by Sam Eastland
‘So you have come from Moscow?’ asked Zolkin.
‘That’s right.’
‘It has been a dream of mine to visit that great city.’
‘Well,’ said Kirov, ‘perhaps you will get there some day.’
‘I do not have long to wait, Comrade Major! You see, I have been loaned to you by Commander Yakushkin, who is in charge of the Red Army garrison here in Rovno. This Jeep belongs to him and so do I. Commander Yakushkin will soon be transferred to Moscow, and I will be travelling with him. Once I am there, I intend to fulfil my life’s ambition, which is to shake the hand of the great Comrade Stalin.’
Although Kirov knew that the odds against that were slim indeed, he said nothing to dampen the sergeant’s enthusiasm.
By now, they had entered the outskirts of Rovno.
As two white chickens scattered from beneath the heavy-lugged tyres of the Jeep, Kirov glanced at the abandoned houses, their thatched roofs slumped like the backs of broken horses. He wondered how long it would take to rebuild a village like this. Perhaps, he thought to himself, they won’t even try. That was what had happened to his family’s tavern after the opening of the railway between Leningrad and Moscow. Within a year or two, traffic on the old road almost disappeared. There weren’t enough customers to keep the tavern open and they had to close. The building was left to rot. He had only seen it once since his family moved out, one winter’s day as he rode past in a train bound for Leningrad. By then, the roof had collapsed. The chimneys, one at either end of the tavern, leaned as if swooning into the ruins of what had once been the dining room. Snow had swept up against one side of the building and the jagged teeth of broken window panes glittered with frost. He had found it strangely beautiful to see how the structure, once the centre of his universe, had surrendered to the gravity of seasons.
The meandering of his thoughts was interrupted as the Jeep came to a sudden halt, slewing almost sideways in the mud.
‘What happened?’ asked Kirov, who had barely saved himself from being thrown out of the vehicle.
Zolkin didn’t reply. He left the engine running and launched himself from behind the wheel, drawing the pistol from his belt.
Seeing the gun, Kirov hauled out his Tokarev, jumped from the car and dived into the wide ditch, which was chest deep in water. The crack of the sergeant’s gun was the last thing Kirov heard before he went under. A moment later, he popped to the surface, spluttering out a mouthful of the oil-tinted ooze. The gunfire continued, but Kirov couldn’t tell what the driver was shooting at since his view was obscured by the wall of mud in front of him. He scrambled up the side of the ditch, one hand clawing at the dirt slope and the other still gripping his gun.
The shooting stopped abruptly and Kirov knew the man’s magazine must be empty. He rolled on to his back and chambered a round in the Tokarev, catching sight of his cap floating upside down in the ditch water like a child’s lopsided boat.
Cautiously, Kirov raised his head, ready to fight off the ambush into which he felt certain they must have driven. Instead, what he saw was the driver, standing in the middle of the road, the pistol tucked into his belt. In each hand, the man held a dead chicken. ‘What on earth are you doing, Comrade Major?’ asked the sergeant.
For the first time, Kirov became aware of the cold slime which filled his boots, the trickles of grit running down into his eyes and the taste of dirty water, rank and metallic in his spit. ‘What am I doing?’ he bellowed in reply. Then he sloshed back to the bottom of the ditch, retrieved his hat and squashed it on to his head. ‘If this is how you drive a car,’ he called out, ‘I don’t think you’ll last long in Moscow! And what are you doing with those birds?’
‘They’re for you, as well, of course,’ the driver told him, as he tossed the chickens into the back of the vehicle, splashing the seats with blood and feathers.
Kirov didn’t reply. He returned to the Jeep, climbed in, and stared off down the road. Water seeped from his cap and trickled down the side of his face.
‘I just couldn’t pass up—’ the sergeant began to explain.
‘This was a brand-new uniform!’ interrupted Kirov.
They finished their journey in silence.
Coils of smoke snaked upwards from the devastated centre of the town, obscuring the powder-blue sky. From what Kirov could see, not a single home was left intact.
Slowly the Jeep made its way forward over broken glass and pieces of smashed stone. Here and there, work crews made up of German prisoners were clearing the rubble, pitching brick after fire-blackened brick into rusty wheelbarrows.
In what had once been the display window of a shop stood a mannequin of a woman, naked except for a helmet which someone had put on her head. With one arm extended, her crumbled plaster fingers seemed to beckon them, like a leper begging for charity.
In the middle of this bombed-out street, their progress was halted by a huge crater, at the bottom of which a 20-ton Russian T34 tank lay upside down. There was no way to get past on either side.
Kirov climbed out of the Jeep, shouldering the bag, which had escaped being soaked in the ditch. Leaving the Jeep behind, the two men continued on foot.
Memo from Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow, to US Ambassador Joseph Davies, Hotel President, Paris, November 5th, 1937
Ambassador – I would draw your attention to the unfortunate situation of Mrs William Vasko who, you might recall, wrote to you earlier this year concerning the arrest of her husband, William Vasko, a worker at the Ford Plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. As you instructed, no comment was made concerning the arrest. Mrs Vasko and her two children‚ whom she believes are now under surveillance by Soviet police, are now living in a homeless shelter here in Moscow.
Mr Vasko is only one of hundreds of arrests of American citizens reported to have taken place this year. I believe the real number may extend into the thousands. The Soviet government has furnished us with no information regarding any of these cases and we have, at present time, no way of ascertaining the whereabouts of these people.
May I impose upon you, Ambassador, to employ your considerable influence with Comrade Stalin to open a window into this phenomenon, so that we might take steps towards affording to these citizens of our country the legal assistance which is theirs by right?
I need not tell you that, with winter already upon us, significant adverse publicity could be generated if word were to spread that American women and children were freezing to death in the streets of Moscow while no action was taken by our own Embassy.
Sincerely,
Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow
In spite of the damage, Rovno still showed signs of life.
A woman with soot-smeared hands picked through a broken chest of drawers which had somehow found its way into the middle of the road. She plucked out neatly folded undershirts and handkerchiefs, laying some over her arm to take away. The rest, she folded up, dappling them with smoky fingerprints, and replaced inside the drawer.
In the next street, a boy wearing a pilot’s leather flying helmet walked past them. Around his neck, he carried a belt of machine-gun bullets, like the sash of an Orthodox priest.
On a wide boulevard which cut through the centre of the town, a group of soldiers huddled around the wreck of a German aircraft. They were sawing off pieces of the aluminium wings and melting the metal over a fire. Once the aluminium had liquefied, they poured it into a mould shaped like a spoon which they had carved into a brick. Over this, they set another brick and bound the two together with wire. They had a production line of bricks stacked along the sidewalk, and dozens of new-made spoons were cooling in a bucket of water.
The plane was a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190, although little remained of it now. The propeller blades had been sheared off, along with the entire tail section, which now lay at the other end of the street. Bare metal showed through its camouflage paint, whose hazy black and green ripples resembled the pattern on a mackerel’s back.
In the mangled cockpit, minus his flying helmet, sat the pilot, still strapped into his seat. His chin rested on his chest. His eyes were closed. He looked almost peaceful, except for the fragment of propeller, as long as a man’s arm, which protruded from his chest.
They walked on, stepping over wooden beams puffed and blackened by the fires which had carbonised them.
At last, they stopped outside a house whose front door had been blown away, leaving only shards of wood attached. Now a piece of burlap sack hung in its place.
Zolkin pulled aside the burlap and gestured down a staircase, which leaned drunkenly sideways as it descended into the darkness. From somewhere down below came the clattering of typewriters. ‘Colonel Andrich is down here.’
Leaving Zolkin to wait in his Jeep, Kirov descended the staircase. At the bottom, he entered a small room with a low ceiling where case upon case of rifles, grenades, land mines, canned rations and field telephones had been stacked against the walls.
In the centre of this room, two women faced each other across a single desk. They wore heavy, knee-length army-issue skirts and gymnastiorka tunics. The sound of tapping keys filled the air, punctuated by the rustle of carbon paper and the whiz and ping of the return arm being struck. Each was so absorbed in their work that they did not even glance up to see who had entered the room. The women smoked as they typed. Ash fell in amongst the keys.
‘I am looking for Colonel Andrich,’ announced Kirov.
Only now did the women look up.
‘Through there,’ said one, jerking her chin towards a narrow tunnel that had been dug through to the basement of the adjoining building, of which only a pile of wreckage existed above ground. Wires along the dimly-lit corridor were held up by bent spoons jammed into the bare earth roof.
At the end of this tunnel, Kirov emerged into a second basement where more munitions had been piled up in the corners. Some of these cases were open, revealing stacks of Mosin-Nagant rifles and PPSh sub-machine guns. Canvas slings twined around their polished wooden stocks like olive-coloured vines. Another box, made of zinc and lined with foil that had been torn away, contained hundreds of rounds of loose ammunition. The brass cartridges gleamed in the dim light of a candle burning on an upturned fuel drum in the centre of the room.
Kirov had never set eyes upon so much weaponry before. Mixing with the smell of dampness, gun oil, and new paint from the ammunition crates was the sharp musty odour of sweat, tobacco smoke and the marzipan reek of ammonite explosives.
Several men were also crammed into this space. The only one dressed in full military uniform was a Red Army officer, perched on a flimsy chair and swathed in a bandage which covered one side of his face. Blood had soaked through along the line of his jaw.
There were two others, each of them garbed in a mixture of military and civilian clothing. Straggly and unkempt beards ranged across their filthy, wind-burned cheeks.
Partisans, thought Kirov, fear and curiosity mingling in his mind as he studied the assortment of captured German boots, Russian canteens and civilian coats so patched and ragged they belonged more on scarecrows than on men. The partisans were festooned with weapons. Grenades, knives and pistols hung from their belts and cross-straps like grotesque ornaments.
The focus of their attention was a large, bald man wearing a grey turtleneck sweater, who sat at the back of the room at a desk which had been cobbled together from a door torn off its hinges and balanced on two empty fuel drums. The man’s thick, dark eyebrows stood out sharply against his hairless face and his anvil-like hands lay flat upon the paper-strewn surface, as he if expected it all to be blown away by a sudden gust of wind. Beside the papers stood a candle in a wooden bowl and a civilian telephone, gleaming like a big, black toad upon the desk.
One by one, the men turned and stared at Kirov. The eyes of the partisans narrowed with contempt as they caught sight of the red bullion stars sewn to each of Kirov’s forearms, indicating his status as a commissar.
‘Colonel Andrich,’ said Kirov, addressing the wounded officer.
But it was not the officer who answered.
‘I am Colonel Andrich,’ said the man in the turtleneck sweater, ‘and you must be Major Kirov.’
Kirov slammed his heels together. ‘Comrade Colonel!’
‘I am quite busy at the moment,’ said Andrich, ‘so if you will excuse me, Commissar . . .’ Without waiting for an explanation from Kirov, the colonel turned his attention back to the partisans. ‘As I was saying, we can protect you.’
‘The only people we need protection from are yours!’ replied a tall and sinewy man, whose sheepskin jacket was held tightly about his middle by a leather belt whose buckle bore the insignia of an SS officer, grey eagle and swastika surrounded by the words, ‘Meine Ehre Heisst Treue’ – My Honour is Loyalty. ‘Who is speaking for us in Moscow? What about the Central Partisan Command?’
Andrich tried to reason with the man. ‘Comrade Lipko, I have already explained to you that Partisan Central Command was abolished last month. As far as Moscow is concerned, the question of what should happen to the partisans has already been decided.’
‘Not by us,’ said Lipko.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Andrich’s voice was filled with exasperation. ‘Moscow has sent me as proof that you have not been forgotten. There is now a Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, with departments represented by the Army, the Party and by the NKVD. It’s all under the direction of Panteleimon Ponomarenko. He is an expert on partisan issues.’
‘Then why are we speaking to you?’
‘Do not forget that I was once a partisan. For two years, I fought alongside you, until I agreed to return to Moscow and meet with those who are now deciding your fate, and the fate of all partisans.’
‘That’s right,’ sneered the other partisan. He had a slightly upturned nose wedged into a square face and small, vicious eyes, like those of a wild boar Kirov had seen, gutted and hanging upside down outside the stable of his father’s tavern. ‘You went to Moscow, far from the guns of the enemy.’
To Kirov, it seemed that this conversation had already been going on for a long time, and also that it was getting nowhere. As if to confirm Kirov’s assessment, Andrich raised his fist and smashed it down on the desk. ‘But then I came back, Comrade Fedorchak! Because Moscow knew that you would only speak to someone who truly understood what you had lived through. And, for myself, I knew that we would need someone to speak for us, or else we’d face oblivion. Why else would I be here, in this basement full of bombs, instead of safe in Moscow?’
‘And when it is over,’ demanded Lipko, ‘and we have been disarmed or else are lying dead somewhere out in the forest, what will you do then?’
‘I will return to Moscow,’ replied Andrich, ‘to work with Central Staff. There, I will have direct contact with Comrade Stalin. Through me, he will hear your voices and will be aware of your concerns.’
‘Central Partisan Command!’ spat Fedorchak. ‘Or Central Staff of Partisan Movement! What’s the difference? Do you think that by changing your name, you can fool us into thinking that you are different people? You’re all the same. You always have been. It’s men like you who came here in the twenties, ordering the farms to be collectivised and telling us how bright the future looked. And how did that work out? Ten million dead from starvation! And if we did do what you’re asking? If we laid down our weapons and disbanded, what then?’
‘All partisans who are eligible would be immediately enlisted in the Red Army. They would receive uniforms, weapons, food and they would be paid.’
‘What does it mean to be eligible?’ asked Lipko. ‘Who are those you don’t consider eligible and what will happen to them?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ answered Fedorchak. ‘It’s what all of us here already know.’
‘And what is that?’ asked Andrich.
‘That former prisoners of war, who escaped from captivity and joined the partisans, are being sent straight to the Gulag. And the same
thing goes for anyone who’s not already a member of the Communist Party.’
‘How do you answer that?’ demanded Lipko.
Kirov glanced nervously around the room. From the looks on the faces of these partisans, it seemed to him that if the colonel didn’t provide them with a satisfactory answer, they would finish this conversation with gunfire.
For a moment, it appeared that Andrich was at a loss for words. But then he breathed in, slowly and deeply, and at last began to speak. ‘Not everyone’s motives in joining the partisans have been as clear and pure as yours. There are men who collaborated with the enemy, who are still collaborating, and who must now answer for their crimes. If you imagined it to be different, then you are simply being naive. And you are also being naive if you do not consider the alternative to what I’m offering. What do you think that Red Army Command is going to do? Allow heavily armed gangs to roam about freely in the newly reconquered territory? No! They are making you an offer to join them and if you turn them down, they are going to come in here and wipe you out. You can’t just turn around and vanish back into your secret lairs. They’ll burn your forests to the ground. In a matter of months, you’ll have nowhere left to hide.’
‘The Germans made the same threats back in 1941,’ remarked Fedorchak. ‘Now they’re gone and we’re still here. Maybe we’ll take our chances.’
‘The Fascists gave you no choice except to fight them or to fight against each other,’ explained Andrich, ‘but what I’m offering you is a way to not only survive but to be remembered as heroes in this wretched war. Victory is almost in sight. Why not share in the return of everything we have been fighting for?’
‘We did not fight so that everything could go back to the way it was before. We are fighting so that things might finally change. No more collective farms. No more forced conscription. No more arrests and executions simply to fill quotas set by Moscow. This whole countryside is one mass grave, and it’s not just our enemies who have done this.’ Now Fedorchak levelled a finger at Kirov. ‘It’s men like him as well.’
