Grandmother was 8 years old when the war began, they were terribly hungry, the main thing was to feed the soldiers, and only then everyone else, and then one day she heard the women talking that the soldiers give food if you give it to them, but she didn’t understand what to give them. , came to the dining room, stood there roaring, an officer came out and asked why the girl was crying, she recounted what she heard, and he neighed and brought her a whole can of porridge. This is how grandma fed her four brothers and sisters.
My grandfather was a captain motorized rifle regiment. It was 1942, the Germans besieged Leningrad. Hunger, disease and death. The only way to deliver supplies to Leningrad is the “road of life” - frozen Lake Ladoga. Late at night, a column of trucks with flour and medicine, led by my grandfather, headed along the road of life. Of the 35 cars, only 3 made it to Leningrad, the rest went under the ice, like my grandfather’s truck. He carried the saved sack of flour on foot for 6 km to the city, but did not make it - he was frozen because of his wet clothes at -30.
My grandmother’s friend’s father died in the war when she was not even a year old. When the soldiers began to return from the war, every day she put on her most Nice dress and went to the station to meet the trains. The girl said that she was going to look for her dad. She ran among the crowd, approached the soldiers, and asked: “Will you be my dad?” One man took her hand, said: “well, lead the way,” and she brought him home and with her mother and brothers they lived a long and happy life.
My great-grandmother was 12 years old when the siege of Leningrad began, where she lived. She studied at a music school and played the piano. She fiercely defended her instrument and did not allow it to be dismantled for firewood. When the shelling began, and there was no time to go to the bomb shelter, she would sit down and play, loudly, for the whole house to hear. People listened to her music and were not distracted by gunfire. My grandmother, mother and I play the piano. When I was too lazy to play, I remembered my great-grandmother and sat down at the instrument.
My grandfather was a border guard; in the summer of 1941 he served somewhere on the border with what is now Moldova, and accordingly, he began to fight from the very first days. He never really talked about the war, because the border troops were part of the NKVD department - it was impossible to tell anything. But we did hear one story. During the forced breakthrough of the Nazis to Baku, my grandfather’s platoon was thrown to the rear of the Germans. The guys quickly found themselves surrounded in the mountains. They had to get out within 2 weeks, only a few survived, including the grandfather. The soldiers came to our front exhausted and mad with hunger. The orderly ran to the village and got there a bag of potatoes and several loaves of bread. The potatoes were boiled and the hungry soldiers greedily attacked the food. My grandfather, who survived the famine of 1933 as a child, tried to stop his colleagues as best he could. He himself ate a crust of bread and some potato peelings. An hour and a half later, all of my grandfather’s colleagues who had gone through the hell of encirclement, including the platoon commander and the unfortunate orderly, died in terrible agony from volvulus. Only the grandfather survived. He went through the entire war, was wounded twice and died in 87 from a cerebral hemorrhage - he bent down to fold the cot on which he slept in the hospital, because he wanted to run away and look at his newborn granddaughter, and then at me.
During the war, my grandmother was very young, she lived with her older brother and mother, her father left before the girl was born. There was a terrible famine, and the great-grandmother became too weak; she lay on the stove for many days and was slowly dying. She was saved by her sister, who had previously lived far away. She soaked some bread in a drop of milk and gave it to her grandmother to chew. Little by little my sister came out. So my grandparents were not left orphans. And grandfather, a smart guy, began to hunt gophers in order to somehow feed his family. He took a couple of buckets of water, went to the steppe, and poured water into the gopher holes until the frightened animal jumped out. The grandfather grabbed him and killed him instantly so that he would not run away. He carried home as many as he found, and they were fried, and the grandmother says that it was a real feast, and his brother’s spoils helped them survive. Grandfather is no longer alive, but grandmother lives and waits for her many grandchildren to visit every summer. She cooks perfectly, a lot, generously, and she herself takes a piece of bread with a tomato and eats it after everyone else. So I got used to eating little by little, simply and irregularly. And he feeds his family to the fullest. Thanks her. She experienced something that makes the heart freeze, and raised a large, glorious family.
My great-grandfather was drafted in 1942. He went through the war, was wounded, and returned as a Hero of the Soviet Union. On his way home after the end of the war, he stood at the station where a train full of children arrived different ages. There were also greeters - parents. Only there were only a few parents, and many times more children. Almost all of them were orphans. They got off the train and, not finding their mom and dad, started crying. My great-grandfather cried with them. The first and only time during the entire war.
My great-grandfather went to the front in one of the first departures from our city. My great-grandmother was pregnant with her second child - my grandmother. In one of his letters, he indicated that he was walking in a circle through our city (by that time my grandmother was born). A neighbor, who was 14 years old at that time, found out about this, she took the 3-month-old grandmother and took her to show my great-grandfather, he cried with happiness at the moment when he held her in his arms. It was 1941. He never saw her again. He died on May 6, 1945 in Berlin and was buried there.
My grandfather, a 10-year-old boy, was vacationing in a children's camp in June 1941. The shift was until July 1, on June 22 they were not told anything, they were not sent home, and so the children were given another 9 days of peaceful childhood. All radios were removed from the camp, no news. This is also courage, as if nothing had happened, to continue the detachment’s activities with the children. I can imagine how the counselors cried at night and whispered news to each other.
My great-grandfather went through two wars. During the First World War he was an ordinary soldier, after the war he went to receive military education. I learned. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in two significant and large-scale battles. At the end of the war he commanded a division. There were injuries, but he returned back to the front line. Many awards and thanks. The worst thing is that he was killed not by enemies of the country and people, but by simple hooligans who wanted to steal his awards.
Today my husband and I finished watching The Young Guard. I sit on the balcony, look at the stars, listen to the nightingales. How many young boys and girls never lived to see victory. We never saw life. My husband and daughter are sleeping in the room. What a blessing it is to know that your loved ones are at home! Today is May 9, 2016. Main holiday peoples former USSR. We are living free people thanks to those who lived during the war. Who was at the front and in the rear. God forbid we never find out what it was like for our grandfathers.
My grandfather lived in a village, so he had a dog. When the war began, his father was sent to the front, and his mother, two sisters and he were left alone. Due to severe hunger, they wanted to kill the dog and eat it. Grandfather, when he was little, untied the dog from the kennel and let him run, for which he received it from his mother (my great-grandmother). In the evening of the same day, the dog brought them a dead cat, and then began to drag the bones and bury them, and the grandfather dug them up and carried them home (they cooked soup on these bones). We lived like this until we were 43, thanks to the dog, and then she simply didn’t return home.
The most memorable story from my grandmother was about her work in a military hospital. When their Nazis died, they couldn’t get them and the girls out of the rooms from the second floor to the corpse truck... they simply threw the corpses out of the window. Subsequently, they were court-martialed for this.
A neighbor, a WWII veteran, spent the entire war in the infantry until Berlin. One morning we were smoking near the entrance and started talking. He was struck by the phrase - in the movies they show about the war - soldiers are running - they shout hurray at the top of their lungs... - this is fantasy. We, he says, always went on the attack in silence, because it was scary as fuck.
During the war, my great-grandmother worked in a shoe workshop, she was caught in a blockade, and in order to somehow feed her family she stole laces, at that time they were made from pig skin, she brought them home, cut them into small pieces equally, and fried them, so and survived.
Grandmother was born in 1940, and the war left her an orphan. A great-grandmother drowned in a well while collecting rose hips for her daughter. Great-grandfather went through the entire war and reached Berlin. He died when he was blown up by an abandoned mine while returning home. All that was left of him was his memory and the Order of the Red Star. My grandmother kept it for over thirty years until it was stolen (she knew who, but couldn’t prove it). I still can’t understand how people raised their hand. I know these people; I studied in the same class with their great-granddaughter and were friends. How interesting life has turned out.
When he was little, he often sat on his grandfather’s lap. He had a scar on his wrist, which I touched and examined. These were teeth marks. Years later, my father told the story of the scar. My grandfather, a veteran, went to reconnaissance, in the Smolensk region they encountered the SS men. After close combat, only one of the enemies remained alive. He was huge and swearing. SS-man, in a rage, bit his grandfather's wrist to the meat, but was broken and captured. Grandfather and the company were presented with another award.
My great-grandfather has been gray-haired since he was 19 years old. As soon as the war began, he was immediately drafted without being allowed to finish his studies. He said that they were going at the Germans, but it didn’t work out as they wanted, the Germans were ahead. Everyone was shot, and grandfather decided to hide under the trolley. Sent German Shepherd, sniff everything, grandfather thought that everyone would see and kill. But no, the dog simply sniffed it and licked it while running away. That's why we have 3 shepherd dogs at home)
My grandmother was 13 years old when she was wounded in the back by shrapnel during a bombing. There were no doctors in the village - everyone was on the battlefield. When the Germans entered the village, their military doctor, having learned about a girl who could no longer walk or sit, secretly made his way into her grandmother’s house at night, made bandages, and picked out worms from the wound (it was hot, there were a lot of flies). To distract the girl, the guy asked: “Zoinka, sing Katusha.” And she cried and sang. The war passed, my grandmother survived, but all her life she remembered the guy thanks to whom she remained alive.
My grandmother told me that during the war, my great-great-grandmother worked at a factory; at that time they made sure that no one stole and were very harshly punished for it. And in order to somehow feed their children, women put on two pairs of tights and stuffed grain between them. Or, for example, one distracts the guards while the children are taken to the workshop where the butter is churned, they catch small pieces and feed them. All three of my great-great-grandmother's children survived that period, and her son no longer eats butter.
My great-grandmother was 16 when they came German troops to Belarus. They were examined by doctors to be sent to the camps to work. Then the girls smeared themselves with grass, which caused a rash similar to smallpox. When the doctor examined the great-grandmother, he realized that she was healthy, but he told the soldiers that she was sick, and the Germans were terribly afraid of such people. As a result, this German doctor saved many people. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be in the world.
Great-grandfather never shared stories about the war with his family. He went through it from beginning to end, was shell-shocked, but never talked about those terrible times. Now he is 90 and more and more often he remembers that terrible life. He doesn’t remember the names of his relatives, but he remembers where and how Leningrad was shelled. And he still has old habits. There is always huge quantities of food in the house, but what if there is hunger? The doors are locked with several locks - for peace of mind. And there are 3 blankets in the bed, although the house is warm. Watches films about war with an indifferent look..
My great-grandfather fought near Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). And during one of the shootouts, shrapnel hit him in the eyes, causing him to instantly go blind. As soon as the shots stopped being heard, I began to look for the voice of the sergeant major whose leg had been blown off. The grandfather found the foreman and took him in his arms. So they went. The blind grandfather followed the commands of the one-legged foreman. Both survived. My grandfather even saw me after the operations.
When the war began, my grandfather was 17 years old, and according to the law of war, he had to arrive at the military registration and enlistment office on the day of his majority to be sent to active army. But it turned out that when he received the summons, he and his mother moved, and he did not receive the summons. He came to the military registration and enlistment office the next day, for a day of delay he was sent to a penal battalion, and their squad was sent to Leningrad, it was cannon fodder, those whom you don’t mind sending into battle first without weapons. As an 18-year-old boy, he found himself in hell, but he went through the entire war, was never wounded, the only thing his relatives did not know was whether he was alive or not, there was no right of correspondence. He reached Berlin and returned home a year after the war, since he still served in active service. His birth mother Having met him on the street, she didn’t recognize him 5.5 years later, and fainted when he called her mom. And he cried like a boy, saying “Mom, it’s me Vanya, your Vanya”
At the age of 16, my great-grandfather, in May 1941, having added 2 years to himself to get a job, got a job in Ukraine in the city of Krivoy Rog at a mine. In June, when the war began, he was mobilized into the army. Their company was immediately surrounded and captured. They were forced to dig a ditch, where they were shot and covered with earth. The great-grandfather woke up, realized that he was alive, crawled upstairs, shouting “Is anyone alive?” Two responded. Three got out, crawled to some village, where a woman found them and hid them in her cellar. During the day they hid, and at night they worked in her field, harvesting corn. But one neighbor saw them and handed them over to the Germans. They came for them and took them captive. This is how my great-grandfather ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After some time, due to the fact that his great-grandfather was a young, healthy peasant guy, from this camp he was transported to a concentration camp in West Germany, where he worked in the fields of the local rich, and then as a civilian. In 1945, during a bombing, he was locked in one house, where he sat the whole day until the American allies entered the city. When he came out, he saw that all the buildings in the area were destroyed, only the house where he was was left intact. The Americans offered all the prisoners to go to America, some agreed, and the great-grandfather and the rest decided to return to their homeland. They returned on foot to the USSR for 3 months, passing through all of Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. In the USSR, their military had already taken them prisoner and wanted to shoot them as traitors to the Motherland, but then the war with Japan began and they were sent there to fight. So my great-grandfather fought in the Japanese War and returned home after it ended in 1949. I can say with confidence that my great-grandfather was born wearing a shirt. He escaped death three times and went through two wars.
The grandmother said that her father served in the war, saved the commander, carried him on his back through the entire forest, listened to his heartbeat, when he brought him, he saw that the commander’s entire back was like a sieve, but he only heard his own heart.
I have been doing search work for several years. Groups of searchers searched for unmarked graves in forests, swamps, and battlefields. I still can’t forget this feeling of happiness if there were medallions among the remains. In addition to personal data, many soldiers put notes in the medallions. Some were written literally moments before death. I still remember, word for word, a line from one such letter: “Mom, tell Slavka and Mitya to crush the Germans! I can’t live anymore, so let them try for three.”
My great-grandfather spent his entire life telling his grandson stories about how afraid he was during the war. How afraid I was, sitting in a tank together with a younger comrade, to go to 3 German tank and destroy them all. How afraid I was to crawl across the field under plane fire in order to restore contact with the command. How afraid I was to lead a detachment of very young guys in order to blow up a German bunker. He said: "Horror lived in me 5 terrible years. Every moment I feared for my life, for the lives of my children, for the life of my Motherland. Anyone who says he wasn’t afraid will be lying." So, living in constant fear, my great-grandfather went through the entire war. Fearing, he reached Berlin. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and, despite what he experienced, remained a wonderful, incredibly kind and sympathetic person.
Great-grandfather was, one might say, the caretaker in his unit. Somehow we were transported in a convoy of cars to a new place and found ourselves surrounded by Germans. There is nowhere to run, only the river. So the grandfather grabbed the porridge pot from the car and, holding on to it, swam to the other shore. No one else from his unit survived.
During the years of war and famine, my great-grandmother briefly went outside to buy bread. And she left her daughter (my grandmother) at home alone. She was at most five years old at the time. So, if the great-grandmother had not returned a few minutes earlier, her child could have been eaten by the neighbors.
Memoirs of actual state councilor Konstantin Dmitrievich Kafafov .
A lawyer by training (who graduated from St. Petersburg University with a candidate's degree), Kafafov rose to the top of the civil service from lower positions. On October 3, 1888, with the rank of collegiate secretary, he was appointed to the office of the Senate department and by 1892 he was appointed secretary with the rank of titular councilor. For the next 25 years he worked in the judicial department, in prosecutorial supervision, as a judge, and as a member of the judicial chambers. In 1912 it began new stage his career connected with service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On April 2 he was appointed Vice Director of the Police Department. He did not have any experience in political investigation, and he was entrusted with purely bureaucratic functions; mainly, as a vice-director, he was responsible for departments related to legislative activities, and as a member of the minister’s council, he represented the Ministry in various interdepartmental commissions and meetings. His most serious work was done in the Workers' Insurance Council.
In days February Revolution 1917 Kafafov, like many high ranks of the tsarist administration, was arrested. On March 4, the Provisional Government established the Supreme Commission of Inquiry to investigate illegal actions in office former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials, renamed a few days later into the Extraordinary Investigative Commission. On May 24, the Commission issued a resolution stating that “taking into account Kafafov’s age, his Family status and painful condition”, as well as “by the very nature of the act”, his further detention seems to be an excessively strict measure. Conclusion in solitary confinement Peter and Paul Fortress was replaced by house arrest, and from May 31 the matter was reduced to a written undertaking not to leave Petrograd.
On August 24, Kafafov applied for permission to travel to Tiflis and was released. For three years he lived in Tiflis, Baku, and Crimea, and in November 1920 he emigrated to Turkey, then moved to Serbia, where he died in 1931.
In June 1929, Kafafov finished his memoirs, the pages of which dedicated to his stay in the former Russian Transcaucasus are given below with slight abbreviations.
“I’m 66 years old, I’m old. Much has been lived and much has been experienced,” these are the words that begin the memoirs of one of the heads of the Internal Affairs Department in recent years Russian Empire, actual state councilor Konstantin Dmitrievich Kafafov.
...I will not describe the collapse of the Russian state. Much has been written about this, both by those who contributed in every possible way to this destruction, and by outside observers.
My story is humble.
I spent the summer after liberation from the [Peter and Paul] Fortress in Petrograd, since I was obliged by subscription not to leave my place of residence. In the fall, I submitted a petition to the Extraordinary Investigative Commission for permission to move to the Caucasus, to Tiflis. After intense requests, this permission was finally given to me, and they took away from me a signature that I undertake to appear in Petrograd at the first request of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry. September 11, 1917 My family and I went to the Caucasus.
We arrived in Tiflis on September 17th. Autumn this year was unusually good. But the revolution greatly affected the life of the city. There was no bread. Instead of bread, they had to eat some kind of pulp made from bran and straw. Even corn, which is usually quite abundant in the Caucasus, was scarce this year. The cost of other products grew by leaps and bounds, and to top it all off, the most unceremonious robberies began in the city. They robbed us on the street during the day. For example, robbers meet a well-dressed lady on the street, silently accompany her to her apartment and, approaching her entrance, unexpectedly invite her to undress - they remove everything of any value from her, not excluding her boots and silk stockings, then they themselves they ring the bell at the entrance and quickly disappear with the loot, and the unfortunate victim, to the surprise of the servants or relatives who opened the door, comes home almost completely naked. Not only women, but also men and even children were subjected to this method of robbery. In addition, ordinary apartment robberies have become more frequent. Hooliganism has also become extremely frequent. There was continuous gunfire in the streets. The authorities were unable to cope with this.
However, in essence, there was no power. After the February Revolution, a coalition government of Transcaucasia was formed in Tiflis from representatives of Georgia, Armenia and the Baku Tatars. The coalition power, however, was not strong as it lacked cohesive unity and solidarity. In general, in the Caucasus before, it was very difficult to reconcile the interests of the Caucasian Tatars and Armenians; it was not easy to reconcile the interests of Georgians with Armenians. There was constant enmity between the Armenians and Tatars. This enmity had its origins in the distant past relations of the Turks towards the Armenians, which periodically erupted in brutal beatings of Armenians in Turkey. The hostile attitude of the Georgians towards the Armenians was explained by the seizure of all trade and urban property in the Caucasus by the Armenians. In addition, the Georgians, as the most united element and the most revolutionary, tried to dominate the coalition, but such a desire was met with opposition from both the Armenians and the Tatars.
Meanwhile revolutionary movement in Russia it became more and more profound. Soon after my arrival in Tiflis (at the end of October 1917), information was received from Moscow about the seizure of power there by the Bolsheviks. The complete collapse of the army began. Mutinous bands of soldiers reached home from the front in a disorderly, noisy armed crowd, threatening the safety of the cities lying along the way. Communication with the central Russian government ceased. At this time, taking advantage of the state of affairs, the Georgians decided to fulfill their long-cherished dream - to declare their independence. Yesterday's representatives of the Georgian people in the State Duma, and during the revolution - in the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, Chkheidze, Chkhen-Keli and Gegechkori, convinced internationalists - Social Democrats, Mensheviks, unexpectedly turned into ardent nationalists-patriots in their homeland. The Constituent Assembly was urgently convened. The independence of Georgia was proclaimed, basic laws were developed - and Georgia turned into an independent socialist republic.
It must be admitted that the Georgians turned out to be experienced and sophisticated businessmen in revolutionary work. While paying tribute to the demands of the revolution, they were able, however, to direct all these demands in the sense desired by their leaders. So, for example, according to the example Central Russia and they formed a council of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, although in Georgia there are actually few workers at all, and almost no factory workers, since there are only 2-3 tobacco factories there, and at first there were no soldiers at all. Nevertheless, infection is stronger than logic - and such a council was formed. But the leaders of the Georgian independent movement managed to virtually seize this revolutionary institution into their own hands. In essence, members of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, members of the Constituent Assembly and, finally, members of Parliament - if they were not the same persons, then in any case they were political like-minded people who not only did not interfere with each other, but on the contrary mutually supporting each other.
Of the Georgians, the Imeretians turned out to be the most energetic and militant workers. Georgians are divided into several tribes: the Kartalians, living in the lower reaches, mainly in the Tiflis province, the Imeretians, Mingrelians and Abkhazians, living in the Kutaisi province. Of these, the Kartalians are the most civilians Georgia. Imeretians and, in general, residents of mountainous areas have a hotter temperament. In peacetime, the Imeretians were mainly engaged in latrine trades, to which they were prompted both by the poverty of their nature and by their innate entrepreneurial spirit. The best cooks and servants both in Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus were predominantly from Imereti. When socialist teachings and the revolutionary movement began to penetrate into Transcaucasia, the Imeretians turned out to be their most receptive followers. They also captured the revolutionary and independent movement in Georgia. All Georgians share the basics of the language, but each tribe has its own characteristics, its own pronunciation and its own turns of phrase. They understand each other relatively freely. Almost all surnames in Kartalinia end in “shvili” - Mgaloblishvili, Khoshiashvili, etc. “Shvili” translated means “son”, Imeretian surnames end in “dze” - Chkheidze, Dumbadze, Dzha-mardzhidze, etc. “Dze” by -Imeretian also means “son”. Thus, the surnames seem to come from a representative of the clan, but, in addition, in Imereti there are many surnames, the origin of which can probably be explained by the fact that their ancestors came to the Caucasus in long ago times from the west, for example : Orbeliani, Zhordania, etc. As is known, almost all peoples passed through the Caucasus from east to west. There is no doubt that some of them settled in the Caucasus, retaining their type and some of the old customs. This can be especially observed in the mountains, in mountain villages.
Immediately after the declaration of independence of Georgia, local authorities were created. A permanent parliament was elected, ministries were formed, and the old social democrat Noah Jordania, who had previously been a minor employee of the oilman Nobel in Baku, became the head of the government. Nightgowns with ribbons instead of ties were removed, and members of the new government put on starched collars, dressed themselves in business cards and covered their Social Democratic heads with bourgeois top hats. The most talented of them, Gegechkori, who took the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, turned out to be a special dandy. One of his first diplomatic steps was to bow down to the Germans. The newly minted diplomat turned out to be a bad politician and believed in the invincibility of the Germans, being, obviously, at heart a big fan of the German armored fist. However, there was information about relations between some Georgian groups and the Germans back in 1914, at the beginning of the war. But these rumors were not given any significance at that time due to the fact that the representatives of the Georgian nobility close to the court, and after them all the Georgians, were considered selflessly devoted to the throne.
The Georgian ministers turned out to be both more cunning and more experienced than the ministers of the Provisional Government. They did not disperse all employees of the administration and police, as the ministers of the Provisional Government did. On the contrary, all the Georgians who served in these institutions remained, and some even received more responsible posts. And the severity and energy of the socialist Minister of Internal Affairs, shown by him in the fight against the enemies of independent Georgia and order in it, could be envied by Plehve himself. Arrests and expulsions rained down from the socialist cornucopia, regardless of any principles and problems of freedom, which these Social Democrats were shouting about so recently from the rostrum of the Russian State Duma.
The first immediate concern of the Georgian government was the need to ferry Russian soldiers returning from the front without permission from the borders of Georgia as quickly and painlessly as possible. This responsibility was mainly entrusted to the former member of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies Chkheidze, he met the troops, made speeches, convinced the soldiers to quickly return home to their waiting families, and, just in case, pointed them to the towering right on the opposite side. -on the river bank Chickens on Davidovskaya Mountain, saying that a huge number of guns are concentrated there and in case of resistance, in an instant all the carriages with soldiers will be “turned into dust.”
As you know, Tiflis is located in a basin on both banks of the Kura River. On the left bank the terrain is less elevated than on the right. By itself high place on the left bank runs the main branch of the Transcaucasian railway, connecting Baku with Batum. The right bank of the Kura is significantly higher than the left and ends quite high mountain, towering above the city - this mountain is called David's - after the church of St. David, built in the middle of the mountain near a small spring gushing out of the mountain. According to legend, here once upon a time, when the entire mountain was still covered with forest, lived the hermit St. David. Here, in the fence of the church, the immortal author of “Woe from Wit” Griboedov is buried. It was on this mountain that the Georgians, in order to intimidate soldiers returning from the front, built a seemingly formidable battery of 2 cannons taken from the Russians.
With sweet speeches and cannon threats, the Georgian authorities managed to transport troops returning from the front outside of Georgia. The diplomatic attempts of the Georgian diplomat were no less successful. In the first half of 1918, I don’t remember the month now, a small train of German troops unexpectedly arrived in Tiflis with guns and music. And an amazing thing. In the morning the Germans arrived, at noon one German soldier was stationed on the main streets without guns with one cleaver, and the city was immediately restored full order; from that day on it was possible to return home in the dead of night without any fear of attack. So strong was the authority of the Germans in the east. The Germans behaved tactfully in Tiflis. They established complete order in the city. Their headquarters was located in one of the houses on Golovinsky Avenue. Every day, information about the progress of the war was posted near the headquarters doors. In the evenings there was music playing on Golovinsky Prospekt; but the days of the Germans were already numbered. Georgian diplomats were wrong.
After the breakthrough of the Solunsky Front in September 1918, the position of the Germans became difficult: their front still held out, but they felt an impending catastrophe. The allied forces, united under the overall command of Marshal Foch, were preparing for a decisive blow. In view of all this, the Germans hastily folded and left Tiflis. The Georgians, willy-nilly, had to change their orientation and turn to the British.
Soon the British arrived. Their arrival was not as solemn as the appearance of the Germans. Apparently, among Georgians they did not enjoy such charm. And the British themselves treated the Georgians coldly and condescendingly. The British did not interfere in the internal affairs of the Georgians and, as always and everywhere, set out to extract more benefits from their arrival in the Caucasus. They began intensively exporting oil from Baku and manganese from Georgia.
As soon as Georgia declared its independence, the Armenians and Baku Tatars. On the territory of the Erivan and part of the Elizavetpol province populated by Armenians, the Armenian Republic was formed, and on the territory of the Baku and other parts of the Elizavetpol province populated by Tatars, the Azerbaijan Republic was formed. Until that time, Azerbaijan was the name given to the part of Persian territory adjacent to Russia. Baku and its environs, before their conquest by the Russians, constituted a special khanate, ruled by the Baki Khans, who were vassals of the Persian shahs. On the shores of the Caspian Sea, above the present city, the Bakikhanov castle towered. The Khanate was poor, the inhabitants were engaged in cattle breeding and fishing.
They had no idea about oil at that time, and the gases escaping from the ground in places contributed to the creation of a religious cult of fire worshipers, who, thanks to these gases, maintained an eternal fire in their temples. After the Persians adopted Islam, this religion gradually began to spread among the Baku and other Caucasian Tatars and highlanders. The Bakikhanov clan ceased. The Baku and Elizavetpol provinces have long since entered not only the boundaries of the Russian state, but gradually began to join Russian culture. Representatives of the local population in most cases were already pupils of Russians educational institutions. They never even dreamed of independence, which, moreover, they, in essence, never had. But life is more fantastic than the richest human fantasy. And so the Baku Tatars suddenly had the opportunity to organize their own oil republic, and for greater importance they decided to invent ancestors for themselves - in the person of an independent Azerbaijan that supposedly once existed on their territory. Of all the newly-founded republics, the Azerbaijan Republic was the richest, thanks to its oil sources. Then came the Georgian one, which had manganese mines and coal. The Armenian one turned out to be the poorest - it did not even have a single decent city. For its main city, Erivan, is a rather run-down provincial provincial town, which cannot be compared even with Baku, not only with Tiflis. All three republics, especially at first, lived exclusively on the legacy left from Russia in the form of all kinds of food warehouses, uniforms and weapons. They unceremoniously divided all this property among themselves, and lion's share Everything went to the Georgians, because almost all the large warehouses were located in Tiflis and its environs.
Neither factory, nor factory, nor agricultural industry was developed in any way either in Georgia or in Armenia. Before the newly minted state entities The question of finding out the means of subsistence urgently arose. The financial authorities of the new republics first of all took up the search for these funds. First of all, they proceeded to print their own banknotes. Transcaucasian bonds, issued by the triune government of Transcaucasia, were soon replaced by bonds - Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani. These bonds were issued, of course, without observing the emission rules and without backing at least part of them with gold cash. They only indicated that they were provided with all the state property of the country, but the authorities themselves hardly knew what the value of these properties was. The authorities seemed to care more about the external beauty of the bonds, flaunting before each other fancy designs of the emblems of their state power on their credit signs, than about their actual creditworthiness. Oddly enough, but on the Transcaucasian Exchange - their quotation did not go further - Georgian bonds stood above the rest, followed by Azerbaijani ones and last were Armenian ones.
One of the socialist measures of the Georgian government was the nationalization of natural resources. In Tiflis itself there were hot sulfur springs, which were used by their owners, private individuals, by constructing a public baths. These baths bore the names of their owners. So, there were baths: Iraklievskaya, which once belonged to Irakli, the Georgian prince, and which later passed to his heirs; Sumbatovskaya, which belonged to the Sumbatov princes; Orbelyanovskaya, which belonged to the princes Dzhambakuri-Orbelyanov, Bebutovskaya, which belonged to the princes Bebutov; Mirzoevskaya, which belonged to the rich Mirzoevs, famous at one time in the Caucasus, etc. The local population willingly visited these baths, and their profitability grew as the city’s population grew. In 1913, the Tiflis city government raised the issue of purchasing all these baths from private owners and, in view of their healing properties, about constructing them at their location medical resort. Negotiations even began with the owners, but the war prevented the implementation of this intention. The Georgian socialist government solved the issue more simply, it simply took away these baths with all the buildings and lands belonging to them from private owners - like natural resources bowels of the earth. The nationalization itself was also carried out without difficulty. Over time, the number of owners of individual baths has increased significantly. In view of this, for ease of management, these baths are usually general meeting their owners were rented out. The Georgian government invited the tenants and announced to them that, until further notice, it would leave these baths in their lease and instruct them from now on to pay rent to the treasury, in view of the nationalization of the baths. Then it notified the owners about this, promising to pay them the cost of the buildings. However, until its collapse, nothing was paid to them.
Left without the owners and their constant monitoring of the cleanliness and order in the baths and unsure of the future, the tenants directed all their efforts towards the greatest possible exploitation of the property entrusted to them, without paying any attention to the condition of this property. As a result, after just a few months, the baths turned out to be extremely neglected and polluted.
I left Tiflis [for Baku] at the end of November 1918. There were a lot of people on the train: our compartment was packed, with six people sitting on four-seater sofas. As soon as we crossed the Georgian border, animal-like faces armed to the teeth began to appear in the carriages; they opened the compartment doors, examined the passengers and silently left the carriage. It turned out that these were Tatars from the surrounding villages, looking for Armenians on the train. Not long before this there were pogroms, first the Armenians destroyed the Tatars, and then the Tatars destroyed the Armenians. The passions did not have time to subside. On the train they reported that the day before the Tatars had taken two Armenians from the train and killed them right there at the station.
The next morning we arrived in Baku. I was immediately struck by the difference between Baku and Tiflis. From the outside, Baku remained the same as it was before the revolution. Russian speech, Russian people, Russian troops - the detachment of General Bicherakhov. Residents of Baku had to endure a lot after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. First of all, soon after the Bolshevik coup in Russia, the Bolshevik uprising broke out in Baku. With the assistance of workers, local Armenian and Russian Bolsheviks managed to seize power into their own hands. All privately owned oil fields were immediately nationalized. At this time, the Armenians carried out a brutal pogrom against the Muslims, several buildings were destroyed and destroyed by fire, and many people were killed and maimed.
Bolshevism did not last long in Baku. Almost simultaneously with the arrival of the Germans in Tiflis, the Turks arrived in Baku. They quickly eliminated Bolshevism and restored order in the city, but the Turks did not stay in Baku for long. After the breakthrough of the Solunsky Front, the Turks, like the Germans, left the Caucasus. After their departure, a pogrom of the Armenians, organized by the Turks, soon broke out, its cruelty not inferior to the Armenian pogrom. In mid-1918, General Bicherakhov and his detachment arrived in Baku from the Persian front. Thanks to the presence of Russian troops, order was quickly restored in the city. By this time, the power in the newly formed republic had managed to be finally constructed. The government was headed by attorney-at-law Khan Khoyski. A parliament was formed, which included several Russian members. Then a coalition Council of Ministers was formed with two Russian ministers - a former member of the council under the Caucasian governor from the Ministry of Finance I.N. Protasyev as Minister of Finance and local businessman Lizgar as Minister of Trade and Industry.
Bicherakhov's detachment in the spring of 1919 he went to Denikin. The British came to replace him from Baku. The British treated the Baku residents quite favorably. They advised them to expand the coalition and provide two or one portfolio to the Armenians in the ministry. This advice was formally accepted, although in fact it was almost never implemented; the mutual hostility between the Armenians and Tatars was too great, especially after the recent mutual pogroms. After the arrival of the British, the Baku people grew stronger and the newly-minted Azerbaijani Republic began to gradually unfold. A significant part of the employees in Azerbaijani government institutions consisted of Russians. The attitude of the local authorities and the population towards them was the most friendly, and there is no need to compare these relations with the relations between Georgians and Armenians. It is interesting to note the fact that in the Azerbaijan Republic all paperwork and all official correspondence were conducted in Russian, which, by the way, was also the international language in relations between all three Transcaucasian republics. Only in parliament did they speak Turkish, and even then not everyone. It is quite difficult to establish exactly the legal nature of the Transcaucasian republics, since they did not have time to crystallize and were still in the organizational and revolutionary period.
Georgian Republic in its design - with parliament, with a responsible ministry - it fully corresponded to the principles of democracy. As for the Azerbaijan Republic, it was of a rather mixed nature. The ministers here were appointed not from members of parliament, in addition, the principle of a responsible ministry was not clearly implemented, because in their work they reported more to the head of government than to parliament. Some of the ministers, such as Russian ministers, did not go to parliament at all, but on the other hand, parliament was not only a legislative body, but also a governing and supervisory body and quite vigorously discussed all issues of life and government of the country , although sometimes with a great delay.
Armenian Republic was a cross between the Azerbaijani and Georgian republics. In all three republics there was no title of president of the republic, and his duties were performed by the head of government. Such a leader in Georgia was Noah Jordania, in Azerbaijan - Khan Khoisky, and in Armenia, if my memory serves me correctly, Khatisov. The special feature of the Azerbaijan Republic was its army, organized by the full general of the Russian service Mokhmandarov, a holder of two officer Georgies. This army was organized, armed and equipped according to the Russian model. General Mokhmandarov himself always wore Russian military uniform, with two St. Georges, and wore buttons on his uniform with eagles. Almost the entire officer corps consisted of former Russian officers, as a result of which the command, at least at first, was conducted in Russian. No one was surprised by this and no one protested against it. And Mokhmandarov himself spoke Russian even in parliament.
In this respect, the Tatars were very different from the Georgians. In Georgia, from the very first days of the declaration of independence in all institutions, not only correspondence, but also conversations began to be conducted in the Georgian language. The army was also organized according to a special Georgian, or rather Western European, model, although it was all uniformed and armed with Russian uniforms and Russian weapons. The entire officer corps of the Georgian army was filled with Georgians who served in the Russian army. In general, there are very few Russians left in the Georgian service, which is why most Russians moved to Baku. The question of citizenship did not bother the Russians in Azerbaijan either, since this issue, at least in relation to the Russians, was not taken into account there. Russians, despite their citizenship, could hold all sorts of positions, up to and including minister. Although the law on citizenship was adopted by parliament, it was almost not applied in practice until the end of the days of the Azerbaijan Republic. While the Georgians managed to implement their law on citizenship. According to this law, by the way, all persons living within Georgia from a certain date (before Georgia declared its independence) automatically became Georgian subjects. At the same time, persons who did not want to transfer to Georgian citizenship were obliged to declare this within a certain period.
Of all the nationalities of the Caucasus, the Georgians were the most beloved in Russia; of all the nationalities of the Caucasus, after the revolution, the Georgians began to treat the Russians worst of all. And, oddly enough, the Tatars - Muslims - turned out to be the most grateful to Russia for what it did for them. At the same time, many Tatars sincerely declared that they did not rejoice in their independence, did not believe in it, that they lived immeasurably better under Russian rule than under their independence. Many prominent Baku figures have repeatedly spoken to me personally about this. Not only intelligent people thought so, ordinary people also thought so.
End of the article and its full versionMy first memory is my brother's birthday: November 14, 1991. I remember my father driving my grandparents and me to the hospital in Highland Park, Illinois. We were going there to see our newborn brother.
I remember how they brought me into the room where my mother was lying, and how I went up to look into the cradle. But what I remember best is what program was on TV at that time. These were the last two minutes of the cartoon Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. I even remember what episode it was.
In the sentimental moments of my life, I feel that I remember my brother's birth because it was the first event that deserves to be remembered. There may be some truth to this: research into early memory demonstrates that memories often begin with significant events, and the birth of a brother is a classic example.
But it's not just the importance of the moment: most people's first memories are around 3.5 years old. At the time of my brother’s birth, I was just that age.
When I talk about the first memory, of course, I mean the first conscious memory.
Carol Peterson, a professor of psychology at Memorial University Newfoundland, has shown that young children can remember events from the age of 20 months, but these memories fade in most cases by the age of 4-7 years.
“We used to think that the reason we don't have early memories is because children don't have a memory system or they just forget things very quickly, but that turns out to be untrue,” Peterson says. – In children good memory, but whether the memories are preserved depends on several factors.”
The two most significant, Peterson explains, are the reinforcement of memories by emotions and their coherence. That is, are the stories that emerge in our memory meaningful? Of course, we can remember not only events, but it is events that most often become the basis for our first memories.
In fact, when I asked developmental psychologist Steven Resnick about the causes of childhood “amnesia,” he disagreed with the term I used. In his opinion, this is an outdated way of looking at things.
Resnick, who works at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, recalled that soon after birth, babies begin to remember faces and respond to familiar people. This is the result of the so-called recognition memory. The ability to understand words and learn to speak depends on random access memory, which is formed by approximately six months. More complex forms of memory develop by the third year of life: for example, semantic memory, which allows you to remember abstract concepts.
"When people say babies don't remember things, they're talking about event memory," Resnick explains. While our ability to remember events that happened to us depends on a more complex “mental infrastructure” than other types of memory.
Context is very important here. To remember an event, a child needs a whole set of concepts. So, in order to remember my brother’s birthday, I had to know what “hospital”, “brother”, “cradle” and even “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends” were.
Moreover, in order for this memory not to be forgotten, it had to be stored in my memory in the same language code that I use now, as an adult. That is, I could have earlier memories, but formed in rudimentary, pre-speech ways. However, as the brain developed, these early memories became inaccessible. And so it is with each of us.
What do we lose when our first memories are erased? For example, I lost an entire country.
My family emigrated to America from England in June 1991, but I have no memories of Chester, the city of my birth. I grew up learning about England from television programs, as well as my parents' cooking habits, accent and language. I knew England as a culture, but not as a place or homeland...
One day, to verify the authenticity of my first memory, I called my father to ask about the details. I was afraid that I had imagined the grandparents' visit, but it turned out that they actually flew in to see their newborn grandson.
My father said that my brother was born in the early evening, not at night, but considering that it was winter and it got dark early, I could have mistaken the evening for night. He also confirmed that there was a bassinet and a television in the room, but he doubted one important detail - that the TV was showing Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.
True, in this case we can say that this detail naturally etched itself in the memory of a three-year-old child and fell out of the memories of the newborn’s father. It would be very strange to add such a fact years later. False memories do exist, but their construction begins much later in life.
In Peterson's studies, young children were told about supposed events in their lives, but almost all separated reality from fiction. The reason older children and adults begin to patch holes in their memories with made-up details, Peterson explains, is because memories are constructed by our brains and are not simply represented as a string of memories. Memory helps us understand the world, but this requires complete, not fragmentary memories.
I have a memory of an event that chronologically precedes my brother's birth. I vaguely see myself sitting between my parents on a plane flying to America. But this is not a first-person memory, like my memory of visiting the hospital.
Rather, it is a “mental snapshot” from the outside, taken, or better yet, constructed, by my brain. But it’s interesting that my brain missed an important detail: in my memory, my mother is not pregnant, although at that time the belly should have already been noticeable.
It is noteworthy that not only the stories that our brain constructs change our memories, but also vice versa. In 2012, I flew to England to see the city where I was born. Having spent in Chester less than a day, I felt that the city was surprisingly familiar to me. This feeling was elusive, but unmistakable. I was at home!
Was this because Chester occupied an important place in my adult consciousness as a city of birth, or were these feelings triggered by actual pre-speech memories?
According to Reznik, it is probably the latter, since recognition memory is the most stable. In my case, the “memories” of my birth city that I formed as an infant may well have persisted all these years, albeit vaguely.
When people in Chester asked me what a single American was doing in a small English town, I would say, “Actually, that’s where I’m from.”
For the first time in my life, I felt that nothing inside resisted these words. Now I don’t remember if I joked after: “What, it’s not noticeable from my accent?” But over time, I think this detail may become part of my memory. After all, the story looks more interesting this way.
Thanks to everyone who shared their first memories.And I remember how I was lying in a stroller and my parents were driving me along the street at night, the lights were shining and my little sister was looking inside all the time.
I believe it was a little over a year... A year and four somewhere.Childhood experiences and emotions shape many character traits and attitudes to life. It’s not for nothing that psychologists rummage so carefully about our childhood, looking for the roots of adult problems in it: failures with the opposite sex, uncertainty, isolation, total bad luck and even illness. For you and me, this once again emphasizes the importance childhood in a person’s life and obliges us to give our kids something that will give them confidence in their lives and “the posture of a king.”
First childhood memories
Usually, the first childhood memories begin around the age of 3-4 years. Does anyone know what the theories are on this matter, or does anyone have their own assumptions? Why do we, as a rule, not remember ourselves at an earlier age?
Theory in general outline such - with the normal development of the child and his relationship with his parents, the child does not perceive himself as a separate person until the age of 3; That’s why there are no memories left “to myself.” Earlier memories indicate that the child was forced to “separate” from his parents ahead of schedule. As I understand it, this can be a consequence of great stress, such as separation from parents. I can't say that I fully accept this theory; questions arise. But there is something in it.A group of scientists found out why most adults do not remember themselves at the age of 3-4 years and younger, despite the fact that young children remember themselves well from the very beginning. early age. In the study, researchers asked 140 children aged 4-13 to describe their three earliest memories.
Two years later, the same children were again asked to recall three incidents from early childhood and, if possible, indicate how old they were in each case, reports Daily News & Analysis.
The fact that the events described by the children actually took place was confirmed by their parents. They also tried to independently remember the child's age in each individual memory.
Children who were 4-7 years old during the first experiment showed very little overlap between memories in the first and second conditions. This suggests that the earliest childhood memories are the most fragile and vulnerable.
What are your first childhood memories?I like to ask my heroines about their first childhood memory.
Some people remember themselves at the age of five, for some, childhood memories begin at the age of three, and one actress assured me that she remembers herself even when she could not speak. Human memory is weird.
For some it’s like a flash, for others it’s like a long novel.
I remember myself clearly only with school years. I remember the hated gray hat that was tied under the chin, and my mother also rolled a scarf under it for warmth.
About childhood memories and covering memoriesHow far back into childhood do our memories extend? I am aware of several studies on this issue, including work by Henri and Potvin; from them we learn that there are significant individual differences; Some of those observed date their first memories to the 6th month of life, while others do not remember anything from their lives until the end of the 6th and even the 8th year. What are the reasons for these differences in childhood memories and what significance do they have? Obviously, to solve this problem it is not enough to obtain material by collecting information; its processing is necessary, in which the person from whom these messages originate must participate.
In my opinion, we are too indifferent to the facts of infantile amnesia - the loss of memories of the first years of our life, and thanks to this we pass by a peculiar mystery. We forget about what a high level of intellectual development a child reaches already in the fourth year of life, what complex emotions he is capable of; we should be amazed at how little of these mental events is usually retained in memory in later years; especially since we have every reason to assume that these forgotten experiences of childhood did not slip without a trace in the development of a given person; on the contrary, they had an influence that remained decisive in subsequent times. And despite this incomparable influence, they are forgotten!First childhood memories
I remember running through my grandmother’s garden in an orange sundress. As it turns out, I wore this sundress when I was about 2 years old.
My grandfather passed away this winter at the age of 81. He left behind memoirs, which he wrote since the late 80s. I’m reprinting it slowly, this living history. I don’t know what to do with all this yet, but I will publish something here.
When the war began, my grandfather was 15 years old. Then he studied at a military school, and at the end of the war and then, in peacetime, he served in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-NKVD.
Reprinted with minor editing from the manuscript - there may be factual inaccuracies in the names. I didn't check it, I left it as is.
I, Krasnoyartsev Petr Vasilyevich, was born on September 26, 1925, according to the new style, in the village of Izobilnoye, Sol-Iletsk district, Orenburg region.
My mother, Kudrina Maria Vasilievna, born in 1905, died 8-10 hours after giving birth. My father, Krasnoyartsev Vasily Petrovich, born in 1904, in October 1925 was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, into the 44th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Cavalry Division named after. Morozov in Orenburg. I was raised by my grandmothers: Daria Stepanovna Krasnoyartseva and Anisya Alekseevna Kudrina. Until I was one year old, I lived first with one grandmother, then with another, and they fed me cow's milk from a glass horn.
When I was three years old, my father was demobilized from the Red Army. During this period, in the village of Izobilnoye there was a process of dispossession, and after that - the deportation of kulaks to remote areas countries; collectivization began.
My father worked as chairman of the collective farm named after. Tsviling spent more than two years, after which he was again drafted into the same Red Army regiment.
My father married Matryona Ivanovna Donetskova, born in 1908. and went with her to Orenburg, and I stayed with my grandmother in Izobilny.
I spent my childhood from 3 to 7 years old with my mother’s brother, Uncle Pyotr Vasilyevich Kudrin. He taught me to swim, fish, cut talis for weaving and traps, and properly water the garden. I really loved collecting potatoes - Uncle Petya gave me and my friend 10 kopecks for a collected bucket.
In 1932, Uncle Petya brought me to Orenburg to visit my father, we lived on Pushkinskaya Street, and I even went to school for a year kindergarten. Then we moved to live near the Green Bazaar, opposite us there was a hippodrome, and I really loved watching the races.
In 1930, my brother Nikolai was born, but 2 years later he died. In December 1934, my sister Rosa was born.
In 1933 I went to school No. 6 named after. L. Tolstoy. I still remember the first teacher, Maria Davydovna, old and pretty, she spent a lot of effort to attract me to success in my studies. When I went to school, I only knew the letter "O". He really didn’t like reading and dictations, but he really liked mathematics and geography.
In 1936, our 2nd cavalry division was transferred to the city of Pukhovichi, Minsk region.
We moved there with the whole family. In 1939, my brother Gennady was born there.
In September 1939, during the liberation of western Belarus from the Polish occupiers, the division was redeployed to the city of Bialystok, and the regiment in which my father served was located in the town of Suprasl, 10-12 km from Bialystok. Of course, my father’s family also moved there, but my father took me, a 6th grade student, to Minsk, from where I went alone through Moscow to Izobilnoye to finish 6th grade there.
I arrived well. I spent half a day in Moscow, went on a two-hour excursion along the metro, and rode the “wonderful little staircase.” I especially remember the Okhotny Ryad and Mayakovskaya stations back then. In the evening I took a train to Sol-Iletsk, where I was greeted by 30-degree frosts, and from there I rode on horseback to Izobilnoye.
In 1940 I graduated from the 6th grade, and in August my father came to pick me up to take me to Suprasl. There, in 1941, I graduated from 7th grade, and there the Great Patriotic War found us...
My brother Vladimir was born in Suprasly. In the spring of 1941, my father was transferred to a new duty station in Zambrovo, not far from the town of Longzha. My father held the rank of captain, he commanded the 13th tank border detachment. Having received an apartment, on June 21, 1941, he came to pick us up in Suprasl to take us to Zambrovo. Soldiers from the neighboring unit, where my father had previously served, loaded our belongings and furniture into the car. In the evening we had dinner with the unit commander, Colonel Sobakin - I remember he had only one son, Eric, a fifth-grader. We had dinner, said goodbye to them and went to rest so that we could go to Zambrovo early tomorrow morning.
At 4.30 am on June 22, 1941, we were awakened by soldiers. My father told my mother that we had to go quickly, the Germans were bombing Bialystok, then he gave me 10 rubles and told me to buy bread. The store was in our barracks, I knocked on Aunt Dora, the saleswoman, she led me through her apartment to the store, and I bought two loaves from her white bread and twenty French buns. When I brought all this home, my father and mother slightly scolded me - why did I buy so much bread, but then this bread saved us from hunger during the evacuation.
At about 5 am we left for Zambrovo. We got to Bialystok, they didn’t let us in, and we took a detour to the highway to Lomza. The Germans are advancing on it, and we are driving straight into their clutches, women and children are running towards us, there are also men, everyone is scolding us: “Where are you going?!” On the way, we were shot at 2-3 times from an airplane, on the side of the road we saw a damaged car, there the driver and father filled our car with gasoline, and we drove further to the west.
After some time, we saw a burning village ahead, explosions were heard, and people were running towards us, especially a lot of people of Jewish nationality. Some military vehicle caught up with us, my father stopped it, talked to the major sitting in it, then quickly ran up to us, hugged and kissed us, gave my mother money for the journey and told us to go to Bialystok, and from there home, to our homeland in Orenburg region, village Izobilnoye.
He himself quickly got into the major’s car, and they drove to where the village was burning, where people were fleeing, into the very heat.
My father went missing, I think he died almost immediately after we parted.
By the middle of the day, we drove up to the freight station in Bialystok in a car loaded with our things. It was impossible to approach the trains on which people were evacuated. There was terrible panic. There was a rumor that in an hour the Germans would be in Bialystok. Everyone was running, shouting, waiting for evacuation trains.
After some time, a train of freight cars arrived, I heard screaming and swearing, it was impossible to approach the cars to board, there were several thousand people, and these forty cars were just a minuscule amount for all the refugees located on the platform and next to it...
I don’t know and don’t remember how I crawled under the platform; it was a little more than a meter high. I crawled under the train and saw a carriage with a ladder and an open door, and no one in it. Two or three minutes - and I was already standing by our car, telling my mother and the driver, Uncle Kolya, that I had seen an empty carriage.
I was worried about only one thing - how would mom and brother Vova get under the platform? But everything worked out, and very quickly, in a hurry, the mother took two down pillows, a blanket and two bags of bread and groceries. We quickly crawled under the platform, then under the train, climbed into the carriage and sat down on a table in the corner. Then the door opened, about 30 people, mostly women and children, poured in, under the pressure of the crowd they fell to the floor, at that moment the train started moving. I saw how a man and a woman fell between the platform and the carriage, and the train was picking up speed, the cry for help was drowned out by the roar of the train and the noise in the carriage...
Later we were informed that shortly after our departure Bialystok was in the hands of the Nazis.
We were driving towards the city of Baranovichi. On the way, at night and during the day, we were fired upon several times from Henkel-13 aircraft. When the shelling was underway, the train stopped, many ran out of the train... They were shot at. This happened several times a day.
When we passed Baranovichi, I saw a night battle, I saw how our searchlights targeted a fascist plane, how they fired tracer bullets at this plane - and past... I was very disappointed by what I saw, recently I watched the film “If Tomorrow is War” and could not believe it that our Voroshilov riflemen smeared.
The night was very alarming, our train was often fired upon, glowing missiles were thrown over us, one enemy plane riddled the last few carriages - I saw in the morning how the bodies of the dead and many wounded were carried out from there. Our carriage was in the middle, we were lucky.
Our train with evacuees was approaching Minsk. There I saw how two of our fighters landed a fascist plane on a field. Everyone who saw it was very happy about it. Minsk was burning, nothing was visible - everything was in smoke, the people sitting in the carriages were frowning, neither the sun nor the sky was visible.
When we approached Smolensk, we were again fired upon from planes, and again people were running into the forest, they were being shot at, and it was not at all clear to me, a 15-year-old boy, how the Germans could bomb Smolensk, be here, near Smolensk, everything was spinning and it was spinning in my head - how, why did we, our country, get into such a whirlpool?
From Smolensk we were sent south of Moscow; Moscow was busy with defensive work and had no time for us. We were taken to Saratov. And only the day before arriving in Saratov they stopped shelling us. It’s good that not a single bomb was dropped on our train, otherwise there would have been great casualties.
Before Saratov, at the stations we were given bread, pasta, tea - it was a big joy For people who did not see bread for two weeks, people suffered from hunger and were sick. There was also not enough water.
Around July 5-6, our train arrived at Altata station, a few kilometers beyond the city of Engels, Saratov region. There, all the people were registered, divided into groups and sent to villages and hamlets to work on collective and state farms. Our family (5 people - mother, me, Rosa, brothers Gennady and Vladimir) bought a ticket to the Tsvilinga station in the Sol-Iletsk district. From there it is 10 km to Izobilny. They gave us food for the road.
My father, when I bought bread early in the morning of June 22, scolded me - they say he bought a lot, in 3 hours we will already be at our new place of residence. And this bread saved us from hunger on the road. Mom divided the bread between us, for the first 2-3 days we had a little more butter. Then there was only granulated sugar left - we ate that too a week later, and then we only ate buns with water, which I got at stops. There was an incident at the Sukhinichi station, which we passed through. The train stopped, we were told that it would stop for three hours. Mom gave me money and I ran to the station to buy something to eat, it was about 3 o’clock in the morning.
When I found a canteen there, I bought pasta and ten cutlets, all of which I had in a large dish. How my heart rejoiced that now I would feed everyone with cutlets! Alas. When I approached the tracks, our train was not there; it left for another station - Sukhinichi-2, a distance of 7-8 km. I and other stragglers were told that he would stand there for 3-4 hours. Everyone rushed to run along the rails.
Barefoot, in a coat but without a hat, with a dish containing cutlets and pasta, I ran along the rails to Sukhinichi-2. A lot of people stayed behind, mostly women, old people and children. Dawn has begun. We did not reach a couple of hundred meters to the railway bridge over a small river - we were stopped by guards. “Stop! Back!" - they shouted, but the crowd pressed on. Then they fired two warning shots, everyone stopped and then turned towards a simple wooden bridge, along which they wanted to go around the railway. When we reached the bridge, we saw piles; on some of them lay a long log, stapled to the piles. We started the transition, the first ones walked carefully so as not to shake the log, about 20 people walked through normally, then some began to fall into the river. Many, including me with pasta and cutlets, moved while sitting. Some got across by swimming.
When I found my carriage, my mother cried a lot, called me the savior of our family, gave my sister and brother cutlets... They last days felt that they were full. Joy and happiness were on my mother’s face, tears flowed from her eyes. An hour later we drove further, east.
There was also a funny episode: on the way home in Uralsk, I met a girl, Taya, with whom I went to school in the city of Pukhovichi... She also evacuated with her family.
At the Tsvilinga station, where we finally arrived, my mother’s sister and brother lived, we stayed with them. In the morning I walked to Izobilnoye. Grandma hugged me and cried, not believing that we returned from Belarus safe and sound...
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