chapter 29
The village that I lost
(The Victory Day)
It can seem odd how much my perception of the world was influenced by the Second World War, considering that I was born 11 years after it was over. Perhaps it's just the fate of any generation that comes soon after a war. My parents were too young to take part in it and my only known to me grandfather was killed by Stalin's bloody regime in 1938 – a year before it started. We never called it the World War though. First of all, it was the Great Patriotic War for us, that is the war that started in 1941 when Germans crossed the borders of the USSR. “On the 22nd of June, exactly at 4 am, Kiev was bombed and we were informed that the war came to our land” - incredible but I still remember how touched I was when I first heard one actor singing those simple uneven lines in some long-forgotten Soviet movie. And even now, when Russians crossed our borders and have been bombing Ukrainian cities, towns and villages for more than two years, I still find this old song touching. It's difficult not to feel that there is something wrong about it, especially remembering how zealously our former compatriots use the memory of the last war to justify their unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine. Yet my attitude towards it is quite understandable. We were brought up on books, movies and songs dedicated to that war, and most of them were created by people who took part in it or lost their loved ones because of it. No wonder that most of those works of art were so good and touching. All of them, it seemed, tried to show to people why that horrible war should never be repeated again.
At school we swallowed a lot of information about it, studying in detail all the battles with their maps and war heroes with their biographies. Too much information, perhaps. That's why, I think, feeling a bit confused, I asked my father once what the difference between our War and the Second World War actually was. And what a surprise it was to learn suddenly that one was just the part of the other! Father was a man whom I could trust in such matters as he had served in the Soviet Army for ten years. They definitely had to have some lectures about it all. It was Father who once struck my imagination telling me with pride that the USSR had never fought aggressive wars. Obviously, he didn't know it was not really true. As for me, I loved the idea of my country being so peaceful. Our teachers, newspapers and TV programmes told us the same. Our country was always fighting for peaceful co-existence. It seemed completely logical that after all the horrors of the last war, which our films and books showed so vividly, the USSR fought so eagerly for the peace in the whole world. Or celebrated a bit noisily and pompously the Victory Day on the 9th of May. Personally, I couldn't notice any discordance in that.
It was one of my favourite holidays. The weather was usually nice and sunny on that day, and the chestnut trees were in full bloom. It's nowadays because of that damn global warming, that these shapely trees begin to blossom in April, but in those days they usually started flowering shortly before the Victory Day. It's amazing how much I remember about its celebration. For instance, old men in military jackets with decorations on their chests. I always had a warm feeling watching one of them walking somewhere in the street or in the park on that day. Or I still remember my jubilation when I was 11 or 12 and our class took part in the Young Pioneer Parade. It was really exciting to march along the main streets and then through the Central Park, reciting loudly some rhymes that we had learned by heart for this occasion.
“Good training for your boys, who were supposed to serve in the Soviet Army,” my son remarked sarcastically many years later. But I didn't feel like that. There was only a pleasant sensation that we looked very picturesque in our white shirts with bright red ties and blue field caps on our heads. Perhaps for that reason at the young pioneer's age we often participated in some outdoor celebrations. On one especially hot day one of our boys even fainted when we were standing motionless in the sun before the war memorial, listening to some long dull speech about peaceful co-existence - or maybe it was about the USSR saving the world from the fascist plague, I don't remember anymore. Anyway, that boy's fainting caused a great panic among our teachers. But mostly my recollections are warm and light. And no wonder in that as May with its bright greenery and bloom has always been my favourite time of the year.
If I stayed at home on the 9th of May I used to sit with my father in front of our black and white TV watching Military Parade on Red Square in Moscow. At first, well drilled soldiers were marching across the square, measuring out their pace. I didn't find them very interesting. But I did like my father's explanations about military machinery that followed after them. Most of all, I was impressed by large missiles crawling by like huge swollen caterpillars. They looked rather innocent, but I knew it was a deadly weapon. Father assured me there was no need for worry as those things on the screen were completely harmless dummies. Sometimes they showed us the real missiles on TV too and it was even more impressive. They were well-hidden somewhere under the ground, and I still remember how a heavy hatch cover silently slipped aside, showing a dark hole underneath. Then a sharp nose began to emerge followed by a light gray body of a missile and some time later it all sank into the dark tunnel again. Almost certainly there was some disquieting music to go with those video-shots in order to give the audience the right impression.
It's so difficult to accept it but perhaps now Russians destroy our cities, sea-ports and power-stations, and kill our people with some of those missiles, whose dummies my father and I discussed so peacefully on the Victory Day. But at the time of my childhood and youth we sincerely believed that we needed our weapons only for self-protection. Who could have had any doubts about it, remembering the innumerable victims and great devastation of the last war? Definitely, peaceful co-existence seemed to be the only right way to follow. That's why, I think, my generation had never accepted clumsy attempts of Soviet propaganda to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. There were a lot of jokes about “the limited contingent of the Soviet Army” there. Our propagandists' stupid terminology was really annoying and could deceive nobody. No one believed that we had anything to do with Afghanistan or that we had to interfere in their inner conflict.
It was especially infuriating because by that time the lack of food on the shelves in our shops had become well palpable, not to mention permanent deficit of other important things. I can't be sure here but maybe it was Afghanistan that became the last straw for the Soviet economy. People usually explained it all by our endless help to brotherly countries from the Socialist Camp and all over the world. On this irritating background the Afghan campaign seemed really idiotic. Moreover, it contradicted too much the idea of peaceful co-existence that they had proclaimed so many times before. Our leader Leonid Brezhnev fought in the Second World War himself and seemed to be sincere in his fight for the peace in the world. That's why Afghanistan sounded as a discordant note in our ears.
But, in fact, it was not something really new or unexpected – just 10 years before that, in 1968, they sent Soviet tanks to Czechoslovakia to help our brothers communists to stay at the steering wheel. It's a pity that I can't remember my parents' attitude towards the event. I was only 11 then. Maybe they discussed the matter out of my earshot because the memory of Stalin's dark times was still fresh in their minds. All that I can recall is that people suddenly got a bit crazy and started to buy salt, matches and soap in big quantities. “Who knows, maybe a new war is on its way,” my mother explained to me in a low voice. After that she handed a three liter milk-can to me to buy salt and sent me to the queue that was winding like a snake in front of the local shop. “No more than two (or three, or five) items in the same hands,” our shop-assistants usually cried to the crowd in such cases. I forgot the exact quantity but I do remember standing in that long queue, trying to guess how much it would take to reach the counter. A smart young girl passing by stopped to ask about the cause of agiotage. After being told she sniffed so scornfully that I felt a wave of shame rushing over me for standing there.
I am not sure if I saw it then but there it was, a notorious gap between generations, showing itself in all its clarity. People in the queue were mostly elderly or at least over forty. They surely knew what a real war was and tried to be prepared for a new one at any cost. As for the girl in a smart dress, the war for her was something thrilling from a book or a movie, something unreal that couldn't come and kill her and her relatives or burn her house to the ground. I am afraid that's how fertile soil for a new war begins to develop. My mother was a good narrator. But even I, listening to her stories through all my childhood and teens, could never understand in full measure all the atrocities and horrors of the real war. Obviously, nothing can be a better teacher than your own experience. That's why human collective memory has always been too short.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
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