The V-Day. Copyright unknown
On May, 25th 1945 Joseph Stalin made a celebratory speech devoted to the end of the Russian Great Patriotic War. The Second World War was coming to an end, but the Soviet Union was done fighting. The Russian troops had exited Germany and ahead lied a long road of rebuilding and rehabilitation. So in Kremlin, at the V-day Meeting, Stalin had said the following:
Do not expect me to say anything extraordinary today. I have a very simple, very ordinary toast to make. I would like to raise a glass to health of those people who are low in rank and invisible in the hierarchy. Of those who we consider to be the "small screws" of our huge state mechanism - they might be small but without them us generals, marshals and other top army leaders wouldn't have made it. They are plentiful, they are a legion, it is tens of millions of people who have not been heard of - yet they hold us together, as the base holds the top. To their health!
Today we have brought to your attention a fragment of the interview with Yelena Bonner, a human rights activist, a dissident, a writer, and a widow of the late Andrei Sakharov - during the war she was a teen and now, courtesy to the Internet-magazine Snob.ru, she tells us about her experience during the war.
So - We did not fight for Stalin or the Soviet Union. We fought because we had no other choice.
Elena Bonner, b.1923. Image couretsy of snob.ru
Do you remember the war motto: "To Stalin! To Soviet Union!"
I was 18 when I was summoned - at the beginning of war, and till very late 1945 I spent with the troops - yet I never heard that motto. Every time there was a fire on the frontline we never shouted "To Stalin"", it was more like "You sons of fucking bitches!".
So at the beginning of the war we have been told that many - lots! - of young people volunteered to be sent to the front line..
That was another huge lie about that war. Only a tiny percent of people who ended up in the front line volunteered to be there. The rest were mobilised, hands down. Every single man of the appropriate age, be him a farmer or a factory worker - all of them were summoned and sent to the war.
I was also mobilised, as thousands of other girls. I was a student at Hertsen Institute, and they had a huge banner on the wall: "Girls of our country, get your second, military profession now". So we had to take a compulsory course in military education. The choices we had were about becoming a nurse, a communications technician or a sniper. I chose to be a nurse, and by the end of it I was listed as "suitable for summon".
So on June 22nd, 1941 you heard about the German invasion -you know you are listed as "suitable", so did you know you'd be part of the war very shortly? Did you have a feeling of upcoming radical change?
You know, it was a very odd feeling. I am eighty seven years old now, and now I am trying to comprehend what was happening and I am failing at it, how my generation lived anticipating the war. Not just the people of Leningrad - at least we experienced the war with Finland of 1939 - 1940 (the so-called Winter War), and it was a real war, with food shortages and no heating. So starting from 1937 I just couldn't help but anticipate a war coming - and it was a solid, gut feeling. My Moscow friends felt the same.
So in 1942 you were summoned as a nurse - what did it feel like?
I was a nurse on the train, which was travelling in the Leningrad district, picking up the wounded and delivering them to Vologda or other safe destinations. There they were dropped off, cared for, nurtured a bit and then either returned back to the front line, or sent somewhere else, I am unsure... The train was constantly bombed, or derailed, or lost in the snow. And then I was wounded myself - I had a broken clavicle, a damaged left shoulder, injured nerve and a blood eye - I was bad and I was sent by the same train to Vologda and later to the Urals.
I guess I was very lucky throughout the war. There was no reason for me to be on the train - I could have been right on the front line. It was 1942, the toughest year by some account - nobody summoned during that year came back.
Yelena Bonner in her Moscow apartment. Image courtesy of Snob magazine.
How long did you spend on that train?
Till 1945 - till the very end. We were sent to Germany to evacuate the wounded from their territories in 1945. So on May 8, the VE Day, we were somewhere around Innsbruck, Austria, and this was our last journey bound for Leningrad. We arrived home, the train crew was restructured, I was made the Head of some medical department to care for the wounded bomb disposal soldiers. The war was technically over, yet these guys - working with the explosives - kept coming our way.I was one of the last ones to be demobilised, too - in August 1945.
Can you tell us some more myths about the war?
As I have said, nobody volunteered. Another one was that the Jewish did not fight - it is not true, they did. And probably the biggest one is post war - the exploitation of that war. And all these military parades show offs - they are no longer carried out to remember those who did not come back - now they have a mission of public relations, and TV ratings, and flexing the military muscle - both on the domestic and international levels.
Did you feel that right after the war things would change to the better?
We did - we felt that our country had just survived the incredible! We felt powerful, we felt like we were able to change things around, we hoped for the better.
So why do these war veterans who came back from the war never argue these myths about the war?
Why do you think when we came back and thought ah, we are so powerful - why do you think we all shut up?
