The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Shura’s serious eyes shone with such joy that one wanted to believe him. But I did not. He was forty and he knew another Russia. He remembered and yearned for it. But we, contemporaries of the Great October Revolution, had only one motherland: the motherland of the Soviet Union, of brave aviators, gigantic construction projects, a motherland with secure borders, with the invincible Red Army, with the romance of the distant Civil War. Most of us

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Chapter Twenty-Three

were convinced, as the song said, that “No one in the world// Can love or laugh like us.”

Even those like myself who had seen the villages of the Ukraine starving to death in ‘33; who had not slept nights on end expecting the common fate of the intelligentsia, a “visit” from the NKVD during Ezhov’s Terror, even we wanted to believe in a happy future. We tried to view everything that was dark, difficult and often hypocritical as inevitable “growing pains” which had to be lived through. I loved my country, though I did not like many things about it. And now my heart contracted with heavy foreboding.

How sad all the days had become. Every morning brought news of losses. The familiar and beloved world was collapsing. Faith, nurtured over many years, was collapsing. The “secure borders” were violated on the very first day. The “invincible Red Army” surrendered city after city, and a horrible question beat at one’s brain: was it all a lie? We denied ourselves everything, our standard of living was much lower than that of Europe, but we were a land of giants. Courageous aviators soared in our skies, shocking the world with their daring records. The defensive might of our enormous country had grown day by day. Yet, now the arches of the Dnieper hydroelectric dam had fallen, dynamited by the retreating Soviet army. The dead, black smoke stacks of the destroyed plants at Kramatorsk stood ominously. The once aggressive “little falcon” warplanes had become shapeless, burnt-out hulks on their bomb-pitted aerodromes. With a heavy and confident tread the German armies swept across the endless Ukrainian plains, squeezing the Soviet troops, cutting off the retreating forces, seizing cities. The youth of the Soviet Union went to the front but was unable to stop the enemy onslaught.

On the very next day after the declaration of war Lenia [diminutive of Leonid], my sweet and gentle friend from graduate school, left for the front. It seemed only yesterday that he sat by my hospital bed, shyly fingering a large box of my favorite rum cherries in chocolate which the doctor had strictly forbidden after my operation. He was planning his summer vacation then. Now he was far away, somewhere out there, as a military interpreter.

Gone into an armor unit was Kolia, a blue-eyed, fun-loving engineer, my first love. My girlhood, my first secrets from mother, the first dreams of my own nest were all tied to him. Since that time the lilacs had bloomed many times in the gardens of Kiev but carefully hidden in my desk was a withered branch—the first awkward gift from an infatuated boyfriend. And now, as he kissed my tear-filled eyes, I said farewell to my carefree youth, to my familiar and beloved world.

Then Zoika was gone into the army as a medic. Always laughing, always devoted to her work, she assured us that even in the eyes of her beloved man she would first look for symptoms of conjunctivitis. Gone was Viktor, lanky

Tat’iana Fesenko, War-Scorched Kiev

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and fun-loving, the favorite at all our picnics and parties. He had just become the father of as lively and fair-haired a boy as himself. Iura [diminutive of Georgii], too, was gone. My friend of many years who patiently would inquire every three months whether I’d go down to city hall with him and get married. And who instead went with me to all the theaters and movie houses and who kept all my great and lesser secrets. On a summer’s evening I saw off Tolia [Anatolii], the husband of a close friend. Just recently we had celebrated their first wedding anniversary, and now he was off “with a spoon, tin cup, and change of underwear,” as prescribed in the draft board notice.

Our house had become unusually empty and still. Occasionally my weeping girlfriends would come by to share their doleful news. I tried to console and hearten them, not knowing that my own greatest loss was still before me.

Nevertheless, I passed my last exam. Father beamed with a restrained but proud smile. When I arrived at the Military Academy where I had been teaching, a sentry snapped to attention and said with a swagger: “Comrade instructor, all classes have been postponed till the end of the war.” All of a sudden I had a lot of time, empty and useless. I tried reading, then embroidering. But books would fall from my hands and the whimsical, bright embroidery patterns brought no joy.