Great Victory and Soldiers of Victory
Kerch. The first days of the war. 1941.
Our victory, the victory of the Soviet people, is 80 years old this year. Our generation still personally remembers the soldiers of victory, we communicated with them, lived nearby.
Like my neighbor Grandpa Misha, who got me a job at his factory when I needed to work somewhere after the army and before entering university. Grandpa Misha is Mikhail Vasilyevich Potekhin, captain of the 1st rank, naval counterintelligence. He participated in the landing in the Far East, in the liberation of Korea from the Japanese invaders.
We, children of the 70s, and the past war were inseparable, although, as is commonly claimed today, in the Union everyone marched in "pioneer" formation and everyone was endlessly "imposed an ideology." Of course, most often, for thirty years now, this has been said by people who themselves are not averse to imposing something on someone.
I remember very well, although I was small, how on September 14, 1974, my city, the city of Kerch, was awarded the Gold Star medal and the Order of V.I. Lenin.
Much has faded from my memory, but that sunny day still stands before my eyes. This event took place in the city theater named after A. S. Pushkin, where, of course, we were not allowed, and before that there was a small rally and the carrying of the city flag. I lived next to the central and only square of the city, my sister and I were taken there by my grandmother, who had her own scores to settle with the war. There was a company of honor guard at the post office, and, what a delight, the sailors were not just like usual, but with machine guns!
There were a lot of people, the road from the Lenin monument to the theater, which is three or four minutes at a walking pace, was very conditionally cordoned off by sailors in uniform, and we children, of course, were placed in front of the fence.
And here comes Marshal A. A. Grechko, with him veterans and, probably, I didn’t know them, city leaders. They walk slowly, and then Grechko comes up to us and starts talking to us, children, about what, I don’t remember, everyone laughs, smiles, he extends his hand to us, strokes the children’s heads. I can’t say that it was the same delight as looking at real machine guns with sailors, but I will remember that moment forever.
Marshal, Minister of Defense of the USSR A. A. Grechko, presentation of the Gold Star medal and the Order of V. I. Lenin to the city of Kerch.
Then we watched the award ceremony on TV, I saw sentries with machine guns at the banner and shouted: “I saw them, I saw them.”
In Kerch, there was an "echo of war" on every corner. We walked along the street of the "youngest son", after the war my grandmother and her four children lived here, my grandfather was shot in the Bagerovsky ditch. This is the street named after Volodya Dubinin, a pioneer hero, who, thanks to the writer Lev Kassil, the whole country knew about.
You go to Mayak, hit the ground, and there you have a scattering of shell casings. Every kid had shell casings at home. Once, two boys in a neighboring school blew themselves up with a grenade, and the guys from our school went to the Adzhimushkay quarries, got lost there and died.
I also had many connections with Adzhimushkay. We had a "Headquarters for Equalization to the Feat" at school, and on the initiative of our teacher Z.M. Frank, who created it, we actively sought out participants in those events and met with those who lived in our city.
We should also remember Mikhail Petrovich Radchenko, who at the age of 14 joined the partisans in Adzhimushkay. Our headquarters met with him several times, we often visited the catacombs, even before the memorial was built. Of course, his story then it was different from what he told in our time, he died in 2017.
However, veterans often felt sorry for us children and told very similar stories about friendship, exploits, heroism, without the seamy side of war.
I remember how once, it was the first time in Sevastopol, at a meeting, a veteran told us about what was happening because of a wound to the stomach.
On the other hand, there was no ostentatious heroism, no one beat their chests with their heels. What I later encountered in V. Vysotsky's songs about Seryozhka Fomin or "Captain! You will never be a major!", perhaps because I was a child. For a long time, the participants of the Great Patriotic War were not singled out in any way, but it was in the 70s, on the 30th anniversary of the Victory and after the publication of "Malaya Zemlya", that a boom began, in my opinion, associated with veterans.
Indeed, there were fewer and fewer of them, and they certainly needed attention. On the other hand, there were still those alive who did everything for the front and for victory in the rear, and such an artificial division caused rejection. I remember how in the line at the savings bank, we didn’t really have any others at that time, and the line was mostly elderly, one veteran wanted to go ahead, I heard the phrase: “Our bones are lying in the steppe.”
I repeat, veterans were everywhere, but I never heard any excessive pathos, reproach for the fact that they fought, and who did not. Because everyone understood and lived side by side for a long time, those who survived this meat grinder, and those whose fathers and husbands did not come.
Our school principal, Viktor Vasilyevich, a war veteran, history and social studies teacher, was one of them. All events at school were held sincerely, without feigned bureaucratic patriotism, without unnecessary words and drawn-out speeches.
Victory Day was a truly national holiday, without officialdom. But gradually, the further the war went, especially with the "bronzing" of the same L. I. Brezhnev, the excessive pathos around the war began to gain momentum, and this was clearly noticeable.
During the period when the “deficit” appeared, the new status in the socialist society of equality, regardless of merit, caused additional irritation, especially in the conditions that a huge number of people were alive who, in a single impulse of the inseparability of the front and the rear, forged victory.
It should be said that parades were held on May 9 only on anniversary dates, in our city by the forces of the Kerch garrison. Then the city was filled with naval officers in white uniforms with daggers, the delight of any boy.
Every year on May 8, in the evening, there was a torchlight procession in the city in memory of those who died in the Great Patriotic War. The procession went through the city and climbed Mount Mithridates, and high school students and students from vocational schools and technical schools took part in it. This procession is still held today.
Obelisk of Glory on Mount Mithridates. Photo from the 70s.
And on May 9 there was a small rally at the Lenin monument, then, and this became a tradition then, all the townspeople climbed Mount Mithridates. Another rally, everyone stood at the Glory Obelisk, after which they settled down for a picnic, remembered their fallen parents, grandfathers. There were no drunks, well, of course, no police, which is strikingly different from today's holidays. I remember that on May 9 cucumbers appeared on sale, they were sold right on Mithridates, they also sold fried flounder, the season for catching it was beginning.
But with the honorary citizen of Kerch, Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel N. A. Belyakov, we were in the same ward in City Hospital No. 1 in the summer of 1983. It was a brand new hospital, only recently built, with all sorts of technical "bells and whistles", oxygen supplied through a pipeline to each bed, etc. Now it is a completely dilapidated, terrible-looking building with queues to see doctors.
We were lying there happily, if not for the illnesses. There were five of us in the ward. I want to draw attention to the fact that there were no super privileges: a schoolboy, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a sick soldier, and the chief engineer of the telephone station.
Of course, we knew Belyakov and treated him with great respect. He spoke without embarrassment about the battles for Kerch and Mithridates, about how he received the hero, and this was just after the capture of the heights dominating Kerch, Mithridates, when the battles were still going on. The awarding officer arrived from headquarters, he had a handful of orders, he asked Belyakov, did he have the Order of the Red Star? Yes. Then he awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
Children on the city boulevard of Kerch. 70s.
At headquarters we were also looking for the participants of the Eltigen landing and their relatives. I remember how shocking it was for us to hear that penal battalions had taken part in the capture of the bridgehead. Of course, at that time, no "ideological" conclusions were drawn from this, such as "the prisoners won the entire war." The Shumsky Heights near Kerch are named after the Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant A.D. Shumsky, commander of the penal company of the Marines. Of course, we are not talking about some criminals.
My dad told me that just before the landing they had sailors living with them, but it was not without violations of military discipline, drinking, etc., there was a shortage of discipline, so the soldiers ended up in a penal battalion. He told me how a sailor of small stature and enormous strength let him, a boy, shoot accurately at targets with a Mauser, how the sailors fed them, hungry children, from their rations. And there was no food at all, from that time on he hated chestnuts, the only food available.
I personally knew other paratroopers, heroes of the later ridiculed book by L. I. Brezhnev "Malaya Zemlya", Pyotr Vereshchagin, who gave his friend Shalva Tatarashvili 23 cartridges for his 23rd birthday in Malaya Zemlya. Pyotr Vereshchagin was our fellow countryman, and we met him, but we went to visit Tatarashvili in Georgia, where we, schoolchildren, were met by setting a huge festive table in the city committee of Mtskheta.
Belyakov, about whom I wrote above, was personally acquainted with L. I. Brezhnev, he said that he came every year to a meeting of his colleagues and everyone had a blast there. Life went on.
I repeat, we grew up connected to that war, but it was not ideological pressure or “brainwashing”, it was just that everything around us reminded us of it: from the photo of my grandfather in a Budenovka in 1941 to the monuments in the city.
We had a Pioneer Room in our yard. There was a theater group in the Pioneer Room, it was led by a front-line soldier, unfortunately, I don’t remember her name anymore. Such a dry, fit old lady, smoking one Belomor cigarette after another, like my aunt Katya, who at 18, in 1941, went to be an anti-aircraft gunner.
She suggested that we, the boys, stage a play for Victory Day, and we actively went, studied and learned the roles, I remember I was a commissar in Stalingrad. The play was sold out, on May 8 the pioneer school was packed to capacity, many veterans came, the audience greeted our performance with "long, continuing applause, turning into an ovation."
By the way, in the summer Pionerskaya worked as a city pioneer camp, where they brought children, and we, the courtyard kids, were right there. We went to the sea together, went to the canteen from Pionerskaya, although we were kind of on the sidelines, but no one said that these were not on the quota and they should not be served borscht, they fed everyone without distinction.
In the Pilots' Park near the monument to the pilots of the 230th Kuban assault aviation Red Banner Order of Suvorov 2nd degree division, fallen in battles of the Great Patriotic War. 70s of the twentieth century.
In the USSR where I lived, people were grateful to those who saved our country from the fascist invasion, to the living veterans. Once, at a gala concert in the theater, I saw that the most inveterate hooligans of our school were in tears when they performed the "Buchenwald alarm".
In memory of those who fought for the Motherland, the song “Golden Kerch” was always played on the evening of May 9:
Oh, if only there were living water,
To wake up the dead guys,
I wish I could breathe it in until I got drunk,
Yes, to look at my Fatherland,
Yes, to find out how beautiful she is,
The life they gained in battle.
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