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400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
"Everything that we know about the war we were told by men. We are the prisoners of "manly" impressions and "manly" experiences of war. "Manly" words. Women always remain silent, and if they suddenly begin to speak they tell not about their war but the war of others. Adjust to the language that is not theirs. Adjust to the unbreakable canon of men[...]Svetlana Alexievich, the journalist who brought us the books of witness accounts of Chernobyl nuclear explosion and stories of children who lived through the World War II brings us the true accounts of women who fought in the Great Patriotic War between the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany. This is a sad and often terrifying account of the war that was also fought by women in the midst of men, in the world that was not prepared for women soldiers. And, as though in defiance of the common dismissal of women's "feelings" and "lack of objectivity" this book focuses exactly on that - the feelings and colors and smells and all the other (often dismissed as trite) things that create the fabric of our experience of the world instead of battles and strategic planning. It brings the "women's war" to the long-overdue forefront.
We think we know everything about the war. But listening to these women - from villages and cities, simple and educated, those who saved the wounded and those who wounded the others - I can attest that this is not true. A big misconception. There is another war, unfamiliar to us. I want to write the story of that war. The story of women's war... "
"At the age of nineteen I had a medal "For courage". At the age of nineteeen, my hair turned grey. At the age of nineteen in my last battle I was shot through both lungs, the bullet went in between two vertebrae. My legs were paralysed... They thought I was dead... At the age of nineteen... My granddaughter is this age now. I look at her in disbelief. Such a child!"What I found unbelievably sad was the reluctance of many of these women to talk about what happened. While their fathers and husbands and brothers were proud of their veteran status, flaunting medals and stories about battles, most of these women preferred to stay in the background, acting like good wives and mothers, avoiding painful memories of having lived the "unwomanly" lives for the war years. Unwomanly lives. That's the perception. That's often the stigma they had to face.
"We're walking... About 200 girls, and behind us 200 men. It's hot. The summer is hot. And we have to walk 30 kilometers. Thirty! The heat is terrible... And behind us there are red stains on the sand... Red stains... Well, our women's thing, you know... How could we hide that? The soldiers follow us and pretend that they don't see it. They are not looking at the ground..."The things that men did not have to face when they joined the troops was the lack of basics. Like having to wear size 43 boots when you wore size 35, falling out of shoes and having too-big shoes fill with blood from blisters. Like uniforms not coming with bras. Like having to wear men's underwear that you were falling out of. Like having your menstrual period in the middle of long marches. Like being sexually harassed (not all of course; there seem to have been way more camaraderie and support on the front lines, but the ugliness was still there). Like being pregnant and fighting battles. Like being treated as inferior and incompetent because of your gender. Like having to drown your newborn child so that the baby's cries would not disclose the location of your partisan troop to the surrounding Germans.
"Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other..."Men, unlike these brave women, did not have to face the scalding social opinion. The thought that the only reason you went to the battlefields was because you were a whore who wanted male attention, who wanted to steal male soldiers from their spouses. The common attitude towards the women who came back from the battlefields as 'ruined', 'sluts', not-quite-women. The desire of men who have fought a war alongside of you and treated you like a comrade to date and marry somebody else, somebody not like you, not tainted by war, somebody girly and flighty and innocent while you were nothing but a painful reminder of things they wanted to forget. The pressure from your husbands to not "mess up" telling the war stories, to tell them to the journalist in the "proper", "manly" way, without all that "girly" stuff that would, of course, shame the manly husbands.
"After my insistent requests [the husband] reluctantly gave up the spotlight with the words [to his wife], "Tell everything the way I taught you. Without tears and girly insignificant stuff: I wanted to be beautiful, I cried when they cut off my hair". Later, she confessed to me, whispering, "All night, he was studying the 'History of the Great Patriotic War' with me. He was worried about me. And he's afraid now that I will remember the wrong thing. That I will tell it not the way I'm supposed to."And yet, despite the horror, despite everything, these young women chose to fight for their country, for their loved ones, for their future. They chose to leave behind their parents, their siblings, their spouses and children ("For the entire last night I was kneeling by the baby's crib...") to fight the war. Making it the women's war. And these are the stories I want to remember for the rest of my life.
This happened many times, in many different homes.
Yes, they cry a lot. They scream. After I leave, they swallow their heart pills. Call the ambulance. But they keep asking me, "Please, come. Definitely come. We've been silent for so long. We were silent for forty years..."
"When the war was over, I wished for three things: first - I finally will not have to crawl around on my belly but will ride in a trolleybus, second - to buy and eat an entire loaf of white bread, and third - to sleep in a white bed, on crispy sheets. White sheets..."These are the chilling stories of women who did what they thought of as their duty despite the pain and humiliations and reluctance and negative judgment, and survived to tell about it. These are the stories that made me tear up quite a few times and put the book down as I stared at the wall trying to wrap my head around the horror I just read. I recommend it to everybody in this world that seems to jump to wars so easily without realizing the enormous cost of it. These are the stories that the Soviet censors were extremely reluctant to send to print.
鈥淢e dan pena los que leer谩n este libro, y los que no lo leer谩n tambi茅n鈥︹€�Me da algo de apuro, es tal el horror que aqu铆 se recoge, tan conmovedor, tan fascinante la forma collage de expresarlo a base de las voces de sus propias protagonistas, que me parece casi un delito confesar que, despu茅s de las maravillas que para m铆 fueron 芦Voces de Chernobil禄 y, sobre todo, 芦El fin del homo sovieticus禄 , este me ha dejado a medias.
鈥淒eja de recordar la guerra para recordar su juventud. Un fragmento de su vida鈥� Hay que atrapar ese momento. 隆Que no se escape!鈥�El gran acierto de la autora fue encontrar esa forma distinta y potente de contar una historia, una forma que aqu铆 estren贸 y que perfeccion贸 en sus siguientes libros: centrarse en el relato de sus protagonistas, en los sentimientos de aquellas mujeres j贸venes que se alistaron en el ej茅rcito ruso en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Una perspectiva nueva que no era una mera b煤squeda de originalidad.
鈥淟os hombres se ocultan detr谩s de la Historia, detr谩s de los hechos; la guerra los seduce con su acci贸n, con el enfrentamiento de las ideas, de los intereses鈥ientras que las mujeres est谩n a expensas de los sentimientos鈥� Sus recuerdos son distintos, su forma de recordar es distinta.鈥�El problema del libro, o la causa del problema que en 茅l encontr茅, es que fue escrito en 1985, 6 a帽os antes de la disoluci贸n de la U.R.S.S., y, aunque la edici贸n incluye algunas de las partes prohibidas por el censor, creo que el libro adolece de una profunda autocensura por parte de la autora y tambi茅n de las mujeres que se prestaron a la entrevista. Una autocensura sin la que, seguramente, no hubiera podido ver la luz en aquellos tiempos, lo cual fue posible gracias a Gorbachov y su glasnost que permiti贸 que en el libro se trataran, aunque a veces muy de pasada, ciertos aspectos de la guerra que hasta ese momento hab铆an sido un tab煤 inabordable.
鈥淐on diecinueve a帽os me entregaron la Medalla al Valor. Con diecinueve se me qued贸 el pelo blanco.鈥�As铆, el libro se ocupa en su mayor parte de glosar, por un lado, el horror de la guerra, el sufrimiento que supuso para la poblaci贸n rusa y especialmente para sus soldados y a煤n m谩s especialmente para las mujeres soldados; en segundo lugar, y a veces de una forma un tanto reiterativa, el valor, el amor a la patria y el esp铆ritu de sacrificio de las mujeres, tanto de las que se quedaron como, principalmente, de las que se alistaron dejando atr谩s a padres, madres y en ocasiones a sus propios hijos; tambi茅n hubo madres que se los llevaron consigo al unirse a los partisanos y quien lleg贸 a utilizarlos en sus operaciones, eran un buen camuflaje, qui茅n iba a sospechar de una madre con su hijito en brazos.
鈥滱y, nenas, qu茅 pu帽etera fue esa guerra... Vista con nuestros ojos. Con ojos de mujer... Es horrenda. Por eso no nos preguntan...鈥�Tambi茅n hay un gran espacio en el libro dedicado a comentar lo chocante que fue el encuentro de esas mujeres con el ej茅rcito nada preparados para su incorporaci贸n.
鈥溌縈e preguntas que qu茅 es lo m谩s espantoso de la guerra?... Crees que te voy a responder: 芦Lo m谩s espantoso de la guerra es la muerte禄. Pues te voy a decir otra cosa鈥� Para m铆, lo m谩s terrible de la guerra era tener que llevar calzones de hombre.鈥�Comentarios que sirven de respiro entre las partes realmente duras, como leer que muchas de ellas se alistaban al ej茅rcito por amor a la revoluci贸n y a Stalin, aun cuando padres o maridos suyos hab铆an sido duramente represaliados por el r茅gimen (m谩s de una se alist贸 para poder demostrar a sus vecinos y al partido que eran buenos comunistas). Hab铆a qui茅n fue a la guerra entregada por sus propios padres, y muchas otras lo hicieron por vengar las barbaridades que los alemanes perpetraban a su paso por las aldeas rusas. La mayor铆a simplemente se dejaba llevar por la euforia del momento, su juventud, su ignorancia, su idealismo, su amor a la patria.
鈥淵o hab铆a guardado a hurtadillas unos pendientes, me los pon铆a de noche, antes de acostarme...鈥�
鈥淟os soldados se burlaban de c贸mo sujet谩bamos los fusiles. No lo hac铆amos de la manera en que se suele sostener un arma, sino鈥� Igual que cog铆amos a nuestras mu帽ecas...鈥�
鈥淓n la escuela nos ense帽aban a amar a la muerte. Escrib铆amos redacciones sobre cu谩nto nos gustar铆a entregar la vida por鈥ra nuestro sue帽o.鈥�De las barbaridades de los alemanes se dan algunos ejemplos aterradores, aunque no muchos, pero menos a煤n son los que se atribuyen al ej茅rcito sovi茅tico: apenas hay una o dos declaraciones sobre ello y siempre justificando la acci贸n en una supuesta justicia o compensaci贸n.
鈥淟os hombres llevaban tanto tiempo sin mujeres... y adem谩s, claro, el odio nos desbordaba. Entr谩bamos en un pueblo o en una aldea: los tres primeros d铆as se dedicaban al saqueo y a... recuerdo a una mujer alemana violada. Yac铆a desnuda, en la entrepierna le hab铆an metido una granada. Ahora siento verg眉enza, pero en aquel momento no la sent铆.鈥�Tampoco se habla apenas de los abusos que tuvieron que soportar las propias mujeres rusas.
鈥淎ll铆 solo hab铆a hombres, era mejor vivir con uno que temerlos a todos. Durante los combates no hab铆a para tanto鈥� pero acabado el combate te acorralaban... De noche no hab铆a manera de salir de la covacha... all铆 hubo de todo porque nadie quer铆a morir鈥e noche me despertaba agitando los brazos: repart铆a bofetadas, me quitaba de encima sus manos.鈥�En fin, una 茅poca horrorosa que, sin embargo, no logr贸 matar la ilusi贸n鈥�
鈥淐re铆amos que despu茅s de la guerra, despu茅s de aquel mar de l谩grimas, vivir铆amos una vida fabulosa. Una vida bonita. Despu茅s de la Victoria... Despu茅s del gran d铆a... Cre铆amos que la gente se volver铆a buena, que nos amar铆amos los unos a los otros. Que todos ser铆amos hermanos y hermanas. C贸mo esper谩bamos ese d铆a...鈥�鈥� aunque no tardar铆a mucho en transmutarse en otro tipo de horror: tras la victoria final, muchos de los que volvieron fueron deportados a campos de concentraci贸n sospechosos de traici贸n a la patria. No hay prisioneros en la guerra, hay traidores, dec铆a el camarada Stalin.
鈥淗aber vivido en los territorios ocupados, haber ca铆do prisionero de guerra, haber pasado por los campos de trabajo en Alemania, haber estado en los campos de exterminio: todo levantaba sospechas. La pregunta b谩sica era: 驴c贸mo hab铆as salido con vida? 驴Por qu茅 no hab铆as muerto?鈥�Las mujeres, adem谩s, sufrieron un desprecio a煤n m谩s horrible por parte de sus familias鈥�
鈥淰ete... Tienes dos hermanas peque帽as. 驴Qui茅n querr谩 casarse con ellas? Todos saben que has pasado cuatro a帽os en el frente...鈥�鈥� y de la sociedad en general.
鈥淟os hombres no abr铆an la boca y las mujeres... nos gritaban: 鈥溌abemos lo que estuvisteis haciendo all铆! Os insinuasteis a nuestros hombres con vuestros chochos j贸venes. Sois las putas del frente... Perras militares...鈥�