Like I was in captivity. Yuri Vladimirov - how I was in German captivity

Yuri Vladimirov

How I was in German captivity

* * *

Dedicated to the blessed memory of my dear wife Ekaterina Mikhailovna Vladimirova - nee Zhuravleva

Book one

Part one. Years of childhood and adolescence

My parents are Vladimir Nikolaevich and Pelageya Matveevna Naperstkin, Chuvashs by nationality. They were fluent in Russian, but in the family they spoke only their native language, the Chuvash language. Knowing that their children would have to live mainly among Russians, both parents really wanted them to learn to speak Russian as quickly and better as possible.

Grandfather and grandmother were illiterate and poor peasants. Both parents, like their parents, lived almost all their lives in a remote and poor (at least before my birth) village with the Chuvash name Kiv Kadek (Staro-Kotyakovo) of the present-day Batyrevsky district of the Chuvash Republic.

In June 1932, I received a certificate of graduation from the Staro-Kotyakovskaya four-year school, and my father decided to send me to study further, at the Collective Farm Youth School (ShKM), which opened in 1931 in Batyrev. My father did not like the surname Naperstkin, which seemed to him too undignified and degrading personality, since a thimble is a very small and seemingly useless object. He was afraid that his children, as happened with him, peers would tease with a thimble. Therefore, the father went to the Batyrevsky village council and there he enrolled all the children in the name of the Vladimirovs, having received the appropriate certificates.

Having a new surname, in September 1932 I became a student of the Batyrevskaya ShKM, which in 1934 was transformed into the Batyrevskaya secondary school. S. M. Kirov. I graduated from this school in June 1938. I went to that school in any weather, overcoming daily about 5 km back and forth. At the same time, children, like adults, wore boots and bast shoes in winter, and boots, sandals or bast shoes at other times of the year. But I also went barefoot if it wasn't very cold. This hardened me and allowed me to survive in the harsh years of war and captivity.

From early childhood, we worked a lot physically: we maintained cleanliness and order in the house and in other premises (we swept the floors and even washed them), sawed and chopped firewood, removed manure, fed and watered livestock and poultry, dragged buckets of water from the well, planted , weeded and dug potatoes, fertilized the land with manure, dragged straw from the threshing floor for various purposes. In the summer we watered the garden, picked up apples that had fallen to the ground in the garden, which we often exchanged with the neighbor's children for chicken eggs, grazed pigs and a calf, drove cattle into the herd and met him. In the fall, they helped their parents with the harvest. In the summer, I also had to work hard on the collective farm.

In the yard we had a small horizontal bar, since 1937 I trained on large horizontal bars, I rode a lot on a bicycle.

As children, we loved to listen to the stories of adults about the battles of the “whites” and “reds”, about the First World War. From March to July 1917, my father was in military service in Petrograd as part of the (at that time already former) Life Guards of the Izmailovsky Regiment. In the middle of the summer of 1917, by decree of the Provisional Government, my father was demobilized, and from September of that year he continued to work as a village teacher. However, in 1918, he somehow ended up in the White Army, which at that time was very close to us, but, fortunately, my father did not have time to take part in the hostilities. About two months later, he deserted from the military unit and began another academic year in his native village.

Of the other relatives, though not very close to me, connected with "military" affairs, I want to mention my mother's cousin (on the side of her mother) - Danilov Viktor Danilovich (1897-1933), a graduate of the Vladimir Infantry School, probably a lieutenant. In the summer of 1918, he was in Simbirsk on military service in the circle of the young military leader M. N. Tukhachevsky. From 1925 to 1930, he was the military commissar, first of the Chuvash and then of the Mari ASSR, and by the end of his service he wore two rhombuses on the buttonholes of his tunic, which corresponded to the signs of the corps commander and the current lieutenant general. Unfortunately, due to the tragic death of his eldest son and other reasons, he began to abuse alcohol, and, apparently, therefore, he was relieved of his post. Then he graduated from the Kazan Pedagogical Institute and began working as a teacher at the Batyrev Pedagogical College. In 1922, he participated in the work of the first Congress of Soviets in Moscow, which formed the USSR. Another person from my family who distinguished himself in the military field was the husband of my mother's aunt Maria (mother's father's sister - Matvey) Stepan Komarov, who returned from the war in the summer of 1918, having two St. George's crosses. Unfortunately, he was soon killed by white bandits. Approximately 16 years after the murder of Stepan, we received with great pleasure in our house a young handsome Red Army soldier, Peter, the eldest son of Aunt Maria and her late husband. Peter came to his homeland on a short vacation, granted to him for "high discipline and great success in military and political training." The gallant appearance and military uniforms of Peter aroused my admiration.

From an early age, like almost all children, I was very fond of watching movies about the war. Then it was silent films. A mobile film installation came to us in the premises of an elementary school from the district center of Batyrevo. Our neighbor and relative Uncle Kostya Zadonov worked as a projectionist. I went to see the film "Red Devils" about the struggle of the "Reds" with the Makhnovists three times. In 1936, we saw a sound documentary film about the Kiev military district, where they showed major military exercises under the command of the then commanders E. I. Kovtyukh (soon was repressed) and I. R. Apanasenko (died in 1943 during the liberation of Orel). Further, the famous war film "Chapaev" made an amazing impression.

... By 1934, while studying Russian at school and having read with the help of my parents and using a small Russian-Chuvash dictionary a lot of Russian art books, magazines and newspapers, I learned to speak and write Russian quite well.

From the eighth grade, they began to teach us the German language. In this subject, I always had excellent marks, but still I learned to read and write in German, memorizing no more than a hundred German words and the principles of their declension and conjugation. My then “successes” in the German language were greatly facilitated by a pocket German-Russian dictionary bought by my father (about 10 thousand words). Later, in Batyrev, I also bought another, more voluminous (for 50 thousand words) German-Russian dictionary, which I still use at the present time ...

During my high school years, I read a lot of fiction, historical, and even political literature, which I took from the school and district libraries and bought. In my free time, I also studied at the Children's Technical Station (DTS). There we made aircraft models under the guidance of master V. Minin. Aircraft models were not very good for me, but I was delighted when, at a rally in Batyrev on the occasion of the anniversary of the Chuvash Autonomous Republic, my model flew 50 meters.

In 1937, arrests of "enemies of the people" began in the country. We had several very good teachers arrested and an excellent student Arseniy Ivanov from the tenth grade was expelled from school. At this time, my father was appointed inspector of schools in the Batyrevsky district department of public education. Father, of course, was afraid that he would be arrested, too, because he had been in the White Army for some time, and at the beginning of 1928 he was expelled from the CPSU (b) with the wording “For economic fouling”: he built a big house, got a second horse, bought a tarantass , and by the spring of 1930, after the publication of I. V. Stalin’s article “Dizziness from Success” in the newspapers, he could not prevent the collapse of the collective farm, being its chairman. I think later he would have been arrested anyway, but he lived only about two years from the beginning of the arrests.

In the early 1930s, the badge “Voroshilovsky shooter” of two levels was established in our country, and then the TRP badges (“Ready for work and defense”), also two levels, and for children - BGTO (“Be ready for work and defense! "). This was followed by the GSO badges (“Ready for sanitary defense”) and PVO (“Ready for air and chemical defense”). In military units, enterprises and educational institutions, they organized the delivery of norms for obtaining these badges. However, in rural areas they failed to create the necessary conditions for passing the norms. Our school did not only have a shooting gallery and gas masks, but there were also not enough skis to pass the winter standards for the TRP badge.

In the autumn of 1937, when I started studying already in the 10th grade, a new physical education teacher was sent to our school - a demobilized senior sergeant K. A. Ignatiev, who set to work very energetically. Thanks to him, I passed the TRP winter standards and completely - all the GSO standards, but I could not get the badge itself - there were no such badges available. But by April 1938, I managed to get the PVCO badge, having practiced with a gas mask at my desk. With great pleasure, I immediately put this “military distinction” on my jacket and even took a picture with it. K. A. Ignatiev showed us complex gymnastic exercises on the horizontal bar and taught me how to perform the most difficult exercise - the “sun”. I was very glad to see my teacher returning from the war with the rank, I think, of a captain.

Available in formats: epub | PDF | FB2

Pages: 480

The year of publishing: 2007

The author of this unusual book, Yuri Vladimirovich Vladimirov, is a simple Soviet soldier. In 1942, he was sent with his unit to participate in the infamous operation near Kharkov. At the end of May, after his first fierce battle with German tanks, he miraculously survives and is captured. For three years in the camps, Yuri Vladimirovich endured inhuman trials, but not only survived, but managed to maintain human dignity, good spirits and the will to live. The book tells in detail, with important, now almost forgotten, historical and everyday details about the pre-war period, the war, German captivity and the first post-war years.

Reviews

Those who viewed this page were also interested in:

Frequently asked Questions

1. Which book format should I choose: PDF or FB2?
It all depends on your personal preferences. Today, each of these types of books can be opened both on a computer and on a smartphone or tablet. All books downloaded from our site will open and look the same in any of these formats. If you don’t know what to choose, then choose PDF for reading on a computer, and FB2 for a smartphone.

3. In which program to open the PDF file?
You can use the free Acrobat Reader to open the PDF file. It is available for download at adobe.com.

Yuri Vladimirovich Vladimirov

In German captivity. Survivor's Notes. 1942-1945

Dedicated to the blessed memory of my dear parents -

Vladimir Nikolaevich and

Pelagia Matveevna Naperstkina,

sisters of Inessa Vladimirovna

Khlebnikova (née Vladimirova) and

wife of Ekaterina Mikhailovna

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

I, Yuriy Vladimirovich Vladimirov, am Orthodox by baptism, but by worldview I am an atheist. Born on July 18, 1921 in a family of teachers in the village of Staro-Kotyakovo, Batyrevsky District, Chuvash Republic. Chuvash by nationality. Lived more than 60 years in Moscow. Metallurgical engineer by profession. In 1949 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Steel named after I.V. Stalin with a degree in plastic and heat treatment of metals and metallurgy (with in-depth knowledge of technological processes and equipment for rolling and drawing). Candidate of Technical Sciences. He worked in his specialty for many years at factories and in research, design and technology institutes. In addition, I did a lot of translations and writing abstracts from scientific and technical articles and other publications in German and English in order to earn extra money and improve my knowledge. Alone and with co-authors published about 200 scientific and technical articles, mainly on metallurgical and machine-building topics, and published more than two dozen books on them.

Before retiring in 1996 (from the position of a leading researcher), he worked for over 32 years at the Central Research Institute of Information and Feasibility Studies of Ferrous Metallurgy (abbreviated as Chermetinformatsiya).

I have a normal and decent family. He has always been a law-abiding citizen. He was not a member of any political parties.

In his youth, he participated as an ordinary volunteer soldier in the Great Patriotic War, spent almost three years in German captivity, after which he was subjected to over a year of filtration (testing), mainly working forcibly in one of the Donbass coal mines.

All these years were extremely dangerous for my life and at the same time very unusual and interesting. Therefore, although much has already faded from my memory, I decided to tell my descendants and others about them.

Part one

CAPTIVITY ON THE TERRITORY OF UKRAINE

On May 23, 1942, on the Izyum-Barvenkovsky ledge of the Southwestern Front, the Soviet 6th and 57th armies and a separate group of troops corresponding to them in size, Major General L.V. Bobkin, who had the task of freeing Kharkov from the Germans, were surrounded by them and ended up in a cauldron, and then (officially 240 thousand people) - captured. I then served as a gunner in the anti-aircraft battery of the 199th separate tank brigade, which was part of the 6th army. By this time I had been very ill with malaria for several days, I was very weak and ate almost nothing.

On May 23, at about 9 o'clock in the morning, our battery tried to get out of the boiler on its own, five kilometers east of the village of Lozovenka, Balakleyevsky district, Kharkov region, but could not - turned back, stopped and prepared the guns for battle. At the same time, other Soviet units fought aside and ahead of us, but also unsuccessfully. After 15 hours, German tanks moved towards our battery from two sides, with which we entered into battle, but there were too few forces and means to fight them - the tanks destroyed both of our guns and most of their servants.

On the night of May 24, the surviving tank crews of the 199th brigade, the fighters of the motorized rifle battalion attached to it, as well as other units, including anti-aircraft gunners, repeated an attempt to break through the German chains, but they again failed. At the same time, many died or were wounded, and early in the morning of May 24, almost all the remaining military personnel surrendered to the Germans.

I, with a few comrades, hid in a nearby forest. Around 8 o'clock in the evening of the same day, we decided in groups - three of us, two or even one by one - to try to get out of the forest and move east at night unnoticed by the Germans. Unfortunately, my partners let me down, so I had to make my way through the forest alone. About an hour later, at the edge of the forest, densely overgrown with shrubs and tall grass, I was noticed by German soldiers. They immediately fired automatic bursts at me, but, fortunately, they didn't hit me. It was impossible to go deep into the forest. I had to, picking up a long and dry twig lying nearby, tie a white handkerchief to its end and, raising this twig higher from the bushes, surrender to the Germans, shouting to them a couple of times in their language “Bitte, nicht schiessen, nicht schiessen, ich komme, ich komme" ("Please don't shoot, don't shoot, I'm coming, I'm coming"). All this happened around 9 pm.

The circumstances of the capture are described in more detail in my book “The War of the Anti-Aircraft Soldier”, published in early 2010 by the Tsentrpoligraf publishing house.

In the place where the Germans brought me under machine guns, their infantry formation (like our motorized rifle battalion) was going to spend the night, entirely armed with automatic personal weapons, and not like ours - with rifles, and had a significantly larger number of vehicles and other equipment. At this time, the Germans had already had supper and were preparing to go to bed for the night, and many of them slept not in open-air trenches, as we did, but in canvas tents, and trenches with personal weapons were arranged in front of the tents.

My guards asked me some simple questions in German, which I understood and did not leave unanswered, also in German. Seeing me, the German soldiers began to approach out of curiosity, and the soldiers who were near me told the new arrivals the amazing news: “Kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen” (“Can speak a little German”).

The big surprise for me was that the local chef brought me a spoon and a pot filled with thick and very tasty lentil soup with a piece of meat. I thanked him, and then plucked up the courage to ask the soldiers to give me a smoke.

While eating and smoking a cigarette, the Germans gathered around me asked me several everyday questions: what is my name (he gave my first and last name), where I come from (I answered that from Moscow, and this aroused even greater interest in those present), how much I years (since I looked like a boy, I lied, saying that I was eighteen years old, although I was almost twenty-one), who I was by profession (I answered the truth that I was a student, but out of bragging - that of Moscow University), in which unit I fought (he told the truth that he was in anti-aircraft guns), do I have a girlfriend at home and have I ever had an intimate relationship with her (he admitted that he didn’t) and something else (I don’t remember anymore).

In the course of my first live communication with the Germans - soldiers who served in the infantry - I drew attention to their uniforms and other features. I will briefly mention them.

First of all, I was struck by the soldiers' epaulettes on their shoulders and a wide leather waist belt, on a solid and darkish iron plaque, on which they were depicted: in the center is a circle with a standing eagle with half-folded vertical wings and a head with a beak turned to the right, that is to the east, and holding a swastika in its paws, and above that eagle, the inscription “Gott mit uns” (“God is with us”) stamped in a semicircle.

My interlocutors, infantrymen, who wore a single-breasted dark blue cloth uniform, had a similar eagle, but dark green in color and with wings spread horizontally, was sewn over the right patch breast pocket. This pocket, like the left chest pocket of the same type, was equipped with an additional vertical strip in the middle. (And for the soldiers and officers of some units of other branches of the German troops, both wings of the eagle in the same place of the uniform were made inclined - raised - which I found out only later.)

This book was first published in 2008 in the Veche publishing house in the series "Military secrets of the 20th century." entitled " How I was in German captivity". Then it was released several more times, including in the publishing house Tsentrpoligraf in a truncated form. All these publications have sold out, so another reprint can only be welcomed.
Yuri Vladimirovich Vladimirov was born in 1921 into a family of Chuvash peasants, from childhood he got used to hard physical labor on the ground and simple food, he was disciplined, hardened and hardy, he was engaged in wrestling. Only this, he believes, helped him survive in captivity. He graduated from school in 38 (with a silver medal) and entered the Moscow Institute of Steel. Stalin, where he studied as a metallurgist for three pre-war years.
Both at school and at the institute, much attention was paid to military affairs, so Vladimirov was well prepared for the army. On June 30, 1941, he was mobilized for the construction of anti-tank ditches on the Desna, and upon his return to Moscow, despite the reservation for metallurgical students, he did not want to go on an evacuation together with the institute, but signed up for a voluntary people's squad. Together with her, after a short stay in Khimki, Vladimirov went to Gorky, to the reserve anti-aircraft artillery regiment, from which, after a short training, having lost weight to 48 kg, at the very end of 41, he was sent to the combat battery of anti-aircraft guns. In April 42, he, along with his comrades, went to the real front - near Kharkov. There, near the village of Lazovenka, he took his first real battle. Part of it was defeated, most of the fighters and commanders were killed. On May 24, after several attempts to escape to his own, Vladimirov surrendered, which ended for him almost three years later, in May 45.
Most of the book is devoted to the author's stay in the camps - first in Ukraine, then in Poland and Germany. Vladimirov saw a lot, a good memory retained many details, so reading his book is extremely interesting, although difficult. The author was lucky - at school and institute he studied German, which - at the very least - could speak. The Germans used him as an interpreter, therefore, while receiving his share of cuffs and sticks, he still lived a little more satisfying and was exploited a little less mercilessly. He even had to teach German cadet pilots the Russian language, for which they fed him and gave him cigarettes. Yes, and Vladimirov was also lucky with his superiors, he did not experience any special atrocities, and the last commandant of his stalag was a veteran of the First World War, who forbade his subordinates (for no reason) to beat prisoners, and forbade recruiters from Vlasov’s army to enter the concentration camp, considering them traitors and traitors with whom real soldiers, albeit prisoners, do not have to deal with.
After his release and stay in a filtration camp, Vladimirov was sent to the mines of Donbass, from which he managed to get out only thanks to a letter to the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy with a request to reinstate him at the institute. Very soon he received an order to be reinstated and an invitation to come to the institute by the beginning of the academic year.
In 1949, the author graduated from his university, but being in captivity for a long time interfered with his normal life - he was not accepted for graduate school, he was not assigned to work in Moscow. Only in 1956 did he receive the status of a participant in the Great Patriotic War and was able to defend himself.
From the village where Vladimirov was born and spent his childhood, 250 people went to the front. 110 returned. Here's the arithmetic...
The book has a tab with photographs, the text contains quite a few diagrams and drawings made by the author. Newsprint paper. True, it is greatly spoiled by a large number of typos.
Of course, I recommend the memoirs of Yu.V. Vladimirov to all those interested in the history of our country as an honest and frank book.

Current page: 1 (total book has 41 pages)

Yuri Vladimirov
How I was in German captivity

* * *

Dedicated to the blessed memory of my dear wife Ekaterina Mikhailovna Vladimirova - nee Zhuravleva

Book one

Part one. Years of childhood and adolescence

Chapter I

In the yard we had a small horizontal bar, since 1937 I trained on large horizontal bars, I rode a lot on a bicycle.

Chapter II

In June 1938, at the age of 16 years and 11 months, I graduated from Batyrevskaya secondary school. S. M. Kirov, having received a certificate corresponding to a silver medal (in those years, medals were not provided for in secondary schools) and giving the right to enter any higher educational institution (university), including even individual military academies (until 1938).

I, like my father, did not smoke, but I managed to try the only strong alcoholic drink available to me at that time - moonshine, as well as weak wines - Cahors and Port wine. However, I was still very naive, modest with adults and with unfamiliar peers, very trusting towards everyone, unsophisticated, could easily let myself be deceived. Talking to strangers and asking them for something (and especially from the authorities) was a big problem for me: I was afraid that I would interfere with the person who approached him, and waited for the right moment, and my voice became pitiful.

I constantly tried to distinguish myself in front of my peers, especially in front of girls, with something unusual that I could do or knew only myself. Unfortunately, he did not stop before adding something, boasting something, often plunging into dreams and fantasies. He was very open, even talkative.

From early childhood I was disciplined, diligent, loving perfect order in everything and always kept my promises. I used to be stubborn, conservative in important matters and did a lot in my own way, tried to remain myself.

In early childhood, I heard a lot from some adults about the inevitability of fate, which includes both happiness and unhappiness. And I believed this and always lived by the principle - no matter what happens to me, it is the will of fate, that is, everything is from God. At the same time, I considered two other proverbs more significant: “God protects the safe” and “Trust in God, but don’t make a mistake yourself.”

About my life up to the age of 17, I wrote in 1996 detailed memoirs “About my people, childhood and adolescence, relatives and countrymen of that time” 1
I note that my future life was greatly influenced by the early death of my father, and then the Great Patriotic War, which forced many of my peers to grow up quickly. This will be discussed further. The manuscripts are kept by relatives in the village, as well as in the Russian Public Fund (AI Solzhenitsyn Fund) in Moscow.

Part two. Three pre-war student years

Chapter I

When I was at the age of a teenager and studied in high school, I had not yet had to seriously think about choosing a profession. Having read fiction, I could imagine myself as a writer, but the idea of becoming a historian was not ruled out. In resolving the problem that arose, my father played a decisive role, who then worked as an inspector of schools in the Department of Public Education (RONO) of the Executive Committee (RIK) of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies of the Batyrevsky District of the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ChASSR). He believed that I should study further in Moscow, namely at the Moscow State University (MSU). In addition, my father said that I should not get a humanitarian education, but a technical one - to become an engineer. But it turned out that MSU does not train engineers.

A couple of days later, my father saw an announcement that the Military Engineering Academy. V. V. Kuibyshev, civilians who graduated from high school with the same certificate as mine are accepted for the first year without entrance exams. As a family, we immediately decided that the Military Engineering Academy was just what I needed: the Academy is very prestigious, they pay a large scholarship - it seems that about 550 rubles a month in the first year, students wear beautiful military uniforms, and most importantly - engineering specialty provided "a comfortable life in the future." And neither I nor the other members of our family at that time had any premonition that a war could soon break out with all its terrible consequences.

I quickly received a certificate from the district hospital about my good health, and from the district committee of the Komsomol - a recommendation for admission to the Academy. All the necessary documents were sent by valuable mail to Moscow, and we eagerly awaited an answer.

At the same time, my parents wrote to Moscow, a former resident of our village and their student Smirnova Uttya - Agafya (Galya, as she later began to call herself) Yegorovna, a letter with a request to shelter me in her apartment for a few days when I arrive in the capital. She immediately (at that time letters from Moscow reached us even in two days) answered positively, writing in detail how to get to her by metro.

Finally, from the Academy, an official letter came to my name, printed in typographic type: I was asked to arrive at the educational institution at my own expense exactly by the specified date for registration by the student.

They immediately began to collect me for a trip to Moscow. Having reached the Kanash railway station (former Shikhrany) by bus, I had to buy a ticket to Moscow there. But the ticket office almost never had proper order: a crowd formed, some climbed to the cashier's window without a queue, fights often broke out. It was difficult for an ordinary passenger to buy a ticket for a long-distance train, since the trains passed through Kanash with cars already filled with passengers. As my parents recommended to me, I found the station attendant and showed him a letter from the Academy, and he helped me, as a military man, buy a ticket without a queue for train No. 65 Kazan-Moscow. I got the cheapest ticket - only for sitting.

In the carriage, I climbed, together with my suitcase, to the very top shelf - a luggage rack, a hard one - and there, of course, without any bed, I lay down to sleep, putting a suitcase near my head, the handle of which I almost constantly held with my hand so that it would not be "taken away".

Although our train was called an express train, it traveled slowly, often stopping at stations, so the journey to Moscow took about 16 hours.

Walking with a suitcase in my hand and constantly looking around, I found the entrance to the Komsomolskaya metro station and here I immediately saw a newspaper and magazine kiosk, and in it - a detailed map-plan of the city of Moscow. And I made my first Moscow purchase there - I bought that card and clarified with it that I should go to my aunt by metro to the Sokolniki station, bypassing only one station - Krasnoselskaya.

There was a house on 4th Sokolnicheskaya Street, on the ground floor of which our former fellow villager Galya Smirnova lived in a room of about 16 square meters. 2
In the early 50s, this house was demolished and then another two-story, all-glazed building was built in its place, where a hairdressing salon was located.

In 1918, her father Yegor was shot, allegedly for hiding "surplus" bread. At the age of about 20, semi-literate, not knowing the Russian language, she came to work in Moscow. After some time, she was introduced to a very old and sick woman who lived in the said house, whom Galya began to serve and after whose death my countrywoman got her room.

On July 24, I appeared at Aunt Galya's unexpectedly and very inopportunely: she had just celebrated a wake for her dead daughter. However, Galya received me well and was very happy when I gave her a parental gift - a jar of fresh village honey.

In the morning I came to the admissions office of the Academy, and the next day I had to appear for an interview scheduled for 10 o'clock in the morning. In the barracks they showed me my bed, I put my suitcase under it. My neighbors turned out to be two senior lieutenants who also entered the Academy. Tomorrow they had an interview at 2 pm. I asked if this was a mistake, since I was scheduled for this procedure at 10 o'clock. They replied that they were not mistaken, since the secretary had just informed them of this period. And then I thought that the time of the interview could be postponed, but that the interview for civilian and military applicants (by the way, we didn’t hear this word at that time) were held separately, I didn’t guess. The neighbors strongly doubted that I, still a boy in appearance, would be admitted to the Academy. But I decided to show them that “it’s not a bad idea”: when we left the room together, I saw a horizontal bar in the hall, climbed on it and demonstrated the “riveting” exercise to the lieutenants, which surprised them very much.

Taking advantage of my free time, I went to Red Square, which I had long dreamed of. I saw there the Church of St. Basil the Blessed, the Spassky tower with a clock, Lenin's mausoleum with two sentries at the entrance, the Historical Museum and the building of the current Main Department Store (GUM). Then he went out to Manezhnaya Square and watched how the workers there were dismantling and loading onto trucks the remains of a house located in front of the Moskva Hotel.

In the year when I first arrived in Moscow, the metro served passengers only on the Sokolniki - Park Kultury, Kursky Vokzal - Kievsky Vokzal sections, and the Sokol - Ploshchad Revolyutsii section was being prepared for launch. The main mode of transport was still the tram. Even horse-drawn transport has been preserved - horses clattered with horseshoes on cobblestone pavements. The snow on the streets was not completely removed and it was possible to walk on it in felt boots even without galoshes. We often put galoshes on leather shoes and took them off, handing them over to the wardrobe along with outerwear.

On the morning of the next day after breakfast, I still walked around Moscow, again visited Red Square, where I observed the changing of the guard at Lenin's mausoleum. By 14 o'clock I came to the admissions office, very surprised by the appearance of the secretary, who asked why I did not appear for an interview by 10 o'clock. At that moment, a group of very respectable military men headed towards the office where the interview procedure was to take place. One of the applicants present quietly said that among them was D. M. Karbyshev, one of the leaders of the Academy and the future lieutenant general. In the summer of 1941, he became a prisoner of war and died a martyr's death on February 18, 1945 in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

After a while, the secretary turned to me again. He asked me to come closer and almost in a whisper said in my ear that the interview, which I did not appear for, was completely unnecessary for me, since the day before he had to add to the folder with my documents a letter that had just arrived from my homeland regarding the past my father, and now I have no chance of being accepted into the Academy. I guessed that the letter probably informed about my father's stay in the White Army and that this letter was the work of a local ill-wisher of our family.

Of course, I was very upset, but there was nothing to do. The secretary handed me the documents, putting them in an empty folder he took from his closet. I had the right to spend the night again in the barracks of the Academy, but I felt uneasy about what had happened, so, having handed over the bed to the barracks duty officer, as well as the pass at the exit of the building, I walked away from the Academy. So ingloriously ended my attempt to become a professional military man.

Chapter II

Depressed and confused, I made my way to the Kirovskaya metro station (now Chistye Prudy) and suddenly at the entrance I saw a billboard with announcements of admission to universities and among them the announcement of the Moscow Institute of Steel (MIS) named after I.V. Stalin, which I very interested. I liked the very name of the institute, which contained the word "steel", and also the fact that this educational institution bore the name of the Great Leader, which comes from the same word. I thought that my father would undoubtedly like this institute and that my studies there would raise the authority of my parents.

On July 27, early in the morning, taking with me only a folder with documents and a map-plan of Moscow, I went to the Institute of Steel.

The admissions office, after reviewing my documents, gave me a letter of challenge printed on the letterhead of the Institute, in which it was reported that on July 27, 1938, by the appropriate order, I was enrolled in this educational institution at the metallurgical faculty. However, the secretary noticed that I did not provide photographs of 3x4 cm.

I returned with photographs about three hours later, but the secretary of the selection committee demanded that I pass another institute medical check. In the office on the first floor, I received a certificate confirming that I was healthy. However, blood pressure was elevated. The doctor - a very interesting middle-aged woman - asked me if I had drunk much water today. It was this excessive consumption of soda that caused high blood pressure. Finally, I finished all the paperwork. They promised to give me a student card after September 1st.

Having visited all five floors of the institute for the purpose of acquaintance, I left its walls and, joyful, went to Stromynka. And since all my business in Moscow ended with a good result, I was happy. So my youth began in this city. Now I wanted to return home as soon as possible with good news for my dear parents.

... On the day when I became a student at MIS, two of my classmates from Batyrevskaya secondary school came to Moscow from Kanash - the son of a local blacksmith Sasha (Alexander Kondratievich) Kuznetsov and a young man from the village of Chuvash-Ishaki Misha (Mikhail Prokhorovich) Volkov. Looking ahead, I’ll say that both of them entered selected universities without much difficulty: the first - at the Institute of Mechanization and Electrification of Agriculture (MIMiESH), and the second - at the Moscow Mining Institute (MGI). In 1943, being evacuated in Siberia with his institute, Sasha went to study at the Academy of Armored Forces from the last year, where he graduated from the technical faculty and became a professional military man - a tank builder. By the time he retired, he had reached the rank of engineer-colonel. And on October 15, 1941, Misha went with me to voluntarily defend Moscow as part of the Communist Division, served with me in two military units - near Moscow and in Gorky, died in the war. During the years of study in the capital, I sometimes talked with another fellow countryman, a student at the Moscow State Institute of Higher Education Volodya (Vladimir Stepanovich) Nikolaev. As a teenager, he wrote several poems and stories in the Chuvash language under the literary pseudonym Meresh, which later became his official surname. In 1942, Volodya graduated from the Moscow State Institute, and after the war - the Higher Diplomatic School. He worked as a diplomat in India, compiled an Urdu-Russian dictionary. He died in 1971 and was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow.

Friends lived in student dormitories: Sasha - on Listvennichnaya Alley near the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, and Misha and Volodya - on 2nd Izvoznaya Street near the Kievsky railway station. On weekends and holidays we traveled to each other.

My classmate at Batyrevskaya secondary school Makar Tolstov, the brother of our history teacher Yakov Timofeevich, who, like me, received an excellent student certificate, sent his documents for admission to the geological exploration department of the I.M. Gubkin Moscow Oil Institute. On the day when I returned home from Moscow, he was waiting for a call. We agreed to go to Moscow together by the beginning of the school year. By the way, in order not to mention Makar to me, I will say right now that I met him for the last time in my life at the end of the school day, I think, on September 10, in the courtyard common to our institutes. Then Makar waited for me at the exit of the Institute of Steel at the end of the school day and began to say that he did not like his Petroleum Institute, he intended to take the documents from it and go home. He asked me to do the same. Although in those days it was very difficult for me, like him, with my studies and with a completely new way of life, and I was constantly tormented by terrible homesickness, I resolutely refused the offer of a friend. A year later, Makar entered a military school, graduated from it as a lieutenant, participated in the war, remained alive, having risen to a high officer rank, and ended his life path far from being old somewhere in Siberia ...

My parents began to prepare me for my departure: in Batyrev they bought a large black cardboard suitcase with two bright locks, a pair of overshirts, a set of underwear, and other things. They gave orders to local craftsmen: to knit woolen stockings and mittens for me, to make footcloths, to sew leather boots and to felt thin felt boots, which were worn with rubber galoshes. And most importantly, they tried to save money so that in Moscow I could buy a winter coat and hat, a woolen suit, spare trousers, boots and other necessary things. By the way, the purchase of relatively inexpensive clothes and shoes was a very big problem even in Moscow, you had to stand in huge queues in the store from early morning.

... Early in the morning on Monday, August 29, when I arrived at the institute, I met former graduates of the Shakhovskaya school in the Moscow region, whom I liked at first sight. They were Pasha (Pavel Ivanovich) Galkin, Arsik (Arseniy Dmitrievich) Besplokhotny, Dima (Dmitry Vasilievich) Filippov and Vasya (I don't remember his patronymic) Ryabkov. And it so happened that further these guys (except for Vasya, who died later in the war), became for me, both in my student time and towards the end of my life, my closest friends. All of them were not destined to graduate from the Institute of Steel and become metallurgists, as they were taken to study at the engineering faculties of the military academies that were also evacuated: Pasha and Harsik - in the artillery (in Samarkand), and Dima - in the air them. Zhukovsky. Pasha finished his military service with the rank of lieutenant general (in recent years he was the referent of the commander in chief of the Soviet troops in Germany), Arsik - an engineer colonel, and Dima - an engineer lieutenant colonel. Harsik taught at the Higher Artillery School in Penza and wrote many articles and textbooks on artillery metallurgy and heat treatment of various metallic materials. In the early 1950s, as a young officer, he took part in major military exercises beyond the Urals with the use of nuclear weapons, was irradiated at the same time, and later lived on taking very scarce pills every day. He lost his father early (his father was the commander of a large formation of the Red Army and actively participated in the Civil War) and, together with his younger brother (who became a professor, doctor of technical sciences in metal-cutting machines), was brought up by his stepfather P. N. Pospelov, one of the ideological leaders of the CPSU (b) and the CPSU. Harsik died on December 10, 1997 in Penza.

Other of my institute friends also became major military engineers: Afonin Vladimir Pavlovich, Zakharov Nikolai Mikhailovich, Ivanov Vladimir Danilovich, Polukhin Ivan Ivanovich, Sorokin Yuri Nikolaevich, Volodin Nikolai Ivanovich, Molchanov Evgeny Ivanovich, Smirnov Nikolai Grigorievich. Having served in the army as officers and leaving it with high military ranks, they provided themselves, their children and even grandchildren with good material living conditions. I and several of my new acquaintances were given warrants to live in the "privileged" hostel "Commune House" (which we changed into the "Commune House"), located relatively close to the institute. Almost everyone had to live together in a tiny room, which we called a cabin. A nice young man from the village of Glukhovo (near the city of Noginsk) Sergey Ilyushin was assigned to me as a neighbor, with whom we immediately became friends.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Reviews

Those who viewed this page were also interested in:

Frequently asked Questions

Yuri Vladimirov How I was in German captivity

* * *

Book one

Part one. Years of childhood and adolescence

Part two. Three pre-war student years

RELATED ARTICLES

Yuri Vladimirov
How I was in German captivity