From the Fire of Stalingrad

By Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian

An astonishing memoir of Stalingrad survivor. A vivid firsthand account of the horrific battle which changed the course of WWII. The book is in three languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468550238

Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian

Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian was born in Stalingrad in 1928. Her school education was interrupted by the WWII in September 1942. She lost her close family and home in Mamayev Kurgan during the German bombing. In April 1943 she joined the Army as the daughter of the regiment. Withing a separate communications company she went all the way to Eastern Prussia where she met Victory in 1945. She has medals "For taking Kennigsberg", "For the Victory over Germany" and the Order of the Great Patriotic War". After the war she moved to Armenia, where she got married and graduated from Yerevan State University. She worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature for 45 years. L. Sladkova-Avetisian has two children and four grandchildren. Currently retired, she lives in Volgograd and is writing memoirs about her post-war life.

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© 2012 by Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Contact author at [e-mail]

Published by AuthorHouse   11/28/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5024-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5022-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5023-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012902163

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

MAP

FOREWORD

1.  Childhood, 1928…

2.  Orphan, 1939…

3.  The War, 1941…

4.  In The Army, 1943-1946…

To my children, Edward, Tatiana, and grandchildren,

Mariana, Alexandra, David and Anna

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my children, my son Edward, for encouraging me to write this memoir and particularly to my daughter Tatiana for the supreme effort she has put into this project.

I am most grateful to Derrick Jones for editing the English text. A big thank you to Valerie Dabbs (www.bento-media.net), for translating the memoir into French language. I am very grateful to Professor John Philip Jones of Syracuse University for his advise and to Richard Hoblyn for the multi-language concept. I must also thank Guy Denning, who recorded the memoir in English at the Granary Studio (www.reliumx.co.uk).

Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian, Volgograd, January 2012

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Foreword

They say, the most difficult thing is where to start. It does not matter what, a journey, a business, a morning, a narration, a lesson. It is difficult to start a small or large thing. The hardest of all is to know what to start with. Climbing up a ladder starts from the first rung, loving, from first sight, writing, from the most important event, a school lesson, from the first bell. My bell has rung. I shall start from the very beginning. I have been writing this book all my life, by putting into the bottomless sea of my memory, all the stones and stars of my life. But what I want to forget also gets into the same sea, it is full of everything. And now that it has overflowed, it is time to release it and let the people know…

Every person’s life is interesting and unique. If it happens to coincide with major historical events and is linked with them, and these events shaped, broke, crushed and redefined that life, then one must leave a memory about that life and the time one happened to live in. When I look back on the journey I have made I cannot believe how much there was for one person to live through! Childhood, youth, the orphanage, the war which took the lives of so many in the family, the loss of home, starvation, abuse, humiliation and aimless wandering… All that I had to live through, to endure and find a way to live on. Then marriage, children and work that I loved, joy and sorrow, happiness and despair!

So, I shall, as I promised, start from the very beginning.

Ljubov Sladkova - Avetisian, January 2012

Part One

Childhood, 1928…

"Thank you, comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood".

From a banner above the

entrance to a school in

Southern Russia.

They say, a person remembers what happens to them before birth. I am that sort of person. When I first learned to talk I already remembered such things that bewildered, sometimes horrified my parents, while my grandmother ‘crossed me’ saying God almighty! I remembered people whom I could not have seen and events that happened before I was born. For example; I described in detail our old shed and showed people exactly where it used to be. I could not have seen it and nobody ever told me about it. The most vivid memory of my childhood before I was born is of the huge rats in the cellar of our home when it was being built. There were so many of them there. No one knew where they came from. With the sudden invasion of these most horrible creatures no one dared to carry on with the construction, it was scary to approach the house. Their noise and screams frightened even the bravest. I remember when my father brought home a huge cat from somewhere. Two men slightly opened the wood-plank floor to the cellar and my father pushed the resisting and screaming cat inside. The three men stood on top of it. After a minute or so the floor started jumping under their feet and moved a little, and at that moment the cat, all covered in blood ran outside. Wildly screaming, it stormed away past the puzzled men and passers by. I saw it all and remembered it forever and I was not even born yet. The house was finally built when the rats disappeared. They disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.

Our little house was at the foot of Mamayev Kurgan. The area was called ‘Azure village’. It got its pretty name from the nearby factory, aptly named ‘The Azure’, which produced blueing. (Blueing was a powder used in washing white clothes to keep them looking brilliantly white). The house was flooded with greenery which spread deep inside the garden, tender soft grass, flowers, a couple of cherry trees, rose bushes, and white and deep purple lilac, it was dense with a scent so sweet that one could almost see and touch it. In the spring its fluffy hands looked into the open windows filling our little rooms with this native scent. My short-lived childhood memory recalls the lilac lit up by the morning sun. Even now, after half a century as soon as I breathe in the ravishing scent of lilac and close my eyes, I am there! All of me! With all my body and soul! I am madly, deeply happy! My mother, a big lover of flowers, covered the whole yard with them. We had dahlias, huge, solemn, pompous; careless, cheerful phloxes, petunias, which could only be smelled during the day in the full sun. There were zorkaz all over the place, these were small, brightly coloured flowers, which opened up in the mornings and evenings, hence their wonderful name. They had such a strong intoxicating scent! Our little yard was the subject of kind jealousy with the other women-neighbours and the favourite tea drinking spot, after finishing the daily chores in the evenings. We had swings in the garden, I remember my father erecting them for us. While he was doing it all the children from our street sat on our fence green with envy, a fact we would later use to our advantage. We never let anyone have a go for nothing. The benefits were not brilliant and mostly worked for my brother, in return, he rode their scooters from dawn till dusk. There was a fenced enclosure for the chickens behind the house. And a dog called Bobik. That was it, that was our whole world. We were very poor. There was little furniture, apart from a metal bed with nickel headboards, a small table and two Venetian chairs. The room was filled with huge plants, focuses, they had large leaves. My mother used to wash them with water and a cloth, as if they were plates. They shone as though they were polished. Our bedding was made of very heavy cotton-stitched blankets and a huge feather mattress. The pillowcases, sheets and covers were made of cotton patches from our neighbour’s old dresses. The plates were of aluminium and the cutlery of wood. One spoon was made of iron, with an engraving, ‘Children are flowers of life’. When I happened to use it, I always re-read it, trying to understand the meaning of those words, but in vain. There was no meaning in the phrase at all. ‘The flowers of life’ were, as I remember, always hungry, hungry, hungry…in those pre-war years.

My grandparents and great-grand parents were all born of these lands. Many relatives of my mother and father lived in small villages along the Volga River. They had lush gardens and vegetable allotments. Those who have ever tasted watermelons and melons from the Volga region will confirm they are the best in the world! A watermelon of about 10-15 kg, even up to 20 kg, cracked and broke apart from just one touch of a knife! There was so much fruit they did not know what to do with it. They used to dry masses of them. They made honey from the juice of the watermelons. It was called ‘Nardek’. My great-great grandfather had a huge orchard, it was famous among the locals. There he had ‘Bergamot’ pears, sweet, juicy, huge. There were apples of all sorts and plums. For some reason during the purge of the late 1920’s the orchard was cut down, the vegetable allotments and gardens destroyed. The locals were all driven out of the area, the village became deserted.

My grandmother could not contain her tears, every time she remembered how her grandfather was shot in front of everyone, as he, a very, very old person, rushed forward with a stick in his hand to save his orchard. My grandfather was also a victim of the purge, although he was not ‘a kulak’. All he had were two horses, a cow, and a small wooden house, that was all his ‘fortune’. He worked hard all year round. The reason for his persecution was that he made a written statement refusing to enter a collective farm. Having heard of that, one of my grandfathers’ relatives, a member of the committee for the poor, warned him that for refusing to do so he and his family might be sent to Siberia. To avoid this happening my grandfather waited for the night to come, bundled together all his possessions, harnessed the horses, tied the cow and the calf to the carriage, put in his wife and three small children in it and left the village quietly. But he hardly made a couple of kilometres when members of that same committee, the villagers themselves, caught up with him. They threw my grandmother with the children in a field and drove away with my grandfather, the horses, the cow and the carriage with the possessions. Later we found out that it was a young boy of 12, who reported to the authorities about my grandfathers’ intention to escape. He was ordered to spy on my grandfather. This is how they used to put things in ‘order’ and establish new laws. All the children in the village were made to spy and tell on people by deceit and report. My grandmother had to live the rest of her live in other people’s homes as my grandfather disappeared for good. We found out that on the night he was arrested, he managed to escape from the shed they locked him in. Sometimes my grandmother would receive secret parcels with food from him, but she did not know where he was and what he was doing. She never saw him again. Just before the war there was a rumour that he had been killed. Nobody knew where, when and for what reason. In the mean time the villages were being demolished and their hard working inhabitants persecuted. We shall bring the old world to its foundations, to create a brave new world, those who were nothing, will become everything. The songs were sung with much pride in those days. But the builders of ‘the new world’ seemed to be only good at ruining. They ruined the gardens, demolished churches and palaces. Antichrists, my grandmother called them. As for our village, although it did not have any palaces, what made it beautiful were the wooden houses with tiled doors and window frames. Finally, after many years of wandering my grandmother returned to her impoverished home village. Her relatives gave her shelter. She lived with her children in a ‘bania’, a former Russian steam bath house, until the beginning of the war. By then the officials had stopped persecuting her.

I remember the 1930’s because of constant hunger when rationing started. My mother would bring home some burnt brown bread, give a small piece to everyone and like hungry dogs, we would swallow it without chewing, which made us even hungrier. We would look into her eyes waiting and my mother would shout Go to bed, I have nothing else!

Children, get up, I hear my mother’s voice through heavy drowsiness. I open my eyes. It is dark. Why is she getting us up? Get up, dears, let us go and get some bread. We jump up immediately and she helps us to dress. She grabs our hands and we run. We are running to the shop to get in a queue for bread. There are a lot of people there already and they write numbers on our palms with a chemical pencil, I remember the number being three figured. A list is made of the people in the queue. Each person received 500 grams of bread. We return home tired hoping to get some sleep until the next call. Just as we get warm again we have to get up and run, this time I whimper. My mother tries to persuade me, then she tells me off. She grabs me and, short of breath, runs to the shop, it turns out we are late, there was no bread left. The next call took place without us and we were struck off the list. My mother covered her face with her hands and burst out crying. Luckily, the neighbours did not leave us without bread, they shared what they could, depriving themselves of their own meagre ration. Our neighbour, whose husband had died and left her to look after three children, worked at the bread factory. She was arrested and jailed for three years for secretly taking a small piece of bread for her three hungry children. Despite the incident with our neighbour, my mother decided to start working at the bread factory. I would rather go to prison than see my children die from hunger! she used to say. It made things a little easier, but we feared that our mummy would be put into jail for bringing home burnt bread pieces which were discarded from the factory. There had to be ‘discipline!’ among the workers. I remember my mother always being in a rush, washing, cleaning the pans, the oven, carrying water, wood, soot, and coal! She rarely laughed. I thought with horror that when I grew up I would have to suffer the same way she did. So I wanted to remain a little girl forever. I remember she would often wake up in the mornings and clasp her arms together saying God almighty, what am I going to feed you with today! Or something more sinister, You are burdens around my neck. I felt so guilty for being a burden but I could not help her in any way. It always ended the same way, she would cuddle us and cry and cry. Through the tears we would shiver and say mummy, do not cry, do not cry.

Sometimes we had happy days. We used to go with our mother to the steppes to get medical herbs and sorrel. There were so many types of herbs in the steppes. There was intoxicating wormwood, a native herb, lebeda stretched before us, a sea of flowers and in the sky, blueness, endless, mysterious. The freedom and peace! Grasshoppers, butterflies, dragonflies, ground squirrels, the masters of the steppes, were glad to welcome us. They jumped, flew, and crawled around us. We ran around in the steppes and because of our screams and shouts we were like our ancient ancestors. Then, exhausted by happiness, we fell on the dense grass and froze, looking into the sky! But I loved the night sky most of all. A quiet, warm, slightly damp, tender summer night… The moon and the stars are very, very bright, and so close, it seems one can reach and touch them. From the beginning of the summer until the very cold we slept in the garden on the warm soft grass. There were usually about ten of us. There were cousins, aunts and a few neighbour-friends, sometimes my mother joined us. We lay in a circle with pillows in the middle. Our heads close to each other’s and our legs, outwards. It was very comfortable to lie on our stomachs, head supported by our hands, eyes all around you and whispering, whispering until the first calls of the cockerels. Then we would turn onto our backs and cover ourselves with the heavenly blanket of the sky with twinkling stars and mysterious moon. My Aunt and her friends were great dreamers! Looking into the sky they surpass each other making up such stories. I immediately want to fly into the magical depth and stay forever in that blue paradise. Unknown creatures live out there, they can fly, they live in palaces on the Moon. We strain our eyes and really see the palaces and castles on the Moon. There is no vice, cold or hunger there. Everyone loves each other and they live forever. Listening to all this I freeze from happiness, suffering at the same time that I am not there. My only reconciliation is that my all knowing Aunts assure us that we will all will be there after death. So I want to die immediately, but not on my own, all together. In the mean time, while waiting for eternal peace when we are still here, we quietly sing songs and listen to love stories. My Aunt and her friends were about ten years older than us. We, the little ones are holding our breath from pretending to be asleep. Absorbing the yet unknown world, in which there is  . . . love. It frightens and thrills us. It is interesting, but shameful. I was convinced that love was something very shameful but very exciting.

A long, long time ago, far, far away, high, high up on the hill lived a king and a queen. They had a daughter, a princess, such a beauty, that words cannot describe…! This is about me, I am the Princess , I thought, thrilled. The ‘princess’ was running around barefoot in the small yard, her two plats sticking to her sides, with the ribbons made of colourful cloths, she swung on the swings, played dolls with friends and was as happy as a real princess, although she did not have beautiful dresses, cakes or sweets. Always half-hungry, she could not imagine that fine food existed. She did not need it. She was content enough with the little happiness, when her mother or grandmother would sometimes give her a sweet, a fruit-drop, which she tried to keep in her mouth for as long as possible to prolong the pleasure! She did not even notice that the neighbouring boy, Yurka, sat on the fence for days watching her. This favourite ‘pastime’ was only disrupted by an occasional ride on a scooter, which my brother lent him. When he got tired of sitting on the fence, he would bend down and you could see his eyes following her every step through the rare palings of the fence. I was in no way disturbed by his behaviour. If he wanted to look, let him look. The trouble was, when he openly helped me win ball games or let me win at ‘hide and seek’ that was when it became apparent to the others. At first they got cross with him, then, even worse, started teasing calling us ‘bride and groom!’ I became cross with him and avoided him and would not join in the games he was playing. But it did not help. The boys from our street would not give me a break, they would pull faces and call me a bride, (they pestered me but were afraid of him). Once Yurka got them all together and told them loudly that unless they stopped pestering me, they would regret it. He also loudly declared that when we grew up, we would be getting married.

Such a statement, as you might agree, takes a lot of courage to make when one is thirteen. They immediately stopped bullying me. It was from fear or respect towards him. As for me, I hated Yurka from then on, as marrying him did not in any way fit into my plans. Marrying anyone else did not, for that matter. I had my own opinion about marriage, based on the real life examples of my mother and all the married neighbours. To be married, meant to tolerate a husband, feed the children, wash, clean, cook, light the fire, clean the soot, carry heavy loads and suffer from shortages. No money, nothing to feed the children with, tolerate the husband’s humiliation, try to make ends meet, to put the children on their feet. No! I did not want such a set up and I did not want to become grown up. I was happy as I was. They fed me, although, poorly, sometimes felt sorry for me, I have my mummy and daddy, I want nothing else. Marriage is hell, I used to hear quite often. I never heard the word ‘love’. These are totally different things. ‘Love’ is when people court, whisper, meet secretly, kiss. This does not go in any way with marriage. One incident completely crushed my idea of a happy family life.

A big beautiful brick house towered near our house, a big boss who we called Uncle Gleb and his wife Aunt Natasha lived in it. Every morning a light vehicle, known as an Emka took him to work and brought him back in the evening. There was something in it that divided us and grown ups from him. At that time a car was a rarity, a symbol of wealth, something unreachable. We, the children, were very afraid of uncle Gleb. We did not dare to be seen by him. He was tall, with huge white hair, deeply seated eyes, covered with dense eyebrows, always frowning, slightly bent, he walked slowly and solemnly, as though he were the master, confidence and calm in each movement. None of the neighbours ever heard him say anything. He never answered to meek greetings of the people, they usually hid themselves to avoid him, in the street, he simply ignored everyone. Through the fence planks, dividing our yard from his garden, we hid in the grass and sometimes peeped, so that we could tell the neighbours later what we had seen. We never saw anything interesting. Every evening before going to bed, he walked around the garden solemnly and slowly, his arms behind him. At the request of Aunt Natasha my father looked after their garden, dug the trees, pruned, watered and grafted. Uncle Gleb would sometimes stop, look on as my father worked, and they would exchange a few words. Aunt Natasha was completely different from him, she was a close friend of my mother. Petite, and quick, always running between the house and the kitchen in the garden, carrying something in and out, trying to avoid her master. He simply ignored her as well. She was very welcoming and kind, and loved to come to our house when he was out, to have a chat with my mother and bring something for us to eat from the meal leftovers. We, the children, loved to help her tidy her big house, wash the floors, carry water into a large bath, which was in the sun in the garden, and when the water was warm we would splash in it as if it were a swimming pool. These were happy moments of our gloomy childhood. I would often hear her voice from over the fence calling, Lena, come and see me, and our mummy would go and come back from her with her eyes shining happily, and carrying food, the children will not go to bed hungry today. But all this happened in the absence of Uncle Gleb. Aunt Natasha would get rid of us like flies before he came back, Go back quickly, Uncle Gleb will be back soon, we were gone like the wind. They had a daughter Nadja. Tall, like her father, but her demeanour was completely different from him. She was a giggler, a singer and a dancer, she just did not notice her father, was not afraid of him. Maybe it was revenge for his arrogance and being antisocial. She was eighteen, ready to marry. She had a great number of suitors, and had them, by the nose. She was a friend of my Auntie, who was her peer and by then lived in our house. Oh! what they got up to! We used to be the witnesses and participants of their tricks. They would set up dates with all Nadja’s suitors at the same time in different lanes of our street and they would send us to check on them. We of course, would go with pleasure to look at the cheerless men, in love with Nadja, a bunch of flowers in their hands, we would giggle quietly, covering our faces. Some of them, the quick-witted ones would see us and know who we were. God help those of us whom they might catch, they would be interrogated fiercely! The dating game never stopped, only the participants changed.

The life of the beautiful and clever girl Nadja finished tragically. Rejecting very attractive proposals she waited until the war ended for her beloved to come back. He came back and they got married. They had three children, but he drank and abused her so much, that one day she could not take it any more and hanged herself in the garden shed, leaving three young children. They said it was he who did it, killed her first, then hanged her. There was not enough evidence, maybe the authorities simply did not look for it. The drunkard poisoned the life of his children for a long time afterwards.

Sometimes our neighbours had visitors. They did not arrive in trams, no, no, no, they were brought by cars, and the drivers would sit by the house waiting for their masters. The visitors did not sing or have fun, like all the normal people on our street did. We knew that Aunt Natasha had guests by the parked cars in front of their house. So on that unforgettable evening when the guests were already leaving, the small side gate between out gardens suddenly opened and Aunt Natasha rushed in. I was very scared, her dress was ripped, she ran bending, stumbling, with one hand covering her face, the other holding on to the bushes so as not to fall. My mother gasped, and rushed towards her, grabbed her, but Uncle Gleb caught up with her, he pushed my mother to one side without saying a word and started to hit his wife in front of us. Huge, and angry, with a red face, he hit her wherever he could, brandishing his enormous fists. She fell down and hid under the small garden table, so he started kicking her with his feet as hard as he could. At first we could hear her moan, then she went quiet. My father ran up to Uncle Gleb and grabbed him from behind, he shook him so fiercely that he fell on his side. I remember my father took a club from somewhere, held it above Uncle Gleb’s head and whispered, what are you doing, beast?, if you hit her one more time I shall kill you. Uncle Gleb, who appeared drunk, seemed to sober up quickly. He got himself up slowly and with difficulty, and without saying anything or looking at anyone left through the side gate. My mother and father lifted Aunt Natasha up from underneath the table. We stood motionless at a distance and gazed in horror at what was happening. My mother was crying and lamenting as she washed Aunt Natasha`s face. There was no face, everything was covered in blood. Mother was crying and asking the neighbour to call the ambulance but Aunt Natasha whispered something to my mother. I heard Do not, do not, do not. She was afraid that Uncle Gleb would be sacked from his work and jailed, in other words, would get what he deserved. My mother and father put Aunt Natasha on the bed and I think she lay like that for two days.

The next day in the evening Uncle Gleb came to our house, into our small room, where hardly alive, lay his wife, all swollen. My mother tried to stop him from coming in, afraid that he would finish what he did not complete the day before, but he calmly took my mother by her hand, pushed her to one side and went into the room. He bent over his wife, looking for a long time. Aunt Natasha whispered quietly So, are you pleased?, looking condemned, he waived his hand and left.

Aunt Natasha wanted to go back to her tyrant the same day, but my mother did not let her. Nothing will happen to your beast, he will not die from hunger and even if he did, then so be it! Have pity on yourself! Nevertheless the next morning Aunt Natasha, helped by Nadja and my mother, crawled back home and after about two or three days she was again serving on her master. However, Uncle Gleb never touched her again. Maybe, out of gratefulness that she did not send him to jail, but most probably, he was just scared. He became quieter somehow, he sometimes even nodded in reply to greetings. Even before that incident I thought of marriage as a misfortune in the life of a woman, and after what I had witnessed, I announced to everyone that I was never going to marry.

And what about Yurka? I hated him even more, thinking they are all like that. But he as always was attentive towards me, meeting me after school, sometimes going to school with me. One day I saw him leaving school with a girl who, I thought was a disgusting show off. They walked along chatting merrily. I walked quickly ahead of them, Yurka ran up from behind me. I shouted at him Go away, fool. But the fool did not go away. Before that I was sure that I hated him, now I suddenly was about to cry as I was so hurt. Hatred and offence did not somehow go together and I could not understand what was happening. It took me a long time to forget it. I even became kinder to him, and we played together again.

All his family were killed during the bombing.

A child lives in a world of his or her own, regardless of the circumstances, he/she creates it. We often forgot about hunger and had so much fun that no-one would have thought looking on, that our stomachs were rumbling and that while playing we subconsciously were waiting to hear mum’s voice Children, come home, dinner time! and we would run home as quickly as we could.

We had a neighbour, who had a daughter named Simochka. Her father was rich, as the neighbours used to say. We did not understand what it meant to be ‘rich’, but we disliked her for a completely different reason altogether. She used to sit in front of us and eat ice cream, which we could not afford, hoping to make us jealous, but it was in vain. We tried as much as we could, not to look at her, even secretly, while she slowly licked from the round soft and apparently very sweet white stuff. We were running around demonstrating our ‘joy’ oblivious of her, we always won. In the end she would creep up to one of us and say, do you want to try some ice cream? If someone weakened and tried the white stuff, they would become known as a traitor, he/she would be punished by ridicule later. Simochka, despite her special status, was jealous of us and wanted to play with us. We sometimes let her, but we did not treat her as an equal, by allowing her to play with us, we were doing her a favour. We played hide and seek, and ball games, but the girls main passion were the dolls. We did not have real dolls, of course. We made them from rugs, but they were no less precious to us than those unreachable porcelain ones. We would chose a quiet corner in our garden, thankfully, there were many of them with soft, fluffy grass everywhere, so tall we could sit and hide in it, each with her rug doll. All day long we would be dressing, and undressing the dolls, and putting them to bed, singing as we did so.

Incidents happened frequently, someone would snatch a rug doll from their neighbour. The owner of the rug doll would try to get it back. But the person who is trying to snatch the rug doll considers it as her trophy and holds on to it, pulling with all her might. The owner also pulls. For a time this goes on quietly, gradually the brawl would get more active, a girl falls down and everything becomes a mess. Other girls, taking advantage of the commotion, try to grab the objects of their long time desire or whatever they happen to come across. A girl jumps up, trying to run away, a chase follows, she is caught, plats are pulled, screams attract the attention of the parents, who come and take their girls home. The parents turn the ‘girls dispute’ into something more menacing. Unwilling to understand the events, they start attacking each other in order to defend their innocent child. This goes further, they suddenly remember ‘offences’ not connected with this dispute at all. The abuse pours out from their mouths. In the heat of the argument they accuse each other of true and false sins. As the ‘parameters of the dispute widens’ and as they stand next to their fence gates, they have to scream to be heard. Naturally, this ‘free show’ attracted the attention of all but the hopelessly lazy, and neighbours found out about the family trees of the involved and their friends. Finally, the following conclusion was made, they are all hopeless drunkards, thieves and liars, in short, classic material for soaps.

In the evening or the next day the witnesses of this ‘show’ would be telling the unfortunate ones who missed it about ‘the entertainment’ in great detail, embellishing so much, that when the story came back to the originator, they, quite shocked, would curse everyone for gossiping. All good things as well as all the bad come to an end. By the next day one of the old enemies would shout from over the fence Olga, listen, Olga, send Lena over, I have some blinis for you… they turned out nice this time. Lena appears, the same Lena whose plats I pulled yesterday, eyes down, the old enemy puts the blinis on the plate, Lena leaves with a plateful covered in raspberry jam, the peace is restored!!

. . . Where are they all? Lena, come back, steal, snatch, take anything you want from me! I would give anything for the pleasure of having a glance at you again!

The boy’s brawls were not quite the same, they were less noisy, more force usually.

Kolja shouted to Ivan, let us go to Vitka’s, he’s broken my scooter. They arrive at Vitka’s and Ivan is immediately ready to help his friend. Ivan, asks Vitka why he has broken Kolja’s scooter. Vitka replies why hasn’t Kolja returned my wheel. Kolja replies I didn’t take your wheel!! Yes, you did!! No, I didn’t! Give me my scooter back! No! The words are rendered useless, it’s time for action! A stone fight starts until someone screams, usually when the stone has hit the target. Immediately from over the fence one of the parents shouts What are you doing there, devils? The ‘devils’ vanish. But the incident has not finished yet. The enemy has got the wheel and the scooter. Kolja and Ivan wait behind the corner. The enemy will come out sooner or later. The enemy peeps their dishevelled heads from behind the gate, looking around, scared. All seems quiet. Suddenly the ‘devils’ spring up, run, grab Vitka and hit him. There is a mass of bodies, in the dark one can hear the movement, groaning and sniffing, none of those girlish screams. But then suddenly they all run away startled by something. In the morning they will all be together again. The arguments did not happen frequently. We would play all sorts of games with the boys. Ball games, skipping, and, of course, hide and seek. What a hide and seek! The playing field was the whole street. There was plenty of space to hide, try and find someone! Sometimes one would hide so well, that people would shout, come out you win!" I hated it when it was my turn to seek. I resorted to all sorts of tricks, so that my friends sometimes pulled me out of the game. I considered myself unjustly offended, although they were right. I took so much offence I cried, complaining to my mother about my brother. The latter, of course, got the stick from my mother.

At times I was a mean little girl, this was the verdict that I came to about thirty years later.

Just before the war our lives improved a little. My father got a job at a haulage garage. He was given a three-ton car. The employees of the garage were allowed to do ‘moonlighting’ at the weekends, mostly harvesting. The drivers would form a group and would go away for two or three days. They would bring a lorry full of apples, watermelons and melons. They would share everything equally. My mother fed all the neighbours and the poor. We always had some relative living in our house, either my mother’s sister, or my father’s grandmother. This is how I remembered our crowded, cramped, but merry house, before the disaster, the frightful disaster. But so far everything was fine.

Occasionally a movie van would arrive in our street and create a miracle, a cinema. A white cloth would be stretched over long poles and as it got dark people would come and sit in front of the screen, lift their faces up and laugh with or without a reason. The films were silent, so the clever ones would read the subtitles, the motor creaking by the car. The film show would last about three to four hours, as every part had to be rewound. During the breaks there would be a terrible noise as everyone was trying to tell everyone else what they had just seen on the screen. This was when I first saw Charlie Chaplin, whom everyone was simply mad about. This was how our interest in theatre was born.

We built a stage, got together some clothes for the costumes, broken dishes, a broom. My mother, who initially did not see anything good about our venture, was very sceptical, but after the premier she changed her attitude and started to help as much as she could. She became the ‘sponsor’ and ‘managing director’. The scene of action became something more or less reminiscent of a stage, instead of a plain area. A curtain appeared, true, it did not have gold printing on it, but for us even a simple flowery cloth sufficed, it divided us, the actors, from the simple mortals, the audience. Oh! One should have seen us when the curtain started to open, mother had fixed it on a rope, so there we stood, in all our glory, confused, but proud, in front of the audience. It did not matter that they were the boys and girls from our street whom we saw every day, now they were distanced from us, the actors. They watched with hidden envy and unhidden pride, excited and rejoiced, they laughed sincerely, which greatly motivated us. Gradually the parents joined the audience. At first simply because they did not have anything better to do, just ‘to look’, afterwards they came enthusiastically, putting aside their chores. They came to ‘the theatre’.

I remember the first play. It was called ‘Bim and Bom’. There was no plot as such. Bim was walking along with a very brightly coloured face. He has some construction made of leaves on his head. He walks, then stumbles and falls. We did not have to look far for inspiration, this is how some of the neighbours men came back home! We copied them so well, that the neighbours women often recognised their ‘precious’ husbands. But they did not get cross, they laughed heartily Look at these devils, what they do! The devils, it was us, tried their best.

Bim was walking along a street. He meets Bom.

Where are you going, Bim?

There

Where?

I do not know actually

I’ll come with you

OK.

So they walk together, then stumble. They sing songs, they are having fun, so are the people around. The audience recognises their world.

After a while we started to make our shows more complex by adding new details and building up the plot, taking material from the diverse reality of our street, which attracted an even bigger audience. People brought us unwanted items for the set. As the action developed, we set traps, made bangs, howled, quacked, barked. The number of the actors grew. We gave them minor roles such as a cat, a dog or a passer by, often silent roles. There were also stage workers who had to close and open the curtains, create an impression of a wind, by waving tree branches, the rain, pour water from a watering can. The latter role was everyone’s favourite and caused much laughter, when the actors tried to avoid the rain and ‘the rain’, happy in the ardour of his fame, tried his utmost and poured until the last drop of water in the can was gone. Soaking wet after the show we yelled at ‘the rain’, rebuking him for overzealousness. He admitted his blunder, but did exactly the same the next time. I also remember that during the plot Bim and Bom sometimes hit each other, waiving their fists. We agreed that the hits must not be hard, but most of the time this agreement was breached and the hits were for real. My brother was trying to justify himself, it should look real otherwise the audience will not believe us, he said.

I must admit, my role as an actress was a short-lived one. I got to play either Bim, or Bom, I do not remember, only a couple of times. Afterwards the boys resolutely took it away from me. Not that I objected that much. It was a masculine part, as it required falling, turning somersaults, getting kicked and giving punches. However, I was a good inventor and organiser. I did not know at the time I should have been called a ‘scriptwriter’ or a ‘director’. But even this honourable position often found itself futile, frequently disappearing completely, because our passionate ‘actors’ were such good improvisers that they often forgot the planned script and the show would run under their own sails. It would turn out to be so interesting and such fun that I did not even think of being offended. We did not know vanity. We were all either joyful or distressed together. We shared equally all the applause and screams of delight. It is a pity that people tend to lose this quality on the way, as well as other valuable qualities, typical of children. But I had success as an actress. Oh, if it were not for the war maybe some famous theatre producer would have noticed me!

But for the time being there was no famous figure around, our shows came to the attention of my own Aunt, who worked at a meat processing factory, so she took me there. There was an amateur drama club for the children of the employees and I was accepted. We sang, danced and the main thing, we read poetry. Oh, I was an expert. When I read there were no indifferent people and it did not matter what the subject matter of the poem was, the listeners were often so moved they cried. We even got to perform at the circus, where one day in the ring I was given a bar of chocolate, the first time that I had been recognised for my talent as an actress! The war! The war! The war interrupted everything. But this applause, this happiness of the stage has remained in my memory forever!

Two tragic events, one following the other, cut short my ‘artistic career’. They were the death of my mother in November 1940 and just over six months later, the War. I am convinced that it is the circumstances that shape our life. Not diminishing the role of the individual in building their own life, I put the role of the circumstances first. But fate gave me another chance, when I was older, to experience huge success in a real luxurious opera house, on a real stage and to hear a storm of applause.

Just before the war, like a ray of sunshine and warmth in my short-lived childhood, I remember a trip to my grandmother’s village.

Early in the morning through sleep I hear my mother’s voice children, get up, get dressed. I struggled to wake up, shivering from the morning freshness. I eventually get up and am gripped with joy. We are going to visit grandmother on a steamboat! We walk towards the pier. The sound of a motor boat can be heard through the quietness. We walk down the wooden stairs to the pier. Soft splashing of the waves, the familiar smell of the river, humid warmth, steamboat signal. All this was on the pink background of the sky. I cannot describe the state of my mind that morning, but I remember well, that I wanted to cry, from happiness. There were many people on the pier already. We struggled our way through to the steamer. There are suitcases, sacks, people sitting and laying on the deck, pushing, laughing, and making themselves comfortable. Suddenly they quietened down. We sailed away! Slowly, almost invisibly we drift from the pier. It looks as though it is the pier which is moving, and the steamer is stationary. But here we are in the middle of the river! God! how beautiful are the shores of the native river, I am seeing them for the first time. We used to run to the Volga almost every day. I knew every hill, every bush and stone. Sand, clay and slate, it is mine, it is I. From the boat these shores seem very beautiful to me, but alien. I cling to mother and cannot take my eyes from this wonder. My mother is excited just like us and keeps repeating all the time look, look, daughter, what beauty all around!

Pink sky, the blueness of the river and my mummy! She is standing, hands crossed over her chest, peering, soaking in the beauty. This is how I remembered her, a person who suddenly saw a miracle and got cut off from the fuss, forgot about everything and became one with the heavenly beauty of the world. There are moments in the life of a person when one raises above the daily bustle and becomes what God created, the finest creature on Earth. No, these are not high words, this was the way I remembered that moment. Of course, I was little at that time and I did not think about it. All I saw was my mummy, very beautiful, young and very happy. She was joyful like a child, laughing and singing, I had never seen her like that. Maybe she anticipated an early death, who knows! Then we ate red juicy sugar-sweet watermelons and melons. All together, like a large family in one floating house. Shortly we moored at a small wooden pier. It seemed as if our steamer was going to crush it, but instead it quietly and slowly merged with it, we picked up our sacks and stepped on the shore, the motherland of my predecessors. It is so quiet here, it rings in the ears.

We climbed up a sandy bank and found ourselves in the arms of many close and not so close relatives, who were happy about such a rare occasion and came to meet us on the pier and afterwards we would go to my grandmother’s house. She was very hospitable, but constantly worried that such a herd of children would ruin her vegetable patches. We all sat by the house, in the garden, on the bright carpet of grass. The relatives, whom I had never seen before, brought all sorts of food with them. They looked at us, the children, bemused, arguing about whom I looked like. It turned out I was just a copy of my great-grandmother. But I was not in the least interested in it, as I was preoccupied with a more interesting matter. My cheeks, nose, chin and stomach were all covered in the sweet, fragrant juice of the water melon and if I were not pulled away from it by my newly found relatives, I would have exploded, as I was unable to stop eating this yummy thing of my own will.

I remember the festivity lasted for days. People came and brought the gifts of their orchards and gardens. They cooked, baked and prepared food for everyone. And also sang songs! What songs! soulful, unhurried, sad songs. Someone started, and the rest followed. My great-grandfather, who sat beside me, who lost his hearing and voice a long time ago, would keep singing the same note, breaking it by quacking. Sometimes, overwhelmed with emotion, he would wipe a tear from his eye, pat me on the shoulder and looking somewhere far away would sing solemnly Dispai-i-i-i-r-r… My grandmother sat nearby, with tears in her eyes, looking at all of us, as if for the last time, trying to remember us for this life, which she believed in deeply and unable to control her tears, would cover her face with an apron and cry out loud. But the song did not break. It carried on flowing like our beauty, the Volga. The songs were about robbers, tramps, fugitives, but they all turned out to be nice people, and I pitied them. There were also songs about severe stepmothers, who made their husbands kill their children. I listened to these songs with horror, as if anticipating a disaster. I ran away and they carried on singing and crying. There were many songs about love, but for some reason an unhappy love. So I made my own conclusion, if there was love, then it had to be unlucky . . 

At the end of the 1930’s I started school. The school was a long one-storey wooden building with occasional plastering. Deep holes showed where the plaster peeled off. At the beginning of the school term everything was repainted in a dirty brown colour, the squalor showing even more. However, at the front above the entrance there was always a new huge red banner with gold glowing letters Thank you, Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!

It was supposed to persuade us, the children, that we were happy thanks to our dear leader and our Father ‘Comrade Stalin’. I tried my best to believe it but somehow it was hard to persuade my often hungry stomach. To dispel any doubt, the banners and portraits of ‘the dear friend of children’ were not only on the walls of our school, but on textbooks, newspapers, houses and even trams, all ‘decorated’ with photos of Stalin and Mamlakat, Stalin and Voroshilov, Stalin in Kremlin, handsome with his pipe, smiling. The textbooks repeatedly stated that Lenin and Stalin made us happy. Since we had a vague idea of what happiness was, we were content with what surrounded us. Our country borders were safely locked, the enemy was abroad. And Comrade Stalin took care of us. It was a shame that he had so many enemies. Why did they want to kill him? He was such a good man. The songs, the books, the films, were all about him. We were told that everything in our country was good, but over there, abroad, was bad. And this was the merit of Comrade Stalin.

Fanaticism is a dangerous thing for a person, even more so for the society. The fanatics blindly obey their idol or an idea. They do not listen to arguments or examples. They would do anything for the idea. How many wars, how many victims and insanities have been carried out for the sake of the idea over the centuries? But I am not a researcher of this phenomenon. In our country the idol was Stalin, who was bowed to,

Reviews for From the Fire of Stalingrad

[fredbacon_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read a rather unusual book this week, the recently published "From the Fires of Stalingrad" by Ljubov Sladkova-Avetisian. It's the memoir of a Russian woman who, at the age of 14, lived through the Battle of Stalingrad. The memoir is only about 160 pages long, but the full text is included in English, Russian and French so that the book is closer to 500 pages.Born in 1928, the author grew up in a house near Mamayev Kurgan, a mound that dominates the city and was the site of fierce fighting during the Battle of Stalingrad. Now in her eighties, the author's memoir is short, affecting, but confused. The timeline of events in Stalingrad are jumbled up and tied in knots. It's probably impossible to disentangle them after all these years, but it's almost beside the point. Despite the clumsy translation, the terror of a young girl trapped in the middle of the battle is palpable. In fact, the fractured narrative and awkward writing seem to magnify the horror and make the experience more "real" than if the writing were more accomplished. After the battle, Ljubov leaves Stalingrad to join her young aunt in the Soviet Army to work in a communications unit. She spends the rest of the war near the front carrying messages and growing up within a close knit group of young women.I can't say that it was a good book, but will say that it was memorable.