Their victory was righteous
On the bright day of Easter, I changed the winning ribbon on my car, which had been hanging from last year's holiday. Main for Russia. I thought that this year the Resurrection of Christ is celebrated only a day earlier than in the victorious 1945 ...For some reason, I remembered how the deceased father and mother claimed that my first word was the answer to the question: “Mysya, and say, what the hell is our Mogliv (district center - MZ) bombyly?” - “Wow! "I allegedly replied with my brows furrowed. If this is a legend, it is quite plausible. I was born two and a half years after the Victory. So the memories of my countrymen about the last war were not just hot - burning. In the center of my village, Bushi stands a handicraft obelisk, on which 364 surnames of villagers who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War are carved. Among them - eleven Zakharchuk - my close or distant relatives. My father went to the Austrian city of Klagenfurt with battles. He was wounded three times, once very hard, and contused twice. We buried him with a Kruppov shrapnel steel the size of a passport photo — three by four — in the left shoulder. Doctors did not risk surgery. They said: let's move it, but how the shard behaves is only known to God.
I spent my childhood on the ruins of the famous Stalinist pillboxes along the Dniester, which was built by the legendary General Dmitry Karbyshev. They are located a few kilometers from my village.
When I was already working at the Red Star, I studied each of the fifty kilometers of the so-called MYAUR-53 (Mogilyov-Yampolsky Fortified) in detail and wrote a lot of material on this heroic page of defensive battles in the initial years of the Great Patriotic War. The publication “Unbowed from Dot # XXUMX” received a wide response. It received more than ten thousand responses from all over the then Soviet Union, from abroad. Plus one that left my soul very unpleasant and bitter sediment. An excerpt from my Red Star material was used in his scandalously sensational book “Icebreaker” on the 112 page Victor Suvorov, a traitor to the Motherland, a former GRU officer Viktor Rezun, about whom his father said: “The son brought the family more grief than Hitler”. This unfortunate historian, as is known, for the first time among compatriots tried to reconsider the results of the past war and our righteous Victory in it. Until now, only our enemies have been engaged in such cynical and insidious work. And already after Rezun, he went away: “At the forefront of the battle of the peoples two disgusting, bloody and vulgar figrines were grimacing: Hitler and Stalin. They were played along on the sidelines by two burnt politicians: Churchill and Roosevelt. And all the time there was some disgusting bargaining on blood, on the lives of those who still survived, divided the lands, the peoples, led new frontier lines through human hearts, and the smoke from the gas ovens thickened. And then it turned out that the dispute did not go between fascism and the rest of humanity, but between two fascist systems. Fascism was defeated, fascism won ”(Y. Nagibin).
“I understand both you and all other generals of ours who boast, for no one else will praise. Not at all ... And you, and the generals who led you, were very bad warriors, and could not be otherwise, for they were and fought in the most mediocre army since the creation of the human race. That army, like the present one, came out of the most pathetic society — it no longer needs proof. Now everyone knows, except for you, of course, that our losses in war constitute 40 — 50 millions, and I repeated and repeat to you this time: not you, not me and the army defeated fascism, but our long-suffering people. It was drowned fascism in his blood, they threw corpses at the enemy. The first and only 15 war of thousands of wars on earth, in which losses in the rear exceed losses at the front - they are equal to 26 to millions, mostly Russian women and the disabled, children and the elderly. Only criminals could litter their people like that! ”(V. Astafev).
“I was a fascist too, but only red” (B. Okudzhava).
I have already gathered over a hundred of such statements by much smaller people who lived or are now living in a country that has defeated terrible fascism, and I’m far from sure that this collection is exhaustive. Those who are outside of Russia: in the Baltic States, in Georgia, in Poland, in Ukraine, in other countries, in every way they denounce, demean, or even deny our righteous Victory, already not to be considered.
Today, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the defeated are trying to turn history upside down, convincing oneself first and foremost, and then the rest of the world, is that the last violent war in the history of mankind was just a bloody clash of two totalitarian systems.
One wants to exclaim: fools! Do not know what you are doing! But you are not given to turn black into white, as it is impossible to turn the river back. Not in theory, much less practically do it! This is impossible in principle. Because our Victory is as given as the rising and setting of the sun, as the change of seasons, as human life and death. Our great, no - the greatest - Victory not only and not so much nest in our memory, but in our genetics. It will be passed on to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, just as our skin color, eyes, hair are transmitted. Even if we ourselves, because of our laziness or because of thoughtlessness, will not make any effort to that. Wise nature will correct us. Because the price for that Victory — almost thirty million people — is too prohibitive, difficult to comprehend, even mystical, so that it can easily disappear from the memory of our saved society, from the memory of humanity as a whole.
Yes, too many ideological polyps have piled up around our Great Victory, as usual with a shell overgrown with shells and an ocean liner. Here our past ideological system, the general opposition of socialism and capitalism, ordinary human weaknesses, like that of Rezun, who is trying to somehow justify his betrayal, are largely to blame for those same defeatist complexes of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the vanquished. Well, Europe can’t massively lie under Hitler to admire the victory over him, as we admire! Such “misguided” ones like Nagibin, Astafiev, Okudzhava bring a lot of harm ... Finally, we ourselves are partly to blame for the fact that the world is losing its piercingly reverent attitude to our Victory. The current liberal-democratic Russian ideological censorship turned out to be as blind and vengeful as Stalin’s in its time. In those years, as is well known, the so-called “palming” was massively practiced: political figures in photographs disliked by the regime were retouched, and tubs with decorative palm trees were put in their place. Today, even greater absurdities are occurring. So, you can not publish the world-famous photograph of all the Soviet Marshals, the winners, because in its center sits objectionable homegrown spiteful elements Joseph Stalin. Just in case - the main Marshal of Victory. Moreover, even the Generalissimo, under whose leadership this Victory was achieved. And the whole world recognizes this situation unconditionally. They do not even think to put this fact into question. In addition to our "fighters against totalitarianism." In any country of the planet, if desired, they can easily erect a monument to three great world politicians - Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin - who established peace and order for many years after the Victory. In Russia, such a monument is not yet possible. It is impossible to publish and hang posters from the war times in the capital, to show feature films and documentaries without cuts. It is impossible to reproduce newspapers, magazines, books, envelopes, sculptures and other graphic products of that heroic and at the same time terrible time on the stands and posters, because images of Stalin are often found on them. And this, according to our liberal democrats, is the propaganda of Stalinism. Well, what they then differ from the Stalinist minions? But the whole other world stares at us with a dumb reproach: guys, you can figure it out for yourself what's what, then make a complaint to us.
I'd like to believe that we will understand. And the current celebration of the Great Victory will help us strengthen even more in it, my dear. And everything around it is all superficial, stupid, opportunistic, sooner or later it will subside.
Even the most ideologically blinkered people who are now trying to clumsily rewrite, cross out or at least retouch the heroic events of 68 years ago should some day have to wise up enough to understand the not-so-complicated truth: the brown plague of fascism was decisively defeated because that they withstood and withstood in inhuman conditions, showed miracles of heroism, above all, the Soviet people, their army. The forces of good have defeated the forces of evil - it should be so simple and understandable in a biblical way!
Yes, and more than thirty million lives of Soviet people were probably lost - the price for Victory is space. But since the question was: either the victory or the destruction of the state, nation, and the people en masse perceived this alternative in their deepest nature, then let's at least in hindsight not insult that our people with their historical, completely groundless arrogance.
Let not all, but some fighters still went on the attack with the words "For the Motherland! For Stalin! ”And they believed him (not all, again, but many) as God. And many before the battle said or wrote: if I die, consider me a Communist. And the most important, almost holy at that time, a communist, again, was Stalin. We do not understand this, and now we are raging in our own way, as we imagine, in righteous indignation: were they really so naive, primitive? Yes they were. But who gave us the right to blame the people who died for their homeland?
We cannot be patient enough to understand this truth: a historical figure, a commander should not be assessed by what he did not do in our current understanding, but by his achievements in those specific historical conditions.
So, Stalin, relying on the Communist Party, on the cruel repressive structures created by him, not only led the people to victory, but also created a great state, including on the blood of its citizens. How to act differently, he did not understand. And no one then understood this! The world has recognized this truth long ago, but we all scream and fight. Is it time to calm down and wisely?
... I sometimes tell my children and grandson about the past war and Victory. Of course, not as pompous and passionate as these lines are written - excusable on the eve of a great national holiday. I have always asked my little daughters, - adults are now people, they will not let me lie, - do not be offended by their grandfather Sasha’s increased temper. (Another grandfather of Kirill Vasilyevich Belyaev, also a front-line soldier, captain, commander of a company of 82-mm mortars, twice seriously wounded, order bearer, they do not remember. He died from front-line wounds, when the younger daughter was not yet born). That temper of my father was the result of his hardest concussion, after which he could not speak, but only moaned 64 of the day.
I show the daughters and grandson of military and post-war photographs of both grandfathers and emphasize that among my school teachers, only two teachers did not personally participate in the war.
Almost all of my teachers in the Vinnitsa technical school with the intricate name "agroforest", where I entered after eight years, were front-line soldiers. On the big and small Soviet holidays, they, in obedience to the order of the director Alexander Andreyevich Nechayuk, the front-line combat officer, put on their military decorations. It seemed to me that in the technical college classrooms it became warmer and brighter from the slightly dimmed brilliance of military orders and medals.
Years later I will get a higher and academic education. But until now, the Vinnitsa agroforestry-meric college of railway transport remains for me, as for Pushkin the lyceum, in the first place (no offense will be told to two respected Soviet universities and the genius Russian poet). Because educational institutions gave me, already an adult, only a certain amount of knowledge, tuned in on how to extract this very knowledge. And in the college I was taught, educated and even, as I understand it now, carefully cherished, like a mother, people who knew death and had perished for death.
They treated me like this, as if a decent person would turn out of me or not, the fate of the whole Tekhnikumovsky pedagogical team, their own future depended. Such were the people. One of them is the librarian Danyluk Konstantin Grigoryevich, such a wizened, slightly bent old man who kept books like Gobsek his gold. As it turned out, he was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for having cut off a torn telephone wire in his mouth when he was wounded, lost consciousness, and was found his only two days after the battle. Then he was replaced with the Hero of the Order of the Red Banner, because he still did not provide the connection: the wire was torn apart by a projectile elsewhere, and his heroism seemed to be idle.
All of my army commanders, from sergeant Kraskovsky and ending with the division commander, Major General Dudin, were also front-line soldiers.
From school days I remember the stocky, with a grayish mop of thick hair, always calm and balanced lieutenant colonel Ivan Ivanovich Revkov. Hero of the Soviet Union, an honorary resident of Sevastopol, he did not like to talk about his exploits even under coercion by his bosses. But on the tank business was a little nuts, in a good sense of the word. And we, shalopai, usually used this. Not knowing the essence of the question, they asked Ivan Ivanovich: why is such a heavy tank easily passing through the swamp, while the light horse is stuck in it? In love with Tanks Revkov answered with pleasure and detail. But it so happened that he charged us with his love. The groups led by the Hero of the Soviet Union always passed tests and exams in tank affairs from the first call.
If I became a military man and reached the rank of colonel, then to a decisive degree because most of my teachers were victorious front-line soldiers.
I once had a service car driver Ivan Lebedev - the last front-line soldier in the Russian Armed Forces, twice seriously wounded, shell-shocked, a gentleman of three military orders. To him, the Minister of Defense even issued a certificate confirming this title. Taking into account the time spent in battles, as well as with other numerous front-line and post-war privileges, Ivan Dmitrievich eventually achieved a working experience longer than he lived on the ground. And we buried him in 78-th year of life.
Yes, such people could not be defeated by anyone and never! And this is the main truth about the past war and Victory in it, which we all must carry to the rest of the world. And the world is simply by definition obliged to reflect on the stubborn fact that Russia, unlike all other countries, is capable of waging domestic wars. Civilization does not know any more. For all its long history. We had two of them in a row - in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries! Patriotic war - no one and never unsurpassed Russian military brand! And no one ever went into battle with the cry "For the Motherland!"
Another paradoxical lesson for the world is that in all wars at a certain stage Russian people become mystically invincible.
As a rule, long harnessed, the Russians can only begin truly combat operations when it seems to their opponent that he has already triumphed the campaign. Recall: in the Patriotic War 1812, Napoleon took Moscow, burned it. In the second Great Patriotic War, the Nazis had already observed the spiers of Moscow skyscrapers with binoculars. So what? The Russian soldier eventually conquered both Paris and Berlin. Because when it comes to the fate of the Fatherland, the loss of territory and the loss of life does not mean anything to the Russian people. They can roll back to the Urals, for him - to Siberia. Yes, even to the Pacific coast! But then they will push off their feet on some native hummock and turn the globe in the opposite direction. Russian, among the few nations - the very first who can say about themselves: we will never be slaves! And in order to prove this indisputable truth, the Russians are ready for any, even inhuman tests. They happened in the past war: in Brest, in Leningrad, in Stalingrad and further everywhere, where our soldiers were buried in their land. And this should be reminded all over the world tirelessly. To not borzel.
Since the Russian people have recognized themselves as a people, the Russian people have always been ready to pay any price for their freedom. Is always! And any! And paid! As for the Second World War, its “cost” for Russia cannot be compared with the rest of the world. Literally. In any imaginable dimensions and parameters, Russia's pay for the Victory many times exceeds the sufferings of the rest of the world combined. It is clear from here that the “other world” therefore feels uncomfortable and tries to intensively forget the past. But we won't allow it to him either!
... Half a century ago, at the pioneer rally dedicated to the 15 anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, our frontline teachers spoke. The pioneer leader asked them to tell about the most memorable episode of the past battles. When the turn came to my father, he told how, in an attack near Iasi, he jumped into an enemy trench and out of the corner of his eye saw the trembling air above the barrel of a German machine gun. One can only imagine how many of our soldiers a machine gunner had laid! My father wanted to defuse the entire clip into the enemy, but some unknown force kept him. I hit the butt of a dead German with fright from the fright and ran after their own. And after what I had heard, I ran into the thick lilac thickets near the school and there wept bitterly. I would have killed the fascist for sure!
Only over the years I discovered the great fatherly nobility: he did not shoot the defeated enemy, and, therefore, already just a man. Therefore, he, millions of others like him, and won in those terrible battles. Their war was righteous and righteous victory. For life on earth.
... One end of last year's winning ribbon was worn out all the fluffed up threads, the other by some miracle, braiding the ends of the threads, just twisted into a rope. When I straightened it, the ribbon on one side turned out to be like a new one! For a whole year, the rains, snow and winds cruelly beat her on the roof of the car. And they could not do anything with the Victory patch!
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