Completely different in texture, the children’s diaries are decorated with a juxtaposition of “big” and “small”: “I crammed algebra. Ours surrendered Oryol." These are real epics, “War and Peace” - in a student notebook. It’s amazing how a child’s gaze clings to peaceful “little things”, how the beat of “normal” life is felt even in occupation and blockade: a girl writes about her first lipstick, a boy about his first attraction. Children - all of them! - they write about books: Jules Verne and Gorky, school curriculum and family reading, libraries and home heirlooms.... They write about friendship. And of course – about love. The first, cautious, timid, not completely trusting even an intimate diary...

In general, for them, for our heroes, everything is for the first time. For the first time a diary, for the first time - a war, they do not have the experience of older generations, there is no inoculation of life, they have everything - on a living thread, for real, and it seems to us that their testimonies are the most honest as regards the inner world and self-reflection big world.

The diaries we collected are different not only in content, they are also different in “execution”. We have at our disposal sheets of a calendar, and notebooks, and general notebooks with calico covers, and checkered school books, and palm albums... We have long and short diaries. Detailed and not very detailed. Stored in archives and museum collections, there are family heirlooms in the hands of newspaper readers.

One of the readers, having heard our call for children's diaries, sat down and wrote down his youthful memories over the weekend, carefully bringing them to the editorial office on Monday. And we thought: it might be that in all these years no one asked him: “Grandfather, how was it there?”, he didn’t have the chance to trust anyone with a child’s, secret, sick thing...

The action of participation is what the work that “Aif” has undertaken is all about. Not just to show the war through the eyes of a child, through the prism of a child’s perception of the world - innocent, touching, naive and matured so early, but to stretch a thread from every beating heart now to a heart that survived the main catastrophe of the 20th century, to a person, even if he died, but did not give up , a survivor, a small man, perhaps the same age, but who has seen the most terrible pages of history, which seems to have happened recently, or maybe a long time ago... This thread will tie. And maybe he will keep it. So that the world doesn't end. This one turns out to be fragile.

Editorial staff of the weekly "Arguments and Facts"

Children experience war differently than adults. And they record this war and everything connected with it, all its horrors and shocks, in a different way. Probably because children are reckless. Children are naive, but at the same time they are honest, first of all, to themselves.

The diaries of military children are evidence of amazing observation and merciless frankness, often impossible for an adult. Children noticed everyday phenomena and signs of war more accurately than adults, and responded better to all the changes that were taking place. Their diaries are closer to the ground. And therefore their testimonies, their evidence is sometimes much more important for historians than the diaries of adults.

One of the scariest chapters of this book is the very first. The worst thing for children in besieged Leningrad, as far as I could see then, was bombing and shelling, dark streets and courtyards where there was no lighting at night. Explosions of bombs and shells - it was visible, visual death, which they could not get used to.

But they perceived human death, which surrounded them on the streets and in houses, more calmly than adults, and did not feel such fear and hopelessness in front of it, perhaps simply because they did not understand it, did not relate it to themselves.

But the children had their own fears. And the worst thing for them, as it turned out, was hunger. It was much more difficult for them than for adults to endure it; they did not yet know how to force themselves, to persuade them, and as a result they suffered more. That is why so many lines and pages in their diaries are devoted to thoughts about food, the pangs of hunger - and the subsequent pangs of conscience...

What were these diaries for them, those who wrote them? Almost every diary reads: “my best friend”, “my only adviser”... They don’t write in the diary - they talk to the diary. There is no closer creature on Earth than this notebook with a calico cover, a drawing pad, a palm-sized album... And this closeness, this need - often it arises precisely on the first day of the war, when many of the diaries published in this book were started.

Contact with the children's world of those war years is a deeply personal matter for me.

While working on the “Siege Book,” Ales Adamovich and I realized that the feelings and behavior of the siege survivors were most reliably expressed in children’s diaries. Finding these diaries was not easy. But we still found several amazingly detailed ones. And it turned out that, as a rule, a person kept a diary without even hoping to survive. But at the same time, he understood the exclusivity of the Leningrad blockade and wanted to record his testimony about it.

In an era of revaluation of the most important human values, when Nazi torchlight processions are again marching across Europe, evidence such as the diaries of children of war is extremely important. They return us to ourselves, to the land on which we were born... And if today the testimonies of adults do not penetrate someone, then perhaps the words of children will. And today’s children will hear more clearly the voices of their peers, and not of adults who speak from high stands. After all, it’s one thing when a teacher at the blackboard tells you about the war, and quite another thing when your school friend does it. Albeit with a difference of 70 years.

Of course, we are all afraid, we are afraid, we don’t want new war. Reading the diaries of children who survived the past war, you understand this horror even more powerfully. And you can’t help but wonder: have we really been able to live without war for only seven decades? Just seven decades of peace! After all, this is so little.

Daniil GRANIN, writer, participant of the Great Patriotic War, honorary citizen of St. Petersburg

We lived on the Petrograd side in what was once the most beautiful and rich city in the world, the former capital of the Russian Empire.

It was an unbearably long time ago. But it seems like yesterday. And sometimes it seems to me that even today, everything is so clearly before my eyes... The howl of a siren. The ticking of a metronome that came from the loudspeakers. This was a warning about the shelling of the city or its bombing. And then the metronome was always replaced by bravura, cheerful music, which acted on our souls like a requiem. Hunger. At first, despite the enormous weakness, my head was very clear... Then at times you begin to lose consciousness, your perception of reality is disrupted...

Veterans - participants of the Great Patriotic War
dedicated...
Remember the war! Even if it is distant and foggy.
The years go by. Commanders retire.
Remember the war! This, really, is not strange at all -
Remember everything that once concerned us all.
(Yu. Vizbor “Remember the War”)

Dear reader!
You are holding in your hands a book based on information from a preserved and accidentally found unique rarity - a real personal diary an ordinary soldier who passed through the harsh fiery roads of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
This seemingly unprepossessing, few-page notebook with a hard cardboard cover belonged to a native of Mordovia, Fyodor Yakovlevich Bogatyrev.
F O T O "Bogatyrevs" - 02
In the photo: on the right is Fedor Yakovlevich, on the left is his son Nikolai Fedorovich

Fyodor Yakovlevich Bogatyrev (Bakhtyrev) was born in 1901 in the village of Makarovka, near the city of Saransk, in the family of Bakhtyrev Yakov Lazarevich. The family was strong with sober, hard-working men and had a plot of land - “Bakhtyrevo Field” (as fellow villagers called it) was located near an oak grove, where today they select land for the construction of a nanotown.
Fyodor Yakovlevich grew up in a family of tireless workers and gradually mastered the skills of carpentry and carpentry. By nature, he was not very talkative, so we do not know about his childhood and youth.
On this occasion, let's start our story with the cool pre-war times. Fyodor was working at the mill at the time, and one day he milled a couple of bags of grain for his family without permission from his superiors.
For this daring offense committed at that time, a court decision forced him to give 10 years of his life to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which was urgently needed by the country. And there Fyodor Yakovlevich showed himself to be a diligent hard worker - no matter what: neither the conditions of detention, nor the climatic features, he simply worked as well as he knew how to work.
And, as has been the case since ancient times, good deeds are always in sight. There were also people who noticed the diligent worker, got together, thought, discussed and unanimously decided: for conscientious work for the good of the Motherland, transfer the diligent worker to the category of “volunteer” and appoint him to the position of “foreman” for his merits.
After the end of his sentence, he returned to his ancestral homeland under new name- Bogatyrev. It happened as follows. The camp clerk suddenly, for no apparent reason, didn’t like the name Bakhtyrev, and he quickly, with one stroke of the pen, transferred the poor fellow to Bogatyrev. But Fyodor Yakovlevich either did not object and argue with the literate man, or did not pay attention to it special attention. This is how the paradoxical change of surname was legalized. And the owner himself gradually got used to it.
First of all, he came to the village council, reported as expected, and explained his plans for the near future. But when asked about returning to his native village of Makarovka, he was answered with an unconditional refusal, telling him straight to his eyes: “We don’t need jailers.”
And - period. And dreams dissipated and hopes collapsed. And it hurt to the point of tears, and my heart ached at once, and my hands gave up. I wanted to turn to my fellow villagers for help, but I didn’t dare. Because there was no one to count on - it was scary to stand up for a person with such a past in the turmoil that was happening in the vast state. “It will cost itself more,” everyone thought, hiding their eyes.
Where to go? Where to go? Where should you spend your life? What to do next? Questions surrounded Fyodor Yakovlevich with a palisade.
And suddenly it came to mind - he remembered the words spoken during separation by the head of the Northern River Port of Moscow: “Stay, Fedor, in the port - we need such workers.” Then Bogatyrev refused. And now I’ve decided to follow the advice.
At the end of the thirties of the last century, he finally returned to his port, where he was received kindly: he was allocated in the village of Aksinino land plot, and the head of the port personally decided the issue with the material for building the house.
The family by that time already had two daughters Vera, Anna and a son Nikolai. They dug a dugout and began building a house. The building turned out to be big. It is not known how long they would have lived within these walls, only after a while they were given a two-room apartment. And then the village, along with their house, was swallowed up by Moscow (now the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station is located there).
“Lucky,” one might say. It would seem, what more could one wish for - just to live and live, and make good money.
But a common misfortune came for everyone - the Great Patriotic War began.
Almost from the beginning of the war, or more precisely, in July 1941, Fyodor Yakovlevich was mobilized and drafted into the ranks of the Red Army. He himself recalled the war years sparingly, like a soldier. But at the end of each story, he liked to repeat, not without pride: “And I happened to celebrate Victory Day in defeated Berlin. I signed this on the wall of the Reichstag.”
Every year on May 9, Fyodor Yakovlevich Bogatyrev put on a ceremonial jacket with his awards and went to meet fellow soldiers and front-line soldiers with whom he had met. And he was awarded the following medals:
October 20, 1944 - “For the liberation of Belgrade”;
January 17, 1945 – “For the liberation of Warsaw”;
February 13, 1945 - “For the capture of Budapest”;
April 10, 1945 - “For the capture of Koenigsberg”;
April 13, 1945 – “For the capture of Vienna”;
May 02, 1945 – “For the capture of Berlin”;
May 09, 1945 - “For the liberation of Prague.”
This is the “iconostasis”, as people said and still say. The number of medals was replenished in peacetime. They, of course, also pleased: “They remember, therefore they respect.” But these medals are no longer made from that hot and battle-hardened metal, but from anniversary metal.
A few words must be said about the son of Fyodor Yakovlevich.
Nikolai Fedorovich, without waiting for a summons, himself appeared at the district military registration and enlistment office in 1943 and volunteered to follow his father. I set off in order to, having gone through pain, fear, tears, hardships and losses of the people, to repel the fierce enemies, drive them into my lair and bring them to their knees, and then meet with my own father in that very place, in May 1945, in its capital, Berlin.
The newspaper "Red Star" dated May 9, 1987 told its readers about this meeting.
Here is that article by M. Sargsyan with photographs of S. Gryazev.
S C A N E R newspaper "Bogatyryovs-01"
Text of the article "Bogatyrevs"
Fedor Yakovlevich and his son Nikolai Fedorovich Bogatyryov speak sparingly about their front-line roads during the Great Patriotic War. But they often remember with excitement the gift of military fate - an unexpected meeting.
On May 11, 1945, while in Berlin, the father received a letter from his son from... Berlin. The regiment commander gives him leave. Fyodor Yakovlevich hitches a ride to the commandant's office and finds out the address of his son's military unit.
Then they walked around the Reichstag, wandered through the ruins, could not resist - they signed on the walls, chipped from bullets and shrapnel. This happy moment of meeting between father and son is captured in a front-line photo, like a dear relic stored in their family archive. I look at this photo, and lines are born dedicated to veterans, my current interlocutors:
On the photo card is harsh
The fact of the meeting is dear to them...
And like a lucky horseshoe,
I connected their lens.
They didn't think about fame -
The caps are dashingly, askew...
Left them young forever
Native Victory Day in May.
Before the war, they lived in the village of Aksinino near Moscow. Fyodor Yakovlevich worked as a foreman at the construction site of the Northern River Port of the capital. Kolya studied at the Kovrin school. My father went to the front in July of forty-one, forty years old. Cheese in September '43, when he was barely seventeen. Fedor Yakovlevich was a signalman, Nikolai Fedorovich, a holder of the Order of Glory, III degree, a machine gunner of the 286th regiment. Now he works as a milling machine operator at the Central Institute of Standard Design.
“I just don’t understand,” says Nikolai Fedorovich, “how I managed to write to my mother from the front every day.” And she answered every day. But we are silent by nature...
Matryona Yakovlevna is now eighty-two years old. Every year on the ninth of May she sets the table and gathers guests - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, relatives, acquaintances. Victory Day became a family holiday for the Bogatyryovs.
And in the evening before the fireworks they go out onto the Leningradskoye Highway. From here you can clearly see how the glow rises over the Moscow sky. You can’t get used to fireworks; each time it excites you in its own way. So they walk along the Leningradskoye Highway, as if following history, inseparable from people’s life.”
Fyodor Yakovlevich was buried in 1993 at the Golutvinsky cemetery, not far from the Vodny Stadium metro station, Moscow. And his son Nikolai Fedorovich rests in the cemetery in Zelenograd.

After reading the diary, we decided that this historical document deserves to live forever in people's memory. It is written in simple folk language, understandable to everyone.
We have only slightly corrected and edited this frank narrative about what we experienced during a difficult time. We used poetic lines as an epigraph and stage comments.

The closer the soldiers become to us,
Events of those years and memorable dates,
Both the first and last battles...
The further we get from the war,
The more sharply the details differ -
And the feat, and the presentation of the medal,
And a banner of an unnamed height...
The further we get from the war,
The clearer, the more distinct the moments,
Like frames from the greatest film,
Where are the actions of my peers...
The further we get from the war,
The more often we remember those soldiers
That they went into attacks not for glory and rewards,
And for the sake of peace, the happiness of the whole Earth!
(Vladimir K. Tsykalov “The further we move away from the war”)

WAR 1941-1945

22/VI-1941 – Germany attacked Russia suddenly, without declaring war.
Peaceful construction in production ceased. We began to prepare for war.

Oh, war, what have you done, vile:
Our yards have become quiet,
Our boys raised their heads -
They have matured for the time being.
They barely loomed beyond the threshold
And the soldiers went after the soldier.
Goodbye boys! boys,
Try to return home.
(Bulat Okudzhava “War Song”)

2/VII-1941
All stopped construction work. The entire organization loaded onto 900 vehicles with materials and mechanical equipment and left for defense work along the Moscow-Minsk highway to the Vyazma station. The station and the city of Vyazma were bombed by German planes. People from the station and the city were evacuated to the provinces. We were given trains, we loaded up and went to the front in the Smolensk region, Subotinsky, Sychevsky and Kholm-Zhirkovsky districts. Defense work began, pillboxes, bunkers, anti-tank ditches on the Yauza River and beyond the Dnieper. We worked tirelessly for three months, day and night. German planes were flying, scouts shot them down and forced them to make an emergency landing. The German pilots themselves set fire to the plane and ran into the forest, they were caught.
3/X-1941
The Germans went on the offensive. We started artillery preparation at 10 o'clock in the morning and until 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And German aviation went in trains of 30-40-50 pieces. Bombed battle formations, did not allow passage either on horseback or on foot. At night it was fired upon big roads from an airplane with tracer bullets. They threw leaflets, all sorts of completely unfounded provocations, ridiculing the Russians, surrender, senseless resistance.
We carried out work beyond the Dnieper. The headquarters stood 30 kilometers from us in the rear - the village of Pigulino. The German was close to us, 7-10 kilometers. Our front lines were retreating. We remained between the German and Russian front lines.
A Red Army soldier, having undressed, comes running from the Igorevka station, 7 kilometers from us, and says that German tanks at the station. We stopped working. They began to retreat. At sunset it approaches the Dnieper. German aircraft swoop in and begin bombing our units. We can see it in full view. We are showered with fragments and earth. We cross the Dnieper and spend the night.
4/X-1941
We arrive in the village of Pigulino, where our headquarters stood. The headquarters left, everything was on fire, the whole village was bombed. Our cars burned down. Staff near the church. The planes did not allow passage or passage. They are firing machine guns at us from airplanes. By chance, a staff car arrived behind the warehouse. We loaded what we needed from the warehouse and went to headquarters, 25 kilometers in the rear, to the village of Lipitsy.
We drove along the high road. Along the way there were 6 settlements - all burned down from the bombing. We arrived at headquarters. We were considered missing or in captivity. Again we receive a new task: to carry out work in the village of Chashkovo. We arrived and settled in. In the evening we drank tea. A messenger arrives with things: “In the cars! We are surrounded!” German tanks approached and fired at us with cannon and machine guns. We didn’t have time to board the cars with our comrades. We run into the forest, throwing things away, except for drawings and other secret documents. They spent the whole night escaping the encirclement. We ran into other German tanks - also landing. Airplanes on the roads were fired at with tracer bullets. And other planes flew in trains to bomb Moscow.
At night we leave the encirclement. They began to retreat. Subotinsky, Karmanovsky, Sychevsky districts - all the roads were clogged, military personnel were driving, civilian population, drove horses, cows and other livestock. They put 12 seriously wounded people on our car - missing legs and arms, and other injuries. The commissioner was wounded in the chest and died on the way. There was not enough gasoline, the roads were broken, mud, rain, October, cold. The wounded were not accepted anywhere. We arrived in Volokolamsk, 100 kilometers from Moscow. Then they gave me directions to Klin, 70 kilometers from Moscow. The wedge was burning. To Solnechnogorsk near Moscow.
From 5 to 17/X-1941
They retreated. We arrived in Moscow, to the organization where we worked: Khimlag, Gulag NKVD.
There is panic in Moscow, it is difficult to understand what is going on. Again we receive an assignment to the Ivanovo region - to conduct defense work. Shuya city, Vladimir, Yuryev Posad, Vasilyevsky district, Lezhnevsky district. Gus-Khrustalny station and Kurlovka station (apartment).
Got leave to visit my family. A family from Moscow was evacuated to the Ryazan region. I'm coming. They live an unenviable life. Kolya answers. There is not enough bread. Kolya went to work with me, working as a draftsman and copyist.
15/XII-1941
All defense work stopped. They are disbanded and sent to the NKVD Gulag - Moscow to their place of work. We arrived in Moscow, at the Khimki district military registration and enlistment office. They are drafted into the army.
29/XII-1941
They are sent to the city of Orekhovo-Zuevo to a transit point. From the transfer they are sent to Moscow Cherkizovo, Sokolniki metro town to the Cavalry Communications Division.

1/I- 1942
Service in the squadron began: cleaning horses, line work. There was nothing to feed the horses, they chewed all the machines and when they recover, they go back to eating their own feces.
They themselves also starved; they stole oats from the horses, fried them and ate them. Rusks and cake were taken from the pigs in the pig kitchen. My legs could barely walk.
We are receiving a replenishment. Spring, April, May. In June we board the train and go to the city of Kalinin - former Tver. We unloaded in Kalinin - Khoroshevskoe highway. They carried out guard duty and grazed horses. They stayed for 2 months. They took some of the equipment, people and horses with carts from our division to replenish them. And the rest, including me, went back to Moscow for formation. The 9th separate communications regiment was formed in Moscow. And they also demanded signalmen from the regiment at Stalingrad. But we stayed back. Once again we received a replenishment.
5/X-1942
The entire regiment is sent to Kalinin for the second time. We boarded the trains, arrived safely, and unloaded. served as communications service for the 3rd Reserve Army. I was on a business trip 30 kilometers from Kalinin - the city of Medny. They provided electric power to the courses of junior lieutenants. We lived well, had enough bread, and ate excellent food. We were preparing for battle.
14/XII-1942
January, frosty. The order is to load, the station is full of trains. It took 4 days to load. The station was bombed day and night, up to 16 times during the night. Not far from our apartment - everything flew off the walls, the clock flew out, the windows. But there were no casualties.
19/XII-1942
The trains have loaded and are leaving. We drove through Moscow, Tula, Michurinsk. We arrived in the Kursk region city of Yelets, Stanovaya station - 18 kilometers from Yelets. We unloaded - snow, frost, few apartments. We drove 18 kilometers back and forth to Yelets for groceries. We spent the night in a hotel in unheated rooms. They got drowned, burned out, and barely left.
The city of Yelets is divided by 30%. The station was especially bombed. We started moving on our own. Winter, frost, blizzard, roads covered with snow. There were 400-500 cars parked in the field due to the roads skidding. We spent the night in the back of the cars.
We arrived in the city of Fatezh, Kursk region. We settled in the city. The city was bombed 3-4 times a day. We stayed for 4 days. And it turned out that 4 Germans were sitting on the church with walkie-talkies and broadcasting about the situation in the city. When they were removed, the raids stopped.

1943
It started to melt. The month of February. From Fatezh we went to the city of Dmitriev Lgov, 7 kilometers from Fatezh. We stood there for a week and came back to Fatezh. 3 kilometers from the city the village of Melenino. They stood there for more than 2 months. The order is to take up defensive positions. Orlovskaya - Kursk - Belgorod arc. Near the Ponyri station, 18 kilometers away is the village of Lipinovo.
5/IV-1943
The Germans launched an offensive, abandoned many planes and tanks, raided Kursk with 500 planes, 1,500 sorties, the fighting went on day and night, there was a continuous flow of wounded, the Germans pushed back at Ponyri station, ours retreated from 10 to 28 kilometers and back.
By 12/VI-43. restored and went on the offensive.

We turned the Earth back from the border
(this happened at first).
But our battalion commander spun it back,
Pushing off with your foot from the Urals.
Finally we were given the order to advance,
To take away our inches and crumbs, -
But we remember how the sun went back
And it almost set in the east.
We do not measure the Earth with our steps,
I'm fussing with flowers in vain, -
We push her with our boots -
Push! Push!
(Vladimir Vysotsky “We rotate the Earth”)

Air battles went on all day long, German planes were shot down, and our bombers and fighters also fell. The plane descended low, fired at and killed one girl.
The fighting continued. Commander Rodin, assistant Rodzievsky. Order - 2 tanks near Chernava. We went in the evening and drove all night. In the morning the whole army arrived, tanks, Katyusha guns, cars. The next day they entered into battle. Our company received the task and took up defensive positions. First we were fired upon by artillery. The company commander, Starley Moiseev, was killed. Good commander.

It was on Kurskaya. Once upon a time.
Death from a bullet bought a soldier.
I bought it for next to nothing. Cheap.
She led me through the lead crumble.
She led him into the burning smoke.
Through the forest. Burnt. Wild.
Through a settlement choked with smoke.
Through the stone. Killed. Ruined.
Like, on this hellish road,
Don't plan anything in advance.
Or it will come true. Or it won't come true.
Everything here will become cold as mortals.
The guns are driven with iron necks.
The black moon hung over the trenches.
And stands above the blind craters
Death with a bag full of funerals.
(Sergei Ostrovoy "Soldier and Death")

Another one was wounded. The planes came in waves - German and ours. Many of our tanks were burning. The battle was unsuccessful: many losses - little progress. Army commander Rodin has been removed. Received the Bogdanov army.
On the battlefield I had to see my relative, Matvey Semyonovich Martynov. We talked a little and smoked. He told about his fatal wound, he was sent home for 6 months on commission, but the district military registration and enlistment office did not let him go - and back in battle. We received the task and went to carry it out. We said goodbye and never saw each other again.
We moved 40 kilometers near Oryol. The battle began and lasted 2 days. Colonel Belkov transmits from the observation post to the Commander. Our Corps are about to converge. The battle has begun, the result of the battle will soon be revealed. Colonel Belkov was killed on a tank. The offensive was unsuccessful. Let's go. The enemy has strengthened himself greatly. No progress.
10/VIII-1943
We're moving. Kursk region - the beginning of the Oryol region - the city of Sevsk. We occupied the starting line. The Germans stayed in Sevsk for more than 2 years. For the siege of Sevsk, 220 guns of various calibers were supplied. Artillery preparation began and lasted 2 hours 20 minutes. The ground shook from shots and explosions. The infantry went on the offensive. German aviation came in and did not allow our battle formations to advance, bombing the rear areas as well.
I’m standing as a messenger near the radio and other machines. The driver tells me: “There are Foxywulfs flying, high up, barely visible.” We climbed into the trenches. We had just entered the trench when a bomb exploded 9 meters behind us, pierced the Vilis’ radiator, disabled the radio station, and there were no casualties. We were covered with earth in the trench; the trench collapsed from the shock and wave. The battle was strong.
The city of Sevsk was bypassed on both sides, right and left. The Germans retreated. All around the city and in the city there were mines, surrounded by a wire fence, bridges were blown up, they went further than the city, and many civilians were shot. At Kontrolnaya, a shell explosion while carrying out a mission killed soldier Moiseev, and his entire skull was blown off by shrapnel. Buried.
A lot of potatoes were planted in Sevsk. All the crops were sown individually. The earth is divided into strips. The fight is over. We are filming for formation - Kursk region, city of Lgov, Seim River. We arrived at night. The next morning they began to make contact, he chopped with an ax and injured his leg. I limped for a month and a half.
From Kursk to Lgov 70 kilometers. Kursk station was bombed day and night. We ate well. There wasn’t enough, the locals helped, they even made moonshine and drank with us. The formation lasted from autumn until winter.

5/I-1944
The rest was over, loading into the trains began, and on the morning of the 6th the trains departed for the West. Directions Lgov - Konotop - Darnitsa - Kyiv - Zhitomir. While passing through the Darnitsa station, 30 kilometers short of Kyiv, at the station the Germans set fire to 15 trains with gasoline, shells, wounded and various weapons due to bombing. Everything burned down. It was terrible to see what happened. We passed Kyiv and are approaching Zhitomir. The echelons walked in a thread one after another, like a column of cars on a highway. Before reaching Zhitomir 18 km, we unloaded and bombed the roads, especially at night. But it turned out well for us.
We arrived in Zhitomir. The city is nice, green, the terrain is mountainous, and not much broken down. We stayed for 4-5 days and left for Belaya Tserkov, Korsun-Shevchenkovsky district. Destroy the surrounded group. They smashed, a lot of equipment was damaged. Especially tanks. A lot of people were also beaten. And here's a little break. Village in the pit, presentation of the regiment's banner, some - awards. And they began to move closer to the front, preparing for the main offensive. Very a large number of. They brought up the infantry—elderly Ukrainians. They walked day and night.
6/III-1944
Let's go on the offensive. Yablunevka village. 6 a.m. Artillery preparation. The battle has begun. You can see the tanks burning. Impenetrable mud. They broke through the defense. We had to move forward immediately. After the breakthrough, a lot of our infantry was beaten. I've never seen so many. Piled like sheaves in a field. The next day they were buried. Right in the field, 10-12 people per pit.

How many fallen soldiers were killed along the roads
Who counted, who counted!..
Reported in the Information Bureau reports
Only about how much the enemy lost.
But don’t think that we did without losses -
Just like that, just like that...
You see - he froze in the field like a shot animal,
All on fire, crippled tank!
(Vladimir Vysotsky “How many fallen soldiers died along the roads”)

They littered the roads with tanks and cars - it’s hard to describe. We abandoned the cars and began to move on horses. We walked ourselves and carried equipment on a cart. The Germans retreated, creating little resistance. But ours were on their heels. We reached the city of Uman. The city is large, many civilians were shot and many were taken away with them. In Uman, our aviation dropped infantry and ammunition from planes. Since there was no way to get a ride due to the dirt. The Germans retreated, abandoned equipment along the road - 1200 vehicles different brands, tanks "Panther", "Ferdinand", "Tiger" - 500 pieces. It was impossible to walk along the roads; everything was filled with equipment. Railways and sleepers were torn up. They attached 2 locomotives and a strong hook. All the sleepers were broken. Nothing could stop the Russians. Shells from cannons carried one or two pieces. We moved forward.
We approached the Prut River. They crossed the crossing safely - they didn’t have time to blow it up. We are walking through Ukraine. We are approaching the Dniester. The advanced units crossed the Dniester. And a day later, German planes blew up the crossing. Wounded General Latyshev and killed the colonel. German aviation began to disturb us; day and night they did not give us peace.
We received the task of conducting communications across the Dniester. We've arrived. On the banks of the Dniester is the city of Yampol. Small, all beaten up from battles. There were many dead Germans lying on the streets. Among them are women. Our tanks arrived suddenly, captured them sleeping and killed them all.
They stretched a line across the Dniester along an old broken crossing. Almost drowned. The width of the river is 380 meters, the current is fast, the water is spring. The line broke. We went with the lieutenant, didn’t notice how three “Messers” flew up, dropped bombs on the crossing, and almost got hit. And we were close, we drew a line in another place.
That night they also came under bombing with Maltsev. There was a bombing not far from the church. Killed 5 people. But we were a little further away and survived. They began to cross the crossing forward, tanks were coming, and then the cars crossed the Dniester. Aviation began to rage. Doesn't allow passage. They fire on the roads until they burn or kill.
We passed through Bessarabia. Balti city. We had to take different roads. We passed through the field outside the city of Balti. The Germans gained a foothold. We came across a strong defense. Direction: Pyrlitsa station. Garden. The Germans brought in a lot of tanks. We were surrounded by 2 battalions of our infantry. They destroyed everyone. They didn't even take prisoners.
We went north of Chisinau, crossed the Southern Bug River and entered Romania. We started eating mamalyga. There were no Romanian men, only women, old people, and children remained. They sold us cattle very cheaply for Russian money. We ate as much meat as we wanted. They stood on the defensive near the city of Iasi. During the day we were bombed by German planes, and at night by Romanian corn farmers. We slept in trenches.
German artillery and mortars fired at us. The Germans threw leaflets: “Not a single Russian soldier will leave German soil alive. Surrender.”
Grapes, plums, cherries, apricots, and nuts began to ripen. The lands are black earth, fertile. Mountainous only. Plow with bulls and oxen.
16/VI-1944
We pass the city of Balti in Bessarabia. We moved to Young Bug. Before reaching Balti 13 kilometers, we stopped at the Balti station, our Corps 12 - 3 - 6 were loaded. Corps 3 was loaded. Before we had time to leave, 3 echelons were bombed, and one of the 3 echelons was assembled. But we boarded safely. We passed through Sarny station. The road was safe, there were no bombs, but planes were flying.
We arrived and unloaded at the Manevichi station, 70 kilometers short of Kovel. We stood in the forest 2-3 kilometers from the station. The station was bombed day and night. As soon as the train with shells arrived, they immediately attacked. 3 Pulma wagons with shells burned down. This was northern Belarus. The lands are sandy and not fertile.
Ours took Kovel, and we soon went on the offensive. Difficult terrain, swampy swamps. The columns moved in 4 rows: cars, tanks, Katyusha guns, carts. I have never seen such a bold offensive: there was little German aviation, 1000 of our fighter planes were flying in the air all day long. We arrived and crossed the Northern Bug. The river is small. And we went to Lublin. in Lublin, Colonel General Bogdanov was wounded in a street battle.
They went to Warsaw, crossed the Vistula River to the south, bombed us on the Warsaw highway, not allowing us passage. And they took off for training in Belarus - the former Volyn province, the village of Crimea.
In Crimea, in the forest there were many Bulbovites and Banderaites, who were dangerous for the army. They laid mines on the roads, blew up cars, killed soldiers and officers, and derailed trains. Our army caught up to 5,000 of them.
We stood in one place for 3 months and received a large reinforcement. In this village I received a letter that Kolya was passing through the city of Kovel. And we stood not far from him. The letter only took 3-4 days. I asked the commanders to transfer him to our unit. But nothing worked out.
The movement began. Then we moved to the Northern Bug and back. Let's go to Poland. We stopped. City of Zhelekhov. 4 kilometers from it stood for 2 months.
10/XII-1944
We are moving closer to the front. We drove up 4 kilometers from the Vistula, into the forest, into dugouts. And the Corps beyond the Vistula on the bridgehead is snowing and cold. We sleep in cars. But it won't last long.

14/I-1945
Offensive. Artillery bombardment between Warsaw and Sandomierz broke through the defenses. And we 16 went beyond the Vistula and began to move across Poland. Our rapid progress: we went along the Vistula, in the direction of Szczecin, and entered Pomirana. Here it is - damned Germany! The villages of the city are burning, unmanaged cattle, cows and pigs are roaming around. Everything in the apartments was abandoned. There were no Germans, everyone was running away.
This continued until the Oder. Our army advanced and crossed the Oder. The bridgehead was occupied by the 5th shock army. The fighting went on day and night.

Oh, memory, memory, these lines flow...
Soviet regiments are going to battle,
ERs are hitting, anti-aircraft guns are working,
"Hawks" are passing at low level.
Retribution is carried out by one sixth,
And the God of War with a Thousand Barrels...
(Sergey Orlov "Moonlight Sonata")

The order is to clear the right bank of the Oder and reach the Baltic Sea. Destination – Szczecin. The fighting lasted 4 days and nights. The artillery was firing continuously, and they were also firing from airplanes. The Germans could not stand it, abandoned their faustniks, and surrendered. The right bank of the Oder and the Baltic Sea has been cleared. The fighting went on until
12/III-1945.
Then we went to the formation. In Germany, the city of Soldin had a good rest, they ate as much meat as they wanted. The resorts and vacations are over.
10/IV-1945
We leave for the Oder. At the bridgehead, the crossing was bombed day and night. There were 4 crossings. One was broken and could not be restored. Double-decker planes flew. In the evening, two such planes were shot down. There were very strong explosions. We crossed the Oder.
16/IV-1945
Offensive. Artillery preparation. They broke through the defense. German planes flew during the day, but not much; at night they did not let anyone live - they bombed concentrations of troops along the roads. During the day our planes and anti-aircraft guns prevented them from appearing. At night they hang lanterns and bomb.
We started to move forward. Everything is dug with trenches. Anti-tank ditches. The city and villages were destroyed. Everything is burning. There are no Germans - everyone ran away.
They scribbled leaflets from airplanes. The leaflets read: “Murder, death, blood, all of Berlin is so fortified. There are so many defense lines that it is impossible to take it, it’s better to surrender.” This is the last provocation of Hitler and Goering. Our soldiers laughed - there was nowhere to surrender, only Berlin remained.
Let's move on. Also broken, burnt cities, villages, bridges, bomb craters, beaten people, horses torn to pieces, tanks ran into mines, vehicles, guns. The Germans retreated with great tenacity.
24/IV-1945
There are battles on the outskirts of Berlin. Summer cottages in the suburbs. Stalin's order is not to touch the civilian population and, if it is necessary to evict them, then to preserve their property and valuables. The Germans knew the order before us. They did not run away from their houses. It even became difficult to evict. They say that Stalin says not to evict. I was on duty at the radio, and Soldatova’s little girl was killed.
30/IV-1945 - Berlin is surrounded in a steel ring.
2/V-1945 – capitulated. The fighting ended, the shooting stopped. The surrender of the German troops in Berlin began.
8/V-1945 – Germany capitulated and laid down its arms. The war is over. We won. Hooray!

20/V-1945
I received a letter from my son Nikolai Fedorovich. He writes - alive, healthy and unharmed. I serve at the disposal of the commandant of the city of Berlin.
I receive 20/V-1945. I asked for leave for 3 days in the city of Berlin.
And we stood 40 kilometers from Berlin, the city of Nauen. I was not refused, with hitch a ride I'm going to the city. I arrived and found the city commandant. He didn’t give me the address of the unit’s location, because it’s impossible. I had to find the headquarters of the 5th Army, the staffing department. There I received the exact address of the unit's location, district and street.
Found. We met and he was also given a day off. We walked around Berlin, drank beer, took pictures.

F O T O "Bogatyrevs - 05"

Conducted.
While I was searching, I traveled around Berlin for a day and a half using all types of transport: buses, trembuses, metro, cars, and mostly on foot.
But the work was not in vain - we had to meet.
The center of Berlin is completely destroyed, burnt houses, ruins from the bombing. The same thing - the Reichstag was destroyed. The building was beautiful inside and outside, it has 4 facades with architectural design. There are burnt tanks pressed against the Reichstag on both sides of the street. And from two directions there is a park, which is completely damaged from the bombing. Not far from the Reichstag is the Brandenburg Gate. Like here in Moscow at the agricultural exhibition. And from the gate there went an asphalt street, wide, landscaped, which is called Hitler Strasse.

Left Berlin on 2/VI-1945.
4/VI-1945
Arrived at my unit. They began to say that there was an order for demobilization. We are located 62 kilometers from Berlin. The barracks of our Russian slaves or prisoners. We are waiting for them to let us go home.

From that great unthinkable war,
Where the exploits of heroes are frozen in still frames,
I return to the realm of echoing silence,
Filled with the sighs of the night and a swarm of thoughts.
On the roads of war there is the dust of time,
There are feather grasses above the battle trenches,
But at the rail joints the train is knocking -
That last one is from the last war.
And the pulse at the temple is worried,
And the fragment still burns,
At night, front-line melancholy
Doesn't let us sleep until dawn...
(Vladimir K. Tsykalov “From that great unthinkable war”)

Children's book of war - Diaries 1941-1945

FROM THE EDITOR

Completely different in texture, the children’s diaries are decorated with a juxtaposition of “big” and “small”: “I crammed algebra. Ours surrendered Oryol." These are real epics, “War and Peace” - in a student notebook. It’s amazing how a child’s gaze clings to peaceful “little things”, how the beat of “normal” life is felt even in occupation and blockade: a girl writes about her first lipstick, a boy about his first attraction. Children - all of them! - they write about books: Jules Verne and Gorky, school curriculum and family reading, libraries and home heirlooms.... They write about friendship. And of course – about love. The first, cautious, timid, not completely trusting even an intimate diary...

In general, for them, for our heroes, everything is for the first time. For the first time a diary, for the first time - a war, they do not have the experience of older generations, there is no inoculation of life, they have everything - on a living thread, for real, and it seems to us that their testimonies are the most honest as regards the inner world and self-reflection big world.

The diaries we collected are different not only in content, they are also different in “execution”. We have at our disposal sheets of a calendar, and notebooks, and general notebooks with calico covers, and checkered school books, and palm albums... We have long and short diaries. Detailed and not very detailed. Stored in archives and museum collections, there are family heirlooms in the hands of newspaper readers.

One of the readers, having heard our call for children's diaries, sat down and wrote down his youthful memories over the weekend, carefully bringing them to the editorial office on Monday. And we thought: it might be that in all these years no one asked him: “Grandfather, how was it there?”, he didn’t have the chance to trust anyone with a child’s, secret, sick thing...

The action of participation is what the work that “Aif” has undertaken is all about. Not just to show the war through the eyes of a child, through the prism of a child’s perception of the world - innocent, touching, naive and matured so early, but to stretch a thread from every beating heart now to a heart that survived the main catastrophe of the 20th century, to a person, even if he died, but did not give up , a survivor, a small man, perhaps the same age, but who has seen the most terrible pages of history, which seems to have happened recently, or maybe a long time ago... This thread will tie. And maybe he will keep it. So that the world doesn't end. This one turns out to be fragile.

Editorial staff of the weekly "Arguments and Facts"

WORD BY DANIIL GRANIN

Children experience war differently than adults. And they record this war and everything connected with it, all its horrors and shocks, in a different way. Probably because children are reckless. Children are naive, but at the same time they are honest, first of all, to themselves.

The diaries of military children are evidence of amazing observation and merciless frankness, often impossible for an adult. Children noticed everyday phenomena and signs of war more accurately than adults, and responded better to all the changes that were taking place. Their diaries are closer to the ground. And therefore their testimonies, their evidence is sometimes much more important for historians than the diaries of adults.

One of the scariest chapters of this book is the very first. The worst thing for children in besieged Leningrad, as far as I could see then, was bombing and shelling, dark streets and courtyards where there was no lighting at night. Explosions of bombs and shells - it was visible, visual death, which they could not get used to.

But they perceived human death, which surrounded them on the streets and in houses, more calmly than adults, and did not feel such fear and hopelessness in front of it, perhaps simply because they did not understand it, did not relate it to themselves.

But the children had their own fears. And the worst thing for them, as it turned out, was hunger. It was much more difficult for them than for adults to endure it; they did not yet know how to force themselves, to persuade them, and as a result they suffered more. That is why so many lines and pages in their diaries are devoted to thoughts about food, the pangs of hunger - and the subsequent pangs of conscience...

What were these diaries for them, those who wrote them? Almost every diary reads: “my best friend”, “my only adviser”... They don’t write in the diary - they talk to the diary. There is no closer creature on Earth than this notebook with a calico cover, a drawing pad, a palm-sized album... And this closeness, this need - often it arises precisely on the first day of the war, when many of the diaries published in this book were started.

Contact with the children's world of those war years is a deeply personal matter for me.

While working on the “Siege Book,” Ales Adamovich and I realized that the feelings and behavior of the siege survivors were most reliably expressed in children’s diaries. Finding these diaries was not easy. But we still found several amazingly detailed ones. And it turned out that, as a rule, a person kept a diary without even hoping to survive. But at the same time, he understood the exclusivity of the Leningrad blockade and wanted to record his testimony about it.

In an era of revaluation of the most important human values, when Nazi torchlight processions are again marching across Europe, evidence such as the diaries of children of war is extremely important. They return us to ourselves, to the land on which we were born... And if today the testimonies of adults do not penetrate someone, then perhaps the words of children will. And today’s children will hear more clearly the voices of their peers, and not of adults who speak from high stands. After all, it’s one thing when a teacher at the blackboard tells you about the war, and quite another thing when your school friend does it. Albeit with a difference of 70 years.