941-1945

"Barging and bellowing" and "rattling their naked power of evil", as Pasternak put it, was not exactly the same thought—something like a "Martian Invasion"—conveyed by that horrible, inhuman little theme of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony? Today it may seem noisy, melodramatic, repetitive (the theme, is, indeed, repeated louder and louder and louder no fewer than eleven times); yet, as a documentary of 1941, as a reflection of the feeling that here was "naked evil" in all its stupendous, arrogant, inhumanly terrifying power over-running Russia there is almost nothing to equal it:

The lament for the Russian Land took on other forms, too. Konstantin Simonov's poems became immensely popular during that winter of 1941-2. For instance the agonising

picture of the Russian retreat from the Smolensk province, with lines like these:

... And it seemed that outside every Russian village

Our grandfathers had risen from the dead,

And were shielding us with their outstretched arms,

And praying for us, their godless grandchildren...

Russia, our homeland, what is it? I ask you;

It's not Moscow houses, where we cheerfully lived,

It is rather these poor huts where our grandfathers laboured,

And the Russian graves with their simple crosses...

Here was a kind of nostalgia for the Russian land, even in its poorest and most archaic form.

Or the still more famous Wait for me, with its irrational, almost religious undertones: Wait for me, and I'll return, only wait very hard.

Wait, when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain;

Wait, when the winds sweep the snowdrifts,

Wait in the sweltering heat,

Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.

Wait even when from afar, no letters come to you,

Wait even when others are tired of waiting...

Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more,

And when friends sit around the fire, drinking to my memory.

Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory, too;

Wait, for I'll return, defying every death.

And let those who did not wait say that I was lucky;

They will never understand that in the midst of death,

You, with your waiting, saved me.

Only you and I will know how I survived:

It's because you waited, as no one else did.

This literal translation naturally does not render the rhythm of the original; as a poem it is, in fact, very mediocre; but, nevertheless, from the autumn of 1941, when it was first published, right through 1942, it was the most popular poem in Russia, which millions of women recited to themselves like a prayer.

It is difficult at this distance, except for those who were in Russia at the time, to realise how important a poem like this was to literally millions of Russian women; no one could tell how many hundreds of thousands had died at the front since June 22, or had been taken prisoner or were otherwise missing.

Almost equally important were some other poets and writers. People were deeply moved for instance by Zoya, Margarita Aligher's poem on the partisan girl who was hanged outside Moscow—a poem later turned into a play. This represents the girl's hallucinations during the night between her torture by the Germans and her execution, Stalin appearing in the last scene to say that Moscow has been saved. Important, too, was Surkov's poetry, e.g. his prose poem, A Soldier's Oath written in 1941:

I am a Russian man, a soldier of the Red Army. My country has put a rifle in my