Read Simon's Different Days of War online. Read the book Different Days of War (A Writer's Diary) for free - Konstantin Simonov

* * *

From the author

The subtitle of this book, now published in two volumes, defines its character. It is not the memoirs of a professional military man or the work of a historian, but rather the diary of a writer who saw with his own eyes some part of the events of the Great Patriotic War. These events were immensely enormous, and the circle of my personal observations is very limited, and I understand this well enough not to pretend to be complete.

It should be added that my work in those years went beyond the scope of my duties as a war correspondent for Red Star, and the book will talk not only about front-line trips, but also about writing.

My most detailed notes are related to the beginning and end of the war, from the forty-first and forty-fifth years. The records for the years forty-two, forty-three, and forty-four are sometimes quite detailed, and sometimes sketchy. Traces of some trips to the front remained only in correspondence published in Krasnaya Zvezda and Pravda, in copies of reports that I sent through the Information Bureau to America, and in the cursive writing of front-line notebooks. I well understood how important it is for a writer to keep war records, and, perhaps, even exaggerated their importance when, answering questions from the American Telegraph Agency during the war, I wrote: “As for writers, then, in my opinion, as soon as When the war ends, they will need to put their diaries in order. No matter what they wrote during the war and no matter how much the readers praised them for it, still on the very first day after the end of the war, the most significant thing they did during the war for the war will be their diaries.”

However, these words were at odds with deeds. I understood the importance of diary entries, but sometimes I didn’t have enough time to keep them systematically. In the intervals between front-line trips and correspondent work, I wrote two books of poetry, three plays and the story “Days and Nights” during those years. Having succeeded in one thing, he did not have time for another. And it was not just a lack of time, but a lack of mental strength.

In the book “Different Days of War” the reader will meet:

Firstly, with those pages of my war notes that were dictated between trips to the front or - which is much less common - were written from memory shortly after the war; I have shortened their text mainly due to unimportant details of the correspondent’s life and some places that were of a personal nature.

Secondly, with pages I took from front-line notebooks, from wartime and sometimes post-war correspondence, and in several cases from my military correspondence.

And finally, thirdly, with my current memories and reflections, based largely on acquaintance with archival materials. Perhaps some of the readers will think that I devoted too much space in the book to clarifying the biographical details and further fates of people I even briefly met at the front. But I would like to remind you that the disruption of human destinies is one of the most tragic features of the war. And now my feeling of non-payment of debt is becoming more and more urgent, the duty is becoming more and more urgent: wherever you can, name the names of the people who fought that you have found, trace the threads of their destinies in the complex interweaving of the war, sometimes irretrievably broken, and sometimes simply not fully known to us, in including those who remained alive, but who happened to be recorded as dead by an error of memory or document.

When preparing the book for publication, I tried to make it clear to the reader in each case what he was dealing with: what I wrote in those years, or what I remember now.

The book is documentary, there are no fictional characters in it, and wherever I considered myself entitled to do so, I preserved the true names and surnames. There may be memory errors in a book such as this, and I would appreciate anyone pointing them out.

It remains for me to honestly warn those readers who know the novel “The Living and the Dead” and the stories adjacent to this novel “From Lopatin’s Notes” that here, in the diary, they will encounter faces that are already partly familiar to them and with many similar situations and details.

This is explained by the fact that when you write a story or a novel about such a difficult matter as war, you somehow don’t want to fantasize and pull facts out of thin air. On the contrary, wherever your own life experience allows, you try to stay close to what you saw with your own eyes in the war.

Despite all the differences in literary genres, “The Living and the Dead” were written, in general, about the same thing as the diary. It was the starting point for the novel and preceded it in time, although now for many readers, when they encounter in the diary what they have already read in the novel, everything will look just the opposite.

In the future, throughout the book, I will only remind you of this connection between one and the other in the most necessary cases, but here, in the introduction, I want to admit without reservation that for me, as a writer, this connection is fundamentally important.

Chapter first

On June 21, I was called to the radio committee and asked to write two anti-fascist songs. So I felt that the war, which we, in essence, all expected, was very close.

I learned that the war had already begun only at two o’clock in the afternoon. All morning on June 22, he wrote poetry and did not answer the phone. And when I approached, the first thing I heard was war.

I immediately called the political department. They told me to call again at five.

Walked around the city. People were in a hurry, but, in general, everything was outwardly calm.

There was a rally at the Writers' Union. There were a lot of people crowded in the courtyard. Among others were many who, like me, just a few days ago returned from camp training after completing a war correspondent course. Now here, in the courtyard, they agreed among themselves to go to the front together and not be separated. Subsequently, of course, all those conversations turned out to be naive, and we parted in the wrong place and not in the way we thought.

The next day, the first batch of us, about thirty of us, were called to the political department and distributed among the newspapers. To the front - two, to the army - one. I had to go to the army newspaper. This upcoming loneliness was a little unexpected. Writing, of course.

Then, together with Dolmatovsky, he was in the district party committee. Before leaving for the front, I became a party candidate - the secretary of the district committee gave me a candidate card, and Dolmatovsky a party card. After that, we were again at the People's Commissariat of Defense until the evening. There they wrote out documents: for me, for the army newspaper of the 3rd Army in Grodno. We received documents and uniforms. They didn’t give me any weapons, they said: you’ll get them at the front. There, in the clothing workshop, I saw for the last time many of those with whom we were leaving.

They made noise while trying on military uniforms. They were very animated, maybe even too nervous.

In a hurry, he chose an overcoat that was not his height, and had to be changed at the military trade store the next morning, the 24th. Dolmatovsky bought sleepers for his buttonholes there. So we said goodbye to him in the middle of the store.

On the night of the 23rd to the 24th there was the first air raid alert, which, as it turned out later, was a training alert. All these, of course, were toys, but I was dragging children from the fifth floor down to the shelter, and it all seemed extremely serious to me.

On the twenty-fourth, while it was still dark, I went to the station to get my military letter for Minsk. I never got to the place, I just found out when the train would leave. We decided that I would sit down somehow. I was in the mood to say goodbye to Moscow today and not put off leaving for another day.

In the evening it was completely dark in Moscow. The car in which I was going to the station was detained: the driver was not driving with the safety nets that it was supposed to have. Fortunately, another car drove up, and at the last minute I finally got to the train leaving for Minsk. Or rather, I thought it was at the last minute, because the train left only two hours later.

Here and there at the station blue lights were on. A black station, a crowd of people, it is unclear when, where and what kind of train is going, some bars through which you are not allowed. He threw the suitcase over, then climbed over himself.

The overcoat fit well, the belts creaked, and it seemed to me that this was how I would always be. I don’t know about others, but despite Khalkhin Gol, in these first two days of the real war I was as naive as a boy.

The train started moving. The carriages, for some unknown reason, were country cars, without upper bunks, although the train went to Minsk.

I had to report to the political department of the front in Minsk, and from there to the army newspaper of the 3rd Army. The carriage carried mainly commanders returning from vacation. It was hard and strange. Judging by our carriage, it seemed that half of the Western Military District was on vacation. I didn't understand how it happened.

We drove overnight on the 25th and all day on the 25th. In the evening there was a bombing in Orsha, not far from the train. On the 26th, or rather, on the night of the 26th, the train approached Borisov. The news became more and more alarming every hour. And I must say, we quickly got used to them, although it was difficult to believe them.

Next to me in the carriage sat a tank colonel and his son, a boy of about sixteen, whom his father was allowed to take with him into the army. Besides them, there was one artillery captain, a seemingly calm person.

We got off in Borisov at six in the morning. The trains did not go any further. There was information that the routes to Minsk were bombed and intercepted by troops. Then they said that on the 20th the Germans had already reached the railway between Minsk and Borisov, bypassing Minsk. But it hadn’t occurred to us yet; we thought it was a landing party. We got out right at the station and piled up our suitcases. The colonel's son carefully helped the elders arrange food. Everyone carried everything they had and ate together. Someone suddenly brought a barrel of sour cream. They scooped up sour cream with plates, mugs and even helmets. There was something sad about it. Outwardly, there seems to be nothing special, but in essence: oh, where did ours go?

After eating, we rushed around the city for three hours in search of power. Neither the station commandant nor the city commandant could say anything. The head of the garrison, corps commissar Susaykov, was either in the city or twelve kilometers from the city at his armored school, which he commanded.

After a long search, the artillery captain and I caught a five-ton truck, the driver of which was preparing to abandon it because it was running out of gas, and we drove along the Minsk highway to look for at least some authorities.

German planes were flying over the city. There was desperate heat and dust. At the exit from the city, near the hospital, I saw the first dead. They lay on stretchers and without stretchers. I don't know where they came from. Probably after the bombing.

Troops and vehicles walked along the road. Some in one direction, others in the other. Nothing could be understood.

We left the city, but where the armored school stood, or rather, should have stood, and where, according to our calculations, the head of the garrison could have been, everything was wide open and empty. There were only two wedges standing, and their crews were sitting in one of the rooms waiting for departure. Nobody knew anything. The head of the garrison, according to rumors, was somewhere on the Minsk highway, and the school had already been evacuated.

Let's go back to the city. German planes were chasing the cars. One passed over us, firing a machine gun. Splinters flew from the truck, but did not hit anyone. I plopped down in the dust in a roadside ditch.

We returned to the commandant's office. The commandant - senior lieutenant - shouted: “Bury the machine guns!” In the two hours we were gone, a lot had changed. People were walking and running through the city to no one knows where.

I asked the commandant to give me a revolver. To this the commandant answered me: “Eh! So that you can contact us half an hour earlier. Nothing left. Everything was distributed within an hour. Even Mausers were distributed to ordinary soldiers.”

Our car was really running low on gas. Having found out where the oil depot was located - it was about fifteen kilometers towards Minsk - we went there to get gasoline. On the way, they put some quartermaster and two or three more military men into the car.

At the oil depot everything turned out to be calm, although on the way we were assured that the Germans were already there. While we were pouring gasoline into the car with buckets, the captain went to the head of the oil depot to find out something. Entering after him, I saw a strange picture: the captain with whom I arrived and some colonel were holding two commanders in the uniform of sappers under cocked revolvers. One of them had orders. Both had their weapons taken away. As it turned out later, they were sent here to find out the possibility of blowing up an oil depot, and either they got confused and came to blow it up, or they were misunderstood, in general, there was a misunderstanding, because of which the captain and colonel mistook them for saboteurs and five minutes held at gunpoint. When everything finally became clear, one of the sappers - a middle-aged major with two orders - began shouting that this had never happened to him before, that he had been wounded three times in the Finnish campaign, that after such a shame all he could do was shoot himself. It was difficult to calm him down.

After filling up with gas, we headed back. There was a long train at the crossing, blocking the road. His head rested against the tail of another train, blocking the next crossing. And so it seems ad infinitum. Two of those sitting in the back of our car began to make noise and demand that we leave the car and walk, because the trains would never run and the Germans would overtake us here. The captain and I yelled at them.

But we really had to wait about an hour. Somewhere artillery was booming. There was a disgusting feeling of the unknown, and I also felt unarmed. The empty holster dangling at his side only irritated him.

When we reached the city again, the commandant's office was loading. When I asked what was happening, the commandant shouted in a hoarse voice:

– There is an order from Marshal Timoshenko to leave Borisov, cross to the other side of the Berezina and there, not letting the Germans in, defend to the last drop of blood!

We left the city. Cars and occasionally guns walked along the dusty road to the east. People were moving on foot. Now they were all heading in one direction, to the east. On the dam, in front of the bridge, stood a man with two revolvers - in his belt and in his hand. He stopped people and cars and, beside himself, threatening to shoot him, shouted that he had to stop the army here and he would stop it and shoot everyone who tried to retreat. This man was sincere in his despair, but all this taken together was absurd, and people drove and walked past him indifferently. He let them pass, grabbed the next ones by the tunics and again threatened to shoot them.

Having crossed the bridge, we turned off the road and stopped in a small sparse forest, about six hundred meters from the river. It was already swarming here. For the most part, these were all commanders and Red Army soldiers returning from vacation to their units. And besides them, an endless number of conscripts stubbornly moved west to their recruiting stations.

It was already four o'clock in the afternoon. Several colonels, including the tank colonel Lizyukov, with whom I was traveling in the same carriage, were establishing order in the forest. They compiled lists, divided people into companies and battalions, and sent them left and right along the banks of the Berezina to take up defensive positions. There were many rifles, several machine guns and cannons.

The artillery captain with whom I traveled went back to Borisov for shells and cannons, because although there were cannons and shells here, the caliber of the shells did not correspond to the caliber of the guns.

I drove the car into the forest and went to sign up for the drill list. After signing up, I met a military lawyer who was also traveling in the same carriage with me. He told me that he was ordered to deal with his prosecutorial affairs here, and advised me to be with him: “It’s not like publishing a newspaper here.” A few minutes later he brought me a rifle from somewhere with a bayonet, without a belt, so I had to hold it in my hands the whole time.

Half an hour after I got here, the Germans discovered our concentration from the air and began shelling the forest with machine guns. Waves of planes came one after another approximately every twenty minutes.

We lay down, pressing our heads against the skinny trees. The forest was sparse, and it was very convenient to shoot us from the air. Nobody knew each other, and no matter how much they wanted, people could neither really order nor obey.

“At least wait until dark,” the prosecutor told me.

Finally, about three hours later, an I-15 flight passed low over the forest. We jumped up, glad that our planes had finally appeared. But they poured a good dose of lead on us. Several people near me were wounded - all in the legs. As they lay in a row, a machine gun burst crossed them.

We thought it was an accident, a mistake, but the planes turned around and passed over the forest a second and third time. The stars on their wings were clearly visible to us. When they passed over the forest for the third time, someone with a machine gun managed to shoot down one plane. A lot of people ran to the edge of the forest where the plane was burning. Those running there said that the body of a half-burnt German pilot was pulled out of the cockpit.

I don't understand how this happened. One can only think that on the first day the Germans captured several planes somewhere and taught their pilots how to fly them. In any case, we were left with a depressing impression.

They stormed us until late at night. By nightfall the captain returned and brought shells. He was very pleased that he had gotten to his artillery business and no longer felt like a pawn being driven to God knows where.

We chewed something, it seemed like crackers. And we were so tired of drinking that we didn’t even go for water.

Already in the dark, I lay down next to the wheels of the truck, putting my overcoat under my head and my rifle next to me. There was a feeling of fatigue and complete bewilderment in front of everything that was happening around. But at the same time there was faith that all this was an accident, some kind of German breakthrough, that there were our troops ahead and behind who would come and fix everything.

I was so tired that when they started shelling us from the air again at night, I woke up only when someone fired a shot over my ear and they started firing desperately into the sky. The cars were driving somewhere, bumping into one another between trees, crashing, breaking down. Flares hung over the horizon every now and then and distant bomb explosions could be heard.

Our driver wanted to rush after the others, but I held him back, deciding not to leave the forest until the panic stopped.

Half an hour later the forest became quieter. We got into the five-ton car and began to make our way to the road. We went to the edge of the forest. Leaving the driver there with the car, I went out onto the road and came across a group of four or five people who were talking to someone dressed in civilian clothes and demanding documents from him. He replied that he had no documents. They demanded even more insistently; then he shouted in a trembling voice: “Do you want the documents? Everyone catch Hitler! You won’t catch him anyway!” The military man standing next to me silently raised his revolver and fired. The civilian bent over and fell. A dazzling white rocket lit up above our heads, and immediately a bomb crashed about forty paces away. I fell. Then it crashed again and again - further on. I got up. Next to me lay a shot dead man, next to him - almost on top of him - a military man killed by a bomb fragment, one of those who had just stood here. And there was no one else.

I returned to the forest. The driver was lying under the car, with his head under the engine. Having driven out onto the road with him, we learned from passing military men that everyone had been ordered to move seven kilometers back, to where there was a clearing through the forest.

It was dark on the forest road. I walked in front of the car to prevent it from crashing into the trees. When dawn broke, we reached the edge of the forest, where there were cars parked behind almost every tree. People dug trenches and crevices.

I left the car in the forest, next to other cars, and I went to look for some authorities. I was pointed to Susaykov as the senior corps commissar. He stood on a forest road, a young unshaven man with a cap pulled down over his eyes, a Red Army overcoat draped over his shoulders, and for some reason holding a shovel in his hands. I approached him and, in my still lingering naivety, asked where the editorial office of the newspaper was where I could work, because I was a writer and was assigned to an army newspaper.

He looked at me with a blank look and said indifferently:

– Don’t you see what’s happening? What newspaper?!

I said that I needed to report to the front headquarters, to the political department. He shook his head. He did not know where the front headquarters was, in general he knew absolutely nothing, just like everyone who was with him in this forest.

At seven, when the sun had already risen high, the Germans again began to bomb and shell the place. I had to go to bed, get up, go to bed again, get up again. During one of these lies, I saw the prosecutor. It turns out he was lying next to me.

- What are you doing? – he asked me.

I said nothing yet.

- Well, then you will work for us, okay?

I said “okay” and sat down with the group of people who were trying to organize a military prosecutor’s office here. In addition to the prosecutor, there was some political instructor with aviation buttonholes and several other people.

There was small forest and sparse birch trees all around. I remembered my Mongolian experience and, since I was already tired of lying flat on my stomach with a feeling of complete helplessness, I suggested getting shovels; we got them, and under my leadership, employees of the newly created prosecutor’s office began to dig cracks, as we dug them in Mongolia: in the shape of the letter “g”.

About two hours later, having during this time survived the bombing twice, we dug a good, deep and narrow crack in the sandy soil. Only towards the end of this work did I remember that I had eaten and drunk almost nothing for two days. I was feeling sleepy, probably from fatigue and hunger. I sat down on the edge of the crack, leaned against a birch bush and dozed off. The sun warmed my face, and, as usually happens in such moments of short and random sleep, I hastily dreamed of something very pleasant.

In the midst of this dream, the chatter of machine guns began again. I automatically, not yet waking up, jumped into the gap. The planes were flying over the forest, and after me people rolled into the gap. Before I had time to fully wake up, something very heavy fell on my head and asked in a female voice:

- Isn’t it hard for you?

“It’s not hard,” I said.

And the woman was still sitting on my neck, trying to somehow move to make it easier for me, and this made my vertebrae crack. Five minutes later, when, after making several circles, the planes left, I felt the weight ease and climbed out of the gap. It turns out that a rather heavy-set nurse was sitting on me. She now stood in front of me and timidly apologized: she said that everyone is human, everyone wants to live. All that remained was to agree.

The events of the day are confused in my head. I fell asleep, then they shot, I climbed into the gap. Then he fell asleep again. I remember how I was sent to accompany some two people - a man and a woman - how I went out into the open, stood with them at the fence, checked their documents and found out with the meticulousness of a home-grown investigator where they came from and how they got here.

And at this time the planes started flying overhead again. Everyone around lay down or ran into the forest. And I wanted to do the same, but it was inconvenient. I stood and continued to question these two - a man and a woman - who seemed more frightened by my questions than by machine-gun fire from the air.

Right there, not far away, near the fence, bullets splashed, but they didn’t hit us, everything turned out well.

Then I remember a major with a bandage around his neck - some commander had just shot him through a misunderstanding, mistaking him for a saboteur, and he was worried, offended, shouting in an angry voice, but this made no impression on anyone.

I approached the very edge, where the forest road led out onto the Minskoye Highway. Suddenly, five steps from me, a fighter with a rifle, with crazy eyes popping out of his sockets, jumped out onto the highway and shouted in a choked, broken voice:

- Run! The Germans surrounded! Gone!

One of the commanders standing next to me shouted:

- Shoot him, the panicker! - and, pulling out a revolver, began to shoot.

I also took out my revolver, which I had received an hour ago, and also began shooting at the running man. Now it seems to me that he was probably a crazy person, with a psyche that could not withstand the terrible trials of that day. But then I didn’t think about it, I just shot at him.

Obviously we didn't hit him, because he ran on. Some captain jumped out into the road to cross him and, trying to detain him, grabbed him by the rifle. After a struggle, the Red Army soldier snatched his rifle. She fired. Even more frightened by this shot, he looked around as if hunted and rushed at the captain with a bayonet. He pulled out his revolver and laid him down. Three or four people silently dragged the body off the road.

German planes flew over the highway again, and everyone again lay down on the ground or in the cracks.

Then I remember two people - a regimental commissar and a brig-military doctor, who led about one and a half hundred graduates of the Military Medical Academy through the forest under the command. I still don’t understand: either they were practicing in Minsk, or for some reason they were sent under command to Minsk, and now, having already lost twenty people along the way during bombing and shelling, they were going back to Orsha. They looked for the authorities, asked them to help them with something, but who could help them and how? They were simply told to move on. And they did just that - they went.

Then an hour later the military officer came up to me and said:

– You seem to be a writer, aren’t you?

I said yes.

- Help me identify one person here. He's on your side, if he's not lying. He tore up all his documents and military ID out of fear, but says that he worked in the Writers' Union in Minsk. Maybe this is true?

I approached this man. He was so overgrown, dirty, and exhausted that it was impossible to tell from his appearance how old he was - thirty or fifty. I began to question him. It turned out that this was an employee of the Writers' Union in Minsk, the same person who, in peacetime, got train tickets and arranged hotel rooms.

To clear my conscience - although I immediately believed him - I began to find out from him some details about Kondrat Krapiva: when did Kondrat Krapiva go to Moscow? I myself have never seen Kondrat Krapiva, but I remembered the dates on which he was supposed to come to a conference of playwrights in Moscow in the spring. The man answered my question so accurately that there was no doubt: he was exactly who he said he was.

And I suddenly remembered, like something completely wild and absurd, a discussion of my play “A Guy from Our Town.” Just recently, at a conference at the writers’ club, there was a report, speeches, and some debate. All this now, here, was incredibly strange.

Since the identity of this employee of the Writers' Union in Minsk was established, they did not touch him, despite the lack of documents, but decided to send him to some unit that would be formed.

And he sat right next to us, first along with the guards who brought him, and then just like that, because everyone had already forgotten about him.

The next person I had to talk to was a nineteen-year-old boy - thin, unshaven, with sparse hairs sticking out on his chin, with a thin and angry face that either seemed very smart, or seemed like the face of a madman. I never fully understood who he was. He was brought from a company stationed in a nearby forest. When German planes passed over the grove, he, despite the command “Camouflage!”, went out into the middle of the clearing, stood in full view and began waving his arms. Neither shouts nor calls helped. He continued to do his thing. When they brought him to us, he continued to repeat with the tenacity of a maniac that he had ended up with the Germans and that we were all Germans.

The military lawyer brought him to me and asked:

- Well, who do you think is standing in front of you? Battalion commissar or not?

“No, this is a German officer,” said the guy.

- But he has insignia, don’t you see? “Here,” the military officer pointed at my sleepers. – Or do you think these are shoulder straps?

“Epaulettes,” the guy said with the tenacity of a madman.

– Do you understand where you are? – asked the military lawyer.

- I'm with the Germans. “You are all Germans,” said the guy. And it was impossible to squeeze anything more out of him. He, too, was taken to the edge of the forest to several densely growing trees, where the rest of the detainees were sitting.

It seemed to me that this boy had gone crazy.

At about five o’clock in the afternoon, I don’t remember why, together with the military lawyer we went out to the very edge of the forest. About a hundred paces from us there was a truck, and near the truck there was a tall commander in a border guard uniform. Suddenly there was a buzz, then a whistle. We all lay down on the ground - where everyone was - and this border guard commander crawled under his car.

The bomb was probably small, the explosion was not particularly strong, but it hit the car with a direct hit. When we got up from the ground, instead of a car there were only pieces of bent iron, and a wheel was still rolling across the lawn. It rolled and fell near us.

I threw my overcoat over my shoulders because, despite the warm day, I was cold from hunger and fatigue, and went to look for my car. Someone must have moved her to another place. Or maybe the driver left without permission, I don’t know. I searched for her for an hour and a half throughout the forest, but never found her. There, in the car, I had a suitcase and a raincoat strapped to it. But all this was not a pity, but the only pity was the fur sleeveless vest that had been brought from Mongolia in the suitcase - there, in Mongolia, they were called Transbaikal T-shirts - and the two pipes that lay in the pocket of this sleeveless jacket. The tobacco was in his trouser pocket, but there were no pipes. As a matter of fact, it was mainly because of them that I went looking for the car.

I came back and tried to roll a cigarette out of a newspaper, but nothing came of it - I never rolled it.

In the evening, around seven o'clock, the military officer told me that he still had to look for the headquarters of the front where he was sent.

-Where are you going? – he asked me.

I said that I needed to report to the political department of the front.

“Well, then we’ll go together,” he said. – And on the way you will help me deliver the arrested to Orsha.

I agreed. To tell the truth, at that moment I didn’t care whether I stayed here until the morning or went. I wanted only one thing - to sleep.

We went out onto the road. Trucks walked along it from west to east at short intervals, sometimes full, sometimes empty. We stopped one of them. Together with us, an elderly, tired colonel in a border uniform and a border guard soldier stopped this car. They were both looking for the headquarters of the border troops.

We all got into this car. The colonel is next to the driver, and I, a military lawyer, one escort, a border guard soldier and five detainees are in the back.

At first I was dozing, but then the raids and shelling began, and every now and then we got out of the car, lay down in a ditch, got in again, got out again. I'm incredibly tired of all this. But I didn’t want to sleep anymore. Sitting uncomfortably, shaking on board the car, I began to question the guy sitting next to me, also on board - the one who called us all Germans. I don’t remember exactly where he was from, but he said that his mother was in the village, that he graduated from high school and was drafted into the army. He spoke vaguely, and from the conversation it seemed to me that his father was one of the exiled kulaks. He spoke either angrily or stupidly, like a real madman. And in my opinion, he wasn’t pretending.

Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich
Different days of the war. Writer's Diary
(1) This is how references to notes are indicated. Notes after the text.
Publisher's abstract: This volume consists of the war diaries of K. M. Simonov, at that time a correspondent for Red Star, covering the events of 1941. Since the journal publication of K.M. Simonov received many letters from people whom he met on the roads of the war and who are present on the pages of his diaries. He was very attentive to his correspondents. With their help, the author's commentary on the diaries was replenished, forgotten things were recalled, events were restored, and inaccuracies were corrected. However, many comments remained unrealized, although the author considered them important and intended to take them into account when publishing the diaries in the Collected Works. Following the writer's death, the literary heritage commission examined many letters with the author's note "To the Collected Works." In cases where the comments turned out to be indisputable and did not entail a deep invasion of the author’s text, the will of K.M. Simonov was executed and corrections were made.
Content
From the author
Forty-first
Chapter first
Chapter two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter twenty one
Forty second
Chapter first
Chapter two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Forty third
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Forty-fourth
Chapter sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter twenty one
Chapter twenty two
Chapter twenty three
Forty-fifth
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter thirty one
Chapter thirty two
Notes
From the author
The subtitle of this book, now published in two volumes, defines its character. It is not the memoirs of a professional military man or the work of a historian, but rather the diary of a writer who saw with his own eyes some part of the events of the Great Patriotic War. These events were immensely enormous, and the circle of my personal observations is very limited, and I understand this well enough not to pretend to be complete.
It should be added that my work in those years went beyond the scope of my duties as a war correspondent for Red Star, and the book will talk not only about front-line trips, but also about writing.
My most detailed notes are related to the beginning and end of the war, from the forty-first and forty-fifth years. The records for the years forty-two, forty-three, and forty-four are sometimes quite detailed, and sometimes sketchy. Traces of some trips to the front remained only in correspondence published in Krasnaya Zvezda and Pravda, in copies of reports that I sent through the Information Bureau to America, and in the cursive writing of front-line notebooks. I well understood how important it is for a writer to keep war records, and, perhaps, even exaggerated their importance when, answering questions from the American Telegraph Agency during the war, I wrote: “As for writers, then, in my opinion, immediately as soon as the war ends, they will need to put their diaries in order. No matter what they wrote during the war and no matter how much readers praised them for it, still on the very first day after the end of the war the most significant thing they did during the war for the war , it will be their diaries."
However, these words were at odds with deeds. I understood the importance of diary entries, but sometimes I didn’t have enough time to keep them systematically. In the intervals between front-line trips and correspondent work, I wrote two books of poetry, three plays and the story “Days and Nights” during those years. Having succeeded in one thing, he did not have time for another. And it was not just a lack of time, but a lack of mental strength.
In the book "Different Days of War" the reader will meet:
Firstly, with those pages of my war notes that were dictated between trips to the front or - which is much less common - were written from memory shortly after the war; I have shortened their text mainly due to unimportant details of the correspondent’s life and some places that were of a personal nature.
Secondly, with pages I took from front-line notebooks, from wartime and sometimes post-war correspondence, and in several cases from my military correspondence.
And finally, thirdly, with my current memories and reflections, based largely on acquaintance with archival materials. Perhaps some of the readers will think that I devoted too much space in the book to clarifying the biographical details and further fates of people I even briefly met at the front. But I would like to remind you that the disruption of human destinies is one of the most tragic features of the war. And now my feeling of non-payment of debt is becoming more and more urgent, the duty is becoming more and more urgent: wherever you can, name the names of the people who fought that you have found, trace the threads of their destinies in the complex interweaving of the war, sometimes irretrievably broken, and sometimes simply not fully known to us, in including those who remained alive, but who happened to be recorded as dead by an error of memory or document.
When preparing the book for publication, I tried to make it clear to the reader in each case what he was dealing with: what I wrote in those years, or what I remember now.
The book is a documentary, there are no fictional characters in it, and wherever I considered myself entitled to do so, I preserved the original names and surnames. There may be memory errors in a book such as this, and I would appreciate anyone pointing them out.
It remains for me to honestly warn those readers who know the novel “The Living and the Dead” and the stories adjacent to this novel “From Lopatin’s Notes” that here, in the diary, they will encounter faces that are already partly familiar to them and many similar situations and details.
This is explained by the fact that when you write a story or a novel about such a difficult matter as war, you somehow don’t want to fantasize and pull facts out of thin air. On the contrary, wherever your own life experience allows, you try to stay close to what you saw with your own eyes in the war.
Despite all the differences in literary genres, “The Living and the Dead” were written, in general, about the same thing as the diary. It was the starting point for the novel and preceded it in time, although now for many readers, when they encounter in the diary what they have already read in the novel, everything will look just the opposite.
In the future, throughout the book, I will only remind you of this connection between one and the other in the most necessary cases, but here, in the introduction, I want to admit without reservation that for me, as a writer, this connection is fundamentally important.
Forty-first
Chapter first
On June 21, I was called to the radio committee and asked to write two anti-fascist songs. So I felt that the war, which we, in essence, all expected, was very close.
I learned that the war had already begun only at two o’clock in the afternoon. All morning on June 22, he wrote poetry and did not answer the phone. And when I approached, the first thing I heard was war.
I immediately called the political department. They told me to call again at five.
Walked around the city. People were in a hurry, but, in general, everything was outwardly calm.
There was a rally at the Writers' Union. There were a lot of people crowded in the courtyard. Among others were many who, like me, just a few days ago returned from camp training after completing a war correspondent course. Now here, in the courtyard, they agreed among themselves to go to the front together and not be separated. Subsequently, of course, all those conversations turned out to be naive, and we parted in the wrong place and not in the way we thought.
The next day, the first batch of us, about thirty of us, were called to the political department and assigned to newspapers. In the front line - two, in the army - but one. I had to go to the army newspaper. This upcoming loneliness was a little unexpected. Writing, of course.
Then, together with Dolmatovsky, he was in the district party committee. Before leaving for the front, I became a party candidate - the secretary of the district committee gave me a candidate card, and Dolmatovsky a party card. After that, we were again at the People's Commissariat of Defense until the evening. There they wrote out documents: for me, for the army newspaper of the 3rd Army in Grodno. We received documents and uniforms. They didn’t give me any weapons, they said: you’ll get them at the front. There, in the clothing workshop, I saw for the last time many of those with whom we were leaving.
They made noise while trying on military uniforms. They were very animated, maybe even too nervous.
In a hurry, he chose an overcoat that was not his height, and the next morning, the 24th, he had to change it at the military store. Dolmatovsky bought sleepers for his buttonholes there. So we said goodbye to him in the middle of the store.
On the night of the 23rd to the 24th there was the first air raid alert, which, as it later turned out, was a training alert. All these, of course, were toys, but I was dragging children from the fifth floor down to the shelter, and the weight seemed extremely serious to me.
On the twenty-fourth, while it was still dark, I went to the station to get my military letter for Minsk. I never got anywhere, I just found out when the train was leaving. We decided that I would sit down somehow. I was in the mood to say goodbye to Moscow today and not put off leaving for another day.
In the evening it was completely dark in Moscow. The car in which I was going to the station was detained: the driver was not driving with the safety nets that it was supposed to have. Fortunately, another car drove up, and at the last minute I finally got to the train leaving for Minsk. Or rather, I thought it was at the last minute, because the train left only two hours later.
Here and there at the station there were light bulbs burning. A black station, a crowd of people, it is unclear when, where and what kind of train is going, some bars through which you are not allowed. He threw the suitcase over, then climbed over himself.
The overcoat fit well, the belts creaked, and it seemed to me that this was how I would always be. I don’t know about others, but despite Khalkhin Gol, in these first two days of the real war I was as naive as a boy.
The train started moving. The carriages, for some unknown reason, were country cars, without upper bunks, although the train went to Minsk.
I had to report to the political department of the front in Minsk, and from there to the army newspaper of the 3rd Army. The carriage carried mainly commanders returning from vacation. It was hard and strange. Judging by our carriage, it seemed that half of the Western Military District was on vacation. I didn't understand how it happened.
We drove overnight on the 25th and all day on the 25th. In the evening there was a bombing in Orsha, not far from the train. On the 26th, or rather, on the night of the 26th, the train approached Borisov. The news became more and more alarming every hour. And I must say, we quickly got used to them, although it was hard to believe.
Next to me in the carriage sat a tank colonel and his son, a boy of about sixteen, whom his father was allowed to take with him into the army. Besides them, there was one artillery captain, a seemingly calm person.
We got off in Borisov at six in the morning. The trains did not go any further. There was information that the routes to Minsk were bombed and intercepted by troops. Then they said that on the 20th the Germans had already reached the railway between Minsk and Borisov, bypassing Minsk. But it hadn’t occurred to us yet; we thought it was a landing party. We got out right at the station and piled up our suitcases. The colonel's son carefully helped the elders arrange food. Everyone carried everything they had and ate together. Someone suddenly brought a barrel of sour cream. They scooped up sour cream with plates, mugs and even helmets. There was something sad about it. Outwardly, there seems to be nothing special, but in essence: oh, where did ours go?
After eating, we rushed around the city for three hours in search of power. Neither the station commandant nor the city commandant could say anything. The head of the garrison, corps commissar Susaykov, was either in the city or twelve kilometers from the city at his armored school, which he commanded.
After a long search, the artillery captain and I caught a five-ton truck, the driver of which was preparing to abandon it because it was running out of gas, and we drove along the Minsk highway to look for at least some authorities.
German planes were flying over the city. There was desperate heat and dust. At the exit from the city, near the hospital, I saw the first dead. They lay on stretchers and without stretchers. I don't know where they came from. Probably after the bombing.
Troops and vehicles walked along the road. One in one direction, others in the other. Nothing could be understood.
We left the city, but where the armored school stood, or rather, should have stood, and where, according to our calculations, the head of the garrison could have been, everything was wide open and empty. There were only two wedges standing, and their crews were sitting in one of the rooms waiting for departure. Nobody knew anything. The head of the garrison, according to rumors, was somewhere on the Minsk highway, and the school had already been evacuated.
Let's go back to the city. German planes were chasing the cars. One passed over us, firing a machine gun. Splinters flew from the truck, but did not hit anyone. I plopped down in the dust in a roadside ditch.
We returned to the commandant's office. The commandant - senior lieutenant - shouted: “Bury the machine guns!” In the two hours we were gone, a lot had changed. People were walking and running through the city to no one knows where.
I asked the commandant to give me a revolver. To this the commandant replied to me: “Eh! I wish you could have turned up half an hour earlier. There was nothing left. Everything was distributed in an hour. Even the Mausers were stripped to the ordinary soldiers.”
Our car was really running low on gas. Having found out where the oil depot was located - it was about fifteen kilometers towards Minsk - we went there to get gasoline. On the way, they put some quartermaster and two or three more military men into the car.
At the oil depot everything turned out to be calm, although on the way we were assured that the Germans were already there. While we were pouring gasoline into the car with buckets, the captain went to the head of the oil depot to find out something. Entering after him, I saw a strange picture: the captain with whom I arrived and some colonel were holding two commanders in the uniform of sappers under cocked revolvers. One of them had orders. Both had their weapons taken away. As it turned out later, they were sent here to find out the possibility of blowing up an oil depot, and either they got confused and came to blow it up, or they were misunderstood, in general, there was a misunderstanding, because of which the captain and colonel mistook them for saboteurs and five minutes held at gunpoint. When everything finally became clear, one of the sappers - an elderly major with two orders - began shouting that this had never happened to him before, that he had been wounded three times in the Finnish campaign, that after such a shame all he could do was shoot himself. It was difficult to calm him down.
After filling up with gas, we headed back. There was a long train at the crossing, blocking the road. His head rested against the tail of another train, blocking the next crossing. And so it seems ad infinitum. Two of those sitting in the back of our car began to make noise and demand that we leave the car and walk, because the trains would never run and the Germans would overtake us here. The captain and I yelled at them.
But we really had to wait about an hour. Somewhere artillery was booming. There was a disgusting feeling of the unknown, and I also felt unarmed. The empty holster dangling at his side only irritated him.
When we reached the city again, the commandant's office was loading. When I asked what was happening, the commandant shouted in a hoarse voice:
- There is an order from Marshal Timoshenko to leave Borisov, cross to the other side of the Berezina and there, not letting the Germans in, defend to the last drop of blood!
We left the city. Cars and occasionally guns walked along the dusty road to the east. People were moving on foot. Now they were heading in one direction to the east. On the dam, in front of the bridge, stood a man with two revolvers - in his belt and in his hand. He stopped people and cars and, beside himself, threatening to shoot him, shouted that he had to stop the army here and he would stop it and shoot everyone who tried to retreat. This man was sincere in his despair, but all this taken together was absurd, and people drove and walked past him indifferently. He let them pass, grabbed the next ones by the tunics and again threatened to shoot them.
Having crossed the bridge, we turned off the road and stopped in a small sparse forest, about six hundred meters from the river. It was already swarming here. For the most part, these were all commanders and Red Army soldiers returning from vacation to their units. And besides them, an endless number of conscripts stubbornly moved west to their recruiting stations.
It was already four o'clock in the afternoon. Several colonels, including the tank colonel Lizyukov, with whom I was traveling in the same carriage, were establishing order in the forest. They compiled lists, divided people into companies and battalions, and sent them left and right along the banks of the Berezina to take up defensive positions. There were many rifles, several machine guns and cannons.
The artillery captain with whom I traveled went back to Borisov for shells and cannons, because although there were cannons and shells here, the caliber of the shells did not correspond to the caliber of the guns.
I drove the car into the forest and went to sign up for the drill list. After signing up, I met a military lawyer who was also traveling in the same carriage with me. He told me that he was ordered to deal with his prosecutorial affairs here, and advised me to be with him: “It’s not like publishing a newspaper here.” A few minutes later he brought me a rifle from somewhere with a bayonet, without a belt, so I had to hold it in my hands the whole time.
Half an hour after I got here, the Germans discovered our concentration from the air and began shelling the forest with machine guns. Waves of planes came one after another approximately every twenty minutes.
We lay down, pressing our heads against the skinny trees. The forest was sparse, and it was very convenient to shoot us from the air. Nobody knew each other, and no matter how much they wanted, people could neither really order nor obey.
“At least wait until dark,” the prosecutor told me.
Finally, about three hours later, an I-15 flight passed low over the forest. We jumped up, glad that our planes had finally appeared. But they poured a good dose of lead on us. Several people near me were wounded - all in the legs. As they lay in a row, a machine gun burst crossed them.
We thought it was an accident, a mistake, but the planes turned around and passed over the forest a second and third time. The stars on their wings were clearly visible to us. When they passed over the forest for the third time, someone with a machine gun managed to shoot down one plane. A lot of people ran to the edge of the forest where the plane was burning. Those running there said that the body of a half-burned German pilot was pulled out of the cockpit.
I don't understand how this happened. One can only think that on the first day the Germans captured several planes somewhere and taught their pilots how to fly them. In any case, we were left with a depressing impression.
They stormed us until late at night. By nightfall the captain returned and brought shells. He was very pleased that he had gotten to his artillery business and no longer felt like a pawn being driven to God knows where.
We chewed something, it seemed like crackers. And we were so tired of drinking that we didn’t even go for water.
Already in the dark, I lay down next to the wheels of the truck, putting my overcoat under my head and my rifle next to me. There was a feeling of fatigue and complete bewilderment in front of everything that was happening around. But at the same time there was faith that all this was an accident, some kind of German breakthrough, that there were our troops ahead and behind who would come and fix everything.
I was so tired that when they started shelling us from the air again at night, I woke up only when someone fired a shot over my ear and they started firing desperately into the sky. The cars were driving somewhere, bumping into one another between trees, crashing, breaking down. Flares hung over the horizon every now and then and distant bomb explosions could be heard.
Our driver wanted to rush after the others, but I held him back, deciding not to leave the forest until the panic stopped.
Half an hour later the forest became quieter. We got into the five-ton car and began to make our way to the road. We went to the edge of the forest. Leaving the driver there with the car, I went out onto the road and came across a group of four or five people who were talking to someone dressed in civilian clothes and demanding documents from him. He replied that he had no documents. They demanded even more insistently; then he shouted in a trembling voice: “Do you need the documents? Everyone catch Hitler! You won’t catch him anyway!” The military man standing next to me silently raised his revolver and fired. The civilian bent over and fell. A dazzling white rocket lit up above our heads, and immediately a bomb crashed about forty paces away. I fell. Then it crashed again and again - further on. I got up. Next to me lay a shot dead man, next to him - almost on top of him - a military man killed by a bomb fragment, one of those who had just stood here. And there was no one else.
I returned to the forest. The driver was lying under the car, his head under the engine. Having driven out onto the road with him, we learned from passing military men that everyone had been ordered to move seven kilometers back, to where there was a clearing through the forest.
It was dark on the forest road. I walked in front of the car to prevent it from crashing into the trees. When dawn broke, we reached the edge of the forest, where there were cars parked behind almost every tree. People dug trenches and crevices.
I left the car in the forest, next to other cars, and I went to look for some authorities. I was pointed to Susaykov as the senior corps commissar. He stood on a forest road, a young unshaven man with a cap pulled down over his eyes, a Red Army overcoat draped over his shoulders, and for some reason holding a shovel in his hands. I approached him and, in my still lingering naivety, asked where the editorial office of the newspaper was where I could work, because I was a writer and was assigned to an army newspaper.
He looked at me with a blank look and said indifferently:
- Don't you see what's happening? What newspaper?! I said that I needed to report to the front headquarters, to the political department. He shook his head. He did not know where the front headquarters was, in general he knew absolutely nothing, just like everyone who was with him in this forest.
At seven, when the sun had already risen high, the Germans again began to bomb and shell the place. I had to go to bed, get up, go to bed again, get up again. During one of these lies, I saw the prosecutor. It turns out he was lying next to me.
- What are you doing? - he asked me.
I said nothing yet.
- Well, then you will work for us, okay?
I said “okay” and sat down with the group of people who were trying to organize a military prosecutor’s office here. In addition to the prosecutor, there was some political instructor with aviation buttonholes and several other people.
There was small forest and sparse birch trees all around. I remembered my Mongolian experience and, since I was already tired of lying flat on my stomach with a feeling of complete helplessness, I suggested getting shovels; we got them, and under my leadership, employees of the newly created prosecutor’s office began to dig cracks, as we dug them in Mongolia: in the shape of the letter “g”.
About two hours later, having during this time survived the bombing twice, we dug a good, deep and narrow crack in the sandy soil. Only towards the end of this work did I remember that I had eaten and drunk almost nothing for two days. I was feeling sleepy, probably from fatigue and hunger. I sat down on the edge of the crack, leaned against a birch bush and dozed off. The sun warmed my face, and, as usually happens in such moments of short and random sleep, I hastily dreamed of something very pleasant.
In the midst of this dream, the chatter of machine guns began again. I automatically, not yet waking up, jumped into the gap. The planes were flying over the forest, and after me people rolled into the gap. Before I had time to fully wake up, something very heavy fell on my head and asked in a female voice:
- Isn’t it hard for you?
“It’s not hard,” I said.
And the woman was still sitting on my neck, trying to somehow move to make it easier for me, and this made my vertebrae crack. Five minutes later, when, after making several circles, the planes left, I felt the weight ease and climbed out of the gap. It turns out that a rather heavy-set nurse was sitting on me. She now stood in front of me and timidly apologized: she said that everyone is human, everyone wants to live. All that remained was to agree.
The events of the day are confused in my head. I fell asleep, then they shot, I climbed into the gap. Then he fell asleep again. I remember how I was sent to accompany some two people - a man and a woman - how I went out into the open, stood with them at the fence, checked their documents and found out with the meticulousness of a home-grown investigator where they came from and how they got here.
And at this time the planes started flying overhead again. Everyone around lay down or ran into the forest. And I wanted to do the same, but it was inconvenient. I stood and continued to question these two - a man and a woman - who seemed more frightened by my questions than by machine-gun fire from the air.
Right there, not far away, near the fence, bullets were splashing, they didn’t hit us, everything turned out well.

Konstantin Simonov

Simonov Konstantin

Different days of the war (Writer's Diary)

Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich

Different days of the war. Writer's Diary

Publisher's abstract: This volume consists of the war diaries of K. M. Simonov, at that time a correspondent for Red Star, covering the events of 1941. Since the journal publication of K.M. Simonov received many letters from people whom he met on the roads of the war and who are present on the pages of his diaries. He was very attentive to his correspondents. With their help, the author's commentary on the diaries was replenished, forgotten things were recalled, events were restored, and inaccuracies were corrected. However, many comments remained unrealized, although the author considered them important and intended to take them into account when publishing the diaries in the Collected Works. Following the writer's death, the literary heritage commission examined many letters with the author's note "To the Collected Works." In cases where the comments turned out to be indisputable and did not entail a deep invasion of the author’s text, the will of K.M. Simonov was executed and corrections were made.

Forty-first

Chapter first

Chapter two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter twenty one

Forty second

Chapter first

Chapter two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Forty third

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Forty-fourth

Chapter sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter twenty one

Chapter twenty two

Chapter twenty three

Forty-fifth

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter thirty one

Chapter thirty two

It should be added that my work in those years went beyond the scope of my duties as a war correspondent for Red Star, and the book will talk not only about front-line trips, but also about writing.

My most detailed notes are related to the beginning and end of the war, from the forty-first and forty-fifth years. The records for the years forty-two, forty-three, and forty-four are sometimes quite detailed, and sometimes sketchy. Traces of some trips to the front remained only in correspondence published in Krasnaya Zvezda and Pravda, in copies of reports that I sent through the Information Bureau to America, and in the cursive writing of front-line notebooks. I well understood how important it is for a writer to keep war records, and, perhaps, even exaggerated their importance when, answering questions from the American Telegraph Agency during the war, I wrote: “As for writers, then, in my opinion, immediately as soon as the war ends, they will need to put their diaries in order. No matter what they wrote during the war and no matter how much readers praised them for it, still on the very first day after the end of the war the most significant thing they did during the war for the war , it will be their diaries."

In the book "Different Days of War" the reader will meet:

Secondly, with pages I took from front-line notebooks, from wartime and sometimes post-war correspondence, and in several cases from my military correspondence.

When preparing the book for publication, I tried to make it clear to the reader in each case what he was dealing with: what I wrote in those years, or what I remember now.

The book is a documentary, there are no fictional characters in it, and wherever I considered myself entitled to do so, I preserved the original names and surnames. There may be memory errors in a book such as this, and I would appreciate anyone pointing them out.

Forty-first

Chapter first

On June 21, I was called to the radio committee and asked to write two anti-fascist songs. So I felt that the war, which we, in essence, all expected, was very close.

I immediately called the political department. They told me to call again at five.

Walked around the city. People were in a hurry, but, in general, everything was outwardly calm.

The next day, the first batch of us, about thirty of us, were called to the political department and assigned to newspapers. In the front line - two, in the army - but one. I had to go to the army newspaper. This upcoming loneliness was a little unexpected. Writing, of course.

They made noise while trying on military uniforms. They were very animated, maybe even too nervous.

In a hurry, he chose an overcoat that was not his height, and the next morning, the 24th, he had to change it at the military store. Dolmatovsky bought sleepers for his buttonholes there. So we said goodbye to him in the middle of the store.

On the night of the 23rd to the 24th there was the first air raid alert, which, as it later turned out, was a training alert. All these, of course, were toys, but I was dragging children from the fifth floor down to the shelter, and the weight seemed extremely serious to me.

On the twenty-fourth, while it was still dark, I went to the station to get my military letter for Minsk. I never got anywhere, I just found out when the train was leaving. We decided that I would sit down somehow. I was in the mood to say goodbye to Moscow today and not put off leaving for another day.

Here and there at the station there were light bulbs burning. A black station, a crowd of people, it is unclear when, where and what kind of train is going, some bars through which you are not allowed. He threw the suitcase over, then climbed over himself.

The train started moving. The carriages, for some unknown reason, were country cars, without upper bunks, although the train went to Minsk.

Troops and vehicles walked along the road. One in one direction, others in the other. Nothing could be understood.

I asked the commandant to give me a revolver. To this the commandant replied to me: “Eh! I wish you could have turned up half an hour earlier. There was nothing left. Everything was distributed in an hour. Even the Mausers were stripped to the ordinary soldiers.”

Simonov Konstantin

Different days of the war (Writer's Diary)

Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich

Different days of the war. Writer's Diary

Forty-first

Chapter first

Chapter two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter twenty one

Forty second

Chapter first

Chapter two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Forty third

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Forty-fourth

Chapter sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter twenty one

Chapter twenty two

Chapter twenty three

Forty-fifth

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter thirty one

Chapter thirty two

It should be added that my work in those years went beyond the scope of my duties as a war correspondent for Red Star, and the book will talk not only about front-line trips, but also about writing.

My most detailed notes are related to the beginning and end of the war, from the forty-first and forty-fifth years. The records for the years forty-two, forty-three, and forty-four are sometimes quite detailed, and sometimes sketchy. Traces of some trips to the front remained only in correspondence published in Krasnaya Zvezda and Pravda, in copies of reports that I sent through the Information Bureau to America, and in the cursive writing of front-line notebooks. I well understood how important it is for a writer to keep war records, and, perhaps, even exaggerated their importance when, answering questions from the American Telegraph Agency during the war, I wrote: “As for writers, then, in my opinion, immediately as soon as the war ends, they will need to put their diaries in order. No matter what they wrote during the war and no matter how much readers praised them for it, still on the very first day after the end of the war the most significant thing they did during the war for the war , it will be their diaries."

In the book "Different Days of War" the reader will meet:

Secondly, with pages I took from front-line notebooks, from wartime and sometimes post-war correspondence, and in several cases from my military correspondence.

When preparing the book for publication, I tried to make it clear to the reader in each case what he was dealing with: what I wrote in those years, or what I remember now.

I have named the artistic works of Konstantin Simonov on a par with strictly documentary works because the author also laid the foundation for them with colossal factual material, personally gleaned by him as an eyewitness, a war correspondent on the fronts from the Barents to the Black Sea (the writer avoided using documents). Ten years will pass, and readers will receive the writer’s war diaries with his later comments in the form of a two-volume book entitled “Different Days of the War.”

But even these diaries will not fully reflect the wealth of observations, the smallest details, albeit seen from some, sometimes very small, distance and therefore included in the pages of the trilogy “The Living and the Dead”, “Soldiers Are Not Born”, “The Last Summer” (which Nyota Tun called it “a vivid evidence of the harsh and thorny path to victory”) not from the inside, like Mikhail Sholokhov or the “second wave” writers, but as if from the outside, but still giving the work irresistibility. To the writer of these lines, who in 1941, by the will of fate, built military installations near Smolensk, swam across the Berezina, observed the first salvo of Katyusha rockets near Orsha, emerged through the forests from the German encirclement, participated in the defense of Moscow, while reading the novel “The Living and the Dead” - More than once I had to be surprised with what accuracy, spontaneity, and freshness Konstantin Simonov recreates, drawing political instructor Sintsov, the “little doctor” - military doctor Tanya Ovsyannikov, everything that they could see and saw around them, what they thought and experienced in the first months of the war. Therefore, it will remain a mystery to me about the attitude towards the first two hundred-plus pages of the novel, read in the manuscript by A. Tvardovsky. “Tvardovsky didn’t like the beginning of my novel, as he put it, “it didn’t look good,” Simonov recalled. “Coming to him a day later, I sat opposite him, and he, turning the manuscript over sheet by sheet, sadly told me about his dissatisfaction with it.” Judging by the same memoirs, A. Tvardovsky did not like the writer’s “bifurcation” “between a novel and a first-person story,” the fact that one and the same thing is seen “with different eyes.” In my opinion, this is an advantage, not a miscalculation.

Konstantin Simonov worked on the trilogy for exactly twenty years, making the first sketches for the novel “The Living and the Dead” in 1950 and putting the final ellipsis in “The Last Summer” in 1970. In a letter to one of his American correspondents, he characterized the idea and essence of his own artistic narrative about the war as follows: “I saw my duty in writing, to the best of my ability, the war as it was, with its difficult sides and tragedies, - and the war on a personal human level remains a tragedy until its final hour. For us, the war was a global tragedy - the question was simply about the existence of a nation, a country: should we continue to exist on earth or not?..

...I just wanted to tell the truth about the war - as I saw it. It seemed to me and continues to seem that the truth about it testifies to the justice of this war and the fair, in principle, nature of our society, although at the same time - both before the war, and during the war, and after the war - many of our troubles, imperfections, and mistakes were revealed - including mistakes that bordered on crimes, if we talk about violations of the law in the pre-war years. I kept this in mind when I wrote my books about the war in which I participated, believing that our cause was just, and our society deserved to be defended to the last drop of blood.”

The author has also admitted more than once that from the first days of the war, two books had a strong influence on him: “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy and “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov. “...I like the masculine, hard hand of Sholokhov, who writes both life and death in all their complexity and roughness,” he said, and he himself sought to write the last war in his trilogy in this way.

An attentive and strict researcher of Russian literature, Edward Pawlak, in his book “Memory and Constancy” (Warsaw, 1980) called K. Simonov’s trilogy “a work both about the destinies of people and about history itself, invading both the life of an individual and the life of an entire people.” " Critics unanimously recognize the merit of the trilogy that the French writer Pierre Gamarra expressed in terms of monumentality, panoramicness, encyclopedicism.

The heroes of the trilogy go through the most tragic, most grandiose and most glorious events of the last war, such as the fiercest battles in the Smolensk region and near Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Minsk operation. On the pages of the West German newspaper Deutsche Volkszeitung, M. Stütz called this trilogy “a comprehensive epic about the Great Patriotic War, about the Second World War, seen through the eyes of the Russian people.” And she added: just like other Russian writers, “K. Simonov is not interested in war in itself; together with his fellow writers, he examines the traditional issue of “war and peace” in Russian literature on a new philosophical basis. While not entirely agreeing with this assessment, the reviewer from the New Zurich Newspaper was nevertheless forced to admit: “...Simonov’s work makes convincing the truth that indeed only the heroic exertion of all forces could lead to the expulsion of the enemy.”