VICTOR NEKRASOV
57
"You must accustom the fingers in your right hand to little move–
ments," said the doctor in charge, named Shpav. "Do you have a fa–
vorite girlfriend? Write to her every day. With the right hand, not with
the left. It's good exercise."
I did not have a favorite girlfriend. And so, perched on the hillside
below the hospital overlooking the Red stadium, I began to write
about Stalingrad while it was still fresh.
The day when I turned thirty-five and the first half of my life (as of
today) had already elapsed, the book's galleys were ready. Virtually
nothing was changed except for the ending which had been expanded
for the sake of "compositional completeness." The sacred text had al–
ready been looked over by Tvardovsky,
Novy Mir's
editor, who recom–
mended that it be published. It had been given to him by Vladimir
Borisovich Alexandrov, the critic and eccentric who bent everyone's ear
saying, "An ordinary soldier from the front line who doesn't have a clue
about socialist realism. You must read it."
That's right, I didn't have a clue. I had read and worshiped Eric
Remarque, and of course, Hemingway - everybody raved about him.
Before that Knut Hamsun, and the first war book I came across,
Se–
bastopol Stories.
Period. And then the war began.
Here we come to the main point, the reason I am wntmg this
postscript. This horrible meat-grinder of a war, which cost so many lives,
began with the "insiders" attack, after Stalin's ten-day binge (or depres–
sion); was followed by the tragic retreat and senseless loss of life; and
ended with the Red flag flying from the Reichstag. These years were, for
my generation, a brutal coming of age. And this was as true for a semi–
literate peasant from the Altai region as for an urban sophisticate, a total
misfit in the army, who wrote stories about his experiences which no
one needed.
While marching from Rostov to the Volga, our sapper brigade
stopped in a remote village named Puchig and began, on a sloping hill,
to dig through the frozen soil with collective farm shovels. None of the
officers had ever laid eyes on a mine, a detonator, or a Bickford fuse.
We knew only that tolite looked like soap and dynamite like jelly. We
had no weapons and did not know how to shoot. Each soldier received
ammunition for one live shooting all winter; there were barely enough
cartridges for the soldiers on the front.
In the spring of '42 the detachment was dispatched to the Crimea,
where it would bury many of its own. The officer corps was sent to
