The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Everywhere in and out of town people were digging trenches and tank traps. At first, we also took part, conscientiously hauling dirt, helping to camouflage the pits. But then, like everyone else convinced of the hopelessness of the task, we tried to avoid the zealous police. At that point, they began rounding people up everywhere—in movie houses, in food queues, right on the street. Many men began to grow the notorious “trench” beards to look older and visibly prove that they were past the established age for digging trenches.

The parks and gardens of Kiev seemed turned up by giant moles. People hurriedly dug slits in the soil and hid there the moment they heard the drone of airplanes and waited for death from the implacable German bombs. But the

Tat’iana Fesenko, War-Scorched Kiev

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bombs did not fall. Every day flocks of enemy birds would appear over the city. They drew incomprehensible smoke signs in the sky and occasionally dumped a rain of white leaflets. People would watch with trepidation as these white moths circled languidly earthward. Then they would send children to gather the messages from the enemy (or was it friend?) and would avidly read the meager information. “Not a single bomb will fall on your beautiful city” they read, and fear would leave them, and fewer of them would crawl into the raw earth and more and more would watch the powerful silver birds float by in the sky, occasionally engaging the Soviet fighter planes. The results were always the same: smoky balls of explosions would dance near the silvery wings, but they, rocking gently, would calmly disappear in the distance, invulnerable.

At night people would come out to stand watch. Two or three figures with gas masks tied to their waists would stand before every house. But nothing was occurring in the city, and standing watch was as useless as the sand-bag barricades thrown up on all the streets. The summer rain fell on the tough fibers, the hot Ukrainian sun withered them, the sand bags rotted, ruptured, and golden streams of sand flowed to the pavement for children to carry to their yards. At night silver stars would arc across the velvet sky and heat lightning would blaze in the distance. These were stifling and moonless nights in which the rumble of distant artillery would fuse with the dull roll of thunder. In the gardens linden blossoms, tobacco, and petunias gave off their heady aroma. These were nights for singing, loving, laughing, slipping in a boat along the wide ribbon of the Dnieper, and for dreaming till dawn on St. Vladimir’s hill. But instead, quite close, there was fighting. The Germans had occupied the Goloseev forest and buses with large red crosses painted on them constantly raced along the streets of Kiev. Sometimes they drove very slowly and then people looked at them with anguish because only the mortally wounded were transported so slowly.

But, more frequently, other vehicles would race by. One-and-a-half and three-ton trucks packed with all sorts of bag and baggage. Occasionally amidst bedsprings, mirrored chiffoniers, and rolled-up carpets there would be nestled rubber tree plants and palms—the VIP’s of the city were prudently sending their families out of harm’s way. But not everyone was able to leave the besieged city in such comfort. People being evacuated with their institutions and offices would sit for days at junctions and railroad yards vainly expecting departure. And those who did manage to get on the treasured trains sent desperate messages to their loved ones describing chaos, disorder, congestion and filth at the evacuation centers and the panic which had engulfed the rear.

Troops retreated through the city. First from the districts of Western Ukraine—Lvov and Tarnopol—and later from familiar, near-by places where

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Chapter Twenty-Three

Kievans would go on vacation, buy strawberries and drink frothy, whole milk straight from the dairy. Unshaven, hungry, and sullen Red Army soldiers would march by, brusquely answering questions and sometimes caustically cursing their officers and political commissars who had taken off in their staff cars leaving the troops behind.

In contrast to the soldiers, the “warriors” of the newly-formed defensive battalions would proudly posture in their brand-new uniforms. They were given the noble task of fighting mighty German tanks with bottles of combustible fluid. Of course, it never came to that. Having strutted in their uniforms, the youths in a timely fashion changed into civvies and dispersed to their homes. Many of them later, under German occupation, filled the ranks of the collaborationist police, which was largely made up of the more unprincipled and brutal elements, thoroughly despised by the populace. Or else they became black marketeers who would scour villages for flour and cooking oil for resale to starving city-dwellers at incredible prices.