A selection of memoirs was made by Pavel Shasherin.
For life reasons, I had a chance to leave the Far North for the Middle Lane in 1984. By the will of circumstances, which I did not foresee, I ended up in the Pskov region in the Pushkin Hills. There was a tourist season - zero places in the hotel. Walking through the city, I saw a beer chip by a pond with ducks and directed my steps to this hot place, where you can find out more than at the information desk. I liked one peasant at the counter, obviously from the local. I take a couple of beers to this guy. First I ask: “Man, are you from the local? I have a question for you. You will answer your mug. And my question is of this type: where can I stay for a week while I find a place to work?"
He took a mug and replied: “Take the bus from this stop to the Pushkin State Farm. There you write a job application and get a place in their hotel. While you are undergoing a medical examination, you are looking for a place of work. But I would advise you to visit the Pobeda collective farm in Goreliki. The bus leaves for the bus station. There are houses for singles on the collective farm”.
I wrote an application for a job at the "state farm named after Pushkin "and get a week to undergo a medical examination. But then I get a small room with a bed, wardrobe and bedside table at my disposal, on the second floor. But the next day, at the request of the director, I went to the newly built treatment facility building. I checked the light switches, screwed in the bulbs where they were missing, changed the rotation of the electric motors on three out of six electric drives. I brought in the water and checked the drains in the sedimentation tanks. It took me two days to completely put in order the work of the treatment facilities and gave a job to the director, who gave me two weeks for a medical examination, but obliged me to turn it on in the morning, and turn off the equipment after 22 hours. And everything, it would seem, is good, but we are sitting on Saturday with business travelers who lived next door, over six bottles of vodka for four,with a snack and have a conversation. Locals come in, and one of them asks: "Is there a triple cologne, guys?"
- "Why do you need cologne?" "Drink?"
About times, about mores!
“Drink cologne? Sit down, there is enough vodka for everyone. We’re not enough to run away yet.” “You don’t… you don’t know how to drink… You’ll drink six bubbles for four, then you’ll eat it all. How much money will you spend on all this? And here is how I will do: before I drink, I do not eat anything for three days … savings! … then like three cologne funfires and crawl like a bastard for three days. Saving!"
We laughed, but threw ourselves off the common cauldron … He received three cologne funfires, only now I lost my desire to work on such a state farm. Although I was already invited to the bride. Someone had to fix the refrigerator, someone had an iron, someone had an outlet, and every time unmarried daughters were at the table for a treat. But somehow I did not expect to get married at the age of 24, although the girls were not bad and all that remained was to examine the entire catalog of the state farm. But this man has discouraged all the desire to stay on the farm. And I went to Goreliki. Well, for starters, I went to the smithy to discuss this matter with the men. I was immediately offered to discuss this matter not to dryness, because the "head bo-bo" from yesterday. "Guys, I would not mind, but eleven not yet." "Let's go to the store, this is not a problem for us."
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It was I later realized that I ended up on the generalists of my business on the collective farm, who, as a team of the IATG, performed all the repairs on farms and as slaughters of cattle both on farms and in private yards, and such a refusal in the collective farm was not in anything, so more vodka in the store at 8 am.
That's where I was in the brigade and I ended up the next day. The foreman put in a word for me, as for a station wagon, which was confirmed by my work book. I want to tell you the story of life under occupation so that this page does not disappear into oblivion.
It all started with a small bridge over a ditch - a ditch along the road, two hundred meters from the collective farm board. "Do you know what this bridge is called in our collective farm?" "How can this bridge be called?" "This" bridge of Friedrich and Fedor. " When the Germans came to the collective farm, the commandant general of the collective farm gathered all the collective farmers from the nearest villages and announced: “Here, Red Guard horses, here are collective farm cows, here is collective farm land. Share it all among yourself. Then you will give Germany ten percent of all taken from natural products. But if I see that you will fight because of this, I will shoot everyone I notice in this, without objection. " This general found a Soviet U-2 and flew on it about his business. Twice he was shot down by partisans and the plane was dragged back by horses. It was a weekly tradition for the general to break into the bathhouse on Women's Day. He was poured from a prepared tub with water and he ran away laughing. The women are from the bathhouse, and the adjutant is wearing the general's wet uniform. The women will heat the irons on the coals, steam off the uniform, and the adjutant carries it back to the general.
Gatherings in the evening, when soldiers gathered women in one hut, were also traditional. The women mend, sew, knit and sing songs, while the Germans listen.
Something, and this cannot be taken away from them, the German soldiers appreciated good songs and music. Russian people, if they have no hearing, if they need to be prompted, is a good performer. We rested in Yeisk in the second year of the annexation of Crimea. In the evenings we walked along the embankment. And one day, of all the musicians on the embankment, I heard the accordion. I went up to the musician, sat down next to him and listened to him for about forty minutes. No one but me approached the musician. It was only when I bought a disc with the accordionist's melodies that I learned that he had been playing in Spivakov's orchestra for five years, and even performed solo numbers. In Spivakov's orchestra, when he played, people paid a lot of money to listen to him, but here on the embankment …
I read many times in my memoirs that when our orchestras played on the front line for Soviet soldiers, the shooting stopped from the side of the Wehrmacht trenches.
So on the collective farm, the soldiers loved to listen to Russian songs. But at the entrance to the village they set up their sentries and by no means from the partisans. The sentry runs into the hut and shouts: “Mother nah naus! Uterus to the basement! Es-Es is coming! And whoever goes where … And the sentry has nothing to do, he is on duty. And the Esmans are returning from battles with partisans, the wounded and killed on carts are being taken. Someone comes up to a German sentry and grunts in the face in a big way. The women then made lotions to the soldiers: they would bandage the broken ear, the black eye or wash the lips.
There were also tragic cases. Two partisan signalmen rushed into the hut in winter to the old grandmother and started swinging a revolver in front of his nose. “Give me a horse! We have to go!"
The poor grandmother answered them: “Girls, you go to your neighbor, he has four horses there, there is not enough hay for them. He will give it to you. And I have only one horse, and my son-in-law is a policeman, he will see that there is no horse, what will I answer him ?! " "Oh, you bastard policeman, give a horse!" And again they swing the revolver. Apparently the jerks themselves were afraid to go to the peasant's house, so they took the horse away from the old woman. Not far away. The grandmother jinxed it: the son-in-law comes and sees the crying grandmother, immediately around the house with an inspection and discovers that the horse has been taken away from the yard. Policemen caught up with them and the fight was short. Do you shoot a lot with one revolver for two. As two cartridges remained, the girls spent them on themselves. The general did not interfere with their burial. And so they lie in a common cemetery, not far from the road. And my grandmother at 70 was sentenced to seven years in prison because she betrayed the guerrilla contacts. Maybe they remembered the son-in-law …
I read there a book by the Pskov publishing house - the diaries of General Vasiliev. There was such a Leningrad "carpet". Leningradsky - because the Leningrad region then included the Pskov, Novgorod and part of the Vologda regions. And if during the war years Vologda did not participate in battles in the Wehrmacht, now there is a section of the Leningrad front on the Vologda land.
So I drew attention to the statement of this General Vasiliev, that "Pushkin mountains are the area of traitors."
I'm going to the blacksmith. "Explain to me why he spoke this way about you?"
- “So why explain something … They will come - partisans … We are a delegation to them. Tell me what you want? Machine guns, cartridges, grenades? We will give you everything, just don't touch the Germans in our land. There are also collective farms in the neighborhood, where the German is fierce. The youth are hiding in the woods. The people are starving. So they don't care whether you kill the German or not. It won't get any worse."
“They organized an ambush on the road in Polyana and killed two policemen. Those sledges were accompanied. They wanted to take the convoy, but here the nemchura ran into the partisans in armored personnel carriers. They put a dozen partisans there, others ran away. The killed partisans were hung from the trees. Then the Germans shot every tenth from the neighboring villages - both women and children. After we meet the partisans, we warn you: if you don’t leave, we’ll expel ourselves or incite the Germans. If you leave, we'll give you weapons and food, horses and sleighs. And they did. Mishka's grandfather was beaten to death by policemen. The policeman pretended to be a partisan and asked for food. Prokhor gave him food and a manual machine gun with shops. Here on the central estate they beat him with whips. They beat me up until they killed me. And this Vasiliev wrote,that for a sled train to Leningrad our collective farm of 290 sledges gave 250 and more than two hundred sledges were loaded to capacity. And there is grain and oil.
During this conversation, I remembered a film about this train and what I had read about it. From here, from this "land of traitors", as Vasiliev wrote, this train set off. From the neighboring collective farms of the Leningrad region, which were under occupation, only forty sledges of food were collected. There were no food, no horses. The crumbs were given away.
I also recalled the book by Yuri Nikulin "Almost Seriously", where he described his service in the anti-aircraft forces. As from a lack of power, almost the entire battery was seized by "night blindness", when, with the onset of darkness, almost all the soldiers became blind. With the onset of darkness, the soldiers could only move in a chain - for one sighted they walked, putting their hands on the one in front, 8-10 people each. As they brought them fish oil and began to give them two tablespoons a day, two days later night blindness left all the soldiers, and they stopped going blind with the onset of dusk.
When the Germans began to leave, the German general stood on the porch of the board to the last and did not let the houses be set on fire. Only when the tanks were already visible on the road, he got into the car and drove off, waving his hand to the women goodbye.
And as the Soviet power came, everything was ripped off. For the surviving houses, they looked at us as traitors. As if we are to blame that we got such a general. And when the baggage was assembled, the partisans gave each a receipt, who gave how much for Leningrad. Most of them out of harm's way, threw away or burned these receipts so that the Germans would not be shot. But they kept three receipts. So, upon retirement, they, as having paid the tax in kind according to the law, recorded two years of occupation in the collective farm experience. The war she mixed everything. Go figure out who is a scoundrel and a traitor, and who is a patriot, but a bastard … One word "War!"
Author: Pavel Shasherin